OOC: Patient File & "Real Life" History
Name: Blaine, Zachary
Sex: M
Age: 31
D.O.B.: 10/25
Blood Type: A+
Height: 6'2" ft./188cm.
Weight: 178 lbs./81kg.
Eyes: brown
Hair: dark brown
Birthplace: New York, New York
Nationality: U.S.A.
Family History: Born to Thomas and Dorothy Blaine; only child. Father left family when Zachary was 17 and Dorothy continued to raise single-handedly; never remarried. No notable relatives in extended family. No significant others.
Life History:
(Note: All connections with other Heroes characters have been given the go-ahead by their current players.)
Zachary Blaine grew up the only child of watchmaker Thomas Blaine and his wife, Dorothy, a housekeeper, in Queens, New York. Although Zachary had all the bare necessities and received obsessive attention from his mother, his parents generally struggled to make ends meet and often fought while Zachary distracted himself by taking apart his toys and putting them back together. Partly due to his quiet nature and partly due to the fact that his mother isolated him in his early childhood from the "no good" children of their lower class neighborhood, he never developed the proper social skills to relate to people from his age group.
This parental isolation turned into self isolation when Zachary entered public school. While he performed acceptably in all subjects, he seemed unable to and uninterested in making friends, and was often bullied for his antisocial behavior. However, instead of fighting back or crying like most children, his teachers found him instead writing in class about wanting to become "stronger" and realized slowly that he would observe his bullies from afar and then provoke them to violence in front of adults by insulting their vulnerabilities. Although he never did anything he could get in trouble for, his teachers urged his mother to send him to a counselor to address his unsettling behavior. She refused, insisting that there couldn't be anything wrong with her "little angel."
Outside of school, Zachary often had to tag along with his parents to work. With his father, Zachary would spend hours watching him create timepieces and feel contented when he began easily picking up the skills himself. With his mother, he would spend hours inside expensive homes, being continuously told by her that this was the kind of life that could never be afforded on the salary of a lowly craftsman. As a result, Zachary often found himself pretending that secretly, he was the long-lost child of one of the wealthy families who employed his mother, and that he would one day be discovered and never have to choose between being special and doing what he loved. Soon, he became attached to the house of one family in particular - the Campbells - and would study their walls of photographs, gradually coming to fancy himself the long-lost middle brother between Harrison and Ethan even though he only ever saw them in passing. While these fantasies slowly faded as he grew old enough to look after himself in his free time, they stayed ingrained deeply within him.
Meanwhile, throughout school, Zachary continued to feel emotionally distant from his classmates despite the fact that he became adept at putting on social pretenses and acting out personalities that didn't truly belong to him. When he made "friends," it was usually because he became interested in someone particularly talented and wanted to learn "how they worked." Often, when he realized that he could never achieve the same level of skill as his "friend," he would use his connection with them to subtly discourage them and sabotage their personal success. Sometimes, realizing what he was doing, Zachary would break off the relationships abruptly. Sometimes, realizing what he was doing, he'd continue with zeal. Zachary became aware of a schism of morality within him, and though it bothered him, he found justification for his actions in the philosophies of scientific and social Darwinism that he learned in his classes. If people couldn't fight it, he figured, then they deserved to be used.
Then, just as he was readying to apply to Ivy League universities where he thought he could earn scholarships and finally fit in, his mother and father had a particularly nasty fight to end all the rest. Thomas walked out of their apartment, never to return, and Zachary was faced with the hard reality that his mother wouldn't be able to support them on her income alone. He began working his father's shop as a part time job, then as a full time one, dropping out of school with the intention of getting his G.E.D. and continuing on to college when he had enough money.
However, this never happened. Partly out of the secret fulfillment he felt from watchmaking and partly out of resentment toward his mother, he never went to college and instead spent the next ten years honing the craft his father had taught him. Throughout this time, Dorothy continually told her son how heartbroken she was that he was wasting his potential and how he'd become just like his father. Feeling increasingly angry and resentful toward being berated, Zachary repressed these feelings until the day when Meryl Campbell, matriarch of the old Campbell family, came in to have some family heirlooms fixed.
