Let The Whipping Boy Ride: Greg House

[pirate_anon]

Let The Whipping Boy Ride:
Greg House

Greg House is a drug addicted doctor, the titular character
of House, M.D. In the TV show, he is rude to his coworkers and
patients, sexually harasses his boss, has no bedside manner, but he
always ends up right in the end.

The first hint to House's existence is Neo's signature line
on a game-making forum, dating from April 21, 2006. It's a quote
from the good doctor, reading, "There's no I in team. There is a
me, though, if you... jumble it up a bit."

Draven’s House creates his LJ a month later, and although
he’ll only be active for three months, he makes an impression
with his sheer nastiness. He takes the LJ screen-name of
doctorgreghouse, and with predictable coyness, Neo refers to
him as "my alter ego ;)" when posting his House, M.D. fanfiction
(2006, June 22).

Greg is almost as open about his drug use as John. Asides
from giving fanfic writers pointers on the schedule of taking said
Vicodin (2006 April 17), he posts about his evening plans of “a
Valium, three Vicodin, a beer, and bed” (2006 June 13). One of his
fanfictions are posted with the words, “if it sucks, blame the
Percocet,” (2006 June 28) meaning he’s on yet another opioid.

Like John, Greg claims he needs the drugs for his health.
However, the ailments he reports are different. John’s lung cancer
is never discussed again, nor the heart attack. Instead, Greg
focuses on "nerve damage in my spine from MS [multiple
sclerosis] and a severe injury," (2006 June 28) and a month later,
claims to have had a pulmonary embolism in his leg; Greg lists the
drugs he get in the hospital, which include morphine and
Dilaudid, unsurprisingly (2005 May 22). The multiple sclerosis
will also end up being phased out after a decade, replaced with
new and more diagnoses.

With the constant barrage of health crises, it’s difficult to
tell which, if any, are real. It doesn’t help that Draven's maladies
at least partially mirror the health issues his system members had
in their original fictional incarnations. For instance, Neo is
blinded before dying in the Matrix movies, while Constantine of
the film has lung cancer, and of course, Dr. House in his TV show
is famous for his chronic pain and addiction to Vicodin following
an infarction in his leg. Over the ensuing years, the diagnosis list
will only become more complex, and it seems to be somewhat (if
not mostly) in service to Draven’s drug use. “While there may be
some legitimate medical issues there, it's no question to me that
Neo's real handicap is the fact that he's addicted to pills,” reports
a disabled ex-follower who lived with them during this time
(personal communication, 2006). “He's never been offically [sic]
diagnosed with fibro, or brain lesions or spinal lesions, either. […]
He goes into ERs and says whatever he thinks will get him shots
or perscriptions [sic] for pills.”

Despite ostensibly having a heart attack, lung cancer, a
pulmonary embolism, and multiple sclerosis all within two
months, (plus the entire group becoming homeless, which I'll
discuss next chapter), Greg still finds the wherewithal to join the
House, M.D. fandom. He creates a role-play community with the
appropriate name of willingtoliefor (2006 May 22) and churns
out eleven fics in the course of the next month (2006 June 25).
It's here that Connor comes into play again.

Despite Neo’s pointed search for the Kid from the Matrix,
Connor was never properly assimilated into that particular cult;
she was still devoted to Angel, and never gave up the identity he
gave her. House, however, gets her to join his RP as Dr. Robert
Chase, and in a post suggestively named "Let The Whipping Boy
Ride," they role-play a spanking scene filled with creepy Freudian
overtones (Connor and Draven, 2006 June 8).

The scene plays out almost exactly like William's spanking
fanfictions from 1999. Connor/Chase has apparently performed
some slight, in the RP or possibly out of it. House gets high on
Vicodin mixed with DXM, which might be role-play-only, but
who can tell with all the reality-blurring going on—and it is a
dissociative mixed with an opiate, which House discusses as
desirable in his “Valium, three Vicodin, a beer” post. Regardless,
an intoxicated House then suggests the spanking, telling Connor,
"I'll assume your choirboy guilt [...] outweighs the fear of me
tanning your admittedly nice little ass."

Connor is 20 at this point, but still sees Draven as her
father; just two days after this role-play scene, she makes a
birthday post to Neo, reading "Happy Birthday, Pops!" (2006
June 10). And House shows complete awareness of what he's
doing, posting his justifications in the RP. "[House]'d known for
quite a while that there was far more to Dr. Robert Chase than the
[...] Daddy issues. He'd seen glimpses, little insights into Chase's
long-standing guilt, into his need for... well... a father figure.
Sometimes, when Chase hadn't known that he, House, was
watching, House had caught Chase's expressions of almost awe, at
the Diagnostician At Work™" (Connor and Draven, 2006 June 8).

So far, this sounds more like a description of Connor's
relationship to Angel.

Connor says yes to the spanking. House is surprised, and
even considers saying no, but specifically decides not to: "after all,
Greg House loved nothing better than experimentation, learning
what made diseases, conditions, people tick -" House even tries to
justify it as being for Connor’s own good: "House made people
better; that's what he did. If said person was one of his... well
then, so much the better" (emphasis his).

In other words, House is specifically interested in
manipulating Chase/Connor just to see what will happen, and
tries to paint it as noble, since after all, he surely knows what he's
doing. In fact, this spanking will make Connor stronger! And
like Ellen's child, Connor is now "his," which somehow is meant
to justify the behavior further.

(As a side note, this isn’t House’s only interest in
fatherhood; impregnating Cuddy is also a theme in his fanfiction,
and one collaboration he writes has Cuddy describing him as “a
perfect candidate [for fatherhood], as far as I’m concerned.
Highly intelligent, good family history, few if any genetic
problems” and well-hung in the bargain (cincoflex, 2006).
Another story which House himself writes allows him to embark
on a long jealous fantasy of marrying and impregnating Cuddy,
possessively remarking that he “hated those faceless donors so
much” because “They weren't him. Never would be” (2006 June
25). Tellingly, the actual act of child-raising is completely left out;
the fantasy is focused on being the one whose sperm impregnates
her.)

I'll skip the spanking itself. It plays out exactly like
William's old spank wank stories—House as the stern father
figure, punishing Connor's misbehavior, promising redemption
and spiritual purification. House claims that "he certainly wasn't
aroused by this situation; in fact, he thought his balls had crawled
up somewhere around the general vicinity of his spleen," but I
don't believe him; even ignoring the system's fetish for spanking
and domestic discipline, even ignoring how closely the spankings
resemble William’s earlier fics, House posted a fic with a
secondary pairing of himself with Chase a couple weeks prior
(2006 May 21). And even if his statement is true, even if it isn't
sexual, it's still a BDSM scene being performed with no discussion
and safety, with a top possibly on drugs and a bottom definitely
convinced the man spanking her is her real dad.

Draven claims to have been in the kink scene since their
teens (2008 June 13). If they're telling the truth, then House was
an experienced kinkster before playing this scene, and he of all
people should know that it is an egregious overstretch of
boundaries to play a scene like that with his "adopted son." For
someone who takes his online role-play so seriously and
sometimes calls it "bi-location" to emphasize its supposed reality,
one would expect better behavior.

Sadly, Connor isn't the last of Draven's claimed children,
nor the last of the uncomfortable incestuous themes. Draven as a
whole seems to be fixated on the idea of parenthood; they want a
stern parent dom figure, but they also want to be a dad—as
shown by the number of people whose fictional personas are
Draven’s children. Later, Connor will be replaced by even
younger models who are twelve or thirteen. But let's backtrack
to Neo for a moment.