( ooc | application for ataraxion )
| P L A Y E R I N F O R M A T I O N Your Name: Maria OOC Journal: ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small} caipirinhaUnder 18? If yes, what is your age?: Nope! Email + IM: m.pluzhnikov at live dot co dot uk | flamboyant penguin @ aim Characters Played at Ataraxion: N/A, have also applied for Eleanor Buchanan. C H A R A C T E R I N F O R M A T I O N Name: Joan Watson Canon: Elementary Original or Alternate Universe: OU Canon Point: 2.08 "Blood is Thicker" Number: RNG me! Setting: Elementary is a modern retelling of Sherlock Holmes as originally created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, set in New York City, with a notable difference being that Joan Watson is in fact Joan and not John. The setting is not at all far removed from a standard variant of Earth, with no major differences. History: From the outset, Joan appears to have led a relatively normal life up until certain points, particularly in terms of her various career changes. Raised predominantly by her mother and step-father, it has recently been revealed that Joan’s mother left her birth father after complications in the relationship due to difficulties with her father’s mental health. Joan has kept an eye on her father for some time now as he ended up on the streets eventually, leading to Joan’s investment in helping out with the homeless community on the whole, although according to current canon she hasn’t seen him for two years. She also has a half-brother, Oren, with whom she is on good terms, while her relationship with her mother seems occasionally strained. Having invariably worked and trained very hard to do so, Joan was a surgeon for a (probably quite long) number of years up until a mistake on the operating table led to the death of one of her patients, resulting in her being sued for malpractice and being temporarily suspended. Following this, however, Joan left the world of medicine entirely to become a sober companion instead, probably somewhat influenced by a previous relationship with a drug user for whom she’d also staged an intervention at some point. Joan’s change in careers wasn’t exactly warmly received – particularly by her mother, while friends remained quietly baffled – but despite being questioned, she kept at it, which eventually led to her meeting Sherlock Holmes. Joan was hired by Sherlock’s father as his sober companion immediately post-rehab, which started off on a questionable note because on the day Joan was supposed to pick him up, Sherlock instead escaped rehab prematurely (due to boredom, in his words). Sherlock and Joan didn’t have the smoothest of starts, considering that Sherlock didn’t really take to the idea of having a sober companion, not to mention the fact that he’s not always the easiest of people to get on with full stop. Initial hiccups aside, Joan and Sherlock made it work out anyway, despite Sherlock’s resistance to Joan’s encouraging him to engage in the recovery process for addicts, in part because Joan found Sherlock’s work as a “consulting detective” for the NYPD rather fascinating. Throughout the first season, Joan proves useful to Sherlock as not only a sober companion but also an additional pair of eyes to look over his cases, showing her own potential capabilities as an investigator. When Joan’s contract as Sherlock’s sober companion runs out, she chooses to stay on with Sherlock as if her contract had been extended, a fact she can’t keep from Sherlock for very long (unsurprisingly). This leads to Sherlock proposing that Joan stays with him anyway, and that he trains her in the interests of developing her skills as a detective, admitting that he feels his own work as a consulting detective has been improved by her presence in his life. Thus begins a kick-ass partnership, if I do say so myself. Throughout her time with Sherlock, Joan found out through her own investigations of Sherlock’s previous relationship with a woman named Irene Adler, though getting details out of Sherlock personally was more like getting blood from a stone, really. Joan eventually finds out that Irene’s (supposed) murder in London led to Sherlock’s downward spiral in terms of drugs, although it eventually transpires that Irene was not in fact murdered – as a result of Sherlock and Joan finding her following a series of conversations and tasks set to them by “Moriarty”. Who turns out to in fact be the same person as Irene, actually, and many jaws hit the floor at the time when this was found out. Irene Adler/Jamie Moriarty is definitely a Napoleon of crime with fingers in many pies, though at the end of the first season she is caught and arrested. The second season begins with a trip to London wherein Joan not only gets to see Sherlock's old stomping grounds and meet previous colleagues of his, including the rather interesting Greg Lestrade, but also his brother, Mycroft. The focus shifts now Joan's rapidly developing skills as an investigator in her own right, with most of the cases that she and Sherlock work being a very definite partnership effort, whether the cases be regarding whistleblowers, racehorses or mathematicians. Throughout this time, Joan and Sherlock both continue to learn about working with someone as an equal, as both of them have previously been in positions or jobs where they have been the lead of some sort, as opposed to it being a joint matter, as well as solidifying their friendship on the whole, especially in moments such as when Mycroft provides (a rather suspect) ultimatum about Sherlock needing to return to England in the very near future or else face being cut off from the allowance paid to him by his father. Faced with the consequences of the fact that the NYPD do not pay Sherlock or Joan for their consulting services, Joan expresses full on support with regards to Sherlock's desire to stay in New York as part of his personal recovery process, even in the face of being ejected from the brownstone or possible financial instability. We learn rather soon after this, however, that Mycroft was bluffing about Sherlock being cut off and seems to have an ulterior motive. Immediately following this, Joan would find herself in Ataraxion. Personality: Joan is, first and foremost, not going to take any shit from anyone. If there is one thing we learn about her throughout the series it’s that if she can deal with Sherlock Holmes on a daily basis, she can deal with just about anyone. Sure, there might