Victor Frankenstein

PLAYER INFO

Name: DA
Age: 39
Contact: darkangel998 or PM
Current Characters: None

CHARACTER INFO

Name: Victor Frankenstein
Journal: everlastingchains
Age: Approximately 25ish
Appearance: image.

Canon: Penny Dreadful
Canon Point: The End of Season 2. "And Hell Itself My Only Foe"

History: Wiki Link

Abilities:
Medicine - Victor is a trained doctor from the Victorian Era. He can diagnose maladies. He can mixing and use pharmaceuticals. He treats wounds and illnesses as well as performs blood transfusions. His strongest skill is in surgery. He is highly capable, performing autopsies and successful operations. He created his first Creature by stitching it together from different parts.

Scientific knowledge and electrical engineering - Victor built his laboratory himself from whatever junk was lying around. He has a skill for cobbling together electrical machines in an era when citywide electricity was still in it's earliest stages. He created this laboratory in an attic with no money to his name and found a way to harness the power of lightning to imbue life into dead bodies with it.

Marksmanship - Victor learned to shoot from a skilled cowboy. He has enough skill to shoot and kill vampires.

Questionnaire:

1. What do they care deeply about? What kind of loyalties, commitments, moral codes, life philosophies, passions, callings or spirituality and faith do they have? How do these tend to be expressed?

His science is what he values above all else. He rants to Malcolm about how all other scientific pursuits are foolish. The line between life and death and surpassing it is what he has worked for since he started down that path. He is driven to learn and defeat death at all costs. He lives alone and in poverty, all so he can continue his experiments. He joins Malcolm's group for the money he needs to continue his research and because he's curious about the strange supernatural things that have been brought to him. He only gets attached to the group because he longs for a father figure that's proud of him and because Vanessa is kind to him.

He believes only in what he sees and what his science can explain. He is an atheist that only believes in magic and the devil because he's personally encountered it. That makes him skeptical and a bit callous. Ethan calls him a bloodless dandy because he acts so coldly and calmly about deaths written about in the paper. Yet, he is also desperate for love and understanding. At his core, he is a gentle soul, shown in his friendship and tender care towards Vanessa. He’s quite sensitive and loves Romantic poetry by figures like Wordsworth and Keats, as well as Shakespeare. He quotes poetry and in his journal, he has artistic sketches right next to medical drawings he has done. When he smothers Brona in Season 1, it's not only because he believes he can give her a way out of her sickness forever, but also to make amends and concede to the demands of his first creation. Because of his gentle heart, he sees himself as a monster, bound to the wheel of pain.

Unfortunately, due to a childhood illness and his own need to control his pain, Victor turns to morphine when he is overwhelmed. He recognizes that he is an addict but does little to try and change that. In times of severe stress, Victor uses morphine as a quick easy solution to forced calm.

2. What kind of person could they become in the future? What are some developmental paths that they could take: best, worst, most likely?

In Victor's best path, Victor would be an amazing doctor. He would use his talent and genius to take care of the poor and the needy in the area of London he lives in. He would have had love and friends and live a good, likely wealthy life, performing lifesaving operations and enacting medical miracles to save people. Had he used his skill in engineering and medicine for others, he might have been a beloved person in the city. This would have happened if he had had the support of his family and of the school he studied at. Had he been socialized better, he might have had an easier time understanding that everything isn't a competition where someone will always be better than him. It's shown that with the support of his friends, like Vanessa, he could be an active and compassionate part of society.

We see a bit of his worst case scenario at the start of the third season. His final creation, Lily, betrays him and breaks his heart. This is coupled with a magic spell that breaks his mind. He falls deeply into his addiction in order to cope with it. He has no one to turn to because the people he has become attached to are no longer available, either due to being out of the country or simply refusing to see anyone. With his support system gone, he has absolutely nothing but his own fears and regrets and pain. He falls hard, lives in absolute squalor, worse than ever before. He lives in abject fear of his creation coming back to hurt him and those he might still care about. He feels deep guilt for the evil that Lily does because he sees it as his fault, his failing. He is at rock bottom. He would never kill himself but the addiction might just do that on it's own. He squanders his talent and hides from the world and only reaches out for help when he sees he has no other choice. In a worst case scenario, Victor would have likely died in poverty, overdosed on morphine, and no one would ever know since very few knew or even cared to look for him. And if he survived his own destruction, Lily might have used his shattered state to force Victor to keep making more and more creatures like herself until she was satisfied with her immortal army before killing him.

