Herbert West (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
scientificist) wrote2019-03-18 11:29 am
scientificist) wrote2019-03-18 11:29 am
LA Application
Player Information
Name: Leah
Age: Old millennial
Contact: plurk: MaleaBotor or ask me for my disco
Current characters: n/a
Character Information
Name: Herbert West
Series: Re-Animator
Appearance: Here he is...
Age: 27
Canon Point: Half a year after the end of the first film.
Transferring From: Lost Carnival
Canon History: The plot of Re-Animator!
Canon Personality: The most obvious aspect of Herbert is that his primary interest is with his area of study—death and reanimation—and with science itself for the most part. Almost everything he does is in pursuit of furthering his research goals. The reason he has become a medical student appears to be for the access to resources, scientific supplies and dead bodies alike. His initial choice of Dan Cain (star pupil of Miskatonic University’s medical college) as a roommate appears to be Dan’s better access to resources than himself. He even injects himself with his reanimation formula regularly in order to avoid needing to sleep or eat so that he can spend literally all of his time working on his research. He only interacts with people as much as he has to. When the Dean of the medical school he’s joining attempts to introduce him to Dan, he only barely acknowledges him, and pushes past his outstretched hand. He has to engage with the Dean, of course, because the Dean controls his access to supplies and further research and education.
There really isn’t much, in fact, that he won’t do for his research. Herbert appears to have very minimal moral standards in relation to it. He’ll sneak into morgues and mess around with the dead. He’ll steal from the university—Dr. Hill indicates as such when he notes that the microscope Herbert is using in his lab at home comes from the school. He’ll even kill: when it looks like Dr. Hill will steal his research from him Herbert struggles out of his mind control (it’s a weird movie) and beheads him with a shovel. This also means that his judgement is fairly poor, though, when something might possibly aid his experiments. There isn’t a single viable dead body that Herbert won’t reanimate, no matter what a terrible idea it might be to anyone with a shred of common sense. He reanimates a huge, strong man without any restraints, after his previous reanimated body, a cat, became incredibly violent post-reanimation. He reanimates the Dean of the school after he’d indirectly killed him with the previous reanimated corpse, and also had gotten on his bad side pre-death. He even reanimates Dr. Hill (no restraints this time either) literally right after he’s just beheaded him for trying to steal his work.
His empathy initially seems to be completely lacking as he only seems to find the Dean’s death vaguely regrettable, and he especially shows no sympathy towards Dan’s girlfriend Megan (and the Dean’s daughter) who has just lost her father. However, his empathy isn’t so much lacking, as it is incredibly pinpointed. We have evidence of two people that Herbert has fixated onto and empathises with as much as he can: his mentor Dr. Hans Gruber (it came out before Die Hard), and Dan. The people that Herbert chooses to fix onto, insofar as a connection can be made when there are only two real examples, are intelligent people who are also obsessed with defeating death. Dan is a medical student who wants desperately to prevent all his patients from dying while Dr. Gruber was, it seems, as interested in reanimation as Herbert, and was responsible for formulating the reanimation reagent with him. Herbert goes all the way to Massachusetts from Switzerland in order to try and get some sort of comeuppance for Dr. Hill, Dr. Gruber’s old coworker who plagiarised a great deal of his work. He was already situated at the Zurich school, if all he wanted was to complete his research and access supplies. What he wanted was revenge for his mentor by showing up Dr. Hill with the brilliant reanimation science he’d worked on with Gruber.
Dan starts out as a convenient guy with a useful basement and the position to potentially validate Herbert’s research with the greater scientific community but he very quickly becomes one of the few people Herbert is actually able to empathise with. He hides Dan’s dead cat in the fridge when he finds it because he wants to just get it reanimated before Dan notices, knowing he was fond of it. He desperately wants Dan to continue to agree to help him, even when Dan loses his position to help Herbert’s work get validated after he gets his scholarship rescinded. He even helps Dan cause a distraction to rescue Megan even though rescuing Megan won’t get his work back that Dr. Hill stole and he actively despises her. Of course, everything Herbert does basically contributes towards ruining Dan’s life, but he is trying! With other people, he only tries as long as is necessary to remove him from the immediate situation, and sometimes not even then.
