Name: Sarah Contact Info: mereduchesne @ AIM ; mereduchesne Other Characters Played: None.
Character Name: Gregory Lestrade; goes by Greg. Canon: Sherlock (BBC) Canon Point: After 'His Last Vow.' Background/History: Canon information (via wiki) here. Personality: Greg is a practical man in the most fundamental sense: he's never so happy as when he has some function to fulfill. He wants to be useful. It's not an ideological desire, not the result of a decision he's made to attempt to do the most good he can do - rather, it's an impulse driven by his deep sense of empathy and his need for constant human connection. He sees and experiences everything through a lens of how people and their relationships are affected. So he's drawn to people he can do something for - relationships with people who have some reason to need him are the ones in which he can feel best about himself. It's partly down to insecurity, of course. In the world as he sees it, where interpersonal connections are the most important part of anything, it's a deeply frightening and utterly invalidating thing to be left alone, and so he avoids putting himself in situations where he can be dispensed with, and stays in relationships which he might be better off leaving.
But it's emphatically not all about him - he also does truly want to help people, and he's willing to suffer quite a lot of personal setbacks and even pain to do it. He enjoys his work as a police detective because it lets him make a difference in people's lives, even if it also frequently exposes him to a lot of emotional upheaval. He didn't choose this line of work because murders and ruined lives don't bother him; they do. But he's learned to separate those feelings (mostly) from the process of solving the case. He's absolutely sure any decent person would be affected by the horrible things he sees just as he is, even if they might not show it in the usual ways. He has a certain distaste for the way Sherlock Holmes handles people's feelings, for instance, frequently becoming visibly distressed and even angry at his apparent disregard for the dignity of the deceased, the feelings of victims, and the possibility of harm coming to innocent parties, but he wouldn't work with him if he didn't harbor some suspicion that he is, underneath it all, a "good man."
A suspicion is all it is, though, and at the end of the day he operates on suspicion and intuition rather than on knowledge. He's not given to psychoanalysis, at least not beyond the training in criminal behavior he's had as part of his job, or trying to figure people out. He has an innate understanding of how people work that usually serves him well (but which is of course sometimes misguided) and which makes asking more scientific or mistrustful questions about people's motives seem pointless, simplistic, and a little cold. That might be because he's decidedly not an introspective man. He knows what he feels and doesn't look into himself for reasons why, because feelings don't need reasons why. This can lead him to a failure to see when he's in the wrong or being unfair, particularly when he's feeling wounded, forgotten, or unappreciated - when he gets the sense he's not valued (like when a man he's been working with for seven or eight years can't seem to get a handle on his first name), he can become spiteful and defensive. He isn't a prideful man and can live with being stepped on for quite a long time, actually, as evidenced by his choice to stay in a marriage despite the fact he knew he was being cheated on. But when it becomes clear he's not wanted, needed, or respected he's just as capable of cutting words as anyone else. The fact that he feels guilty about it almost immediately usually helps to avoid any long-term damage - he'll usually try to apologize by way of joke or gentle ribbing to show there are no hard feelings - but not everyone responds well to that. His reliance on intuition rather than introspection means he's not terribly good at articulating his own feelings, which means there's frustration on the horizon when he has to confront them or explain them to others.
Greg's lack of analysis of emotional responses - his own and other people's - also means his default opinions are quite traditional, and tend to be accepting of the status quo. Old-fashioned systems mostly benefit people like him, so he hasn't had to think much about it; but when the subjects are raised and he's actually made to consider them he's quite open-minded. His empathy makes him fairly fluid in his assessment of how things should work, and also pretty bad at arguing and splitting hairs, as he's usually all too eager to jump on the side where his heart's leading him. He has a deep sense of duty, and it's tainted only by a little cynicism; he may be tired, but he's not jaded. He believes that doing the right thing is more important than doing the done thing (using Sherlock is definitely not above-board) and he tries his best to make choices accordingly, even when they're not best for him or not popular.
