top three shin headcanons, go go

idk if this headcanon per se but i get annoyed by seeing it crop up as one so it'll be a freebie anti-headcanon while i think: shin isn't a stinky boy. he showers, guys. in fact, he might be a little too obsessively squeaky clean

his hands are so clean they don't disturb dirt on a keyboard, he's the one most relieved they actually are given a chance to bathe in game, and he's on record as constantly turning up the heat to avoid colds (and has a lot of reason to want to, his poor health means he gets them a lot)

what's shin's daily routine as soon as he wakes up(home, yogen whichever is easiest)

ALL KOMAEDALINGS ARE OBSESSED W STAYING CLEAN!!

so it's extremely likely he keeps that clean bc he's worried about getting ill.
does he use 13-in-1 shampoo? probably. does he brush his hair? not really. he's not big into personal grooming, but he does like the wet box

EXACTLY
HE GOT THAT GENE

I think my fav comic I saw is that even tho komaeda has dementia and you stop caring for yourself at that point... he makes it a habit as soon as he wakes up to clean so it sticks to him as sumn he needs to do and if he cleans he'll be like now it's time to shower etc

hhhh keeping that scaffolding for himself...

what else... at this point it's kind of hard to separate headcanon from speculation, but i do have the headcanon that he was either in or abt to go to college when midori "died", and i'm vindicated i'm not the only one

i just keep thinking about the many ways shin's future was stolen from him; a toxic friendship at a critical point of his life, the loss of it at another critical point of his life, and of course the death game itself

that goes for all the candidates, but it's interesting to me (and also another fun foil detail that shin and sara have the like. attention drawn to their particular grooming for it, narratively)

i've been thinking lately about how shin learnt programming (and briefly persued a degree in compsci bc of it) because of midori, and like. it's interesting to me it's programming and not, say medical skill which midori also had
because programming was impressive to a young shin (and maybe also worked better for midori's plans)

which moves on to the third headcanon here, which is that midori was definitely grooming shin to be an asset in the death game for him, which i've shamelessly picked up from elsewhere
midori's strategy in the banquet has the vibe of being very planned out, which fits with how much sara's wish and the keiji thing throw him off guard

and i fully believe he'd approach the full game the same way: go in with a plan, and an ally you'll throw under the bus when necessary

sdfsdf sounds cold when I put it that way, i think midori did have genuine affection for shin, it's just it's affection in that kind of 'hugging something is next to wanting to kill it' way

anyway i'm trying to reel this back from being a midori headcanon and not a shin canon but their CR is so entertwined that to a certain extent one is going to be the other

*headcanon

but then of course things didn't go to plan (thanks alice!) and so now shin is this like.... almost half-sharpened, rust-spotted knife someone left lying around and that's kind of... fascinating to me? idk why

he's got all these little scraps but they were made to be useful to someone else, not him, controlled by someone else, through him.
things like the list of passwords... combine that with the lantern and you have a storage mechanism handy

programming skill, and it's pure headcanon but i do love the idea he taught shin to shoot in case he got caught in russian roulette

and this theme gets particularly fun in logic, where he's kept alive because he's useful

or... potentially useful

like i said, idk why but it's interesting to me, i'm spinning it
i don't think he's made the full connection in yogen, but he's def a bit fucked up about the revelation logic route exists at all and that's part of why
sometimes i go back and reread him arguing that he's not useful before getting to the anger stage of grief and going :' )

i don't know if these are my three favourite headcanons so much as the first ones that come to mind, but they're def ones i toss about a lot

perpendicular

oh right and now i think about it this also fits with how they get closest to escape when nao, effectively, wields him and he lets himself be wielded, in the structure of this metaphor
he's fun, he's the protagonist of his own story that was supposed to be the dragon of one that didn't happen

this is also making me very sad about hinako

what's the easiest thing about writing shin for you? the hardest? or just your favorite thing about him, whatever's most fun for you to touch on!

daily routine.... i've actually written down shin's daily routine in yogen before, but that was before he took on shopkeeping duties

which has disrupted his sleeping patterns a bit; i think he sleeps in a couple hours more now, and often naps in the afternoon and on the job when it's quiet

(on the job tends to be more catnaps waking up at the slightest noise though)

he's also putting a lot of his homework, teaching duties and personal projects into his shop time as well, so you'll almost always see him doing one of those while at the counter

and some of those have started to slip rip, esp while recovering from injury. lot more 'lets just watch a movie' days
that reminds me i need to actually like. ask about more comps for his class that's been on the docker for a while

this also means going to clubs and hanging out with friends is now a bit tricky for him, so his appearances are sporadic and he's probably had to drop out from the dnd game

he IS his own boss though, and that means he can just call off a shift whenever he wants (he's done this for helena) so... he does, if he's getting wrecked

or just wants to

but mostly for being tired reasons

it helps that night shift is mostly for the benefit of transfers and npcs who are deliberately staying behind for smth specific instead of getting like, stationary, so it's easier on him than day shift would be

outside of yogen.... well we know he pretty much never left the house, not even to go get something to eat, which i want to stress is much easier in japan, there's food places within walking distance a LOT

this guy got a lot of doordash it seems

he'd walk to a night shift at a local convenience store on the bad side of town - this lines up with joe and sara being kidnapped at night which is a nice touch, he was on the way there

i imagine he'd probably get his shopping done at work as well... maybe pick up stuff from a vending machine on the way?