Personality Shifts: Herbert is fairly unchanging because he’s so up his own ass. However, one minor change is that he’s less sexist now. In Lost Carnival, he interacted with some…females??? (Rita Mordio from the Tales games and Peridot from Steven Universe) who demonstrated the kind of interests and intelligence that he respects and acknowledges, so he’s a lot less 80s Male-Dominated Field Sexist now and more just. Regular asshole. Yay…
It's honestly pretty difficult to think of things he's mentally carried with him from the game due to the aforementioned up-his-own-ass-ness. For anyone else, yeah, getting brainwashed to act as a fae's servant or being unethically experimented upon would have had a long-lasting impact. The former just strengthened his distaste of mind control (thanks, Hill) and the latter unsettled and upset him initially when he was going through it, and later just bothered him that he didn't have access to the results! After all, he experiments on himself anyway. Herbert joined the carnival just as the distressing things started happening and being chased by angry fae just made him irritated that it was getting in the way of his research. The same thing goes for his physical changes: he was mostly just irritated that his new limbs were in his way. When he developed wings, he actually initially considered surgically removing them, but decided that without an appropriate method to study how they'd affected the anatomy of his back, he was better off leaving them. He loves the new blood he got from being experimented on. It's a constant inner source of his reagent, and he's now immortal. What's not to love? He hates his feet, though. That's why he still wears shoes on them, even though it looks objectively stupider. They look dumb and he can't afford to lose more dignity, he thinks.
As far as in-game CR that was specifically important to him, that's Foster von Denend, Yukio Okumura, Ginko, Rita Mordio and Jonathan Strange. Foster started as weird sniping in a fae's dungeon and ended up as some sort of...dual-manipulative relationship where a brainwashed Herbert ended up injecting reagent into Foster's brain and essentially curing his brain's further degeneration. Herbert likes Foster because Foster reacts really well to Herbert saying almost exactly what he thinks at him and that's way easier than trying to do Polite. Yukio is like as close as Herbert will ever get to treating someone like a little brother. He has similar values to Herbert, which means he respects him, and makes an effort to teach him any surgical information he thinks Yukio could find helpful. Yukio is also useful to have around because he's better at Polite than Herbert. Ginko started out helping Herbert inject himself with reagent when he was too in withdrawal to appropriately do so, and Herbert continues to think of him as, like. A helpful kind of guy with a basic interest in biology that makes him a useful acquaintance. Also he's pretty good looking, so that helps. Rita Mordio was on the same scientific team as Herbert in the Carnival trying to solve various cases of petrification. Her method of magic, which is science-based, helped him come to terms with magic as a Thing, and he ended up respecting her and showing her his future experiments. Jonathan Strange is the opposite of basically everyone else here. Herbert hated him almost immediately. Strange did magic to show off, and explained it by essentially saying 'it just works'. It ended up with Herbert hating him kind of for the sake of hating him, but he was actually a constant irritation to Herbert as well, just by virtue of his running headlong into things and hoping they worked, instead of using any method whatsoever. This is obviously hypocritical, as Herbert's not exactly one to think first, but I never said it was a particularly rational hatred.
Abilities: I’ll start off with his non-magical skills, because they’re less complicated. As far as those go, he has a good deal of medical knowledge, being as he’s a doctor (albeit a new one) and something of a genius into the bargain. His specialties are in surgery, neurology/neurosurgery in his specific focus of reanimation, enough chemistry to design and formulate his reagent, and the science of death. He also seems to be fairly quick at learning about anything that seems related to his pet project.
As far as his superhuman abilities, Herbert chose to be transformed into essentially a god at endgame. I have some more info on his Lost Carnival page but I’ll try and do a summary of stuff here as well. The Miracle he chose to align with was the Miracle of Growth and Decay, which gives him basically unlimited if unpracticed powers related to tangible and intangible change. I understand that this is kind of A Lot so I’d like to request at least the ones on my LC page (magic dulling incense, sterilization spell, cat tf) and maybe also whatever sort of lower spell capabilities you gave the DND wizards? LMK what I’m not permitted to craft, basically, I’m easy.