At first, Zachary considered it a strange coincidence and was elated when he found Meryl to be friendly and talkative, just like he'd imagined. Gradually, all of Zachary's old childhood fantasies came trickling back, and as Meryl regularly returned with new keepsakes for him to fix, he began chatting with her, looking forward to their meetings and finding himself wishing that his own mother was as accepting and sympathetic as she - that maybe Meryl was his real mother. This wish slowly turned into a kind of conviction, but when Zachary began asking about things he'd only know about from studying the family pictures, Meryl became unsettled, and when Zachary began insinuating that he felt a true kinship with her family and her sons, her mood changed drastically and she threatened him with a restraining order and left.
Although he hadn't fully realized it, Zachary's childhood fantasy had been the main thing holding him together under the stress and self-loathing that his mother had cultivated in him, and when Meryl walked out, so did his tenuous sanity. In his grief and rage over being rejected even by the mother of his dreams, he smashed a watch he'd been working on for years, and when he saw the brand name on it - SYLAR - he found a name for the persona that found so much joy in hurting others. For the other persona that had put up with the normalcy of his life for so long, that had accepted it and been pathetic and weak, he came up with the name "Gabriel Gray" - Gabriel for the angelic image his mother had of him and Gray for the mediocrity that disallowed him from living up to those expectations.
However, the person that Zachary immediately wanted revenge on was Meryl. Knowing that her younger son, Ethan, had been publicized as being mentally unstable and borderline suicidal, he met him under false pretenses and began cultivating a friendship with him. Already prone to comic book delusions and desperate for a calling in life, it was easy to convince Ethan that he was meant to "save the world" and that the rest of his family was part of a villainous conspiracy. However, while Ethan bought most of the lies, Zachary underestimated his loyalty to his family, and found himself being declared Ethan's "mortal enemy" when he kept trying to turn him on his mother and brother. Zachary, then left to his own devices, found himself gradually consumed by the fantasy that he himself had created for Ethan, beginning to believe that he himself had the superpower of "intuitive aptitude" and that, if he opened someone's skull, he could learn their "abilities" straight from their brain - just like he'd always wanted to.
Zachary believed this so deeply that he even decided to try it out. He called up Dave Brians, an old "friend" from high school who was particularly good at public speaking, and asked to meet him at his watchmaking shop. When Dave wasn't looking, Zachary bashed him in the head with a blunt object, killing him.
Although he initially felt a kind of thrill and satisfaction that he'd never experienced before, Zachary quickly found his joy dwindling as he realized the magnitude of what he'd done. Like in high school, he felt erratic remorse for his actions, and in his moment of sanity, he called the police and reported his crime. He was arrested, pled guilty by reason of insanity, and showed nothing but guilt and remorse for his actions throughout the procedures, although he sometimes felt he was doing so with Sylar's deceptive persona rather than with his own. Overall, however, he began slowly realizing the insecurities that had brought him to this state in the first place.
Due to testimony on his history of mental instability, his clear remorse, his consistently exemplary behavior, and his having turned himself in, his plea was accepted and he was allowed admittance to Landel's Institute for psychiatric treatment rather than being sent to a correctional facility.
Medical History: suffered exceptionally virulent case of chicken pox as a young child; displayed increasingly antisocial behavior throughout gradeschool (never professionally diagnosed/treated); began developing fantasies that distanced himself from his life and family from a young age; fantasies developed into more complex delusions in his adult life; antisocial behavior became gradually more sociopathic during teenage years; closed self off from regular socializing for ~12 years spent as watchmaker; suffered break from reality after interaction with members of family meeting his standards of achievement; has become willing patient in his treatment; has received self-inflicted lacerations on lower right forearm; has received patient-inflicted wounds on right cheek, left brow, left palm, and right calf
Current Status: Zachary has displayed excellent behavior during his time at the Institute; he has socialized healthily with others and maintains several friendly, long-lasting relationships. However, his disposition has recently changed; after receiving his mother as a visitor, he behaved erratically and provoked another patient into attacking him that evening. Zachary was badly wounded; the patient was expelled from the Institute. Since then, he has shown significant regression into his "Sylar" persona; more extreme treatment or extended therapy sessions might be necessary.