It's not all murders and mysteries, though. Although he's preternaturally patient and almost always gentle, he has a boisterous streak that comes out when he's having fun. He likes to kick back and indulge his rough-housing brand of fun every now and then - he likes the outdoors, likes kids, likes sports, likes a little bet now and then, and likes a drink a little more than he should. He's been known to go heavy on the affectionate teasing, and the fact that Sherlock has never actually exploded in response is a pretty good indication that Greg has a sense of when it's all right and when it isn't, and respects those boundaries. Most of all, he just enjoys being with people. Solitude makes him antsy, and makes him feel as though something's being wasted. Left alone he's never at his best - it's when he knows other people are watching or depending on him that he flourishes and can best take care of himself and others.
Abilities/Powers: Greg's intelligent, intuitive, and good in a fight - but that's about it. The training he's received during his rise to DCI has been top notch, as far as criminal detection goes, and his entire career has been an on-the-job course in leadership. He's got a good memory and a lot of patience and is good at applying what he knows to his work, but he's no genius; he's just good at what he does. Other than that, he's in good shape and knows how and when to throw a punch (and maybe a pry bar). Items/Weapons: His wallet; his home & car keys (with handy Chelsea key-ring-cum-bottle-opener); a half-empty pack of peppermint chewing gum. Sample Entry: Here's a recent meme thread. Sample Entry Two:
Greg's memory is good. Given a little prompting, a turn through the pages of a relevant file, he can summon and organize most everything he needs about a particular case. He's been at this a while; over the years it's fallen into place for him, slowly but surely, to the point that he can feel his way through the beats of his work. It's like muscle memory, more or less involuntary, all physical learning.
So it takes weird turns, pops up in unexpected places, surprises him like physical bodies always do - hours after he's left a crime scene, drafted up the paperwork, gone home, and had supper something will shift into place and he'll realize - something.
Tonight it happens while he's going through the hall closet, taking advantage of the solitude (Anne's out with her usual Thursday night girls; she never gets back til one or two in the morning) to get a little sorting done. They've lived here nearly seven years, and a lot of stuff - frankly, crap - has accumulated in spaces he'd rather use for useful things, so he's pulling out old shopping bags and empty boxes and half-broken appliances and feeling all the while that there's something missing. With every layer he pulls away there's something underneath that isn't there, that should be. It's an almost haunting feeling - until it coalesces into something solid and sharp when he grabs a half-used, beat-up roll of plain blue wrapping paper Anne bought ages ago for some baby shower.
Children.
For his own part, he's sidelined that disappointment as well as he could - it's strange to feel it come out so strongly now, until he realizes it isn't about him. The crime scene he went through this afternoon: half a hovel, a real dump of a place, with a woman stabbed to death in the bath. At first it had seemed a real puzzle, the water and blood trail left by the perpetrator ending supernaturally suddenly in the middle of the kitchen. He'd gone so far as to text Sherlock before one of his officers found the improvised door behind the refrigerator. That house, like so many around it, built to no code but whatever some grasping landlord thought would get him the most money out of his converted shack, had countless such senseless features. Windows that weren't, locks that attached to nothing, floors that stopped before the wall. So they'd gone out into the alley and eventually found a shoe print, and the chase was on. Hadn't needed the resident genius after all.
But now he remembers: stuffed under the sink in the bathroom around the exposed pipe there was a pack of disposable diapers, almost full. A kid - there was a kid. No kid at the scene, though, and none with the man they picked up hours later trying to scrape the blood out of his shoes.
Greg leaves all the debris where it is, grabs his coat and keys, gets in the car, and tears out of the drive toward that wretched part of town. The scene's been locked down, but there must be something to find. There has to be. When he arrives he lets himself in past the tape and the clumsy police padlock on the flimsy door and, torch in hand, tries not to think about what it is he's looking for. That won't help him, anyway.
When he hears something move in the direction of the sofa, he spins (and about jumps out of his skin) and can't tell if he's more relieved, disappointed, or worried to see a very adult figure sitting there. The fact that it's Sherlock Holmes clarifies matters not at all.
"Jesus." He stalks over, shines his light right in the other man's face. Maybe it's good that he's here - maybe he can help - but it doesn't feel good. "What the hell are you doing here?"