As far as his superhuman stuff, the major one is that his blood has been replaced entirely by his reagent. This gives him kind of ridiculous endurance, if not really any superhuman strength/speed whatever, and makes him heal faster than usual. He doesn’t need to eat or sleep but he enjoys doing it anyway. He is also as flexible as a cat, has a prehensile tail, and flight-capable wings. Obvi I’m willing to remove the magic that would be necessary for him to fly. It’s not like he has a keel or hollow bones or anything. He’s obviously flying with magic.
Inventory: One unstainable labcoat, an entire suit he’s wearing, syringe kit, a black t-shirt rolled up in the labcoat pocket, glasses case
Sample
Q&A: Have you ever sacrificed anything for anyone? If so, was it worth it?
I suppose it would be fair to say that I sacrificed my, chance to graduate at Zurich for the sake of Dr. Gruber's wish to be an initial human test subject for our serum. Any other action upon his death would have been unacceptable. Whether or not it was 'worth it' does not, enter into it--although I couldn't take effective notes thanks to the University's interference. A waste.
How valuable do you consider your own life to be?
Obviously quite valuable--who else? Could have created my reagent? Who else would have the drive to make the advances I have made?
How could someone you dislike earn their way into your good graces?
I doubt it's possible: they would have to prove themselves entirely different from my analysis of them, which seems...unlikely.
Is there anyone you would give up your life for?
In which way? I'm physically incapable of doing so, you know--perhaps you mean my way of life? Or some, magical trade? If it was to prevent their death I'd simply bring them back to life myself, no trade required. I can't imagine a scenario where that wouldn't be sufficient.
Who is the most important person (or persons) in your life, and why?
Dan, of course, he's an invaluable assistant. His aid, in our work is, indispensable.
To you, what would be considered an unforgivable action by someone else?
Stealing my work.
Have you ever disappointed someone you cared about? If so, how did that make you feel?
Ohh...I was a constant disappointment to my parents. I simply...learned not to care. Once you've realised that yours is the only opinion that matters, not caring about the insignificant conceptions and assumptions of others becomes quite simple.
Name: Leah
Age: Old millennial
Contact: plurk: MaleaBotor or ask me for my disco
Current characters: n/a
Character Information
Name: Herbert West
Series: Re-Animator
Appearance: Here he is...
Age: 27
Canon Point: Half a year after the end of the first film.
Transferring From: Lost Carnival
Canon History: The plot of Re-Animator!
Canon Personality: The most obvious aspect of Herbert is that his primary interest is with his area of study—death and reanimation—and with science itself for the most part. Almost everything he does is in pursuit of furthering his research goals. The reason he has become a medical student appears to be for the access to resources, scientific supplies and dead bodies alike. His initial choice of Dan Cain (star pupil of Miskatonic University’s medical college) as a roommate appears to be Dan’s better access to resources than himself. He even injects himself with his reanimation formula regularly in order to avoid needing to sleep or eat so that he can spend literally all of his time working on his research. He only interacts with people as much as he has to. When the Dean of the medical school he’s joining attempts to introduce him to Dan, he only barely acknowledges him, and pushes past his outstretched hand. He has to engage with the Dean, of course, because the Dean controls his access to supplies and further research and education.
There really isn’t much, in fact, that he won’t do for his research. Herbert appears to have very minimal moral standards in relation to it. He’ll sneak into morgues and mess around with the dead. He’ll steal from the university—Dr. Hill indicates as such when he notes that the microscope Herbert is using in his lab at home comes from the school. He’ll even kill: when it looks like Dr. Hill will steal his research from him Herbert struggles out of his mind control (it’s a weird movie) and beheads him with a shovel. This also means that his judgement is fairly poor, though, when something might possibly aid his experiments. There isn’t a single viable dead body that Herbert won’t reanimate, no matter what a terrible idea it might be to anyone with a shred of common sense. He reanimates a huge, strong man without any restraints, after his previous reanimated body, a cat, became incredibly violent post-reanimation. He reanimates the Dean of the school after he’d indirectly killed him with the previous reanimated corpse, and also had gotten on his bad side pre-death. He even reanimates Dr. Hill (no restraints this time either) literally right after he’s just beheaded him for trying to steal his work.
