application.

[burnden]

SPOILERS: This app does contain major spoilers for the main character from Little Hope's ending. It is still a new video game (though falls within the range of month-old) and I just wanted to lay this warning out right here for anyone still playing through their first time.

IN CHARACTER

Character Name: Abraham | Anthony Clarke | Andrew*
*note: While I'm tecnically apping as "Andrew" - all these characters are directly connected and may be referred to throughout the app since this character has to do with split-personality/reincarnation style stories.
Canon: The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope
Canon Point: Ending 2 where Andrew is told by Vince to go find the nearby diner and use the working phone there to "get out of this town" forever.

In-Game Tattoo Placement: Back of his right bicep
Current Health/Status: Concussed, severe bruise (possible mild sprain
?) on his arm from where "Mary" grabbed him, bruised up to hell and back, and extremely confused. Otherwise, alive.
Age: 66 | 18*
*note: Andrew is portrayed as an 18 year old. Anthony, meanwhile, is actually a 66 year old man who seems to be "mentally stuck" at his trauma from when he was 18.
Species: Human

Content Warnings: Suicide, severe PTSD, severe hallucinations, split personality-style mental health, dysfunctional family dynamics, trauma, alcoholism, bus crash, death of family via burning, possible death routes via burning alive, hanging, stabbing, crushing, drowning, witch hunt trials/executions, implied abuse of children, religious horror.

History:

This is one of those choose-your-own-adventure style horror games which means there's a variety of scenarios+endings that can stem from whatever you choose throughout the game. All of the summaries for the game are scattered around because of it and I will be outlining the core "plot" as well as the choices I made in my own run through the game that will determine Andrew's general storyline.

History of Anthony Clarke (1972)

We are introduced to Anthony Clarke in the early 1970s in the Clarke Family home located in a town called Little Hope. Anthony is an adopted child to a family of five. We are shown that Anthony's father and mother have a tense relationship primarily revolving around the father's job, drinking, and their daughter and Anthony's little sister, Megan. His father holds resentment towards Megan, believing there is something "wrong" with her, something sinister, and doesn't seem to trust his own daughter. Anthony, on the other hand, sees his little sister as "just a kid" and I went the route of him being empathetic towards Megan.

As his father goes to drink in the living room, his mother goes to take a bath, and his other two siblings, Dennis and Tanya arrive. After another tense conversation about Megan, the siblings part ways throughout the house. Anthony goes to light the gas stove in his kitchen to boil a kettle of water when he hears his sister Tanya calling for help outside. Investigating, he finds that she's accidentally locked herself out on the balcony. He soon realizes he's been locked out as well. Inside, something nefarious tempts Megan to place her doll next to the gas stove and it eventually "falls over" and catches fire. Soon the entire house is engulfed in flames and Anthony scrambles trying to get inside and save his family.

Tragically, he instead winds up having to watch Megan be burned alive. He quickly tries to see if he can save his father, but he is crushed under the collapsing house. He watches his brother Dennis try to escape out a window only to be impaled on the fence below. Tanya dies in the fire as well, and Anthony rushes into the house to see if he can at least save his mom, Anne, but she's already suffocated. Anthony doesn't manage to save any of his family, instead of suffering a severe burn on his left ear, and is arrested under the suspicions that he had lit the fire due to the matches he had in his pocket from when he lit the kettle earlier.

Ultimately, Anthony is found innocent after investigators concluded that it had been the doll that caused the fire and he is released from prison. He then leaves Little Hope. This is our first introduction to our core cast of characters and their first "appearances" in the story.

History of Andrew - Core Story (2020)

After the cutaway from Anthony's story, we are then brought into present-day Little Hope as a bus driver experiences a crash just outside of the town. A group of four college students and their professor (Taylor, Angela, Daniel, and John) are waking up from the crash and this is when we are introduced to the main character, Andrew, who is an 18-year-old college student with a badly concussed head and an alleged case of amnesia. He appears dazed and confused by who the people he's with are, but is complacent enough in trusting them.

