1, 11, 40, 60, 56 shin

1: what kind of situations compromise my muse emotionally

Hm. Well, stressful situations will do it, situations where his life is in danger or the life of someone he cares deeply about is, situations where he feels helpless to act or change something, taken extremely off guard and unsure what is going on, which can be a subset of that. That's a fairly standard package.

There's also if something unequivocally and completely is at a disjunct with his worldview or his idea of 'how things go'. He has a fairly major breakdown in canon early on because of this and he had another one at Sidney in Yogen as well.

He's... brittle is the wrong word but like. So many of his conceptions are interlocked with so many of his other conceptions that if something cracks one, the others start to give.

Which is especially painful for him because the core of them is his trust issues stemming from his trauma surrounding a toxic relationship, that's both the construction he's built to mentally process it and deal with it entertwined with the wounds inflicted during it and so anything that conflicts that really gets to him.

It's not a perfectly crystalline structure either, it's messy and sometimes internally contradicts and that adds strain when it's tested

dfdgfhgd I got a bit into the weeds here

11: a sadness headcanon

I'm not sure if this means like. A sad headcanon or a headcanon about Shin being sad but. This counts as a headcanon because it's not been confirmed in the series yet but I do think Shin died not knowing Kanna was the biological sibling he'd wanted to meet all those years ago.

God this is all so delicious

KEEP GOING!!!

IKR shin's fascinating when you get out the microscope there's so many moving parts

Case in point, for Shin being sad... I think there's that internal tension between the fact he genuinely wants validation and wants his pain to be seen and heard and the gestures at above that means he'll often do this extremely obliquely or not at all.

He's a very lonely person but also is extremely bad at reaching out or letting people get close to him so he'll just play some video games or hug a plush in his room until it goes away most of the time.

There's his parents who from what he says do seem to love him very much to the point of being a little smothering or overprotective sometimes, but he has a lot of insecurity and sense of shame about his life and the way he lives it and has a desire to stand on his own feet that kind of hamstrings getting comfort from them.

it sucks because if someone genuinely asks if he's okay his kneejerk response is to be suspicious of why they're asking, you can see how he's bound up in all these threads :' )

40: where 'home' is to my muse

sighs.... shin....

SIGHS

his pain... and his reaction to being asked if hes ok..... sick...twisted

he is a LOT
yeah you can see how you could like pick up on his 'notice this' signals and try to like, connect into that and then he like brushes it off or tries to turn it around on you because he thinks you haven't picked up on it and HHHRHGH SHIN

he's.... doing better in yogen actually, like he's Trying. it's just this is a lot to unpick and he doesn't have a map i.e. therapy but.... at his core he really doesn't... like this

i love how u play him bc these lil things do be showing and my heart... my heart places hand to chest...sighs.... my feelings

<3 aaaa thank you :' ) i try my best with him... sometimes i do wonder in a tag if i'm missing one of his facets that would interact with the rest and produce a different result but... i think I'm starting to get on top of him this means a lot : D

it's fascinating bc there's a tweet from the creator showing that he might have been one of the first characters made for the game (or at least there was one of the first characters that was split into him and another one), and it kind of shows in that there's a LOT that seems like it's the result of a ton of iterations

like for example in some of the cut content it's implied that he was a heavy drinker or alcoholic; this was cut, he's not that, but there's a line in the game where he's like 'oh yeah... i'm drinking age huh... should be careful, drink can end up consuming you' or similar

so it's fun going on an archaeological dig and trying to guess which traits come from where. there's an implication his abuser potentially wasn't actually a character until one and a half chapters in, but nankidai is really good at taking a character's existing behaviour and weaving it near seamlessly into new changes

but it does mean that like... there's artefacts of the process and it does influence the end result in making him a very humanly messy sort of individual

dsfdgfh i got sidetracked though... home for him... we actually do get to see his home, or part of it!

A lot of this is like. Headcanon filling the gaps but Midori had an apartment that Shin used to go over to after school and I think when he was 18 he actually moved in

this was the start of many fights about the thermostat

well, i say 'fights' more like shin turning it up, midori turning it down, and midori making pointed comments about 'sure is hot in here' while drinking water

anyway when Midori vanished for Mysterious Plot Reasons he just kept... living... there...

I think he still avoids Midori's half of the computer room

Because whenever he's asked about it he mentions it bring back bad memories

So home is a very interesting thing for him bc like. He could move back in with his parents but like... even though I think they'd be happy to have him he'd see it as a personal failing but also there's a lot of ghosts in this apartment although after two years maybe they have faded into the mundane a little

So does he truly feel at home there? Hard to say. Is there a kind of place he'd feel at home? Also hard to say. He doesn't really go out much, mostly for food or his night shift convenience store work.

