Character/Username: Tim Wright (postictal) Player: Zero Character Themes: aloof, cynical, depressed, and deeply entrenched in his own guilt, tim's story has a lot of themes of guilt and accountability. the memetic brain virus of the operator is entirely his fault from his perspective. he sees himself as something of a doorway for the operator's machinations - the entry point through which it began to infect everyone's lives. he moves in a continuous cycle of lashing out at people who get too close to his issues and then immediately twisting around and turning that blame back on himself. paranoia and by association deception/lies are huge parts of his characterization. he is by nature a mysterious character, even if he happens to be the one person on the main cast whose backstory we know the most about. he is an unreliable narrator taken to the nth degree, repeatedly called a liar by nearly every other character in the series. it's a label he detests but nonetheless acknowledges as utterly true. he considers himself a deeply unreliable person, and doesn't trust himself in the slightest - nor does he encourage others to trust him either.
tim's history also deals heavily with the nature of control. tim has spent a very small proportion of his life with any actual agency in regards to what he could choose to do or be. if it wasn't doctors delineating his diet, his medication, his routine, his schedule, then it was the operator's overarching reach. when it wasn't totheark backing him into corners and trying to force him into revealing his secrets, it was jay posting tim's medical records on the internet and exposing all the private segments of his history for the world to peruse at a whim. tim is, in many respects, just as much of the operator's puppet as everyone else in the series; the big difference with him is that he's the only one who recognizes this and uses his acknowledgment of that to cut his own strings and free himself from the operator's influence as best as he could. personhood and agency are deeply important to him as a consequence.
kindness and empathy are secondary characteristics that tim himself doesn't always acknowledge and usually doesn't even recognize, but are there nonetheless. when he notices someone else hurting in a way he recognizes, he instinctively reaches out to help. the moment jay express symptoms that tim recognizes as similar to his own, he tries to get jay medical help to keep it from worsening. by the end of the series, he even offers a helping hand to alex, even as the other man is actively attempting to murder him and has arguably hurt tim more directly than anyone else in the series. while tim isn't without his limits - being taunted about what happened to brian was enough to tip him over the edge and utterly wreck kralie's ass, sobbing all the while - he's an innately compassionate person who especially doesn't like the idea that someone might be going through what he did, and that they might be going through it alone like he did. this also ties into an inherent sense of self-loathing that dovetails neatly into self-sacrifice: tim is almost always willing to throw himself under the bus for someone else's sake, as an extension of his self-blame complex. his assuming the blame for things going wrong (even when there's not much reason to, or when there's a perfectly rational explanation for why it probably isn't his fault) is almost a way of him asserting control over his own life in the only way he can. this also relates to his history of attempted suicide. just like too many other things in his life, this attempt ended in failure - a bitter reminder that his life never truly was his.
paranoia and doubt are tied also to the themes of lies and deception. tim is untrustworthy and untrusting; he'll keep your secrets, but he'll also keep far too many of his own. his history frequently leaves him invalidating himself and dismissing himself as "crazy," usually dismissing his own (rational) feelings as irrational spurts of madness from a broken mind. while tim will defend to the death anyone else who might be in a similar situation, his hypocrisy rears its ugly head in how dismissive and dehumanizing he often is in regards to himself. this self-contradiction also displays itself in less intensely destructive ways, however. tim is incredibly determined to the point where, despite having arguably been dealt the worst hand out of anyone in the series, he is consistently able to scrape himself up off the ground and not just power through to the other side, but also offer a willing hand in the process. despite how bitterly he wishes it could just be over already, he suffers from an almost pathological inability to simply lay down and die - though part of that might be the fact that the attempt on his own life he made ended in failure, possibly due to the operator's intervention. in-game, a sense of accountability has started to become a more prevalent theme for him; as much as he wishes he could simply let it be over, he's grown too close and too fond of too many people to just up and leave. he knows it would be irresponsible to put them through it, and doesn't consider their emotional turmoil worth the easy exit.
lastly, visual themes. tim is heavily associated with black/white dichotomy: the mask his famous alter ego wears is bone-white with black accents, and tim himself is often lit in very heavy shadows. he's obviously also associated with some fairly regular symbols: masks, cigarettes, trees, hospitals, pills, and the operator symbol, which is the circle with the x through it. he's also associated with fire. he smokes, and has an implied history with the fire in his old hospital. this has been far more prevalent in-game over time, to the point where fire is one of his main means of personal attack and defense. as a personal note, i tend to associate him with crows for a variety of reasons.