We know that Andrew has been homeschooled and that he has very little experience with interacting with people. The class he was taking with their professor, John, was a creative writing class. As they venture away from the bus crash, they wonder where their bus driver went and decide to try and explore since their cellphones can't pick up on service. They wind up having to explore Little Hope, an abandoned town with no one except an old man named Vince in it. Vince appears to be of no help and seems to "follow" them around, telling them to get out of the town or distantly calling after them.

They slowly begin to unfold the town's history with witch trials from the 1600s as well as how the town came to eventually shut down through job layoffs. While exploring the town, they are haunted by horrific demons that seem to be connected to all of the characters except for Andrew - none of the demons even attack Andrew, but all the same, Andrew does his best to help the others get away from the demons.

As they explore the town, they are additionally haunted by screaming ghosts that randomly grab onto the characters and bring them into "flashbacks" to a specific witch trial from Little Hope's past revolving around a young girl named Mary who was accused of witchcraft by a priest named Reverend Carver. The core group discovers that the people in the flashbacks connected to Mary bear a striking resemblance to everyone in the group, despite their "strange accents" and clothing. They eventually realize that they can interact with the flashbacks, influencing the characters in the flashbacks to make certain choices or to try and help save certain characters from various executions.

Towards the end of the game, the core characters also discover a family picture of the Clarkes and realize, yet again, that they bear striking resemblances to the family - though they never do see any flashbacks of the Clarke family itself and can only guess about what their connection to them might be.

Various playthroughs can result in the entire group (including Andrew) surviving, dying, or some surviving through to the end as the demons do wish to actively kill the different characters.

History of Abraham (1692)

Abraham is Andrew's "look-alike"/possible "reincarnated" self that we see during the witch trials portion of the flashbacks. Abraham is one of Mary's guardians at some point and is brought in to testify about her involvement in the strange, violent incidents going on in Little Hope.

We never learn much about Abraham beyond his involvement in Mary's life and his distant connections to the rest of the cast's "look-alikes"/"reincarnated" selves. We do learn that Andrew, Anthony, and Abraham arguably have the most "consistent" personalities between the lookalikes, while the other characters have similar personalities to their own look-alikes but obvious enough differences to distinguish them in their different "timelines".

Abraham is the only one from the witch-trial flashbacks that we never see an execution for. This is important as the various demons that plague the characters in the game specifically reference all of the different ways the other characters have died during their execution - which you can reference all of the demons here. The demons are clearly named after the deaths they represent ie; "Drowned Demon" or "Burned Demon" or "Impaled Demon" which also coincide with how Anthony's various family members died.

The Full Circle of Anthony Clarke (2020)

Eventually Andrew and his companions wind up in the original Clarke house that had burned down back in 1972. They find a few old traces of the family that lived there before and this winds up being the "ultimate showdown" location. A variety of different endings can happen at this point depending on what you have chosen to do throughout the game.

In my particular playthrough, only John, Angela, and Andrew made it to the house. The demons are waiting outside, and Andrew goes upstairs to confront Megan and see the "Final Scene" of the witch trials where he convinces Abraham to accuse Reverend Carver of being Satanic and abusing/influencing Mary by telling the Judge to look at Carver's bible - which has proof of his Satanic beliefs on the pages.

This is deemed as "saving" Mary and absolving her of the crimes accused against her. Afterward, Andrew and Angela walk away from the scene knowing that they have "defeated" the situation of Little Hope and feel assured that they can now leave. We see the three walking in daylight away from the town, without the fog, and seemingly are okay.

The old man, Vince, then approaches them and informs Andrew specifically that "I know that the fire wasn't your fault" and "we've both suffered for a long time now" and tells Andrew to head for a diner with a working payphone and to "never come back - there's nothing here for you anymore." At first, Andrew appears confused, but slowly, we realize that Angela and John are no longer there. Andrew begins to hear the various voices of the companions he'd stayed with all night, and the camera pans around to reveal that Andrew is actually the bus driver who had crashed the bus at the beginning of the game.

