castofthought: (Default)
castofthought ([personal profile] castofthought) wrote2012-05-30 11:11 pm

Application for [community profile] hollyheights

OOC INFORMATION
Player: Jade
Age: 20
Personal Journal: [personal profile] drinksteapots
Contact Info:
PM this or user account.
Email: drinksteapots@gmail.com
Plurk: [plurk.com profile] drinksteapots
Other Characters: Eiki Shiki [personal profile] fateofyears

IC INFORMATION
Characters Name: Madotsuki
Age: 13
Canon Point: Post-canon.
Species: Human.
Gender: Female.
Orientation: Straight.

History:
Yume Nikki Wikipedia article.
Yume Nikki Wikia article on Madotsuki.
Yume Nikki TV Tropes article.

Throughout her dream, she continues to explore her inner mind, looking around the great surreal landscapes and interacting with the passing thoughts, hopes, and fears of her mind. She gathers 25 Effects (24 main Effects + the Instructions, which counts as an Effect but doesn't need to be 'learned' or acquired). Some are necessary to reach other Effects, others are virtually useless. One titular effect is the knife; it allows her to kill or harm NPCs, makes NPCs run away from Madotsuki, or is used to interact with the environment much more. At the end of the game, Madotsuki must abandon all these Effects in the form of eggs and wake from her dream. A stairway on her balcony appears when she wakes, and to end the game Madotsuki must leap off. This way, she may live in her dreams.

As the game gives little history before her canon start, the only evidence for her life up until this point is interpreted through what can be easily described as nightmares. To fill in the following history with headcanon, the hints given in dreams will be used. As linked articles suggest, Madotsuki's history is both traumatic, miserable, and full of assault. Everything from the floating severed heads, to the traffic accident, to the phallic "KyuuKyuu-Kun" , to seeing her ghost self in a level called "Hell", to the pained paintings in the sewers, to the world of sticky, white fluid, to girls with no faces, and other examples in her dreams indicate that her life up until her canon start made her feel trapped, miserable, and helpless. Through her fear, she locks herself in her room. Real people to her will always be despicable and horrible; if she cannot remove them from her life, she will remove herself from them by becoming isolated. While recovering from her trauma might have been possible, her withdrawal from the world has made such a thing impossible. The one real control over her life is her decision to sleep or to stay awake. She prefers sleep, of course, because that is where her subconscious truly reigns.

The imagery used in Yumi Nikki is disturbingly clear at some parts. A bedroom where a monster is revealed only when the lights are turned off. The equivalent of a ‘death’ is an inescapable, hopeless area. Monsters that are shaped like a uterus. Monsters that have swollen abdomens. A monster that rubs a pole. Doors that look like zippers must be stabbed at until they bleed and open. A world that is filled with sticky, white fluid. It is not without much thought and a heavy heart that I use this as support to include in headcanon that Madotsuki was sexually abused.

She could have gotten help and could have recovered from this incident. Unfortunately, neither did she search for help nor did her parents try to intervene (some even believe that her parents were the perpetrators, if the two floating severed heads are any indication). Following this event, she experienced shock, numbness, disbelief, self loathing, disgust, hopelessness, and unclean. This was coupled with an overwhelming idea that she could trust no real person. This rape and these feelings are something she avoids quite well in canon while at the same time confronting them through surreal representations. There are only a few key areas where she’s reminded enough of these feelings and the event that are triggering enough to wave her up from her dream without her consent.
Appearance:
This.
Personality:
When left alone or at a distance, Madosutki is mostly apathetic, but she has a haunting instability. She fluctuates between apathy and emotions. The only consistent trait about her personality is that she is inconsistent between events and even with other people. She smiles and cries like everyone else—quiet easily, too, if an event is triggering enough. However, being happy or being sad takes effort on her part, so she readily slips back into her apathetic state. Her dreams aren’t real—she might as well not put too much emotion into it as long as she sees that others in her dream have enough sadness, happiness, pain, and fear to go around. Conversey, certain things can trigger her to show much emotion and react accordingly. After all, her immense distrust for others (especially adults), while dimmed when she believes she is merely dreaming, is still present. When she’s presented with something new, she may be overly cautious—she believes that others are there to hurt her, even if they mean nothing. It’s a paranoia in the sense that she thinks anyone may attack her for no given reason. Yet instead of running away to her room and being a hikkikomori, in her dreams at least she feels confident enough to interact and converse.

