Age: 16
Gender Male
Side & Role: White Bishop
Personality:
He seems innocent or even charming at first, but is surprisingly fragile and has violent self-doubt and internal hatred. Deme loves to read horror novels, but his extremely active mind causes him to overprocess details and come up with disturbing scenarios - no one can possibly scare him more than he himself does. And he doesn't hate anyone more than himself, either. He rarely really makes friends and just reacts passively to whatever life throws at him, having given up hope of changing his lifestyle or those around him. He is gay, in a family where it is unacceptable. Because of his stress, he succumbed to drug abuse and smokes, but now does it out of habit more than enjoyment.
Although he doesn't care for himself, he likes to encourage others, and vicariously lives through their successes. He tries not to betray his volatile emotions (of many sorts) and is contrivedly calm when he talks to others. Deme gets emotional easily on the inside, but processes his own feelings and rarely reacts to anything. He is academically capable and his teachers have never guessed his secrets. Besides, he rarely acts like the image of a "stereotypical gay."
This deception doesn't mean that he's dishonest. He answers questions in a straightforward way and relies on his attitude to make sure that nobody even asks about the darker things. However, he never answers more than he has to, and is very to the point.
He has an appreciation for fine arts, especially music, and wants to play jazz piano (he composes songs while high or drunk sometimes, and revises them later). However, his parents prefer he stay to classical music, which he enjoys but doesn't really love. He has a lot of resentment for his parents, because they wanted a manly son who was good at sports from the start and only reluctantly allowed him to stay with piano. But he'll never reveal his true feelings.
History:
Deme came from a very devout Christian family and grew up extremely devoted to his God, a trait that remained even after he realized that he was gay. He always had a deeper understanding of "real" religion than most people, seeing the dark side of the people who prayed as well as the sinners and heretics they criticized. He still reached out to all these people, but was scolded every time he spoke out against the church. Because of this, he began to fall into despair, even before learning about his sexuality. Children rarely suppress their feelings, but Deme did. And so his emotions became fragile and dangerous. His parents saw some of his early breakouts, but thought that it calmed down after he learned the piano.
Wrong. He just learned to control them.
He took up piano at a young age, because his parents saw his inability to express his torment and were scared at not knowing what their gifted and empathetic child felt. Deme was delighted by the piano and spent all his time working at it. However, he realized that the songs he learned grew more restrictive as he got more advanced and had conflicted feelings about the piano. He saw a jazz musician playing in a park one day, and was fascinated, but his parents dragged him away before he could be contaminated by the evil. The preacher at their church began to take a liking to Deme, who he viewed as extremely pure and close to God because of his suffering. Deme was a little scared by this, but also pleased.
His first clue to his sexuality came when he was about 12, practicing a four-hands piano duet with another boy. He didn't realize that there was anything special to these feelings at first, but later noticed the way the boys and girls at his school interacted. Eventually he started to have sexual thoughts and feelings, and was terrified because his parents hadn't even let him know that other sexualities existed. Thanks to the internet, he discovered others and sympathized with them. However, these sites had to be kept secret from his mom and dad, and the struggle for secrecy kept paining him.
He began to hate himself, not for being gay, but for not being honest and pure enough to admit it to everyone. Because of his passive and quiet personality, a kid at school offered him some cigarettes, claiming that it would make him look tougher and prevent others from beating him up. Deme refused at first, but gave in. He got addicted to the feelings that these drugs gave him, and kept coming back to them, even stealing his parents' money. He knows this is wrong and hates himself for doing it, but somehow he can't stop.
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