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Jan. 28th, 2012 01:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tchh>PLAYER
NAME/HANDLE: Linton
PERSONAL JOURNAL: lintonbridge
ARE YOU OVER 16? Yes
CONTACT: AIM: Astrosyzygy; Plurk: lintonbridge
OTHER CHARACTERS: n/a
>CHARACTER
CHARACTER NAME: Shinjiro Aragaki
AGE: 18 (at his decease)
PERSONALITY: Shinjiro's first real meeting with Minato and the junior members of SEES, behind Port Island Station, is a dangerous moment. The punks who hang out behind the station are threatening Minato, Yukari, and Junpei, and Shinjiro scares them off with a headbutt and a confident, undaunted attitude.
This episode alone can sum up Shinjiro's character, on closer examination. On the outside, he radiates strength and independence; in this scene, like usual, he is alone. (Despite his close friendship with Akihiko, he meets with his friend only once every few weeks.) He's tall, he looks shady, and he doesn't bother with niceties or politeness. From a glance, it's evident he has confidence in himself, despite being one against a group. He may very well be worried; they outnumber him greatly, after all. If so, this doesn't show through, and that's because he knows better than to let it show through. His greatest advantage, in a situation like this, is that he has the confidence not to rely on others; he's been on the streets for years, as an orphan and then later, after leaving SEES. His considerable physical strength helps too, naturally, but his mental strength is equally remarkable. As he says in conversation later, "for your Persona to have a weakness, the Persona-user has to have a weakness... and I don't."
When it comes to a fight, he first intimidates the punk with a display of force--one well-timed and well-aimed strike, going literally head-to-head and downing his enemy. His attacking style and fighting style also reflects this attitude: he takes big cuts, using a large battle axe, and when he hits, he hits hard. In battle, he simply wants to get the job done as quickly and as efficiently as possible, and he doesn't want to deal with any of the other crap, as he calls it. This reflects, more broadly, that he is straightforward in a way that few other Persona characters are. As it stands, he is, besides Koromaru, the only SEES member whose Persona never evolves. Of course, his dying happens to be the catalyst for that evolution for several people, and maybe given time his Persona might have changed, too. But maybe not: while he has problems, he mostly deals with them openly and consistently. Indeed, another main attribute of his is his consistency. Akihiko seems to have asked him many times over the years to come back to SEES, and he's repeatedly refused. When, in P3P, Minako establishes a level ten Social Link with him, he still tries to hold back from becoming intimate with her, and she has to barge her way in, squelching his excuses, before he finally gives up and then gives her the warning that he's "not gonna hold back". In other words, it's not that his mind can't be changed (indeed, Akihiko gets him back in SEES, too), but rather, that when he does something, he commits to it. Staying away from SEES was the right thing to do, he believes; he learned that his Persona can get out of control once, and it cost Ken's mother's life. Others might be tempted to return, to make it up, at least, or might be convinced by their best friend urging them. Akihiko says Shinjiro can't let go of the past, but Shinjiro believes that he has let go of the past; that he's accepted what happened, and has simply taken steps not to let it happen again. Issue done with. It still preys on his sense of morals, but he can't do anything about that by going back to SEES. By the time Ken catches up to him, he seems to have thought it out thoroughly, guessing exactly what Ken is thinking (also indicated by the end of Minako's social link). And the only thing he feels he can do in that regard is let Ken take his deserved revenge, if he wants it, while urging him not to.
The issue of Ken is his biggest moral conflict, but the episode behind the station also shows Shinjiro's essential morality. It's not, in fact, all that hidden: first, he can't refrain from barging in to save the SEES members despite not knowing them; then, he tells them the information that Yukari wanted to know on top of it. Yukari sees it: she tells him "You're very kind", which seems to take him aback. He doesn't want to get into fights, which is both practical and personal: he doesn't want to fight if he doesn't have to, and so he doesn't swoop in and beat up the punks from the start, but rather, tells them almost politely (in comparison to what the punks have just been threatening) that he'll make the intruding SEES members leave. He isn't a lover of violence nor is he embittered. Indeed, he actually cares deeply for people. Again in Minako's social link with him, he demonstrates this through his cooking skills. This is the main source of his growth through the canon; he learns a way to express his care for the others, a way other than doing his best when fighting with them and expecting the best from them in the same situation. He encourages them to stay strong by eating better food, learns to lean on someone else (Minako) just a little bit by listening to her encouragement, and, along the way, somehow manages to correct the disaster that is Fuuka cooking (eat your heart out, Minato). Shinjiro remains, of course, gruff and blunt; and in this timeline, he hasn't even met Minako, obviously, so that side of him remains submerged, but still present.
WHERE THEY ARE NOW? Well, he's been dead. It hasn't made him particularly happy or sad, mostly because he's dead. Post-canon, his activities are limited to the things dead people can do.
>SAMPLES
FIRST PERSON ACTION SAMPLE: [> Central shopping district, evening...
