𝙿𝙴𝚁𝙼𝙸𝚂𝚂𝙸𝙾𝙽𝚂

IF YOU REALLY WANT TO SEE MARY, YOU SHOULD JUST DIE.
BUT YOU MIGHT BE HEADING TO A DIFFERENT PLACE THAN MARY, JAMES.

LOOKING FOR

Angst and tragedy. Explorations of guilt, redemption, and what it means to carry that weight. Damaged people making each other better (or worse). Anyone patient enough to put up with the world's saddest sad sack as he unpacks years of repression and guilt. Anyone brutally honest enough to tell him to get the fuck over it. Unscrupulous characters who'd like to take advantage of a man at his lowest point. Other bereaved people to commiserate with (at least until certain facts come to light...). Horror scenarios of all kinds.

Cross-canon, cross-medium, and OC friendly. Characters from Resident Evil, Dead by Daylight, and other horror canons are loved. Note that the above list is non-exhaustive, and I'm generally happy to make something work even if I'm not familiar with the canon. Since Silent Hill's brand of horror is fairly grounded and psychological, I can easily insert James into AUs with no supernatural elements. I'm also willing to nudge his timeline earlier or later (anything from the '70s to the present day, give or take).

OOC PERMISSIONS

■ PACE. Variable depending on RL responsibilities, but I try to get back to tags within a few days at the most. It's always okay to let me know if you'd like to handwave or continue something.
■ STYLE. Default to brackets, but I'll switch to prose if preferred.
■ BACKTAGGING. Always!
■ THREADHOPPING. With discussion.
■ FOURTHWALLING. No.
■ CONTACT. VIVISECTOR @ Plurk or PM.

IC PERMISSIONS

■ FLIRTING. Go for it, but expect anything from a complete nonreaction to confusion/annoyance. If he's into it, he'll likely get flustered.

■ PHYSICAL AFFECTION. Sure, with the caveat that James is simultaneously touch-starved and touch-averse, so don't expect him to react like a well-adjusted person would. He'll probably freeze up or pull away unless he trusts the other character. With significant CR, he may clumsily attempt to reciprocate.

■ PHYSICAL VIOLENCE. Absolutely. Rest assured that he deserves it. Note that drawn-out fight scenes are not my strong suit, so please give me a heads up if you want to go in that direction. James is not a trained fighter, but he can defend himself if pressed.

■ SHIPPING & SMUT. Okay with both, but it's not expected or required. Preference for M/M, but I will also write M/F and M/NB. I'm open to shipping James with most of the the Silent Hill cast, excluding Alessa, Angela, Laura, and Heather (though I'm happy to have platonic CR with these characters). I'm very much down for cross-canon ships as well. Not interested in shipping or sexual content involving any characters under the age of 18. Kinks listed here.

Note that James carries a great deal of emotional baggage from his marriage and is still in the process of grieving, so any relationship will be extremely slow burn. I should also note that James is from the '90s, and while I don't view him as especially homophobic for the time period, it's a safe bet that any potential same-sex relationship will come with some gay panic of the 'but we're both men!!!' variety.

■ POWERS & ABILITIES. None. Normal human. He has no means of defending himself against mind-reading/mind-control/etc, but he will react extremely poorly if any such abilities are used on him without his consent.

■ OFFENSIVE SUBJECTS. Illness, dead loved ones, any accusation that he wanted his wife out of the way or is glad that she's gone.

CODE BY

𝙸𝙽𝙵𝙾𝚁𝙼𝙰𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽

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