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Dr. Genevieve Tetch, formerly Dr. Jervis Tetch, was a brilliant neurotechnologist whose work focused on treating severe mental disorders by electrically manipulating the firing of neurons. Her invention was a literal mind control device, intended to give control back to people whose thoughts had become too disordered to handle. She was driven not only by empathy for the mentally ill, but by the family history of mental illness that lurked like a serpent in her own genetic heritage.
Jervis’s more aggressive colleagues often talked over her and took credit for her innovations, but Jervis was content as long as she could continue her work. Being a short, soft-voiced “man” her whole life, she was used to being overlooked.
Tests on animals went well. Tetch held out doubts, wanted to get all the kinks out of the system before they moved on to humans, but her colleagues forced her work into human testing before it was ready. They'd take half the credit anyway, and who doesn't want to be the man that cured schizophrenia? Tetch, small in statue and small in self-esteem, was strongarmed into signing off on the project.
Their first subject was in a state of catatonic schizophrenia, handed over by his desperate family with subject himself unable to consent to anything that was done to him. Jervis applied the device to the best of her ability, hoping that her life’s work would manage to pull someone back from the brink of self-destruction.
The subject’s brain was fried. The family sued, the media coverage was horrific, and her once “supportive” colleagues needed a scapegoat who had no one to speak on her behalf. She lost her job, her work, and there wasn’t a lab in the country who would hire her to wash the test tubes. Confronted by her life falling down around her ears Jervis spiraled headfirst into the same situation she had fought so desperately to escape. Two weeks after the incident she checked herself into Arkham Asylum, under the diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder.
The hospital spat her back out ten days later with regained lucidity, a handful of prescriptions and few solutions to the overlying problem. While she had access to a therapist she was reluctant to reveal any aspect of herself that would indicate she was anything less than mentally fit and her doctor had little interest in her personal fulfillment.
One of the few coping devices left to her was an increased obsession with the literature of Lewis Carroll, in particular the Alice in Wonderland duology. Since childhood she had identified strongly with the titular Alice, a young woman who’d been thrust into a world whose inhabitants spouted nonsense and constantly accused her of being something which she was not. In an attempt to force herself out of the house Jervis attended a stage performance of Through the Looking Glass put on by a local theatre. She found herself so enraptured with the program that she snuck into the dressing room after the show and stole the costume worn by the child playing Alice. By the time the compulsion wore off she was on the bus home and had no way of returning it appropriately.
Wearing the dress around the house and acting out the events of the book was a far more effective therapy than talking to a woman who gave not a fig about her existence. Being Alice not only let Jervis privately display the real gender she was coming slowly to accept, but let her transport herself into the one place she could be safe from the world's horrors. However, Wonderland was only a feeble buffer against piling bills and resume rejections. The last blow came from a psychology journal declaring that her former colleagues would be attending a conference to present equipment very similar to what she had designed and then lost. Jervis felt herself spiraling away again and frantic recitation of Carroll became insufficient.
Her salvation came again from the looking-glass world.
'I hope it encouraged him,' she said, as she turned to run down the hill: 'and now for the last brook, and to be a Queen! How grand it sounds!' A very few steps brought her to the edge of the brook. 'The Eighth Square at last!' she cried as she bounded across, and threw herself down to rest on a lawn as soft as moss, with little flowerbeds dotted about it here and there. 'Oh, how glad I am to get here! And what is this on my head?' she exclaimed in a tone of dismay, as she put her hands up to something very heavy, that fitted tight all around her head.
'But how can it have got there without my knowing it?' she said to herself, as she lifted it off, and set in on her lap to make out what it could possibly be.
It was a golden crown.
Jervis, as she was, was shy and ill-equipped to cope emotionally with the challenge before her. As she had hidden behind the child Alice Liddell she now invented a persona more capable of handing the world’s slings and arrows -- the domineering, bold Queen Alice. She recreated her own work and then altered it for the select purpose of removing mental control from those affected by its electrical signals. In order to sabotage her colleagues, and prevent her work from ever being put to use again, she infiltrated the conference and discredited both "Walrus” and “Carpenter” by driving them temporarily insane before their presentation.
