Noah Tessaro

and my pain is mine, it's become my friend with time
Noah is an enormous jerk, is what he is.

chia-like it grows; watch it fester for my foes
To sum Noah up in a slightly ridiculous sentence, he's a cluster of razor sharp little teeth, much like a langolier! As an extension of this, at first glance Noah seems to be a walking threshing machine: kind of entertaining to watch at a distance, or drive, but God help you if you get in his way. He is one of those highly intelligent, verbal teenagers who know they're bright and have some issues to work out, and choose to work them out by tearing into everyone around them. Noah is often funny in his barbs, and doesn't eviscerate people immediately, but when he's actually inspired to be hateful he has a knack for knowing exactly where to focus to maim someone. He seems to have limited patience with most people, and in fact claims to universally hate just about everyone and everything on principle, because angry disaffectation is so twenty-first century. This doesn't win him many friends, and he appears to be fine with that.

This is only true up to a point, as first glances tend to be. One of Noah's most typically 'masculine' traits is that he reacts to his own inner problems with a) denial and b) displacement. Although this still doesn't make his behavior...acceptable, at all, it's a measure of how tumultous his inner workings are that he lashes out as much as he does. Noah is essentially brittle, in his sharpness, and when pressed he tends to shear and crack--and thus just develop more vicious little edges. He spent a lot of the most important years for his identity formation struggling just to define what thoughts were his own, and which weren't, so getting him to open up and share incredibly hard-earned genuine pieces of himself is...challenging. He values his privacy and personal integrity to an almost neurotic degree, and he's well-aware that being an insufferable asshole keeps people from wanting to get close to him; it's one of the biggest points of the whole thing, besides his actual general misanthropy. Noah looks at people and focuses on their worst qualities, most of the time, which is partly bitterness and partly an effort to protect himself from having to care about everyone.

Which segues nicely into his ability, and how he feels about it: telepathy tends, in writing, to either be associated with gently empathetic, intuitive, caring people (Jean Grey) or manipulative villains (Emma Frost), but Noah doesn't fit into either category. He finds his power inherently creepy, for one thing, and hugely intrusive on his own privacy, for another--when he's unmedicated, he frequently has trouble distinguishing between his own mind and the minds pressing against it, and as such he's very touchy and particular about how he expresses himself. It's the only way he can be closer to sure he's only expressing himself, and not fifteen other people he spent time around that day. It doesn't help that he really only recently came to believe that it's real telepathy, and not him losing his mind, which is a personal fear that outdoes death and public speaking. Telepathy didn't endear other people to him, but led an already slightly cynical young teenager to believe that all people are basically selfish, stupid bastards--including, and especially, himself. Having the awareness that everyone around him is in as much, or more, pain and confusion as he was and is was something he could have done without, and so instead of using his forced empathy to...help anyone, he tends to act like he doesn't have it or uses it to damage people more when he believes it's deserved.

When he does try to help people, he...historically fucks it up, because what people project wanting often differs from what they actually need, and Noah is actually stunningly inept at reading people past a certain level--he takes their surface as their reality, more often than not, because getting closer to anyone requires effort and usually letting them get to know him a little better. Which is terrible and should never happen. Because of this, he's even less motivated to be decent--but when he does finally become protective he becomes extremely tenaciously so, and...often violently, because he bubbles with the kind of outrage that is most commonly associated with activists: the world is an unfair place, and that pisses him off. The only reason he's not vocal about this is because it would imply he cares, and as noted he doesn't want that to be a known fact--and he'd be vocal about everything, all the time, which takes the kind of energy he doesn't think he has.

