Frank Adler

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Content Warning: Discussion of suicide and custody battles ahead.


NAME: Jeeps
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OTHER CHARACTERS IN THE PINES: Steve Rogers



NAME: Frank Adler
CANON: Gifted
CANON-POINT: After the end of the film.



HISTORY: Frank has been surrounded by brilliant people his entire life. He was born in Boston to a father who died when Frank was eight years old; his mother was a mathematician, a brilliant woman who was herself eclipsed by Frank's younger sister, Diane, a mathematical prodigy from a young age. In raising her, Frank's mother, Evelyn, believed she had responsibilities beyond motherhood to do everything in her power to further Diane's genius. This was often to the exclusion of a personal life, though Diane herself also had a singular obsession and, in adulthood, this translated specifically to solving the Navier-Stokes equation, one of the seven major unsolved equations designated by the mathematics community. This lifelong dedication, consumed by her genius and her mother's expectations, eventually took its toll on Diane's mental health. She went to Frank for help, but he put her off for a date and when he came home found that Diane had taken her own life in his bathroom, her six-month-old daughter Mary left on the couch.

Frank was no slouch in the brains department himself, but after Diane's death he quit his job teaching philosophy at Boston University and relocated to Florida to raise Mary, making a living for them by repairing boats. As Mary got older it quickly became apparent that she had inherited her mother's genius, onto differential equations by age seven. Frank did encourage her to learn, homeschooling her and spending part of their limited funds on books for Mary (the kinds that college students have to pay hundreds of dollars for), but he'd been close to his sister. He'd been in the delivery room when she gave birth to Mary, and he knew Diane had ​wanted her to have a normal life. Even more importantly, Frank didn't want her to share her mother's fate. However, despite his efforts to give her more to focus on than math, she was still isolated from her peers, her only friends Frank, her beloved one-eyed cat Fred, and their neighbor Roberta (closer to Frank's age than Mary's). So he enrolled her in the first grade.

It was less than a day before Mary outed herself as a genius to her teacher, Bonnie, and eventually this made its way to the principal. Naturally, her school felt unequipped to provide Mary with an appropriate curriculum, being an elementary school, while Mary's talents were in the advanced college level stratosphere. Frank refused her offer of a scholarship to a more appropriate school, however, citing his family's history with such institutions and the dangers of isolating children like Mary from their peers. Not satisfied with this refusal, the principal tracked down Mary's grandmother.

Upon learning her granddaughter shared Diane's genius, Evelyn showed up on Frank's doorstep and immediately initiated a custody battle for Mary. Frank fought back, but the fact that he didn't have the means to afford health insurance or a home in which Mary had her own room, much less the kind of education Mary needed at her level, put him at a serious disadvantage. Rather than risk losing her to Evelyn entirely, they settled on a fostering situation, where Mary would live with a mutually agreed upon family until she was twelve years old, at which time she could go to court and choose who she wanted to live with.

However, being taken from the man who was essentially her parent was as traumatizing to Mary as it would be to any little girl, genius or not. She didn't want to see Frank after he left her there, until one day Bonnie sent him a photo of a flyer from a local cat shelter for Mary's monocular cat Fred. Evelyn being allergic to cats, Frank realized she was living in the foster family's guest house against their agreement. He went to take Mary home, and he brought leverage: the Navier-Stokes proof, which Evelyn (and the rest of the world) had believed to still be unsolved before her death. She had given it to Frank with instructions not to publish it until after their mother's death. The ultimatum Frank gave her was that Evelyn could have the proof now and dedicate the next few years of her life to defending it (thus allowing her no time for Mary), or it would stay with Frank until Evelyn's death. She chose the proof, and Frank took Mary home. He kept her in school, but began the process of easing them both back into the world of higher education, allowing Mary to take advanced college courses and himself to dip his toes back into philosophy.

WHAT ARE YOUR CHARACTER'S STRENGTHS?: Frank is an enormously thoughtful man, and this ties into the field he chose to study. His interest in philosophy isn't just academic, but as a mechanism to express his beliefs and choices. He's entirely and deliberately removed himself from that institution as he's raised Mary, but it's still part of his worldview, and the lessons he tries to teach her stem from the way he's trained himself to process his own experiences and therefore have quite the philosophical bent while still being deeply personal. Thus he's not prone to being reactive, but to a considered, world-weary sort of compassion.

