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Jul. 11th, 2015 05:18 pm
Who is Donovan?
Background
Donovan is from a kind of underwhelming little horror film from 2006 called Left in Darkness.
The movie is about an orphaned woman, Celia, who dies on her 21st birthday and finds herself in an afterlife version of the place where she died. As her protecting light fades, monsters lurk outside the light wanting to consume her soul.
As Celia tries to work out what's going on and try to save herself, her childhood imaginary friend, Donovan, comes to her. He tells her that he's her guardian and he knows what he's talking about because he died when he was eight and he's been around this afterlife gig for a while.
She invites him into her light and he tells her the rules of this interstitial place. The monsters are soul eaters who can take the form of souls they've eaten because they've consumed everything that makes that person a person including personality and memories. They can only enter her sanctuary with invitation, they can only touch her if she touches them first, and her light is going to die within hours leaving her unprotected, at which point the soul eaters will consume her.
He shows her some of the other tips and tricks of the afterlife, stays with her, and offers her suggestions for how to survive and extend the time before her light dies.
Just because his suggestions are selfish and show no caring for anyone but Celia shouldn't be a problem, right? He's been around all her life. Hell, he even saved her from being hit by a car when she was a little girl. There's no doubt that he's her guardian.
And he is, but no one ever said he was her guardian angel.
As time goes by and Celia refuses to make the callous and selfish choices that he tries to guide her to, Donovan's reactions grow more sarcastic, more impatient. When she tells him to go away, he leaves her to be chased and attacked by soul eaters until she calls for him to come back.
It's easy, he tells her. Just go where he tells her, do as he tells her. Just trust him.
Trust me.
His solution to the problem? Ignore her feeling that the room where Donovan leads is an evil place and tell her to go in there. Just go in. Who wouldn't want to go into an evil room and jump into a pit filled with naked people screaming for help?
When she refuses to jump in the pit, Donovan shows his true colors. He collects souls for Hell, but along the way, he gets particular enjoyment out of nurturing people from childhood through full lives in which they can develop vices and virtues - Pride. Pride is my favorite. - and those souls he keeps for himself to consume one attribute at a time, eating loyalty, laughter, pride, and anger like delicacies he's cultivated in a hothouse. Every person in the pit is someone Donovan had nurtured and convinced to give themselves to him.
All along his goal is to make her give in by choice, but he can take from her by force, and he tries.
The movie ends with Celia winning back her grandfather's soul and finding her dumbwaiter to heaven (I can't make this shit up), leaving Donovan to have a minor tantrum because she's well and truly out of his reach.
Personality
Donovan is a demon. He's a demon who collects souls for Hell, skims a few off the top to feed on himself, and is in it only for himself. He presents himself as a good guy who really cares, but he's a good guy with some flaws - a propensity for sarcasm, a bit of a fatalistic streak, and when contradicted or denied too much, a bit of a temper.
Until he chooses to take off the mask, that's as bad as it gets, and he's not above apologizing if it seems he's gone too far.
Under the mask, he's cruel, manipulative, sadistic, and has an eye to the long game. He lies without compunction, twists the truth when a lie won't do, and is always working toward his own ends. Just because those ends usually take an entire human lifetime doesn't mean they aren't there.
If he remembers having once been an angel, he shows no sign of regret or remorse. He knows what he is and he revels in it. He gets a kick out of having the power to lead people along, thinking he's their savior when he's helping them lay their paving stones of good intentions.
Hell doesn't need to tempt the sinners - they're already on their way. It's the good people who take work.
Powers
Donovan controls the soul eaters and can even force them to release a consumed soul.
He can affect the living world, as when he picked up Celia and pulled her out of the way of an oncoming car.
He can make himself seen in the living world at will, although chooses to do so only to those he's chosen to nurture.
He can change his physical appearance at will. He always makes an effort to appear human until all the cards are on the table, and even then, only changes just as much of his body to a more demonic form as is needed to get the job done.
He can turn invisible in the interstitial world of death as well.
He can telekinetically affect souls.
He can breathe in and consume human attributes as described above. Given willingly, it isn't too painful. Taken by force, it's agonizing.
He has his portable hole of the damned that he can open and close at will.
He knows what's happening at a distance, but it's logically (more like inferentially, but I'd rather see it limited) limited to damned souls, souls his soul eaters have consumed, and those he's taken a personal interest in.
