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User Name/Nick: Alexis
User DW: halfhappy
E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact: punnyinpink @ plurk
Other Characters Currently In-Game: N/A

Character Name: Christina Brand
Series: Professor T
Age: 55
From When?: the classic "hit by a car" death, set after saying goodbye to Jasper in 3x03

Inmate Justification: She keeps making bad decisions in her search for happiness. Her marriage troubles, her falling for a corrupt cop who was only using her, her ill-conceived plan to arrest him, and then all the perjury that followed, stem from the way she seeks happiness in external sources. Heartbreak 12 years ago made her more likely to settle for less than she really wants. All the trappings of a good life (tm) amount to nothing because they're not the real deal. And what will the real deal be now that she has thoroughly destroyed the possibility of being with the love of her life? Unclear, but certainly they will not be in the family she was so ready to leave behind. Until she undetstands she is the source of her own problems and happiness, she'll keep hurting the people around her and/or making them miserable.

Arrival: She agreed to it because she was convinced she was hallucinating the exchange. Now she gets to realize it was real and that she's along for the ride.

Abilities/Powers: N/A she's a very average human.

Inmate Information: She's not your typical violent or destructive inmate, but the sheer mundanity of her issues will work against her. They're so small-scale, personal, and insidious that it'll be hard to face them head on and find and address their root cause.

She favors honesty and directness and being respected as an intelligent adult. She's level-headed (mostly) and not inclined to violence or emotional displays. She has a distinct professional demeanor vs social vs vulnerable and honest. It will take a lot of time in the vulnerable and honest state to get the work of redemption done.

Key events mostly revolve around Jasper: falling in love with him, getting engaged, and being abandoned by him. If the most honest person she'd ever met could lie to her and break her heart, anyone could. She puts up a front, reining in her emotions because god forbid women so much as smile at work. (There's nothing in the show about this explicitly, but it's not a stretch to say she had to work harder than a man would've to get to where she wound up in the force.) She got married to "a boring accountant" because such a person would feel like a safe bet, and after Jasper, Christina is willing to put her true wants and needs second or third in favor of safety for her emotions in particular. She performs normal because she believes she wanted normal, but the truth is she wanted what she had with Jasper. That's why her marriage is falling apart by the time the show starts and why she keeps having these little moments with Jasper as they reconnect thanks to the plot.

Her choices hurt the people she loves most, so we have to assume she cares about her husband and his kids. (And they have to not be hers biologically because if they are then she's a garbage parent, and it would've come up, and Jasper's parent trauma would've ended their dramatics before they got actually dramatic.) She works hard to convince herself she's doing what's best, only to then opt to exit the situation when it gets Real (tm). Apart from the emotional impact of her bad decisions, she's wasting taxpayer money and time (on the trial). Also, that was perjury. And threatening bodily harm on a guy, regardless of if he deserved maybe a punch in the face or such. It isn't a stretch to read her last scene with Jasper as her desperately hoping he'll tell her he still loves her so she can say she wants to stay with him. And if it is a stretch, it's at least rude as hell for her to take his hand even though he's wearing gloves, when she knows how he is about germs and touch.

At her worst, she's manipulative, selfish, and cruel. Pushed to the brink, she'll try and brute force her way through a problem and use her knowledge of a person (such as their strengths and weaknesses; she even says, "I know you better than you know yourself," to Jasper) against them (he did nooot deserve the prison saga). She's willing to lie under oath to settle a personal and professional score. Small potatoes compared to a lot of other fiction, but these are things that impact people and relationships every day in the real world. People like her could become better, but a lot of the time they just carry on in their toxic little ways. My argument is she could be worse and then better, and that's how I envision her arc. She'll have to admit just how badly she was hurt by what happened with Jasper and how destructive their time working together on cases was for them personally. She'll need to face that she was about to draw blood because she felt slighted and used, and that pride and her need for revenge/justice almost ended an innocent man's life as a free individual. She'll have to truly get over Jasper (by far the biggest ask), and she'll need to learn how to find peace and happiness within her own self.

Path to Redemption: Well! See above. She's adaptable enough to work with anyone provided there's trust there. She won't enjoy floods and will hate breaches a lot. Anything outside of average human life will be weird to her, but again, she'll adapt. She will be most helped by developing connections to all kinds of people. Having compassion for herself will be both difficult and necessary. Her job involves a lot of black and white thinking, so becoming comfortable with gray areas will also be good. Someone with experience laying out facts and identifying patterns, possibly even with experience in police detective work or scientific methods (or other fact-based methods tbh) will probably click the most with her, but they must also be able to deal with delicate and emotional subjects comfortably. Christina is fine with all of that in theory, but in practice, she's going to want to avoid it when it's about her.

