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CHARACTER: CANON SECTION
NAME: The Biologist (for Recolle purposes her name is Lena)
AGE: early 30s?
CANON: The Southern Reach
NAME: The Biologist (for Recolle purposes her name is Lena)
AGE: early 30s?
CANON: The Southern Reach
CANON HISTORY:
The Biologist (she has a real name but, out of all the PoV characters, we never learn it) was born somewhere in the continental USA, around the late 70s-early 80s. Their family struggled with poverty throughout her childhood and it seems as if her parents had no idea how to raise as strange and introverted a child as her.
Her mother also seemed to have a problem with drinking, leading to outbursts. To escape these things, she retreated into observing wildlife. Her pet project was an abandoned pool in their backyard which had been reclaimed by the local wildlife. She obsessively cataloged it. It was her only friend and her first training as a biologist. They eventually moved away (possibly to avoid debts).
We don't know anything about her high school or college years, but it can be inferred that she had few, if any friends in either of them. Straight out of college, she had a number of fieldwork assignments, none of which she was able to succesfully stay with for a long time, usually because she ran out of grant money. Her longest, and loneliest one was in the pacific northwest, where she studied tidepools. She was an outcast in that fishing town, and eventually found in it the limits of her appetite for solitude. She drank a lot, had a lot of one night stands. It was a bad time.
She met her husband after moving away from there, though we're not told how. At first their marriage worked very well, both of them taking a sense of satisfaction in being with someone who was so opposite to them. His social energy and spontaneity kept her grounded in ordinary humanity and er reticence fascinated him. Cracks began appearing in it eventually however. His need for sociality and closeness began to grate on her and her refusal to open up hurt him. She began feeling jealous of his frequent (though secret) field assignments. It may have been these difficulties that caused him to volunteer for a dangerous assignment he never came back from: Area X.
The official story of Area X was that it was a very large chemical spill, far too dangerous for anyone to go near. The truth was far stranger and more dangerous. In reality something had happened, an event had been triggered that put up an invisible but very dangerous barrier around an area of "The Forgotten Coast" (implied to be Florida). No electronics could penetrate it and forcing it open was impossible and dangerous.
When a way into the barrier was discovered, a pristine wilderness seemingly awaited on the other side. Of the inhabitants there was no trace. Chemically, Area X was astoundingly free of toxins and other pollutants. The pristine environment hid very disturbing dangers tho. Equipment broke down. Members of the expedition began rapidly mentally breaking down and physically mutating. Most went insane, or regressed to a primitive state. Some turned on each other, some completed their transformations. Only one member made it back across the border, permanently traumatized and mentally unbalanced.
In the years since, The Southern Reach, the secret agency in charge of the effort to contain Area X, has sent dozens of expeditions into it, varying their compositions and preparations, having only marginally more success than the first expedition. Few have made it back. The Biologist's husband believed he was volunteering for the 11th expedition (his expedition was actually 11-H, by their internal labeling scheme). He was declared MIA eventually (presumably after not more than about a week). The Biologist was left to mourn her missing husband. She felt unmoored without him, detached from humanity.
Unknown to her, the director of the Southern Reach was observing her and lobbying for her inclusion in the next expedition. She felt the Biologist's detachment and extreme identification with her job made her better equipped to handle the mental effects of Area X.
After some months, The Biologist's husband unexpectedly returned, appearing in a vacant lot. He seemed to be suffering from a generalized amnesia and had a flatness to his affect that disturbed her. Their reunion was cut short the next day by his collapse. He had multiple, severe cancers and died within a few days. Determined to find out what had really happened to him, she volunteered for the next expedition into Area X.
What happened next is summarized in the wikipedia page.
CANON PERSONALITY: Very introverted, The Biologist has been described as "self contained" by the director of her expedition. While she does desire social interaction with other people, she prefers it in very limited doses and is rather awkward with it. She tends to dislike small talk, preferring to get to the heart of people's world views, even while she keeps her own views on most things (besides stuff like mollusc populations) close to her chest. She's capable of larger amounts of socializing, but forced into being with groups for long periods of time, she'll retreat into observation, mentally commenting on the people around her as if they were creatures in her beloved tide pools.