Her need for revenge sated, Queen Alice joined forces a newly formed superhero team led by the Red Hood. She also found a firm friend and partner in the massive Waylon Jones, who she would dub the Jabberwock. With scepter in hand and crown on her head she now aides the Gotham Rogues Gallery in their battle against the forces of evil and Owlman's Injustice Syndicate.
Jervis’s more aggressive colleagues often talked over her and took credit for her innovations, but Jervis was content as long as she could continue her work. Being a short, soft-voiced “man” her whole life, she was used to being overlooked.
Tests on animals went well. Tetch held out doubts, wanted to get all the kinks out of the system before they moved on to humans, but her colleagues forced her work into human testing before it was ready. They'd take half the credit anyway, and who doesn't want to be the man that cured schizophrenia? Tetch, small in statue and small in self-esteem, was strongarmed into signing off on the project.
Their first subject was in a state of catatonic schizophrenia, handed over by his desperate family with subject himself unable to consent to anything that was done to him. Jervis applied the device to the best of her ability, hoping that her life’s work would manage to pull someone back from the brink of self-destruction.
The subject’s brain was fried. The family sued, the media coverage was horrific, and her once “supportive” colleagues needed a scapegoat who had no one to speak on her behalf. She lost her job, her work, and there wasn’t a lab in the country who would hire her to wash the test tubes. Confronted by her life falling down around her ears Jervis spiraled headfirst into the same situation she had fought so desperately to escape. Two weeks after the incident she checked herself into Arkham Asylum, under the diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder.
The hospital spat her back out ten days later with regained lucidity, a handful of prescriptions and few solutions to the overlying problem. While she had access to a therapist she was reluctant to reveal any aspect of herself that would indicate she was anything less than mentally fit and her doctor had little interest in her personal fulfillment.
One of the few coping devices left to her was an increased obsession with the literature of Lewis Carroll, in particular the Alice in Wonderland duology. Since childhood she had identified strongly with the titular Alice, a young woman who’d been thrust into a world whose inhabitants spouted nonsense and constantly accused her of being something which she was not. In an attempt to force herself out of the house Jervis attended a stage performance of Through the Looking Glass put on by a local theatre. She found herself so enraptured with the program that she snuck into the dressing room after the show and stole the costume worn by the child playing Alice. By the time the compulsion wore off she was on the bus home and had no way of returning it appropriately.
Wearing the dress around the house and acting out the events of the book was a far more effective therapy than talking to a woman who gave not a fig about her existence. Being Alice not only let Jervis privately display the real gender she was coming slowly to accept, but let her transport herself into the one place she could be safe from the world's horrors. However, Wonderland was only a feeble buffer against piling bills and resume rejections. The last blow came from a psychology journal declaring that her former colleagues would be attending a conference to present equipment very similar to what she had designed and then lost. Jervis felt herself spiraling away again and frantic recitation of Carroll became insufficient.
Her salvation came again from the looking-glass world.
'But how can it have got there without my knowing it?' she said to herself, as she lifted it off, and set in on her lap to make out what it could possibly be.
It was a golden crown.
Jervis, as she was, was shy and ill-equipped to cope emotionally with the challenge before her. As she had hidden behind the child Alice Liddell she now invented a persona more capable of handing the world’s slings and arrows -- the domineering, bold Queen Alice. She recreated her own work and then altered it for the select purpose of removing mental control from those affected by its electrical signals. In order to sabotage her colleagues, and prevent her work from ever being put to use again, she infiltrated the conference and discredited both "Walrus” and “Carpenter” by driving them temporarily insane before their presentation.
Her need for revenge sated, Queen Alice joined forces a newly formed superhero team led by the Red Hood. She also found a firm friend and partner in the massive Waylon Jones, who she would dub the Jabberwock. With scepter in hand and crown on her head she now aides the Gotham Rogues Gallery in their battle against the forces of evil and Owlman's Injustice Syndicate.