at work he magically vanishes when there's customers and gets puffed carrying boxes - in ytts shin mentions the manager is 'friendly' so I get the impression that like. it's more obvious than he thinks that he's a soaked kitten. he's got a coworker who's annoyed by these shenanigans but the art of them chatting while having drinks is cute

it kills me honestly bc there's the sense that like. in a lot of ways he was starting to recover? his life was stagnating a little but it was also like. idk how to put it

he had smth to stand on to keep his head above wate

also im realising i should nix the doordash bc absolutely what he was doing was buying the shop's expired food im crying

so anyway that's him at work... i imagine he gets home and just crashes for eight hours, so he probably gets up some time in the afternoon

and then with the leisure time before it starts all over again he goes online.... reads light novels, games, plays osu, and takes stabs at any freelance programming projects he's gotten (easier on his days off)

it's a very isolated space bubble of existence

sakasaki

THINKIN ABT NIXING THE DOORDASH oh im crying that ssooo cute i think him playing osu is adorable that is like the staple past time game i liked this

there's some discrepancies that point to the idea he did have this job but then quit or was fired at some point and became freelance full time, but there's not really enough to say one way or the other so i'm going with this until we get more deets

yessssss. im like. what do my bro and his nerdy friends do. well they sure do play a lot of osu

im crying shin's looking at carpal tunnel by his thirties

this is why he's formidable whenever there's a gaming club competition :' )

gonna go get lunch and return to bunny's q

what is one of your favorite rp moments with an old character you dont play anymore?

okay i RETURN from various things lemme get right back into it

easiest and hardest things about writing shin... well first i have to talk about the easiest and hardest things about writing in general rip

which is that i really love description; love setting a scene, love action, love messing around with prose and introspection
and then i get to the dialogue and it becomes more like pulling teeth. knowing what a character is thinking and feeling is easy, how that comes out of their mouth is euuughh
i don't have this problem with body language, for some reason

for shin it gets trickier again bc he's not the sort to say what he's thinking.... to an extent, he's actually a lot more out with it than he appears in a first playthrough bc in a first playthrough it's hard to tell when he's bullshitting or not. he'll be sarcastic, he'll be reticent, but the hardest part is when he Knows Thing and Implies about it

which is 50% hard bc i do not Know Thing

this i think is just the rp 'smarter character than i am' in general problem

at this point i do have like, a sort of general cheat sheet/flowchart for what he says and how but it's very much something i had to sort of construct

but for shin specifically... i think the hardest thing atm is that he's had a LOT of character development to keep track of. i know i'm going to miss things and i'm not too bothered about that, but it gets tricky where i'm like 'okay this would have SOME effect on him, so i need to work out what that is and how that stacks with these other things'

it also means as time goes on, recalibrating with canon rereading doesn't take this into account

i have to parse my first ideas of 'is this just what i think is cool or would he actually do this' with a little more time to think about it

yogen is also very fast paced, so sometimes it can be a bit of a if i'm still working out the effects of smth and then smth else falls on top; usually they're emotionally consolidatable but it does stack up

i think i first started noticing this problem around the whole thing with rantaro, bc that's def a black box of shin reaction that i've kind of thrown a rug over, shhh, it'll be fine

ultimately rp is a messy affair and it's not like a novel where you're supposed to get several drafts through rounds of edits, as long as everyone's having fun that's the goal and i'm having fun

but this is probs why i think two years at yogen is enough for me.... if i took up shin as he is now again it'd probs be after a break to really pick apart the exact shifts and changes and nail him down again

the easiest part of rping shin is that he has so many traits that lend themselves to my rp style; his health is bad and he needs to rest a lot, so i have an excuse if rl happens, conversely he's proven to improve fast if given the chance, so i can play around with him getting and exploring new skills

i don't have to worry too much if i'm accidentally making him too nice abt smth bc he is kind at heart..... his Just Some Guy ness is a bit of an advantage here

and he has a player character level aversion to things sometimes

i think i've gotten a little too used to this bc i've fallen into a bad habit of using ic excuses for ooc actions which i'm trying to nip in the bud now i've noticed

but yeah i also like that he's squidgeable enough to get him to do things; he's the guy who thinks a vending machine could be a trap but changes his tune when he finds out there's soup in it and that mix of cautious and impulsive is extremely fun

can't wait for despair disease to turn off his anxiety
you think he's bad now hoo boy

this somehow drifted into favourite things about him territory which is nice and neat.... he's just a fascinating little meow meow, that's my favourite thing. there's a lot to him to poke around at.

pfle

sits bolt upright and runs into traffic MY STICKS

favourite rp moments with an old character... god there's so many don't make me chooseeee

p much all of them are with annie: the stairs thing, the sibling fight in the library... all of the ventus and vanitas ones in general but i loved the basement one and the one where vanitas ends up crashing into apprentice ven's place

but... i think the thread that ensured i'd actually get into dwrp holds a place in my heart; the one in an entranceway tdm where i got to pull off a sick move that ended up having ripple effects in the game proper
i made a lot of friends there, some of whom i still see on plurk occasionally!

anyway the desire to chase that high is why I kept going with it, and here we are

blueseawitch

basement one was so good. im curious about the second...

i'm trying to remember what/where it was but you gave me the good vanitas meeting Darkness food with it

THAT DOES SOUND GOOD WHEN DID WE WRITE THAT

LEMME HAVE A LOOK