reverie app.

[pampa]

CHARACTER
» NAME: Josephus Miller
» CANON: The Expanse
» CANON POINT: 2.4
» AGE: 40ish

» SETTING: Here.

» SHORT DESCRIPTION: obstinate, fixated, misanthropic, duplicitous, self-destructive, pathetic
» INFLUENTIAL EVENTS:

Becoming a Cop
Miller grew up on the street with his friend Sematimba stealing and begging for every meal. One day his friend posed to him, “Would you rather be the boot or an ass?” and then and there they both decided to become police on Ceres. Miller signs on because he would rather be “the boot” and not to enact any sort of justice. He is generally lazy with his work and takes bribes when it benefits him, using his new position of power to get ahead. But when Sematimba is kicked off the force and he gets an Earther for a partner who is a serial do-gooder, Miller’s priorities seem to shift. He takes a bribe to stave off an air filter inspection, but when people start getting sick he takes the man to a vacuum-seal and suffocates him until he agrees to clean the filters. His Earth partner also serves as a foil for Miller, as he sympathizes with Belters and tries to learn the culture and language to immerse himself Miller wears a porkpie hat and is called “Welwala” by a demonstrator. Miller translates it to mean “traitor to our people,” visibly bristling at the insult. Though being a cop sets him apart from “his people,” it’s obvious that underneath the gristle and cynicism that Miller really does care for the people of Ceres and wants to help them. He just doesn’t think he’s in a position to nor particularly qualified to do so.

Being given Julie's case
His station chief tells him to find an heiress on the down-low, a “kidnap job” as he calls it and makes it sound like he’s done these kinds of jobs before for her. It’s inferred that they give him these cases on the side because he retrieves results quietly and doesn’t have the moral compass of some of the other cops. But when he first starts investigating Julie’s disappearance, it’s immediately apparent that this case is different for him. He becomes instantly fixated and slowly starts unraveling the mystery that is the main conspiracy of the entire show’s storyline. He realizes quickly that she isn’t just a rich girl trying to rebel and through reliving her final weeks through his investigation, we see Miller begin to change. He is noticeably more invested in her story than anything that preceded it. Anderson Dawes, who is the liason for the OPA on Ceres, interrogates him when he starts getting too close, clueing him into it being more than a missing persons case. Dawes accuses him of being in love with Julie and rather than argue, he accepts this suggestion and redoubles his efforts to find her.

Getting Fired
His boss asked him to find Julie Mao, but she also tells him to stand down after he’s already fallen down the rabbit hole. She claims she only asked him to find out if Julie was on Ceres, but he was determined to bring her home; and barring that, to know what really happened to her. He’s told to stand down and he doesn’t and she kicks him off the force. This event only intensifies his obsession and when he gets a lead that will take him to Eros he has no reason not to go. He’s never left Ceres but he’s determined to see this out so he says goodbye to the one friend he still has on the station (a fellow cop) and heads out right away. This is the first time we see him without his hat, which was a symbol of him carrying on the work of his partner who got fired under similar circumstances. After this, we never see him wear it again. He mentions in an apology video he never sends Julie’s father that he’s usually only given cases like this “the brass doesn’t want him to solve.” Again we see this is different, not only does Miller see the grander conspiracy but it means something to him personally. On the transport to Eros, he speaks to a Mormon who notices that it’s Miller’s first time flying and says that people who grew up on Ceres “develop a natural agoraphobia.” He says he’s been flying once a month and Miller asks if he’s a salesman, which is how he finds out he’s LDS and he asks Miller to not hold it against him -- Miller replies “There was a time that I would’ve,” which seems to denote that even he knows he’s changed/is changing.

Meeting/working with Holden
Miller arrives on Eros and reunites with his friend Sematimba who gave him the tip. He says seeing Miller sober is “the biggest surprise of the night,” immediately seeing the shift in the other man. He reveals that he gave him his hat when he got fired so Miller would “keep his head” and not make the same mistakes he did. It’s clear to his oldest friend in that moment that Miller is spiraling out and can’t be reeled back in -- to whatever end he will find out what happened to Julie Mao, even if it kills him. He says “I believe in her,” and seems to convince himself more and more all the time that they knew each other. Holden and the crew on Rocinante are looking for answers too, about who blew up two of the ships they were on and killed the original crew of the Tachi (the warship they “salvaged.”) This leads them all to Eros at the same time, where they discover Julie’s body which has been ravaged by the Protomolecule. One would think finally having a definitive answer about whether she’s alive or dead would make Miller back off, but the opposite is true. The authorities are following all of them now so they have to work together to get out of Eros once it’s locked down. Holden and Miller go off alone and accidentally inflict a mega dose of radiation on themselves and have to detour for painkillers so they can get back to the ship before it takes off without them. When Miller and Holden get to the Roci it’s revealed that Amos killed Sema because he didn’t want to wait for them, and Amos is the one who administers Miller his cancer drugs. Even though he’s upset and enraged about his friend, he holds it together so they can all share information about what they saw, more entwined with this case than ever.

Deciding to go back to Eros
After discovering Eros is a testing ground for the protomolecule and all 100,000 Belters who are still there have been handed a death sentence, Miller and the Roci crew start to put the pieces together. The Protomolecule is something no one understands but it’s something coveted by Mars Earth and the OPA as a weapon. Miller crafts a plan, remembering the Mormon he met who spoke of a ship called the Nauvoo that is supposed to help all its followers ascend. He and Fred Johnson (OPA leader and operator of Tycho Station) work together to calculate a trajectory for the Nauvoo to crash into Eros and hurl it into the Sun so that the protomolecule can’t escape to infect anyone else or be placed into the wrong hands again. All of this goes above and beyond anything Miller has ever done in his life and exhibits a care for others he’s either never felt or merely never acted on. It’s also extremely proactive and places himself in immediate danger because part of his plan is to return to Eros and plant charges so no one can ever dock on the asteroid again. In the beginning of the series he is only concerned with his own survival by contrast, asking his Earther partner if he “sees any extra holes in him” meaning he’s never been shot on the job and doesn’t ever intend to be. He goes to Eros and plants the charges, but the Nauvoo misses because the protomolecule (using Julie Mao as a conduit) has somehow turned Eros Station in a spaceship, sending it on a hurtling collision course for Earth. In order to save everyone, Miller refuses rescue and instead goes deeper into Eros until he locates Julie, whose consciousness has been reconstructed with the protomolecule. She says she was dreaming she was racing the Razorback and wants to go home. Miller explains to her that they can’t go home but he’ll stay with her and whatever happens to them happens to them together. She tells him “You belong with me” and course-corrects, sending Eros in the opposite direction where it eventually burns up in Venus’ molten atmosphere. This final event is a definitive display of how much Miller has changed through his obsession with Julie. She brought out bravery and selflessness that he’s never had access to before and it’s easy for him to make the decision to sacrifice himself because he already has such a low self-opinion.

» FIT: Miller knows all about space, he's got this. That’s a lie the only time he left home he immediately got cancer, don’t trust him with anything. In all seriousness: he hates space and he’s bad at it. He will whine a lot but eventually get with the program or die trying. He is good at that at least.

» POWERS: Regular human with brittle bones from growing up in low gravity. He also has some sort of bone growth on his spine from supplements he was given in childhood. Other than that he is pretty mediocre at everything.