The Aspen Valley Incident (Darth Wiki)/Characters

A list of all the characters in The Evil Oboist's novel, The Aspen Valley Incident.

Victor Larousse
Victor Larousse is a half-vampire vampire hunter. Twenty-two years old at the beginning of the story, he has been a professional vampire hunter since he dropped out of school at sixteen following his mother's death. He never knew his father. He sees killing vampires for blood and money as merely a job, not a crusade against vampirekind in general. He has a general air of someone who has been forced to grow up too fast, but is not yet jaded. His nature is generally tolerant and easygoing, but he will freak out if he sees anyone threatening a mother with a child.

Tropes associated with Victor:
 * Badass
 * Book Dumb: High school dropout with an impressive vocabulary, natch
 * Deadpan Snarker
 * Dhampyr: His mother was a vampire, his father is a human.
 * Embarrassing First Name: Eugene
 * First-Person Smartass
 * The Generic Guy: Very well-rounded and moderate as far as people like him go.
 * He Who Fights Monsters
 * Heroic Bastard
 * Improvised Weapon User
 * Neutral Good
 * Punch Clock Hero
 * Real Men Wear Pink: Likes to cook.
 * Redheaded Hero
 * Ugly Cute or Uncanny Valley: He's... weird-looking. So weird-looking that he becomes attractive.
 * Vampire Hunter

Henry Matheson
Henry Matheson is a 192-year-old vampire (he was turned at the age of 30) and a workaholic doctor who runs a questionably legal clinic. He takes care of his seven-times-great-granddaughter, Clarissa, since her parents were some of the first vampire victims in town. He is idealistic to the extreme despite being a battlefield doctor for every major American war from the Mexican American War to Vietnam. He was turned by accident in 1847 when a strange man was brought in from the battlefield, mortally wounded. The vampire bit Henry on the arm, which Henry managed to shake off, but some of the vampire's blood squirted into Henry's mouth in the process. The rest is history.

Tropes associated with Henry:
 * Badass Bookworm
 * Back-Alley Doctor: Sort of. He has been to medical school (several times) and his clinic is clean and well-equipped, but he doesn't ask questions, drawing the ire of the lawful types who would prefer that he report gunshot wounds.
 * Beware the Nice Ones
 * Chaotic Good
 * Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette
 * Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: On the extremely friendly side
 * Geek, Nerd
 * He Cleans Up Nicely: Henry appears in something other than scrubs exactly three times in the story. The one time he actually dresses up, he looks very nice.
 * Older Than They Look
 * Parental Substitute: to Clarissa.
 * Straight Gay
 * The Smart Guy
 * Smart People Wear Glasses
 * Tall, Dark and Handsome
 * Workaholic

Bianca Anzino
Bianca Anzino is a bitter, unhappy dhampyr who tries to pass as human. She finds joy in working as a chef in her family's Italian restaurant. She isn't completely miserable all the time, though--just when Victor shows up, reminding her of what she really is. Her mother is a human and her father was a vampire. About twenty-six or twenty-seven at the beginning of the story, she used to study at Columbia and had a promising future as a lawyer, but she left school to rescue her family's failing restaurant. Said restaurant is now very prosperous and famous on a small scale. She does not regret leaving her future behind in favor of it.

Tropes associated with Bianca:
 * Action Girl: Sometimes, but only when she feels like it!
 * Chaotic Neutral
 * Chef of Iron
 * Deadpan Snarker
 * Defrosting Ice Queen: Without the Defrosting part.
 * Dhampyr
 * Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette
 * Grumpy Bear
 * Heroic Bastard: She is the product of her mother's rape.
 * The Lancer: Henry is idealistic and Victor is pretty optimistic. Bianca is neither, providing an interesting contrast to both of them.
 * Pass Fail
 * Sour Supporter: She helps Victor because it'll help the restaurant, not because she wants to.
 * Tall, Dark and Bishoujo
 * Unresolved Sexual Tension

Mayor McCarthy
Mayor McCarthy is a rather low-key kind of evil. The mayor of Aspen Valley, he wants everything to be perfect in his town, and that includes ridding the place of vampires. All vampires. He made the final decision to hire Victor, but he also wants to get rid of Henry for good. But since Henry's death would look suspicious, he's content with trying to close down his clinic and driving him out of town... for now. The Mayor is largely friendly and well-intentioned, if a bit of a bigot. His bigotry overtakes his more positive qualities after a while.