However, Noah is bright enough to realize and not self-deceptive enough to forget that this is pretty much a hideous way to exist, but changing any of it is something he's unwilling to do, because what's come along with his inherent close-mouthedness is a...lot of pride, some of which is even earned. Noah has accomplished a lot, most notably not having any significant stress-related breakdowns until very recently, and he has carved his identity bloody out of chaos--this took real strength, especially since he never talked about any of it with anyone. He's also very, very bright, especially when it comes to the comprehension, manipulation, and creation of literature; he's already a talented, albeit both naive and overly cynical, writer, and he's certainly not done improving. On the other hand, his sense of superiority is greatly exaggerated in comparison to this, which is tied to how it's partly bullshit. His massive insecurity runs inches below the surface; the logic of it being that if he was likeable or loveable at all, he wouldn't have had to take care of himself, because someone would have cared enough to notice that he had problems. This isn't a fair assessment, but no one ever said teenagers were fair, especially when they're looking for more reasons to be angry and avoid doing anything as hard as growing up. He's also his harshest critic, artistically and otherwise, and if he can't do something right he'd usually rather not do it at all. He sees all flaws in his own work as amplified, glaring, and intolerable, and so besides what he hands in for school he's extremely reluctant to share his work--and if anyone shares it on his behalf they'll get verbally and/or physically beaten to a pulp.

To wrap this up with his good traits, because he does have them: when Noah can get over himself, he's loyal, surprisingly sensitive, and generally inclined to do whatever other people want (...which is distinct from 'the right thing', occasionally, but there you go). He expresses his caring mostly indirectly, but if you're attentive he does have a pattern of reluctantly standing up for people, even if this largely manifests as a) assaulting someone else or b) making himself a better target--he has a latent martyr complex that will definitely never create issues in the future. Although he could easily stay the jerk he is, or get worse, Noah is at a stage in his life where the potential to become a better person is great, and there's every chance he will.

one day i'm gonna get up, get right back into the city
Noah is the first and only child of his biological parents' marriage--Marco Tessaro and Andrea Horne married in their early twenties, while Marco (going mostly by Mark, by then) was still working as a travelling salesman for a major pharmaceutical company. It was a job that paid well, but it required he be out of the house for weeks at a time. He knew about her family history of insanity, and they had discussed adopting seriously, but Noah's unplanned conception put an end to that; what he never worried about was Andrea's mental health, because in his mind schizophrenia was something you picked up in your teens and if you were a boy - that's how it was for her brothers, after all.

Andrea didn't seek help for her delusions, at first, because she was afraid that she'd be taken away from her son, and when she did begin self-medicating (she had a rough idea what drugs she needed, and obtained them illegally) she was bad at taking the already dubious drugs she prescribed herself. Noah spent his early years in a tense, mercurial atmosphere that only seemed to stabilize when his father was home. Andrea clung to Noah tightly, and he developed the vague but urgent sense he had to take care of her and find some way to make her happy.

This was never sustainable, and when Noah was five and in kindergarten his teacher finally called social services to investigate. That resulted in Andrea being institionalized; at first on an emergency basis, which was then prolonged as needed. Mark came home to take care of his son, at first, and to deal with the fallout of his marriage's rather dramatic turn for the worse, but eventually the stress proved too much and he had to return to work anyway. He made enough to provide for the care of both his wife and son, and so Noah was moved in with his loud and rambunctious cousins on the paternal side and pretty much left there until he was eight and his father finalized his divorce from his mother during one of her periods outside of care. (Noah didn't see her during this time; it was considered best by his father, who had pretty solid reason to believe it'd be traumatic.) He got married a few months later to Julia Cho, and Noah moved in with his new stepmother in their new house in Houston shortly before his father got a new job as a manager in the city, a significant leap up the payscale. Noah could easily have resented his 'new mom', but instead he clung to her immediately, partly as a reaction to suddenly being the only child again--and Julia took to her new stepson as well, so there have been much more turbulent stepparent/stepchild relationships. In fact, if anything, Noah preferred her to his father, which was a trend that would continue.

