sympathy, tenderness, strangers to my life
P L A Y E R
☓ Name: Hilda
☓ Personal journal: starsandtildes
☓ Age: 24
☓ Other characters in The Devils See: n/a
☓ Email: palastinalied@gmail.com
☓ AIM/MSN/Yahoo! Messenger: aim: frilly betches, plurk: juchecouture
C H A R A C T E R
☓ Name: Thomas MacLaine
☓ Series: Deadly Premonition
☓ Reference: Wikipedia page for the canon
Fan wiki page on the character
☓ Canon point: During York’s premonition in Thomas and Carol’s apartment
☓ Age: 28
[major spoilers below, including the identity of the Raincoat Killer]
☓ Personality: Despite his position as a high-ranking sheriff’s deputy, Thomas seems like the least likely cop imaginable. At his introduction, when York, a visiting FBI agent, first meets him, he's mild-mannered, apologetic, and rather nervous, as if he’s far out of his depth in law enforcement. Unlike George, the decidedly unimpressed town sheriff, and Emily, the deputy who bickers with York from the moment she meets him, Thomas seems eager to impress the sophisticated visitor from the outside world and possibly the only person who will be at all willing to cooperate with the feds.
Second and third and fourth impressions only deepen those initial impressions. Thomas openly panics in situations that in his position require a cool head, from terror at his car nearly being run off the road to vomiting at witnessing his friend Becky’s murder scene, and the very best he can muster up is “barely functional”. When conflict arises, he either avoids it or submits, taking shit from George with a shy “thank you sir may I have another” attitude and making York bounce customers from his sister Carol’s bar Galaxy of Terror instead of handling it himself. He’s at his best working internally as the department archivist and chef, and though he’s very self-effacing and modest, praise for his culinary skill, especially, means a lot to him. Even when he's at ease, though, he carries himself in a tightly wound and almost prissy way, still frequently wearing his deputy uniform I know it’s probably just model limitations but who curr? no1.
Thomas isn’t naturally quite that twitchy, though. He has a hell of a lot to hide. Since he was a high school kid, he’s been in love with George, who encouraged the attachment and set him up as one of the ~ladies~ in the creepy sex club he keeps in Galaxy of Terror’s basement, but seems to only see him as a substitute for Carol. He doesn’t seem to resent this, but what he can’t handle? Carol is a substitute for Emily, who George is obsessed with even more than Thomas is obsessed with him. To Thomas, it’s her fault, because no one he loves can do wrong. He unfairly sees Emily as a skanky “city girl”, but since he works with her, he’s repressing his jealousy of her for years.
In fact, whenever he’s unfairly treated or feels like he is, he represses his consciousness of it and sublimates it into pleasing others. Carol’s a hard bitch who doesn’t seem to like anyone at all ever, but he runs her bar and he’s the only one comforting her when one of her friends is murdered. George, well, George is a lot of things, including a douche, but Thomas has carved out a niche as the department waifu and will do ~anything~ for him, no matter how degrading (we never do hear the story about the “love G” tattoo Thomas has, but it’s hideous and possibly homemade) or terrible.
Including being an accessory to murder. George is also the serial killer who York is in town to investigate and has so far murdered three victims, and Thomas knows this: the victims are all girls in the sex club, and the state they’re found in is based on an obscure urban legend Thomas told George about. He's prepared to sacrifice his own reputation and even life to keep suspicion away from the actual murderer, and kidnaps York and attempts to kill Emily in seems to have been an attempt to get arrested as the Raincoat Killer. He’s a fatalist, though, and probably knows this will be as ineffective as it turns out to be, though he also believes that his sacrifice is inevitable. When he leaves York tied up under the town auditorium, his last words to him are about how he can’t change what is going to happen to either of them, and that York’s fate isn’t his own, but in the hands of whoever next opens the door to the room they’re in.