Working Diagnosis: (NOT MULTIPLE PERSONALITY DISORDER will be filled in later)
Sex: M
Age: 31
D.O.B.: 10/25
Blood Type: A+
Height: 6'2" ft./188cm.
Weight: 178 lbs./81kg.
Eyes: brown
Hair: dark brown
Birthplace: New York, New York
Nationality: U.S.A.
Family History: Born to Thomas and Dorothy Blaine; only child. Father left family when Zachary was 17 and Dorothy continued to raise single-handedly; never remarried. No notable relatives in extended family. No significant others.
Life History:
(Note: All connections with other Heroes characters have been given the go-ahead by their current players.)
Zachary Blaine grew up the only child of watchmaker Thomas Blaine and his wife, Dorothy, a housekeeper, in Queens, New York. Although Zachary had all the bare necessities and received obsessive attention from his mother, his parents generally struggled to make ends meet and often fought while Zachary distracted himself by taking apart his toys and putting them back together. Partly due to his quiet nature and partly due to the fact that his mother isolated him in his early childhood from the "no good" children of their lower class neighborhood, he never developed the proper social skills to relate to people from his age group.
This parental isolation turned into self isolation when Zachary entered public school. While he performed acceptably in all subjects, he seemed unable to and uninterested in making friends, and was often bullied for his antisocial behavior. However, instead of fighting back or crying like most children, his teachers found him instead writing in class about wanting to become "stronger" and realized slowly that he would observe his bullies from afar and then provoke them to violence in front of adults by insulting their vulnerabilities. Although he never did anything he could get in trouble for, his teachers urged his mother to send him to a counselor to address his unsettling behavior. She refused, insisting that there couldn't be anything wrong with her "little angel."
Outside of school, Zachary often had to tag along with his parents to work. With his father, Zachary would spend hours watching him create timepieces and feel contented when he began easily picking up the skills himself. With his mother, he would spend hours inside expensive homes, being continuously told by her that this was the kind of life that could never be afforded on the salary of a lowly craftsman. As a result, Zachary often found himself pretending that secretly, he was the long-lost child of one of the wealthy families who employed his mother, and that he would one day be discovered and never have to choose between being special and doing what he loved. Soon, he became attached to the house of one family in particular - the Campbells - and would study their walls of photographs, gradually coming to fancy himself the long-lost middle brother between Harrison and Ethan even though he only ever saw them in passing. While these fantasies slowly faded as he grew old enough to look after himself in his free time, they stayed ingrained deeply within him.
Meanwhile, throughout school, Zachary continued to feel emotionally distant from his classmates despite the fact that he became adept at putting on social pretenses and acting out personalities that didn't truly belong to him. When he made "friends," it was usually because he became interested in someone particularly talented and wanted to learn "how they worked." Often, when he realized that he could never achieve the same level of skill as his "friend," he would use his connection with them to subtly discourage them and sabotage their personal success. Sometimes, realizing what he was doing, Zachary would break off the relationships abruptly. Sometimes, realizing what he was doing, he'd continue with zeal. Zachary became aware of a schism of morality within him, and though it bothered him, he found justification for his actions in the philosophies of scientific and social Darwinism that he learned in his classes. If people couldn't fight it, he figured, then they deserved to be used.
Then, just as he was readying to apply to Ivy League universities where he thought he could earn scholarships and finally fit in, his mother and father had a particularly nasty fight to end all the rest. Thomas walked out of their apartment, never to return, and Zachary was faced with the hard reality that his mother wouldn't be able to support them on her income alone. He began working his father's shop as a part time job, then as a full time one, dropping out of school with the intention of getting his G.E.D. and continuing on to college when he had enough money.
However, this never happened. Partly out of the secret fulfillment he felt from watchmaking and partly out of resentment toward his mother, he never went to college and instead spent the next ten years honing the craft his father had taught him. Throughout this time, Dorothy continually told her son how heartbroken she was that he was wasting his potential and how he'd become just like his father. Feeling increasingly angry and resentful toward being berated, Zachary repressed these feelings until the day when Meryl Campbell, matriarch of the old Campbell family, came in to have some family heirlooms fixed.
