app for TLV in 2013.
Apr. 3rd, 2015 09:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnprestonused to be found here
Character Name: Cleric John Preston
Series: Equilibrium
Age: Never specified , but I’m assuming 28 given the actor’s age at time of filming.
From When?: Post-movie, presumably after he died fighting for the resistance.
Inmate/Warden: Inmate. He might be the protagonist and a revolutionary, but Preston is still, with the situation stripped away from him, a mass murderer. He killed a lot of people, some of them when there isn’t a need to, and he has felt no remorse or grief over their deaths.
Item: N/A
Abilities/Powers:
He has no supernatural powers, but he’s very powerful, trained fighter in both Gun Kata and kendo. He has enough strength to literally cut a man’s face off, and enough speed to basically kill a whole troop of trained soldiers before they could even retaliate against him. He also has enough training and combat experience to be able to anticipate an opponent’s movements, and also to tell when he’s being watched.
And he has the ability to tell whenever someone is feeling—which means, at the very least, that he's very observant. There’s also a part of him that’s pretty good at planning and hiding himself—or else he couldn’t have survived so long as a ‘sense offender’ in the realm of the hunters themselves.
Personality:
What defines John Preston is ‘necessity’. He is whoever that he needs to be, and he has long learnt to clip away the parts of him that is detrimental to what he needs to be at any moment in time. He pushes it away, shoves it away—and he stops thinking about it. He dismisses it until it comes back again, or when he needs that part of himself for another purpose.
Preston, in the beginning, needed to be the Grammaton Cleric, First Class. He took Prozium which, presumably, suppresses all of his emotions, and he kills and raids for his government. He’s the best of the best, the strongest Cleric out there—with the special skill of always being to tell when someone is a sense offender or not. This is a very important skill of his, and he uses it to its fullest potential. It’s never said how many people he actually captured, but it’s not a stretch to say that it can run up to hundreds.
One of those captured—“by another”—was his wife. He was there when she was arrested, and he stood by when she was taken to be executed. At the point in time, he excels so much at being what he needed to be, a Grammaton Cleric, that he literally has no idea what to feel about the situation. He didn’t feel anything—and at the same time, he felt that he didn’t feel. And that is the crux of it.
Because what he keeps trying to cut out again and again as a Grammaton Cleric is that one thing that is in the core of him—his ability to empathize, and his ability to feel so incredibly deeply that not even Prozium can numb him entirely. He can tell if someone else is feeling because he would empathise with them, and in his own words: “Put myself in their position”. His strength of emotion is incredibly, incredibly great, but because of his position and the environment he lives in, he has no idea about what it means. He doesn’t have the knowledge about how to deal with that empathy. Due to necessity, he uses it as a weapon. As a way to find 'sense offenders' and kill them.
And even after he stops using Prozium, it remains the same. He has no idea how to deal with his empathy, his emotions. All he knew how to do was how to become what he had to become; to do what he had to do. All he knew was to fulfil what he has to do; to do his duty.
Later on, instead of becoming what Libra needed him to become, he became what the resistance needed him to be—an assassin, an executioner, and the inside man. When the resistance leader that he tried to help escape told him not to interfere, not to kill all the soldiers who were there to execute them, Preston repressed his emotions and walked away. When Jürgen told him that he had to repress his emotions in order to give everyone else the freedom to express themselves, to feel—he did so. He became what they need, and he did what he needed to do.
But there’s a Preston beneath all those necessities. It’s a man who picked up a puppy and doesn’t want to kill it; a man who knows the danger of keeping such an animal but does it anyway. It’s a man who is proud of his children and he thinks he might love them—a man who smiles with pride that he doesn’t even notice when he realized that his son and daughter have been ‘off the dose’ for longer than he has, and who have been hiding it much better than he had as well. It’s the part of Preston that fell messily and clumsily in love with Mary O’Brien, and who is deeply remorseful about killing his partner Partridge. This is the human part of Preston, the part that still exists despite the Prozium, despite all that he needs to be.
