User blog:Jester of chaos/PE Proposal: J.S. Steinman


 * Original:

Found another PE candidate from the Bioshock universe J.S. Steinman

Who is J. S. Steinman? What has he done?
Dr. J. S. Steinman is a plastic surgeon obsessed with the idea of beauty, perfection, and his own image.

In Bioshock Rapture, Steinman travels to Rapture in order to be free to explore his more artistic side of surgery, and as he performs various surgeries, he restrains himself from utterly butchering his patients' bodies due to wanting to build up a good reputation ("for now" as he notes)

During a cocaine-addled drug trip, Steinman saw a hallucination of the goddess of beauty Aphrodite, who "told" Steinman to more confidently explore his natural inclinations and find "true beauty" inside people.

Of the belief he was truly visited by the actual Aphrodite, plus the creation of ADAM opening the door to more people needing surgeries, Steinman decides to embrace his mindset that he can be a Picasso of surgery and develops a god complex, beginning to take in mortally wounded or paralyzed Splicers and then horribly mutilate their bodies and kill them on the side of his real practice.

Steinman soon enough began taking ADAM and EVE himself, using the drugs and their abilities to enable him to further mutilate and butcher his victims' bodies. Before the ADAM began altering his mental state, Steinman carved up and killed his assistant Nurse Chavez when she tried to expose his horrifying murders, and stores her sliced-off face inside refrigeration along with other removed faces.

Steinman eventually began collaborating with Sander Cohen, taking in kidnapped victims from Cohen to perform his surgeries on, and in one case preparing to slice off a woman's face, regrow it with ADAM, then repeat this until she died of shock.

By the time of Bioshock, ADAM has nearly completely driven Steinman insane, as he continues his butcherings but with stuttering madness and screaming insanity. ADAM has deteriorated Steinman's mind and appearance, and when Jack eventually kills him, Steinman dies ranting about Aphrodite.

Does Steinman have a Freudian Excuse or other mitigating factors?
No, at least until ADAM drives him insane. In Bioshock alone, Steinman is so far gone that it is hard to consider him a Complete Monster due to his insanity. However, in Bioshock Rapture, it is shown that Steinman was already murdering and mutilating even before ADAM drove him insane, so it becomes easier to potentially see him as a Complete Monster due to the fact that he was already committing atrocities, ADAM just eventually destroyed his mind.

He does think Aphrodite "spoke" to him, however unlike when he is insane from ADAM in Bioshock, in Bioshock Rapture Steinman does not behave like Aphrodite is directing his every action and is actually physically present. Rather, while still sane, Steinman views Aphrodite as a manifestation of his own ego and believes she spoke to him only once in order to push him to enact his vicious surgeries. Steinman has a god complex and is acting on the ego trip that a goddess gave him her "blessing", unlike in Bioshock itself when he treats Aphrodite like an ever-present force assisting him.

Is Steinman sufficiently heinous?
Steinman is a very unique villain in that he is not out for power or money or having even a primary goal beyond his surgeries, and with that, he makes his mark as a monstrous Serial Killer. He kills untold amounts of people through nightmarish mutilations, keeps several faces as trophies, and murders his own assistant nurse. Once he is driven mad by ADAM he racks up an even higher bodycount, though whether that should be applied to his rapsheet is debatable since he is far insane by that point.

Final Verdict?
I'd say yes