Application for RS
Character: Gregory House, M.D.
Series/Fandom: House M.D.
Deviance: 1
Age: 49 in 2008
Gender: Male
Species: Human
Canon Used: T.V. Show! I don't think there's any more canon than that. D:
I'm taking House from Season 5, episode 5, "Lucky Thirteen".
Appearance:
House is of average height, 6'2", but he walks with a limp in his right leg. This right leg is severely scarred because a large amount of the muscle tissue was removed, but you're not going to see it, don't worry. He always carries around his black cane, with bitchin' flames at the bottom, and he's partial to the combination of not-actually-professional blazers, graphic tees, etc. He has brown hair and blue eyes, and, of course, House's eternal 5 o'clock shadow, and it's like brown/black with a random grey patch goddamn.
ROCKIN USAAAA
Psychology:
House is a jackass. That's really all there is to it. But he has attained a kind of nirvana of being a total douchebag, ascending to levels never imagined, or at least, not for a doctor. It's fairly incredible, and is attributed to how much his life has sucked. But there are several points to his asinine behavior, so let's get this started!
So like I said, House is a complete, utter jackass. But he is an insanely intelligent one. He's, arguably, the best diagnostician in the US, and he's proud of that fact. He's an arrogant guy with pride the size of Texas. It's certainly not undeserved, though. Most of the time, no matter what it is, House is right. A patient, paternities, a bet, House just has the gift of either being lucky or having his intelligence on his side. After all, in the hundred or so cases presented in House M.D., there have been less than five cases where he was not right. Pretty good track record for 5 years.
I imagine that his accuracy is nothing less than superb because of his bad attitude. That sounds odd, but remember that House's idolization of the buraku man made him want to become a doctor, and I think shaped House's personality substially. House is obsessed with finding the answers, and getting the right ones because he thinks that as long as he produces results, then people can tolerate him. This is why he seems so upset when cases do not go as planned. So House is a perfectionist, in a sense. He wants to uphold his reputation, in part, but he also feels the need to do so to keep himself from being completely alienated.
But this brings up another important part. If he's worried about being alienated, it would stand to reason that he could just change his personality a bit to not be so offensive. But House is stubborn and resistant to change. Once he gets settled with a particular set of people, he doesn't want new ones to incade his turf, or for the others to leave. This is evidenced by his resistance to Vogler taking over and having to pick a new team especially. But Vogler is different too, because this revealed his stubborness. House is resistant to change, sure, but more than that, he hates being told what to do.
House frequently goes against the rules, not just to rebel or not conform, but because he finds them trivial. The labcoat rule or professional dress rule are ignored 99% of the time, and House is likely to skip out on his required clinic duty by playing games, watching soap opera, whatever. He does what he wants to do. Yet that's not to say that he doesn't take orders. It's more like he's very specific in whose orders he takes. That comes down to respect. The people that House respects are the only ones that can make him waver or even consider doing something that he doesn't want to do. For example, House doesn't always pick up cases on his own, but rather, gets them presented by his team, Cuddy, or Wilson. These are the only people that he will consider it for, just because he does respect them enough to value their opinions and ideas.
But people he does respect, that's a very small pool. They're people that can deal with his crap, in one sense, but he likes people that can retaliate, or humor him, like Wilson does. He has no patience for ignorance or stupidity, and will brush people off for it. Though, House's version of brushing people off is his trademark. The reason House is such a popular show is because of its titular character, who is famous for his biting sarcasm. Obviously, people that annoy him get the worst of it. And it's this that also makes him a confrontational person. His stubbornness makes him believe that he is always right, so if someone challenges him? Whoa, back up now.
This is why he hates clinic duty. Having to deal with idiotic problems when he's the best doctor in that hospital is very tedious to him, and the patients are very annoying. He hates things that are boring and ordinary, and clinic duty falls right into this category for him. It's too easy for him. This is when he plays his game systems or goes to watch soaps with coma guy. Similarly, he doesn't like meeting the patients he actually has. He rarely does, letting his team relay information for him. He just doesn't like interacting with people outside his "circle" and is extremely reluctant to let new people into that circle.
That's not to say he's an emotionless bastard, though. He's still a bastard, but there have been several cases that House has actually become endeared to his patients or made some kind of emotional connection to them. It's brief, understated, and coated in his usual sarcasm, but it is there. The people he bonds the most to are people who society considers abnormal. For example, a schizophrenic, an autistic child, and a homeless person. People cast away are the people that he relates to best, and are the ones that he rarely uses his sarcasm with. These are also the cases that he tends to pick up on his own time rather than being presetned with them.