So life was (mostly) fine, except for the ghost of Andrea who would occasionally manifest in monitored phone calls and a few photos that generally left Noah uncomfortable and guilty for days afterward: a new school where no one knew his history, no cousins pushing him aside in the struggle for attention, a stepmother he loved, a father he was carefully polite with, and a sudden new best friend from across the street with braces named Emma Evans. The unfortunate alliteration that Noah latched onto instantly aside, it was his first really close friendship, and people often remarked on what a 'cute little couple' they made. So it was Emma's house Noah marched over to when he was ten (even after his male friends started teasing him about his 'girlfriend') when he found out his stepmother was pregnant--and not just pregnant, but pregnant with twins. He was angry, which was understandable, although not charming; he was also scared, because if there was one thing he was sure of when it came to his father it was that Noah reminded him of Andrea, and these new children wouldn't do that. Ergo, they'd be preferrable--and potentially his replacements, since he was sure Julia wouldn't want anything to do with him after she had her own children. The household was tense in the wake of his sullenness and occasional outbursts, despite Julia's attempts to reassure him, and it stayed that way until she went into premature labor at seven and a half months.

Noah was sure that it was his fault, at the time, and it's a belief he's never shaken fully: if he'd been easier to deal with, if he hadn't made her so stressed, then maybe his half-sisters would have been born on their due date. Eve and Zoe instead spent their first few months of life in the hospital, and initially weren't expected to survive at all. By the time they were brought home Julia was at the end of her rope, and Mark reacted by drawing away, so Noah decided it was time for him to step up and take care of the little sisters he'd only seen a handful of times before. He didn't assume full care, but he did help significantly, and so discovered his new niche in their rearranged family. He could be a good older brother, if nothing else.

So life carried on in this new routine, which was complicated by the fact that even as infants Eve and Zoe were extremely high-energy--if they could run off and get into something they shouldn't, they would, so Noah would jokingly refer to himself as a sheepdog when he rounded them back up. Julia went back to work as a curator when the twins were four and enrolled in preschool, Mark was promoted again, and Noah's precociousness with the English language began to show signs of being something with exceptional potential. He also grew a little closer to his best friend, with hormones being the things they are, and when he turned fourteen he started to consider asking her out--and then he started to hear voices.

Noah read a lot, and one of the topics he quietly focused on was schizophrenia (he had finally seen his mother in person again the year before, and it was an experience he was still conflicted over) so he leapt to the conclusion that seemed logical with his history: he didn't just have his mother's eyes or her love of literature, but an ugly little snag in his neurons to match hers. He thought about telling either of his parents, but rejected it at first because he didn't want to have to leave. Instead, he dug up the bottle of Valium his stepmother had gotten when she went back to work and barely even started before going off of it and tried to take care of himself.

This being the most genius plan in the history of genius plans, Noah finished that bottle and sought out a refill from less-than-legal sources--the one thing he didn't lack for was money, and since the supervision he received at home was next-to-nonexistent the change in his behavior was put down to teenaged moodiness. In the midst of developing his addiction, Noah came to the conclusion that either his delusions were amazingly accurate or he was actually hearing thoughts, but no matter which one it was he couldn't function off of medication. His power spiked hard and early, and during Valium-free periods it was nearly impossible not to get overwhelmed. The drugs helped him stop caring, even if they didn't shut anyone up. His experiment with an illicitly acquired anti-psychotic went...badly, so he stuck to what was barely effective.

From fourteen to a few months after his seventeenth birthday, Noah was in various states of 'high'; his schoolwork suffered a little, but he cheated enough to stay ahead of any possible concern. He went from being an avid reader to being an almost compulsive one, and outside of school he retreated to his home and stayed in that relative security except for occasional excursions to babysit and make a little extra money for his precious, precious habit. His former friends fell by the wayside, including Emma, and he thought he was secure until he adjusted his own dosage and triggered one of the many wonderful side-effects of Valium use: fits of rage! Although it started with 'only' verbal snapping, it escalated to Noah breaking another boy's nose over a small comment, and when he came home with his suspension he found that his father had searched his room and come up with his pill collection, which was promptly disposed of.