have been a stutter at the start, but she has spent more than enough time with him to have developed a pretty superhuman (haha) level of patience for, shall we say, eclectic personalities. That said, Joan is a patient woman full stop – you have to be when you’ve been through the range of professions that she has, not just because you’d have difficulty in dealing with said professions if you didn’t, but because she is naturally that way inclined too. Everyone has their limits of patience and toleration, and Joan is certainly the kind of person who will let you know if you are testing these limits, whether this is by openly telling you so or dropping a dryly sarcastic remark. Joan isn’t particularly afraid to speak her mind or contradict people if she disagrees with them, a trait possibly amplified by her time spent with Sherlock. Aside from all of this, Joan is a friendly and polite woman on the whole with a pretty excellent, er, client-side manner, in that she often softens the blow of Sherlock’s more abrupt actions, having always maintained a somewhat more professional manner than the comparatively unorthodox Sherlock even when she was not herself a consulting detective. She has a pretty strong and clear moral compass that she sticks to, and is very open minded, to a point – for example, she won’t really have much of an issue with her housemate having multiple sexual partners that pop up in the brownstone, but when one of these people turns out to be their prime suspect for a murder, then she will (loudly) have something to say about it. Joan seems to treat strangers with a level of caution. Whether this is partly drawn from experiences with drug addicted exes and the like or less than safe situations she has encountered while working with Sherlock is sort of unclear, but she doesn’t appear to be the sort of person who is ready and willing to let people wander into her life as they please. Yes, she’s friendly and polite, as mentioned, but she is also fairly guarded, as shown somewhat by the fact that she only relates to Sherlock that her mother’s husband is in fact her step-father midway through the second season, after living with Sherlock for over a year. Despite the fact that Joan has encountered opposition – both minor and not so minor – to some of her choices in recent years, including but not limited to an attempted intervention of sorts by her friends when they think she is getting too wrapped up in Sherlock and his consulting and concerns raised by her therapist, she has always stood her ground. Joan is a woman with clear focus, which isn’t to say her judgement isn’t prone to clouding, but even at times where she has seemed “lost” to others, she has always had a pretty clear sense of self. This also indicates that she’s pretty stubborn, and it’s hard to loosen her grip on something when she’s got a hold of it. In effectively becoming Sherlock’s apprentice during the first season, Joan shows that she is eager to learn and a quick study, picking up on details as minute as being able to identify specific pigments of paint. She throws herself into new things willingly and with a desire to do them well and thoroughly. The bottom line is that Joan lives to help people, and this is clear throughout her life and her actions. Being a surgeon, a sober companion, a consulting detective – all of these things have allowed her to help save and transform lives, or put minds to rest. She has a vested interest in aiding the homeless community not only because of her own personal reasons, but invariably because it resonates with a desire to do what she can for people in whatever way possible. There is room to suggest, however, that Joan might also be the kind of person who might fall into the trap of wanting to save or fix everybody and struggle with the idea of not succeeding, as indicated by her choice to quit medicine having lost a patient. In the end, though, this will never change the aspect of Joan that is determined to help others. Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations:   + through her time spent with Sherlock, Joan has amassed an interesting collection of skills she never thought she would have, primarily along the lines of sharpening her abilities with regards to deductive reasoning, heightening her powers of observation considerably, as well as the unconventional trinity of: lock picking; pick pocketing; stealing cars. not necessarily the most useful skills in space, but ones she has at her disposal nonetheless. - Joan is very much a breakable human and likely going through various stages of learning self-defence, though the extent of these stages is fairly unclear so far in the series, but she definitely has no superhuman abilities that can protect her if she were to encounter something dangerous. ~ no power limitations on account of the fact that she has none! Inventory: - Sherlock's monograph on tobacco - a comfy red cardigan - one pair of reading glasses + case Appearance:  As portrayed by Lucy Liu in Elementary. S A M P L E S Log Sample: Sometimes it feels like her mind is always buzzing, always turned on. It's moments like these where she's not particularly surprised that sometimes Sherlock can stay awake all night, fuelled by a need to follow all the loose threads to a tangible end, because it's not something you can really switch off once you've switched it on. Her gaze lingers on the stain in the tablecloth before her, briefly, and she takes note of the fact that despite being quite a bright and natural looking red, it has a slight pinkishness that suggests lipstick rather than sauce. A quick, awkward touch up before an unnerving date? Maybe. Joan looks instead at her phone, briefly, even though she knows she has no new messages. It is, however, three minutes until Sherlock is officially twenty minutes late, but then what else was she expecting when she let him chase up a lead at the Metropolitan on his own? Of course he was going to get distracted. Meanwhile, all she had was an address that turned up to be a random dummy with a definite dead end. She wonders how strange it is, to notice things in a way that you didn't notice them before. How strange that you always had the capacity for it, you just needed to unlock it. Not that she's complaining - it's a fascinating way of seeing the world around you, and somehow that fascination never quite stops. It's a snowball effect, addictive in its own way, though Joan only mulls over these thoughts in her