P L A Y E R; NAME: Matt
AGE: 33
PLAYER JOURNAL: mattnificent @ plurk
TIMEZONE: CST
CONTACT: plurk!
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: Seta Souji
C H A R A C T E R;NAME: Ikari Shinji
CANON: Neon Genesis Evangelion, original anime canon.
POINT IN CANON: Episode 20
AGE: 14
APPEARANCE: https://i.imgur.com/0NffEN7.png CANON HISTORY: https://wiki.evageeks.org/Shinji_Ikari#Character_Summary CANON PERSONALITY: Shinji is passive, sensitive, needy, and resentful. His lonely upbringing, with no family and little interpersonal contact, lead him to be introspective, wary of others, and maladjusted and socially awkward. Simultaneously, Shinji yearns for acceptance, love, or even simply to be needed - and he rejects those needs, feeling he is safer alone, that close contact with others is a source of pain, and the expectations of others will lead to disappointment. Because of this, he vacillates between a willingness to obey orders and pilot Evangelion, and a complete rejection of his role as a pilot, fleeing not the physical conflict and pain so much as the psychological weight of others’ expectations. His father and even Misato use him, but piloting Eva does not automatically win their approval. His classmates fear him or resent the damage he does to the city as much as they praise him. Why accept the fate of the world when it means the whole world will be disappointed in him?
Shinji considers himself unworthy of saving, or loving, or praise; since he has so seldom received help or emotional support, he concludes it is because he does not deserve them, and hates himself. He recognizes his cowardice and caprice and is repelled by them, but the extreme pressure of being a pilot would break anyone; he can’t find it in himself to mindlessly accept these dangers, and so he continues to be indecisive, sometimes leaping into the fray to help Rei, or Toji and Kensuke, sometimes wandering the city alone or actively fleeing.
Shinji bears within himself a deep well of resentment and frustration for the way he has been treated by his father and the unfairness of his circumstances, but as a powerless and neglected child, he has learned that expressing that frustration does not improve his situation, and so bitterly, he hides it, expressing it only in battle or in brief outbursts.
Shinji is, beneath this damage (which we have reason to believe is the result of deliberate calculation to produce the qualities of psychological fragility and malleability necessary in an Evangelion pilot), compassionate, sensitive, artistic. He likes playing the cello, relaxing with friends, listening to music, playing with kittens. While his curiosity is stunted because curiosity makes one vulnerable and open to rejection, someone who met Shinji in a low-stakes circumstance would find him quiet, shy, but quick to smile or laugh - sweet and innocent. He’s good at domestic tasks, cleaning and cooking, and he’ll gladly do favors for others and is more concerned with their safety and happiness than his own (although in part because he craves their approval and does not consider his own wellbeing worth investing energy in).
These contradictions - selfish, needy, resentful, cowardly, capricious -- sweet, diligent, empathetic, compassionate, attentive, receptive -- are at the core of Shinji Ikari. His awareness of the conflicts is the (internal) cause of his anxiety (with the overwhelming pressures of his environment being the outward cause).
POINT OF DEPARTURE: no point of departure at this time. I’m interested in potentially integrating other versions of Shinji’s canon experiences in later dungeons.
VETERAN?: No.
ABILITIES: Shinji has the extremely rare ability to synchronize his mind, soul, &/or ego with an Evangelion. The precise nature of this ability is never explained; Evangelion likes its audience to work for answers. My assumption is that Shinji’s deliberately cultivated psychological damage permits him to subordinate his ego enough to synchronize with an Evangelion, but his damage is not so severe that he is no longer able to project an AT Field (the barrier between the self and the other).
INVENTORY: plugsuit, SDAT music player.
ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW?M A R K S; JUSTIFICATION: Strength. Shinji is kind and gentle and does indeed possess inner strength, but he is fickle, unstable, poorly in control of himself. Strength resonates with some of his traits while emphasizing others he does not reliably possess in a way that would suggest a good relationship with his patron would foster character growth.
Fool. Shinji is the Fool of his canon, an ignorant boy on a journey of discovery, an innocent in a world of corruption. He is not yet the active, initiative-taking Magician, but still the receptive, naive soul subject to his surroundings.
Death. Shinji is depressed, psychologically wounded, subject to forces beyond his control or understanding (caught in the inescapable). This would be the most contentious and least positive match for him, but still very interesting to me as a player.
VETO: Chariot, Emperor. Chariots are decisive; Shinji is the opposite. Emperors are father figures, father figures are traumatic for Shinji in a way I’m not interested in exploring through Marks.
S A M P L E S; ACTIONSPAM SAMPLE: https://synodiporia-ooc.dreamwidth.org/260228.html?thread=12799364#cmt12799364 PROSE SAMPLE: Liminal Space was crushing Shinji, a little at a time, with how relentlessly public and open it was. Even Travelers with their own rooms spent so much time with one another, literally in each other’s heads and he’d already heard how people who got too disconnected wound up in dungeons. The idea of a dungeon was even more terrifying than being seen and heard by everyone, so he found a nook in the library where other people could see him, and started reading, curled up in his chair like a turtle in its shell. He looked up furtively whenever anyone passed, especially people near his own age, people laughing or talking, being friendly…
He couldn’t run away, even if he wanted to, and trying meant risking being alone forever. Just the thought made his hand twitch, fingers clawing at the seat of the chair beside him.
Nobody was noticing him. Did he have to do something? Say something? To who? Why was it like this? His hand crept slowly to his Mark, sliding thoughtfully over the colors. Maybe - he was on a team, right? Those were the people it was most important to know, the people who had a good reason to accept him. But - who were they? Did it say anywhere?
It was somewhere to start, anyway. He slipped a bookmark into his book and stood up, moving to scan the shelves, only making a slight noise of protest when he looked back a few minutes later and found that his bookmark had disappeared out of the pages. The thought of vanishing like that - just that quickly, and who would know? - made him stretch out and connect his mind to the network, flinching at the sound of voices in his head, but speaking up nevertheless.
Hello? Um, can everyone hear me? ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