Furthermore, we see that the bus driver is actually Anthony Clarke who had survived the fire all those years ago but had essentially lost his mind entirely to the trauma and grief and that he has spent years suffering severe hallucinations. We come to understand that our entire gameplay has been one long hallucination of Anthony wandering around Little Hope, talking to himself- believing, sincerely, that he was an 18 year-old-college student and that his companions were truly there. He walked around thinking those demons were really chasing him and even mentally invented the entire witch trial story as a way to consider his own past. We also realize that Vince was just following after Anthony because he realized it was just some old man wandering around an abandoned town all on his own.

Anthony's a 66 year-old-man in reality, but he seems to be stuck permanently at 18, when he had originally lost his family back in 1972. We do not know what happens to Anthony after this point, whether he forgives himself at last and is able to move on, or he continues to feel guilt. In alternative endings, Anthony/Andrew does wind up shooting himself in the head over his despair and guilt, with one end him failing at killing himself. In other endings, he is arrested.

In the end, we understand that Anthony completely invented the majority of what we encounter in the game as part of his own extensive psychosis. Essentially this means Abraham/Andrew are figments of his imagination and he was genuinely convinced he was Andrew.

My Playthrough

These are probably a little nonsensical out-of-game-play but still seem the important choices to keep consistent.

I consistently played Andrew/Anthony as empathetic towards Mary/Megan, continually defending her as being "just a kid" and skeptical of people wanting to insist that she is evil. This resulted in being able to "save" Mary in the end.

Andrew does not find the gun at all because I'm a fucking idiot!

Taylor's demon winds up being the Burned Demon instead of the Hanged Demon.

Andrew fails to save Taylor.

Andrew does not choose to burn the doll that they find in the museum.

Andrew fails to save Daniel.

Andrew winds up closest to Angela by endgame.

Andrew was not antagonistic/hostile towards Vince at the bar and therefore Vince depicted forgiveness towards Andrew.

Only two of the demons were "confronted" and therefore Andrew neither forgave himself at the end nor condemned himself to his own guilt. The latter of which would have lead to his suicide. He is told to go to a nearby diner with a working payphone and not return to the town.

Personality:

The entire ass game is based solely on Anthony's mental health and how he is coping with the grief and trauma from losing his family. It's a metaphorical commentary on how grief can manifest and haunt people and I will be exploring Anthony's personality through the different aspects of the game and primarily through his main "personality" Andrew. It would seem that Anthony never truly aged past 18 when he originally lost his family, and it seems like Andrew is a reflection of his stunted growth. This is especially supported since Angela is a mature student in their group, thus showing that Anthony could have easily projected himself as another mature student or the professor, but instead, he winds up projecting himself as an 18-year-old, which like who the hell would want to be stuck at 18.

Throughout the game, Andrew is concussed from the bus crash and alleges to have amnesia. While this is likely worsened by the actual bus crash Anthony experiences, it is highly suggested that Anthony himself struggles with remembering not only reality but what he's doing, where he's going in general. At the beginning of the game, Anthony, as he's driving the bus, is pulled over by a cop and expresses sincere confusion about where he is and what the cop is even talking about. The cop himself even points this out, asking if Anthony is all right.

Anthony claims he's fine, he's just reluctant to take a different route to Little Hope. He gestures to the back of his empty bus and says "I need to get these people to where they need to go" and the cop looks back, seeing the empty bus, and seems concerned with Anthony. In the beginning, we don't realize the bus is empty yet, and instead hear what Anthony is hearing, which is the group of college students and their professor talking over one another.