Greg Lestrade | Sherlock | Not Reserved
Contact Info: mereduchesne @ AIM ;
Other Characters Played: None.
Character Name: Gregory Lestrade; goes by Greg.
Canon: Sherlock (BBC)
Canon Point: After 'His Last Vow.'
Background/History: Canon information (via wiki) here.
Personality: Greg is a practical man in the most fundamental sense: he's never so happy as when he has some function to fulfill. He wants to be useful. It's not an ideological desire, not the result of a decision he's made to attempt to do the most good he can do - rather, it's an impulse driven by his deep sense of empathy and his need for constant human connection. He sees and experiences everything through a lens of how people and their relationships are affected. So he's drawn to people he can do something for - relationships with people who have some reason to need him are the ones in which he can feel best about himself. It's partly down to insecurity, of course. In the world as he sees it, where interpersonal connections are the most important part of anything, it's a deeply frightening and utterly invalidating thing to be left alone, and so he avoids putting himself in situations where he can be dispensed with, and stays in relationships which he might be better off leaving.
But it's emphatically not all about him - he also does truly want to help people, and he's willing to suffer quite a lot of personal setbacks and even pain to do it. He enjoys his work as a police detective because it lets him make a difference in people's lives, even if it also frequently exposes him to a lot of emotional upheaval. He didn't choose this line of work because murders and ruined lives don't bother him; they do. But he's learned to separate those feelings (mostly) from the process of solving the case. He's absolutely sure any decent person would be affected by the horrible things he sees just as he is, even if they might not show it in the usual ways. He has a certain distaste for the way Sherlock Holmes handles people's feelings, for instance, frequently becoming visibly distressed and even angry at his apparent disregard for the dignity of the deceased, the feelings of victims, and the possibility of harm coming to innocent parties, but he wouldn't work with him if he didn't harbor some suspicion that he is, underneath it all, a "good man."
A suspicion is all it is, though, and at the end of the day he operates on suspicion and intuition rather than on knowledge. He's not given to psychoanalysis, at least not beyond the training in criminal behavior he's had as part of his job, or trying to figure people out. He has an innate understanding of how people work that usually serves him well (but which is of course sometimes misguided) and which makes asking more scientific or mistrustful questions about people's motives seem pointless, simplistic, and a little cold. That might be because he's decidedly not an introspective man. He knows what he feels and doesn't look into himself for reasons why, because feelings don't need reasons why. This can lead him to a failure to see when he's in the wrong or being unfair, particularly when he's feeling wounded, forgotten, or unappreciated - when he gets the sense he's not valued (like when a man he's been working with for seven or eight years can't seem to get a handle on his first name), he can become spiteful and defensive. He isn't a prideful man and can live with being stepped on for quite a long time, actually, as evidenced by his choice to stay in a marriage despite the fact he knew he was being cheated on. But when it becomes clear he's not wanted, needed, or respected he's just as capable of cutting words as anyone else. The fact that he feels guilty about it almost immediately usually helps to avoid any long-term damage - he'll usually try to apologize by way of joke or gentle ribbing to show there are no hard feelings - but not everyone responds well to that. His reliance on intuition rather than introspection means he's not terribly good at articulating his own feelings, which means there's frustration on the horizon when he has to confront them or explain them to others.
Greg's lack of analysis of emotional responses - his own and other people's - also means his default opinions are quite traditional, and tend to be accepting of the status quo. Old-fashioned systems mostly benefit people like him, so he hasn't had to think much about it; but when the subjects are raised and he's actually made to consider them he's quite open-minded. His empathy makes him fairly fluid in his assessment of how things should work, and also pretty bad at arguing and splitting hairs, as he's usually all too eager to jump on the side where his heart's leading him. He has a deep sense of duty, and it's tainted only by a little cynicism; he may be tired, but he's not jaded. He believes that doing the right thing is more important than doing the done thing (using Sherlock is definitely not above-board) and he tries his best to make choices accordingly, even when they're not best for him or not popular.
