Dr. Marnie MacNeil's Questionnaire

Marnie lives in Maine, in a town on the coast that has a thriving marine research industry. After graduating with her PhD in Marine Biology, she quickly made a name for herself in the field, and the Center for Undersea Exploration and Understanding was one of the first to offer her an incredibly lucrative position as a top researcher. Marnie has always been a little eccentric, and her only condition for accepting the job was that she wanted a houseboat close to the Center, with a built in moon pool, and access to the Center after hours to do her own research. The ability to do that research, and the fact that they fly her around the world a few times a year to study elsewhere, is why she still lives in Maine and works at the Center. Her home is relatively small, being a houseboat, and cluttered with marine plants, microscopes, and all sorts of tools that she uses to study the ocean and her friends within it. 

By working as a scientist and researcher. Marnie has made incredible discoveries in the marine world, of both the natural and the supernatural, and the Center she works at spends a lot of money to let her learn more about them and to fly her out as a keynote speaker for conferences around the world. She has enough tools, technology, and scientific equipment through the Center already, but she spends her own money on professional level scuba diving equipment, and fancy tools for herself to use in her off time on her boat. She also enjoys taking her wife on fancy vacations to special places around the world- the Galapagos is their favorite.

Her dream is for the worlds of the land and sea to one day be united as one, as she feels they must have been when the legends say Atlantis ruled long ago. She would love to learn more about the state of the world during that time. Whether this means integration and peace, with technology allowing those under the sea to explore the land safely and vice versa… or whether this means the seas rise up to drown out the land and marine life rules all, in a wash of violence… she doesn’t see one as better than the other, necessarily. But she would go quite far to achieve this, even up to death’s door (so long as her wife was nowhere near death’s door). She would kill for it, although she has never done so before.

When scuba diving in the deep Pacific with her wife, far from civilization, Marnie got her ankle caught in a crevice on the sea floor. Even with her custom mask that has a prescription, it’s hard to see underwater, and she could not get free or signal to her wife, and did not notice the shark approaching until it was upon her. Suddenly, she had her ankle free, having scratched it upon the rough crevice, and there was blood in the water- and a shark directly in front of her. Marnie held its gaze, offering it the gentle smile that her students knew her for, and keeping as still as she could through the pain in her ankle- and the shark blinked at her slowly, as if like a cat, before turning and swimming away. In that moment, Marnie knew that the life under the sea deserved far more than the life above it wanted for them, and she promised that she would give it to them.

Her wife, Charlotte. They met in grad school, where Charlotte was studying plant biology, and had a rivalry over their respective fields until they finally gave in to their chemistry (a field they both despise). Charlotte is the black car to Marnie’s golden retriever, and is happy to be a stay at home wife with her books and plants, working on maintaining the creaky old houseboat. The two of them also have a shared love of tea and travel. 
Marnie’s two interns: Stella and Hans. They are grad students who drink too much coffee and don’t ask enough questions before doing things in Marnie’s lab. But they’re learning! Stella is a punk goth who Marnie has high hopes for as a marine biologist, and frequently comes over for dinner. Hans is a frat bro who is in this because his parents want him to be, and should have flunked out long ago. But he’s very nice, and is a surprisingly helpful intern.