application poly_chromatic

[shorterway]

[nick / name]: Vee
[personal LJ/DW name]: blizzardseason
[other characters currently played]: N/A
[e-mail]: PM

[series]: NOS4A2
[character]: Vic McQueen
[character history / background]: link
[character abilities]: Victoria McQueen can use her imagination to place a 'bridge' between her current location and a fixed point. She doesn't necessarily need to know where that point is, as she uses it to find lost things as a child, but she cannot connect her bridge to something on the move, she needs both ends anchored. The bridge is both figurative and literal, and the interior of the bridge is an 'Inscape' or an inner world that's been brought into some kind of connection with the real world. Her psyche happens to reside on this bridge in the form of bats, which sometimes escape and take bits of her sanity with them. She needs to have a specific item that has bonded to her to find and cross the bridge, in her childhood it was a bike, as an adult a motorcycle. Not just any will do, the items 'speak' to her in a way.
[character personality]:

" Victoria McQueen had been abducted at age seventeen by Charles Manx, a man who had almost certainly kidnapped others. He was at the time driving a Rolls-Royce Wraith, the 1938 model. Vic got away from him, and Manx was jailed for transporting her across state lines and murdering an active-duty soldier. In another sense Vic had not escaped him at all. Like so many survivors of trauma and probable sexual assault, she was made a prisoner again and again--of her addictions, of madness. She stole things, did drugs, bore a child out of wedlock, and burned through a string of failed relationships. What Charlie Manx had not been able to do she had been trying to do for him ever since. "

( 591 )

TOM BOY. Victoria McQueen was always what one would consider a tom boy. Our first introduction to her and her powers is her affection for a boy's bike much too large for her. Her father calls her the Brat or Vic, neither of which are very feminine epithets. Victoria does not look up to her mother as much of a role model, instead as a child she looks upon her father as the end all be all. More about Daddy issues below. Victoria stays a tomboy pretty much all of her life, which is partly because she loses a lot of the levity in her life that might have allowed her to express herself in a more typically feminine manner. She gets pregnant young and out of wedlock, she's seriously depressed, and turns to alcoholism. Her rough and tumble tomboy ways are how she's pushed herself through struggles. Rebuilding a Triumph motorcycle is how she works on her own head and tries to reconnect with her son. She's not that great at the 'mom' business, since she is the emotionally tough parent with her partner Lou showing more of the typically nurturing traits.

DADDY ISSUES. Victoria was very strongly a Daddy's girl. She resented her mother for causing all the problems in the marriage. It was a childish understanding that Victoria would logically reconsider, but never really emotionally quite manage to get herself past. Logically, Victoria grows up to hate her father not only for hitting her mother--(we don't know if this happened more than once, but the point is pretty much moot since it's impact on Victoria is all that matters)--but also for leaving Victoria and her mother for a new woman. Her father valued this new woman over his family and when Victoria eventually ran away from home at 18, he refused to let her stay with him either. This is a betrayal that will stay with Victoria her entire life and influence the way she thinks about herself and her relationship to men. She doesn't really believe that relationships can be based on love and trust, and feels that all women are good for is sex. She acts out on this when she's younger, which is how she becomes pregnant with Wayne, but after her institutionalization, she has too many of her own mental issues (and Manx issues) to even bother getting into a relationship with anyone. In the end though, she still holds this bitter idea of what a relationship is. Interaction with Manx and Bing Partridge doesn't help, as the former terrorizes her and the latter tries to rape her. She doesn't trust much of anyone, but men in particular are not going to have an easy time convincing her of trust or emotional intimacy. Sex isn't that big a deal to her, and maybe in the back of her mind she sometimes still thinks it's all she's good for anyway.

THE KNIFE. The knife is the metaphor used by characters in this verse to describe those who can in one way or another access an Inscape. Not only because it slices through what is understood as physical reality, but also because it slices something away from those who use it. For Vic, her knife is a manifestation of her creativity, and what it takes from her is her sanity. The use of her power creates a fracture between what she knows to be true and what can feasibly be true. This is not just in the sense that she could never relate her powers to anyone without expecting scorn and disbelief, Vic also would come to believe the stories she would craft in order to explain away her amazing feats. This meant that there were two realities that she believed in, and this fissure is compatible with her sanity. While it is true that supernatural things were happening in Vic's world, it's unclear which parts were 'real' and which parts were her descent into depression and schizophrenia. It's unclear to the reader as well as to Victoria. While institutionalized, she was encouraged to treat all impossible happenings as the result of her deluded fantasies and inability to deal with her real world situations. Victoria's creative world is very strong and never really leaves her alone, she tries to deal with it through artwork. Vic is very skilled at putting M.C. Escher to shame with her complicated scenes and puzzles. These confusing images are a literal reflection of her mind, her fears and worries sometimes find their way into the scenes without her even knowing she's drawn them there.

SELF-ESTEEM ISSUES. Victoria McQueen knows that she is a broken woman. She doesn't have any idea how she couldn't be. Whether she's working off of what really happened in Manx's 'Sleigh House'--She was attacked by a monster child and left to burn to death inside the house. While tracking her down, Manx lit a man on fire and bashed another's face in--or the story she invented--She was drugged, assaulted, and kidnapped--she's been through some terrible experiences. She is haunted by those experiences, and it drives her insane. She's an unhappy alcoholic that eventually snaps and burns her own house down in order to escape the voices of dead children calling her on the telephone. She's institutionalized and rehabbed. She let down the people who loved her most. She's an unwed mother and a runaway. This is exactly how she describes herself, all too aware of her failings. She doesn't even take any particular pride in her award winning book series Search Engine, since the only reason she started the project was to drown out the calls from the children in Christmasland. Victoria sees no way anyone could ever look past any of this, and in her mind is always apologizing to Lou and Wayne for failing them so much, for not loving them as much as they loved her, for not living up to their love. After successfully being released from the mental institution, and on a steady source of meds, this sorrow is no longer quite so dramatic nor outward. It's buried inside of her, but always there. Outwardly, she just seems more resigned to her fate. She's brusque without apology. She's not happy with herself, but she can't be anyone else. So what are you gonna do about it.

WAYNE AND LOU. Vic's son Wayne is really the only reason she's still holding on and hasn't killed herself. She honestly doesn't know what else she's living for. It certainly isn't her son's father Lou, although she has strong feelings for him. However, Lou quite simply can't provide her with the support she needs. She's less concerned about not being the woman he needed, and more concerned with how much she's fucked up her son's life by being a crazy bitch. At her pull point, she has just recently made the decision to stick her toes back in the water of motherhood, she's really trying, if unsure. Of course having her son kidnapped also brings out the ferocity of motherbear in her.

[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: Before Manx kidnaps Wayne.

[journal post]: Thread with Constance
[third person / log sample]: LINK this is a prose sample! I made a picture prompt meme to work on samples for a bunch of characters, so the link also contains said picture prompt.