The game shows him taking on another persona when those darker aspects - his obsession and need to sacrifice himself - come out. He’s dressed as a woman, in the same style as Carol dresses, and also acts a lot like Carol. Directorial word is that Psycho was a heavy influence on Deadly Premonition, so I think the crossdressing is a reference to Norman Bates dressing as his mother: more of an attempt to capture Carol’s strength than anything to do with gender issues. The people he loves the most are confident and driven, and the desire to emulate them is what attracts him to them more than anything. shit, there’s no other reason he’d have become a cop I can see it becoming a defense mechanism in this setting
Poor guy only wants peace and quiet: he’d rather dance to his jazz collection or smoke ham in his backyard that deal with the horrors dragging him down, and he seems most himself outside of work. He believes his dying or being arrested is fate, but if not, he’d have taken York’s advice to flee with Carol and open up a bar or a diner somewhere no one knows them. He also straight out tells York that he wishes he’d met “someone like you” instead of what he had: a strong, confident guy who protects the people he loves.
Basically, he’s been screwed over by the world and doesn’t have the tools to unscrew himself.
☓ Abilities: No superpowers here, but there is one thing Thomas is good at: he’s an amazing cook and has experience cooking for large numbers of people at both of his jobs. To be honest, he’s much more suited to running a dining establishment than being a police officer.
☓ Weaknesses: Thomas is a terrible cop, getting sick at the sight of human blood and the horrific crime scenes he’s been confronting recently, and he can barely focus when it’s time to get serious. He’s neither physically courageous - his last crazy acts immediately after canonpoint were fueled by rage and fear rather than anything natural to him - nor particularly strong, and will be dependent on others if in physical danger.
On a mental level, he’s easily manipulated, especially by men, and can be persuaded to do some pretty terrible stuff if he’s convinced it’s in their or his interest to get it done.
He also has a terrible phobia of dogs. Dog or wolf monsters? He’ll be lucky if he can even run from them.
☓ Strengths: He’s actually useful outside of a fight. While Thomas’s loyalty is double-edged, he makes the worst aspects of it cut him rather than the people he tries to help: he’ll suffer a lot rather than let them hurt. He seems incompetent but he’s really effective at what dangerous things he can do - the kind of skulduggery you’d only trust a quiet, unobtrusive, trustworthy guy with - as long as someone’s there to back him up if shit gets real.
He’s also super organized. While his methods can be too obscure for other people to understand at times (for instance, his filing system depends on a set of nearly-identical keychains only he can tell the differences between), he knows exactly where everything is and can provide you with exactly what you asked for. Just give him a minute, okay?
Also even though he’s mostly a pacifist he does remember his firearms training. He’s… not the best, but not a danger to himself or others. Though not particularly to the monsters, either.
☓ Intranet post sample: [voice] Hello, this is Thomas again. I don’t want to ask for too much right now, since so many people are recovering from that last attack, but… I don’t know kung fu - it’d probably be kung fu here, right? - or anything like that. When the monsters attack, I don’t feel like I’m pulling my weight. Does anyone have time to teach me between patrols? I promise I’ll make it worth your time. I’ll be able to protect myself, and you can stop by anytime you like when I’m working and I’ll make sure you can have your fill.
☓ Log post sample: When he first wakes up, Thomas thinks he's face-down in the shower. The last thing he remembers is getting everything together so he could get ready and did he fall and drown and is he dead.
That wouldn't be that bad, since if he is dead, everything is over and no matter how hard he fights he can’t change the future. He doesn’t have to be afraid anymore, sick with anticipation over just when Agent York’s going to find out and find him, and what steps he’ll have to take next to make sure no one finds out about -
When he gags on the salt water and a chunk of something fluttering in his throat, he realizes he’s still breathing. Not dead, then, but the coughs racking him are making his head ache and when he pushes himself up, he winces at the jar in his neck. No open wounds, but he’s bruised all over his head and caked in sand and still half-dressed.
And on a beach, or so he thinks when he finds his glasses almost crushed in his hand. The lakeshore is all stones, so he’s out at the coast. Did he finally reach the point where he couldn’t take it and ran and… best not to think too hard about that.
But the only other option is someone left him here. Maybe they thought he was dead. They’d tried to kill him and dumped his body into the ocean, maybe to get him out of the way for…
For what? He can’t imagine Carol doing that her own brother. He’s not the one who’s a threat to her love. And as bad as he is at everything, he’s not a risk to him. He’s been doing everything he can to take suspicion off of him, and he has to know that, right? He has to.
But, and his stomach drops when he thinks of it, they’re the only ones who knew where you’ve been hiding.
He scrapes the sand off his face and heads up the beach to a path into the woods. Maybe his car will be there.
