Santa Monica Madness: or Will the real Voerman sister please stand up?

Childe of Malkav wrote:

Dragatus wrote:

Why would anyone in their right mind watch any Uwe Boll movie?

I'm certainly cured of that after buying the first two bloodraine movies in a boxed DVD set.
How does that guy still get actors to play in his films?  Probably the producer will only tell them who the director is after they have signed up...

The only Uwe Boll movie I've seen is "In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2006)."  It had Jason Statham, and several other actors I like, who must have been tricked into making that movie, because it sucked.

Maxus Corvin wrote:

One might think it would be the case that she would still be human, but I doubt any method of preservation a bell jar would offer could work for that long. One does wonder if she was embraced, one why Grout would do it, and also, how would he know what to do.

Grout's wife is definitely Kindred.  He speaks of "finding a cure for myself and my beloved wife", so he obviously Embraced her too.  Grout talks like he really adores her, but he thinks nothing of encasing her in glass to 'protect' her.  I wonder what the dynamic is there.  The way he treats his 'test subjects', and speaks so longingly of the old style insane asylums (which are considered inhumane today), I can't see him as a very empathetic person.

Side topic:  The painting in Grout's mansion, showing the woman with the white streak in her hair... Who painted it?  I doubt it was Grout.  To me, the most logical artist would be Grout's wife... from the hair, it's apparently the same woman in the bell jar, so it's a self-portrait, although I doubt she really has black wolves coming out of her head.  Any thoughts on what the images represent?
(Link to picture)

I thought that was a portrait of Grout, not of his wife.

It is Grout for sure. So maybe his wife painted it...

As for interpreting art...
*licks balls thoroughly*

Dragatus wrote:

I thought that was a portrait of Grout, not of his wife.

Feral wrote:

It is Grout for sure. So maybe his wife painted it...

As for interpreting art...
*licks balls thoroughly*

Take a closer look at the lady in the bell jar, just before Grout's bedroom.  She has red hair, with a lock of white hair above her forehead, just like the portrait.  How is that Grout?  See the lace collar in the portrait?  Unless Grout is a cross-dresser, that's not him.  The portrait is his wife, although it makes her look older than she does under glass.  That's probably how she sees herself.

I was kind of joking about the art critique, but come on...

OK, I haven't noticed the collar at first. So it is Mrs Grout. As for analyzing this fact, I am not a professional. 

It certainly is a picture of Grout's wife. That is never a male face. And compare it to the photo in the room with the tape before you go up to the tower walk. It is an older and more abstract picture of the same person.
As for interpreting it. Well for me it always had something apocalyptical. Even if the creatures behind her are not horsemen. But if I recall right, sometimes they are also referred to as beasts.

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I actually have another observation to give on the topic of Jeanette being the original. The topic of Vandal Cleaver.

In Arthur's Krimeputer, underneath the alphabetical section with Vandal's name (v. cleaver), it states he was arrested for stalking someone with a tazer and duct tape, but his conviction was talked down from intent to do harm to house arrest.
He also states if you try to seduce your way out of paying to "Start breathing,, you corpse. I fell for that once and I ended up as a pet."

The seducing part may have been on Jeanette's part. And she shows even more how manipulative, yet rewarding she is. She gives him eternity as long as he does as she says, and he's convieniently in the blood bank, giving her not only emergency reportoires of blood (which, considering her tendencies, would probably never happen) but providing a service to other vampires while maintaining a steady flow of cash.

Sorry for double post, but let's look even closer to Vandal. His mannerisms seem to accept his insanity, much like Jeanette. Even more is his intro, which mirrors Jeanette's somewhat in that he creepily introduces himself and states he knows you're a vampire. Even more is his eyes, in which either he's really gaunt, or he has eye shadow on, much like Jeanette has.

THAT'S GROUT'S WIFE?

ThePhilosopher wrote:

THAT'S GROUT'S WIFE?

The pictorial evidence aside, the filename nails the point home...

malkwifepic.dds

Admittedly the filetype doesn't matter, but still.

Quote :

THAT'S GROUT'S WIFE?

My thoughts exactly.


Regarding what Duncan said earlier: "They tried to separate us, but I refused. I chose this life... and brought you into it so we could stay together." I would think that the original personality would be the one who claimed to Embrace the other personality.

I was just thinking about that line, although I came to the opposite conclusion. If we assume Jeanette was the original or "real" personality, that offers a different (but equally interesting) possibility. Being Embraced isn't always a nice experience; it could have been downright scary, even violating, especially since we can be sure her sire was a psycho in some way or other. Picture a partially healed Jeanette... she knows she has mental issues, and she's actually getting better, but then THIS guy comes along and to her it's probably not so different than dealing with "daddy" all over again.

So we see her coping mechanism kick back into high gear. Therese was Jeanette's safety net before, and in a sense her scapegoat for the negative feelings she'd otherwise have felt about herself, as Therese "willingly" went along with her father's actions. Now Therese is once again used as Jeanette's bid for a more controlling hand in her own fate, as the Embrace wasn't forced on Jeanette, but Therese "chose" it. The situation is no longer one that Jeanette has no control over, because her supporting figure is still there.