It's not all murders and mysteries, though. Although he's preternaturally patient and almost always gentle, he has a boisterous streak that comes out when he's having fun. He likes to kick back and indulge his rough-housing brand of fun every now and then - he likes the outdoors, likes kids, likes sports, likes a little bet now and then, and likes a drink a little more than he should. He's been known to go heavy on the affectionate teasing, and the fact that Sherlock has never actually exploded in response is a pretty good indication that Greg has a sense of when it's all right and when it isn't, and respects those boundaries. Most of all, he just enjoys being with people. Solitude makes him antsy, and makes him feel as though something's being wasted. Left alone he's never at his best - it's when he knows other people are watching or depending on him that he flourishes and can best take care of himself and others.
Abilities/Powers: Greg's intelligent, intuitive, and good in a fight - but that's about it. The training he's received during his rise to DCI has been top notch, as far as criminal detection goes, and his entire career has been an on-the-job course in leadership. He's got a good memory and a lot of patience and is good at applying what he knows to his work, but he's no genius; he's just good at what he does. Other than that, he's in good shape and knows how and when to throw a punch (and maybe a pry bar).
Items/Weapons: His wallet; his home & car keys (with handy Chelsea key-ring-cum-bottle-opener); a half-empty pack of peppermint chewing gum.
Sample Entry: Here's a recent meme thread.
Sample Entry Two:
Greg's memory is good. Given a little prompting, a turn through the pages of a relevant file, he can summon and organize most everything he needs about a particular case. He's been at this a while; over the years it's fallen into place for him, slowly but surely, to the point that he can feel his way through the beats of his work. It's like muscle memory, more or less involuntary, all physical learning.
So it takes weird turns, pops up in unexpected places, surprises him like physical bodies always do - hours after he's left a crime scene, drafted up the paperwork, gone home, and had supper something will shift into place and he'll realize - something.
Tonight it happens while he's going through the hall closet, taking advantage of the solitude (Anne's out with her usual Thursday night girls; she never gets back til one or two in the morning) to get a little sorting done. They've lived here nearly seven years, and a lot of stuff - frankly, crap - has accumulated in spaces he'd rather use for useful things, so he's pulling out old shopping bags and empty boxes and half-broken appliances and feeling all the while that there's something missing. With every layer he pulls away there's something underneath that isn't there, that should be. It's an almost haunting feeling - until it coalesces into something solid and sharp when he grabs a half-used, beat-up roll of plain blue wrapping paper Anne bought ages ago for some baby shower.
Children.
For his own part, he's sidelined that disappointment as well as he could - it's strange to feel it come out so strongly now, until he realizes it isn't about him. The crime scene he went through this afternoon: half a hovel, a real dump of a place, with a woman stabbed to death in the bath. At first it had seemed a real puzzle, the water and blood trail left by the perpetrator ending supernaturally suddenly in the middle of the kitchen. He'd gone so far as to text Sherlock before one of his officers found the improvised door behind the refrigerator. That house, like so many around it, built to no code but whatever some grasping landlord thought would get him the most money out of his converted shack, had countless such senseless features. Windows that weren't, locks that attached to nothing, floors that stopped before the wall. So they'd gone out into the alley and eventually found a shoe print, and the chase was on. Hadn't needed the resident genius after all.
But now he remembers: stuffed under the sink in the bathroom around the exposed pipe there was a pack of disposable diapers, almost full. A kid - there was a kid. No kid at the scene, though, and none with the man they picked up hours later trying to scrape the blood out of his shoes.
Greg leaves all the debris where it is, grabs his coat and keys, gets in the car, and tears out of the drive toward that wretched part of town. The scene's been locked down, but there must be something to find. There has to be. When he arrives he lets himself in past the tape and the clumsy police padlock on the flimsy door and, torch in hand, tries not to think about what it is he's looking for. That won't help him, anyway.
When he hears something move in the direction of the sofa, he spins (and about jumps out of his skin) and can't tell if he's more relieved, disappointed, or worried to see a very adult figure sitting there. The fact that it's Sherlock Holmes clarifies matters not at all.
"Jesus." He stalks over, shines his light right in the other man's face. Maybe it's good that he's here - maybe he can help - but it doesn't feel good. "What the hell are you doing here?"