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sirenspull application;
Aug. 9th, 2010 07:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
paybackPlayer Information
Name: Senri
Age: 21
AIM SN: DISCO SNUFFMUFFIN
email: undead.invader(at)gmail.com
Have you played in an LJ based game before? Yes. C:
Bonus: How did you hear about Siren's Pull? A mod told me.
Character Information
General
Canon Source: Blade of the Immortal
Canon Format: Manga
Character's Name: Asano Rin
Character's Age: 16
What form will your character's NV take? A MAGIC SCROLL!! She can unroll it and it can serve to write on, project voice, and also work like a videoscreen. Three characters will go down the sides offering her options to choose from. She'll experiment and figure it out. :)
Abilities
Character's Canon Abilities: Nothing superhuman. Rin is a fighter, but not exactly a badass one; she's EXTREMELY determined when she has to be and innovative under pressure, and she's stronger, faster, and smarter than one would expect, but she's human and Blade is a series where characters bleed and sweat for years to get good. She just hasn't put in the time to reach that level, nor does she have the inclination to take lives, generally.
Other than that, she's smart. She's adaptable. She relates well to people. She can cook and clean and take care of herself, at least in her own setting – the modern world is going to present a hell of a lot of hurdles for her to cross.
If your character has no superhuman canon abilities, what dormant ability will you give them? I'd like Rin to have the ability of stealth! With the application of will, she'll become less noticeable to most psyches; as her strength and practice with her skill grows, she'll become harder and harder to notice or find, even for psychics or people with superhuman senses, and eventually she'll have enough strength to cloak a few other people along with her, although physical contact will be a necessity to extend the shield to them.
She will still be noticeable to cameras and electronic surveillance, and psychics more powerful than she will be able to break her shield and both notice her and be able to expose her to other people. I'd like her shield to be dependant partly on her will though, and Rin's will is pretty strong, so as her facility with her dormant ability grows she'll be able to shore up her shield against stronger and stronger pressures. Vulnerability to electronic observers will remain a serious liability, though.
This ability would allow her to function as potentially both a spy when necessary and perhaps, eventually, as an assassin. Her previous game's environment hardened and sharpened her in a lot of ways so both paths are possibilities.
Weapons: She did not possess any weapons in her previous game, but I wonder if it would be possible to bring her heirloom sword, Kutoneshirika, into the world of Siren's Port with her? It's an important item, it was theoretically in storage in the previous game, and it's a weapon she's familiar with in a world where it's not safe to be unarmed (not that it's safe to be armed either, but she'll feel a bit better).
History/Personality/Plans/etc.
Character History: Two years before her canon's start point, Rin was living a happy, peaceful life as the daughter of a samurai family. Her father was the head of a sword school known as the Mutenichi-ryu, and there was strife in the land as always, conflict stemming this time from an upstart sword school known as the Itto-ryu, which was going around razing other sword schools to the ground, killing students who couldn't convert (because the Itto-ryu was a sword school that demanded a high caliber of fighting skill from its members and not everyone could deliver) and trying to spread its philosophy (whatever works, in a nutshell) to every part of the country.
As might be expected from this beginning, the hammer fell on Rin's family, with a personal twist this time, as the leader of the Itto-ryu's grandfather had once been a Mutenichi-ryu swordsman before he was thrown out of the school over a manner of style, and Rin's grandfather (the old master's son) was given the leadership of the school.
Anotsu was the son of the man who was thrown out, and he carried out his grandfathers' legacy of rage against the Asano. Rin's parents were killed, although she was left alive because assaulting children showed “no class”.
Fast forward two years. Rin's canon begins. She's been wandering alone for that time, searching for Itto-ryu in a vengeance quest. Unfortunately it's not been going so well, as it's hard to even find Itto-ryu, much less kill them (Itto-ryu are hella good, and Rin, though determined, is not so hot with a sword). It's lucky, then, that she finds Manji, a swordsman who eventually agrees to serve as her bodyguard.
Manji is immortal, which is a big help putting down Itto-ryu, and he and Rin start traveling together, which is a big help to her in overcoming some of that loneliness. The two have a lot of adventures together, killing Itto-ryu and becoming closer, fighting a hidden immortal swordsman (just like Manji!) in the Itto-ryu, getting Rin's heirloom sword back from the Itto-ryu member who stole it, meeting more enemies and allies as they go. Occasionally Rin runs into Anotsu again too, and frankly, she turns out to be a pretty sucky avenger, given that her will to kill people is pretty low and she states that she hates useless violence.