Tropes associated with the Mayor:
 * Affably Evil
 * Fantastic Racist: Hates vampires and dhampyrs who don't try to pass.
 * Hidden Agenda Villain: For most of the book, we don't know what's up with him
 * Knight Templar
 * Large and In Charge
 * Lawful Evil
 * Meaningful Name: McCarthy. Hates Henry for being a vampire and gay. Who knows, he's probably trying to blacklist him for communism while he's at it.
 * Obstructive Bureaucrat
 * Offstage Villainy: Since the story is in Victor's point of view, we don't see the Mayor's evilness until Victor runs across him one night.
 * Politically-Incorrect Villain
 * Pride Before a Fall
 * Reasonable Authority Figure: Or so it seems...
 * Well-Intentioned Extremist: His personal bigotry aside, the Mayor's agenda (No Vampires) seems pretty reasonable.

Clarissa Matheson
Clarissa is Henry's seven-times-great-granddaughter. Four years old at the beginning of the story, she is precocious and outgoing and likes horses. Her parents were killed by vampires a few months prior to the beginning of the story, but since she is so young and because Henry has been so attentive to her, she is adjusting well to the new situation. She likes to play with Victor's cat, Abraham Van Helsing, and feed him her chicken nuggets.

Tropes associated with Clarissa:
 * Cheerful Child
 * Children Are Innocent
 * Has Two Daddies: at least if Henry had a partner.
 * Infant Immortality:
 * Kawaiiko

Molly Johnson
Clarissa's babysitter. A junior in high school, she's incredibly smart and wants to go to Barnard. However, she comes from a poor family and can't pay for it, so Henry pays her generously to watch Clarissa in the evenings. She reminds Victor of Alicia, since she has a lot of common personality traits and she looks sort of the same. She's not afraid of vampires--she has crosses and garlic aplenty, and always gets home safe.

Tropes associated with Molly:
 * Brainy Brunette
 * Genki Girl
 * Nightmare Fetishist: Her first words to Victor, upon seeing him drink a glass of blood: "What does that taste like?"
 * Vampire Refugee: Sorta. She is almost killed by vampires, but wasn't turned--in her weakened state, however, she becomes a particular target for another attack.
 * You Remind Me of X

Alicia Urquhart
Alicia was Victor's girlfriend. They met when they were both part of a large contingent of vampire hunters in Seattle two years ago and hit it off that winter. Alicia was tough, street-smart, and very cute--she used her soft appearance to lure vampires in, and then she would catch them by surprise. She grew up poor in the inner city with four younger siblings and used vampire hunting to help provide for them. It eventually became more and more of a way of life and not just a job. A vampire super-gang, fed up with its members getting killed off (Victor especially killed a lot of them), captured Alicia while she was on patrol and tortured her for information regarding Victor's whereabouts. Victor found her and killed all of the vampires on pure Heroic Resolve, but Alicia died on the way to the hospital.

Tropes associated with Alicia:
 * Action Girl
 * Author Avatar (does it count as Mary Sue if she dies the most horrible death I've ever written?)
 * Badass Normal: A human vampire hunter in a world of half-human hybrids.
 * Cold-Blooded Torture
 * Cute Bruiser
 * Genki Girl
 * Heroic Sacrifice: No matter how much she was tortured, she refused to give Victor up to them.
 * Promotion to Parent
 * Wrench Wench: She fitted her car headlights with UV bulbs for easier hunting.
 * Vampire Hunter

Lucien de Sainte-Marie
A 254-year-old French vampire, Lucien was forced to flee his country of origin before the Revolution because of his aristocratic blood. About a year after fleeing for England, he was turned, and shortly after that, he moved to New Orleans, which he has called home ever since. He found that New Orleans suited him better anyway, seeing as it was more tolerant of his lifestyle than England had been. He did not return to Europe until the turn of the 20th century, partially because in the decades before he had met Henry and the two of them struck up an on-and-off relationship. Lucien is a violinist, writer, and artist--he appreciates the finer things of life and doesn't understand Henry's obsession with science, organizing everything in sight, and working long hours.

Tropes associated with Lucien:
 * Bishonen
 * Blond Guys Are Evil: Subverted. Victor first thinks he's evil, but Henry assures him that he's not.
 * Camp Gay: A very mild example. He's a lot more stereotypically gay than Henry, but then so are most people.
 * Cultured Badass
 * Everyone Looks Sexier If French
 * Hair of Gold
 * Older Than They Look: 254 years old, turned at the age of 32.
 * Renaissance Man
 * Stupid Sexy Flanders: Even Victor admits that he's hot.
 * Warrior Poet