Madotsuki is delusional and incoherent. She believes she is still in a dream and that everyone is simply another aspect of her imagination, of herself. She understands the importance of dreams and how they are interpreted and knows that yeah she is quite “messed up”, especially when her imagination makes such interesting monsters and areas. Not that she cares, of course, because this only means she is interesting herself. As she believes this is her dream, she believes everything belongs to her. She can do what she wants to them because she knows that what she wants, the others want as well. If something happens to her that on the surface she does not want to experience, she simply interprets it as some unconscious reminder that she has to go through with it. For example, she does not want to wake from her dreams, but being forced out of them is to make sure she eats and drinks.

No matter what outward personality RPs gives Madotsuki, she is indisputably a disturbed individual. The interpretation I choose to go with is that she finds salvation in her dreams. What most would consider hell or a nightmare, she calls a sanctuary or dream. She knows her world is a twisted perception of mind and memory of true reality, so she does what she sees fit to the inhabitants there. The inhabitants of the dream world cannot kill Madotsuki. The only way they may harm her is by existing and reminder her of whatever led to their distorted state in her dream. The most they can do is transport her to a area where she cannot escape—forcing Madotsuki to wake up from her dream if only to fall back asleep from the starting point again. She falls asleep to interact with her world, to maim, to kill, to converse with—quite opposite from her fear of interacting with real people. Her number one fear is the outside world; no matter how many times the players make her consider opening her door to the outside, Madotsuki simply shakes her head and refuses to leave her room. As such, she is a hikkikomori, or a ‘shut-in’. She does not like reality or people, and that fear has trapped her in her room and in her dreams. However, she embraces this because solitude brings her much comfort. At the same time it’s exhausting to be lonely, which is why she so easily falls asleep, and her inner mind creates these figments of her imagination with which to interact. She kills the monsters in her head which are mixed aspects of herself with what she knows of the world. Since they are a part of her, she knows and feels their pain. She only sees it in their eyes and body when she kills them, but she knows that it’s okay because she will bring them back.

Her dreams reveal that she does want to interact-- but with only with those that she can trust. She can only fully trust herself and her dreams. Yet, in her dreams her actions signify that she remains distrustful of herself and others. While it shouldn't matter because she is in a dream, it does. She lives in a dream, something she knows is fake and nothing more than her twisted psyche and real life experiences. There’s two reasons for this distrust that remains. The first is that that she’s still tentative on engaging others. The second is that even though she holds a delusion that everything is her dream, somewhere inside her she knows that this is reality for her. In game, she has the ability to kill those in her dream, and those that she kills are also a part of herself. If she trusted herself, those figments of her imagination would allow her to do what she wanted to them without fear or hesitation. Since they are extensions of herself, whatever she does to them she does to herself. Even though she can feel pain in her dreams, the reality of experience there and sensation and feeling is nothing. Her one hope is to be with her dreams (even if observers may consider them as nightmares). Being in a dream state keeps her away from the world and lets her face and attack the surreal representations of the horrors she has experienced. At the very end she decided she would join her dream, by ending her life.