Eventually, after finding out that Anotsu is traveling to settlement of Kaga, Rin splits off from Manji and goes by herself to follow her parents' killer, revealing that she's determined and obsessive enough to go a little crazy when the opportunity arises. Manji can't go with her because he's has a criminal record and a warrant out for him, although Rin doesn't realize she has one too, after being blamed for the crimes of a sociopath named Shira. She has to assume another identity to follow her parents' killers, and manages pretty well until she gets careless and is robbed on the road, ending up with no money to get rooms or food. :|
Nearly starving and half dead on the trail, Rin is found by Anotsu, and she follows him – and although he could easily kill her (and it would probably be better for Anotsu if he did; Rin is a danger to him, no matter how small) he allows her to travel with him, and her hatred for him changes and lessens when traveling with him while his respect for her, near nonexistent at first, increases somewhat. Eventually they even team up and fight together; Anotsu gets lockjaw and Rin claims she'll follow him and kill him when he's weak enough (he still doesn't kill her!) and then never gets around to it until he's so weak she says she missed her window of opportunity (thus proving again that Rin is a crappy avenger). Eventually, even with all this, she runs into Manji again, and swearing to Anotsu that she'll kill him the next time they meet (ha ha ha... ha ha...) she departs with her bodyguard.
It's mostly back to business and monster-of-the-week whacking for our intrepid heroine and her man after that, more of the usual with Rin getting put in danger and Manji rescuing her, weird new enemies popping up that need to be whacked, all against a background of continuing strife in Edo.
Eventually Manji is called in to talk with the government about working off his criminal name by killing FOR the government, and when he turns that down, he's taken in, because immortality is a hot commodity in Edo and the government would really like to find out how it works and how it could be passed on. Rin has an ubercrush on Manji at this point, plus he's her friend and bodyguard and she needs him, so she promptly sets about to figuring out what happened and how to lever him out of it.
To do this, she ends up teaming up with a couple of Itto-ryu (the last person you'd ever expect to, really) and in fact letting them stay in her house after one of them tried to kill her (over the course of the series we also realize that Rin is somewhat bananas, has a way too huge heart, and doesn't mind hanging out with crazy people one something of the other side of the law as long as they don't enjoy killing too much). The Itto-ryu's name are Doa and Isaku and they love each other very much, and eventually when Isaku is captured and impounded to take part in the brutal immortality experiments (tons of people are dying in the prison-slash-'lab' under Edo castle, where Manji is confined, because research techniques aren't exactly what you'd call ethical there) and Doa goes a little nuts when Isaku gets caught. Rin takes her well in hand though, proving that she can both lead and keep a level head in a crisis, too.
So, the two girls do some spying and scheming and planning, and they head off to the heavily-guarded very secure prison by themselves to find their men and get them out!
Only then she was pulled into St.Edelweiss. And from there, she was pulled into Siren's Port. Actually, the latter place is an improvement in many regards.
Point in Canon: Just as she and Doa were beginning to storm Edo castle.
Brief summary of previous RP history: St.Edelweiss was not a place where characters thrived so much as maintained – and that if they were lucky. In her time in the asylum, Rin didn't learn any amazing skills or kill any staff or anything, but she did persist in a quiet, stubborn resistance against the forces of staff, which were usually repressive, dangerous, sadistic, and generally awful, with few exceptions.
Rin spent some time in the asylum just getting her bearings, making friends (finding allies), and figuring out what she possibly thought she could do to resist the place (because very quickly she figured out that it was a place that demanded resistance if a person didn't want to be destroyed). In short order she tried to make connections with senior patients from before some mysterious massacre was carried out over the patient body, finding out about the occurrence of mysterious fires in short order.
She had allies and enemies from home in the asylum already, the most prominent of which would prove to be Shira, who she quietly plotted to kill (a plot which she then got beaten up for) – an event that actually kind of won her more allies, as the patients already knew Shira was scum and were sympathetic to her.
In short enough order she befriended fellow patient Hisoka and became his partner in crime in a manner of speaking, shortly joined by the patient Matt. Together the three of them agreed to tally and record the deaths and disappearances of their fellow patients as the asylum ground people under its heel, and this duty was one that Rin would carry out until she left the asylum with as much dedication as she could. It was both an act of morality, an attempt to give respect and record the depravity of the place in which they were trapped, and an act of defiance, again in tracking the asylum's crimes.
This project and Matt held her up through many losses, the deaths of many of her friends, dirty deals amongst patients that would put Rin at Shira's mercy in exchange for him leaving a few other people alone, and Rin's will proved strong. She fell somewhat in love with Matt, and her project and the thought that she could help other people, she would help other people, held her through losing many of her friends, sometimes more than once as people came and went. Her strongest belief was that maintaining patient solidarity and not losing hope or self-respect could carry them through almost anything, and to this end she did her best to shore up both of these things.
She developed a tendency to start games in the darkest times, simple little things that would allow her to talk to people, to support them and cheer them up, and to find allies. She was only taken into the dreaded therapy one early time and after that she more or less escaped the heavy hands of the staff. She managed to maintain; that was about the best that could be hoped for, under the circumstances.
It didn't last forever, though. Matt died, and Shira came and beat her comatose for a week, and when she woke up the asylum had changed very greatly. Most of the friends she'd cared for had disappeared. The patients' numbers had dwindled. The openings in the defenses of the asylum, chances to defy and possibly defeat staff – well, they didn't appear any more frequently. Rin continued to try and maintain, and that was more or less the best she could manage.