Donovan is from a kind of underwhelming little horror film from 2006 called Left in Darkness.
The movie is about an orphaned woman, Celia, who dies on her 21st birthday and finds herself in an afterlife version of the place where she died. As her protecting light fades, monsters lurk outside the light wanting to consume her soul.
As Celia tries to work out what's going on and try to save herself, her childhood imaginary friend, Donovan, comes to her. He tells her that he's her guardian and he knows what he's talking about because he died when he was eight and he's been around this afterlife gig for a while.
She invites him into her light and he tells her the rules of this interstitial place. The monsters are soul eaters who can take the form of souls they've eaten because they've consumed everything that makes that person a person including personality and memories. They can only enter her sanctuary with invitation, they can only touch her if she touches them first, and her light is going to die within hours leaving her unprotected, at which point the soul eaters will consume her.
He shows her some of the other tips and tricks of the afterlife, stays with her, and offers her suggestions for how to survive and extend the time before her light dies.
Just because his suggestions are selfish and show no caring for anyone but Celia shouldn't be a problem, right? He's been around all her life. Hell, he even saved her from being hit by a car when she was a little girl. There's no doubt that he's her guardian.
And he is, but no one ever said he was her guardian angel.
As time goes by and Celia refuses to make the callous and selfish choices that he tries to guide her to, Donovan's reactions grow more sarcastic, more impatient. When she tells him to go away, he leaves her to be chased and attacked by soul eaters until she calls for him to come back.
It's easy, he tells her. Just go where he tells her, do as he tells her. Just trust him.
Trust me.
His solution to the problem? Ignore her feeling that the room where Donovan leads is an evil place and tell her to go in there. Just go in. Who wouldn't want to go into an evil room and jump into a pit filled with naked people screaming for help?
When she refuses to jump in the pit, Donovan shows his true colors. He collects souls for Hell, but along the way, he gets particular enjoyment out of nurturing people from childhood through full lives in which they can develop vices and virtues - Pride. Pride is my favorite. - and those souls he keeps for himself to consume one attribute at a time, eating loyalty, laughter, pride, and anger like delicacies he's cultivated in a hothouse. Every person in the pit is someone Donovan had nurtured and convinced to give themselves to him.
All along his goal is to make her give in by choice, but he can take from her by force, and he tries.
The movie ends with Celia winning back her grandfather's soul and finding her dumbwaiter to heaven (I can't make this shit up), leaving Donovan to have a minor tantrum because she's well and truly out of his reach.
Personality
Donovan is a demon. He's a demon who collects souls for Hell, skims a few off the top to feed on himself, and is in it only for himself. He presents himself as a good guy who really cares, but he's a good guy with some flaws - a propensity for sarcasm, a bit of a fatalistic streak, and when contradicted or denied too much, a bit of a temper.
Until he chooses to take off the mask, that's as bad as it gets, and he's not above apologizing if it seems he's gone too far.
Under the mask, he's cruel, manipulative, sadistic, and has an eye to the long game. He lies without compunction, twists the truth when a lie won't do, and is always working toward his own ends. Just because those ends usually take an entire human lifetime doesn't mean they aren't there.
If he remembers having once been an angel, he shows no sign of regret or remorse. He knows what he is and he revels in it. He gets a kick out of having the power to lead people along, thinking he's their savior when he's helping them lay their paving stones of good intentions.
Hell doesn't need to tempt the sinners - they're already on their way. It's the good people who take work.
Powers
Donovan controls the soul eaters and can even force them to release a consumed soul.
He can affect the living world, as when he picked up Celia and pulled her out of the way of an oncoming car.
He can make himself seen in the living world at will, although chooses to do so only to those he's chosen to nurture.
He can change his physical appearance at will. He always makes an effort to appear human until all the cards are on the table, and even then, only changes just as much of his body to a more demonic form as is needed to get the job done.
He can turn invisible in the interstitial world of death as well.
He can telekinetically affect souls.
He can breathe in and consume human attributes as described above. Given willingly, it isn't too painful. Taken by force, it's agonizing.
He has his portable hole of the damned that he can open and close at will.
He knows what's happening at a distance, but it's logically (more like inferentially, but I'd rather see it limited) limited to damned souls, souls his soul eaters have consumed, and those he's taken a personal interest in.