second verse, same as...
Mar. 25th, 2013 12:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meanstwinUser Name/Nick: Hilda
User DW: none
AIM/IM: on file
E-mail: on file
Other Characters: Lua, Touko/Syo
Character Name: Thomas MacLaine
Series: Deadly Premonition
Age: 28
From When?: Chapter 21//”Cat fight”
Inmate/Warden: Inmate. Thomas used his position as head of records at the town sheriff’s office to cover up a series of murders his boyfriend committed. When that failed, he kidnapped a federal agent and used him as bait to get a fellow officer into a position where he could murder her, both to throw suspicion onto himself and because he had been frustrated with her very existence ever since she attracted his boyfriend’s attention.
cw: discussion of canon fail about gender and sexuality issues and canon sexual abuse of minors.
Abilities/Powers: No extraordinary mental or physical abilities, however, Thomas is a fantastic cook and bartender and great at organizing information (though less so at making it accessible for others without his guidance).
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 make him seem more incompetent. Thomas openly panics in situations that in his position require a cool head and the very best he can muster up at those times is “barely functional”. When conflict arises, he either avoids it or rolls over. He’s at his best at office work, doubling as the Greenvale Sheriff's Department's archivist and chef, and though he’s very self-effacing and modest, praise for his culinary skill, especially, means a lot to him. Poor guy only wants peace and quiet: he’d rather relax to his jazz collection or smoke ham in his backyard than deal with the horrors dragging him down. He seems most himself outside of work, when you see him chilling out in his apartment or working behind the counter at his sister Carol’s bar. Even when he's at ease, though, he carries himself in a tightly wound and almost prissy way, like he’s hiding something.
Which is true – he’s not quite as nervous and incompetent as he seems. On a second run around canon, his behavior around his co-workers is colored by the viewer knowing that since he was a high school kid, he and Carol both have been in under-the-table sexual relationships with George, who’s an emotionally abusive douche and treats both Thomas and Carol as replacements for Emily (the only woman who’s turned him down). Emily’s a comparative outsider, having come to Greenvale from Seattle as a high schooler, and Thomas feels like she’s a threat to the way things have been - have to be - in his life. Thomas is also a member of the BDSM club Carol runs in her basementsurprisingly there doesn’t seem to be any incest going on here, which is more of an excuse for George to get his creep on with much younger people hopped up on exotic substances, and while everything's among consenting adults it isn't the kind of thing you would want getting out about yourself in a conservative town in eastern Washington.
Whenever he’s unfairly treated or feels like he is, he represses his consciousness of that feeling and sublimates it into pleasing others. Carol’s a hard bitch who doesn’t seem to like anyone at all ever, but he works hard at her bar and he’s the only one to comfort her when one of her friends is murdered. George, well, George is a misogynist creepster who tries to put Thomas in a submissive, feminine role because of a need for power, but Thomas will do anything for him (another thing not to ask about: the cholo-style tattoo he has declaring his love for George).
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, where murdering four women in a particular way will make the killer immortal (it’s not clear, but Carol may also have been involved in one of them and Thomas may have known that the club was a honeypot for murder victims). He's prepared to sacrifice his own reputation and even life to keep suspicion away from the actual murderer, partly out of love and partly because he feels responsible. If he hadn’t accidentally given George the idea, he thinks he might not have done it.
But when you feel trapped – and Thomas is stuck in terrible relationships, in a professional role he can’t fill, stuck hiding a dark secret – you act out. There is a lot that “Thomas” can’t do that he wants to, so he has to be someone else when he has to do something “Thomas” would think is icky or wrong (kinky sex he’s pressured into, kidnapping, attempted murder) – Carol. Carol has almost no moral compass and an overpowering personality, and since he doesn’t think he’s enough of a man compared to George or York, both of whom he looks up to, he goes for being a strong woman. When he’s “Carol”, he dresses like her stage persona and tries to take on her pitch and mannerisms. It fits him about as poorly as being a cop does, but he’s trying to do things he “can’t”.