At first, Zachary considered it a strange coincidence and was elated when he found Meryl to be friendly and talkative, just like he'd imagined. Gradually, all of Zachary's old childhood fantasies came trickling back, and as Meryl regularly returned with new keepsakes for him to fix, he began chatting with her, looking forward to their meetings and finding himself wishing that his own mother was as accepting and sympathetic as she - that maybe Meryl was his real mother. This wish slowly turned into a kind of conviction, but when Zachary began asking about things he'd only know about from studying the family pictures, Meryl became unsettled, and when Zachary began insinuating that he felt a true kinship with her family and her sons, her mood changed drastically and she threatened him with a restraining order and left.
Although he hadn't fully realized it, Zachary's childhood fantasy had been the main thing holding him together under the stress and self-loathing that his mother had cultivated in him, and when Meryl walked out, so did his tenuous sanity. In his grief and rage over being rejected even by the mother of his dreams, he smashed a watch he'd been working on for years, and when he saw the brand name on it - SYLAR - he found a name for the persona that found so much joy in hurting others. For the other persona that had put up with the normalcy of his life for so long, that had accepted it and been pathetic and weak, he came up with the name "Gabriel Gray" - Gabriel for the angelic image his mother had of him and Gray for the mediocrity that disallowed him from living up to those expectations.
However, the person that Zachary immediately wanted revenge on was Meryl. Knowing that her younger son, Ethan, had been publicized as being mentally unstable and borderline suicidal, he met him under false pretenses and began cultivating a friendship with him. Already prone to comic book delusions and desperate for a calling in life, it was easy to convince Ethan that he was meant to "save the world" and that the rest of his family was part of a villainous conspiracy. However, while Ethan bought most of the lies, Zachary underestimated his loyalty to his family, and found himself being declared Ethan's "mortal enemy" when he kept trying to turn him on his mother and brother. Zachary, then left to his own devices, found himself gradually consumed by the fantasy that he himself had created for Ethan, beginning to believe that he himself had the superpower of "intuitive aptitude" and that, if he opened someone's skull, he could learn their "abilities" straight from their brain - just like he'd always wanted to.
Zachary believed this so deeply that he even decided to try it out. He called up Dave Brians, an old "friend" from high school who was particularly good at public speaking, and asked to meet him at his watchmaking shop. When Dave wasn't looking, Zachary bashed him in the head with a blunt object, killing him.
Although he initially felt a kind of thrill and satisfaction that he'd never experienced before, Zachary quickly found his joy dwindling as he realized the magnitude of what he'd done. Like in high school, he felt erratic remorse for his actions, and in his moment of sanity, he called the police and reported his crime. He was arrested, pled guilty by reason of insanity, and showed nothing but guilt and remorse for his actions throughout the procedures, although he sometimes felt he was doing so with Sylar's deceptive persona rather than with his own. Overall, however, he began slowly realizing the insecurities that had brought him to this state in the first place.
Due to testimony on his history of mental instability, his clear remorse, his consistently exemplary behavior, and his having turned himself in, his plea was accepted and he was allowed admittance to Landel's Institute for psychiatric treatment rather than being sent to a correctional facility.
Medical History: suffered exceptionally virulent case of chicken pox as a young child; displayed increasingly antisocial behavior throughout gradeschool (never professionally diagnosed/treated); began developing fantasies that distanced himself from his life and family from a young age; fantasies developed into more complex delusions in his adult life; antisocial behavior became gradually more sociopathic during teenage years; closed self off from regular socializing for ~12 years spent as watchmaker; suffered break from reality after interaction with members of family meeting his standards of achievement; has become willing patient in his treatment; has received self-inflicted lacerations on lower right forearm; has received patient-inflicted wounds on right cheek, left brow, left palm, and right calf
Current Status: Zachary has displayed excellent behavior during his time at the Institute; he has socialized healthily with others and maintains several friendly, long-lasting relationships. However, his disposition has recently changed; after receiving his mother as a visitor, he behaved erratically and provoked another patient into attacking him that evening. Zachary was badly wounded; the patient was expelled from the Institute. Since then, he has shown significant regression into his "Sylar" persona; more extreme treatment or extended therapy sessions might be necessary.
Working Diagnosis: (NOT MULTIPLE PERSONALITY DISORDER will be filled in later)