lab app

[petsthedog]

OOC INFORMATION
Player Name: Batty
Pronoun Preferences: she/her
Contact: goodluckmodes
Are you over the age of 18?: y
Invitation Link: here
Current Characters: n/a
Link to Permissions: Permissions.

IC INFORMATION
Character Name: Shinjiro Aragaki
Species: Human
Canon: Persona 3 (Reload-compliant, mostly, with bits and pieces taken from other iterations of canon such as the manga)
Canon Point: Post-death
Character Age: 18
CRAU: N
Character Appearance: Here.
Powers and Abilities:
A Persona in the Persona series is the manifestation of a person's soul which can be summoned for purposes such as combat and reconnaissance.

Shinjiro's Persona is Castor. Castor is essentially a tank/berserker-type persona, which passively regenerates damage taken every turn and reflects up to 20% of the physical attacks aimed at it, and can do large amounts of physical damage itself at the cost of 10-20% of Shinjiro's own strength:

Fatal End - Deals medium Slash damage to 1 foe. Low chance of inflicting Fear.

Blade of Fury - Deals weak Slash damage to all foes (2-4 hits).

Heat Wave - Deals heavy Strike damage to all foes.

Bloody Charge - Consumes 40% HP to increase critical rate and next physical attack damage.

Endure - Survive a fatal blow with 1 HP remaining.

Regenerate - Automatically recover 6% of max HP each turn in battle.

High Counter- 20% chance of reflecting physical skills. Does not stack.

It's also worth noting that Shinjiro has lost control of Castor before. There is not a known in-universe explanation for this, nor does it occur again throughout the period Shinjiro is a playable character in any of the P3 games. I'm flexible with regard to however the mod would like to handle this!

Shinjiro is also decently skilled at hand-to-hand fighting, easily taking down some thugs that were threatening Minato, Yukari, and Junpei early in the game, as well as implied to have had many sparring matches with his best friend, champion boxer Akihiko. Finally, he's known to be excellent at cooking and other domestic tasks, fixing a broken geta with a spare handkerchief in supplementary material.

What Did Your Character Wish For? "I wish things could have been different" would've been the wording of the wish, with specifics in his heart being for Oct 4th to have never happened like it did, or at least to have regained control before he got someone hurt or killed, and to have been able to keep his promise to graduate with Akihiko and Mitsuru.

What Potion Did They Receive? Blue
Did They Drink It? N

Character Questions:
1. Who is the person your character is most bonded with from their canon, or who is someone they miss the most and why?
Akihiko Sanada - his oldest, dearest friend, the closest thing he has to family. Akihiko was always the one between them with dreams and ambition, and before his life fell apart, Shinjiro was content to simply follow along and watch his back. Akihiko's passion and conviction were a driving force, as Shinjiro was guided by their childhood promise between them to always do what they felt was right. Ultimately, that became the same instrument to drive a wedge between them. Akihiko's insistence on Shinjiro simply moving on from the past clashed with his own strongly-held views that it would not be right to carry on as though what happened didn't matter, and this would remain a bone of contention between the two of them for the next two years. Even so, Shinjiro distanced himself largely because he wanted to spare his old friend the pain of grieving him; he never managed to sever his ties entirely, which is why he would make himself available to meet him and offer information even as he professed wanting nothing more to do with the Dark Hour, Personas, or SEES, but he hoped the distance would serve to dull the pain of eventually losing him. The promise between them is core to why Shinjiro can't bring himself to walk away from the path he's chosen for himself, and on some level what he wants most of all from Akihiko is for the other teen to understand that.

2. What are they most afraid of and why?
Shinjiro is most afraid of himself, ultimately. Specifically of causing direct harm again because of his powers, but he is also deeply paralyzed with the fear of not making the right choices after all, of causing more harm than good by existing. He is perhaps most terrified of all of having to live with the guilt and pain of these mistakes and risk continuing to be a negative element in people's lives. He no longer believes he is a good person, to the point where he rejects any compliments to that effect, and his former classmate Mitsuru notes that he's uncomfortable when people "make a fuss" about him. He is unable to let himself off the hook for the consequences of his actions, despite the fact that his intentions were righteous to begin with. He is traumatized and suicidal because of it, no longer seeing any value or potential future good in himself.