As for all the other patients, he's not the kindest. He's not a shy person by any means, and is quite frank. He's not one to side step asking questions about their sex lives, relationships, or habits, and it's because people lie about these things that House has his infamous motto "Everybody lies". So in his own philosophy, he does consider everyone to be a liar, and treats them as such. Yet, if they admit the truth, he's not even phased by the fact that they lied. It's just brushed off.
But about his patients, House often picks up on important clues when he goes to visit the patient himself. Which is funny, because you would think that he would figure out that he should visit them more often, but nope, quite the opposite. House is an observant and perceptive person! He is able to pick up quite accurately about tiny, almost unrelated details about a person and identify underlying problems, whether physical or social. As far as his social perceptiveness goes, he's extremely accurate about picking up details or hints about not-quite-perfect relationships. This is likely because of his lack of luck in this department in general, and his general view of the world as an outsider.
Of course, his outrageous, uncensored questions get him in trouble. Patients get mad, and House has been punched, shot, and threatened. He's a mean person and has no regard for other peoples' feelings. He will scathingly say what he wants because he has no need to censor himself (or so he thinks) and he when something about a person intrigues him, he will interrogate them until he gets the answer he wants. Some people call it bullying, House and Wilson call this a friendship.
Back to his arrogance, his arrogance and unabashed statements, obviously, get him into trouble. I don't only mean with people with just as much power or equal to House's own, but with patients. He tends to skim over informed consent, for example, and coerce a patient into doing a treatment that House thinks is right if they don't agree with them.
I keep jumping around, oops. But anyways, back to the kind of relationships House has, his sarcasm can be a term of endearment, in a way. The only people that he will get close to or allow to get close to him are those that he deems interesting. In fact, his motivation for anything seems to be on the criteria of how personally interesting House finds it. As he says, "anomalies bug me". He likes people, cases, and things that go against the norm, and in terms of people and cases, he digs deeply to find out why that is. He analyzes things intensively because he wants to make sense of the world.
Yet, despite everything, House is unhappy. His life has not been sunshine and rainbows, so he probably hasn't been actually happy in a long time. But he denies it over and over again. If anyone confronts him about it, he responds with a quick "no" and some biting sarcasm to go with it. He's unhappy, but he won't allow himself to admit it because that would be acknowledgment, on his own level, that he's miserable. And he doesn't want that. He wants to function, and unhappiness is a hindrance to functioning. And that is House's definition of happiness, in a way. As long as he can function, he's "happy".
But functioning for House is also defined by another key point of his character: Vicodin. House has severe pain in his leg ever since his surgery, and he takes the pain pill for it. However, he is addicted to the drug. When he's made bets that he can function without it, or it got revoked, then House goes into full blown withdrawal, which is also accompanied by pain. His leg genuinely does hurt to the point that he needs Vicodin, but he takes it more often than he should. It was implied once that he took as many as 5 pills at a time, and he takes "shots of pills" often enough. He is heavily dependent on the drug to function, and remember what functioning is equatable to for House.
Other Skills/Abilities:
House is an intuitive person! By only looking and observing people, he's often able to pick out very subtle things, especially when it comes to relationships. He's also absolutely brilliant. Super brilliant. Sometimes not ethical, but hey, you know? Other than his observation powers and incredible wit, cleverness, and genius, though, he's a normal guy.
But he is a normal, smart guy. He is fluent in English (of course), but also Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi, and Mandarin Chinse. He is also quite the musician, especially skilled with the piano.
Other Weaknesses:
In terms of weaknesses...! Well, psychological weaknesses are numerous, but physical weaknesses comes down to one: his leg. House cannot run or walk terribly fast. He's missing a big chunk of leg, after all. Oddly enough, House is also allergic to corn. He is also human and will die and shit.
History:
So my legend begins in the 12th century. Let me tell you of it.
Wait, that's not right.
House was born June 11, 1959 (though he gave another birthday once, I'm going with this one). He was the song of Blythe and John House, and is affectionately known as a "military brat". House's father was a military pilot, so his family traveled extensively around the world throughout his young life. He's lived in several countries, but the two important ones are Egypt and Japan.
Egypt was where House developed his love of puzzles, or his "Rubik's complex", as it's called by his team. He was fascinated with the history and mysteries of ancient Egypt, thus bringing his love of solving puzzles. However, his desire to become a doctor came from an experience in Japan. Little House went to a Japanese hospital, and he met a janitor there. When the Japanese hospital couldn't handle a particularly difficult case, this "janitor" stepped up, revealing himself as the best doctor in the hospital. He was also a buraku, thus making House idolize this man for the idea that he did not even try to fit in. The other doctors did not like this man, but they would turn to him when they needed to because they knew that he was brilliant.