Other patients became friends and support, with much relief from Rin to because in paying attention to them she could drown her own growing depression out.
Eventually newcomers appeared on the patient line, speaking of the history of the asylum and chances to change things, and really to make a difference against the mostly terrible staff (there were a few exceptions, but they were the minority). Rin focused on them, calling them out over the patients' channel of the intercom, and gradually she lost interest in most of the other things she'd done, but this also caused her drive to do most anything else to drop through the floor. Finally, St. Edelweiss and all its brutalities were really taking a toll.
The day she awakes in Siren's Port will be shocking and confusing and awful but also not, in a way, unwelcome. She was slowly dying where she was before, after all.
Character Personality: In spite of all her bad experiences, Rin is basically a sweet girl. She’s strong-willed and altruistic and she truly wants to do what’s right. Most of the problems she has with this stem from the fact that in her world, there never really seems to be a surefire right thing to do.
She’s a bit of a crybaby, and she has a big sweet tooth, and she’s not as good a fighter as most of the other people in the series. No one should think that Rin’s worthless or wimpy because of any of this, though! This is a girl who deliberately dislocated her own thumb so she could slip out of her bonds and go rescue her bodyguard. She’s tough! So when Rin’s really loyal to someone, she’d undergo almost anything to keep them safe. She’s fairly clever as well. She’s good at making antidotes for emergencies and carries a little poison too. Since she’s not an especially strong fighter she relies heavily on surprise, demonstrated mostly in her Golden Wasps attack, where she throws several small daggers which are usually concealed in her sleeves. She's also developed a knack for strategy, and for working with people who are difficult to work with – Anotsu, the murderer of her parents, states at one point that he's impressed how much strength she drew out of some of her allies, fragile otherwise.
Rin is good with people. She has a huge, deep heart, and a compassionate nature even when she can be bratty and haughty sometimes. She can be mean, but she's not generally inclined to be genuinely unkind. She's just a rather sharp girl in many ways. Her past sort of honed an edge on her, although she can conceal it, and she has a wealth of psychological damage and a fixation on her identity as an avenger. If you removed that key purpose and part of her personality, Rin would have a hard time knowing what to do with herself. It's what she's been so focused on for such a long time that thinking of giving it up is literally painful, even though she's not a good killer.
Stemming from this as well, for all her desire to become stronger Rin’s not entirely cut out to be a fighter. She’s too empathetic; she even finds a certain amount of sympathy for her own private enemy Anotsu, and won’t kill him when he’s alone with her and terribly weakened by lockjaw – it’s just not the honorable thing to do! But that’s Rin, always on some level preferring reconciliation with her enemies rather than just decapitating them. She yells a lot at Anotsu and acts really bratty towards him (although he probably deserves it), but there isn’t as much honest hate demonstrated between them as you’d think. They even manage to work pretty well together sometimes. This is probably a symptom of Rin's essential adaptability and drive to survive, along with her complete incapability to turn a blind eye to someone elses' suffering. Even when she wants to, even when it might be safer, she is not inclined to just let people be miserable, or to find it easy to let them suffer or die – even when it's to protect someone absolutely precious to her (although in that situation, she'll bite lip and push through with it).
If I had to name an alignment I would put Rin as a neutral good. She'll break a law and stomp all over a rule if she thinks it's the right thing to do, and damn the consequences. Still, her natural disinclination to kill or torture and her dislike of pointless violence, and her inclination to help other people still makes her a good person, in my opinion. She just won't necessarily go by the book (she also doesn't keep the best of company, so as you can likely guess, her morals are athletically flexible too).
Personality development in previous game: St. Edelweiss left a mark on most of the characters that went through it, and Rin was no exception. It was not a good place for anyone, and likewise was not a good place for her.
Rin was a very open person, somewhat naive and easy to manipulate, and most of the people she meets throughout her canon take advantage of it at one point or another. However, in St. Edelweiss, casually bestowing trust of any magnitude could prove to be a huge mistake. It was important to place people as allies or enemies fast, and to be on guard at all times. Coming out of the asylum Rin will be much more guarded, much more choosy who she really opens up to, much slower to trust. After all, in St. Edelweiss people died and left so easily. She wouldn't want to be open to that pain again, as much as loneliness might hurt her, and being the outsider looking in.
A significant change at St. E was that in many places Rin sort of stopped regarding people as people. It's not to say that she became cruel or callous, and she didn't enjoy people dying – even when she just thought of people as objects, she didn't want to see them die. But here's the thing: in many cases people became objects and obstacles, burdens to be shouldered by her or someone else, but she engaging personally with people, becoming friends with them, relying on them, was so chancy and in so many cases something that just got her hurt. Leaving St. E, she'll be slow to trust or engage until she's relatively certain that someone will LAST for a while, because in Siren's Port, it's easy to die in a lot of horrible ways too.