He’s a fatalist, though, so still trapped. He believes his dying or being arrested in an insane plan to throw suspicion onto himself in these murders is inevitable, and even though he can tell it’s going to end badly for himself, he has to try. If he doesn’t, he doesn’t love the people he’s protecting enough.
He knows what’s going on is fucked up, though – at least with George, since it isn't clear if he thinks his relationship with Carol is toxic. York’s offer to let him and Carol go free if Thomas lets him go free from the place he’s imprisoned in is tempts him, and not because it gets him out of the consequences. It’s a way out of his old life, where he and his sister can start over. 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. He wants to be that himself, as his reactions to York telling him that he’s confident Thomas could back him up in a fight suggest (and York is the only person who doesn’t treat him dismissively), but doesn’t believe he can.
Barge Reactions: Thomas would do well on the Barge. He knows that he’s in a terrible situation and that his coping skills are part of the problem, but he has no tools to extricate himself from it. He’d get with the program, stay out of trouble, and very happily make himself useful, though he would probably confuse that with progress. Some of the more dangerous stuff would freak him out, but it would most people. The biggest problem is that he might attach himself to any man who showed himself as an authority and showed confidence in him, which could hold back his progress. But, well… recognizing that is a warden's job. He was here before about a year ago, but since he didn't make any significant progress and most of his CR is gone, I'm just giving him a hard reset. I'll probably even recycle his intro post tbh.
Path to Redemption: Getting Thomas out of his canon environment is actually the biggest step to making him a functioning person. Now that he doesn’t have Carol or George or his need to hate Emily there and holding him back, he can think about himself and who he really is. But just putting him there isn’t going to be enough, since as is he’ll slip into the pattern again. He needs to learn that you don’t constantly keep giving to other people, especially not to someone who hurts you, and that your life is what you make it.
He attaches himself to male authority figures, but I think a male warden would be good for him, because the attachment is something he needs to work through, not just try to avoid. He needs a guide to show him what to do – a guide into emotional independence – and someone like “who he wants to be” would be the most effective with him, especially a man who can show him that he doesn’t have to be just like him. He really needs to learn that it is totally okay for him to not be this strong supermasculine guy, but the 50s housewife with a Y chromosome he is, and that doesn’t mean that he’s less of a person. He has to learn to stop hiding behind the idea of “Carol” when he “needs” to do something he’s supposed to think is wrong, and either take care of what he wants on his own or, since it involved a lot of felonies, doing the right thing instead.
History: A reasonably accurate and comprehensive fan wiki page.
Sample Journal Entry: [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 – would it be kung fu here, right? - or anything like that. When floods like this happen, I don’t feel like I’m pulling my weight. Does anyone have time to teach me?
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.
Sample RP: Thomas doesn’t know why he woke up in his bathroom the first time, no matter how hard he thinks about it. This place likes symbols, so maybe it’s about cleaning him off, washing away everything that had scummed over him since he was… how long has it been, anyway, that he hasn’t felt like this?
But there’s no shower anymore, so that doesn’t really work, does it. He takes stock of everything left as he sits cross-legged on the mat, looking for what’s missing, but half the room’s been cut off and there’s nothing to clean with under the counter. He can see why, just to make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone with it, but to his mind this tile’s disgusting and someone has to take care of it.
Carol would have let it sit a lot longer. The thought still makes him wince, knowing he’s alone here, and who knows how he’s left her. She might have the shower, but not the toilet.
He shakes and bows his head, his laughter almost a whimper, but cuts himself off. She’s in as ridiculous a state as he is now, if it’s true, wondering where it went. It shouldn’t be funny, and if the apartment puts itself back together… that would mean she came here.
She would hate this place. She’s too good for it. She needs help, he knows, but the same help he does. And she won’t take it from a stranger.
If they let him live when he goes back, he has to go to her.
