lastvoyages application
User Name/Nick: Kris
User LJ: my_daroga
AIM/IM: originalfine
E-mail: my_daroga@livejournal.com
Other Characters: N/A
Character Name: Erik
Series: The Phantom of the Opera (Gaston Leroux)
Age: Unknown--probably around 50
From When?: Just prior to dying of love at the end of the novel.
Inmate/Warden: Inmate. Erik is a murder, a sociopath, an inveterate trickster, who considers himself outside humanity. While he believes himself to have been redeemed by Christine's love at the end of the novel, we all know it is not that easy--he has no understanding of what it means to be good.
Item: N/A
Abilities/Powers: Erik has no supernatural powers, though he's incredibly intelligent and very strong. He has skills which can look like magic to the observer, including sleight-of-hand and ventriloquism. He does appear somewhat supernatural in the novel, so let me know if there's any issue here.
Personality: I'm starting with appearance because while not specified on the application, to a great extent it has formed both Erik's history and his personality.
To most, Erik is merely a shadow, if that. If one is unlucky, he is a cloaked and masked figure. For the even less fortunate, his yellow eyes are the last thing they see. Erik was, as a boy, exhibited as the Living Corpse and has retained this emaciated state into adulthood. Despite this, he is alarmingly strong, as he stores little fat and what he has is muscle. He is tall, but not unusually so by our standards; something over six feet, but his extreme thinness makes him seem taller. His limbs are slightly longer than average, as are his fingers. His skin has an unhealthy pallor to it and is somewhat mottled.
His face, should anyone be unlucky enough to see it, resembles not so much a skull as a skull with greyed-yellowed skin stretched over it. The cartilage is missing from his nose, which gives him the appearance of having a hole instead. This did not remove his sense of smell, but has compromised it over the years due to lack of protection of the cilia and olfactory nerve. His ears also show some signs of this cartilage lack, though it is not a generalized condition. His eyes are sunken, and appear black and bottomless in the light but yellow in the dark. His mouth is nearly lipless. Altogether the effect is strikingly corpse-like, made all the worse for the face being animated.
Erik's habitual attire is evening dress, whatever the time of day. He is typically careful with his clothing, and has his measurements on file with a discrete tailor. However, he is also capable of neglecting his appearance entirely while preoccupied with other matters. He does, however, keep his fingernails blunt for musical purposes. Because of the underground conditions, combined with his periodic neglect of his person and diminished sense of smell, Erik can smell unpleasantly like a combination of must and body odor. When out and about, Erik is wrapped in cloak, mask and hat all in black. On the occasions when he must go above-ground, such as for provisions, Erik has a false nose which he wears with glasses, though he keeps his face in the shadows as much as possible. He also has a flare for the dramatic, as witnessed in his Red Death costume. On those historic occasions when he revealed himself to the denizens of the opera (the managers' dinner, the Bal Masque) it was his own face he wore.
It is difficult to find one word to describe Erik's personality, but if pressed, one could do worse than "mercurial." Erik is changeable, though his behavior can be predicted in specific cases. Of primary importance is his absolute divorce from humanity; he considers himself, alternately, both entirely above and entirely below mankind. This leads us to another one-word description, which is "contradiction." Erik walks a strange boundary between society and utter lack of it, which is to say that while he considers himself above civilization, he desperately resents the fact he cannot be part of it. He has absorbed many of the desires, opinions and habits of civilized man, but they manifest in his own way.
Therefore, Erik is constantly battling between his middle-class ambitions (wife, home, opera) and his conviction that he is either a god or a monster. This manifests in his home, absurdly pedestrian in many details but lodged deep within the earth and containing, apart from the torture chamber, other mysterious wonders. It manifests in his dress and manners, sometimes courtly in the extreme but often nearly animalistic--and always exaggerated. He professes a desire to live among men but does not mimic them well. He has, at this point, been below for so long that he is almost a caricature of a gentleman, with no real knowledge of how people behave. Anyone reading this will wonder how he might have fulfilled his promises to Christine to live as normal people do, should she have stayed with him, and they are quite right to. Erik himself is not aware of this lack, for he long ago ceased to view himself from any exterior vantage point as a matter of self-preservation.