History: of course there's no fan wiki etc for this show

With no indication otherwise, it's safe to assume she had a very normal life until she met Jasper in her and his late 20s, and then until the show begins. Over the course of the decade+ since meeting Jasper, they fell in love and were going to get married until he decided that all his mental health issues (including PTSD and OCD) meant he could never make her happy, so he left her at the altar. Whoops. The tragic part is that she clearly thought they could indeed be happy, or else she wouldn't have agreed to get married. In any case, life went on. She (allegedly, and definitely to some degree) forgives him eventually (during the years they don't interact) and meets and marries a "boring accountant" whose name changes in season three for no reason other than he's so unimportant to the story that nobody bothered to check for continuity. He has two kids from a prior relationship-- or so we assume, because they only make one appearance and are never mentioned or alluded to until then.

Then the show begins. She's now Detective Chief Inspector for the Cambridge police, and one of her detective sergeants consults with an old criminology professor for help, and who should that be but Jasper Tempest. He's so helpful that she lures him to the police station and ambushes him with a meeting with the team in which she pitches him being a consultant for them. He accepts, nerd (affectionate) that he is. The show then slowly reveals just how close they used to be. Jasper evidently still has feelings for her, and Christina, who starts the process of separating from her husband (again, zero mention of kids) seems to indicate interest in reconnecting with Jasper. It's exactly as "just say the words ffs" as it sounds. The (nominally) straights are not okay.

Things proceed as expected in a crime drama (except for guns, for those of us who are used to crime shows from the US). Crimes happen, tensions arise within the team, and Jasper and Christina end up in a kind of emotional tango, as 1x01 shows us via Jasper's imagination. Season 2 sees a drug unit cop (Simon) start appearing. He immediately flirts with Christina, who, despite being kind and attentive to Jasper (she HELD his HAND and then they held pinkies in the same scene!!!!!! scandalous!), realizes she doesn't want to wait forever for her old love, and thus plays directly into Simon's hands, both tactically and sexually. Turns out he only wants her for her credentials on the Greater Cambridge Police intranet. Jasper knows something's up, but not what, and she's upset he won't take decisive action and so dismisses him as being jealous because Simon makes her happy (girl, please). Not entirely untrue, but also, never let it be said that people in their 50s are super mature all the time.

Anyway, the truth comes out. Christina is pissed off enough by this betrayal / blatant manipulation to get a gun from the armory without signing it out, aka illegally, and lures Simon to her office for a "surprise" -- she wants to arrest him herself, before the cops who are about to do just that get the chance. The thing is that she seems unsteady when she's got him at gunpoint, which leads one to wonder if she wanted him to be afraid or maybe beg or something. Or maybe she wanted to shoot him a little, as a treat. (It's because cops in the UK don't just get handed guns as a matter of course lmaooo sorry, that's my "lives in America, where guns flow like water" bias showing.) In any case, Jasper susses out that she will overreact upon finding out the truth, so he shows up at her office with a hunting rifle. This throws her off. Simon shoves her to the floor, and she drops the gun. Jasper and Simon face off, Simon taunting Jasper like the late Mr. Tempest did when Jasper was a little boy. Christina crawls over to the gun and picks it up and points it at Simon's leg. And Jasper, who has probably spent the last 12 or so years feeling guilty for how he left things with her, fires a shot into the ceiling so she doesn't get a chance to do possibly the stupidest thing she could do in the moment. Officers then rush in and restrain him and detain Simon, and somehow nobody else sees that Christina had a gun.

Which is good for her because, as Detective Inspector Rabbit (yep, Paul Rabbit, love him so much) reminds her, this unsanctioned use of a gun could result in her losing her job, her pension, and her reputation. Cool, she'll have to talk to Jasper, right. So she does, and tells him that if he tells the truth, she's SOL. The problem becomes that, since Simon knows the truth (about the gun and about Christina and Jasper) and can guess what's going on (she's banking on being believed over him because she's got a good reputation), Simon decides, fuck it, pin attempted murder on Jasper the jealous ex-lover. This effectively screws Christina no matter what happens: lying means she has to live with the knowledge that Jasper gets life in prison because of her, and telling the truth means she loses the aforementioned benefits. Rabbit meant well warning her, but now the fear and panic means she sticks to the lie.

And gets back with her freshly renamed husband, who has a daughter and a son he brings along to the trial. Sure. So yes, witnesses testify, and eventually so does Christina. The prosecution gets her to admit that she and Jasper used to be lovers. This plus the fling with Simon give us the odd but funny choice to show the viewer the husband's colossal eyeroll. This also escalates the legal drama. To protect her, Jasper begins to change his court-assigned plea of not guilty and is cut off by his mother dramatically faking a fainting spell. (Actual queen Adelaide Tempest, y'all.) And it's the fact that Jasper (who never lies because trauma and autism (probably? this is not the show's strength)) is willing to lie for her that gets through and makes Christina tell the truth.

