OOC: Ten Things
Sep. 10th, 2007 11:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyfirestarterTen Things About Charlie McGee
1. Charlie's sex life has been nil, with one exception when she was seventeen. Mostly from a desire to prove she could, she slept with a boy a year younger than herself and found the experience more uncomfortable than anything else. She has deliberately suppressed all related desire since then (or, possibly, since long before then), and is not consciously aware of why. Edited to add: This was true as of Charlie's entrance to Milliways, and has since changed.
2. The aforementioned why has a great deal to do with what firestarting feels like, to her. As with Breaking, it's intensely pleasurable -- in a way that is very closely approximated by sexual arousal. Charlie has had to control that ability rigidly since very early childhood, and while she has mostly broken through the Bad Thing complex her parents instilled in her, its remnants are still very much there: at the very core of her she knows that the only thing that feels that good is deadly dangerous.
(Yes, this is what's causing the panic attacks.)
3. If you asked Charlie if she believes in God, she would probably answer either 'no' or 'I don't know.' The closest thing to a concept of God in Charlie's life is the Rose, and she is as devoted to it as any born-again religious. The Rose is everything, and there is no higher calling than to serve it.
4. It's been mentioned that Charlie spent some of her later teenage years on the road. It was sometime around then -- she never noticed when, and I couldn't tell you -- that she went todash, slipping between worlds much the same way Pere Callahan did after leaving Jerusalem's Lot, to end up in Keystone Rose. The Tet Corporation found her through one of their recently acquired spotters, a boy named Eric VanAllsburg.
5. Owing mostly to those years on the road, Charlie never finished high school. She took (and passed) an equivalency test shortly after she started working for Tet, and has since taken a few college-level correspondence courses (mostly in literature, one in 20th-century American history).
6. Charlie was twenty-six years old when she first read her own canon. It took her the better part of a day. She has read it since over a dozen times, and made extensive notes in the margins. Sometime around December of 2006, she gave her annotated copy to Irene Tassenbaum, who still has it.
7. The most unsettling thing she learned from reading her own story had to do with the inner thoughts and motivations of John Rainbird -- both how thoroughly he manipulated her, and how genuinely, in his own twisted way, he cared about her. Until that first reading, she had forgotten (or successfully repressed the memory of) his last words to her, spoken just before he fired the bullet meant to kill her: There. So I can see your eyes. I love you, Charlie.
8. With the exception of the Dark Tower series and its most blatant tie-ins, which are unofficially required reading for every employee of the Tet Corporation, Charlie hasn't read a lot of Stephen King. [note to self: doublecheck this.]
9. Charlie's favorite colors in clothing are mostly greys and muted blues and greens. She favors jeans for everyday, with light button-down blouses or t-shirts in summer and turtlenecks or sweaters in winter. If she needs to look more professional, she'll wear a pants suit. She doesn't generally have occasion to dress up any more than that; she does own one obligatory Little Black Dress, but hasn't worn it in ages.
10. When she was about ten, Charlie made a conscious decision that she would never have children of her own. She hasn't really thought about that decision in a long time, and hasn't had occasion to seriously revisit it.
1. Charlie's sex life has been nil, with one exception when she was seventeen. Mostly from a desire to prove she could, she slept with a boy a year younger than herself and found the experience more uncomfortable than anything else. She has deliberately suppressed all related desire since then (or, possibly, since long before then), and is not consciously aware of why. Edited to add: This was true as of Charlie's entrance to Milliways, and has since changed.
2. The aforementioned why has a great deal to do with what firestarting feels like, to her. As with Breaking, it's intensely pleasurable -- in a way that is very closely approximated by sexual arousal. Charlie has had to control that ability rigidly since very early childhood, and while she has mostly broken through the Bad Thing complex her parents instilled in her, its remnants are still very much there: at the very core of her she knows that the only thing that feels that good is deadly dangerous.
(Yes, this is what's causing the panic attacks.)
3. If you asked Charlie if she believes in God, she would probably answer either 'no' or 'I don't know.' The closest thing to a concept of God in Charlie's life is the Rose, and she is as devoted to it as any born-again religious. The Rose is everything, and there is no higher calling than to serve it.
4. It's been mentioned that Charlie spent some of her later teenage years on the road. It was sometime around then -- she never noticed when, and I couldn't tell you -- that she went todash, slipping between worlds much the same way Pere Callahan did after leaving Jerusalem's Lot, to end up in Keystone Rose. The Tet Corporation found her through one of their recently acquired spotters, a boy named Eric VanAllsburg.
5. Owing mostly to those years on the road, Charlie never finished high school. She took (and passed) an equivalency test shortly after she started working for Tet, and has since taken a few college-level correspondence courses (mostly in literature, one in 20th-century American history).
6. Charlie was twenty-six years old when she first read her own canon. It took her the better part of a day. She has read it since over a dozen times, and made extensive notes in the margins. Sometime around December of 2006, she gave her annotated copy to Irene Tassenbaum, who still has it.
7. The most unsettling thing she learned from reading her own story had to do with the inner thoughts and motivations of John Rainbird -- both how thoroughly he manipulated her, and how genuinely, in his own twisted way, he cared about her. Until that first reading, she had forgotten (or successfully repressed the memory of) his last words to her, spoken just before he fired the bullet meant to kill her: There. So I can see your eyes. I love you, Charlie.
8. With the exception of the Dark Tower series and its most blatant tie-ins, which are unofficially required reading for every employee of the Tet Corporation, Charlie hasn't read a lot of Stephen King. [note to self: doublecheck this.]
9. Charlie's favorite colors in clothing are mostly greys and muted blues and greens. She favors jeans for everyday, with light button-down blouses or t-shirts in summer and turtlenecks or sweaters in winter. If she needs to look more professional, she'll wear a pants suit. She doesn't generally have occasion to dress up any more than that; she does own one obligatory Little Black Dress, but hasn't worn it in ages.
10. When she was about ten, Charlie made a conscious decision that she would never have children of her own. She hasn't really thought about that decision in a long time, and hasn't had occasion to seriously revisit it.