And it’s a part of him that he still doesn’t know how to deal with—but he’s learning. Very slowly.
The reason for most of John's behaviour is simply that the society he lives in stress the lack of individuality. Rarely does he ever think for himself until he stops taking Prozium - for most of his life, he follows orders, he does what he needs to do. It basically defines the majority of his attitude, simply because he cannot be 'himself' if there is no 'himself' in the beginning with, due to Prozium. So instead of developing any sort of individuality, he simply becomes who he has to be, and fits whatever personality traits that still struggle to the surface despite Prozium into what he has to be.
There's also the fact that he has duty impressed into him. He is the best at what he does, and it's repeated over and over again, which makes it even worse for him because then it tells him directly what he has to be. Even the rebels told him that he is the only person who can assassinate Father. It's always about him and what he can do, rather than him and what or who he is, and that's basically the crux of it.
The focus on the fact that he's the best, he's the only is that it leads to- well, basically, an over-inflated sense of self-importance. That, coupled with the new-found individuality away from Prozium's hold, and the attitude the movie takes that people under Prozium are less than human, it basically leads to him thinking that what he feels is more important than anyone else's. That his own concerns, his own feelings- are more important. It is a great shift from the beginning, when he is just what he can do, and is the crux of his character development in the movie. But it's not a good character development, because he's wrong about that. He's not the only one who matters.
Which is why he needs to be redeemed.
Path to Redemption:
The problem with Preston is that he has a very, very selfish man. What he cares about, what matters to him—are simply matters that involve him directly. The deaths of those that he cares for are the only deaths that seem to matter; that he mourns—even when he watched his wife’s execution, he was less shocked and affected by the fact that she was going to her death than by his own compliance and his own hand in it. He was able to kill what seems like hundreds of people to save himself—heck, to save a dog that he’s actually emotionally invested in.
Nothing else matters. Not the lives of the people whom he had just murdered. Not how the lives of the citizens of Libra and whether they would choose to rebel. No—it was entirely about him. His loss, his remorse, his sorrow, his choices; even if Jürgen said that Preston was someone who had to stop feeling so others could feel, Preston decided that his feelings were enough to dictate to everyone’s.
And that’s what he has to change, in the end. He needs to see the value of people around him—all the people around him, and not just those that are important to him. He needs to understand that there is value in life itself—that every single person whom he killed, every one whom he had condemned while he was still under Prozium… they matter. Their lives matter and they weren’t just a means to the end—to Preston’s end. That other people should be given the right to choose—the right that he has—and it is something they deserve. All of them. Not just Preston himself.
Very simply, he needs to understand that people are people, and he is a person. He means just as much, or just as little, as the next guy who stands next to him. He cannot afford to make choices for them based upon what he thinks to be right; upon his skill with a gun or a sword. He needs to understand that he is just as powerful—or powerless—than any other person in the world. That they matter, and he should not just feel for himself—but also for them.
History: The Wikipedia entry sums it up pretty well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equilibrium_(film)
Sample Journal Entry: [5-10 Sentences]
[text]
happy, adj.
characterized by or indicative of pleasure, contentment, or joy: a happy mood; a happy frame of mind.
angry, adj.
feeling or showing anger or strong resentment (usually followed by at, with, or about).
sad, adj.
affected by unhappiness or grief; sorrowful or mournful.
[video]
[ Preston looks blank, but there’s emotion in his eyes, and his shoulders are tense, his hand clenched into a loose fist. His breathing is a little too even. ]
When I try to find the meaning of emotions, I find they lead to more emotions. There’s no real definition that can be known. What does ‘happy’ mean? What is ‘contentment’, or ‘joy’? How does ‘anger’ differ from ‘resentment’? What is the difference between ‘sad’ and ‘unhappiness’ and ‘grief’? How do you label the emotion a person feels when they see someone die?
