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netting_nettlesplayer
NAME: Erry
DW USERNAME:cupiditas
TIMEZONE: CST
character
NAME: Masaki Kariya
SERIES: Inazuma Eleven GO!
WIKI LINK: Here
PERSONALITY:
Kariya takes the term “two-faced” to almost literal extremes.
Catch a glimpse of him in public on your average minute of the day, and you’ll see a boy who is quiet, polite, and, while perhaps insular or even shy, friendly enough to those around him. He’s not the type to jump into social situations on his own initiative, but he’ll smile and play nice if they come to him of their own accord. This is the Kariya that his teammates first witness off of the field, when he arrives at Raimon: A well-mannered youth who seems to do his best to be unobtrusive without quite turning into the fragile or wilting type, so very normal and unassuming.
But a (very) attentive eye will catch snatches of something quite different, playing out in Kariya’s eyes and his expression. Particularly when no one worth noting seems to be paying him attention, his features can fill with exasperation and suspicion directed towards those around him – as well as a calculating harshness that says he knows just how to take advantage of his trustworthy looks.
The thing is that, truth be told, he generally does, too. Kariya is a natural hand at manipulating others, mostly because he has such a knack for observation. With just a few glances, he can usually pin what someone’s impression of him is, what their temperament is like, and so on. In his canon, this set of skills is on full display early on in his appearances, when he sets himself in conflict with his teammate Kirino: By his second day on the team, Kariya’s already worked out who’s suspicious of his behavior, who’s naively trusting, and who’s unaware of the whole fight between the two of them. He uses that information to his own advantage without hesitation, spreading false rumors about Kirino to players who can be expected not to suspect him while playing the poor, put-upon victim to those likely to be sympathetic. Kariya is good at these kinds of deceptive games, and he knows it. He also has little in the way of ethical compunctions about such manipulation. He may get uncomfortable about being in a situation where he's pressed to deceive others, but guilt after the fact doesn't hit him hard.
Kariya would probably like to tell himself (sometimes, at least) that the shrewd, cynical side he tries to keep out of view of others is what he’s really like, deep down. Clever enough to use people to his advantage, far too smart to be used, and certainly not harmed in any way by always standing off from the rest of his peers...that’s a self-image he’s not above enjoying. (He takes visible pleasure, for instance, in dangling the possibility that he’s a mysterious and dangerous double agent over his teammate Kirino’s head.) To a great extent, though, this side of Kariya is a defensive mechanism, part of his reaction to the damaged trust that the being abandoned by his parents prompted. Being wily and vicious would mean that he couldn’t be harmed by being taken advantage of again and that, even if he were, he wouldn’t have to care...if he were truly that way right down to his core.
That’s all to say that what can look like the sweet “front” to Kariya’s “real nature” has as good a claim to a central place in his personality as his harsher side. Thus, while he’s not above cruel pranks and jokes (e.g., playfully mocking new team members or tricking them into running into the goal posts), he can also be legitimately gentle and unassuming, the kind of kid who’s just content to be invited somewhere with friends and allowed to be part of someone else’s social circle. Likewise, while he likes to play cool and in control, his self-confidence can be markedly precarious: Having others declare that they trust or are relying on him makes him uncomfortable, and even minor disapproval or criticism can get him flustered. (One of his canon's running jokes revolves around Kariya’s terrible attempts at giving his teammates’ techniques impressive names. He’ll suggest something patently lame, everyone will have a good, innocent laugh over it – and, after the rest of the team is totally over it, there’s Kariya, still flustered and fuming and flushing.)
Whichever side of himself is showing through, fear of abandonment is a motivation worked pretty deeply into the Kariya’s psyche by this point. It affects even relationships far removed from the familial realm which initially gave the poor kid the complex he has over it: Arguably, his entire spat with Kirino is at least a partial result of this worry – Kirino is a defender on Raimon’s team, like Kariya, and gives (mild) criticism of Kariya’s play soon after he joins the team, sparking the feud between them. Kariya seems to feel that he has to ensure that he’s the one who appears “necessary” (as he puts it to another teammate) to Raimon’s defense, while making Kirino look troublesome and expendable. The underlying thought, then, is that if anyone is going to be thrown away, it definitely won’t be Kariya Masaki. And the sad part is that Kariya leaps to these kinds of worries and defensive gestures when there’s no good reason for him to think he might be under threat somehow. He's constantly trying to keep his defenses up, and his "defenses" most often come out as misdirection and passive aggression.
In the end, though, Kariya probably isn’t at all self-conscious about this inner balance between these two sides of himself. He’s not nearly as cool and self-sufficient as he would like to think he is...but, then, he’s also not as sweet and unassuming as he can make himself look, either.