3. What are their emotional, mental, and physical weaknesses and why?
Physically, he's done a lot of damage to his body from his overuse of the Persona suppressants, such that he was actively dying. We're told he regularly feels cold without his coat and beanie, even in normal weather/indoors, and he likely deals with some disordered sleep and chronic pain/fatigue issues as well.

Mentally, he shows signs of depression and ptsd, struggling with finding meaning or value in continuing to exist and accepting various cognitive distortions that have convinced him everyone would be better off if he just Didn't. He also seems to have anhedonia issues (his apparent Only Hobby is cooking), and makes reference to how his body won't let him forget the night of Oct 4th, and "he finds himself there even when it's the last place he wants to be" – which sounds like he's referring to having regular flashbacks.

Emotionally, his greatest weakness is his crippling guilt. His storyline is centered on his inability to forgive himself and move on. He is convinced that causing a person's death, even accidentally, is something that can never be taken back or forgotten, something that he does not have the right to forgive himself for, and he constantly suffers over the fact that he faced no consequences for what he's done.

4. What discrepancies are there between their inner self (who they feel they are) and their outer self (how they present themselves to others)?
Shinjiro tries to give off the impression of a thug, intimidating and unapproachable—someone you wouldn't want to run into in a dark alley. He speaks coarsely and has the height to loom, and his default expressions range from crabby to downright frightening.

The juvenile delinquent street punk facade is often thin at best, however, readily crumbling upon scrutiny–much to his own chagrin. In truth, Shinjiro is a very kind and gentle person. In one radio drama, he goes out of his way to return someone's lost geta and fix it for them with his own handkerchief. He expresses concern for the troubles of his old friends Mitsuru and Akihiko, tells the protagonist to be careful with his health, teaches him to cook, and fusses about nutrition. He hand-makes dog food for Koromaru and shows him a great deal of affection--something he appears to be embarrassed by when the others find out, as it detracts from his tough-guy image. Even while dying, his focus is not on himself, telling Ken it’s alright if he can’t let go of his hatred right away, and to try to turn his anger into strength to live on.

It's worth noting, however, that the way Shinjiro presents himself outwardly is more in line with who he feels he is than these hints toward his true nature. He does not see himself as a good or kind person, and he feels others would be better off not trusting or relying on him, even as he cannot bring himself to fully sever all his ties.

5. What would make them happiest and why?
"Happy" is a relative term with someone as depressed and exhausted as Shinjiro. He finds happiness with cooking and taking care of team dog Koromaru, around whom he is even seen smiling occasionally, but this is still akin to taking ibuprofen for a shattered limb while continuing to attempt to walk on it. What Shinjiro wants most is simply … to rest. He wants to stop hurting most of all, wants to do right by the people he's hurt, but it's important to remember he was only sixteen when everything fell apart and has been struggling largely on his own since. The trauma he experienced makes it difficult for him to understand what he really wants, but the first step to healing would likely be for someone to acknowledge his guilt and grief as legitimate and not something that can simply be "moved on" from like a shed skin.

6. What characteristics does someone need to have to be your character's ideal significant other? In the case a character is underage or does not feel romantic attraction, answer for an ideal platonic partner or best friend.
The kind of traits Shinjiro most admires are forthrightness and conviction. Shinjiro does not consider himself as someone who has any business being especially judgmental; people do shitty things for their own reasons, and he is no exception. Yet, the kind of person he respects the most is the sort that makes no illusions about who they are and what they stand for, whatever it is that might be, and does not back down from those principles. Akihiko is an excellent demonstration of that, someone who will not back down from what he believes is the right way to be. Though this can frustrate Shinjiro and he would likely say that it's annoying to have someone nag him all the time, but he responds well to that kind of attitude all the same. People most likely to get close to him are those who are not afraid to pursue him when he retreats, yet do not act entitled to his space and his life. Someone too visibly attached will make him uncomfortable, but he finds vulnerability difficult and those who are not willing to ask for his heart in smaller, subtler ways are never going to find it, either.