In her last scene, she meets Jasper on the rooftop to apologize. As she tells him goodbye (she's moving away with her husband and the kids to like reconcile but please, how, there's no way), she takes his hand, and only lets go when Jasper wishes her well (as opposed to, idk, saying something more personal or whatever it is she wanted but didn't get). She says she loved him and wishes him well back, and he leaves and it's overall sweet, considering he spent weeks in prison for and because of her.

And that's the end of her time on the show. Throughout, we see her be supportive of a grieving team member (Rabbit) and encouraging of another (Lisa) in her pursuit of career growth. A decent person overall who just can't get out of her own way. Christina leaves in pursuit of full happiness, and Jasper goes on to continue therapy and work.

Sample Network Entry: see sample below

Sample RP: TDM tl and threads

Special Notes: I'm going to mess up the Britishisms. I'm not bothered by this. I'd rather put my limited mental energy toward making sure her motivations etc are correct, and that her dialogue reflects the spirit of these motivations, than into making her sound perfectly authentically English. That said, I'm more than happy to take critique and suggestions, because I genuinely love learning about how language works in different cultural contexts.

permissions

OOC PREFERENCES:
•CONTACT METHOD: plurk (punnyinpink) or this journal
•THREAD-JACKING: sure, if we're all good with it
•FOURTH WALLING / CANON PUNCTURE: only during events with said mechanic
•BACKTAGGING: sure, but after 3-4 weeks I'd like to discuss where it ends up, so we're not left waiting
•AVOIDED TOPICS: Elder abuse, child abuse (if it's character backstory, allusions are fine, just warn for it, please). And I doubt this will come up, but I really don't want to RP "hey so acab" conversations. Her initials can be rearranged to spell "acab" so let's leave it there and have fun without having to remember reality for a bit
•PREFERRED GENDER PRONOUN: she/her

IC CHARACTERISTICS:
•CURRENT CANON POINT: after 3x03
•PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: the internet tells me the actor is 5'8" tall, so Christina is 5'8" tall. She occupies space like she's entitled to it, comfortable, competent. When seated, she's often leaning back, but even looking up at people who report to her doesn't diminish the authority she projects. In many ways she presents the way you typically see men in her position do, good for her. Her hair is always down, and she wears a necklace with a flat circle charm, possibly in contrast or as her only outward nods to femininity. Or both, tbh.

She dresses business casual, typically in cool tones, favoring blues and grays. Outer layers are usually warm/sandy/camel. Her voice tends toward a low pitch, often with breathiness to it, and is sometimes gravely, notably when she admits a personal defeat to Jasper in her last episode.
•DEMEANOR: She is unflappable under pressure and is comfortable speaking in public. Christina projects the image of someone who can be trusted to do difficult things and keep people safe.
•ABILITIES: Her skills are all mundane: She can lie with a straight face, is perceptive as hell and will use what she gleans from people against them in a pinch, and she has mastered the art of handling people without them noticing until she has them where she wants them and has shut the door behind them (source: 1x03: "Jasper, come with me for a moment" > leads him to her office as if they were going to have a little chat > "Stay here" > closes the door on him and leaves. Smooth as ice lmfao). She's sensitive to the mental state of her people, as a good supervisor should be. She's a good detective and has moved from working cases to directing as needed, making sure her staff are seeing and investigating all the possible angles.
•MEDICAL INFORMATION: Nothing of note. Healthy human adult.
•CABIN INFORMATION: A sleek Cambridge apartment, idk. Nothing terribly special.
•OFFENSIVE SUBJECTS: Crime stuff, in that she has opinions.

IC PERMISSIONS:
•MENTAL: Yes, let's just work out a few details beforehand
•MIMICRY: Yeah, fuck her up
•VIOLENCE: She's difficult to provoke (she's faced unrepentant murderers who've threatened her and hasn't been fazed by them, she can take a lot) but like definitely fight her, I'm down. Let's just talk it out a little first
•MAGIC: Yes, let's talk about what willl happen!
•DEBATE: No, she's not really the debating type
•OTHER / NOTES: Please feel free to correct me on Britishisms. I'm bad even at Americanisms because I didn't grow up in the USA except in the most technical sense, so yeah I'm going to get the UK details wrong. I'm aiming to keep her IC, but she will definitely not sound perfectly English. If it's especially jarring, I'm happy to correct it if you let me know what needs fixing!

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