Valium withdrawal is not pretty, and Noah knew that; the fight that he and his father had, the first big one they had ever had, was undercut with his knowledge that he was not capable of going off drugs without finally slipping. He ended up being grounded effectively for the rest of his life and choosing not to mention the side effects of abrupt discontinuation. It was another brilliant decision on his part that eventually took him to the ER with wounds he and his stepmother both swore weren't self-inflicted. This fooling about...no one, he was held for observation, but he kept it together enough to satisfy both the medical professional and his stepmother, who took him home and promptly put him in therapy. Noah just as promptly didn't discuss any of his real problems, using his power to supply the answers that would keep everyone happy with his progress.

Now barely functioning, Noah went back to school, transformed from the quiet, distracted kid in the back of class to an aggressive, tense, and brilliantly cutting lord of sarcasm. Going off of Valium is often compared to shrugging off a wet wool blanket, and Noah certainly felt sharper, although he hated every second of it and the new close monitoring he got at home--he found it bitterly ironic that it was only after he screwed his life up that anyone would pay attention to him. During this period, he also dropped his loose group of 'friends' and began hanging out with Emma again, who had taken the bumps of adolesence almost as roughly as he had. She was dating a boy who had graduated a year ahead of them and was now attending university, and their relationship was rocky at best, leading Noah to act as the worst relationship counsellor of all time. He also managed to reignite his crush on her, because why not make things even more complicated?

Things came to a head when Emma found out that she'd contracted an STD via her boyfriend's previously unsuspected screwing around, and after Noah finally tucked her into his own bed when she had cried herself to sleep he proceeded to go over to her boyfriend's shared house and...beat the everloving shit out of him, as goes the Texas tradition in such situations. By the time the cops had arrived Mr. Presumably-Ex-Boyfriend needed immediate hospitalization, and Noah was arrested and transported to the closest local jail. He wasn't in the prison system long, since his parents were more than capable of posting bail, and once released into their custody he was informed that he'd spend his time until they figured out what to do about the aggravated assault charge sitting inside. And this would have been fine, except that Emma was somehow less than thrilled that Noah had opted to abandon her when she needed his support, and she refused to talk to him.

So he stopped trying to call her, went for a walk, and started talking; he didn't shut up until his parents, on the verge of having him committed after nearly a week of trying to address his apparent sudden insanity, were contacted by the representatives of a school who had reassuring things to say and an option for dealing with Noah that wouldn't label him in a way that his father just couldn't cope with--he'd already failed his first wife, and the idea he could have let it happen to his son was too much to handle. Thus, Noah was enrolled in QCI, where the first thing they taught him was that repeating other people's thoughts aloud is not, in fact, the funniest thing in the world.

with my flamethrower mouth
in-game history

you bet your life it won't be pretty
Noah is a receptive telepath, which means that he can pick up thoughts but (currently, although there's no indication one way or another that it'll develop) can't transmit his own. He hears/sees/tastes/smells/feels primarily surface thoughts--and that broad spectrum of sensory words should clue you in that it's a very confusing experience, and he has trouble making sense out of them most of the time even off medication. After all, the stream of consciousness is not known for being coherent. To get at deeper thoughts he has to focus, and it's intensified by actual physical contact and proximity--outside of about a football field's range all thoughts fade to background noise, and it's only within a few metres that Noah can reliably distinguish between individuals.

as the stars scar my ceiling

 * Clara Ford
 * Max Guevara
 * Poe Wyman

i won't spare you

 * Lear Shapiro
 * Ethan Ford
 * John Constantine
 * Blake Angler
 * Ryan Letowski

you aren't new enough, i give up on you
soundtrack

pretty boy, floating face down in a pond of glue
STILL NO MONEY BEING MADE, MOVE ALONG.