7. Would your character make a sacrifice to save someone else and why or why not?
Absolutely. Shinjiro is haunted by Ken's mother's death and especially the coverup about it. In the absence of anyone to hold him accountable or punish him for what he caused, he has spent much of the past two years self-flagellating as a means of "paying" that debt instead, unable to come to terms with his guilt. Yet despite being willing to allow Ken to kill him in revenge without complaint, he goes out of his way to warn the boy that it might weigh on him in the future, and upon ultimately taking a bullet to protect him, his dying words are entirely for the sake of the boy's well-being.

His attitude can further be gleaned from his actions in the years leading up to his death. Despite actively propelling himself toward an inevitable end, it's notable that he does not simply take his own life immediately after the incident that caused Ken's mother's death – that kind of thing would end up on the news, and could cause additional problems for the few people in his life if they were to be connected with him in an investigation. He chooses instead to slowly, gradually disappear as a poor orphan in the cold unforgiving streets. He doesn't want to cause problems for others, and if self-sacrifice is an option that might remove such, he'll take it.

8. What is one thing they would tell their younger self if they had the chance, or if your character is young, what is one thing they would want their older self to remember?
While Shinjiro would probably want to tell his younger self not to join SEES, he knows that said younger self would absolutely not listen to him without the life experiences he's had, so instead he would somewhat cryptically tell him that there would be a kid whose back he would need to watch in the future, and when the time comes, he should consider finding that kid to be a higher priority than anything else, no matter how he feels about himself at that time. Shinjiro wouldn't offer the context, since it would be meaningless to his younger self, but of all the regrets he has, probably the deepest is that he didn't realize Ken fully intended to kill himself after he got his revenge; he'd want better for the kid than that, even if he can't see a better future for himself, so he'd want to try to see to it that Ken found friends and a support structure before he became as consumed with revenge as he had been.

9. When in dire circumstances does your character fight, flee, freeze or fawn and how does that look?
It depends. Shinjiro is terrible at coping with stress and especially guilt, wherein he defaults to avoidance. After the incident on October 4th, he immediately leaves the dorm and SEES, begins skipping school and enters into shady bargains with a group known for violence to secure ultimately fatal suppressant drugs for his Persona, seeking to simply remove himself as a threat. He doesn't want to cause pain with his death, though, so he withdraws socially, hoping to die quietly and unmourned. When Akihiko finds out about the drugs, he allows himself to be hit rather than be upfront about what's going on with him.

However, when someone else is in danger, he generally chooses to fight. He joins SEES originally in order to watch Akihiko's back as they fight Shadows. Early in the game, when the protagonist, Yukari, and Junpei wander into a dangerous area and are accosted by thugs, Shinjiro appears to chase them off without even recognizing them as people he'd met before. He rejoins SEES after two years of refusing to do so for his own sake when he finds out Ken Amada has been brought into the fold to fight Shadows. He tries to tackle Takaya when the man intends to shoot Ken, and ends up taking a bullet for him.

10. Why did your character make the wish they did?
Shinjiro's dying words are "this is how it should be", and yet, there's evidence that he didn't really want things to have ended the way they did. In Reload, for instance, there's an entire storyline about Mitsuru and Akihiko's efforts to get him to re-enroll in classes, and after his death, the protagonist finds the completed reinstatement form in his desk, likely left there as a token of his desire to have kept his promise to them. In a drama CD that explores his past, we see that he once wanted to be an average high school student who hung out with friends and had fun summer vacations on the beach – and there's part of Shinjiro that mourns that simple, average life he intended to have but no longer feels he deserves. Finally, throughout his storyline, his greatest priority is Ken's well-being; if he could take it all back and allow Ken to have a good, happy life which was not traumatically shattered by him, it'd put his tortured heart at ease.

Samples:
Log sample
Network sample