Shinjiro is staring at the Chinese Diner Aiya with a distracted expression, hat pulled low over his eyes, dressed too warmly for the night's weather, perhaps because he can't feel that anymore. He stares at it for a second longer before his eyes drop and he backs up, towards the nearby alley, striding almost angrily away.]
Tch... That kind of shit doesn't really matter anyway.
[He ends up strolling down the street. It's aimless as before... He sees Marukyu coming up and laughs a little darkly to himself.]
If I can get bad enough tofu, it might not taste any different.
[He sighs.]
Yamagishi'd have no problem getting that... Tch. Typical.
[And so he keeps wandering on, vaguely disconsolate, but looking typically stoic.]
THIRD PERSON SAMPLE: Shinjiro blew a deep breath out into the still air on top of the hill overlooking the town.
Yeah, Inaba was a quiet, rural town, all right. That didn't matter to him, though. There was more excitement in the alleys of Port Island, but excitement wasn't what he wanted in any case. In fact, Shinjiro would've found himself at a loss anywhere else at the moment, too. He knew for a fact he wasn't supposed to be here. He had made his peace with his fate. That was how it should have been, and that was how it was. He'd paid for his mistake in the most fitting way, or the only fitting way. What could you do to make up for murder? And if it wasn't technically murder, it didn't matter to him. It was all the same. What could you do? Go to prison? Give your sincerest apologies? There was only one thing that could even that bloody gap; more blood. All the same. It was better if it was Strega. Or anyone. Better that than he should ruin Ken's life through his death as surely as he had in life.
He gazed out over the town. He'd come here alone to try to work out his confusion. What was he doing here, in a town he had heard of maybe once (but he had heard of it, hadn't he? People came here for the springs. Something like that), without those injuries? Without the bullets he could still remember?
He wasn't the kind of person who believed in the divine or any of that crap. If it existed, it wasn't part of the world. The world had its own mechanism that was like that. Fate, or something close to it, but fate was not the kind of law that could bring a dead man back into his body and send him to Yasoinaba. Even less so could it take away his ability to feel things. What if hell was being alive again, alone and purposeless, without even the senses you used to have?
Yeah... The last thing he'd felt was those bullets. In the town, he'd tried to eat something. No dice. He'd dug his nails into the skin of his hand and felt nothing and stopped before it seemed like he was going to crush one hand in the other. If this was the price to pay, he'd pay it, but damn. Would he ever cook again?
After a moment, Shinjiro scoffed mentally at his own question. It wasn't like he could do anything about it. No point crying over something like that. It was a pretty town, even though the fog was obscuring most of the view. If there was an afterlife, he'd heard of worse ways to spend it.
PERSONAL JOURNAL: lintonbridge
ARE YOU OVER 16? Yes
CONTACT: AIM: Astrosyzygy; Plurk: lintonbridge
OTHER CHARACTERS: n/a
>CHARACTER
AGE: 18 (at his decease)
PERSONALITY: Shinjiro's first real meeting with Minato and the junior members of SEES, behind Port Island Station, is a dangerous moment. The punks who hang out behind the station are threatening Minato, Yukari, and Junpei, and Shinjiro scares them off with a headbutt and a confident, undaunted attitude.
This episode alone can sum up Shinjiro's character, on closer examination. On the outside, he radiates strength and independence; in this scene, like usual, he is alone. (Despite his close friendship with Akihiko, he meets with his friend only once every few weeks.) He's tall, he looks shady, and he doesn't bother with niceties or politeness. From a glance, it's evident he has confidence in himself, despite being one against a group. He may very well be worried; they outnumber him greatly, after all. If so, this doesn't show through, and that's because he knows better than to let it show through. His greatest advantage, in a situation like this, is that he has the confidence not to rely on others; he's been on the streets for years, as an orphan and then later, after leaving SEES. His considerable physical strength helps too, naturally, but his mental strength is equally remarkable. As he says in conversation later, "for your Persona to have a weakness, the Persona-user has to have a weakness... and I don't."
When it comes to a fight, he first intimidates the punk with a display of force--one well-timed and well-aimed strike, going literally head-to-head and downing his enemy. His attacking style and fighting style also reflects this attitude: he takes big cuts, using a large battle axe, and when he hits, he hits hard. In battle, he simply wants to get the job done as quickly and as efficiently as possible, and he doesn't want to deal with any of the other crap, as he calls it. This reflects, more broadly, that he is straightforward in a way that few other Persona characters are. As it stands, he is, besides Koromaru, the only SEES member whose Persona never evolves. Of course, his dying happens to be the catalyst for that evolution for several people, and maybe given time his Persona might have changed, too. But maybe not: while he has problems, he mostly deals with them openly and consistently. Indeed, another main attribute of his is his consistency. Akihiko seems to have asked him many times over the years to come back to SEES, and he's repeatedly refused. When, in P3P, Minako establishes a level ten Social Link with him, he still tries to hold back from becoming intimate with her, and she has to barge her way in, squelching his excuses, before he finally gives up and then gives her the warning that he's "not gonna hold back". In other words, it's not that his mind can't be changed (indeed, Akihiko gets him back in SEES, too), but rather, that when he does something, he commits to it. Staying away from SEES was the right thing to do, he believes; he learned that his Persona can get out of control once, and it cost Ken's mother's life. Others might be tempted to return, to make it up, at least, or might be convinced by their best friend urging them. Akihiko says Shinjiro can't let go of the past, but Shinjiro believes that he has let go of the past; that he's accepted what happened, and has simply taken steps not to let it happen again. Issue done with. It still preys on his sense of morals, but he can't do anything about that by going back to SEES. By the time Ken catches up to him, he seems to have thought it out thoroughly, guessing exactly what Ken is thinking (also indicated by the end of Minako's social link). And the only thing he feels he can do in that regard is let Ken take his deserved revenge, if he wants it, while urging him not to.
