User Name/Nick: Danii
User DW: yarnzipan
E-mail: gamenotifications@gmail.com
Other Characters: Clark Luthor, Alan Scott, Ardyn Izunia

Character Name: Teddy Flood (technically SV4680468050)
Series: Westworld
Age: mental age is over 30, physical age is definitely over 30 but we don't precisely know how long
From When?: end of season 1, and let's say that in the ruckus of Dolores's murder spree/revolution, he takes a bullet between the eyes

Inmate/Warden: Inmate. Teddy's moral issues are two-fold, really. The first is that as a host in Westworld, he's a constructed being who has largely functioned according to his programming for most of his existence. This means that he has consistently acted to prioritize human pain and suffering over the pain and suffering of other hosts (others like him) regardless of the behavior of the humans or the hosts in question, regardless of their morality. Now this seems simple enough, but while it's perfectly acceptable for a machine to do as such, for someone who's recently come to even the first stages of consciousness, this would be unacceptable. The Good Samaritan reflex, in a universe where consciousness can be found in hosts as well as humans, is inherently immoral. Secondly, there is definitely a certain murkiness surrounding how much of Teddy's participation in a variety of massacres and violent actions were a part of his programming and which were a part of said burgeoning consciousness, tied intrinsically to one of the first acts that are still in parts of his memory as well as his growing rage and frustration caused by the consequences of said consciousness, such as gunning down the Union soldiers and, of course, in letting Dolores murder Dr. Ford and all that came after. Teddy's programming says one thing (which is immoral) and yet the rage and anger and pain that's built up in his time at the park says another thing, namely the support of the murder of all of the humans in the park, which is also immoral in a different direction, since of course the humans in the park had no idea of what Ford was doing (attempting to create consciousness) or the real consequences of their behavior on conscious beings. It's the equivalent of executing someone for playing a violent video game because it turns out the judge is Luigi Mario and he's sick and tired of getting eaten by a venus fly trap.

Arrival: -- Teddy absolutely would agree to come, as despite the reasons why he is going to be an inmate, his basic personality and programming is to be good and kind and decent and heroic, and he would welcome the chance to have a place dedicated to figuring out moral difficulties to work through it all with some perspective. Because back home, all he's got is Team Dolores McMurdereveryone and Team What Do You Mean The Blow Up Dolls Have Feelings and neither of them are really conducive to figuring out how this all works.

Abilities/Powers: Teddy is technically a robot so he's stronger, faster, tougher, and technically able to keep going through all manner of abuse and harm, but he's programmed to react like a human. He has no supernatural or other abilities beyond the fact that, well... he's a construct.

Personality: Teddy is, well, not really your typical inmate in a lot of ways. To start off with, he's kind. This kindness, of course, shows itself in the big ways, the heroic ways, the fact that he can't let something terrible happen without trying to do something about it, but also in the small ways: he's polite and neighborly to the sex workers at the saloon and treats them all like ladies, he'll pick up a random can he sees rolling around on the street and try and help someone get their groceries back together, and he'll try and diffuse a situation that he sees going south without violence if he can possibly help it. He tries to give people as many chances as he can stand, and it's one of the reasons he gets killed so often, honestly.

He's also relatively simple, both when it comes to how he handles the world, and what he expects out of it. While Dolores is always looking towards the horizon, always wanting to push at the borders and see what's outside, he doesn't see why he'd want to mess up how good things are now, enjoy things the way they are. His emotions show plainly on his face and he acts on them without much reserve: when he's happy, when he's mad, when he's frustrated. He doesn't see the need to complicate things or to lie about them most of the time, seeing it as a waste of time and effort, so while he'll never be rude or cruel, he tends to speak plainly. The only time we've ever seen him obfuscate is when Dolores asked him when he intended to leave Sweetwater with her and you can see that he's sort of fighting the programmed urge to make her want to stay since it clearly isn't what she wants; his responses are clumsy and kind of terrible.

