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[pighead]

PLAYER
Player name: Manda
Contact: bang on the wall
Characters currently in-game: Adam Parrish, Dorian Pavus

CHARACTER
Character Name: Joshua Washington
Character Age: 20
Canon: Until Dawn
Canon Point: Mid-chapter 3, just after the seance
History: wiki link
Personality:

When Josh is first introduced, he's described with three words: thoughtful, loving, and complex. These things are all true, but the last one - complex - is, perhaps, a hint that there's a lot more to Josh than that, and that maybe there are darker sides to these supposedly positive qualities.

On the surface, Josh is a friendly young man, funny and caring and creative. He's got plenty of clever (or not so clever) quips, and tends to rely on humor and a casual attitude in social situations, making it easy to be around him. He likes to party and have a good time, and he likes having people around him. However, he's far more troubled than he lets on, and it becomes clear that he doesn't confide in many people - or any people. Even Sam, who had thought they'd gotten close, was unaware of the depth of his difficulties.

Josh has been struggling with mental illness for years, having been prescribed antidepressants since he was eleven years old and struggling with the ups and downs of his mental health since then. The loss of his sisters only made things worse, leading to him being considered a suicide risk. Not so long before the events of the game, Josh stopped taking his medication entirely, and in addition to his depression was affected by withdrawal symptoms that only increased his instability. While his actions can't be blamed on this, they're certainly easier to understand when you realize that he was nowhere near being mentally well.

He loved his sisters deeply. Throughout the lodge can be found pictures of them together and mementos that show how important they were to Josh. Losing them would have affected anybody, but Josh, already mentally ill and to a certain extent blaming himself, was far more deeply affected than anyone guessed. It's his love for them that drives his plan at the lodge, his love and a desire to get revenge for Hannah's humiliation. It's his warped view on reality that allows him to go through with it without seeming to really understand the trauma he's inflicting on his friends. He sees it as a basically harmless prank - mean-spirited, maybe, but nothing that they didn't deserve and nothing that would actually hurt them.

As awful as his plan is, it also shows the scope of Josh's creativity. The son of a film director, Josh wants to follow in his father's footsteps, and it's more than clear that he has the ability to do so. He pulls off practical effects that are more than movie-quality, enough so that he has Chris and Ashley convinced that he's dead, and he has all of them convinced that a psycho is loose on the mountain and trying to kill them. The amount of time and effort Josh put into his plan is truly amazing, and speaks well to his ingenuity and resourcefulness, for all that he's using those qualities to terrify and traumatize his friends.

While Josh is being taken from before he carries out his plan, that in no way negates his capacity to do so, or his intentions. He does seem to have some conception of how terrible the things he does are, if you take the interludes in the imaginary Dr Hill's office to be a visualization of Josh's mental state. There is some part of him that knows that what he's doing is wrong, and will hurt his friends, but that doesn't stop him. It is very clear that his mental state is deteriorating throughout the game, and he ends it more or less in the midst of a complete psychotic break.

Josh might take revenge on his friends for what happened to his sisters, but a lot of his hatred is directed at himself. He blames himself for being unable to help Hannah and Beth, and he is aware on some level that what he does to his friends is wrong, especially as things begin to spiral out of control. Josh is one of the antagonists of the game, but as twisted as his actions might have been, he didn't intend to actually hurt anyone - which isn't to discount the emotional trauma he inflicted, but it's clear that he didn't take it anywhere near as seriously as he should have. Josh isn't evil, but he is extremely unstable and has the capacity to do very bad things while thinking they're justified.

Still, underneath the struggles with mental illness, his medication withdrawal symptoms, and his truly astounding series of bad decisions, Josh is not innately a bad person. He does love his family, and even his friends, very deeply. He can be funny and friendly and caring. He is creative and resourceful.

He just sometimes thinks it's a great idea to invite his friends to a wendigo-infested mountain and torture them with painstakingly enacted horror movie tropes. And come on, who hasn't done that once or twice?

Inventory: The clothes on his back, his wallet, the keys to the lodge and cable car, and his phone.
Abilities: Josh has no special abilities. He is, however, very creative and resourceful, and excellent at practical special effects. He has some minor skill in wiring, makeup, prosthetics, and filmmaking.
Flaws: While mental illness isn't a flaw, Josh's particular condition and decision to stop taking his medication have made him distinctly unstable and, to a certain extent, dangerous. He could easily have seriously injured or even killed one of his friends if his plans hadn't gone right, and he doesn't appear to understand the seriousness of his actions (though judging by his Dr Hill hallucinations, he might - he just doesn't want to admit it to himself). While Josh is being taken from before he truly starts to go through with his plan, he's already set everything up and has every intention of doing so. The emotional trauma he intends to inflict on people he considers friends is considerable, and he doesn't appear to question that at all.

SAMPLES
Action Log Sample: TDM link