With an appropriate support system and some hard work, Victor's most likely outcome is what we see in the tie-in sequel comics. He is no longer addicted, having worked with his friend to get him off drugs. He continues to be a doctor. His friend gets him a practice and he helps with patients at the mental hospital. He still has his lab, but he no longer is willing to make any more creatures. His monster making days are over. Instead, he focuses on helping his friends however they need.

3. How do they behave within a group? What role(s) do they take? Does this differ if they know and trust the group, versus finding themselves in a group of strangers? Why?

Victor's usual place in a group is slightly outside the group. He holds himself away for the most part because he feels he won't be accepted. He thinks this because he never has been before. He's always been set apart for one reason or another, sometimes through no action of his own. Because of this, he remains slightly cold and impartial. He is cool and distant but is quick to help in a medical emergency. If he feels threatened socially, he gets sharp and arrogant, using words as his weapons as he knows he's physically underwhelming. He is catty and passive aggressive. He's got a bit of an inferiority complex and tries far too hard to be seen as worthy and worthwhile, especially towards older men and fatherly figures.

He's often terrorized by his large creation, John, yet for all that he is hurt by John, he can't bring himself to try and kill the creature. In a fight, he is prone to standing back, letting the fighters do the hard part unless he has no other choice. When he does have to fight, he tries to do is intelligently, attacking from behind or shooting at a distance. While he tries to be logical and often stands back and assesses like a doctor does, he wants desperately to wade into the fight and help out. He doesn't like being left behind or to be considered lacking.

With friends, he's a bit more open. He gets jealous and acts a bit like a bratty little brother to Ethan, trying to compete for Malcolm's attention. He tries very hard and is quietly kind, having soft honest discussions with Vanessa and asking Malcolm about things like love, which Victor has no true frame of reference for. He is easy to embarrass and gets flustered by Vanessa. He's eager to help Malcolm to get his praise. He openly admits his addiction to his friends but stays quiet about his own troubles with his creatures. But even among people he sees as friends, Victor's role is support. He's a doctor and weak and unhealthy. He wants badly to fight, but in the end, he is better suited to staying behind and picking up the pieces after. It still telling that he's the only person that Vanessa trusts with the secrets of her whereabouts when she leaves London.

4. What do they need and want out of relationships, and how do they go about getting it?

Victor desperately craves attention and acceptance. He was never really loved or considered something worthwhile as a child in his father's eyes. He lost his mother very traumatically at a young age. He put away his poetry and art and threw himself into science because of it. He stays distant from everyone, working by himself because he thinks no one will ever truly understand him what he's trying to do because no one has before. He made only one friend during college and that was out of the lonely necessity of two outcasts banding together. He loses contact once his friend is expelled. He builds Lily at first to protect himself and his friends, but ends up falling in love with her. When she manipulates and betrays him, he follows her, sits outside the house she's staying in and eventually shoots her and the man she's with in jealousy. The only thing he is good at expressing is his wants is for science and his personal projects. He is a romantic that doesn't understand love, doesn't do well with people and is used to being alone unless someone wants something from him. He is only a part of Malcolm's group because of his surgical skills. He doesn't really know how to reach out to others.

5. How do they understand the world–what kind of worldview and thought processes do they have? Why?
Victor is said to be cursed with poetry. He is an idealist with far too high of expectations. He has pushed himself towards the madness of turning back death itself due to the deep anger and grief. He is deeply aware that the world is a hard and tragic place but he feels he can win. He knows that people are treated poorly because he has been treated poorly. He left being raised in wealth to struggle as a poor student at a wealthy college. His only friend was someone hated for their racial background. He has seen the absolute unfairness of the world. He holds himself as better than everyone else because of it. It's they that are fools and small minded. He's smarter. He's better. He can succeed. He loved puzzles and anything he has put his mind to he has been able to solve. To Victor, most things are a puzzle and he's not afraid of getting his hands dirty to solve it. As Sir Malcolm observes, he is not afraid of peeling back the skin to see what's underneath.