So, she was kind to people, and she tried to help them, but if someone couldn't take care of themselves, keep up or adapt to at least some apparent degree, she would not emotionally engage with them. It was surface kindness, a distraction to occupy herself where otherwise she'd bog down in her own despair, and if one of those people that she spoke kindly to and encouraged and played games with was in trouble, and so was someone else that she actually cared about, Rin would drop the former – not without guilt or sorrow, but she would – and she'd go to the latter, to do as much as she could for someone that she felt also gave back to her.
St. Edelweiss forced her to become sneakier. It also put her in a position to use her brain. She's become more perceptive about people, as thinking about people and watching the way they worked there was another thing to stave off boredom and desperation. She acquired some familiarity with the idea that hope and smoke and mirrors and kind words could stabilize people in a crisis, could help someone without her actually having to stir herself to effort. The power of words and information was more valuable than physical power for her, at least in terms of utilizing it, since she was smart enough to make a rousing speech or snag an ally verbally but not strong enough to kill someone or defend herself. Although at the end of her time in St. Edelweiss if there was a chance to kill one of her persistent tormenters, one of the people who'd hurt other people she cared about, she would have taken it.
Rin became more thoughtful in her words, more wary of when to speak up and when to challenge authority. She didn't lose a somewhat smartassed sense of humor but it did get darker, more desperate, more aware of her precarious situation. She became more cautious. Matured, in many degrees, but at a cost that turned her stressed and grieving. But the tendencies developed in St. Edelweiss might prove useful even in Siren's Port, so who knows? Maybe it was for the best.
Character Plans: Well, really, what I'd like her to do is get a chance to heal. Rin is at her heart plainly a nice girl, empathetic, sympathetic, and kind, for all that she can be a downright brat sometimes and she suffered a lot in her past game setting really without any respite. I'd like to see if she could rebuild a support network, find her feet in (another) totally unfamiliar world, and even thrive.
That and I miss playing her in more than one place. :)
Appearance/PB: See her icons.
Writing Samples
First Person Sample
Siren's Port was a very different city, and Rin was so unused to cities by now that she really did find it somewhat terrifying. Even without the Darkness (which she hadn't even seen yet, but wasn't anxious to see anyway), without the crime, without the threat of slavery or experimentation or prostitution – so like what she'd just gotten out of that it nearly made her ill – all of the people, the demands of an entirely different time, everything that she was going to have to learn...
Her head was still spinning. It wasn't her first experience with being unexpectedly dragged from one – world, apparently? - into another, but looking up nearly gave her vertigo. All that beautiful sky, even here, in a filthy city; gorgeous, depthless blue, so intense it nearly burned her eyes.
That was how she felt. A little burned. Tender, wounded.
There was so much she was going to have to learn to do. She could see that just looking at the apartment, which was unhospitably bare. How was she going to get food? At least at the asylum, she'd known where the next meal would come from, even if it was mostly a chore to eat.
She bit her lip. Don't start missing that place, girl. It just wouldn't do, to start thinking like that.
She felt so heavy. She'd lost so many things that she never thought anyone could take away from her. Not after her parents -
The bleachers were hard seats, not very comfortable, and Rin shifted and sighed. She was bonier than she used to be. She'd lost weight. She was still dirty and cold. At least in the apartments, there had to be a way to clean up.
“Not yet,” she said to herself. She felt exposed, fearful, somewhat shy, but she wasn't ready for that yet, closing off the world to herself again. There was probably a word for what she was feeling, like she might just float off the planet, Pull or no. Not that she would know it.
“Not right now.” She looked up, shifting, pulling her legs up to tuck them awkwardly under her bottom.
She wasn't ready to leave that sky just yet, that was all. Birds floated in it like long-lost dreams. She felt like she'd dropped a weight, very suddenly. It was a feeling guilty and good and frightening. She had no connections to anyone. She was utterly on her own, more than she'd been even in St. Edelweiss, where at least she'd had an enemy at first, to focus on surviving against. Letting her unmoored heart up into the air let her feel like she might never get it back, and maybe like she wouldn't feel bad about losing it without a trace, either.
Third Person Sample
{First on the nv, simple marks, a few Japanese characters written out. Random words, testing how it works. “Moon”. “Pen”. “Stand”. “River”. After a few moments, these die out into random squiggles, then tiny drawings; a small bird perched on a flower, a star shape, a tree.
Still in Japanese, written:}
Please excuse me. Can anyone else read this?
Are there any other people from Edo here? They told me there were a lot of different people here. There must be a few, maybe?
{A pause, after the writing. A few awkward squiggles again with the ballpoint pen. She wishes she had a brush; thecharacters look so... soulless this way. Then, changing over to speaking.}
I guess it transfers voice too. Everyone can really hear me? This thing doesn't seem like it should carry sound. {pause.}
Is it really true that we can get jobs here? We're really allowed to go where we want?