cw: internalized ableism and suicide reference
Player: Zero
Character Themes: aloof, cynical, depressed, and deeply entrenched in his own guilt, tim's story has a lot of themes of guilt and accountability. the memetic brain virus of the operator is entirely his fault from his perspective. he sees himself as something of a doorway for the operator's machinations - the entry point through which it began to infect everyone's lives. he moves in a continuous cycle of lashing out at people who get too close to his issues and then immediately twisting around and turning that blame back on himself. paranoia and by association deception/lies are huge parts of his characterization. he is by nature a mysterious character, even if he happens to be the one person on the main cast whose backstory we know the most about. he is an unreliable narrator taken to the nth degree, repeatedly called a liar by nearly every other character in the series. it's a label he detests but nonetheless acknowledges as utterly true. he considers himself a deeply unreliable person, and doesn't trust himself in the slightest - nor does he encourage others to trust him either.
tim's history also deals heavily with the nature of control. tim has spent a very small proportion of his life with any actual agency in regards to what he could choose to do or be. if it wasn't doctors delineating his diet, his medication, his routine, his schedule, then it was the operator's overarching reach. when it wasn't totheark backing him into corners and trying to force him into revealing his secrets, it was jay posting tim's medical records on the internet and exposing all the private segments of his history for the world to peruse at a whim. tim is, in many respects, just as much of the operator's puppet as everyone else in the series; the big difference with him is that he's the only one who recognizes this and uses his acknowledgment of that to cut his own strings and free himself from the operator's influence as best as he could. personhood and agency are deeply important to him as a consequence.
kindness and empathy are secondary characteristics that tim himself doesn't always acknowledge and usually doesn't even recognize, but are there nonetheless. when he notices someone else hurting in a way he recognizes, he instinctively reaches out to help. the moment jay express symptoms that tim recognizes as similar to his own, he tries to get jay medical help to keep it from worsening. by the end of the series, he even offers a helping hand to alex, even as the other man is actively attempting to murder him and has arguably hurt tim more directly than anyone else in the series. while tim isn't without his limits - being taunted about what happened to brian was enough to tip him over the edge and utterly wreck kralie's ass, sobbing all the while - he's an innately compassionate person who especially doesn't like the idea that someone might be going through what he did, and that they might be going through it alone like he did. this also ties into an inherent sense of self-loathing that dovetails neatly into self-sacrifice: tim is almost always willing to throw himself under the bus for someone else's sake, as an extension of his self-blame complex. his assuming the blame for things going wrong (even when there's not much reason to, or when there's a perfectly rational explanation for why it probably isn't his fault) is almost a way of him asserting control over his own life in the only way he can. this also relates to his history of attempted suicide. just like too many other things in his life, this attempt ended in failure - a bitter reminder that his life never truly was his.
paranoia and doubt are tied also to the themes of lies and deception. tim is untrustworthy and untrusting; he'll keep your secrets, but he'll also keep far too many of his own. his history frequently leaves him invalidating himself and dismissing himself as "crazy," usually dismissing his own (rational) feelings as irrational spurts of madness from a broken mind. while tim will defend to the death anyone else who might be in a similar situation, his hypocrisy rears its ugly head in how dismissive and dehumanizing he often is in regards to himself. this self-contradiction also displays itself in less intensely destructive ways, however. tim is incredibly determined to the point where, despite having arguably been dealt the worst hand out of anyone in the series, he is consistently able to scrape himself up off the ground and not just power through to the other side, but also offer a willing hand in the process. despite how bitterly he wishes it could just be over already, he suffers from an almost pathological inability to simply lay down and die - though part of that might be the fact that the attempt on his own life he made ended in failure, possibly due to the operator's intervention. in-game, a sense of accountability has started to become a more prevalent theme for him; as much as he wishes he could simply let it be over, he's grown too close and too fond of too many people to just up and leave. he knows it would be irresponsible to put them through it, and doesn't consider their emotional turmoil worth the easy exit.
lastly, visual themes. tim is heavily associated with black/white dichotomy: the mask his famous alter ego wears is bone-white with black accents, and tim himself is often lit in very heavy shadows. he's obviously also associated with some fairly regular symbols: masks, cigarettes, trees, hospitals, pills, and the operator symbol, which is the circle with the x through it. he's also associated with fire. he smokes, and has an implied history with the fire in his old hospital. this has been far more prevalent in-game over time, to the point where fire is one of his main means of personal attack and defense. as a personal note, i tend to associate him with crows for a variety of reasons.