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Donnie Mirath by thecharacterconsultancy

DONNIE MIRATH

  • Species: Human
  • Sex: ♂
  • Age: 34
  • Birthday: 10th September 1984
  • Height: 5ft 9in
  • Weight: 180lbs
  • Siblings: John (2 years older) and Charles (6 years younger)
  • Profession: Thief, specialising in cybercrime

Donnie is a human original character, and the middle of three siblings, all brothers. He and his brothers are thieves, each specialising in a different area of illegal activity, with Donnie himself specialising in hacking and cybercrime. He is companionable, more secretive than is immediately apparent, and quietly clever.

Trust & Confidence

Baby

Donnie was his mother's second child. His father was present during his infanthood, however at this early stage this was not terribly significant to him as he was locked in symbiosis with his mother, as all infants of this age are.

His mother was experienced enough at child-rearing by this point that she felt confident with Donnie and gave him a stable yet easy-going experience of infanthood. Since she took this in stride so did Donnie, and he kept a sense of inner personal trust with him throughout his life.

Freedom & Self-Determination

Toddler

As Donnie grew old and mobile enough to take an interest in his surroundings, he became more aware of the other people in his home: his father (who sometimes went absent, which Donnie paid little mind to at the time since as far as he knew, that was just what fathers did) and his three year old brother, John.

John was quite interested in Donnie, and as they developed more of a relationship Donnie came to feel protected – and sometimes put upon – by his big brother. John was a potent presence for Donnie as a toddler, as older brothers tend to be, but overall John was a benign enough presence and Donnie accepted the status quo of this as his 'normal'.

John's forcefulness was effective in keeping Donnie in his place, so Donnie often avoided conflict by indulging his interest in observing and learning about the world around him. While everybody else in his family was either busy or up to no good, he felt that his natural niche was to watch so that he knew how best to respond in a way that wouldn't inconvenience them – or him.

With that said, Donnie learned a thing or two about how to get away with things by observing John. It wasn't so much that Donnie meant to become a thief, but because he saw John lying, manipulating, and taking what he wanted, this too became Donnie's 'normal', so he copied his big brother and developed a habit for taking what he wanted – although as stated before, his style had more of a quiet, wait-for-your-chance-then-take-it quality.

Toddlers develop a fundamental preference for either holding on or letting go (which can apply to objects that they find, to the clench or release of their muscles, or to grudges or perceived slights). Given John's ability to take what he wanted irrespective of Donnie's opinion on the matter and the skill he'd learned at his mother's breast for being easy-going, Donnie was more of a letter-go.

Toddlers also have the experience of being able to make choices for the first time in their lives, as this is the time of life when they develop muscular control and begin to realise that they are separate entities from their mothers. Donnie instantly had a range of different scenarios to handle as a newly 'autonomous' toddler: he could function separately from his mother, and she didn't convey anxiety at him exploring or being curious, but John tended to make certain choices for him. As a result Donnie quickly learned to let it be when John took over, and learned to expect to get his own way only when he personally could make it so, and when John wasn't in sight.

All of this meant that Donnie had a complex relationship with doubt. He did not doubt his mother's competence in dealing with him but sometimes saw her struggle to manage John. He had great confidence in John's ability to get what John wanted, and overcame his own personal doubt about how to get what he wanted and needed with someone like John around. All in all, Donnie came out of this life stage with a decent lack of self-doubt, one that many people might envy, but was not entirely free of it.

Donnie's attitude towards detail is that detail is good, and knowing the details is helpful. As a toddler, attention to detail allowed him to get what he needed and he developed a good relationship with it. Keeping track of the details could allow him to be more autonomous.

Ambition

Young childhood

Like many small children Donnie became quite energetic as a young boy. However, it didn't take him long to learn that losing himself in his expression of energy could be a bad idea around John. It wasn't so much that John was violent with him, but he was boisterous and bigger than Donnie. Instead, Donnie directed his energy into curiosity and exploration; mental energy rather than physical.

Given the criminal dynamic of his family Donnie, along with being (at least to an extent) John's dogsbody meant that he didn't really develop a strong sense of shame. He learned to fly under the radar but this didn't come with the crippling sense of self-censoring that some people learn at this life stage. He came to feel proud of his achievements as he honed his skills in getting what he wanted as John's little brother.

He also became very good at cooperating. His mum made a point of teaching him to be cooperative in a way that John wasn't always. In fact, she tended to praise it in the hope that John would follow suit. Cooperating therefore became something of a badge of honour for Donnie.

Donnie didn't become very ambitious since his life seemed to be all about fitting in with others. Ultimately his greatest ambition was to be able to be independent and not have to live under anybody's thumb. Beyond that, simply living his life would be enough.

At around the time Donnie moved on from this stage to older childhood, his mother gave birth and he found himself no longer the youngest, but the middle brother.

Productivity

Older childhood

Older childhood was a difficult time for Donnie. He was no longer his mother's youngest so her attention was quite wrapped up in Charles, especially since Charles had been born underweight. However, he gave up the position of family baby with good grace for his mother's sake. Even when Charles wasn't actively being demanding, doing anything or going anywhere required military precision due to the logistical requirements of any activity that factored in a baby, so Donnie responded by doing what he did best: taking a back seat and observing for opportunities to quietly take what he needed, when he needed it.