Special Notes: Thomas has a crippling phobia of dogs and was killed in a dog-related accident (though considering that the dog was channeling a Great Old One who knows how accidental this was).
User DW: none
AIM/IM: on file
E-mail: on file
Other Characters: Lua, Touko/Syo
Character Name: Thomas MacLaine
Series: Deadly Premonition
Age: 28
From When?: Chapter 21//”Cat fight”
Inmate/Warden: Inmate. Thomas used his position as head of records at the town sheriff’s office to cover up a series of murders his boyfriend committed. When that failed, he kidnapped a federal agent and used him as bait to get a fellow officer into a position where he could murder her, both to throw suspicion onto himself and because he had been frustrated with her very existence ever since she attracted his boyfriend’s attention.
cw: discussion of canon fail about gender and sexuality issues and canon sexual abuse of minors.
Abilities/Powers: No extraordinary mental or physical abilities, however, Thomas is a fantastic cook and bartender and great at organizing information (though less so at making it accessible for others without his guidance).
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 make him seem more incompetent. Thomas openly panics in situations that in his position require a cool head and the very best he can muster up at those times is “barely functional”. When conflict arises, he either avoids it or rolls over. He’s at his best at office work, doubling as the Greenvale Sheriff's Department's archivist and chef, and though he’s very self-effacing and modest, praise for his culinary skill, especially, means a lot to him. Poor guy only wants peace and quiet: he’d rather relax to his jazz collection or smoke ham in his backyard than deal with the horrors dragging him down. He seems most himself outside of work, when you see him chilling out in his apartment or working behind the counter at his sister Carol’s bar. Even when he's at ease, though, he carries himself in a tightly wound and almost prissy way, like he’s hiding something.
Which is true – he’s not quite as nervous and incompetent as he seems. On a second run around canon, his behavior around his co-workers is colored by the viewer knowing that since he was a high school kid, he and Carol both have been in under-the-table sexual relationships with George, who’s an emotionally abusive douche and treats both Thomas and Carol as replacements for Emily (the only woman who’s turned him down). Emily’s a comparative outsider, having come to Greenvale from Seattle as a high schooler, and Thomas feels like she’s a threat to the way things have been - have to be - in his life. Thomas is also a member of the BDSM club Carol runs in her basement
Whenever he’s unfairly treated or feels like he is, he represses his consciousness of that feeling and sublimates it into pleasing others. Carol’s a hard bitch who doesn’t seem to like anyone at all ever, but he works hard at her bar and he’s the only one to comfort her when one of her friends is murdered. George, well, George is a misogynist creepster who tries to put Thomas in a submissive, feminine role because of a need for power, but Thomas will do anything for him (another thing not to ask about: the cholo-style tattoo he has declaring his love for George).
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, where murdering four women in a particular way will make the killer immortal (it’s not clear, but Carol may also have been involved in one of them and Thomas may have known that the club was a honeypot for murder victims). He's prepared to sacrifice his own reputation and even life to keep suspicion away from the actual murderer, partly out of love and partly because he feels responsible. If he hadn’t accidentally given George the idea, he thinks he might not have done it.
But when you feel trapped – and Thomas is stuck in terrible relationships, in a professional role he can’t fill, stuck hiding a dark secret – you act out. There is a lot that “Thomas” can’t do that he wants to, so he has to be someone else when he has to do something “Thomas” would think is icky or wrong (kinky sex he’s pressured into, kidnapping, attempted murder) – Carol. Carol has almost no moral compass and an overpowering personality, and since he doesn’t think he’s enough of a man compared to George or York, both of whom he looks up to, he goes for being a strong woman. When he’s “Carol”, he dresses like her stage persona and tries to take on her pitch and mannerisms. It fits him about as poorly as being a cop does, but he’s trying to do things he “can’t”.