Name: Senri
Age: 21
AIM SN: DISCO SNUFFMUFFIN
email: undead.invader(at)gmail.com
Have you played in an LJ based game before? Yes. C:
Bonus: How did you hear about Siren's Pull? A mod told me.
Character Information
General
Canon Source: Blade of the Immortal
Canon Format: Manga
Character's Name: Asano Rin
Character's Age: 16
What form will your character's NV take? A MAGIC SCROLL!! She can unroll it and it can serve to write on, project voice, and also work like a videoscreen. Three characters will go down the sides offering her options to choose from. She'll experiment and figure it out. :)
Abilities
Character's Canon Abilities: Nothing superhuman. Rin is a fighter, but not exactly a badass one; she's EXTREMELY determined when she has to be and innovative under pressure, and she's stronger, faster, and smarter than one would expect, but she's human and Blade is a series where characters bleed and sweat for years to get good. She just hasn't put in the time to reach that level, nor does she have the inclination to take lives, generally.
Other than that, she's smart. She's adaptable. She relates well to people. She can cook and clean and take care of herself, at least in her own setting – the modern world is going to present a hell of a lot of hurdles for her to cross.
If your character has no superhuman canon abilities, what dormant ability will you give them? I'd like Rin to have the ability of stealth! With the application of will, she'll become less noticeable to most psyches; as her strength and practice with her skill grows, she'll become harder and harder to notice or find, even for psychics or people with superhuman senses, and eventually she'll have enough strength to cloak a few other people along with her, although physical contact will be a necessity to extend the shield to them.
She will still be noticeable to cameras and electronic surveillance, and psychics more powerful than she will be able to break her shield and both notice her and be able to expose her to other people. I'd like her shield to be dependant partly on her will though, and Rin's will is pretty strong, so as her facility with her dormant ability grows she'll be able to shore up her shield against stronger and stronger pressures. Vulnerability to electronic observers will remain a serious liability, though.
This ability would allow her to function as potentially both a spy when necessary and perhaps, eventually, as an assassin. Her previous game's environment hardened and sharpened her in a lot of ways so both paths are possibilities.
Weapons: She did not possess any weapons in her previous game, but I wonder if it would be possible to bring her heirloom sword, Kutoneshirika, into the world of Siren's Port with her? It's an important item, it was theoretically in storage in the previous game, and it's a weapon she's familiar with in a world where it's not safe to be unarmed (not that it's safe to be armed either, but she'll feel a bit better).
History/Personality/Plans/etc.
Character History: Two years before her canon's start point, Rin was living a happy, peaceful life as the daughter of a samurai family. Her father was the head of a sword school known as the Mutenichi-ryu, and there was strife in the land as always, conflict stemming this time from an upstart sword school known as the Itto-ryu, which was going around razing other sword schools to the ground, killing students who couldn't convert (because the Itto-ryu was a sword school that demanded a high caliber of fighting skill from its members and not everyone could deliver) and trying to spread its philosophy (whatever works, in a nutshell) to every part of the country.
As might be expected from this beginning, the hammer fell on Rin's family, with a personal twist this time, as the leader of the Itto-ryu's grandfather had once been a Mutenichi-ryu swordsman before he was thrown out of the school over a manner of style, and Rin's grandfather (the old master's son) was given the leadership of the school.
Anotsu was the son of the man who was thrown out, and he carried out his grandfathers' legacy of rage against the Asano. Rin's parents were killed, although she was left alive because assaulting children showed “no class”.
Fast forward two years. Rin's canon begins. She's been wandering alone for that time, searching for Itto-ryu in a vengeance quest. Unfortunately it's not been going so well, as it's hard to even find Itto-ryu, much less kill them (Itto-ryu are hella good, and Rin, though determined, is not so hot with a sword). It's lucky, then, that she finds Manji, a swordsman who eventually agrees to serve as her bodyguard.
Manji is immortal, which is a big help putting down Itto-ryu, and he and Rin start traveling together, which is a big help to her in overcoming some of that loneliness. The two have a lot of adventures together, killing Itto-ryu and becoming closer, fighting a hidden immortal swordsman (just like Manji!) in the Itto-ryu, getting Rin's heirloom sword back from the Itto-ryu member who stole it, meeting more enemies and allies as they go. Occasionally Rin runs into Anotsu again too, and frankly, she turns out to be a pretty sucky avenger, given that her will to kill people is pretty low and she states that she hates useless violence.