head and would not consider raising them aloud. Moments like these, when she has an opportunity to daydream, to stop and think for a second about the path she was walking. Definitely one on the less travelled side, to say the least. One and a half minutes left. He makes it, but only just. Launching straight into explanations and theories rather than attempting an apology, but Joan just arches her brows and waits for him to get it all out before she points out how late he is. He's probably been holding this with great difficulty for the entirety of his trip to get here, so she will give him the benefit of relieving himself of the burden of his need to share his findings before giving reminders about good manners. Comms Sample: [ when the feed clicks on, joan's still damp hair is scraped back and out of her face, and she's already bundled up in her red cardigan, mercifully provided to her by the ship. there is a vague moment of pause before she speaks, a moment of hesitation that seems to ask if playing along with this system is giving validation to some warped illusion, but- well, she's clutching at straws right now. ] On the off chance that at this point I'm really not going to wake up from this incredibly weird dream, I guess I should introduce myself. [ another hint of hesitation, as if she's waiting for someone to jump out and yell "SURPRISE!" just because she's giving in - she exhales, faintly. ] Joan Watson. So, this is already shaping up to be the worst vacation I've had in a while, between the very dubious legality of just about everything I've seen so far since falling out of that pod thing and the fact that apparently we're in space. [ her brows crinkle. ] Speaking of which - is that blue stuff a regular thing? [ please say no. ] |
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To expand on Joan's feelings of guilt, this is generally built upon the idea that she has a tendency to shoulder far more responsibility than she needs to and can take to heart her mistakes and shortfalls in a way that affects her judgement. We learn during the second season that she is still in contact with the son of the patient she lost on her operating table, to whom she still feels like she owes a debt for being unable to save his father. This is shown by the fact that she has occasionally been giving him money for things such as getting a new car for college, and the fact that despite discomfort in the suggestion, she is willing to loan him a considerable sum of money to help him start up a bar he plans to open, having dropped out of college. This all spirals around the fact that after being sued by her patient's husband, the son expressed to Joan that he did not blame her for his father's death, something that Joan does not necessarily agree with.
All of this is significant because there is rationality in Joan that tells her she should be wary of putting such faith and support into someone that she doesn't actually know, but her sense of responsibility for his situation - claiming that he dropped out of college because he was having difficulty coping with his father's death - overrides that rationality. By being a pretty empathetic person, Joan is also someone who can be manipulated if someone put their mind to it and can be left indefensible if someone figures out how heavily mistakes can weigh on her mind. It's not hard to imagine that a former surgeon would have to be something of a perfectionist in order to do that job well, because life and death - obviously - hang in the balance. She eventually makes the right decision by offering the son a considerable amount of money, but only with the ultimatum that he use it to go back to college and finish his education because that's what his father would have wanted, to which he responds unfavourably by telling Joan that his father would still be there were it not for her. The comment clearly hurts Joan deeply, because in her mind there would be a ring of truth to it and it is hard to give someone you feel like you've let down an option they're not looking for.
This also leads onto the fact that Joan is no stranger to doubting herself. Although mentioned previously that she has a fairly clear sense of self, it should be noted that this clear sense is sometimes built on wobbly foundations. It sometimes takes a push from others for her to be certain of her choices, to know that her desire or resolve to stick to something that she believes is right, or at least right for her. While she does eventually make the right choice regarding her patient's son, it is not without the opinion of Sherlock, who tells Joan he doesn't want her being taken advantage of. It's not that Joan has zero faith in herself, but just like anyone else, she can't help seek some sort of support or approval from others just to help strength her convictions. The doubt creeps into some of Joan's earlier case solving, too, such as having a gut instinct that a husband has something to do with the disappearance of his wife and being initially unable to prove it - including a public embarrassment in the process where something she thought would serve as suitable evidence fell short.
Through the latter half of the first season she takes time to ascertain to herself that she is doing what's best for her (as opposed to jump onto an exciting new opportunity) by becoming Sherlock's pupil in the art of deduction and what have you. The part of her that's sure is the part that reacts negatively to her friends' worries and attempted interventions, but the part that isn't is the part that sticks around afterwards and develops in her head, wondering if maybe she is as lost as her friends suggest she is. Slight divergence, but personally I don't think that "lost" is the right word for Joan, because it implies a kind of aimlessness where Joan always knew the base explanation for why she has chosen her different paths. Maybe some of the justifications aren't necessarily the best, but it seems more like she has just been wandering down paths that doesn't have clear ends or directions, which is difficult to fathom for friends who are settled, have families, and don't look at their own futures in a haze. In itself, it can be argued to be a weakness of Joan's in that she honestly cannot predict anything in her life anymore due to the unpredictability and dangers it now presents, which is possibly more a view from people on the outset rather than one she would personally consider as a weakness.