It's because of this that House developed not only his drive to succeed, learn, and be better than everyone else, but also that infamous misanthropy of him not giving two shits about what other people think of him. However, despite these two major events that really shaped House's Rubik's Complex, his family life was not so pretty. His father was demanding as a military man, and while his mother was very loving, she had very high expectations for House. Because of being a military child with demanding, and from his father and grandmother, actually abusive parents, though, House became distant from his peers, and from most other people.
But it was those demanding parents that made House a brilliant person. He was a good student, obviously, and ended up at Johns Hopkins Medical School, but got expelled for cheating. Oops. Not discouraged at all, he got into Med School at the University of Michigan, eventually getting a perfect score on his MCAT. He also met Cuddy while here because of he became legendary for his brilliance, as usual! Ohoho. He also met Wilson in this general time frame, apparently paying Wilson's bail for being a college kid. So basically, Wilson got caught for "vandalism, assault, and property destruction". Tsk, tsk, Wilson. As a funny little side thing, House was also very athletic, participating often in golf, lacrosse, running, paintball, and even cheerleading. Cheerleading!
At some point, he met Stacy Warner while playing paintball, and they started going out. It's said that they had a pretty deep relationship, but Stacy did something to House that he couldn't forgive. In a supreme act of irony, House suffered an infarction (an main artery blockage) in his leg. By the time he realized the cause, and thus the fact that his muscle tissue was dying, his leg was already gone to hell. Cuddy recommended amputation, but House "liked his leg" and refused. He went through an alternative procedure instead, but it caused him extreme pain until House insisted on being put into a chemically induced coma. Since he was in a coma, though, Stacy was now his medical proxy, and she went with Cuddy's suggestion to remove the dead tissue.
This left him with pain for the rest of his life, and took out a big portion of his leg muscle. This required him to use a cane to walk as well as take Vicodin. Over time, House became addicted to the drug, and while he realizes this, he doesn't care because the Vicodin lets him function. He came to work at the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital at some time (whether this is before or after the surgery isn't clear), and he has a prestigious job as the department head of diagnostic medicine. His department is the most heavily funded, mostly in terms of legal expenses because House is a douche. He worked some other places before this, but he always got fired because of his tendency to ignore the rules and his oh-so-charming personality.
So, there is a lot of patients and stuff that has actually happened in the series, but summarizing every single patient would suck. So instead, I am going to go over the connecting plot of House, the relationships between the characters. When the series starts, House is working at the hospital with Cuddy as the head of the hospital, and Wilson as the department head of oncology. He's the head of the diagnostic medicine department, with three very skilled doctors working for him. There's Eric Foreman, a neurologist, Allison Cameron, an immunologist, and Robert Chase, an intensivist. Together, they fight germs! This goeson for several episodes, with Chase's dad coming to visit, telling House that he has lung cancer that will kill him and taking Cameron on a date, or at least until the big bad asshole comes and tries to curb in on House's turf.
A billionaire, Edward Vogler, donates $100 million to the hospital, thus becoming the new chairman of the board. The first time Vogler sees House, he doesn't like him and tries to control House's outrageous actions, which House resists immensely because he's a stubborn jackass. As time goes on, Vogler tries to get House fired, but because Cuddy wants to keep House because, godammit, he's good. Vogler instead tries to control House by forcing him to make a speech rather than fire a team member, but when House is a total douchebag, Vogler tries harder to get House fired, in addition to getting him to fire a team member. Because his team members were talking with Vogler, when House picks Chase to be fired, Vogler says no. House gets angry, but to avoid conflict, Cameron resigns.
Vogler also tried to fire anyone that stood up for House, but when Wilson is up for dismissal, Cuddy is forced to take a stand against Vogler. So the hospital is down on $100 million for research, but now they are free from Vogler's rule!! But House is still without Cameron, who he admits was an important part of his team. So he goes to ask her to come back a few times, but eventually convinces her to come back by promising to fufill the one requirement she says: a date. He does go on the date, but it doesn't work out, obviously.
Shortly after that, a person from House's past returns: Stacy. She comes to see House, but not for nostalgia's sake. She came to him to ask him to diagnose her sick husband. He can't decide whether he wants to take her case or not, admitting jealousy of her husband. When House does decide to do some tests, though, they all come back negative. Yet his symptoms are getting worse, which House thinks is because he's dying. House cures her husband, but leaves him disabled for a while. But despite that, Stacy, now an attorney, starts working at the hospital. Because House is bad, obviously they spend a lot of time together, and House starts to have his romantic (or as much as he can have) feelings return. Yet as he gets closer and she accepts House more than her sick husband, House decides to push her away, making her go back to her husband.