Erik has no moral compass save for that which coincides with his own self-interest or, on rare occasions, his feelings for others who manage to transcend his generalized hatred of humanity. He is aware of what men believe are right and wrong, but only intellectually and it does not apply to him. He is capable, however, of wishing himself good, and of believing he might be given the chance--but it is an abstract goal, and he does not follow through as far as altering his behavior.
All this said, Erik is not without his charms, for he is widely traveled and very talented and, in the right circumstances, could be an interesting, albeit dangerous, companion. But one would have to ask the Persian about that, or Christine Daae. If either were inclined to speak on the subject.
Sexually, Erik is a virgin; I could see circumstances where he might have paid for sex but he hasn't bothered. He's not asexual, but he is convinced that he is repulsive, holding the same views he rails against. And there have always been more important things to do than paying someone to try to pretend not to want to throw up.
Coming to the barge, Erik will be reluctant. Though his native curiosity will take over when he realizes there are worlds and technologies out there he has not yet conquered.
Path to Redemption: Since Erik has been reached by Christine Daae already, he believes himself to be redeemed. This complicates matters, obviously, both in and out of character. The issue, I think, is that Erik has no concept of right or wrong, or of humanity's or society's expectations. So he will believe that "love" has made him good--but will need to learn not only how to be good, but that love doesn't have that sort of transformative power. Not automatically, anyway.
Basically, Erik needs to be made to feel part of the human race again. Hideously ugly, he's been hounded all his life--he believes that "if I am evil, it is man's hatred that has made me so." If he were to be made to believe that mankind accepted him, that he could be seen for himself (and as a man) not just by one woman but by society, his need to belong would take over.
Triggers/likes would include music, scientific invention, travel, and, at its most basic level, human interaction that is neither persecution nor victimhood. That is to say, Erik is used to people hating him, fearing him, or both. He will eventually have to reconcile normal human interaction with what he "knows" of the world.
History: Much of Erik's known history is drawn from Gaston Leroux's research as presented in the novel, though I've filled some in as his information is sketchy. Erik was born near Rouen, the son of a mason. His parents were middle-class, his father better-off than his own parents though his mother had married down slightly, both out of infatuation with Erik's handsome father and the (correct) expectation that he would soon be a success. He recalls his parents as handsome, distant people except when his mother became angry, as she often did on what seemed to the young Erik like a whim. Nearly any action he performed could be punished, and it was always Mother who carried out such. His father remained aloof and remote, generally visible only from a distance as Erik was restricted to certain parts of the house so as not to disturb him. Erik did, however, hear his father play the violin from time to time, though he did not play exceptionally well. He left home too early to be aware of this, but his father blamed his mother for the boy's condition, and relations rapidly deteriorated between them. They maintained a front of a marriage, but kept to their own quarters except before company. By this time, they were well to do enough that their house could accommodate such an arrangement. His father saw Erik only once, just after he was born, and henceforth had nothing more to do with him.
Erik fled from home around the age of eight, after having learned all he could from his father's library (into which he snuck until caught fondling the violin). Unprepared for the world outside, he was nonetheless already predisposed to consider humanity a separate species from himself, and therefore considered any means of survival appropriate. He lived for some little time like a pariah dog, stealing food and taking what he could, until he fell in with a band of Roma who lived up to their reputation and taught him new ways to steal as well as the herblore and magic of their people. He also procured his first violin at this time. He also began to be shown as "The Living Corpse." While never trusted, Erik was not imprisoned, though he sometimes allowed the public to believe he was for the hint of danger it provided. The indignity of this grated on him, but he also learned the value of terror, of misdirection, of defied expectation. Soon he was on his own again, traveling Europe as he wished, following the fairs but also seeking the centers of learning. While he could not gain formal admittance to any school, Erik nonetheless used his ability to gain entry to any building and creep silently to make his own course of study. As such, it was erratic and very much according to his whim at the time. He watched others at work, as well. Soon his income from the fairs was going into his own experiments and research, which fed back into his act until his other talents were impressive enough that he was able to perform masked but for the denouement of every performance, when he would reveal his face to the shocked crowd. At times, in his youthful arrogance, he even enjoyed this act as he was rapidly becoming convinced of his own superiority and took their foolish, slack-jawed faces as further proof of his status as something apart from Man. He was also honing his craft as a musician, listening where he could and likewise receiving an eclectic education.