This confusion about reality is a consistent theme throughout the game even if you don't realize it until the very end. It is revealed that Anthony himself is fascinated with the occult and witchcraft, and it is likely that he has attached himself to such studies because he felt like his sister, Megan, was unjustly villainized by her family - especially her father. This "witch hunt" against his sister by his family as well as her school ties in well with why Anthony would have imagined a "literal" witch-trial scenario in his head, his imagination taking over how he felt about his sister and how he often felt useless to helping her against unfair judgment. This can also be further emphasized on the fact that it was ultimately Abraham who had the choice to "save" Mary - reflecting how Anthony felt he could have possibly "saved" Megan if only he had made the right choices and if he had stood up for her more often.

His general imagination/way of engaging with his own issues is synced up with Anthony's intense, vivid hallucinations. It seems like Anthony is incapable of directly dealing with his issues and instead has to depend on expansive inventions through hallucinations to deconstruct what he is going through - the main thing being guilt.

Anthony feels absolutely responsible for the death of the family. Although it was the doll that had caused the fire, he still feels responsible for being the one to have left the kettle alone and the stove turned on with an exposed flame. Seeing his family die one after another after failing to save them is reflected in the various "executions" he imagines during the witch trial - for each execution is a direct reflection of how his family members were killed. The weight of his guilt is further emphasized by the different demons that haunt the different characters in the game, each demon meant to look like representations of how the family died. Andrew can also fail to save different characters from their own demons and regardless of how they die, it's clear that Andrew feels the weight of Anthony's guilt and failing to save people he cares about once more.

Despite the enormous weight of guilt pressed on Anthony, it's also clear that some part of his mind has completely rejected ever properly dealing with the trauma. We know very little of what has occurred in Anthony's life after the fire, and similarly, when we are introduced to Andrew, we scarcely know anything about Andrew himself. It could be because of the concussion, but most likely it is because of why Andrew exists (as Anthony's imaginative creation) - but Andrew claims to have "amnesia." Yet Andrew seems to be a complete replica of Anthony's core personality traits and the main attributes that Anthony struggles with.

Andrew is described as "anxious" and "detached" and seems to struggle with emotionally expressing himself or forging close or nuanced connections. He is distant from the group he is with. Daniel and Taylor are dating, and Daniel has a relatively close relationship with Angela, John and Taylor have tensions, John and Angela are implied to have an ongoing on-and-off relationship that varies between hostility and respect...Andrew doesn't fit into any of these relationships. He doesn't seem to have a complex foundation with any of these characters until you begin to forge them in the game itself. He's shy and reserved from them and seems to play the role of the observer of the group rather than be part of the group itself.

Despite his detachment, he still seems to feel deeply responsible for the various people in the group. He willingly engages in deeper conversations, being upfront with how he feels about their choices or what they are saying. Andrew might be shy and anxious, but he is a deeply compassionate individual who generally will stand by what he believes to be the right thing. He consistently defends Mary despite continual context suggestions that she might be sadistic or evil, constantly falling back on referring to her as "just a child."

Even when his companions show frustration and hostility towards him for defending Mary, Andrew doesn't back down from his decision, sticking to what he thinks is right rather than cowering under group pressure. His compassion aligns with his sense of altruism wherein he doesn't seem to care too deeply about his own well-being in relation to caring about others. He will slip himself into danger to ensure the others survive their encounters with their demons. While the other characters need to work up to confront their personal demons (if you choose to go that route) Andrew is the character who consistently steps in regardless. He is the only character who is not haunted/attacked by ANY of the demons, so he truly could just escape from the demons, but instead chooses to put himself in direct danger because, again, he knows it's the right thing to do.

Although Andrew isn't close with the others, he appears to be sympathetic to their problems. John has various unlikeable traits and can be abrasive to deal with, but there are multiple instances in which Andrew can respond to John in a way that is sensitive to how John must be feeling beyond his surface behavior. Andrew seems fully capable of thinking about what other people must be going through. We also see this at the beginning of the game with Anthony as he deals with his drunken father by alternating between being frustrated with his dad but also trying to be understanding about how much pressure his father must be feeling. While it would be easy to write Anthony's father off as a drunken asshole, we see Anthony capable of trying to be a good son to make his dad's life a little easier.