He's emo for a while, but still works as usual, or at least until something odd happens. Because of a corrupt cop's case, Foreman gets infected and quarantined. Foreman nearly dies, and this case seems to restore House's usual personality. But even with his restored personality, it's House's charming personality that gets him in trouble. One of House's former patient's husband comes to visit House, and he gets shot, going to the ICU. Of course, the shooter blamed House for her suicide, but whatever. House now has street cred, gets to be a little crazy, life goes on.
House recovers, and even though his leg pain disappeared because of the morphine he received from the gunshot wounds, he returned to Vicodin in due time. So his usual, charming self, he gets himself in trouble once again. He gets a difficult as in "House finds him annoying" patient, Detective Michael Tritter. Tritter gets pissed, and at first threatens to sue House, but House won't let himself be bullied. House is taking a ride on his motorcycle when, ironically, he gets pulled over by Tritter. Tritter arrests House for drug possession, which was his Vicodin, sigh. Wilson bails out House, but Tritter searches House's apartment and finds House's stash. And House gets more charges, sigh.
After that, Tritter starts to pressure House's co-workers to testify against House. It works, kind of, but the real kicker comes when Tritter finds out that House stole Wilson's prescription pads to forge getting more drugs. He almost gets sentenced for being a druggie, but Cuddy stands up for House, and the judge realizes that it's more likely that Tritter has a grudge, so the charges are dismissed. Work continues as normal, or at least until Foreman resigns. He cites his reasons as he "didn't want to be like House". Cuddy and Wilson try to convince House to get Foreman to stay, but grumpy old House fires Chase for no real reason. But he says it's because Chase "learnt enough". Because of romance between them, Cameron resigns to follow Chase.
Of course, that's no good, Cuddy forces House to hire a new team. House rounds up forty applicants that don't annoy the crap out of him. Because House is an eccentric kind of guy, he decides to do this reality show style, with eliminations and everything. During this, Cameron and Chase come back to the hospital, not for House, but just to work there. Which is nice for House, because he occasionally consults them with cases. Foreman got a job being a diagnostician at another hospital, but his own words came back to bite him, since he got fired for House-like behavior. He comes back to Princeton-Plainsboro, and House is not pleased with that. Especially because Cuddy says he can only hire two people now that Foreman is back, and Foreman must be on his team for supervision.
House is down to the last few, and he decides to pick two men. Because Cuddy won't let House hire a team of only men, she allows him to hire a woman, which is what he wanted to begin with. There's Chris Taub, a plastic surgeon, Lawrence Kutner, a rehabilitation specialist, and Remy Hadley, who House refers to only as "Thirteen" because that was her applicant number and he never really bothered to look at her file. Oh House. Foreman also stays on the team. One of the applicants, Amber Volakis, who House affectionately refers to as "Cutthroat Bitch", had been dating Wilson.
This upsets House because he fears that classic saying "bros before hos" is being violated. Wilson had been dating her for several months and didn't tell House. So House makes fun of/tortures Wilson about the relationship, but it only gets worse. House goes out to a strip club and gets super smashed. Amber came to pick him up, and they got on the bus together. The bus crashed, injuring House by giving him a concussion, but he can't remember who was with him, only that another passenger had some kind of medical condition. It was Amber. She ends up dying from organ failure, and dies in Wilson's arms.
House and Wilson's friendship fragments, and though Wilson wants to blame House for her death, he can't. At the same time, House feels guilty for her death. It's too much for Wilson, and he leaves the hospital, making House miserable for losing a friend. However, House can't really handle it, and hires a PI to stalk Wilson, basically. In the meantime, House's father dies, and House finds out that his father was not actually his father. Oops. Wilson does go to the funeral with House, and they reconcile. Wilson decides to come back to the hospital, yay!
SO THERE WE GO.
Reality Description:
House lives in the real world. It's not anything special or different from our world. House works at the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, which is located in New Jersey. So, obviously, it's affiliated with Princeton! Neat! The Chief of Medicine is Lisa Cuddy, and is overseen by a board of department heads and generous donors. It has a free clinic, where Cuddy often tries to get House to actually be a doctor, but to little avail. The hospital is 5 floors (1 is a basement) with 6 wings.
House goes to many locations throughout the series, but they're nothing extraordinary for an American city, really. His own apartment (221B, hee) is kind of messy, but it's actually pretty stylishly decorated. It has three or four rooms in it, but the focus point? House has a baby grand piano. How awesome is that? Anyways, yeah, New Jersey, normal world, hookers, all that jazz.