AU DETAILS:
Not much about Kariya's life prior to the beginning of his canon is changed by transposing him into an AU like our own world. He'll still have been born to a rather average set of parents and have had a quiet and content childhood in an area near Tokyo. Also as in canon, that relatively happy life will have been shattered around the age of eleven, when his father fell prey to a ruinous financial scam. His parents separated in the aftermath, but, as neither was able to support a child at this point, their final decision together was to give Kariya up to a nearby orphanage, cheerfully named Sun Garden.
Despite having a rather shady past, the Sun Garden Children's Home was a nice enough place to live by the time Kariya arrived. Generously sponsored by Kira Hiroto, a young man who had been adopted into the family of the orphanage's former patron, it provided Kariya and its other residents with all the needs and comforts they could expect...except, of course, an actual home. Kariya didn't care. He came to the orphanage deeply mistrustful, withdrawn, and bitter towards both the staff and his fellow residents. He scraped by in school and steadfastly refused to bond with anyone else around him, spending all of his time off by himself, practicing his favorite sport -- soccer.
Eventually, the orphanage's lead caretaker, Kira Hitomiko, took notice of Kariya's one apparent interest, and she struck a deal with him: She would allow him to transfer from the middle school most of Sun Garden's students attended to a nearby academy famous for its youth soccer team...but, in exchange, he would actually have to get along with his new classmates and work on his attitude back at home.
Kariya, of course, took the deal. And, though his initial interactions with his teammates were guarded and often outright manipulative - eager as he was to make a place for himself on the team by any means necessary - he eventually began to bond with them. Together, despite several internal crises in the team, they won a hard-fought victory in Japan's national tournament for junior high clubs.
At the time of his abduction, Kariya will have been on break following the team's championship victory, celebrating at home...and also talking over interest he's garnered from professional youth team scouts with his guardians at the orphanage. He's at a point where he finally has friends and people he trusts and maybe even a few options at life. Perfect time to be kidnapped into a torture warehouse and then dumped in an apocalyptic wasteland, right?
AU/MEMORY LOSS EFFECTS: The biggest change for Kariya will be not remembering his time bonding with and learning to rely on his soccer club teammates. That was a major transition for him, the one major step that opened him up to trusting others again. Without those memories, he'll be back to full-on "Everyone's going to let me down or abandon me, I can't depend on anyone" mode initially.
The other big difference is that, whereas Kariya gets into some crazy adventures in canon (including being abducted at least once by a shady, soccer match-rigging organization), his "normal" AU life as just a talented, young soccer prospect won't have gotten that weird and exciting. Being kidnapped will be much more immediately traumatic for him without that "Well, stranger things have happened to me" buffer in place.
SAMPLE THREAD: Here
NAME: Erry
DW USERNAME:
cupiditasTIMEZONE: CST
character
NAME: Masaki Kariya
SERIES: Inazuma Eleven GO!
WIKI LINK: Here
PERSONALITY:
Kariya takes the term “two-faced” to almost literal extremes.
Catch a glimpse of him in public on your average minute of the day, and you’ll see a boy who is quiet, polite, and, while perhaps insular or even shy, friendly enough to those around him. He’s not the type to jump into social situations on his own initiative, but he’ll smile and play nice if they come to him of their own accord. This is the Kariya that his teammates first witness off of the field, when he arrives at Raimon: A well-mannered youth who seems to do his best to be unobtrusive without quite turning into the fragile or wilting type, so very normal and unassuming.
But a (very) attentive eye will catch snatches of something quite different, playing out in Kariya’s eyes and his expression. Particularly when no one worth noting seems to be paying him attention, his features can fill with exasperation and suspicion directed towards those around him – as well as a calculating harshness that says he knows just how to take advantage of his trustworthy looks.
The thing is that, truth be told, he generally does, too. Kariya is a natural hand at manipulating others, mostly because he has such a knack for observation. With just a few glances, he can usually pin what someone’s impression of him is, what their temperament is like, and so on. In his canon, this set of skills is on full display early on in his appearances, when he sets himself in conflict with his teammate Kirino: By his second day on the team, Kariya’s already worked out who’s suspicious of his behavior, who’s naively trusting, and who’s unaware of the whole fight between the two of them. He uses that information to his own advantage without hesitation, spreading false rumors about Kirino to players who can be expected not to suspect him while playing the poor, put-upon victim to those likely to be sympathetic. Kariya is good at these kinds of deceptive games, and he knows it. He also has little in the way of ethical compunctions about such manipulation. He may get uncomfortable about being in a situation where he's pressed to deceive others, but guilt after the fact doesn't hit him hard.
Kariya would probably like to tell himself (sometimes, at least) that the shrewd, cynical side he tries to keep out of view of others is what he’s really like, deep down. Clever enough to use people to his advantage, far too smart to be used, and certainly not harmed in any way by always standing off from the rest of his peers...that’s a self-image he’s not above enjoying. (He takes visible pleasure, for instance, in dangling the possibility that he’s a mysterious and dangerous double agent over his teammate Kirino’s head.) To a great extent, though, this side of Kariya is a defensive mechanism, part of his reaction to the damaged trust that the being abandoned by his parents prompted. Being wily and vicious would mean that he couldn’t be harmed by being taken advantage of again and that, even if he were, he wouldn’t have to care...if he were truly that way right down to his core.