The books on science here say that emotions are caused by hormones through the body. Electric signals. Chemistry. If that’s all they are, why are they so important?
video; (arrival)
[ The screen flickers on to see Preston, seated on a bare metal chair, with the walls white and stark behind him. His room. ]
I understand that this is a prison. [ He says the word carefully, as if he's not familiar with it. ] However, I do not understand why I am here. If it is for the crime of sense-offense [ the revolution and rebellion comes under that too, Preston ], then return me to Libria and the Council for judgment and execution immediately.
If it is for another crime [ and here he looks mildly puzzled because he still cannot understand that there are other crimes - there is sense-offense, and only that, in his world ], then put me on trial summarily.
The delay is unnecessary.
Sample RP: [3-5 paragraphs, 3rd Person POV]
The gun kicked in his hand, slamming back against his palm, caught by the flesh even as the impact travelled down to his bones. It shook him just slightly, and he let himself be knocked back at the sensation even though he was so used to the feeling—the sensation that he had to go against his instincts.
But he wanted to feel this. This entirely visceral feeling of his gun in his hand; the kick of it, the smell of the gunpowder, the flare at the mouth, the weight and smoothness of the metal. It filled his senses almost entirely, and he wondered how he could have ever missed this. How could he have not noticed something as overwhelming as this? How could he have shot this gun over and over without understanding its power, its strength, and its capabilities? How could he have missed all of this?
His fingers curled over the handles, fitting into the grooves perfectly. Ergonomics—he remembered the word, from the old dictionaries that they didn’t manage to burn entirely. It was for comfort. For further durability. He has never noticed it—had just taken for granted that it was just how a gun looked—but now it had meaning.
It was in the simplest of things. He was relearning the world, step by step. Today he walked past the building of Equilibrium, and he realized that there were no bricks. Only plain, smoothed over cement. So much white that it made the people walking past seem bright and energetic—and it made his heart hurt, a little, the lack of details. The plainness. The lack of history. So much of it lost.
He remembered sanctioning the burning down of an entire house. It was a beautiful, old mansion. The bricks stood out in his mind—old, blood red, each with its own individual chips and scars, telling countless stories of everyone who had once lived there. Now it’s all gone.
And he thinks that this tight, heavy feeling in his chest might be regret.
Special Notes: None!
Character Name: Cleric John Preston
Series: Equilibrium
Age: Never specified , but I’m assuming 28 given the actor’s age at time of filming.
From When?: Post-movie, presumably after he died fighting for the resistance.
Inmate/Warden: Inmate. He might be the protagonist and a revolutionary, but Preston is still, with the situation stripped away from him, a mass murderer. He killed a lot of people, some of them when there isn’t a need to, and he has felt no remorse or grief over their deaths.
Item: N/A
Abilities/Powers:
He has no supernatural powers, but he’s very powerful, trained fighter in both Gun Kata and kendo. He has enough strength to literally cut a man’s face off, and enough speed to basically kill a whole troop of trained soldiers before they could even retaliate against him. He also has enough training and combat experience to be able to anticipate an opponent’s movements, and also to tell when he’s being watched.
And he has the ability to tell whenever someone is feeling—which means, at the very least, that he's very observant. There’s also a part of him that’s pretty good at planning and hiding himself—or else he couldn’t have survived so long as a ‘sense offender’ in the realm of the hunters themselves.
Personality:
What defines John Preston is ‘necessity’. He is whoever that he needs to be, and he has long learnt to clip away the parts of him that is detrimental to what he needs to be at any moment in time. He pushes it away, shoves it away—and he stops thinking about it. He dismisses it until it comes back again, or when he needs that part of himself for another purpose.
Preston, in the beginning, needed to be the Grammaton Cleric, First Class. He took Prozium which, presumably, suppresses all of his emotions, and he kills and raids for his government. He’s the best of the best, the strongest Cleric out there—with the special skill of always being to tell when someone is a sense offender or not. This is a very important skill of his, and he uses it to its fullest potential. It’s never said how many people he actually captured, but it’s not a stretch to say that it can run up to hundreds.
One of those captured—“by another”—was his wife. He was there when she was arrested, and he stood by when she was taken to be executed. At the point in time, he excels so much at being what he needed to be, a Grammaton Cleric, that he literally has no idea what to feel about the situation. He didn’t feel anything—and at the same time, he felt that he didn’t feel. And that is the crux of it.
