Doctor Seward - Tumblr Posts

You know, thinking about it more, I'm actually most surprised with how Van Helsing handled the Renfield situation. The love and respect he has for Jack are actually the only reasons I am willing to accept his actions in his entry, because without that, it would seem kind of OOC.

Because Renfield basically just said "I can't tell you why right now, I would if I could, but I'm begging you, please believe me that my intentions are good and I am only asking this for the sake of others." And that's exactly what Van Helsing said to Jack, Arthur, and Quincy for the duration of the "we need to kill undead Lucy" arc. And I think Van Helsing realized that parallel, I think that's why he was addressing him "as an equal," as Jack put it.

But ultimately, he did not take the leap of faith he asked others to. To be fair, the circumstances were a bit different, but all the same...it's quite unforunate.

On the flip side, I'm not surprised with Jack's response at all, even if I am frustrated by it. Dr. Seward is The Observer of the group, he's extremely good at absorbing nearly every detail and compiling it. But when it comes to synthesizing that data, he sticks to finding patterns in previous observations and using them as a predictive model. And that's exactly what he did here with Renfield—he saw parallels between how Renfield was acting here and how he acted when he wanted a cat, and responded accordingly. The internal logic there was completely sound.

Where Dr. Seward so often falls short is making conclusions that require you to step outside of that set framework of data, and that's something Van Helsing has repeatedly called him out on throughout the "we need to kill undead Lucy" arc. Unforunately, that kind of reasoning was the only hope Renfield had here, because he could not provide Seward the data he needed to make the correct conclusion his usual way.