might be a bit in and out today

how do i not ask All for shin jffc... ummmm 1, 2, 4, 8... both in canon and in game.... :3c

ohohohoh

In game:
1 - The low hanging fruit is Sara. He's scared of her ability to coordinate the group and what might be hiding behind the ability. She has the highest survival percentage, and that makes him suspicious by default because he has a very specific idea of the sort of person who could survive.

(the sort of person he's trying to emulate)

9, 10 and 13 for shin!!

the hhh thing is we find out he's.... not exactly wrong to be scared either, much later. but sara herself doesn't want to be like that.
yesss

he's still a little scared of her in yogen, but in the way where it's like. she's scary but not pointed towards me/she's scary on my side which like. yes and no shin.

2 - Someone they love... asdfdfg death game is interesting bc it creates intense trauma bonds very fast. Here it's Kanna, who he accidentally sort of adopted in the midst of manipulating her. He only knew her for 3-4 days but by the end he was arguing for him to be voted for instead of her.

shin has an interesting tension between the side of him that gets ride or die for people and the side that shakes it by the collar going you fucking donkey

and like even at the start he was trying to protect her the problem is just like
so many of his actions are so utterly counterproductive

"Alright now right brain, you're being insane." "No, left brain, it's called being aliiiive, you should try it! You might like it!" - the paranoia vs the ride or die

THAT REALLY IS HIM AT ALL TIMES it's just a cage match in there

he keeps inexpertly performing mental surgery on himself

lessee...
4 - someone he admires

god hhhhhhhh 'i can't make that emotion anymore' but honestly that's kind of a lie

admiration now is wrapped up in jealousy and suspicion nowadays

it's attached to traits he doesn't understand or trust but wishes he had or feels he needs

so in game it's got that like. darkly sarcastic bitterness to it, like 'admiring' sara for her ability to win hearts or seem cool and collected

sdfgfd in yogen he's like. grappling with the concept of self-sacrifice by the strong for the weak which like. smashed two parts of his worldview together in a horrible screeching driveby
so he has like. that sort of admiration for people who do that but equally he doesn't understand it and like. it's a tangle

I Did This

you did this and I love it

but yeah that's the state of admiration for him sparkle-eyed kind died with midori :' )

maybe he'll let himself have a more reserved version at some point who knows

8 - someone he views as a role model

in game, midori, in the absolute worst way possible

he takes his name and tries to emulate him because he sees strong, cruel midori as the kind of person who would survive a death game

even now, he hasn't actually told anyone his true name in yogen, and some other bits have stuck as well, whoops

shin doesn't have a lot of confidence in himself so..... that ends up lending itself to this kind of thing
in yogen it's a bit more muted and diluted, but he's been taking bits from sara, komaeda, sidney.... he really does to that thing where he watches and then tries to copy and messes it up bc he doesn't get what makes it worse

work

gasps, what has he tried to imitate from sidney...

part of the reason it's less the case in yogen is because.... what does make for survival is less clear to him, there's no percentages and a lot of people, and he's got a vague map of like 'get cr maybe'

+ 7,11,15

sdfdf from sidney he's tried to pick up that sort of like. collected taking charge, just that sort of steady vibe.... success is debateable but you can sort of see it in the escape room thread with keigo... with a lot of this it's a lot more piecemeal and tentative than the canon straight up self-rewrite

since that didn't quite work out for him but he still has that tendency to symbolic thinking

oh thats so cute...

yeah :''' )
he's also picked up komaeda's 'hm' and a little directness from sara

she just straight up says things and it works somehow...... wild

also sdfg i intended to do them separately but i ended up giving them together anyway so people he loves in yogen....... more than he realises actually

OH WEH... i cant wait

i am.... very hhhh about one of them getting murdered bc he will uh. not take it well

tfw you're like 'i should trust people, i should get allies' accidentally end up genuinely caring them just like the canon time, shocked pikachu face

deltarune voice despite everything, it's still you

wait that should be undertale

where am i...

