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Character Requested: River Tam
Source: Firefly
Your Name or Handle: Heather


Canon History for the Character:

River Tam was born an extremely gifted young girl on Osiris, circa the year 2500. Considered a child prodigy, she excelled at everything she tried, especially dance. At the age of 14, the Alliance invited her to join an Academy for gifted children, which she accepted with excitement. Her parents and brother Simon were so proud of her.

Two years later, her brother had given up his promising medical career and standing as a law abiding citizen to rescue her from the nightmare into which she had plummeted. The "Academy" was actually a center for torture and experimentation, and by the time Simon had gotten her out, River was broken. Paranoid schizophrenia, said her brother, manufactured at the hands of scientists. Among other things, they had cut into her brain and stripped her amygdala, causing her to feel every emotion intensely and without respite.

She spent the next year living as a fugitive with her brother aboard the ship Serenity, piloted by Captain Malcolm Reynolds. Simon continuously tried to understand and treat River's ailment with drugs, leading to limited success. Amid the madness, she shows flashes of something else: an acute sensitivity to others, perhaps empathy, or perhaps… telepathy? Who can tell for sure, in a mind as shattered as hers? There was also one incident, in which she shot three men dead at once. Without looking.

But that was surely a fluke. No way could a cracked, albeit pretty, little doll like River be capable of anything so dangerous.

Right?

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