Eventually, after finding out that Anotsu is traveling to settlement of Kaga, Rin splits off from Manji and goes by herself to follow her parents' killer, revealing that she's determined and obsessive enough to go a little crazy when the opportunity arises. Manji can't go with her because he's has a criminal record and a warrant out for him, although Rin doesn't realize she has one too, after being blamed for the crimes of a sociopath named Shira. She has to assume another identity to follow her parents' killers, and manages pretty well until she gets careless and is robbed on the road, ending up with no money to get rooms or food. :|
Nearly starving and half dead on the trail, Rin is found by Anotsu, and she follows him – and although he could easily kill her (and it would probably be better for Anotsu if he did; Rin is a danger to him, no matter how small) he allows her to travel with him, and her hatred for him changes and lessens when traveling with him while his respect for her, near nonexistent at first, increases somewhat. Eventually they even team up and fight together; Anotsu gets lockjaw and Rin claims she'll follow him and kill him when he's weak enough (he still doesn't kill her!) and then never gets around to it until he's so weak she says she missed her window of opportunity (thus proving again that Rin is a crappy avenger). Eventually, even with all this, she runs into Manji again, and swearing to Anotsu that she'll kill him the next time they meet (ha ha ha... ha ha...) she departs with her bodyguard.
It's mostly back to business and monster-of-the-week whacking for our intrepid heroine and her man after that, more of the usual with Rin getting put in danger and Manji rescuing her, weird new enemies popping up that need to be whacked, all against a background of continuing strife in Edo.
Eventually Manji is called in to talk with the government about working off his criminal name by killing FOR the government, and when he turns that down, he's taken in, because immortality is a hot commodity in Edo and the government would really like to find out how it works and how it could be passed on. Rin has an ubercrush on Manji at this point, plus he's her friend and bodyguard and she needs him, so she promptly sets about to figuring out what happened and how to lever him out of it.
To do this, she ends up teaming up with a couple of Itto-ryu (the last person you'd ever expect to, really) and in fact letting them stay in her house after one of them tried to kill her (over the course of the series we also realize that Rin is somewhat bananas, has a way too huge heart, and doesn't mind hanging out with crazy people one something of the other side of the law as long as they don't enjoy killing too much). The Itto-ryu's name are Doa and Isaku and they love each other very much, and eventually when Isaku is captured and impounded to take part in the brutal immortality experiments (tons of people are dying in the prison-slash-'lab' under Edo castle, where Manji is confined, because research techniques aren't exactly what you'd call ethical there) and Doa goes a little nuts when Isaku gets caught. Rin takes her well in hand though, proving that she can both lead and keep a level head in a crisis, too.
So, the two girls do some spying and scheming and planning, and they head off to the heavily-guarded very secure prison by themselves to find their men and get them out!
Only then she was pulled into St.Edelweiss. And from there, she was pulled into Siren's Port. Actually, the latter place is an improvement in many regards.
Point in Canon: Just as she and Doa were beginning to storm Edo castle.
Brief summary of previous RP history: St.Edelweiss was not a place where characters thrived so much as maintained – and that if they were lucky. In her time in the asylum, Rin didn't learn any amazing skills or kill any staff or anything, but she did persist in a quiet, stubborn resistance against the forces of staff, which were usually repressive, dangerous, sadistic, and generally awful, with few exceptions.
Rin spent some time in the asylum just getting her bearings, making friends (finding allies), and figuring out what she possibly thought she could do to resist the place (because very quickly she figured out that it was a place that demanded resistance if a person didn't want to be destroyed). In short order she tried to make connections with senior patients from before some mysterious massacre was carried out over the patient body, finding out about the occurrence of mysterious fires in short order.
She had allies and enemies from home in the asylum already, the most prominent of which would prove to be Shira, who she quietly plotted to kill (a plot which she then got beaten up for) – an event that actually kind of won her more allies, as the patients already knew Shira was scum and were sympathetic to her.
In short enough order she befriended fellow patient Hisoka and became his partner in crime in a manner of speaking, shortly joined by the patient Matt. Together the three of them agreed to tally and record the deaths and disappearances of their fellow patients as the asylum ground people under its heel, and this duty was one that Rin would carry out until she left the asylum with as much dedication as she could. It was both an act of morality, an attempt to give respect and record the depravity of the place in which they were trapped, and an act of defiance, again in tracking the asylum's crimes.
This project and Matt held her up through many losses, the deaths of many of her friends, dirty deals amongst patients that would put Rin at Shira's mercy in exchange for him leaving a few other people alone, and Rin's will proved strong. She fell somewhat in love with Matt, and her project and the thought that she could help other people, she would help other people, held her through losing many of her friends, sometimes more than once as people came and went. Her strongest belief was that maintaining patient solidarity and not losing hope or self-respect could carry them through almost anything, and to this end she did her best to shore up both of these things.
She developed a tendency to start games in the darkest times, simple little things that would allow her to talk to people, to support them and cheer them up, and to find allies. She was only taken into the dreaded therapy one early time and after that she more or less escaped the heavy hands of the staff. She managed to maintain; that was about the best that could be hoped for, under the circumstances.
It didn't last forever, though. Matt died, and Shira came and beat her comatose for a week, and when she woke up the asylum had changed very greatly. Most of the friends she'd cared for had disappeared. The patients' numbers had dwindled. The openings in the defenses of the asylum, chances to defy and possibly defeat staff – well, they didn't appear any more frequently. Rin continued to try and maintain, and that was more or less the best she could manage.