It would seem this is likely tied directly to Anthony's sense of guilt and his feelings of not wanting to lose people he cares about - physically or emotionally. In the original house burning, Anthony had no problem throwing himself into the burning house in a fruitless attempt to save his (already dead) mother. Similarly, Anthony appears as shy and anxious as Andrew, showing similar ticks of feeling unsettled easily by what's going on around him. And, to align with the compassionate element of Andrew, we also see Anthony showing concern towards his sister as well as worry about his father's drinking problems.

Since Anthony lost his family so young, he never truly got to experience a typical life. This is reflected in Andrew's general depiction of inexperience and being somewhat naive about the world he's in. Andrew is said to have been homeschooled, which aligns with Anthony's seclusion from reality, since homeschool ties into the idea of being "cut off" from regular life, yet observing it from a distance in a controlled environment.

Anthony has been battling his mental health for most of his life. At the end of the game, when we realize he is a 66 year-old-man, we also discover how deep his problems run as he spent the entire game wandering around some abandoned town, completely alone, essentially talking to himself and feeling deeply confused by the hallucinations he was experiencing. To Anthony, these hallucinations were completely real, and even by the end of the game, it is completely unclear as to whether Anthony has truly "accepted" his reality or if he's going to have another similar mental lapse before long - especially since with where I took him from, he has not decided whether he has forgiven himself or not.

It's difficult to say whether this is a common experience for him, but at the end, Anthony seems mostly confused than shocked by the reveal, so it's probable that this isn't the first time he has gone through something similar - or, also a high possibility, he's just completely forgotten about it if he has. It seems he struggles to remember his general life, considering how unaware Andrew was when he saw an actual picture of Anthony and his family back from 1972, and likely cannot keep up mentally with his long-term experiences which could be a possible suggestion of dementia or just general memory-loss experienced through trauma/mental health issues.

Because of Anthony's extreme guilt and dissociative issues, Anthony also runs a high risk for suicidal inclination. Multiple endings of the game wind up with Anthony, as Andrew, trying to kill himself (some successful, some not). Anthony's guilt is extreme enough that, if pushed to the right point, he will feel guilty enough to end his own life. This is the outcome of Andrew failing to save his companions, showing again, the connection between Anthony and Andrew since it is Andrew who winds up pulling the trigger on himself.

Since Anthony's hallucinations and connection to Andrew are so extreme/vivid, it could easily be argued that he suffers some form of dissociative identity disorder considering the absolute conviction he felt of being Andrew.

Anthony is not just his mental health and staggering compassion. He is an inquisitive person who constantly speculates about the unusual in the world. Anthony's curiosity leads to him being open-minded about "supernatural" things he experiences and he doesn't rush to deny something just because it seems strange. Instead, he wants to see the various possibilities that could exist. This inquisitive nature can at times make him feel uncertain about things and make him approach conversations without conviction, sometimes making him hesitate about immediately agreeing with someone. This can come across negatively to the other characters as it at times seems like he is disagreeing with them rather than the situation in general.

He has a morbid fascination with the witch trials and is openly bothered by all of the death and destruction they had lead to. Andrew frequently comments on the terrors of the witch trials throughout the game, often expressing vocal discomfort or disapproval of Little Hope's violent history with witch-hunting. It's likely that half of this is due to his guilt with Megan, but it would also appear that he sincerely believes that the people who died because of the witch trials are a real tragedy. He is afraid of seeing people hurt because of what others do not understand and this could have to do with how Anthony had been arrested after the death of his family under the suspicion that he had started the fire. Anthony knows from experience what it is like to be persecuted for something terrible you did not do and what it is like to be judged by an entire town.