What she does need regular interaction with is nature. It's not in a St Francis sense. She's not naturally adored by animals and she doesn't anthropomorphize them. Rather there's something about the complex webs of natural interaction that calms her active mind and allows her to focus. Without some regular exposure to an ecosystem she can study, she becomes restless and irritable.
This goes hand in hand with her extreme self-identification with her job. She's uniquely suited to the task of fighting back against Area X, which subverts human consciousness via their sense of self, because she submerges herself almost completely in her role. This is why she doesn't mind giving up use of her name on the expedition. Being a biologist/ecologist is part of her identity and has been since she was a small child. She pursued the title to match that, not the other way around.
This scientific background tends to keep her calm in situations that would panic others. She still feels fear and anxiety when in danger but she's capable of a detached assessment of most any situation she's in. Thus despite her lack of natural charisma, she's often leaned on by others in groups she's in.
Curiosity is also one of her key points. She loves anything new and strange. Combined with her social awkwardness, this can occasionally make her seem rude and even intrusive, despite how quiet and shy she normally is. Ghost Bird, her clone, notes: "The first thing The Biologist would try to do if she met me would be to try to take a DNA sample.". If you don't excite her curiosity tho you are unlikely to see that side of her.
Her strong scientific instincts also don't make her totally unethical. She's wary of spreading The Brightness to others, and feels pity for The Crawler, for instance. She may still do unethical things if she judges the gain of them is worth it, but she's still aware of the quandary.
She's capable of forming strong bonds with others despite all this. Despite how miserable her marriage became, she clearly loved her husband. His emotionality and sociability helped keep her grounded in the world of ordinary people. Finding answers to his death was part of the reason she agreed to go into Area X, a seeming suicide mission. In his absence, she'll probably end up subconsciously seeking someone out who fulfills the same role for her here.
She's also not unaware of how strange all this makes her seem in comparison to ordinary people. Her awareness of her introversion, for instance, is high enough to make her a little smug about it (one could imagine, if the trilogy were written a few years later, her having posted smug memes about being an introvert on facebook). If her oddness is genuinely offputting to someone she'll apologize once or twice (any more and she'll decide they're just not compatible as people and do her best to avoid them).
SKILLS/ABILITIES:
The Biologist (she has a real name but, out of all the PoV characters, we never learn it) was born somewhere in the continental USA, around the late 70s-early 80s. Their family struggled with poverty throughout her childhood and it seems as if her parents had no idea how to raise as strange and introverted a child as her.
Her mother also seemed to have a problem with drinking, leading to outbursts. To escape these things, she retreated into observing wildlife. Her pet project was an abandoned pool in their backyard which had been reclaimed by the local wildlife. She obsessively cataloged it. It was her only friend and her first training as a biologist. They eventually moved away (possibly to avoid debts).
We don't know anything about her high school or college years, but it can be inferred that she had few, if any friends in either of them. Straight out of college, she had a number of fieldwork assignments, none of which she was able to succesfully stay with for a long time, usually because she ran out of grant money. Her longest, and loneliest one was in the pacific northwest, where she studied tidepools. She was an outcast in that fishing town, and eventually found in it the limits of her appetite for solitude. She drank a lot, had a lot of one night stands. It was a bad time.
She met her husband after moving away from there, though we're not told how. At first their marriage worked very well, both of them taking a sense of satisfaction in being with someone who was so opposite to them. His social energy and spontaneity kept her grounded in ordinary humanity and er reticence fascinated him. Cracks began appearing in it eventually however. His need for sociality and closeness began to grate on her and her refusal to open up hurt him. She began feeling jealous of his frequent (though secret) field assignments. It may have been these difficulties that caused him to volunteer for a dangerous assignment he never came back from: Area X.
The official story of Area X was that it was a very large chemical spill, far too dangerous for anyone to go near. The truth was far stranger and more dangerous. In reality something had happened, an event had been triggered that put up an invisible but very dangerous barrier around an area of "The Forgotten Coast" (implied to be Florida). No electronics could penetrate it and forcing it open was impossible and dangerous.