Other patients became friends and support, with much relief from Rin to because in paying attention to them she could drown her own growing depression out.
Eventually newcomers appeared on the patient line, speaking of the history of the asylum and chances to change things, and really to make a difference against the mostly terrible staff (there were a few exceptions, but they were the minority). Rin focused on them, calling them out over the patients' channel of the intercom, and gradually she lost interest in most of the other things she'd done, but this also caused her drive to do most anything else to drop through the floor. Finally, St. Edelweiss and all its brutalities were really taking a toll.
The day she awakes in Siren's Port will be shocking and confusing and awful but also not, in a way, unwelcome. She was slowly dying where she was before, after all.
Character Personality: In spite of all her bad experiences, Rin is basically a sweet girl. She’s strong-willed and altruistic and she truly wants to do what’s right. Most of the problems she has with this stem from the fact that in her world, there never really seems to be a surefire right thing to do.
She’s a bit of a crybaby, and she has a big sweet tooth, and she’s not as good a fighter as most of the other people in the series. No one should think that Rin’s worthless or wimpy because of any of this, though! This is a girl who deliberately dislocated her own thumb so she could slip out of her bonds and go rescue her bodyguard. She’s tough! So when Rin’s really loyal to someone, she’d undergo almost anything to keep them safe. She’s fairly clever as well. She’s good at making antidotes for emergencies and carries a little poison too. Since she’s not an especially strong fighter she relies heavily on surprise, demonstrated mostly in her Golden Wasps attack, where she throws several small daggers which are usually concealed in her sleeves. She's also developed a knack for strategy, and for working with people who are difficult to work with – Anotsu, the murderer of her parents, states at one point that he's impressed how much strength she drew out of some of her allies, fragile otherwise.
Rin is good with people. She has a huge, deep heart, and a compassionate nature even when she can be bratty and haughty sometimes. She can be mean, but she's not generally inclined to be genuinely unkind. She's just a rather sharp girl in many ways. Her past sort of honed an edge on her, although she can conceal it, and she has a wealth of psychological damage and a fixation on her identity as an avenger. If you removed that key purpose and part of her personality, Rin would have a hard time knowing what to do with herself. It's what she's been so focused on for such a long time that thinking of giving it up is literally painful, even though she's not a good killer.
Stemming from this as well, for all her desire to become stronger Rin’s not entirely cut out to be a fighter. She’s too empathetic; she even finds a certain amount of sympathy for her own private enemy Anotsu, and won’t kill him when he’s alone with her and terribly weakened by lockjaw – it’s just not the honorable thing to do! But that’s Rin, always on some level preferring reconciliation with her enemies rather than just decapitating them. She yells a lot at Anotsu and acts really bratty towards him (although he probably deserves it), but there isn’t as much honest hate demonstrated between them as you’d think. They even manage to work pretty well together sometimes. This is probably a symptom of Rin's essential adaptability and drive to survive, along with her complete incapability to turn a blind eye to someone elses' suffering. Even when she wants to, even when it might be safer, she is not inclined to just let people be miserable, or to find it easy to let them suffer or die – even when it's to protect someone absolutely precious to her (although in that situation, she'll bite lip and push through with it).
If I had to name an alignment I would put Rin as a neutral good. She'll break a law and stomp all over a rule if she thinks it's the right thing to do, and damn the consequences. Still, her natural disinclination to kill or torture and her dislike of pointless violence, and her inclination to help other people still makes her a good person, in my opinion. She just won't necessarily go by the book (she also doesn't keep the best of company, so as you can likely guess, her morals are athletically flexible too).
Personality development in previous game: St. Edelweiss left a mark on most of the characters that went through it, and Rin was no exception. It was not a good place for anyone, and likewise was not a good place for her.
Rin was a very open person, somewhat naive and easy to manipulate, and most of the people she meets throughout her canon take advantage of it at one point or another. However, in St. Edelweiss, casually bestowing trust of any magnitude could prove to be a huge mistake. It was important to place people as allies or enemies fast, and to be on guard at all times. Coming out of the asylum Rin will be much more guarded, much more choosy who she really opens up to, much slower to trust. After all, in St. Edelweiss people died and left so easily. She wouldn't want to be open to that pain again, as much as loneliness might hurt her, and being the outsider looking in.
A significant change at St. E was that in many places Rin sort of stopped regarding people as people. It's not to say that she became cruel or callous, and she didn't enjoy people dying – even when she just thought of people as objects, she didn't want to see them die. But here's the thing: in many cases people became objects and obstacles, burdens to be shouldered by her or someone else, but she engaging personally with people, becoming friends with them, relying on them, was so chancy and in so many cases something that just got her hurt. Leaving St. E, she'll be slow to trust or engage until she's relatively certain that someone will LAST for a while, because in Siren's Port, it's easy to die in a lot of horrible ways too.
