App: TLV

[everlastingcovenant]

User Name/Nick: Karin
User DW: finalprogramme
E-mail: lingeanare@gmail.com
Other Characters: Patrick Sumner

Character Name: Father Paul Hill (né Monsignor John Pruitt)
Series: Midnight Mass (TV 2021)
Age: 80, but appears to be about half that or younger.
From When?: In episode 6, he's shot in the head, and though that doesn't perma-kill him in the context of the show, let's say it kills him enough to send him to the Barge.

Inmate/Warden: Inmate. He has made some really, really misguided decisions, and in so doing has brought down death and destruction on his tiny island town, in the form of a supernatural monster from without and an all too human monster from within.
Arrival: Seized at the moment of his death, he's going to wake up on the floor of the chapel, blood all over his face and fancy white-and-gold chasuble.

Abilities/Powers: Vampiric regeneration, ability to turn people, enhanced senses, probably healing blood as well. He can sense certain physical events within his vampire cohort (i.e. people who share his blood and the blood of the vampire that turned him) on a semi-subconscious level—he is aware when the blood has healed one character's paralysis, and he feels it when another character dies. Midnight Mass vampires don't seem to be super powerful, so he can't fly, transform himself, etc., and while his physical strength appears to be a bit above normal, it's not spectacular.

Personality: In many ways John is, to all appearances, a model priest. He is a kind, gentle man with genuine love in his heart for his community and strong Catholic faith. He's worked tirelessly all his life to provide spiritual guidance to his congregation, even as the community on Crockett Island slowly decays as the fishing industry collapses. He's beloved by his parishioners for reasons beyond longevity, and when he's pretending to be Paul, you can see the energy and force of personality that must have made an enormous impression on the islanders when he originally arrived and cemented his standing in a way that lasted even into the next generations. He is charming and charismatic, and his occasional stutter and verbal hesitancy belie his conviction and steadiness. He is compassionate, firm, intelligent, and perceptive.

But he is also convinced of his own rectitude, and too ready to ascribe divine purpose and not necessarily in the healthiest or most correct way. He will assume good intent when it suits him to do so and turn a blind eye to people's faults if they are loyal to him, which enables people like Bev Keane to influence him and gain authority in the community. And he is also willing to lie and deceive to enact what he's decided is God's will, and even to inflict pain and death in the name of what he has decided is salvation.

His lies sometimes seem trivial, even charming—for example, pretending to a child that an injured mouse was healed through divine intervention (when in fact he put the mouse out of its misery and presented a lookalike to the child). But it is nevertheless deceit and ultimately does no one any favors. And then on theother end of the scale, he feeds vampire blood to his congregation without their knowledge or consent, a decision that destroys the entire community. And in the canon moment from which he's just been pulled, he's gone full Jim Jones and encouraged his congregation to drink poison to complete their transformation into vampires (which he sees as a resurrection). He claims he feels no guilt, and that God has absolved him of guilt. He has fucked right up.

He also broke his vow of celibacy when he when he fell in love and had an affair with Mildred Gunning, which resulted in the birth of her child, Sarah, whom he never publicly acknowledged (though he did love her as much as he could and was always invested in her life and future), and whose paternity was assumed to be Millie's husband George. One character mentions rumours that John was less than celibate, but nothing ever seems to have been openly discussed or known. Now, on one hand, you can argue that he and Millie were consenting adults when they had their affair and you can argue against priestly celibacy ... but on the other, you can also argue that his position as a priest and figure of authority automatically throws consent into question, and that he took the vows when he took holy orders and whether you agree with it or not, he still broke faith.

In any case, he always loved Millie—to the extent that one of the factors underpinning his decision to return to Crockett was essentially to grant her everlasting (vampiric) life and youth. In fact, one may reasonably wonder about the extent to which all his talk about the end of days and the new covenant is him trying to convince himself of a larger meaning and purpose beyond simply the frankly selfish desire to bring Millie back from old age. The affair with Millie, aside from all the questions stated previously, also left him vulnerable to bad decisions that he hasn't really admitted to yet. He's lying to his community and to himself, not to mention letting himself be swayed by Bev, on whom he'd gotten into a habit of relying on his increasing infirmity—and he still does, even though he has his faculties back.

It's also worth noting that for a parish as tiny as St. Patrick's, he is able to outfit himself in some truly glorious chasubles, and the chalice, paten, etc. are all very nice. There is a streak of earthly vanity in John that he is unwilling to admit as well.

Barge Reactions: The theological implications of the Barge are going to give him some headaches, which he is going to deal with largely by just trying to be a priest—holding Mass, offering sacraments, and so on. The other vampires on the Barge are going to knock him sideways, however, because he is quite convinced that the vampire that turned him is an angel. (Apparently vampire lit either doesn't exist in the world of Midnight Mass, or it just doesn't have the pop cultural cachet that it does everywhere else, since no one even uses the V-word or references so much as Dracula.) Hilariously, that may give him his biggest crisis of faith.

Path to Redemption: John's graduation requirements, in approximate order from least to most difficult, are: acknowledgement that the "angel", while far from being divine, is in fact a dangerous monster; recognition that he's done his community an enormous disservice by not only bringing the "angel" and without their consent turning them with its blood, but also by enabling Bev, who while only a metaphorical bloodsucker, is wildly dangerous in her own way; admitting that he's been profoundly lying to himself about his core motivation of saving Millie; understanding that this motivation was fundamentally selfish and that she was right—the natural order of things is for them to fade away, not cling unnaturally to a life that is, really, no life at all; and finally, acknowledgement of the many, many layers of deceit—self- and otherwise—that have underpinned his entire life and led to his downfall and the destruction of his community.

(His graduation will send him back to the moment he revives from the gunshot wound, and ... everything that happens in the last episode. No one ever said the poor bastard was going to be guaranteed a happy ending.)

History: Midnight Mass episode summaries.

Additional background: John Pruitt was born in 1940, and seems to have come to Crockett Island sometime in the late 1960s or early 1970s. (There's a newspaper clipping visible at one point that mentions a date of Sunday, April 27, a date which occurred in 1969 and 1975. For various other reasons of timing, 1975 makes the most sense, which places his arrival on Crockett in 1967.)

Sample Journal Entry: https://tlvgreatesthitsdw.dreamwidth.org/108976.html?thread=31148208#cmt31148208
Sample RP: Also https://tlvgreatesthitsdw.dreamwidth.org/108976.html?thread=31148208#cmt31148208

Special Notes: I'll leave it to mod fiat to determine how much we want to nerf John's vampiric abilities. At some point he may very well try to turn people (extending the covenant of everlasting life to them, as he sees it), and I can go either way on how that turns out. Vampiric turning in Midnight Mass is basically the same as everywhere else, via ingestion of vampire blood. People can ingest the blood and still act normally, though injuries will be healed and their bodies restored to youth if they're old, but they don't turn full vampire until they die and resurrect.

Regarding his name: I'm trying to thread the needle of "ICly he has no reason to go by an alias" and "OOCly I don't want to spoil people if they care about such things", and so he's going to introduce himself as "Father John" to whoever peels him off the chapel floor. I'll have a spoiler opt-out post.