At the full flower of his arts of legerdemain and music, Erik was "discovered" at Nijni-Novgorod and summoned to the court of the Shah of Persia, where he encountered a man known in Leroux only as "the daroga" or "the Persian." His talents were put to darker use by the little sultana and the shah, and Erik committed horrors there that one quails to repeat. He performed all such acts without a hint of remorse, and the sultana's mad delight only fueled his own megalomania. The rest, Leroux relates: Erik was ordered killed, escaped due to the daroga's intervention, traveled Asia, and in the 1860's returned to France where he participated in the building of the Palais Garnier. Tired of bloodshed (there are only so many ways a man might die), music was, by now, his all-consuming passion and he conceived of a life he might lead ensconced in its temple. He was to find, of course, that the temple was more appropriately dedicated to Mammon, which may have contributed in some respect to his infatuation with Christine Daae and the purity of her gift.
In the novel, Erik hears a young Swedish ingenue, Christine Daae, singing and offers her lessons despite his need to stay hidden. Christine is a bit touched (my personal view is that her father was well-meaning but a bit childlike and kept her far too sheltered--his death plunged her into a real world she simply wasn't equipped to handle) and perceives his disembodied voice as the "Angel of Music" her father always told her about, sent from Heaven. Erik goes along with this, thinking he can simply teach her and own her talent and her soul. He is soon not content with that, and begins to believe he can have all of her, but he's about the most inept person you can imagine at relationships. He plays on her weaknesses, and eventually (when threatened by the presence of another, handsome suitor) kidnaps her. She learns who he is, and is simultaneously filled with revulsion and pity. This goes on for a bit, with things basically spiraling out of control, until events reach a head and Christine is forced to make a choice. She chooses to stay with Erik and save her boyfriend, which act transforms Erik's bitterness. He lets them both go and dies of love (or whatever) after finally experiencing her tears on his behalf.
Sample Journal Entry: This is unacceptable. If Erik is to be imprisoned again, for his own good as you say, it would be preferable simply to be killed. Your jurisdiction is untenable and I will not consent to remain here. Further, your claim that I have anything to gain from this experience is patently false, as by any measure relevant to me I have been redeemed already.
If I am to remain here, however, I will require a few things. Should my requests be denied, be assured I am used to getting what I want.
Sample RP: Was this what dying was like?
Altogether, it was busier than Erik had expected. He had been raised to believe in Hell, as much as he believed in anything, but had long since come to recognize Hell as life itself. Nothing which came after could be worse, and so, nothing was what must come after.
But here there was light, and noise, and people, and after the weeks of solitude, the silent march of hours as he waited, waited for his body (too strong, at the last) to give up as his soul had, it overwhelmed his senses. His mind rebelled--he did not want this, he wanted the quiet, the release from pain death had finally promised him. He had dealt it so often--was it so much to ask that he be granted the same courtesy?
His mouth, dry from days without water, worked silently for a moment before he spoke.
"Where am I?" he demanded in accented English, his voice still powerful even as a rasp. "Why have you stolen Erik from his resting place?"
Special Notes: I will be playing Erik mostly from Leroux's novel, but there may be some slide due to the rather cardboard nature of his characterization, holes in background, and, frankly, the wide variety of canon material that may have seeped in over 17 years of fannishness.
My other note is that I am willing to revise the moment of arrival, if the need for redemption is not considered sufficient. I think it's a grey area, but am fascinated by the thought of tearing down the romantic notion that "love conquers all" and that one act of mercy constitutes a change of heart. But I'm flexible.