☓ Name: Hilda
☓ Personal journal: starsandtildes
☓ Age: 24
☓ Other characters in The Devils See: n/a
☓ Email: palastinalied@gmail.com
☓ AIM/MSN/Yahoo! Messenger: aim: frilly betches, plurk: juchecouture
C H A R A C T E R
☓ Name: Thomas MacLaine
☓ Series: Deadly Premonition
☓ Reference: Wikipedia page for the canon
Fan wiki page on the character
☓ Canon point: During York’s premonition in Thomas and Carol’s apartment
☓ Age: 28
[major spoilers below, including the identity of the Raincoat Killer]
☓ Personality: Despite his position as a high-ranking sheriff’s deputy, Thomas seems like the least likely cop imaginable. At his introduction, when York, a visiting FBI agent, first meets him, he's mild-mannered, apologetic, and rather nervous, as if he’s far out of his depth in law enforcement. Unlike George, the decidedly unimpressed town sheriff, and Emily, the deputy who bickers with York from the moment she meets him, Thomas seems eager to impress the sophisticated visitor from the outside world and possibly the only person who will be at all willing to cooperate with the feds.
Second and third and fourth impressions only deepen those initial impressions. Thomas openly panics in situations that in his position require a cool head, from terror at his car nearly being run off the road to vomiting at witnessing his friend Becky’s murder scene, and the very best he can muster up is “barely functional”. When conflict arises, he either avoids it or submits, taking shit from George with a shy “thank you sir may I have another” attitude and making York bounce customers from his sister Carol’s bar Galaxy of Terror instead of handling it himself. He’s at his best working internally as the department archivist and chef, and though he’s very self-effacing and modest, praise for his culinary skill, especially, means a lot to him. Even when he's at ease, though, he carries himself in a tightly wound and almost prissy way, still frequently wearing his deputy uniform I know it’s probably just model limitations but who curr? no1.
Thomas isn’t naturally quite that twitchy, though. He has a hell of a lot to hide. Since he was a high school kid, he’s been in love with George, who encouraged the attachment and set him up as one of the ~ladies~ in the creepy sex club he keeps in Galaxy of Terror’s basement, but seems to only see him as a substitute for Carol. He doesn’t seem to resent this, but what he can’t handle? Carol is a substitute for Emily, who George is obsessed with even more than Thomas is obsessed with him. To Thomas, it’s her fault, because no one he loves can do wrong. He unfairly sees Emily as a skanky “city girl”, but since he works with her, he’s repressing his jealousy of her for years.
In fact, whenever he’s unfairly treated or feels like he is, he represses his consciousness of it and sublimates it into pleasing others. Carol’s a hard bitch who doesn’t seem to like anyone at all ever, but he runs her bar and he’s the only one comforting her when one of her friends is murdered. George, well, George is a lot of things, including a douche, but Thomas has carved out a niche as the department waifu and will do ~anything~ for him, no matter how degrading (we never do hear the story about the “love G” tattoo Thomas has, but it’s hideous and possibly homemade) or terrible.
Including being an accessory to murder. George is also the serial killer who York is in town to investigate and has so far murdered three victims, and Thomas knows this: the victims are all girls in the sex club, and the state they’re found in is based on an obscure urban legend Thomas told George about. He's prepared to sacrifice his own reputation and even life to keep suspicion away from the actual murderer, and kidnaps York and attempts to kill Emily in seems to have been an attempt to get arrested as the Raincoat Killer. He’s a fatalist, though, and probably knows this will be as ineffective as it turns out to be, though he also believes that his sacrifice is inevitable. When he leaves York tied up under the town auditorium, his last words to him are about how he can’t change what is going to happen to either of them, and that York’s fate isn’t his own, but in the hands of whoever next opens the door to the room they’re in.