She has quite the few weaknesses as well:
--Body and Health: …She’s a twelve and a half year old human girl. And while she might be above average for her age in some athletics and use with a knife, she’s still young and human. Skinny, even. Before her death her hikkikomori syndrome was at its worst-- she could not even open the door to leave for food. Her body became emaciated and brittle, making her exhausted and giving her that edge to fall asleep easily. She tends to be tired a lot now anyways, and may lose interest in things quickly.
--Mistrusting: This notion keeps her wary and stressed, although it may not look it that way. Her quietness may come off as being shy to a fault, but really it simply it’s her sheer borderline paranoia when regarding others.
--Impulsiveness: It is a weakness as it is a strength. The primary example is, of course, the ending. She has a thought to jump off her balcony, to end it all, and she does. This quality makes her a danger to others and to herself. She will hurt others if given enough incentive, but she will also hurt herself for the same reason.
--Hikkikomori: A shut in. She finds it difficult to carry on conversations, and she finds it difficult to interact with others. It's a basic shyness combined with that mistrust she has for everything.
Abilites:
Effects: In Yume Nikki, Madotsuki may learn 24 Effects. Effects are part of her person, and she activates them simply by thinking. Some of them are useless such as the Severed Head (just as it sounds, it simply makes her turn into a disembodied head), or pointless such as the Umbrella (makes it rain but the umbrella keeps Madotsuki dry—so really there’s no point). Others transform her into mythological entities such as an Oni or Yuki Onna. A list of these Effects can be found here.
World Building: Everywhere she has explored and every thing or being she has encountered in her mind is created by her. She creates them, she destroys them, and when she goes back to sleep she creates them again. However, to acknowledge it as reality of the dream is something else entirely.
--Athletic: She’s a pretty fast runner and more athletic than she appears to be...for a twelve year old girl. She’s agile and nimble--she had to be, to explore the inner recesses of her mind. Of course, she is only human. The strength may change on which Effect she uses. For example, the ‘Severed Head’ effect only slows her down and gives her no means to fight back, but the ‘Oni’ effect gives her the body of a thunder oni, which has all of its inhuman perks. For the most part, she stays human.
--Good with knives: Although in the game she has a multitude of Effects, many of them are useless. One that gains the most command is the Knife. She has used it to protect herself and to kill those other parts of herself she encounters in her dreams.
--Tolerance for pain: While it’s not abnormally high, she’s not going to be crying over few cuts or even a broken arm. She has been hurt before, and she has hurt herself before too. Every time she cuts down one of the apparitions in her mind she hurts herself by extension.
--Courage: She’s a brave little girl. Her most traumatic experience she had back in reality when she was abused. To her, nothing could compare to having the trust of family broken and the painful events that followed. As such, whenever she thinks she will be scared, she has her previous reality to compare it all to, in a thought that is like ‘this may be bad, but at least it’s not...’ She’s used to being trapped and being hurt, but as long as she’s not at home she believes her situation is not completely awful. Unfortunately, most of the courage is delusion.
--Impulsiveness: Although she may appear to be apathetic, she actually does follow much of her feelings. Here, being courageous or brave has little to do with fear, but more for a want to feel something, be it emotions or a sense of accomplishment for ‘getting things done’. ‘Should I stab this thing?’ Just do it. 'Should I open this door?' Of course.

Other: Since I will be taking her from the end of canon, Madotsuki is effectively dead. From the ending of the game- which shows creatures from her dream-world surrounding her body- it seems to indicate that she has joined her dream upon death. Like the other Yume Nikki spins off, the game is both mysterious, dark, and ambient in nature; much is left to interpretation. I have constructed the interpretation in this application using as much evidence as possible. If accepted, I will additional make an opt-out for muns who would not like to interact with Madotsuki because of her background.

SAMPLES
First Person:
D_M example, all and any threads!

Third Person:
Always wandering, like normal, like usual. Barefooted and uncombed. She still believes this is a dream— she must. If she didn’t, then she would hide herself away from anyone and anything. To function socially in the smallest sense takes courage, and she has just enough to venture outside. It’s a delusion she must keep, although on the basest of levels she knows this is reality. It can be said that this buried thought is the reason she still mistrusts many, and why even now she wanders away from life itself. She appears completely oblivious to danger with the way she so lightly steps over rocks and roots, not minding the numerous cuts on her ankles and feet. In truth, she only is slightly more relaxed than usual. At the very least, without people she believes she does not feel loneliness but comfort from solitude.

The girl fancies herself introspective with how often she explores and ventures. It’s a process that requires little feeling other than the want to explore and discover. With no one around, she doesn’t have to put any effort into speaking. With no one around, she doesn’t have to put any effort into being anyone but herself. And what is she but a young girl with a wary, morbid, curiosity? She has gone exploring many times before to areas like this forest-- so quite possibly, she doesn't need to expect anything worse.

“...Can you speak?” Her voice sounds hoarser to her than usual as she questions a tree. Yes, a tree.

After a moment with no response she reaches into her pocket, pulling out a kitchen knife. Gripping the handle lightly, soon that same knife is embedded into the truck. The woods cracks and splinters as the knife pulls back and then plunges in again. The motion is easy for her, practiced even. To open up new areas, she’s had to stab repeatedly in a single spot before. If such a thing didn’t happen with this tree, maybe she’d do it with others. Again and again. Until she becomes exhausted. Until she collapses.

OTHER
Housing Request?: A home with a mother and a father would be good!
Did you read the rules and FAQ?: Yep!

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