That said, he was still raised with poetry. He still longs for beauty and softness in his world. He had a childhood of great wealth and the doting of a mother. He enjoys art and thrived when trying to teach his second creature. There is pure interest and engagement when learning from an older mentor figure. Yet he is still a man in Victorian London, which comes with a lot of societal pressures. It is shameful that he's a virgin at the age of 25. It is tragic that he's a sickly boy grown into a physically weak man. In a society that praises the strong, athletic, and wealthy, Victor is none of these things. He sees the world though the lens of that era as something "other". He holds himself apart from other people. He sees it a himself and everyone else, because until he was drawn into Vanessa's fight, it was exactly that. Himself and everyone else.

6. How much do they rely on their minds and intellect, versus other approaches like relying on instinct, intuition, faith and spirituality, or emotions?
Victor claims that "man does not live only in the empirical. We must seek the ephemeral, or why live?". He's a man of science, but in his heart, he is still a poet and an artist. It's quite a dichotomy as he sees emotions as chemical reactions to the brain and uses morphine to control and manipulate them in himself as well as to relieve what he claims is "pain." He wants to fully rely on logic and intellect, but sometimes his emotions get the better of him. He is terrified of his first Creature to the point where he ran away from him and hid from him. He jealously keeps his third creation, Lily, to himself for as long as possible. When he is required to help her socialize, he basically pouts passive aggressively. He acts smarter and better than Ethan, angry that Malcolm might like him more. He's still a very fragilely emotional young man prone to emotional outbursts.

In terms of faith and trust, Victor never asks for help for his own problems, regardless of how much his friends might be able to help him. It's only when he's at rock bottom that he finally reaches out to an old friend for help. He is under the impression that only he can understand his problems and he can't rely on anyone else to help with them. His sins are his and no one else needs to be dragged into it.

7. What is something others might find intolerable about them?

His ego. Even more than his addiction and his jealous possessiveness, which are deeply troubling, Victor's ego is a deeply intolerable thing. He puts himself above others. He tells Vanessa, in fact, that he saw himself as different from everyone else. Even in college, he would imagine a time when he and his friend would walk into the Royal Society and silence all those people who hated and belittled him. His ego is what drove him to not only make one Creature but do the experiment a second time. He knows he has done the impossible, brags about it to his only friend. This friend is the only person other than his monsters until Dorian to know what it is that Victor had even done. He claims that other scientists and explorers are fools and there's only one science that matters, his own. Most would see Victor as a raving Mad Scientist, but he isn’t insane. He’s just young and arrogant enough to believe he knows better than everybody else.

Samples:
First person letter writing
TDM Sample 1
TDM Sample 2

Why are you interested in this game?

I am intrigued by the idea of a character making amends and finding a better path. A lot of Victor's path is shaped by his era and the society from which he is from. Victor, I feel, is the sort of character, that had the world and society been different, would benefit from better choices. If he had a better support system and better things to attach his attention to, he could become a brilliant doctor and a help to society instead of being simply a mad scientist making monsters in the attic. It is society, his age, and his ego and pride that are holding him back. As a character, I feel Victor's curiosity and drive to learn and explore and seek what's beneath would make a good addition to the game. Plus, he can share his medical knowledge to help the other characters should such things become necessary.

 Victor has a canon filled with monsters, sex, sexual violence, Victorian Mental Health Practices, Racial prejudice, and Victorian Era Medicine. Victor himself is rife with problematic materials stemming from his era. He has also raised the dead three times,  as well as performed or helped to perform inhuman experiments using corpses and mentally ill people.

He is shown to have some necrophiliac tendencies seeing as the first and only relationship he has ever had was with a woman he raised from the dead. A woman he has purposely misled and manipulated  and then jealously tried to kill. And then considered  altering and controlling her to keep her.

Another issue is his addition to Morphine. Victor is canonically an addict. He regularly injects and uses Morphine. I understand that hard drug use and addition can be a trigger for some.

ff you wish to opt out of playing with this or any other aspectt of his life or not playing with him at all due to these facts, I completely understand