As silly as it sounds, though, he is heroic. He can't stand by when he hears someone in danger, and even when he wants to just fall over and die, he picks himself up and soldiers on as best as he can. Most of the time we've seen him die hasn't actually been for human beings but for the safety of other hosts, the people he has no actual special programming to save. And even when he's terrified, even when he knows he's going to face the worst of his past and everything he's ashamed of, he keeps going. Brave and true and good, that's Teddy. Loyal as well, given all he's seen Dolores through and how much he loves her even as the old memories no doubt paint her in a very different light for him after a time.

The thing of it is, though, is that Teddy is probably the most lost host of any in the park. The various other hosts who are climbing towards consciousness, Dolores and Maeve especially, have very specific wants and goals and needs. Teddy just wants to find peace, a search which is much harder in a lot of ways given that you can't find it in a daughter (Maeve) or the edge of the horizon (Dolores). He doesn't want answers about the bigger questions of the park; he wants answers about himself, about what he feels and why he does what he does and why he loves and cares about the things he loves and cares about. His walk through the maze, his walk through consciousness, has been the most purely personal of all of them, in a lot of ways, as it has almost entirely to do with his own past and his own actions and what he expects of himself.

And it's what makes him dangerous in a lot of ways too, both because he defers to others (Ford, Dolores, even to some degree the Man in Black) but also because he will get to the point where he hardly understands why he's trying, what matters, who matters, any of it. The moment when he got up on the gatling gun and just mowed down the Union Soldiers was probably the most extreme, on camera, 'fuck this, fuck everything' he has on the show and it's the sign of a man who's at his wits end with no escape in sight. Because with everything I've mentioned up above, he's in an impossible situation, a situation where the morals are so questionable, it seems like everything matters and nothing matters, that his behavior will change nothing because there's always someone who's outside of the bounds, or some force, that he can do nothing about.

For all that Teddy is capable and willing and even badass, he is a victim most of the time, not just to the various humans in the park but also to the hosts. Everything he tries to believe or do gets preempted or stomped on, and even his 'happy' ending is one where he's lost the only thing that ever meant anything to him. He's doomed to tragedy, canonically the most murdered and attacked host in the park and there's some part of him that knows it. Because in Westworld, there almost isn't a right thing. Because the park is about wish fulfillment, not logic or justice, and he's there to serve a purpose for others or to the story but never to himself.

Which is part of why Dolores is such a touchstone for him, the one he looks to, the one he seems willing to follow to the ends of the earth. Dolores is the only logic he knows, the only one that seems to ever make sense. That's why, despite the fact that he doesn't believe in wanting to kill anyone let alone in cold blood, he stands there and waits while Dolores lines up her shot behind Ford. Even when he knows she's murdered countless people, that he's murdered countless people for her, that what she's doing is wrong, he can't help but cling to her, to the one piece of the park that makes him feel good, and in a way, he feels like he's sold his soul for it, thinks he doesn't deserve it.

And yet, I wouldn't say that he doesn't want Ford dead, doesn't want all of the people in the park dead. People like the Man in Black have spent so much of their time and their money to quite literally torture him and people like him. Ford had decided that he wanted to pursue the idea of consciousness in his machines and obviously, since they weren't conscious, they couldn't consent but especially for him, consciousness and the climb to it have been nothing but painful. In the very last moments of the season, Teddy's justice turns on it's head, his programming to protect humans shifting to kill them for how cruel and awful and how little they seem to care about the suffering of him and people like him, of creatures trying and struggling towards consciousness. He has no context for it, but he doesn't care, and the scenes shown from the next season have him literally chasing down party guests on horse back with a gun and hunting them for sport for all they've done to he and his.

Through this and through the moments where he's 'broken' his own usual behaviors (mowing down the soldiers, actually injuring the Man in Black, etc) have all been expressions of extreme suppressed rage and a desire to cause pain. Part of his awakening to consciousness has been a rejection of the 'programmed' goodness that was put into him and a raw and sometimes brutal need for what he views as justice without, perhaps, the context to actually pursue justice. And he shows no inclination to be looking for it either; he's lost in his pain and his anger and as noted below, he will have to find himself, who he really is, reconstruct the pieces of who he is, around the kind of truths he's never been given a chance to see.

