Name: Preston Horatio Burroughs.
Nickname: No. Preston does not accept such trivial and overly, presumptuously intimate things as
nicknames. Try it with him and see what happens.
Gender/Pronoun: Cis man, he/him.
Age: 26.
Birthday: January 19th, 1997.
Sign: Capricorn/Aquarius cusp.
Gemstone: Depending on the source? Probably garnet, but you might also see onyx, jasper, rose quartz, and chalcedony listed as birthstones for January.
Blood Type: O-
Fav. Food: None of your business (but if you
must know, he’s very fond of salmon, onions, garlic, and the lo mein at this little hole in the wall Chinese restaurant a couple short blocks from his apartment).
Hated Food: Beets, pork, cream cheese (but in a way where, if you mix it into something so he can’t get a bad mouthfeel off the texture, he’ll be fine but asking him to eat cream cheese on its own is not happening). He also has several food-related allergies, but none are so severe that they could put him in the ER and when he’s not doing so well emotionally, he has been known to deliberately eat things that he knows he’s allergic to out of some mistaken idea that repeatedly subjecting himself to said allergens without guidance or medical supervision will definitely make him get over the allergies. (Spoilers: This hasn’t worked.)
School: DCU, working on a PhD in history and religious studies.
Occupation: Graduate TA and multipurpose employee at the marijuana dispensary owned by the family of
Jupiter Butterfly Kayne. Since Preston is chronically awful at customer service, he primarily works in the back, nurturing the plants and tinkering with improving the growing conditions.
Hobbies: all beings must suffer to become pure (Religion): This is not to say that Preston is particularly religious or spiritual himself, because he isn’t. Although (or maybe
because) he comes from a deeply (he would say fanatically) religious upbringing that was primarily defined by punishment and highly restrictive rules, Preston doesn’t subscribe to any specific belief system himself. The most solid thing he believes about the divine/supernatural/what-have-you is that any superhuman beings who wish to stand in his way had best reconsider. However, despite feeling no use for nor attachment to religion for himself, Preston finds all religions fascinating with regard to their practices, beliefs, scriptures, sociocultural structures, etc. Likewise, he enjoys comparing different practices, writings, and beliefs from different groups, periods in history, etc. to trace and pick apart the patterns he might find. He may not be a believer himself, but he has no disdain for anyone else’s beliefs and would actually like to hear more about them, as much as anyone is willing to share and discuss with him. If he is allowed to attend any services or ceremonies, he always comes as a respectful, open-minded guest, because he doesn’t want to convert, but he
does want to learn and understand.
no good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they’re feeling sensible (Classical & Orchestral Music, Opera, etc.): Not playing any of it; Preston’s musical aptitude is basically nonexistent. But he is an avid listener of instrumental music—whether that means older composers like Sibelius, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky, or more contemporary artists like Bear McCreary, Yo-Yo Ma, and Ramin Djawadi (he guesses Philip Glass can come too but he is easily frustrated by Glass’s minimalism). If his music does have lyrics, he strongly prefers them to be extremely dramatic and in a language he doesn’t know. He’d like to go listen to more live performances, but usually, that’s an expense he can’t afford, so instead, you can almost always find him listening to recordings on high-end headphones.
this has proven to be a complicating variable in my experiments (Tinkering, Self-Directed Mad Science, etc.): For various reasons, Preston has always struggled in science-related classroom settings. While he understands that the rules in classroom settings exist for the sake of safety, the ways that most of them have worked haven’t played nicely with the ways that he learns things best. This has kept him from pursuing higher education in a STEM field, but he still has a deep love and passion for science. So, rather than pursuing this interest in a setting that does not work for him, Preston likes working on little projects of his own design. Most of them end up being more research based than actually carrying out the experiments or observational studies that he enjoys designing—unfortunately, there are limits to what he can do about pursuing his ideas without access to labspace, which was not included with his apartment—but he has access to plenty of scientific journals, thanks to being a DCU grad student, as well as the tomes available in the DCU library. Maybe some of the experiment designs he’s written up would never pass an IRB review because they push the bounds of what most people deem “acceptable,” but that’s because most people are fools and don’t understand that there is so much more that Preston could do than modify his neighbor’s Roomba to install a voice-control.
Basically, Preston is the sort of person who walked away from
Frankenstein thinking that Victor Frankenstein did nothing wrong with all the grave-robbing, corpse mutilation, and playing around with forces beyond his control. Really, his only failure was that he refused to give the Creature even the bare minimum of respect as a sapient being, but everything else was perfectly morally and ethically acceptable because it was done in the name of science.
failure is when something ceases to serve a purpose. when that happens, it becomes worthless to me (Self-Improvement): Mostly, this refers to physical self-improvement (e.g., working out regularly, keeping a healthy diet [his habit of deliberately eating things he’s allergic to notwithstanding], avoiding alcohol, narcotics, and nicotine, etc.), but it can also include challenging himself to hone his mental skills and keep them sharp (which often takes the form of research projects or puzzle games). Preston grew up a very sickly and physically sensitive child, hearing prognoses that seemed to condemn him to a life stuck with his family of origin, under the thumb of people whom he
does remember loving—mostly because some part of him hasn’t stopped loving them—but who wished to control him indefinitely. He did not accept this fate. Now, with ample distance between them, Preston regularly prioritizes his physical and intellectual self-maintenance, and is always working to do better than he did the last time he tried something.