The issue of Ken is his biggest moral conflict, but the episode behind the station also shows Shinjiro's essential morality. It's not, in fact, all that hidden: first, he can't refrain from barging in to save the SEES members despite not knowing them; then, he tells them the information that Yukari wanted to know on top of it. Yukari sees it: she tells him "You're very kind", which seems to take him aback. He doesn't want to get into fights, which is both practical and personal: he doesn't want to fight if he doesn't have to, and so he doesn't swoop in and beat up the punks from the start, but rather, tells them almost politely (in comparison to what the punks have just been threatening) that he'll make the intruding SEES members leave. He isn't a lover of violence nor is he embittered. Indeed, he actually cares deeply for people. Again in Minako's social link with him, he demonstrates this through his cooking skills. This is the main source of his growth through the canon; he learns a way to express his care for the others, a way other than doing his best when fighting with them and expecting the best from them in the same situation. He encourages them to stay strong by eating better food, learns to lean on someone else (Minako) just a little bit by listening to her encouragement, and, along the way, somehow manages to correct the disaster that is Fuuka cooking (eat your heart out, Minato). Shinjiro remains, of course, gruff and blunt; and in this timeline, he hasn't even met Minako, obviously, so that side of him remains submerged, but still present.
WHERE THEY ARE NOW? Well, he's been dead. It hasn't made him particularly happy or sad, mostly because he's dead. Post-canon, his activities are limited to the things dead people can do.
>SAMPLES
Shinjiro is staring at the Chinese Diner Aiya with a distracted expression, hat pulled low over his eyes, dressed too warmly for the night's weather, perhaps because he can't feel that anymore. He stares at it for a second longer before his eyes drop and he backs up, towards the nearby alley, striding almost angrily away.]
Tch... That kind of shit doesn't really matter anyway.
[He ends up strolling down the street. It's aimless as before... He sees Marukyu coming up and laughs a little darkly to himself.]
If I can get bad enough tofu, it might not taste any different.
[He sighs.]
Yamagishi'd have no problem getting that... Tch. Typical.
[And so he keeps wandering on, vaguely disconsolate, but looking typically stoic.]
THIRD PERSON SAMPLE: Shinjiro blew a deep breath out into the still air on top of the hill overlooking the town.
Yeah, Inaba was a quiet, rural town, all right. That didn't matter to him, though. There was more excitement in the alleys of Port Island, but excitement wasn't what he wanted in any case. In fact, Shinjiro would've found himself at a loss anywhere else at the moment, too. He knew for a fact he wasn't supposed to be here. He had made his peace with his fate. That was how it should have been, and that was how it was. He'd paid for his mistake in the most fitting way, or the only fitting way. What could you do to make up for murder? And if it wasn't technically murder, it didn't matter to him. It was all the same. What could you do? Go to prison? Give your sincerest apologies? There was only one thing that could even that bloody gap; more blood. All the same. It was better if it was Strega. Or anyone. Better that than he should ruin Ken's life through his death as surely as he had in life.
He gazed out over the town. He'd come here alone to try to work out his confusion. What was he doing here, in a town he had heard of maybe once (but he had heard of it, hadn't he? People came here for the springs. Something like that), without those injuries? Without the bullets he could still remember?
He wasn't the kind of person who believed in the divine or any of that crap. If it existed, it wasn't part of the world. The world had its own mechanism that was like that. Fate, or something close to it, but fate was not the kind of law that could bring a dead man back into his body and send him to Yasoinaba. Even less so could it take away his ability to feel things. What if hell was being alive again, alone and purposeless, without even the senses you used to have?
Yeah... The last thing he'd felt was those bullets. In the town, he'd tried to eat something. No dice. He'd dug his nails into the skin of his hand and felt nothing and stopped before it seemed like he was going to crush one hand in the other. If this was the price to pay, he'd pay it, but damn. Would he ever cook again?
After a moment, Shinjiro scoffed mentally at his own question. It wasn't like he could do anything about it. No point crying over something like that. It was a pretty town, even though the fog was obscuring most of the view. If there was an afterlife, he'd heard of worse ways to spend it.