Because what he keeps trying to cut out again and again as a Grammaton Cleric is that one thing that is in the core of him—his ability to empathize, and his ability to feel so incredibly deeply that not even Prozium can numb him entirely. He can tell if someone else is feeling because he would empathise with them, and in his own words: “Put myself in their position”. His strength of emotion is incredibly, incredibly great, but because of his position and the environment he lives in, he has no idea about what it means. He doesn’t have the knowledge about how to deal with that empathy. Due to necessity, he uses it as a weapon. As a way to find 'sense offenders' and kill them.
And even after he stops using Prozium, it remains the same. He has no idea how to deal with his empathy, his emotions. All he knew how to do was how to become what he had to become; to do what he had to do. All he knew was to fulfil what he has to do; to do his duty.
Later on, instead of becoming what Libra needed him to become, he became what the resistance needed him to be—an assassin, an executioner, and the inside man. When the resistance leader that he tried to help escape told him not to interfere, not to kill all the soldiers who were there to execute them, Preston repressed his emotions and walked away. When Jürgen told him that he had to repress his emotions in order to give everyone else the freedom to express themselves, to feel—he did so. He became what they need, and he did what he needed to do.
But there’s a Preston beneath all those necessities. It’s a man who picked up a puppy and doesn’t want to kill it; a man who knows the danger of keeping such an animal but does it anyway. It’s a man who is proud of his children and he thinks he might love them—a man who smiles with pride that he doesn’t even notice when he realized that his son and daughter have been ‘off the dose’ for longer than he has, and who have been hiding it much better than he had as well. It’s the part of Preston that fell messily and clumsily in love with Mary O’Brien, and who is deeply remorseful about killing his partner Partridge. This is the human part of Preston, the part that still exists despite the Prozium, despite all that he needs to be.
And it’s a part of him that he still doesn’t know how to deal with—but he’s learning. Very slowly.
The reason for most of John's behaviour is simply that the society he lives in stress the lack of individuality. Rarely does he ever think for himself until he stops taking Prozium - for most of his life, he follows orders, he does what he needs to do. It basically defines the majority of his attitude, simply because he cannot be 'himself' if there is no 'himself' in the beginning with, due to Prozium. So instead of developing any sort of individuality, he simply becomes who he has to be, and fits whatever personality traits that still struggle to the surface despite Prozium into what he has to be.
There's also the fact that he has duty impressed into him. He is the best at what he does, and it's repeated over and over again, which makes it even worse for him because then it tells him directly what he has to be. Even the rebels told him that he is the only person who can assassinate Father. It's always about him and what he can do, rather than him and what or who he is, and that's basically the crux of it.
The focus on the fact that he's the best, he's the only is that it leads to- well, basically, an over-inflated sense of self-importance. That, coupled with the new-found individuality away from Prozium's hold, and the attitude the movie takes that people under Prozium are less than human, it basically leads to him thinking that what he feels is more important than anyone else's. That his own concerns, his own feelings- are more important. It is a great shift from the beginning, when he is just what he can do, and is the crux of his character development in the movie. But it's not a good character development, because he's wrong about that. He's not the only one who matters.
Which is why he needs to be redeemed.
Path to Redemption:
The problem with Preston is that he has a very, very selfish man. What he cares about, what matters to him—are simply matters that involve him directly. The deaths of those that he cares for are the only deaths that seem to matter; that he mourns—even when he watched his wife’s execution, he was less shocked and affected by the fact that she was going to her death than by his own compliance and his own hand in it. He was able to kill what seems like hundreds of people to save himself—heck, to save a dog that he’s actually emotionally invested in.
Nothing else matters. Not the lives of the people whom he had just murdered. Not how the lives of the citizens of Libra and whether they would choose to rebel. No—it was entirely about him. His loss, his remorse, his sorrow, his choices; even if Jürgen said that Preston was someone who had to stop feeling so others could feel, Preston decided that his feelings were enough to dictate to everyone’s.