Virtues: i will not fail. you have no power to stop me / then, they will see that they were wrong. i am *not* a defect, i am *worth* something (Driven/Hardworking): Most people have a sense of when enough is enough, and when they are allowed to give up on something……but Preston is
not most people. For him, the acceptable time to give up on something is literally never. Even with projects that Preston realizes are fruitless and/or where doggedly refusing to give up might hurt him more than he wishes to acknowledge, he will press on against all common sense and redouble his efforts at making this thing happen until he is absolutely forced to acknowledge that his quest is hopeless. Should someone manage to get through to him about that, they won’t manage to break him off of
wanting to make the impossible thing in question happen. At his core, Preston desperately wants to believe that if he puts enough hard work and concentrated effort into everything he does, then there is literally nothing he cannot achieve, and even letting someone drag him away from a goal for his own good won’t stop him from thinking that maybe, there is some approach to [insert problem here] that he hasn’t tried yet, and that if he did, he could fix
everything.
no matter what you say, you are *not* a failure. any who discount you are utter fools / he will see what i am capable of. i will return to him victorious, *worthy* (Devoted): Preston does not trust people easily and he does not consider most people worthy of his attention—not simply positive attention, but
any attention. Likewise, he has a distaste for moral and/or ideological fanaticism and is deeply suspicious of most causes that inspire people toward too much passionate yelling (not least because he wants to know how you’re doing anything effective and meaningful if you have so much time to yell at him). However, when someone or something
does capture his attention, his mind, or his heart, Preston does not commit to them half-heartedly. He will risk himself and everything he has, perhaps more, to protect the people he cares about, and will dedicate his hardworking nature toward making them happy or keeping them safe. He does have a tendency to idealize the people to whom he becomes devoted, but his devotion is rarely shaken if they should fall short because he extends grace to them that he denies to most other people, himself included.
what have you done to me? / go. maybe then these memories, these imperfections, will leave me (Sensitive): Although Preston does not usually know what to
do about other people’s emotions or how to react to them constructively, he
does pick up on them pretty easily. Little shifts in the emotional weather register to him as much as an abrupt explosion of anger or getting glomped while someone squeals at you. Much of this is hypervigilance on his part; he had to learn to mind these minute shifts and read between the lines in order to survive, and although he tries to avoid dealing with the people who made him learn these things, he does still remember what they taught him. (Incidentally, this is also why he often does not know how to react to other people’s emotions: his immediate responses are strategies that worked with specific people, in specific situations, but that have proven maladaptive and somewhat less than effective with most other people.)
Because he can be so awkward, and because it is very easy for people to emotionally wound him in turn, Preston is probably not the best person to talk to when you’re sad. Instead, he’s the sort of person who will notice that you seem a bit off, then start doing chores that you hate doing so you don’t need to, or silently leave a comfort snack at your workspace. He won’t tell you what he’s doing—he’d honestly prefer if
you didn’t point it out, either—but he
will watch to make sure that his efforts are having the intended effect of easing your burdens. If they are not, he will remember it and try something different next time.
there is nothing i cannot learn, nothing i am not willing to do (Meticulous): Preston has an eye for detail and he doesn’t like letting things slip past him. When working on any given thing—a plan, a project, a self-directed scientific investigation, thinking of a gift for someone, whatever—he will scrutinize every conceivable aspect of his idea and his work, consider it from as many angles as he can imagine, and otherwise go over it with no fewer than seven different varieties of fine-toothed combs. If he needs to find something unexpectedly, he will go all over town and/or the Internet in order to find what he needs. If he needs to learn something new, he will research-binge and dig up multiple perspectives on the subject just to be sure he won’t miss out on any important information thanks to any particular writer’s biases. For most people, there is a point at which they will be satisfied with their own work, decide they’ve done enough, and break off to go chill; for Preston, that point is not permitted to enter his consideration until he’s gone through at least four revisions based on integrating new data and new perspectives.