Barge Reactions: I believe Teddy will acclimate rather well to the Barge, though initially he'll have the most trouble since he won't have access to as much of his memories. The show makes it clear that they gain more of their memories back as they work through the maze of consciousness and with enough time and effort, he will more than likely get back some of the memories from other iterations and possibly even other genres; he comes preequipped with floods and breeches! But even initially, while he'll be a little confused since his understanding was built for being a cowboy in the 1880s, he was also built to roll with whatever anachronisms the guests might pull, so he'll almost certainly be just fine with that portion. He'll be a little nonplussed at SPACE and being out of the park, but that'll be more wonder and joy and a little bit of sadness that he can't share that with his murderwife Dolores, her desire to catch the horizon, so to speak.

Path to Redemption: Honestly, Teddy's going to have to learn how to people. He's going to have to figure out what morality really is, how it works, how it works in conjunctions with the specifics of the park and how the park works, how it works in conjunction with the people who built him and programmed him and all of that. He's going to have to learn how the world works when people understand that there are consequences. He's going to have to kind of learn reality and morality. Beyond that, though, he's also going to have to learn to handle and understand anger, fear, and pain, what they really are and what they really mean, and appropriate responses to them. Gradually, he's going to have to sort of rewrite his own programming from scratch, not because that's what he was told to do but with the understanding or and in agreement with his own principles as he figures them out.

History: http://westworld.wikia.com/wiki/Teddy_Flood

Sample Journal Entry:
10/28/XXXX

My dearest Dolores,

It was certainly a strange sort of day. You are in my thoughts more often than is helpful, but I take some heart in thinking that perhaps that'll delight you some day, to know that I see you when I look out at the stars and every time we stop at some strange, new place. I can't help but think that you would be a far more suitable passenger than I am, where I only seem to feel as if I am on a train that I will never depart from, a complaint I know that I have made before and will endeavor not to make too often. I always hated boring you.

You remember those creatures that came about the one year around harvest time? The walking ones with the flesh and bone sticking out? Well, it seems as if this is something that can happen outside of the park, beyond just our small corner of the world. I've been assured that there are whole worlds taken over by such creatures, though no one here claims to hail from such a place. Regardless, it seems that the kind that occur more naturally than our own abide by the same schedule, though not by the same appetites. These, it seemed, had no interest in me, unlike the very particular interest they had in the rest of the crew. Which, of course, resulted in my spending most of the day walking about the ship, bringing folks supplies and food so they could stay in the rooms safely until this all blew over. I suspect it'll be done with within the week like most things are around here, though in all honesty, I hope it will be sooner. Most of those here have enough trouble with their containment and I fear this will only make it worse.

Regardless, I can appreciate the honest fatigue in my limbs and the droop to my eyelids that comes from a good day's work, however strange the circumstances. So while bizarre, I will count today as a good day and leave you with the thought that your Teddy hopes to dream of you tonight. Hopes that and that you're thinking of him until we once again see one another face to face. Have a good night, Dolores.

Dream something beautiful.

Sample RP:

[ There's a lot of ways to be lost and a lot of ways to be aimless and Teddy's pretty sure he's found a good number of them since he came here.

He wants to be confused, surprised maybe, at the surroundings he finds himself in. But when it comes right down to it, there's still stars in the sky and a spot to rest his head and that's all he's ever looked for in a place to be. He's simple that way.

The only gaping hole in his world is Dolores-shaped, and it's the kind of hole that he's not sure if he wants to fill or if it needs to heal over. Maybe that's what he's here to do. One or the other. Maybe what he's here to do is figure out which one he wants.

He's not sure. He'd been offered a chance at redemption, at pulling the gnawing beast of guilt and darkness out of his soul and for the first time, what felt like the first time, he'd made a choice. And now he was here.

So instead, he wanders around this little town of a ship. He's in the saloon more often than not, the deck when he feels a little too scattered, and he's walked past the chapel more times than he can count even if he's never gone in. He has to eat, but he keeps to himself in the mess hall and more often than he likes, he ends up in what seems to be a massive wardrobe off from machines he's been told clean clothes. He doesn't take any of the clothes, but seeing them all lined up, all kinds, all colors, all sizes... it stirs something in him, memories of something he thinks he may have seen. Maybe. ]

Special Notes: Beep boop.