9 - someone he would like to befriend

sdfgfghfg both easy and hard this one but.... i think that's part of what he's doing with rantaro without realising it
also sort of nosing towards subaru bc that really was a fun time but like. going back in a bit where subaru hits the wrong notes
sorry subaru but cheerily fishing for hugs got him in the 'nope'

in general like. this sort of thing has to happen on a layer other than the conscious otherwise it will start tripping alarms

or at least have some surface level justification pasted on top of it

10 - someone they're holding a grudge against

asdfghgfddfg he holds onto that sort of thing easily, the thing that most come to mind is komaeda for all the everything and also specifically chasing him down like a rabbit

in the end tho he has to actively and deliberately maintain it beyond a level of 'shin will remember this' popping up in the corner of the screen so while there's things like subaru cracking a whip on him and the future snowtrap, komaeda really is..... the one who does things consistently enough it's just a kind of constant low grade simmer

it's yet to really become relevant but..... messing with someone he cares about... he's already afraid for helena in this regard

13 - someone they have conflicted feelings about

hhhh shin is such a land of internal contradictions i feel like this is most of his cr in some sense but that's a cop out answer

rantaro is a bit of an example but also, weirdly enough... i think the clearest one is Redacted

because that really hit him in the fault line of shin being unsure who he is anymore, monster or victim

on one hand he identifies with redacted's motives, on the other.... narumi was dying in front of him and that left a mark

i think he's missing several core threads but that's usual for him, esp when he gets into projection hours

kagehira

7 - someone he views as a mentor

sdfggfd i think clamor with that element of teaching in the background eventually

it's tricky bc like. there's this thread about the power dynamic of teaching in him that i only just picked up bc like. it happened with midori, he mimicked it with kanna, and it's probably part of why he voted for mishima

and it's probably internally come up now that he's a teacher officially himself, although it was more relevant one on one with helena

so it's something that, like admiration, like befriending, he has to do some mental juryrigging skirting around

he's also been learning a lot from senku as they've been working together i think, but it's a little more peer-ish there

11- someone he has romantic feelings towards

haha if friendship is something he's nosing around patches of thin ice on, romance is like.... figuring out how to eat a watermelon without a knife

except that like, it doesn't even occur to you that watermelon's for you

it's hard for him to separate the feeling of a crush when it does happen, from admiration i think which points up, marked under to be avoided

and like. who would be interested in him?
subaru apparently but he's just like that can't be right
as well as the fact there that shin still looks like a high schooler but isn't one
keep thinking about the fact he calls nao, 19, a kid despite being two years older
so yeah the answer is a big ol zero

15 - someone they used to see positively but now see negatively

in canon there's the easy answer so lets look at yogen

asdfgdfg well there's komaeda if you count past school memories, it kills me

shin's cr hasn't had a crash and burn yet, but it's entirely possible
sara revealing a certain thing might do it

3, 5, 6

anyway i got distracted and also kept thinking about it but there... really isn't anyone else with that flip so, onwards!

BlueFlewFedUQueen

3 - someone they miss

aw.... he misses kanna honestly... esp with reminders of her like the phone and remembering her hacking trick
he got some closure there but, you know.

he also misses his parents a bit.... been thinking about whether they know he's dead
he managed to hack out the part of him that missed midori but it turned out there was still enough left to be upset when he found out he wasn't the only one midori had messed with (it wasn't the only reason, there's at least two more there)

he luckily hasn't had much close cr with people who've died or gone missing in yogen, at least enough to miss them per se but acquaintences with nanami and legion and atsushi left their own marks

otherwise... he was so disattached from the social dogma there's not a lot of people to miss, when it comes to him

5 - someone he's forgiven

asdfghfddf kills me to type this but sara, despite the fact that like, it was mostly him throwing paranoid curveballs in her direction
love this guy sometimes i do want to throttle him
similar mood with like. the helena conversation.
it's honestly hard for him to forgive people, like usually it'll just like, erode or he'll just sweep it under the rug

at best

which happens when you're someone who's had your capacity to forgive deliberately tested

this is why sidney forgiving him is very hhhh

esp since, like joe, he's a 'isn't it natural to get angry' person except for him it's a 'if you're not angry, maybe you don't actually care?' thing

which was part of the point he was trying to make with helena, saying something about komaeda designed to get her defensive on his behalf if she really did consider them friends and i'[m just like shin you UTTER MESS

anyway yeah if he does forgive it's the kind that happens after the anger drains away and you're just numb

or after enough time that his inner kindness leaks through anyway

6 - someone they feel dislikes them

sdfghfds lucifer

lucifer's just like this but every single scolding has given shin this impression, despite the lava pool start

it's easy for shin to assume people dislike him, esp if he visibly beefs it, easy to assume people will hate him and i'm just like. my lad.

there's so much to unpack here honestly

low self esteem. suspicion. missing social cues and not understanding why. thinking it's a matter of time. the warning alarms if people do appear to like him, for TWO reasons now

he's doing whole new and interesting kinds of juryrigging and i'm hhh

pfle

oh shin, honey...

he's such a mess and it breaks my heart because i just want him to be happy

every time i think about him it's like i'm consulting a horoscope chart that is also a pepe silvia board

:''' ) he has been happy in yogen....... there's been moments
can't forget he's in a murderschool but, you know

laughs god that's so legit... honestly seeing him able to at least do better in yogen makes me happy, even if he's just always going to have a ton of baggage sigh

him forgiving sara kills me though that's just so... him

:''' ) he could use some therapy and an actually safe environment but... is better than death game. is a little better than being a complete shut in sort of.
i keep using the word juryrigging but like... even if it's a mess and he's a mess he is working out ways to like. circumvent the baggage to an extent

IT IS ISN"T IT

me and annie keep bringing up that 'that was just some tit for tat... i wasn't thinking straight at the time' line

closes my eyes... shin

sometimes he's just so... SIGH

shin

HE REALLY IS need to do more with that honestly

but man, it's legit. it's weird because yogen is really terrible, but it also takes him away from some of the major stressors in his life. aside from the issue of abuse, he comes off as the type of person who's just too exhausted from the daily grind to really better himself

and then you can't isolate yourself quite so much so there's that too, but it's like... just a daily grind at a job you hate is so tiring

hhhh yeah exactly
tbf his job's part time, but then there's freelance programming work on top of that... as well as like, low energy levels as well from not eating well, maybe not sleeping well, possible anaemia, no sunlight...... because it's night shift

and also i think just like. it's hard for him to like. his sense of himself and his future is just....... he's stuck in a sense

yeahhh it's just so hard when you're stuck in that state

it really is and like
in yogen he's like. getting proper food esp now the void thing's been resolved, his grades and sleep have been improving with helena's help, he's actually like. doing things and deciding to do things and finding out things he likes and taking on work that suits his interests and like.... it happened bit by bit

like someone put a ramp in front of him where previously there had been a wall

proud of him

:''''' ) same

of course there now might be problems with like. over extending himself, etc, it's like when you finally get around to draining the sink and discovering there's dishes in it, he's still going along
but........ five months... he's come so far

it's.... a little sad that dying is the best thing that happened to him in some senses

ugh yeah

same with ranger honestly this kills me

they both should have been able to have better lives....

ughhh yeah with both of them i just think so much about what they could have been if not for asunaro... like you could say that about all of them, but shin had midori meddling for years, and ranger had the other three so they were both just doomed right out the door

i'm so proud of both of them and so upset

same... same........ god it kills me that like
yttd really does go all in on like
how fucked is it that this all got set up actually side of things
it feels different from dangan in a way i can't explain..... probably because the horror goes so far backward in time
there's you were put in a death game

and there's the only reason you're alive is so you could be put in a death game. also we control the police and your parents might be in on it
which makes even the possibility of escape nailbiting

shin very very carefully not thinking about how he might be a self insert so that some inner mechanism doesn't snap and send shrapnel flying into the other bits he's got enough to deal with already from that bombshell

the realisation you might have been made to be some dude with self-loathing's stand in and that's why you're Like This
i love how yttd is like, humans, dolls, it's fucked either way have some existential horror

noooo how I finally got to come back and peek in here and shin... so cute... sighs I think it's really endearing what you said about the friendship having to happen on other layers

also puts hand to chest at ami getting both conflicted feelings and that subconscious friendship attempt in a way

:'''' ) he has to work around himself in a lot of ways it kills meeee

it's not friendship it's an ~alliance~ it's not hanging out it's a ~strategy meeting~

ugh but it's cute... in that I'm glad he's gotten some good growth in a positive direction from being in yogen too

oh so he's just got a little chuuni, got it

yeah... i was not expecting this honestly bc murdergame but it really has been good for him...
helps i took him from the route where he's a little more willing to try, himself, that's been 40% of it

oh he's absolutely got some chuuni he hides it well but it's there

this is a guy who called midori an 'antihero' and his house a 'secret base' and calls a popup of a ton of photos of him a 'mental attack

ok but mood, yogen really be walking that balance for death game style characters in a way I feel, like yeah it's Horrifying but the stakes don't feel the same as they are in canons where it's all pvp all the time

it gives Just enough down time in a way where you can build up this growth with room for conflict still I guess? kinda

NOOO THAT'S SO CUTE... embarrassing little nerd

sdfgfdsdfg yeah it's like
the school getting the Not As Bad As You Could Have Been Award
Not As Bad As We're Used To
yessss i love it.... november being no murder month's helped as well... but it's good to have that breathing room to make things hit harder
he's such a nerd i love him so much

i got to have him call the barrier stopping people from leaving school a 'forcefield'

and of course, rock gacha

NOT THE FORCEFIELD I support him so much

and honestly yeah I'm crying, no murder November has been so much fun too

time to follow up on those more low key elements kinda

it's like the sleepover but in macrocosm
YEAH.... all the sort of narrative character threads

and reinforcing CR... and recovering from the murders