When a way into the barrier was discovered, a pristine wilderness seemingly awaited on the other side. Of the inhabitants there was no trace. Chemically, Area X was astoundingly free of toxins and other pollutants. The pristine environment hid very disturbing dangers tho. Equipment broke down. Members of the expedition began rapidly mentally breaking down and physically mutating. Most went insane, or regressed to a primitive state. Some turned on each other, some completed their transformations. Only one member made it back across the border, permanently traumatized and mentally unbalanced.
In the years since, The Southern Reach, the secret agency in charge of the effort to contain Area X, has sent dozens of expeditions into it, varying their compositions and preparations, having only marginally more success than the first expedition. Few have made it back. The Biologist's husband believed he was volunteering for the 11th expedition (his expedition was actually 11-H, by their internal labeling scheme). He was declared MIA eventually (presumably after not more than about a week). The Biologist was left to mourn her missing husband. She felt unmoored without him, detached from humanity.
Unknown to her, the director of the Southern Reach was observing her and lobbying for her inclusion in the next expedition. She felt the Biologist's detachment and extreme identification with her job made her better equipped to handle the mental effects of Area X.
After some months, The Biologist's husband unexpectedly returned, appearing in a vacant lot. He seemed to be suffering from a generalized amnesia and had a flatness to his affect that disturbed her. Their reunion was cut short the next day by his collapse. He had multiple, severe cancers and died within a few days. Determined to find out what had really happened to him, she volunteered for the next expedition into Area X.
What happened next is summarized in the wikipedia page.
CANON PERSONALITY: Very introverted, The Biologist has been described as "self contained" by the director of her expedition. While she does desire social interaction with other people, she prefers it in very limited doses and is rather awkward with it. She tends to dislike small talk, preferring to get to the heart of people's world views, even while she keeps her own views on most things (besides stuff like mollusc populations) close to her chest. She's capable of larger amounts of socializing, but forced into being with groups for long periods of time, she'll retreat into observation, mentally commenting on the people around her as if they were creatures in her beloved tide pools.
What she does need regular interaction with is nature. It's not in a St Francis sense. She's not naturally adored by animals and she doesn't anthropomorphize them. Rather there's something about the complex webs of natural interaction that calms her active mind and allows her to focus. Without some regular exposure to an ecosystem she can study, she becomes restless and irritable.
This goes hand in hand with her extreme self-identification with her job. She's uniquely suited to the task of fighting back against Area X, which subverts human consciousness via their sense of self, because she submerges herself almost completely in her role. This is why she doesn't mind giving up use of her name on the expedition. Being a biologist/ecologist is part of her identity and has been since she was a small child. She pursued the title to match that, not the other way around.
This scientific background tends to keep her calm in situations that would panic others. She still feels fear and anxiety when in danger but she's capable of a detached assessment of most any situation she's in. Thus despite her lack of natural charisma, she's often leaned on by others in groups she's in.
Curiosity is also one of her key points. She loves anything new and strange. Combined with her social awkwardness, this can occasionally make her seem rude and even intrusive, despite how quiet and shy she normally is. Ghost Bird, her clone, notes: "The first thing The Biologist would try to do if she met me would be to try to take a DNA sample.". If you don't excite her curiosity tho you are unlikely to see that side of her.
Her strong scientific instincts also don't make her totally unethical. She's wary of spreading The Brightness to others, and feels pity for The Crawler, for instance. She may still do unethical things if she judges the gain of them is worth it, but she's still aware of the quandary.
She's capable of forming strong bonds with others despite all this. Despite how miserable her marriage became, she clearly loved her husband. His emotionality and sociability helped keep her grounded in the world of ordinary people. Finding answers to his death was part of the reason she agreed to go into Area X, a seeming suicide mission. In his absence, she'll probably end up subconsciously seeking someone out who fulfills the same role for her here.
She's also not unaware of how strange all this makes her seem in comparison to ordinary people. Her awareness of her introversion, for instance, is high enough to make her a little smug about it (one could imagine, if the trilogy were written a few years later, her having posted smug memes about being an introvert on facebook). If her oddness is genuinely offputting to someone she'll apologize once or twice (any more and she'll decide they're just not compatible as people and do her best to avoid them).
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