Application for entranceway
Name: Kristen
LJ: mouthofbrass
E-Mail: kristen[at]spectrumvoid.net
IM: MadMadPhineas
Character Name: Saeki Kayako
Series: Ju-on/The Grudge movie series
Timeline: Sometime after Ju-on: The Grudge but before her "rebirth" in Ju-on: The Grudge 2
Canon Resource Link: Character's Wikipedia entry, Wikipedia entry for the film series
Character Background: Kayako was a relatively normal girl. She grew up and went to college to study education, where she fell in love with a classmate, Kobayashi Shunsuke. She became obsessed to the point of stalking him, breaking into his house and hiding under his bed at night, and even giving her son a name that used the same characters as Kobayashi's given name. Throughout her adult life, she often dressed all in white, because she once overheard Kobayashi's offhand comment that he thought women looked good in white. Over the years, she recorded all of her feelings for Kobayashi and all of her actions in relation to him, along with some child-like doodles, in a journal, which she never got rid of.
In the end, Kobayashi was more or less oblivious to Kayako's existence, let alone her feelings toward him, and both of them ended up marrying other people. Kayako's husband, Takeo, cared for her deeply and she seemed to care for him as well, though she clearly never forgot her feelings for Kobayashi, even if she did her best to hide them. She and Takeo moved into a home together and had a son, Toshio.
It wasn't until Toshio started school that things started to go downhill. As it turned out, Kobayashi ended up being Toshio's first grade teacher. After meeting him one morning, Kayako's infatuation with him was rekindled and she found and started to write about it in her old journal again.
It wasn't long before Takeo found Kayako's journal sitting out on her desk. He read through it, becoming enraged to the point of convincing himself that Kayako had cheated on him and that Toshio wasn't his son--that he had been tricked into taking care of Kobayashi's bastard. When Kayako returned home to find him reading her journal, Takeo attacked her. Although she tried to run away, he ultimately succeeded in killing her, breaking her neck, crushing her windpipe, and stabbing and cutting her with a box cutter. He wrapped her body up in plastic garbage bags and hid her in the corner of the attic before drowning Toshio, along with the family's pet cat. Then he died, as well (in the American version he hanged himself, but in the Japanese version, he was killed by Kayako's ghost).
Then the fun really begins.
With Kayako's death, a curse is born and she (along with Toshio and, rarely, Takeo) begins to haunt the house where she and her family lived and died as an onryo. Every member of every family who subsequently lives in the house disappears or died mysteriously or, in some cases, violently. Even people who just come into the house briefly are haunted and killed by Kayako--and then she proves herself capable of going after their family and friends, who may not have ever come into direct contact with her curse.
Kayako is an angry and brutal ghost, sometimes making her victims relive her own death experience before killing them. Due to her injuries prior to her death, she is generally unable to speak but can only emit a croaking noise, and is often seen covered in blood. Her motions are jerky and she usually seems capable only of crawling to get around. She does seem to be somewhat capable of altering her appearance, but I will go into this in the abilities section.
A note on canon: Ju-on is actually a series of movies and books. The movies include the short films "Katatsumi in a Corner" and "444-444-4444" (the former of which Kayako appears in), the full length Japanese movies Ju-On: The Curse, Ju-On: The Curse 2, Ju-On: The Grudge, and Ju-On: The Grudge 2; and the American remakes, The Grudge, The Grudge 2, and The Grudge 3. There is also a video game and at least one novel that relates the story of the first of the Japanese full length movies.
The second and third American movies go into details about Kayako's past that are never mentioned in the Japanese movies, and since I'm a snob purist, I don't consider them to be canon. However, I might draw a little from the first American movie, which is much more true to the story the original Japanese films told and doesn't deviate much from them. The novel goes much more in depth about Kayako's past and her relationship to Kobayashi than the movies do, so I'm drawing her backstory primarily from there rather than from the story laid out by the American movies.
Abilites/Special Powers: Whoo boy. Okay, Kayako's powers are these:
☠ Curse: "It is said in Japan that when someone dies in extreme sorrow or rage, the emotion remains and can leave a stain upon that place. Death becomes a part of that place, killing everything it touches." The curse created by the circumstances of Kayako's death dictates that anyone who comes into contact with her and her home will die, generally at Kayako's hand. Strictly speaking, this curse is an energy or force attached to a specific location (the Saeki house), and it is coming into contact with it that enables Kayako to be able to haunt people no matter how far away from the house they may travel or how far in the future she might choose to manifest and do away with them. Time and location mean nothing to her or the curse.
☠ Haunting: Kayako haunts the Saeki house in general, but she also haunts anyone who comes into the house, even after they've left. She will follow them anywhere and everywhere, tormenting them until she either catches up to them or until she simply chooses to strike. Because she's dead, actual physical and temporal barriers don't affect her, so it's likely that she just enjoys toying with people and that is why she often haunts people for awhile before killing them. Her haunting capabilities include but are not limited to things like the following: appearing in peoples' homes or workplaces, following them, manipulating electronics (in one case, she turns on a copy machine and makes copies that start out totally black but eventually turn into a picture of her face), placing calls to peoples' phones, mimicking peoples' voices or creating apparitions of them, moving objects without touching them or even being present, and so on.