And that’s what he has to change, in the end. He needs to see the value of people around him—all the people around him, and not just those that are important to him. He needs to understand that there is value in life itself—that every single person whom he killed, every one whom he had condemned while he was still under Prozium… they matter. Their lives matter and they weren’t just a means to the end—to Preston’s end. That other people should be given the right to choose—the right that he has—and it is something they deserve. All of them. Not just Preston himself.
Very simply, he needs to understand that people are people, and he is a person. He means just as much, or just as little, as the next guy who stands next to him. He cannot afford to make choices for them based upon what he thinks to be right; upon his skill with a gun or a sword. He needs to understand that he is just as powerful—or powerless—than any other person in the world. That they matter, and he should not just feel for himself—but also for them.
History: The Wikipedia entry sums it up pretty well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equilibrium_(film)
Sample Journal Entry: [5-10 Sentences]
[text]
happy, adj.
characterized by or indicative of pleasure, contentment, or joy: a happy mood; a happy frame of mind.
angry, adj.
feeling or showing anger or strong resentment (usually followed by at, with, or about).
sad, adj.
affected by unhappiness or grief; sorrowful or mournful.
[video]
[ Preston looks blank, but there’s emotion in his eyes, and his shoulders are tense, his hand clenched into a loose fist. His breathing is a little too even. ]
When I try to find the meaning of emotions, I find they lead to more emotions. There’s no real definition that can be known. What does ‘happy’ mean? What is ‘contentment’, or ‘joy’? How does ‘anger’ differ from ‘resentment’? What is the difference between ‘sad’ and ‘unhappiness’ and ‘grief’? How do you label the emotion a person feels when they see someone die?
The books on science here say that emotions are caused by hormones through the body. Electric signals. Chemistry. If that’s all they are, why are they so important?
video; (arrival)
[ The screen flickers on to see Preston, seated on a bare metal chair, with the walls white and stark behind him. His room. ]
I understand that this is a prison. [ He says the word carefully, as if he's not familiar with it. ] However, I do not understand why I am here. If it is for the crime of sense-offense [ the revolution and rebellion comes under that too, Preston ], then return me to Libria and the Council for judgment and execution immediately.
If it is for another crime [ and here he looks mildly puzzled because he still cannot understand that there are other crimes - there is sense-offense, and only that, in his world ], then put me on trial summarily.
The delay is unnecessary.
Sample RP: [3-5 paragraphs, 3rd Person POV]
The gun kicked in his hand, slamming back against his palm, caught by the flesh even as the impact travelled down to his bones. It shook him just slightly, and he let himself be knocked back at the sensation even though he was so used to the feeling—the sensation that he had to go against his instincts.
But he wanted to feel this. This entirely visceral feeling of his gun in his hand; the kick of it, the smell of the gunpowder, the flare at the mouth, the weight and smoothness of the metal. It filled his senses almost entirely, and he wondered how he could have ever missed this. How could he have not noticed something as overwhelming as this? How could he have shot this gun over and over without understanding its power, its strength, and its capabilities? How could he have missed all of this?
His fingers curled over the handles, fitting into the grooves perfectly. Ergonomics—he remembered the word, from the old dictionaries that they didn’t manage to burn entirely. It was for comfort. For further durability. He has never noticed it—had just taken for granted that it was just how a gun looked—but now it had meaning.
It was in the simplest of things. He was relearning the world, step by step. Today he walked past the building of Equilibrium, and he realized that there were no bricks. Only plain, smoothed over cement. So much white that it made the people walking past seem bright and energetic—and it made his heart hurt, a little, the lack of details. The plainness. The lack of history. So much of it lost.
He remembered sanctioning the burning down of an entire house. It was a beautiful, old mansion. The bricks stood out in his mind—old, blood red, each with its own individual chips and scars, telling countless stories of everyone who had once lived there. Now it’s all gone.
And he thinks that this tight, heavy feeling in his chest might be regret.
Special Notes: None!