That’s all to say that what can look like the sweet “front” to Kariya’s “real nature” has as good a claim to a central place in his personality as his harsher side. Thus, while he’s not above cruel pranks and jokes (e.g., playfully mocking new team members or tricking them into running into the goal posts), he can also be legitimately gentle and unassuming, the kind of kid who’s just content to be invited somewhere with friends and allowed to be part of someone else’s social circle. Likewise, while he likes to play cool and in control, his self-confidence can be markedly precarious: Having others declare that they trust or are relying on him makes him uncomfortable, and even minor disapproval or criticism can get him flustered. (One of his canon's running jokes revolves around Kariya’s terrible attempts at giving his teammates’ techniques impressive names. He’ll suggest something patently lame, everyone will have a good, innocent laugh over it – and, after the rest of the team is totally over it, there’s Kariya, still flustered and fuming and flushing.)
Whichever side of himself is showing through, fear of abandonment is a motivation worked pretty deeply into the Kariya’s psyche by this point. It affects even relationships far removed from the familial realm which initially gave the poor kid the complex he has over it: Arguably, his entire spat with Kirino is at least a partial result of this worry – Kirino is a defender on Raimon’s team, like Kariya, and gives (mild) criticism of Kariya’s play soon after he joins the team, sparking the feud between them. Kariya seems to feel that he has to ensure that he’s the one who appears “necessary” (as he puts it to another teammate) to Raimon’s defense, while making Kirino look troublesome and expendable. The underlying thought, then, is that if anyone is going to be thrown away, it definitely won’t be Kariya Masaki. And the sad part is that Kariya leaps to these kinds of worries and defensive gestures when there’s no good reason for him to think he might be under threat somehow. He's constantly trying to keep his defenses up, and his "defenses" most often come out as misdirection and passive aggression.
In the end, though, Kariya probably isn’t at all self-conscious about this inner balance between these two sides of himself. He’s not nearly as cool and self-sufficient as he would like to think he is...but, then, he’s also not as sweet and unassuming as he can make himself look, either.
AU DETAILS:
Not much about Kariya's life prior to the beginning of his canon is changed by transposing him into an AU like our own world. He'll still have been born to a rather average set of parents and have had a quiet and content childhood in an area near Tokyo. Also as in canon, that relatively happy life will have been shattered around the age of eleven, when his father fell prey to a ruinous financial scam. His parents separated in the aftermath, but, as neither was able to support a child at this point, their final decision together was to give Kariya up to a nearby orphanage, cheerfully named Sun Garden.
Despite having a rather shady past, the Sun Garden Children's Home was a nice enough place to live by the time Kariya arrived. Generously sponsored by Kira Hiroto, a young man who had been adopted into the family of the orphanage's former patron, it provided Kariya and its other residents with all the needs and comforts they could expect...except, of course, an actual home. Kariya didn't care. He came to the orphanage deeply mistrustful, withdrawn, and bitter towards both the staff and his fellow residents. He scraped by in school and steadfastly refused to bond with anyone else around him, spending all of his time off by himself, practicing his favorite sport -- soccer.
Eventually, the orphanage's lead caretaker, Kira Hitomiko, took notice of Kariya's one apparent interest, and she struck a deal with him: She would allow him to transfer from the middle school most of Sun Garden's students attended to a nearby academy famous for its youth soccer team...but, in exchange, he would actually have to get along with his new classmates and work on his attitude back at home.
Kariya, of course, took the deal. And, though his initial interactions with his teammates were guarded and often outright manipulative - eager as he was to make a place for himself on the team by any means necessary - he eventually began to bond with them. Together, despite several internal crises in the team, they won a hard-fought victory in Japan's national tournament for junior high clubs.
At the time of his abduction, Kariya will have been on break following the team's championship victory, celebrating at home...and also talking over interest he's garnered from professional youth team scouts with his guardians at the orphanage. He's at a point where he finally has friends and people he trusts and maybe even a few options at life. Perfect time to be kidnapped into a torture warehouse and then dumped in an apocalyptic wasteland, right?
AU/MEMORY LOSS EFFECTS: The biggest change for Kariya will be not remembering his time bonding with and learning to rely on his soccer club teammates. That was a major transition for him, the one major step that opened him up to trusting others again. Without those memories, he'll be back to full-on "Everyone's going to let me down or abandon me, I can't depend on anyone" mode initially.
The other big difference is that, whereas Kariya gets into some crazy adventures in canon (including being abducted at least once by a shady, soccer match-rigging organization), his "normal" AU life as just a talented, young soccer prospect won't have gotten that weird and exciting. Being kidnapped will be much more immediately traumatic for him without that "Well, stranger things have happened to me" buffer in place.
SAMPLE THREAD: Here