Who knows, but the odd situation might have been what sparked this degree of strife between the two personalities in the first place; if Jeanette does not want the Embrace but needs to get that feeling of control back, "Therese" becomes both a protector and a domineering adversary at the same time. She's protected Jeanette by taking control, but she's also done something that hurt Jeanette.

SaulottheGentle wrote:

Sorry for double post, but let's look even closer to Vandal. His mannerisms seem to accept his insanity, much like Jeanette. Even more is his intro, which mirrors Jeanette's somewhat in that he creepily introduces himself and states he knows you're a vampire. Even more is his eyes, in which either he's really gaunt, or he has eye shadow on, much like Jeanette has.

Hm, I'm quite sure Vandal was ghouled by the Therese personality. You can find his adress and even a mail of his on Therese's computer. If you try to get access to the bloodbank in the Lilly quest, he refers to his vampire master as "queen bitch", and talks about that querulant voice of hers. I'm sure he wouldn't talk in that way of Jeanette.
For being on the krimeputer, that was probably when he was looking for someone to "fill the chair" sometime before he got hold of Lilly. And getting the case talked down to a minor offense by a good lawyer certainly is a more thereselike way of dealing with an employee being arrested while doing his job.
As for his manerisms, that guy has surely been a nutcake all along. Though the Malk blood certainly added to that, and enabled him to easier identify kindred. Besides how many people usually come to the bloodbank for donating in the middle of the night?
I just imagine a guy saying to himself after an unsuccessful night in the clubs: "Damn, didn't find a girl, so let's at least go loosing some other body-liquid." 

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Vandal as a pet...

Dunno...

I think I should get offended  

But good thinking, Salout.

NEW THOUGHT:

What if Jeanette was embraced as a Malkavian Antitribu?
Think about it:

If Jeanette had DID before getting embraced, and with being embraced as a Malkavian Antitribu, she would have two more derrangements: Megalomania (for Therese) and Nymphomania (for Jeanette).

Some more evidence would have to be the hired thugs. We see the same looking ones in the Sabbat warehouse.

Even more I found in the Anarch Codebook. One of the Anarch's tactics for fighting the Camarilla would be to call in the Sabbat to help in exchange for giving them a piece of the city. And if Tourette is affiliated with the Sabbat, this would explain their sudden appearance in LA and the aftermentioned thugs.

And possibly her emotionless passion for pleasure would be best fitting in the Path of Cathari, wouldn't it? And for Therese, her desire for complete control is best exemplified by the Path of Power and Inner Voice.

It's also by this logic that if you chose one sister over the other, then they would take full control without ever having to worry about the other returning. Possibly from going antitribu back to mainstream, with only one derangement. You helped "kill" the DID, and the derangement that belonged to the "dead" sister "dies" with her, leaving only the derangement that the remaining sister has.

What do you all think?

I think it is a bit far fetched.

She is a Malkavian. OK. Nutcase? Sure. Wants to be Prince? Yep. And is in the Sabbat at the same time!?  

Unless Janette is Sabbat and Therese is Camarilla... Which is possible with a Malkavian.

Feral wrote:

I think it is a bit far fetched.

She is a Malkavian. OK. Nutcase? Sure. Wants to be Prince? Yep. And is in the Sabbat at the same time!?  

Unless Janette is Sabbat and Therese is Camarilla... Which is possible with a Malkavian.

Well, not IN the Sabbat. But probably used to be part of it and kept some of her old contacts in it?
Also, the Malkavian Antitribu part to help explain if she really does have extra derangements.

Well....to be fair, Saulot's (go Salubri btw! XD ) theory was what if Jeanette was *embraced* by a malk antitribu, not that she's currently Sabbat herself.

She clearly isn't...as Bertram makes mention of the fact that Therese wants to be made prince of Santa Monica and if Jeanette survives its heavily implied Santa Monica goes Anarch instead. Though I think Therese sending thugs to kill you was just to show what an utter bitch she is when she realizes she can't control someone and has no qualms about killing someone (if you *did* hand over the ocean house pendant to her) even if they'd previously helped her.

Jeanette is unaligned But Therese is too ambitious not to side with the Camarilla and get a chance to be Prince...

Apart from everythiing else, the thugs looking like the ones at the wasrehouse in no evidence whatsoever. It's simply due to the fact that the whole game only has two or three "thug" models. You can see the same guys running around downtown and in the Hollywood back alleys.

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Hehe yes... it's also the same model as the DMZ guy, too, I think. How's that for a correlation?  

Ettinarius wrote:

Hehe yes... it's also the same model as the DMZ guy, too, I think. How's that for a correlation?  

Yep, the Sabbat wants to get hold of LA, so they have armed every single thug in all LA, and equipped them with a kind of uniform.  Except of course for the Tong who are bankrolled by the Kuey Jin.

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And of course all of the thugs went to Henchmen Community College (HCC), so they wear the school colors.

The Kuei-jin minions are restricted to wearing the standard Asian-style pajamas worn in every kung-fu movie.