player.
NAME/HANDLE: Alicia.
PERSONAL JOURNAL: swords
ARE YOU 16 OR OVER?: Indeed.
CONTACT: AIM | theseoldhaunts. PLURK | zombiejosette
OTHER CHARACTERS: Belle, lucency


character.
CHARACTER NAME: Victoria Winters
SERIES: Dark Shadows (2012 hot mess trainwreck party) - presented to you in film wiki and character wiki formats!
CANON POINT: Towards the end of the film, immediately after jumping from Widows' Hill.
AGE: 21.
APPEARANCE: A pretty darlingface.

PREVIOUS GAME HISTORY:

PERSONALITY:
Victoria Winters - Maggie Evans, if we want to tell the truth, but she doesn't, and this is the name she chose - is polite. Professional. Poised and respectful at all times. Almost a doll, it's seemingly easy to cast her out into background scenery, a girl who only wants to tell people what they want to hear. This assessment isn't wrong at all. Victoria - or Vicky, as she often requests to be called, knows how to be (or seem to be) what people want. It's how she gets by. Without this ability to steel herself, basically, her entire life would be in shambles. At the risk of sounding dramatic, that's a harsh lesson she learned in childhood.

Victoria (Maggie, then) grew up in a mental institution, submitted to cruel forms of therapy because she saw a ghost. And the ghost never went away, even through the treatments and the solitude and the years that rolled on. The ghost (known as Josette du Pres, but that's another story for another day) was resilient. The ghost stuck by Maggie, giving her a friend and maybe, somehow, some quiet strength.

Enough strength to allow her to slip unnoticed out of the window of the institution several years later. It's that same strength that keeps Maggie - Victoria, now (I know, it's confusing) in a mindset to hold it together. She knows how to listen to herself, and she knows how to get what she needs or wants. She does indeed have bravery. The 1970s were a different (more innocent, some would say) time, but it takes some kind of fortitude to figure out a way to escape from a presumably secured place and then go through with it, bravery to hitchhike in a quiet, remote town (the kind you might get murdered in, no big) to an equally remote mansion on a hill. She's just as resilient as the ghost that stuck to her side throughout her childhood - and even now.

But it's not without its downsides. Due to being shut away and abandoned in an institution by her own family, Vicky's developed severe trust issues. She's closed off - downright cagey, by some standards. It even veers on coldness, sometimes, when she feels her space is being infringed upon (as is normal behavior in some people; with Victoria, she clams up at the mere mention of people's professions - understandably, it happens in when she's alone in the presence of a doctor. A psychiatrist, even). When she winds up employed at Collinwood, while she does involve herself with the family, most of her action occurs while she's alone. She keeps herself as a near-enigma to the rest of the family, and frankly, with the rest of the mysteries surrounding Collinwood and the Collins family, it isn't a surprise that they don't concern themselves with her. Better that they don't, because she wouldn't take kindly to a blatant interrogation without some time to prepare - her life is built entirely on lies, after all, from her name to the clothes she wears.

So yes, Vicky keeps quiet. Polite. Mild-mannered. There's a sense of nervousness about her, a tendency to explain things on impulse when they hit too close to home (a situation happens early in the film in which David, her new charge, insists that he speaks to the ghost of his dead mother despite the denial of the rest of his family. Having experience with this, Vicky doesn't outright say so, as that would be likely to get her fired - instead, she's quick to mention studies to prove the existence of ghosts in an attempt to fill the awkward silence and justify it). It's not so much a habit of nervous rambling than it is a method to be quick and save face. She can be blunt, when the situation calls for it, and she does always try to do what's right. She's eloquent and concise, usually, and even has a rather dry sense of humor.

Truthfully, Vicky is very open-minded. She isn't religious, instead taking the attitude that there are some things in this world that humans aren't meant to understand - and she's perfectly fine with that. She isn't one to judge others for their beliefs or habits, instead using that as a way to relate to them, methods to endear them to her. Because underneath everything, despite her betrayal and her hiding and lying and stealth, under all that resilience and strength, Victoria wants a genuine connection with people. She wants the home that she's never had. She wants the sunlight on her face and a place to belong. She wants a family. But how she goes about it is just rather complicated.

ABILITIES:
• Seeing ghosts → it's only canonically confirmed that Vicky can see one ghost, and that's the ghost of Josette du Pres, a woman who killed herself in 1776, and the former lover of Barnabas Collins - who winds up falling for Vicky when his coffin is broken into. The reasons why Vicky can see her are unclear; the movie was probably going for a reincarnation plot, but it kind of failed on that front - because why would you be able to see your own ghost and communicate with it if that's you? An equally valid theory is that Josette haunted Vicky since childhood to become an influence in her life and thus lead her to her death, allowing Josette to take possession of her body and reunite with Barnabas (though let's be real, that might be too complex for this movie). However, due to her attitude on life, the idea that there are things that people aren't meant to understand, and the statement that some people have the correct "antennas" to pick up ghosts, it isn't unbelievable that she could see other spirits if they chose to present themselves.
• Thievery → Yet another thing canon didn't technically go into is how the hell Vicky acquired a train ticket out of New York, a suitcase, and several very nice outfits and nightgowns. It's laughable to suggest that she went home to get such things; from her dialogue it's safe to say that she hates her family and would sooner burn their house down than run the risk of seeing them again. That leaves one thing: she stole them. And she didn't get caught.
• Stealth. → Tying in with the last one, Vicky's a very quiet young woman. Sometimes - a lot of times - she goes unnoticed. She slipped out of the mental institution without being spotted, stole several high-end items without being spotted, and somehow got out of a burning house - again - without being spotted (though that last one - there was a lot of chaos and chandeliers breaking and portraits bleeding so that one might just be on the action and not so much her).

POSSESSIONS: Her clothing: a billowy purple dress, stockings, and black buckled shoes (and undergarments, of course).

samples.
JOURNAL ENTRY SAMPLE:

[ the feed comes on, and victoria looks - pensive. her brows are drawn together, eyes down, lips pursed. she's wringing her hands, but the camera doesn't catch that far down. ]

Sometimes I have trouble with remembering things.

[ a pause. her eyes flick upward, and she shakes her head with a laugh. ]

Remembering too much. I can't forget. That's the problem.

I don't expect magic - something that's going to erase all my troubles, but I don't like dwelling on it. And given the nature of this place, I just thought that I can't be the only one who feels like this.

Am I right?

THIRD-PERSON SAMPLE: