also bomnp

oh did i miss this... remiss of me truly

ii., iii., iv., xv. for mister shin

no worries, it got trapped in the rush I think

II. The High Priestess — How does your muse feel about religion?

I feel like Shin is probably like a lot of Japanese people in that he doesn't particularly see himself as religious but still goes to a shrine on new years, maybe tosses a coin in one of the little ones on a whim if he can spare it (so... never, sobs)
he doesn't leave the house much in general after the whole midori thing so that's gone down as well

Mostly, I think he doesn't really think about it much.... he's not fond of the idea the death game is a holy ritual though :' )

XXI, VII shin

i'm contemplating how much he's that annoying internet guy who's like 'it's illogical'. maybe a smidgen. this is why he and angie should not be in the same death game together

i think if you really dug shin is cynical about anything that can make people throw away their lives and devotion, either for a person or an ideal

and religion goes into that venn diagram

III. The Empress — Describe your muse’s relationship with their mother.

i'm crying the things we know for sure about shin's parents are
- he has them
-

that's it, that's all we get, along with the fact that he heard them having a conversation about his long lost sibling and left bc he felt he was hearing something he shouldn't have

i feel like shin's relationships with his parents is at most strained and complex; humanly messy, rather than something you can point to as pretty bad like his relationship with midori

i think he loves them very much, and they love him very much, but he feels a little stifled and guilty for relying on them so much (hello self esteem issues) he wants to be able to stand on his own two feet and i think he's the sort to lie if they ask how he's doing :' )

on the opposite end i think his parents like. are worried about him but don't know how to express that worry; i don't think they didn't notice that he went from a shy and awkward but sweet and happy kid to someone who barely left his room and never really talked about his day... so I think that's in some part behind that spoiling that shin is talking about

if they themselves struggle with things like anxiety and such, that's in there as well... we don't know why they gave kanna up to be adopted; a theory I've seen is that they had their hands full with shin and couldn't handle another child at the time

shin would have been around seven at the time, so even if he doesn't remember it, i think as a kid he definitely would have picked up on whatever mood this created in the house because kids are sharp like that, and it probably affected him somewhat

for his mother specifically... headcanonwise i think she maybe did try and be like 'you've been spending a lot of time with that hiyori boy' and getting smth like a MOM you wouldn't UNDERSTAND and it hurts me :' )

because complicating things also..... is the death game.
pretty hefty spoilers but like. the reason it's THESE particular people and not say anyone kidnapped off the street (although they were kidnapped off the street) is that they were specifically born for this

stands in the corner with shins parents are asunaro goons and asunaro MADE them give kanna up theory

i see you T-posing in the corner and i agree
super fucked if it was just to give them easy contracts, im clutching my head about it
maybe kanna wasn't expected but then they decided to make her a candidate anyway WHO KNOWS

iirc the hades incident had a sibling pair? so maybe

BUT YEAH LIKE it gets deeply fucked when you think about it bc we know that like. asunaro ran the orphanage... and the chidouins are knee deep in asunaro. kanna's family probably weren't involved.... but were shin's parents? million dollar question. highly likely they were
which like.
makes it more hhhh bc like did they know about the death game

or was it just like. they knew their kid was the subject of focus but not all the details (probably somewhere between)
i think they do care about him, and i think this makes wherever they fall on the scale heartbreaking bc at the end of the day, their kid is dead
and they may not know for days or weeks
shin's wondered about the cover story in yogen

if they'd get his body or excuses or never find out

and then like. he finds out from ranger just how planned it was and now he's asking himself the same questions here with equally as little answers and it's especially painful for him

bc like, even deeply wounded by his friendship with midori, his parents have always been there, you know?

anyway it's one of the things sort of percolating away in it's own corner... the thought cabinet, if you will, but until he knows for sure all it can be is painful limbo

when sara and shin are friends again they can both be like our parents ARENT evil right? right. and then live in their best world bc yttd wont update b4 yogen ends probably

sdfdgfhfgdf MAYBE IF WE GET A SECOND YEAR i never did find out if we got enough new mods for that

crying
a mutual denial
shin thinks sara's parents were definitely In On It but now can't throw this stone in his glass house

last week of yogen it comes out, i put in bonus ac so sara can be like MY DAD IS EVIL?!?!??!?!?!??!?!?? and know her endgame

yeah they gotta live their lies

SFDGFGDFFDGF GOD
fingers crossed

dsfdfs just be in their lotus bell jars.... ignorance is bliss sometimes

crying at sara becoming a living clickbait article

IV. The Emperor — Describe your muse’s relationship with their father.

whoops i guess that's answered to with the above as well

it's hard to come up with specific headcanons because we know so little... i like the idea shin picked up the habit of shared activities as affection from him

XV. The Devil — Has your muse ever given into temptation?

hahaha, yes, absolutely
i think shin's prone to it in general; a fact he's aware of but being aware of it doesn't always help. see re: his gachas
but also his thoughts on alcohol etc where he's had more success, partly because he's still adjusting to being of legal age

but yeah there's a very funny moment in canon where he's like 'we can't trust this vending machine' and then sings a completely different tune at the idea it might have one of his favourite soups

it also makes him easy to rope into things... he's such an uncertain person a lot of the time that to tip the balance you just need to weight the side of the argument that's already internally there

when you play the game a second time you realise he's a LOT more impulsive than he looks and that's part of it as well

sometimes the time between the temptation arising and him going for it is very, reflexively small..... which is why he really does work best when he's given time to think and plan

all and all the card and it's meaning itself... does fit his history :' )

amity_rose

XXI. The World — What are your muses biggest dreams, and how do they plan to achieve them?

I think that like, the common thread throughout the dreams Shin's had over the years, waxing and waning, is that he wants to Be Somebody

he wants to be strong, he wants to have skills that he sees in people he admires that he doesn't have, he wants to be like the people he admires, he wants to be liked, he wants to be someone who can survive

someone who can be independent, who can be relied upon instead of having to rely on others
he wants to be the kind of person worthy of the people he cares about, the kind of person he'd like his long lost sibling to meet

i think midori played on this heavily

well, it's practically canon that he played on this

this element of like. almost 'to change the world, change yourself' very much informs how much his approach to things is to mirror them
becoming sou hiyori is the egregrious example, but he does it in little ways all the time, like a hermit crab that constructs it's own shell

partly this might be bc it's hard for him to see worth in himself as he already is :' ) the death game really did jam a crowbar into faultlines that were already there

sometimes these dreams seem achieveable. sometimes they seem like pipe dreams, approached with either longing or resentment. his self esteem is bad, so a lot of the time it's the latter

as far as concrete plans to achieve them go... it's hard for him, i think. leaving aside self esteem making the difficulty seem high, it's also the fact that a lot of the time he sees where he is and sees where he wants to be, and just doesn't know how to get there, or takes shortcuts because he doesn't understand how it actually works or doesn't have the

experience that these traits represent

with more tangible things it's a bit easier; especially when it comes to skills. he's a quick study, he loves learning, he'll listen to people he likes talk about what they're passionate about

then go away and try and practice them on his own to impress later. it's kind of cute

*impress them with

but then he can get neurotic about it as well i think, bc it's hard to gauge how good you are sometimes, so he can put a little TOO much effort into it and suffer the consequences

especially if he's trying to achieve things way beyond his current level

shortcuts come into play there too, he's not above cheating or bluffing, getting stuck on something and trying something else similar instead

deep inside shin is someone who's just like miles in that one meme

one day he wants to be the one on the right.... he pretended to be and tried to be for kanna and hhhhh we know how that ended
it was one of the arguments she used for him to be spared over her
there's a LOT to unpack there honestly esp in yogen but that's getting outside the scope of the question

VII. The Chariot — Describe one of your muses coping mechanisms.

ohohoh only one?

god, what to pick...

part of me wonders if the answer to 'how does he cope?' is 'does he?' but no, he does, to an extent

there's his gachas.... surrounding himself with tangible reminders and comfort objects...

and also like. displacement or denial or deflection

you'll see a LOT in the narration of tags where he's like 'i can't afford to think about this, so i won't'

and then it bubbles back up at the worst times or 3am

he'll also tend to withdraw and isolate himself

and honestly sometimes the catharsis of flipping out about something or lashing out and then going away to sulk.... if it weren't usually the case that it causes some hefty damage a lot

also sometimes when things get bad and he's on the spot he'll just straight up go into a fugue state and watch himself just say and do things

and i think in yogen... the option of just doing something with someone is suddenly there as well

he and sara can just study in the common room and not talk about their nightmares that woke one or the other up

in healthier coping mechanisms, there's also the trick helena mentioned of him writing down his nightmares and then burning them, and it's really been helping bc it hits right in the part of his brain that deals in symbolism
to shin, it's like he's burning his nightmares away so he doesn't have to face them anymore, but it's also that writing them down

means he has to think about them in a way he has power over

instead of ignoring them or trying to ride them out or suppress them

finally like... he's actually better at self care than you'd expect, like he has frequent showers and rests when he needs to, and most of his food problems are more from like money woes (oh right i should mention impulse purchases as another... but also he's not got a lot of income to begin with) or forgetting or void food shenanigans

on the other hand he doesn't go out much and has night shift, so no vitamin D, and he doesn't exercise much bc of that

he's been getting more exercise in yogen courtesy of helena and subaru and even gardening club, and sunlight as well, so that's been helping :' D

finally there's also like. when he doesn't feel in control he'll frantically try and claw it back, which can result in unwise decisions
there's probably ones i've forgotten about but that's a pretty good spread

blueseawitch

^me reading about shin

^ reading about sara
but hehehe he is Some Guy Trying His Best (self-diagnosed)
it's fun to think about all his moving parts