When Donnie was seven or eight, he realised that his father hadn't been around for some time. In truth it was never certain whether the boys' dad had gone to prison, or simply chosen to abandon the family. Either way, Donnie came to see John as the nearest equivalent to a father figure.

This was sometimes difficult as John was fast learning to be a tough, dominant individual. Sometimes the stress of being the oldest male in the house got to John and he would pick a fight (whether verbal or physical) with Donnie. Donnie was never seriously hurt during these but it did influence him, once again, to keep to himself and fit in with the more outgoing John.

Donnie's best avenue of relaxation and self-expression – or perhaps it is best to say, 'path of least resistance' – was school. As an older schoolboy his lessons had become more substantial, so he immersed himself in this.

Child to Adult Transition

Adolescence

By the time Donnie began adolescence John was in the thick of it and approaching his sixteenth birthday. Charles was only six, so the age gap between the older two and Charles seemed significant. In a sense. Donnie found himself as the youngest in this dynamic once again.

Donnie embraced the increasing difficulty of the more technical disciplines he was learning at school, with his main passion being for anything that involved taking things apart or coding. In time he took to hacking, mainly to prove to himself that he could do it and because he simply enjoyed technology-based interests. This was the independence and true autonomy he had wanted for so long! He first started using his hacking skills on the school system when his brothers got into trouble, and frankly, he found the school's security system easy to hack.

The brothers had a wider group of friends who were also developing and beginning to test their skills in illegal career paths. They would test each others' skills and competence. Sometimes John lent an intimidating presence to these sessions, but with the group being mostly male, machismo prevented anyone from admitting how intimidated they felt, and instead they went out of their way to prove themselves. In effect, John's presence led to several members of the group testing themselves harder – and sharpening their skills all the more for it.

Donnie himself was well-liked, with his thoughtful nature appealing to the more gentle-spirited boys and his ability to distract and entertain winning him at least some favour among all but the roughest of them.

With his father no longer present, Donnie found himself at something of a loss for role models so instead, continued to rely on his own ability to problem-solve and to navigate the various problems he encountered in daily life. This led to a lifelong approach of self-reliance.

Donnie began dating during his teens, and tended to polarise these relationships as either romantic or sexual. His romantic partnerships tended to last over a year at a time, whereas his sexual relationships were usually shorter. He tended to pick both male and female partners.

Closeness in Relationships

Young adulthood

As a young adult Donnie found himself growing closer to his brothers in a meaningful way once again. He and John were young adults, ready and able to make their own way in the world (at least in theory. In practice they became closer to function as a group of thieves together). Charles was fifteen, just about old enough to be considered a young adult if Donnie squinted. As such, the trio of brothers began functioning as a group of professional thieves.

This closer contact also meant more conflict. John would never shy away from a challenge to his leadership, and Charles as the youngest either lacked the understanding of John's seriousness or felt the need to challenge John in order to get what he wanted. The result was that Donnie often found himself acting as the mediator, breaking up fights. He never got very good at it, but that was because he didn't get very much experience. Fights between John and Charles that needed to be physically broken up were rare.

Verbal disagreements were much more common and Donnie became an old hand at handling these. John, of course, didn't help with this as dominance was everything to him. Charles at least had a sense of place. Not the same one that Donnie possessed, and Charles sometimes took liberties with his position of the group baby, which made things more difficult for Donnie. Overall however, Donnie believed that he did a passably good job at maintaining peace in the group.

While John was tailoring his domineering traits to become a successful extortionist and Charles honed his pick-pocketing tricks, Donnie pressed ahead with his computer skills and applied them to cyber crime. He felt that, with his track record of diligence at school, he could have taken a legal job, but ultimately he chose not to. The low risk that came with a legal job held a definite appeal, however for Donnie, crime held a dual appeal: one of being able to take what he wanted at his convenience, and the other of fitting in with his family, who were the people who knew him best. In addition to this, once Donnie had internalised the principle of high returns for low or short-term effort, he couldn't quite justify to himself the value of a salaried job.

By the time he was an adult, Donnie had a decent online presence (through which he got a certain amount of work as a cyber criminal) and had cultured a small group of like-minded friends, both online and off.

Although Donnie would have kept quiet about it, he would have loosely identified himself as polyamorous, having multiple partners both locally and with whom he was only in online contact.

At times Donnie considered his relationship with his brothers, and gave serious thought to whether he necessarily wanted to remain in the dynamic as John and Charles' designated peace-keeper. John and Charles were not averse to winding each other up on occasion and this did not go unnoticed by Donnie. Donnie had no desire to break up two people who chose to argue – or fight – willingly. However, he remained loyal to his brothers no matter what he was offered to betray them.

Passing on Responsibility

Middle age

Donnie was more actively interested in having children than his brothers. Furthermore, he determined that if he ever discovered that he did have a child then he felt certain that he wanted them to have the best life possible. It is possible that Donnie has children around that he isn't aware of, however if he does become aware of them he would want to have at least some contact with them and to help provide for them.

He he ever finds out that he has children he will be less interested in teaching them illegal trades than each of his brothers might have been, and would avoid telling them about his chosen career entirely.

End of Life

Old age

Donnie is aware that there will be an end to his life, and sees it as something too inevitable to worry about. He simply chooses to remain alive and at least reasonably healthy for as long as he can.

Donnie Mirath

thecharacterconsultancy

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