Flaws:perhaps he was right, perhaps i am a failure / i have never been “in a tizzy” (Moody/Volatile): Preston tries to keep his emotions tightly leashed, which is sort of a problem, especially when he naturally feels most things at volume 11,005. Trying to restrain or repress his feelings often leads to them coming out in explosive or dramatic fashions: raising his voice, knocking things over, punching doors and walls, etc. He doesn’t like how he feels during these slips in his self-control, and he hates how he feels after, but he doesn’t know very many ways of handling his intense, tumultuous emotions aside from trying to leash them up. No, it has not worked for him yet, and based on precedent, he doesn’t believe that it will. But it’s all he has, so either suggest something else or get away from him.
so i’m to understand that you have disturbed me for no reason / i am not discussing this. it is none of your concern (Reclusive): By nature, Preston is a deeply introverted person. Dealing with other people for too long exhausts him, especially if they have no respect for his boundaries and/or push his buttons in the wrong ways (the list of Wrong Ways to push his buttons is already very long and perpetually being added to), and he requires a lot of time to himself in order to keep his mind clear and his volatile emotions in check. Exacerbating this natural tendency, however, Preston is also very afraid of either letting someone in only to end up getting hurt, or letting someone in and developing a new weakness for someone else to exploit (especially if that involves hurting the person whom Preston allows himself to care about). All this leads Preston to avoid most social situations and to keep a very thick, ten-foot emotional wall up between himself and most people. He can be cordial and cooperate with people like an adult, but that doesn’t mean he has to let you get to know him. Ugh, stop trying to
bond with him, please just let him go be by himself, why are you
like this?!there was a defect in me, and defects are worthless / forgive me, brother. please, take this affliction from me (Perfectionist): Although Preston has left his family of origin behind and does everything in his power to maintain his distance from them, he can’t so easily escape several of the things they taught him. The biggest emotional scar Preston carries with him is how little grace and forgiveness he is willing to extend to himself when he falls short of his own expectations (which happens pretty regularly because he sets his expectations for himself very high). For Preston, minute slip-ups feel like massive failures, unexpected problems throw his plans out of order in ways that he struggles to recover from (which often make him lose control of his temper), and if he does not meet his own expectations, then he needs to punish and berate himself so that he gets it through his head that this sort of insufficiency is unacceptable. He knows that he learned this way of treating himself from people he has disavowed, which ought to give him permission to disavow these patterns as well……but unfortunately, Preston feels like his perfectionism is a matter of life-or-death importance. Screwing up badly enough might allow his family of origin back into his life, and they might harm the people he has come to care about. This is unacceptable to him, therefore he must pursue perfection at all costs.
your days were numbered the moment you crossed me (Unforgiving): “Forgive and forget” sounds nice in theory and all, but Preston Burroughs is much more of a “Resent and remember” sort of person. As much as he would prefer for most people to think of him as someone too above-it-all to get his feelings hurt over petty nonsense, the unfortunate reality is that Preston very easily gets his feelings hurt, often over matters that don’t strike others as all that important. He takes things personally when he maybe probably shouldn’t. Because he is used to people hurting him or having hidden agendas and not caring very much about how those plans will hurt him, Preston reads things into situations that either aren’t actually there, or that
might be there but aren’t as exaggerated as Preston’s mind tries to make them (e.g., someone may genuinely not have considered how their actions might affect him, but it might not have been malicious neglect on their part so much as poor impulse control or innocent negligence). When crossed in these ways, even in small ways, the wounds go deeper than one might expect and it takes Preston a long time to move past them and forgive whomever wounded him so—if he ever manages that at all.
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTIONEyes: Bright magenta (#EF25D7), though they’re a bit on the smaller side and usually hooded in some degree of graduate student sleep deprivation, so it can be difficult to notice that, sometimes.
Hair Color: Ombre hair, midnight/moonlight-looking sorts of colors. Sample color ideas:
#DEF6FF at the roots, moving to
#C2D9F2, then moving to
#465A87, then moving to
#1D1959, and finally something indigo/violet-toned and close to black, like
#13012B or maybe
#0D011E. Maybe a balance
like this (i.e., heavier on the darker colors)?
Hair Style/Texture: Fairly long (past his shoulder-blades/getting to about mid-back). For the most part, straight and fine, but if left to its own devices, it quickly gets messy and does the hair equivalent of going apeshit. As Preston, he forcibly tames it into a tight, high ponytail or an equally tight man-bun (which does a very good job disguising how much hair he actually has). As Cryptomelane, however, his hair bursts free into a wild mane, the only semblance of “taming” being the forelock braid framing the right side of his face.
Face: Thin and pointy with high, sharply defined cheekbones, full and pouty lips, and
a prominently upturned nose that has garnered him more than his fair share of comparisons to a pig.
Skin Tone: Very fair, pinkish with cool undertones. Pale, but healthy. You could easily mistake him for a goth, between the pallor, the dark hair, and the fondness for dark clothing, but this would probably make him look at you in utter non-comprehension because when
he hears “goth,” the first thing he thinks is “Be more specific: Visigoth or Ostrogoth?”
Body Type: 5’10”. Thin with a hard-won, wiry musculature. He doesn’t ever manage to look athletic or ripped; he looks more like a skinny nerd got tired of being shoved in lockers.
Clothes: He tries his best to look professional and put-together while on campus at DCU, but if you catch him at the dispensary—or when he’s tinkering with something—he is much more likely to be wearing old jeans that may or may not be hanging on for dear life and t-shirts that have probably seen better days. Like the musical equivalent of a “Fake Geek Girl,” several of the shirts in question are merch from bands that Preston has never listened to and knows nothing about, but the shirts were cheap at Goodwill and fit him decently, so here we are.
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