☠ Shape changing: Kayako's normal appearance is a pale woman with long, black, tangled hair, often but not always covered in blood, wearing white or sometimes wrapped in plastic, who is only capable of making odd croaking noises, whose broken neck makes crunching sounds as she turns her head at extreme angles, and whose movements are jerky and uncoordinated. However, she is capable of altering her appearance and her voice. Sometimes she appears as a dark shadow, sometimes she is capable of walking and moving gracefully, somtimes she speaks in a normal voice. She can make her hair grow out to extreme lengths, wrapping it around people to immobilize, smother, or strangle them. It seems that she alters her appearance to whatever will most benefit her terrorizing the person she's dealing with, but ultimately, and especially when seen in the Saeki house, she manifests in her bloody, jerky, croaky form.
☠ Temporal distortion: In at least one instance, Kayako's haunting manifests in a temporally distorted way. Two of the characters in Ju-On: The Grudge 2 hear and see certain parts of their own deaths days before they happen, but don't put the pieces together until it's too late to escape. In another instance in Ju-On: The Grudge, she shows a man who has come to he Saeki house to destroy it a vision of his daughter six or seven years in the future as she and a group of friends enter the house to mess around and drink. The daughter, from the future, is also able to see him.
☠ Spiritual possession: There has been at least one instance (described explicitely in the novel, but implied in Ju-On: The Grudge) in which Kayako chooses not to kill a person she is haunting but instead bides her time, following the woman around and gradually subsuming and altering the living woman's personality in a bid to gain a new life. In Ju-On: The Grudge 2, she haunts a pregnant woman and manages to possess and take control of the fetus she's carrying, allowing her to be reborn. Either way, the possession process is gradual.
☠ Demonic possession: This goes along with the general haunting, and describes the examples I gave above, such as Kayako's ability to manipulate electronics, move objects around, place phone calls, and so on. She can apparently induce visions concerning herself, such as coming out of a person's chest. Conversely, she can also manifest physically, touching people, though they may not be able to see her after she does.
In addition to these powers, Kayako's appearance apparently induces such fear in her victims that they're unable to fight back--none of them, regardless of their personalities or skills, ever attempt to physically attack her, but are instead paralyzed with fear.
Obviously, if she's accepted, I'll be putting up a permissions post to cover all of these things. If her powers need to be limited at all, beyond the obvious limitations of not having the Saeki house and therefore the site of her curse present, let me know.
Third-Person Sample:
There was no light in the closet; no cracks in its frame that would allow the light in. No cracks that would let her see out. That was fine. Kayako didn't need them. Even though she never closed her wide-open eyes, she knew that vision could never truly communicate what was and wasn't there. After all, she was there. And she would always be there.
Always was a long time. A long time to lay still, waiting, the lingering memory of her body in pain exponentially worse in retrospect than it had been in reality. But it was okay. The pain made her rage stronger, made her extend her reach further, made her hunger and thirst greater than they had ever been when she had been alive. Her longing for Kobayashi--strongest on the nights she had slept under him sleeping on his bed, inches above her, but so, so far away--had never been as strong as this feverish desire for revenge.
Downstairs, something moved. A door opened, closed. Footsteps paused in the entry as shoes were removed, and she could hear voices. A man--no, two--and a woman: the realtor and a couple looking for a new home. She shifted in her plastic coccoon, the rustle drowned out by how loud the crunching of her broken neck sounded in her own ears. She had already decided to spare the realtor for the time being. He brought new tenants, after all, and new tenants were all that curbed her anger. But the married couple--
Marriage was a tentative thing. A new form of life struggling to stand on its own feet and wobble alone in its first steps. It was easily shattered, easily devoured, easily tainted. Takeo had taught her this.
Quashing her impatience, Kayako went still again. There was no point in hurrying. She would always be here, and always was a long time.
First-Person Sample:
[The video begins in a dim room, inexplicably laid out in Japanese fashion. Light filters in around drawn curtains and dust hangs in the air.
There is a light scrabbling sound at the sliding door of the closet, as though someone inside were scratching at it. The sound is not urgent--it could almost be described as confused.
The door slides open slowly, jerkily revealing an inch of darkness. Another. A few more. Then the motion stops.
The room is perfectly still for several moments, other than the dust in the air.
A low croaking begins from some source off screen. It's abortive at first, but quickly grows in volume and strength. Visual tears appear in the video feed, then it freezes, holding for just a second before going to static and then cutting out altogether. In that time, one may be able to see thin white fingers wrapped around the edge of the closet door.
Saeki Kayako has arrived in the mansion. And she is not happy about it.]