The game shows him taking on another persona when those darker aspects - his obsession and need to sacrifice himself - come out. He’s dressed as a woman, in the same style as Carol dresses, and also acts a lot like Carol. Directorial word is that Psycho was a heavy influence on Deadly Premonition, so I think the crossdressing is a reference to Norman Bates dressing as his mother: more of an attempt to capture Carol’s strength than anything to do with gender issues. The people he loves the most are confident and driven, and the desire to emulate them is what attracts him to them more than anything. shit, there’s no other reason he’d have become a cop I can see it becoming a defense mechanism in this setting
Poor guy only wants peace and quiet: he’d rather dance to his jazz collection or smoke ham in his backyard that deal with the horrors dragging him down, and he seems most himself outside of work. He believes his dying or being arrested is fate, but if not, he’d have taken York’s advice to flee with Carol and open up a bar or a diner somewhere no one knows them. He also straight out tells York that he wishes he’d met “someone like you” instead of what he had: a strong, confident guy who protects the people he loves.
Basically, he’s been screwed over by the world and doesn’t have the tools to unscrew himself.
☓ Abilities: No superpowers here, but there is one thing Thomas is good at: he’s an amazing cook and has experience cooking for large numbers of people at both of his jobs. To be honest, he’s much more suited to running a dining establishment than being a police officer.
☓ Weaknesses: Thomas is a terrible cop, getting sick at the sight of human blood and the horrific crime scenes he’s been confronting recently, and he can barely focus when it’s time to get serious. He’s neither physically courageous - his last crazy acts immediately after canonpoint were fueled by rage and fear rather than anything natural to him - nor particularly strong, and will be dependent on others if in physical danger.
On a mental level, he’s easily manipulated, especially by men, and can be persuaded to do some pretty terrible stuff if he’s convinced it’s in their or his interest to get it done.
He also has a terrible phobia of dogs. Dog or wolf monsters? He’ll be lucky if he can even run from them.
☓ Strengths: He’s actually useful outside of a fight. While Thomas’s loyalty is double-edged, he makes the worst aspects of it cut him rather than the people he tries to help: he’ll suffer a lot rather than let them hurt. He seems incompetent but he’s really effective at what dangerous things he can do - the kind of skulduggery you’d only trust a quiet, unobtrusive, trustworthy guy with - as long as someone’s there to back him up if shit gets real.
He’s also super organized. While his methods can be too obscure for other people to understand at times (for instance, his filing system depends on a set of nearly-identical keychains only he can tell the differences between), he knows exactly where everything is and can provide you with exactly what you asked for. Just give him a minute, okay?
Also even though he’s mostly a pacifist he does remember his firearms training. He’s… not the best, but not a danger to himself or others. Though not particularly to the monsters, either.
☓ Intranet post sample: [voice] Hello, this is Thomas again. I don’t want to ask for too much right now, since so many people are recovering from that last attack, but… I don’t know kung fu - it’d probably be kung fu here, right? - or anything like that. When the monsters attack, I don’t feel like I’m pulling my weight. Does anyone have time to teach me between patrols? I promise I’ll make it worth your time. I’ll be able to protect myself, and you can stop by anytime you like when I’m working and I’ll make sure you can have your fill.
☓ Log post sample: When he first wakes up, Thomas thinks he's face-down in the shower. The last thing he remembers is getting everything together so he could get ready and did he fall and drown and is he dead.
That wouldn't be that bad, since if he is dead, everything is over and no matter how hard he fights he can’t change the future. He doesn’t have to be afraid anymore, sick with anticipation over just when Agent York’s going to find out and find him, and what steps he’ll have to take next to make sure no one finds out about -
When he gags on the salt water and a chunk of something fluttering in his throat, he realizes he’s still breathing. Not dead, then, but the coughs racking him are making his head ache and when he pushes himself up, he winces at the jar in his neck. No open wounds, but he’s bruised all over his head and caked in sand and still half-dressed.
And on a beach, or so he thinks when he finds his glasses almost crushed in his hand. The lakeshore is all stones, so he’s out at the coast. Did he finally reach the point where he couldn’t take it and ran and… best not to think too hard about that.
But the only other option is someone left him here. Maybe they thought he was dead. They’d tried to kill him and dumped his body into the ocean, maybe to get him out of the way for…
For what? He can’t imagine Carol doing that her own brother. He’s not the one who’s a threat to her love. And as bad as he is at everything, he’s not a risk to him. He’s been doing everything he can to take suspicion off of him, and he has to know that, right? He has to.
But, and his stomach drops when he thinks of it, they’re the only ones who knew where you’ve been hiding.
He scrapes the sand off his face and heads up the beach to a path into the woods. Maybe his car will be there.