He's kind of... aimless and crushed by the looming rest of his life.

I think though that... in an ideal world his home would definitely be one shared with other people. So I'm happy about the Yogen dorms even if he doesn't like the school in general :' )

60: what my muse's ideal pet would be

Something low maintenance I think. A dog would be a bit too high energy for him and need more exercise than he's physically up for. I think he'd accidentally kill a pot plant because that's a little too easy to forget about

SHINNNNNNNNNNNNN

pulls some of my hair out

goes a lil bald for him

A cat would probably suit him. Maybe a rabbit. Something soft he can cuddle with
sfdgfhghfgd oh no

the anti dog charas

taps my wrist

yall my next tally

HE WASN'T ANTI DOG UNTIL THE WOLF THREAD

DONT LET KOMAEDA KNOWWW

then again komaeda would have loved that dog

actually... yeah ...

maybe a little nervous around them but if a friendly one came up to him he'd pet it. dogs and dog energy people... good for him in small doses

DOG ENERGY PPL

but now uh... the motion of a dog (as well as vanilla) would probably be a trauma trigger for him

if one jumped or ran at him or something he would be OUT

YEAH DOG ENERGY PPL
if you get the right dog energy person he responds really well to him because they can overload his natural emotional defenses with sheer emotional exuberance a bit

subaru and more evilly npc kun have found this out

*responds really well to them

there is one dog energy person in yttd that would get him and it is a goddamn shame shin kills him

of course it has to be in the right range band because if someone is too happy to see him or interact with them or cheerful in general it sets up HUGE RED WARNING ALARMS in his brain so. tricky

*interact with him, whoops

56: if everyone my muse knew was hanging off a cliff and they could only choose three to save, the rest certainly dying, who they would choose

Haha this is a really easy question.
Nene, Haruka and Helena, the rest of you are on your ownnnnn

Basically if he feels a sense of responsibility for someone weaker than him, they are automatically in this group

'weaker' and 'stronger' having a lot of very interesting interlocking meanings to shin

because it's not like. necessarily physical or even emotional weakness, although those are part of the calculations, it's also the ability to use and be used by others

the 'stronger' use and discard the 'weaker', and the 'weaker' give themselves to the 'stronger'... if they're stupid

so he tries to be 'stronger' to survive and that means using 'weaker' people but... dsfdgfhgd I don't want to downplay the fact he does replicated abusive behaviours like isolating, lying and manipulation but also he gets very attached to people when he lets himself or more usually by accident

in yogen he's already at the point where he's like 'this.. was not a good idea. i didn't like this, it didn't work out for me, it only hurt someone i came to care about, i should have done better or different'

but like, this is still part of his mental model so... what does he do instead? unsure. yogen is interesting because it's not as intense a survival pressure as the death game but it's not a wholly safe place either so he has to figure out on the fly what he's doing and it influences where he advances or backslides

59, 6, 18 shin!

Helena is particularly interesting I think because they met when Shin was most concerned about being murdered in Yogen and you can see him slip back into these behaviours a little and then like. he has that moment where he realises he's scaring her and sort of backs off but like
by that point she's in this place in his mind so it's like she's spedrun the CR

One last thing i want to mention is part of this is a bit of an assumption that if you ARE what he considers 'stronger'... you'll probably be fine. He tends to place people on odd pedestals

ohohoh hi annie!

59: how empathetic/sympathetic/compassionate my muse is

this is fun question because like
compassionate: YEAH (he has to actively suppress it)
sympathetic: YES (if he can relate)
empathetic: .......nnnnoot reallyy...

shin is...... very bad at theory of mind as they call it, like he will reconstruct what he thinks someone is thinking or their motivations from their past actions and current behaviours but also more importantly his worldview WHICH UH
AS YOU CAN SEE UP THERE
CAN LEAD TO SOME INTERESTING RESULTS

it's implied that he didn't really have very many friends even before he met midori he is extremely rusty

this means that even his attempts at outreach might sometimes come from a slightly off or orthogonal place, like asking someone if they want to rest... because he's someone who's learnt the hard way that you have to rest, like his body will and has punished him for pushing it

he's someone motivated by a need for control and to anticipate the moods of others to jury rig this entire thing to compensate for this

but he often will miss things, esp if they don't pertain to him and thereby don't flip the anxiety flag

rereading this backlog yum)

(yesssss eat up enjoy)

(ALSO NOT SAVING SARA...OUCH SHE'D SAVE HIM.)