His empathy initially seems to be completely lacking as he only seems to find the Dean’s death vaguely regrettable, and he especially shows no sympathy towards Dan’s girlfriend Megan (and the Dean’s daughter) who has just lost her father. However, his empathy isn’t so much lacking, as it is incredibly pinpointed. We have evidence of two people that Herbert has fixated onto and empathises with as much as he can: his mentor Dr. Hans Gruber (it came out before Die Hard), and Dan. The people that Herbert chooses to fix onto, insofar as a connection can be made when there are only two real examples, are intelligent people who are also obsessed with defeating death. Dan is a medical student who wants desperately to prevent all his patients from dying while Dr. Gruber was, it seems, as interested in reanimation as Herbert, and was responsible for formulating the reanimation reagent with him. Herbert goes all the way to Massachusetts from Switzerland in order to try and get some sort of comeuppance for Dr. Hill, Dr. Gruber’s old coworker who plagiarised a great deal of his work. He was already situated at the Zurich school, if all he wanted was to complete his research and access supplies. What he wanted was revenge for his mentor by showing up Dr. Hill with the brilliant reanimation science he’d worked on with Gruber.
Dan starts out as a convenient guy with a useful basement and the position to potentially validate Herbert’s research with the greater scientific community but he very quickly becomes one of the few people Herbert is actually able to empathise with. He hides Dan’s dead cat in the fridge when he finds it because he wants to just get it reanimated before Dan notices, knowing he was fond of it. He desperately wants Dan to continue to agree to help him, even when Dan loses his position to help Herbert’s work get validated after he gets his scholarship rescinded. He even helps Dan cause a distraction to rescue Megan even though rescuing Megan won’t get his work back that Dr. Hill stole and he actively despises her. Of course, everything Herbert does basically contributes towards ruining Dan’s life, but he is trying! With other people, he only tries as long as is necessary to remove him from the immediate situation, and sometimes not even then.
Personality Shifts: Herbert is fairly unchanging because he’s so up his own ass. However, one minor change is that he’s less sexist now. In Lost Carnival, he interacted with some…females??? (Rita Mordio from the Tales games and Peridot from Steven Universe) who demonstrated the kind of interests and intelligence that he respects and acknowledges, so he’s a lot less 80s Male-Dominated Field Sexist now and more just. Regular asshole. Yay…
It's honestly pretty difficult to think of things he's mentally carried with him from the game due to the aforementioned up-his-own-ass-ness. For anyone else, yeah, getting brainwashed to act as a fae's servant or being unethically experimented upon would have had a long-lasting impact. The former just strengthened his distaste of mind control (thanks, Hill) and the latter unsettled and upset him initially when he was going through it, and later just bothered him that he didn't have access to the results! After all, he experiments on himself anyway. Herbert joined the carnival just as the distressing things started happening and being chased by angry fae just made him irritated that it was getting in the way of his research. The same thing goes for his physical changes: he was mostly just irritated that his new limbs were in his way. When he developed wings, he actually initially considered surgically removing them, but decided that without an appropriate method to study how they'd affected the anatomy of his back, he was better off leaving them. He loves the new blood he got from being experimented on. It's a constant inner source of his reagent, and he's now immortal. What's not to love? He hates his feet, though. That's why he still wears shoes on them, even though it looks objectively stupider. They look dumb and he can't afford to lose more dignity, he thinks.