He’s a fatalist, though, so still trapped. He believes his dying or being arrested in an insane plan to throw suspicion onto himself in these murders is inevitable, and even though he can tell it’s going to end badly for himself, he has to try. If he doesn’t, he doesn’t love the people he’s protecting enough.
He knows what’s going on is fucked up, though – at least with George, since it isn't clear if he thinks his relationship with Carol is toxic. York’s offer to let him and Carol go free if Thomas lets him go free from the place he’s imprisoned in is tempts him, and not because it gets him out of the consequences. It’s a way out of his old life, where he and his sister can start over. 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. He wants to be that himself, as his reactions to York telling him that he’s confident Thomas could back him up in a fight suggest (and York is the only person who doesn’t treat him dismissively), but doesn’t believe he can.
Barge Reactions: Thomas would do well on the Barge. He knows that he’s in a terrible situation and that his coping skills are part of the problem, but he has no tools to extricate himself from it. He’d get with the program, stay out of trouble, and very happily make himself useful, though he would probably confuse that with progress. Some of the more dangerous stuff would freak him out, but it would most people. The biggest problem is that he might attach himself to any man who showed himself as an authority and showed confidence in him, which could hold back his progress. But, well… recognizing that is a warden's job. He was here before about a year ago, but since he didn't make any significant progress and most of his CR is gone, I'm just giving him a hard reset. I'll probably even recycle his intro post tbh.
Path to Redemption: Getting Thomas out of his canon environment is actually the biggest step to making him a functioning person. Now that he doesn’t have Carol or George or his need to hate Emily there and holding him back, he can think about himself and who he really is. But just putting him there isn’t going to be enough, since as is he’ll slip into the pattern again. He needs to learn that you don’t constantly keep giving to other people, especially not to someone who hurts you, and that your life is what you make it.
He attaches himself to male authority figures, but I think a male warden would be good for him, because the attachment is something he needs to work through, not just try to avoid. He needs a guide to show him what to do – a guide into emotional independence – and someone like “who he wants to be” would be the most effective with him, especially a man who can show him that he doesn’t have to be just like him. He really needs to learn that it is totally okay for him to not be this strong supermasculine guy, but the 50s housewife with a Y chromosome he is, and that doesn’t mean that he’s less of a person. He has to learn to stop hiding behind the idea of “Carol” when he “needs” to do something he’s supposed to think is wrong, and either take care of what he wants on his own or, since it involved a lot of felonies, doing the right thing instead.
History: A reasonably accurate and comprehensive fan wiki page.
Sample Journal Entry: [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 – would it be kung fu here, right? - or anything like that. When floods like this happen, I don’t feel like I’m pulling my weight. Does anyone have time to teach me?
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.
Sample RP: Thomas doesn’t know why he woke up in his bathroom the first time, no matter how hard he thinks about it. This place likes symbols, so maybe it’s about cleaning him off, washing away everything that had scummed over him since he was… how long has it been, anyway, that he hasn’t felt like this?
But there’s no shower anymore, so that doesn’t really work, does it. He takes stock of everything left as he sits cross-legged on the mat, looking for what’s missing, but half the room’s been cut off and there’s nothing to clean with under the counter. He can see why, just to make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone with it, but to his mind this tile’s disgusting and someone has to take care of it.
Carol would have let it sit a lot longer. The thought still makes him wince, knowing he’s alone here, and who knows how he’s left her. She might have the shower, but not the toilet.
He shakes and bows his head, his laughter almost a whimper, but cuts himself off. She’s in as ridiculous a state as he is now, if it’s true, wondering where it went. It shouldn’t be funny, and if the apartment puts itself back together… that would mean she came here.
She would hate this place. She’s too good for it. She needs help, he knows, but the same help he does. And she won’t take it from a stranger.
If they let him live when he goes back, he has to go to her.
Special Notes: Thomas has a crippling phobia of dogs and was killed in a dog-related accident (though considering that the dog was channeling a Great Old One who knows how accidental this was).