(SORRY SARA HE HAS HIS PRIORITIES.... MISS 15% HAS A GOOD CHANCE RIGHT BYE)

(i think if it wasn't so limited a choice he would try tho)

(and hey, there's always the chance she could end up in the category, somehow)

no it makes sense....he's the type of guy who priortizes the weak deep down... he sees saving someone helpless as more achievable then trying to protec the strong i think? morally? anyway sara would curse his entire bloodline on the way down tho

14, 22, 39, 52

i'm late but i love these big answers... im coming back here when i thaw to learn

hellooo : D yessss no worries i will have many pages of text for u, enjoy warmth
and yeah this is like... the one place where his sorting algorithm of people works out for him :' )

entirely fair for u to curse him sara... i think it would keep him up at night he's not a heartless robot

he definitely still thinks about kai in game, and i think about mishima and joe too but.... can't think too much, you know how it is

you start thinking too much and bad things happen... and he's still not out of the woods yet either

sara definitely has it worse than him on this front tho these are not people he knew or felt responsible for

but yeah like... saving the weak... more morally 'right', more needed, more achieveable.... and also.... safer

where was i... empathy... yeah it's hard for him to put himself in others' shoes, especially if they don't have something in common...

there's a fun moment in the third chapter where everyone's trying to calm someone down and he can mess up by performing his action at the wrong time and he is extremely taken off guard by the response and another character comments that he's bad with people huh

there's a fun minor trend in general where he'll be right about people... at the wrong time

sympathy he has.... again, esp if it's something that goes into the lens of this machine. there's a lot of things that lead to him just not acting or ditching a lot of the time but in the events they're not present his natural instinct is to help out, again often obliquely or indirectly or through a protective facade of insults or indifference

because at his core, he IS a compassionate, kind person and one of the core tragedies of the game I think, is how much his fears and doubts and personality and situation strangle that

because YTTD is very much a game with that as it's central thesis, of the tension between how you want to act and how you feel you need to

6: if my muse has a high or low opinion of themself

: DDD yess i love this annie
his opinion of himself... hoo boy

well we can start with an easy answer of 'low'. he does not think very highly of himself at all

he's a very insecure person and i think midori picked and picked and picked at that

he's so terrible. i miss him every day

rest in many little pieces king

he feels shame and doubt about the state of his life, about his low physical ability, about his future and what he can achieve in general... even outside of a death game he'll lie about these things because he doesn't want people to think poorly of him or pity him... in fact he can take people trying to accommodate him AS pity

there's a very sad moment when a character well meaningly adds him to the list of people who should come get her if they run into trouble and he's like 'what a cutting remark....'

anyway this is why sara's comment about him being pathetic for not being able to open a stuck cabinet has left him as dead on the floor as 'ok dad'

*pity but also potentially a put down or jab

IM SORRY SHINNIE

I WAS JUST THINKING ABOUT IT...

IT'S OKAY HE'LL RECOVER

the way this is one of the first sketches

nankidai did

dsfgdfhg yeah

this is it this is the dynamic

nailed from the start

i love... shin... i'm bookmarking this to read after i watch the game lp

aaaa that's the highest praise ori : D

shin is just... i love him. he's such a critter

it'd be interesting to see your thoughts on him

self-confidence... what does he have going for him? i think he places some stock in his ability to program but he also feels overshadowed here because he also applies a ranking system in his head here
'midori could use FOUR monitors at once' sweetie he was a cyborg

but this is also why i think he's a bit intimidated by the likes of senku and add

they've got omnidisciplinary mad science going on and he's Some Dude Who Codes

our dude who codes

our dude who codes!
he will never say this to their faces :' )

it's probably a similar thing with the buffer dudes in game and yogen
distant longing jealousy and also maybe some thoughts that in another universe would lead to a 'we've got another one boys' on a gym forum

he actually does like learning new things and self improving but is a little hamstrung by a certain someone making him feel stupid for asking questions so he will do things like watch carefully while you do it and then try it himself and get into trouble later, him actually asking something means he's either a) really extremely stuck and frustrated

or at a relaxed/secure enough place the curiosity overrides it

gfhgj thanks plurk

so he's got that package of inadequacy just sitting there, and I think that plugs into his whole thing about control as well

i love shin, i feel like i have a humongous flowchart of interconnected pieces and i keep zooming in and out on different bits of it

anyway, FINALLY, we've established our baseline, lets look at his sense of himself after death game

bad. shin will do anything to survive, even things he considers morally reprehensible like becoming his abuser, but that does mean he hates himself for them and considers himself a bad person bc he sorts people and he is a people

his sense of himself in yogen now that he's had time to think about it is.... muddy. is he 'strong'? is he 'weak'? but he can be sure he's done things he'd hold comtempt for if he saw someone else doing them

how to deal with that? hard to say. i think that's one of the things yogen, as a not entirely safe place, is still keeping under pressure because the survival lever has not entirely turned off

there's some things he's working through, some he hasn't even begun to touch and some he can't touch yet