He's also thoughtful in the sense of possessing this compassion and empathy. It would have been very easy for him to grow up a bitter kid, surrounded by great minds, so much of his mother's attention reserved for Diane. Instead his experiences with his family have made him acutely aware of the cost of greatness, and he directed that to being his sister's best friend and co-conspirator and then, after her death, raising her daughter in the way he believed Diane would have wanted, to be happy and compassionate herself. No small task with a child orders of magnitude smarter than other kids her age.

WHAT ARE YOUR CHARACTER'S WEAKNESSES?: Frank's guilt over his sister's death and his fear of Mary sharing her fate are intrinsically linked. Speaking about Diane, he says, "There's no way I could've known, but... I should've known." Holding himself responsible for her death extends to his responsibility for Mary and not trusting himself to be good for her. His self-imposed exile to Florida with Mary in tow, quitting his career entirely for something not remotely connected to academia — it's hard to say whether these things were for Mary or for him, and whether he's able to tell the difference. It leads to a huge vulnerability in his case when his custody of Mary is called into question, and his own fear over the answer to that question is what makes him voluntarily give her up.

WHAT EVENTS OR CIRCUMSTANCES IN YOUR CHARACTER'S PAST HAVE IMPACTED THEM THE MOST?: His sister's suicide undoubtedly changed his life. While their childhood was difficult and complicated in a way that would impact the choices he made after her death, it was Diane's loss that brought those issues to the forefront of Frank's life. Before that, he was a professor of philosophy at Boston University, living a bachelor's life. Afterward, he was a man raising a baby in a different state, getting by in a much less lucrative job to support them, all conscious choices he made in light of his sister's death. While Mary herself changed his life — became his life — Frank wouldn't have made those choices were it not for the way in which she came to him.

WHAT MOTIVATES YOUR CHARACTER?: He wants Mary to be happy and have a normal life, and he doesn't have much of a life of his own to this end. There's a certain amount of penance in this as well, but he also tells Bonnie that part of the reason he kept Mary instead of finding a better home for her in the first place was simply that he fell in love with her. This ultimately goes beyond guilt and fear and is the reason he goes back for Mary in the end.

WHAT IMPRESSION DO OTHERS TEND TO HAVE OF YOUR CHARACTER?: The words "quiet damaged hot guy" are used at one point. So there's that.

Frank pretty much exudes blue collar. He's attractive but clearly gets sun, his clothes and hands are constantly stained from his work, and he generally keeps to himself. He also looks tired all the time, under the eyes and in demeanor.

IN WHAT WAYS DOES THAT IMPRESSION DIFFER FROM WHO YOUR CHARACTER REALLY IS?: He does very little to dissuade this impression, because to an extent it's a skin he's comfortable in and has made his own. The exhaustion is entirely unfeigned, the result of constantly working to support a particularly high-maintenance child. But it also doesn't take long into getting to know him to get an inkling of the highly educated man that he really is.

HOW DOES YOUR CHARACTER HANDLE CRISIS OR ADVERSITY?: Self doubt and self-flagellation. He's pretty resolute in his beliefs about what's best for Mary, but when put to the test through, admittedly, a healthy dose of adversity, he loses his confidence that he's the best person to give it to her. This is very much tied to his guilt over Diane: he's at least part of the reason Mary no longer has a mother. In his attempt to protect her from the other half of that equation, he cut both of them off from the resources for her gifts. Or so the thinking went.

Also, leaning against walls and sighing.

WHICH 5 THINGS WILL YOUR CHARACTER REMEMBER UPON ARRIVAL, AND WHY DID YOU CHOOSE THEM?:

• He's Mary's parent. (She's the most important thing in his life and not remembering her at all would be too traumatizing for him. He won't know in what capacity he's her parent, however, and will likely assume father. Gotta twist the knife a little, you know.)
• He knows how to repair a boat. (And he's pretty good at it, which is weird, because there are no large bodies of water or, well, boats around.)
• He doesn't like cats but he likes Fred. (Because Fred is important.)
• Mary stays with their neighbor on Friday nights/Saturday mornings. (To keep the tradition of his weekly Frank time alive and help him build CR.)
• The Trachtenberg Method and learning it in his childhood. (So he won't think too much of it at first when Mary starts being able to calculate large sums.)

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU FEEL WE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER?: He needs sleep.


SKILLS, ABILITIES, & PHYSICAL WEAKNESSES: He's a very intelligent, educated guy with specialized knowledge in philosophy and, uh, boats. He's strong and has been known to hold his own in a bar fight. Other than that he's a squishy, squishable human.

INVENTORY:

• Fred
• A once-white, now-stained, short-sleeved henley
• Stained jeans
• Stained boots
• René Descartes' "Discourse on Method"

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