𝙸𝙽𝙵𝙾𝚁𝙼𝙰𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽

[unjustifiable]

THE BASICS

NAME. JAMES SUNDERLAND
AGE. 29 (OG), 30s (REMAKE)
HAIR. BLOND
EYES. HAZEL
HEIGHT. UNREMARKABLE
BUILD. AVERAGE

SETTING. MAINE, USA. 1994.
CANON. SILENT HILL 2
WIKI. HERE

OOC INFO

NAME. E. C.
TIMEZONE. GMT -6
CONTACT. VIVISECTOR @ PLURK or pm

BIOGRAPHY

CW: terminal illness, death of a spouse. For a full list of content warnings, click here.

He never meant for it to turn out this way.
He just couldn't watch her suffer.
He has no one to blame but himself.

James Sunderland only ever wanted a normal life. He married his sweetheart, Mary, and settled down to plan a white-picket-fence future: house, kids, grandkids. Those hopes died when Mary got sick. She never got better. Terminal, the doctors said.

James spent the next three years trying and failing to cope with his situation. He muddled through life in a grief-stricken fugue until the day he received a letter written in Mary's hand. The letter beckoned him to their "special place:" a resort town called Silent Hill. He and Mary had once made happy memories there.

He returned to find a warped reflection of the town he remembered. As he searched for answers, his recollection of the events surrounding Mary's death slowly began to unravel. The further he ventured into the town's nightmarish depths, the closer he came to facing the truth. ■

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

At first blush, James comes off as affable enough. Though introverted and reserved, he can maintain a façade of normalcy during superficial interactions. If the conversation goes beyond small talk, then the cracks in his mask will likely begin to show through. He has trouble maintaining eye contact, and his blunted affect causes him to come off as distant, even dissociated — as though he were just going through the motions of conversation and reciting the lines that he thinks he's "supposed" to say. ■

PERSONALITY

James is a man of many defense mechanisms. The most prominent of these is denial. He will go to great lengths to avoid confronting painful emotions and situations. These avoidant tendencies sometimes manifest in the form of callous – even cruel – behavior. Mired in repression and shame, he tends to avoid self-reflection whenever possible. He has trouble recognizing and expressing his feelings, often to the detriment of his relationships with others.

His reflexive response to conflict is to shut down and withdraw. While normally passive if antagonized, he's prone to occasional angry outbursts that are both unpredictable and seemingly irrational. He prefers to avoid talking about himself in detail, and he usually deflects or outright ignores prying questions. In spite (or because?) of his efforts to keep other people at arm's length, he is an intensely lonely man.

At his core, James believes that he is a fundamentally bad and irredeemable person. He has some fairly compelling reasons for feeling this way. Nevertheless, he's capable of greater selflessness and courage than his shortcomings might suggest. He feels protective of those who can't defend themselves, especially children, and he's willing to put his life on the line for them. However, this altruistic streak tends to falter when it's time for emotional heavy-lifting. He'll fight a monster for you, but he won't go to therapy with you. ■

CANON POINT & ENDING

I default to a late-game or post-game canon point, with James having already watched a certain video tape and learned the truth about Mary's death. I portray James as being on a trajectory to get the Leave ending. I incorporate both the original and remake canons into my portrayal, but I usually default to the original whenever the two directly contradict. ■

CODING