As far as in-game CR that was specifically important to him, that's Foster von Denend, Yukio Okumura, Ginko, Rita Mordio and Jonathan Strange. Foster started as weird sniping in a fae's dungeon and ended up as some sort of...dual-manipulative relationship where a brainwashed Herbert ended up injecting reagent into Foster's brain and essentially curing his brain's further degeneration. Herbert likes Foster because Foster reacts really well to Herbert saying almost exactly what he thinks at him and that's way easier than trying to do Polite. Yukio is like as close as Herbert will ever get to treating someone like a little brother. He has similar values to Herbert, which means he respects him, and makes an effort to teach him any surgical information he thinks Yukio could find helpful. Yukio is also useful to have around because he's better at Polite than Herbert. Ginko started out helping Herbert inject himself with reagent when he was too in withdrawal to appropriately do so, and Herbert continues to think of him as, like. A helpful kind of guy with a basic interest in biology that makes him a useful acquaintance. Also he's pretty good looking, so that helps. Rita Mordio was on the same scientific team as Herbert in the Carnival trying to solve various cases of petrification. Her method of magic, which is science-based, helped him come to terms with magic as a Thing, and he ended up respecting her and showing her his future experiments. Jonathan Strange is the opposite of basically everyone else here. Herbert hated him almost immediately. Strange did magic to show off, and explained it by essentially saying 'it just works'. It ended up with Herbert hating him kind of for the sake of hating him, but he was actually a constant irritation to Herbert as well, just by virtue of his running headlong into things and hoping they worked, instead of using any method whatsoever. This is obviously hypocritical, as Herbert's not exactly one to think first, but I never said it was a particularly rational hatred.
Abilities: I’ll start off with his non-magical skills, because they’re less complicated. As far as those go, he has a good deal of medical knowledge, being as he’s a doctor (albeit a new one) and something of a genius into the bargain. His specialties are in surgery, neurology/neurosurgery in his specific focus of reanimation, enough chemistry to design and formulate his reagent, and the science of death. He also seems to be fairly quick at learning about anything that seems related to his pet project.
As far as his superhuman abilities, Herbert chose to be transformed into essentially a god at endgame. I have some more info on his Lost Carnival page but I’ll try and do a summary of stuff here as well. The Miracle he chose to align with was the Miracle of Growth and Decay, which gives him basically unlimited if unpracticed powers related to tangible and intangible change. I understand that this is kind of A Lot so I’d like to request at least the ones on my LC page (magic dulling incense, sterilization spell, cat tf) and maybe also whatever sort of lower spell capabilities you gave the DND wizards? LMK what I’m not permitted to craft, basically, I’m easy.
As far as his superhuman stuff, the major one is that his blood has been replaced entirely by his reagent. This gives him kind of ridiculous endurance, if not really any superhuman strength/speed whatever, and makes him heal faster than usual. He doesn’t need to eat or sleep but he enjoys doing it anyway. He is also as flexible as a cat, has a prehensile tail, and flight-capable wings. Obvi I’m willing to remove the magic that would be necessary for him to fly. It’s not like he has a keel or hollow bones or anything. He’s obviously flying with magic.
Inventory: One unstainable labcoat, an entire suit he’s wearing, syringe kit, a black t-shirt rolled up in the labcoat pocket, glasses case
Sample
Q&A: Have you ever sacrificed anything for anyone? If so, was it worth it?
I suppose it would be fair to say that I sacrificed my, chance to graduate at Zurich for the sake of Dr. Gruber's wish to be an initial human test subject for our serum. Any other action upon his death would have been unacceptable. Whether or not it was 'worth it' does not, enter into it--although I couldn't take effective notes thanks to the University's interference. A waste.
How valuable do you consider your own life to be?
Obviously quite valuable--who else? Could have created my reagent? Who else would have the drive to make the advances I have made?
How could someone you dislike earn their way into your good graces?
I doubt it's possible: they would have to prove themselves entirely different from my analysis of them, which seems...unlikely.
Is there anyone you would give up your life for?
In which way? I'm physically incapable of doing so, you know--perhaps you mean my way of life? Or some, magical trade? If it was to prevent their death I'd simply bring them back to life myself, no trade required. I can't imagine a scenario where that wouldn't be sufficient.
Who is the most important person (or persons) in your life, and why?
Dan, of course, he's an invaluable assistant. His aid, in our work is, indispensable.
To you, what would be considered an unforgivable action by someone else?
Stealing my work.
Have you ever disappointed someone you cared about? If so, how did that make you feel?
Ohh...I was a constant disappointment to my parents. I simply...learned not to care. Once you've realised that yours is the only opinion that matters, not caring about the insignificant conceptions and assumptions of others becomes quite simple.