This fascination with the occult translates directly into Anthony's various hallucinations. The entire storyline of Mary and the witch trials that we see during the game are all a product of Anthony's imagination. He sees a wide variety of witch-type artifacts throughout the game such as strange dolls made out of twigs, archaic ruins, ritualistic setups, and numerous books and flyers about witchcraft and mysticism. He leans hard into believing and studying the occult to the point where it seems to fuel his sense of fear and paranoia about what he's experiencing and what he expects from the world around him.

Depictions of Mental Health & Hallucinations In-Game

Because Anthony is so convinced that he was Andrew, that he saw himself as Andrew, I will have that belief carry over into how Anthony "appears" in Deerington's setting. For the most part, he will feel completely convinced that he is Andrew, and thus because of Deerington's strange belief-dream mechanics, he will appear and act as Andrew. He will experience similar hallucinations, his dissociative identity as Andrew being part of those hallucinations. However, people with psychic/telepathic abilities would be able to see the "real" Andrew and understand what's going on.

I plan to have Anthony "appear" in-game during certain events or certain mental breaks for Andrew, so other characters may also get the chance to realize the true situation of Andrew's existence. When Anthony has reverted back to "himself" he will be extremely confused and suffer greatly from not understanding his surroundings, and he will likely not understand anyone who tries to tell him about Andrew. Andrew would also struggle with anyone trying to tell him about Anthony - though they may get to a point where they can acknowledge one another's existence.

Anthony will be primarily existing as "Andrew" during his stay in the game since that seems to be a dominant personality for him. Like I mentioned earlier, it also seems apparent that Anthony never truly "grew up" from 18 and so it seems appropriate that in a dream, he'd be similarly stuck in that state of mind through his physical representation of Andrew. This isn't a "superpower" whatsoever - it just seems like the best approach to this split personality/hallucination element of the story and it seems like it would be appropriate for Deerington's setting. If this doesn't add up or seems off, let me know and we can figure something else out!

Since Anthony experiences extensive hallucinations I will have him occasionally be haunted by the same demons as he is in the game when he has worse moments. These demons are completely imaginary and cannot hurt literally anyone whatsoever and aren't an actual power/actual monster. Other people, except maybe psychics, or during game events, wouldn't be able to see what he's seeing. Similarly, Andrew might have fully fleshed out conversations with people who aren't actually there. I'll likely have him rotate between talking to the different characters from the game Anthony invented in his head. However, if any of those characters ever join the game, Anthony/Andrew will no longer see them / interact with them as hallucinations.

He might also at times be completely convinced of certain things, might set up strange physical "proof" for his own hallucinations (ie; setting up a weird witchy display without remembering it and then later on 'finding' it and thinking a real witch made it - etc). All of these will be extensions of his mental health and will have no actual sway over reality/other people.

Anthony is genuinely unaware of when other people react to his hallucinations. Both the cop and Vince react with blatant confusion to Anthony and he doesn't seem to pick up on the social cues that he's acting strangely. Because of this, he can often come across as stiff and awkward while he's trying to process what his hallucinations are saying and what real people are saying.

Abilities/Powers/Weaknesses & Warping: None.
Inventory: Ferriman uniform & Andrew's outfit (Sweater, hoodie, jeans, sneakers)

Writing Samples: TDM threads.

OUT OF CHARACTER

Player Name: Milk
Player Age: 28
Player Contact: you gotta pay me 5 dollars to even look in my general direction. 10 dollars to talk to me directly.

Other Characters In Game: Eddie Kaspbrak, Nicolo di Genova
In-Game Tag If Accepted: Anthony Clarke/Andrew: Milk
Permissions for Character: Here
Are you comfortable with prominent elements of fourth-walling?: i invented fourth-walling did you guys know that. so ya fam.
What themes of horror/psychological thrillers do you enjoy the most?: Metaphors
Is there anything in particular you absolutely need specific content warnings for?: Animals violence, sexual violence, weed being crammed down my entire ass throat
Additional Information: