— 𝐚 𝐩 𝐩 𝐥 𝐢 𝐜 𝐚 𝐭 𝐢 𝐨 𝐧

[possessum]

♔ IN CHARACTER

Character Name: Peter Graham
Canon: Hereditary
Canon Point: After jumping through his attic window and hitting the ground outside: specifically, just after Paimon permanently entered his weakened body.

In-Game Tattoo Placement: A pair of large antlers on his stomach, curving around it almost like a cage.
Current Health/Status: Basically;;; Peter will be waking up in Deerington with the consequences of smashing his face into his desk while possessed, and after crashing through a second-story attic window. While any injuries that may have been life-threatening were healed, Peter bears a freshly broken nose, swollen and bloodied. It was seen by a doctor prior to his arrival in Deerington, so he at least has a bandage and splint; it will likely take a few weeks to heal. Worth mentioning is that his face has cuts and bruises from the fall, his left eye is noticeably, unsettlingly, bloodshot, and the rest of him will be very sore and weak for awhile. In general, he is mentally and physically very unwell and that exhaustion is apparent. His dark circles have dark circles...
Age: 16 upon arrival; after two birthdays in Deerington, he is now 18.
Species: Human / host to the demonic entity, Paimon.

Content Warnings: Here.

History: Here.

Personality: Stressed, Depressed, and Demon-Possessed.

On the surface, Peter may seem like the stereotypical teenage male: moody and indifferent towards his family, showing what barely passes as an interest in life only when weed or the pretty girl he's crushing on in his class are involved. There are snippets suggesting that he was involved in things once -- he clearly has a love of music, given the keyboard and guitar propped against the wall of his room. There are other odds and ends telling of his interests: a dart board, an hour glass by the head of his bed, various other knickknacks and objects, a rather nice telescope pointed to the window.

But his room is not the area of someone who has much care for it or his belongings anymore. There are clothes everywhere but the closet, and sometimes he falls asleep in bed without taking his shoes off. Apart from plucking at guitar strings some nights when he's alone in bed, he doesn't actively pursue music anymore. What may seem like cool, laid-back indifference, is actually something else. There are many layers inside the son of the Graham Family, and rather than simply being an "unconcerned teenager", it could be said that he's like water: on the surface, smoothed over and seemingly emotionless in its quiet.

But beneath is everything he's pushed down, and it is only a matter of time before it explodes.

The tendency to swallow everything down in this way is one of the features that defines Peter's self-perception and interaction with the world. His stomach is where it all is stored, felt (and often, not felt). It's here that his guilty conscious lives, quietly most days, but slowly eating at him from the inside. There is his resentment, frustration, and after the death of his sister -- loss and self-loathing, a more relentless sort of guilt.

Peter does not have a healthy relationship with his family, and this is also a defining feature of who he is. While we are introduced to him after his stomach is already weighted with what's been buried down there for years, it could most likely be assumed that he has seen familial dysfunction for the greater part of his life. His mother obstinately kept him away from his grandmother when he was born, and he seems to have little to no emotional attachment to the woman at all; indeed, it seems he never got to know her beyond her status as "grandma". When asked whether he was sad about her passing, he simply laughed a little uncomfortably (and dismissively).

Dysfunction is also evident in his relationship with his closer family. The tension between Peter and his mother is almost a living presence, something felt but not spoken of. It is there in the way they snap at each other, the underhanded remarks and passive aggressiveness Annie displays towards her son. The uncomfortable, perhaps guilty, fear and bitterness that both of them have towards each other. The script of the film takes this into more detail, describing how Peter locks his door when his mother leaves his room -- how he always makes sure that door is shut. The resentment he has towards his mother for her sleepwalking episode (in which she covered him and his little sister with paint thinner and started to light a match.... and perhaps for the fact that severe mental illness supposedly runs on her side of the family, a looming Presence in the back of his mind) is there inside of him, and it grows with each day that passes, each day that it isn't spoken about. The same can be said for the resentment that Annie has towards her son, whom she never truly wanted to have and whom she seems to have a deep-rooted fear of, perhaps knowing on a subconscious level what his fate will be or at least fearing him for the simple fact that her mother wants him for some nefarious reason.

Peter's relationship with his little sister is also a strained one. Despite only being three years younger than him, the gap between Charlie and her brother is another empty space that isn't talked about, something else to add to the list of emotions and thoughts that Peter keeps swallowed down. He loves her, of course, and up until only a couple of years ago shared a room with her. Other than Grandma Ellen, he has most likely spent more time with her than anyone else has. But there is a distance there. No one can ever really know Charlie. He is deeply, deeply ashamed of his resentments towards her, the frustration with her "oddities", for the trivial embarrassments in front of others at school and the girl he likes, for being the apple of their enigmatic grandmother's eye, for the fact he is the one who must constantly watch out for her because his parents are there but not there.

Lastly, the relationship with his father also has a distance that presents itself in the subtle details: when hugged, Peter doesn't physically embrace the man (and it should be noted that his father only hugs him one-handedly to begin with). When told "love you," Peter doesn't say it back. Clearly, the family in general have many issues kept under the surface, packed under layers of hard dirt. "We don't talk about it" is the Graham Family's motto: no one really says how they feel, emotions (and their loved ones as a result) being kept at an arm's distance, further fueling hurts, resentments, and dysfunction that were there (at least on Annie's side of the family) for more than one generation.

There is a deep loneliness to Peter's existence from the fact that he is very much alone. His dad tries to keep everyone together but it is in his cool, clinical way, as though he doesn't want to dirty his hands by touching anything directly. His mother is an uncomfortable, tightly wound string that is about to snap, and his sister is not capable of experiencing and reacting to emotions in a typical manner. Peter's half-lidded and detatched demeanour through life is a coping mechanism, a way to keep it all buried so that things keep moving along, even if they never really move forward. He has emotionally shut down and given up, just going through the motions.

After Charlie's death, the things he's swallowed down begin to break that numbed surface. At first, he is unable to process his trauma, unable to digest his grief. He cannot accept what has just happened. He continues to repress everything: staying lifelessly in bed, fists balled and body tight as he stands outside of his house until he's able to go in and face his family with eyes forward and voice in monotone.

However, coinciding directly with the family tragedy that the Grahams are dealing with is the influence of the cult and Paimon who is now released from his first vessel, becoming a spectral presence that needs to get into a new body. Perhaps ironically, this allows Peter to get out some of those suppressed emotions. The border between grief and possession is an ambiguous one, as Paimon gets closer to Peter and starts slipping in, and the boy begins to progressively, slowly, be torn open emotionally as he is progressively, slowly, possessed.

It starts as a foreign tension, an uneasy sensation that erupts into anxiety. A panic attack under the bleachers when smoking pot with his friends. Glimpses of shifts in reality, of shadows and shapes in the corner of the eye, hearing voices and the clicks from the little girl whose panicked, pained gasps from the backseat haunt him. After the séance, which allows Paimon's presence in, Peter increasingly emotionally unravels alongside the demon's increasingly strengthening control.

As this happens, we begin to see more of his personality underneath -- even if it is the result of progressively being forced open, his character shows itself in meaningful moments. The way he agrees to take part in his mother's séance when he sees how she desperately pleads. How he automatically moves protectively in front of her when eerie things begin happening. How he tries to move behind her for protection when he gets frightened enough. How he doesn't dismiss the horrifying concept of his sister haunting him, how open and susceptible he is to it, how he lets it unfold around him, because it's what he deserves. He tearfully admits to his father that he can't do anything of value or worth, that he's nothing, for the first time really saying how he feels about himself aloud.

Beneath his numbed exterior, Peter is young, soft, vulnerable, and afraid; he has been for a long time. Therefore, when his defenses start splitting open, it's like a flood: soon he's crying all the time, terrified, unhinged. It completely breaks out of him in his soon-to-be final moments, crying out for his "Mommy" the way a child would and how he makes a piteous last attempt to "wake himself up" from the "nightmare" he's having.

Lastly, an important defining character trait in Peter is that he isn't a "fighter", something that is displayed in different nuances. He has never fought his family's unhealthy way of interacting, never made waves. When he does finally explode back at his mother one night over dinner, he shrinks back quickly from her wrath rather than fighting back. As the cult continues to manipulate things from the shadows and things start getting worse and worse for the Grahams, Peter never "fights" what's happening, doesn't really think to, doesn't know that he should. He doesn't fight Paimon's influence and willingly follows him, trailing after the shimmering light that is the demon king's body-less form, which allows it to get inside of the boy, violently attacking and weakening him. There are endless nuances to the Graham Family's situation, but in the very end, Peter is the sacrificial lamb whose slaughter has been "fated" for a long time, and he has literally inherited his family's demons. Hail Paimon.....

Abilities/Powers/Weaknesses & Warping: Peter has no powers or abilities, but the canon point I am taking him from entails that Paimon's spirit is inside of him. However, this was before he woke up, so the cult were unable to complete their ritual and Paimon had not yet settled into fully taking over Peter's mind. Therefore, Paimon is more of an essence, a presence inside Peter. It will allow me to keep the "possession" theme that is so integral to Peter's character, as well as being a feature that I feel would be very suiting and additive to a horror game. My plan is to explore the themes of Paimon through certain events, while maintaining the air of ambiguity of him.

In general, Peter is currently an unknowing host dealing with the effects of possession. This includes psychological, emotional, and physical distress such as: paranoia, contortions, convulsions, dissociation / identity confusion / much Vacant Staring, choking, and an assortment of other odd behaviours and sounds. When Peter is weakened, he is especially vulnerable to these effects and Paimon's presence becomes stronger, which may lead Peter to "attack himself" as the disoriented demon inside of him flares up and freaks out. There are also times that Peter briefly displays the persona and quirks of Charlie's outright, due to the fact that Paimon's identity was Charlie for thirteen years. He's a jumbled, confused, lost demon king trapped in a traumatised, confused, lost human boy. They're fine....

Inventory:
1. outfit
2. pajamas
3. family photo + one of his sister's drawings

Writing Samples:
• one (TDM top-level)
• two (thread)

♔ OUT OF CHARACTER

Player Name: Jhey
Player Age: 30
Player Contact: plurk: skeletals | discord: large bat#2354

Other Characters In Game: None.
In-Game Tag If Accepted: Peter Graham: Jhey
Permissions for Character: Here.
Are you comfortable with prominent elements of fourth-walling?: Yes!
What themes of horror/psychological thrillers do you enjoy the most?: I enjoy a range from "subtle yet cutting slow burn" to "outright ookey body horror". Psychological, existential/philosophical horror, slowly turning into some thing, body sharing, possession and all of the nuances involved, indescribable eldritch abominations from The Beyond, metaphorical and symbolic themes, What You Don't See being worse.... Horror is such a broad spectrum and I really enjoy exploring so much of it!
Is there anything in particular you absolutely need specific content warnings for?: Nope!
Additional Information: *obligatory tongue click*