(anyway gotta go make dinner, i will Return)

i will wat until the Shin Meals return

*wait

he's also a bit of a hypocrite tho, because he can judge his own actions knowing the motivations as opposed to the slightly black boxes of other people. this is something everyone does to one extent or another really

ANYWAY i am back where were we

ah yes the pit of despair

18: an art-related headcanon

god now i have to think.... is Shin good or bad at art
how 'graphic design is my passion' is he

does he roast sara for his art and pretend not to hear when asked to do better? did he think midori using comic sans was tacky? mysteries of the universe

*her art, rip

i think... he won't be making masterpieces but you won't be in doubt of what he's attempting to draw either

he strikes me as a bit of a detail oriented person when you get right down to it and i think he'd take care with the lines and draw a fairly good diagram when trying to explain something

oh and he makes memes

but nobody will ever now (is what i said about the gacha, like a fool)

*know

14: where my muse feels most calm/relaxed

TRICKY BC HE IS NEVER RELAXED i joke i joke

interestingly he's at his most relaxed he's been in yogen hanging around at the lava pool
i think after you've gone through the trauma checklist and eliminated things like 'do i feel like people here might hurt or want to use me' and 'am i in physical danger right now' the traits of a place that relaxes him are:

- warm. this is always a given in general
- nobody expecting things of him. he can just chill.
- people, but in a way he can just watch them or not interact or leave if he wants to. probably there's a cut off point where too many is just always stressful
- ambience. like a nice backdrop or quiet or soft background noise like chatter

something that won't grab and wrench his attention if he's thinking about or working on something

if there's soft things, it's a bonus but not required

he also likes dark spaces, I found this out on a rewatch recently

we need to replay more so we can find more secrets

keep meaning to ask you

YES

holds your hand just say the word annie

22: who my muse looks up to

oh no :' )

so first of all, looking up to people is a lie and trap and you should never do it, so jot that down

you must never assume someone is always right. don't do it, bad idea

if you would die for someone, you are an idiot and a fool and a sucker

(so you can probably guess who he DID look up to)

he definitely thought midori was cool and was a little star struck and in canon saw him as a big brother figure, though there's the sense nankidai might have put that in as a cap on how dark it got

shin describes thinking of midori as an 'antihero' and his apartment as a 'secret base' and from this you can tell he was a massive nerd but also that like. as scary and discomfiting as midori could get this also felt secret and cool and exciting, especially early on

these sorts of relationships are not constant bad, otherwise they wouldn't be as hard to get out of as they are, and they often don't start bad and instead slowly get worse over time

fsdgfgd YEAH

the idea it got worse over time kills me

somehow worse then it being bad from the start

yeah :' )

we know midori can be charming when he wants to be

i think when shin moved in was a bit of a shifting point because then midori had a lot more control over him, as well

i think worse over time feels worse because with it being bad at the start you can be like 'maybe shin thought it was worth it' but... i think it was... a pitcher plant, of downward-facing hairs

the more I think about it the more i really am glad midori was "killed" because hhhhhh drags hands down face i think otherwise this would have continued right up to when the Death Game was scheduled and if one year did this to shin, i don't know if I want to think about three

so anyway now if he finds himself looking up to someone he will mentally slap himself and if he sees you doing it he will think of you as 'riffraff who can't think for themselves' and if you look up to him some part of him will be 'don't' and the other part will be like 'hate this but this is a survival resource'

the 'don't' part is a little stronger these days because of that whole wake up call of almost getting kanna killed so if someone told him they did and appeared to genuinely mean it he might have another mental breakdown

similarly for getting excited about being part of something, because they're linked in this way
i think he's just a person naturally inclined to this, so even with him putting the handbrake on it'll slip through sometimes - in canon this is really apparent when the escape attempt is going well and even really early on trying to get sara to jam about a clue

as well as being like 'this is getting kind of fun' about an evil strategy meeting. honey it's not because you're being evil it's bc you're plotting with 'friends'