So, she was kind to people, and she tried to help them, but if someone couldn't take care of themselves, keep up or adapt to at least some apparent degree, she would not emotionally engage with them. It was surface kindness, a distraction to occupy herself where otherwise she'd bog down in her own despair, and if one of those people that she spoke kindly to and encouraged and played games with was in trouble, and so was someone else that she actually cared about, Rin would drop the former – not without guilt or sorrow, but she would – and she'd go to the latter, to do as much as she could for someone that she felt also gave back to her.
St. Edelweiss forced her to become sneakier. It also put her in a position to use her brain. She's become more perceptive about people, as thinking about people and watching the way they worked there was another thing to stave off boredom and desperation. She acquired some familiarity with the idea that hope and smoke and mirrors and kind words could stabilize people in a crisis, could help someone without her actually having to stir herself to effort. The power of words and information was more valuable than physical power for her, at least in terms of utilizing it, since she was smart enough to make a rousing speech or snag an ally verbally but not strong enough to kill someone or defend herself. Although at the end of her time in St. Edelweiss if there was a chance to kill one of her persistent tormenters, one of the people who'd hurt other people she cared about, she would have taken it.
Rin became more thoughtful in her words, more wary of when to speak up and when to challenge authority. She didn't lose a somewhat smartassed sense of humor but it did get darker, more desperate, more aware of her precarious situation. She became more cautious. Matured, in many degrees, but at a cost that turned her stressed and grieving. But the tendencies developed in St. Edelweiss might prove useful even in Siren's Port, so who knows? Maybe it was for the best.
Character Plans: Well, really, what I'd like her to do is get a chance to heal. Rin is at her heart plainly a nice girl, empathetic, sympathetic, and kind, for all that she can be a downright brat sometimes and she suffered a lot in her past game setting really without any respite. I'd like to see if she could rebuild a support network, find her feet in (another) totally unfamiliar world, and even thrive.
That and I miss playing her in more than one place. :)
Appearance/PB: See her icons.
Writing Samples
First Person Sample
Siren's Port was a very different city, and Rin was so unused to cities by now that she really did find it somewhat terrifying. Even without the Darkness (which she hadn't even seen yet, but wasn't anxious to see anyway), without the crime, without the threat of slavery or experimentation or prostitution – so like what she'd just gotten out of that it nearly made her ill – all of the people, the demands of an entirely different time, everything that she was going to have to learn...
Her head was still spinning. It wasn't her first experience with being unexpectedly dragged from one – world, apparently? - into another, but looking up nearly gave her vertigo. All that beautiful sky, even here, in a filthy city; gorgeous, depthless blue, so intense it nearly burned her eyes.
That was how she felt. A little burned. Tender, wounded.
There was so much she was going to have to learn to do. She could see that just looking at the apartment, which was unhospitably bare. How was she going to get food? At least at the asylum, she'd known where the next meal would come from, even if it was mostly a chore to eat.
She bit her lip. Don't start missing that place, girl. It just wouldn't do, to start thinking like that.
She felt so heavy. She'd lost so many things that she never thought anyone could take away from her. Not after her parents -
The bleachers were hard seats, not very comfortable, and Rin shifted and sighed. She was bonier than she used to be. She'd lost weight. She was still dirty and cold. At least in the apartments, there had to be a way to clean up.
“Not yet,” she said to herself. She felt exposed, fearful, somewhat shy, but she wasn't ready for that yet, closing off the world to herself again. There was probably a word for what she was feeling, like she might just float off the planet, Pull or no. Not that she would know it.
“Not right now.” She looked up, shifting, pulling her legs up to tuck them awkwardly under her bottom.
She wasn't ready to leave that sky just yet, that was all. Birds floated in it like long-lost dreams. She felt like she'd dropped a weight, very suddenly. It was a feeling guilty and good and frightening. She had no connections to anyone. She was utterly on her own, more than she'd been even in St. Edelweiss, where at least she'd had an enemy at first, to focus on surviving against. Letting her unmoored heart up into the air let her feel like she might never get it back, and maybe like she wouldn't feel bad about losing it without a trace, either.
Third Person Sample
{First on the nv, simple marks, a few Japanese characters written out. Random words, testing how it works. “Moon”. “Pen”. “Stand”. “River”. After a few moments, these die out into random squiggles, then tiny drawings; a small bird perched on a flower, a star shape, a tree.
Still in Japanese, written:}
Please excuse me. Can anyone else read this?
Are there any other people from Edo here? They told me there were a lot of different people here. There must be a few, maybe?
{A pause, after the writing. A few awkward squiggles again with the ballpoint pen. She wishes she had a brush; thecharacters look so... soulless this way. Then, changing over to speaking.}
I guess it transfers voice too. Everyone can really hear me? This thing doesn't seem like it should carry sound. {pause.}
Is it really true that we can get jobs here? We're really allowed to go where we want?