and in yogen he's sort of... tentatively tipping his toe in the water of like... allowing himself to actually feel that, like with the lava pool and the laptop interrogation

because he wants to be able to trust others, he made a sort of promise to believe in others but.... taking it slow probably a good idea really

actually looking up to someone, in yogen..... he's not there and i don't know if he'd ever let himself be... i think sidney and senku might be closest and even there he's kind of stabbing that with a stick

he needs to figure out a good middle between trust and distrust

39: an anger headcanon

ohohoh

shin does get angry, believe it or not

some of this is headcanon some of this canon but he'll never get physical when angry

fighting people, punching a wall yeah but also little things like kicking a car tire

it'll be more things like throwing out his hands (the distressed jazz hands!) and yelling

or like. grabbing his beanie in frustration

that's usually when his anger is combined with stress in the moment

but he can also have a petty, simmering anger because hh shin can hold grudges and that can combine with that

shin has a petty, passive aggressive side and retail has not helped this

this sort of thing can manifest in malicious compliance or vindictiveness, because shin has a streak of 'tit for tat' thinking in his sense of justice

the third case is when his anger combines with a tendency towards reflexive kneejerk action which means he'll set up something he knows will hurt you and even if he cools down later does... not... take it down

sara is... familiar with these :' )

thanks for making her worse buddy

he's the gift that keeps on shooting himself in the foot :' _

*:' )

52: how my muse thinks other people see them

ohhh boy this is a doozy bc as mentioned before shin has blindspots in his empathy and i think this is one of them

it's one of the things that makes his anxiety go brrrr bc how DO people see him... hard to know. in day to day life i think this definitely played into his sort of... non confrontational nature

playing it safe
there's an interesting thing where he's like 'i don't know why someone would hate me enough to do this, i always apologize after arguments etc' and then in some supplementary tweets you can see his coworker getting annoyed at him for mysteriously vanishing when there's customers

and in the death game this really hampers him bc he doesn't really understand how and why people get and keep trust, and he doesn't realise he's undermining his credibility in the group until it's too late and he implodes on them and then it's VERY too late

he seems to, in lieu of any hard data, assume he's going to be disliked and I think that might be due to a general pattern of missing some cue and not understanding the response and assuming it's because they don't like him

this also means he'll project his own insecurities and trauma onto his idea of people's perceptions of him, assuming they pity him or see him in one of the categories he sorts them in

he also seems to assume that you can 'reset' things and get a clean slate, either with like, an apology, or a reconciliation, or faking amnesia..... and hhhh i think this partly stems from living with a guy who could a) gaslight and was very good at it and also straight up erase memories and was very good at it

which ties into the general trend of shin trying to achieve social goals by copying what he's seen done before and not understanding why they don't work because he's missing some fundamental aspect

for someone who's in the 'manipulator' role for a large part of a game it's interesting how... bad at it he actually is

dsfdgfhgdf and unfortunately that's carrying right on through to yogen bc komaeda has seen through him like a window

shsl siscon

...wrong person hang on

kagehira

there we go : D

NOOOO I JUST SAT HERE AND CAUGHT UP ON ALL OF THIS FOOD THANK U FOR THE PING I LOVE IT

ugh mise voice tasty

that last point is especially cute to me I remember reading a post about that before too and I just think Shin sounds... sooooo neat wtf... also I love the thought you put into him

dsfdggdf he's less a character so much as a rabbit hole you end up falling down

i spent all of july making a document tracking his movements and actions in game and canon reviewing and i'm STILL sure i'll discover new things about him on a rewatch bc yttd is that kind of game

yesss good i feel validated to know someone else has thought this
shin is a very human feeling character, like he's just A Guy in the end it's very fun
sometimes i worry if i'm wildly off base with him, especially in yogen where he's had two months of not being in a death game and character development has been happening

but I think I've got the major hang of him : D

I think you have too!! tbh I haven't had the chance to play through yttd myself but I think that the way you write him (and your style of writing too!!) are so good for conveying that humanness

your dedication super shows and you really make him dynamic and fun to watch and to play off of

aaaa thank you so much!

it's very fun getting to play with you all as well and see the changes that result and i'm not exaggerating when i say it's clear everyone here has also deeply thought about and loves their characters and it shows... i look forward to continuing

and also, if/when you do play yttd, i'd love to hear your thoughts!

ugh right!! I love this group a lot tbh... also I totally want to! if I get the chance I'll definitely come running

heck yeah!!!
ikr yogen is a gift and hot damn ori is amazing and i love you all so much