loki-friggason

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good luck on the hunt everyone

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until the very end,

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We finish this together.

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your turn to die be upon ye

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PSA

avoid conforming to traditional gender norms by avoiding this common palette:

try using these palettes instead!!

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what 4 papers and an outfit change does to a guy

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⚠ Ch 3-1B spoilers! ⚠ 3-1Bパートネタバレ! CW: Body horror

Maple 2.0

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Shin Tsukimi and chronic illness as a core part of his character beliefs and motivations

While it's true that Hiyori was a big influence in Shin's life, I think Shin's health issues might have given him a jaded outlook on the world long before Hiyori entered the picture. The game points out his poor health too frequently for it to be irrelevant, so I've collected as much as I could on his physical condition for the purpose of diving into why it's a central part of his character, instead of just a minor detail thrown in!

His frailty is important enough to be called out in his character profile. It goes deeper than "Shin just doesn't eat enough" though. I believe that Shin has some kind of chronic illness—maybe more than one—that he's been dealing with his whole life, and YTTS makes the strongest case for this.

In YTTS, Shin is pained by the fact that he's always too skinny, and he admits to Kai that he's struggled with being underweight his whole life. This isn't because he doesn't want to eat, but because his body physically can't handle very many foods.

When Kai cooks something tolerable and nutritious for him, Shin gets a little carried away. He does want to eat! He gets excited when he gains even the tiniest amount of weight! It's funny to me that in his enthusiasm, he slips into his "scary personality" (he doesn't need a death game to be strange and off-putting). I think it's safe to assume that he has a stomach-related illness, at the very least.

He also has issues with temperature—most notably an intolerance to cold. He's always wearing winter clothes, and he keeps his heater outrageously high.

It's worth pointing out that he wants to keep warm to avoid catching a cold. He tells Kai in YTTS that he gets sick every winter, so his immune system isn't great. This could also be why he keeps his hands so clean—he knows how easily he can get sick and takes extra precautions to avoid it.

Though the below scene is humorous, it shows Shin's temperature intolerance in the other direction:

Steam makes him dizzy! He likes being warm, but in extremes, it looks like he can't handle heat very well either.

He gets exhausted faster than anyone else. While the characters explore and complete attractions in chapter two, Shin struggles to keep up.

While an argument could be made that he goes back to rest in his room to plot his schemes in secret, I do think he was genuinely physically drained as well. He faints while plotting his next move in the room (and gets a nightmare, but more on that later).

While his exhaustion is genuine, I think he also uses this moment of weakness to his benefit here in order to manipulate Kanna. She's afraid of losing the only person she has left, so Shin takes advantage of that fear to get her to follow along with his scheme.

Continuing with YTTS, Mishima's route further exposes and confirms that Shin struggles with physical exertion.

He can't do a single pushup, but not for lack of trying. How is he supposed to improve if he can't even lift himself off of the ground? But Mishima tells him how to modify it, and Shin takes his words into consideration. He does want to get stronger, and he starts doing squats when Mishima calls out his lack of exercise. What's funny to me is his outlandish, roundabout way of avoiding the topic of exercise or bragging about what little he was able to manage. It's also kind of sad that he didn't feel comfortable enough with himself to just tell the truth, though.

It's noteworthy that Shin takes pride in his swimming ability. For those with chronic illnesses, swimming is an excellent way to exercise without exhausting and damaging your body further. It takes all the weight and pressure off of your muscles and joints, which is especially important for dealing with and minimizing chronic pain.

When Shin attempts and fails to do a pushup, he tries to play it off like he doesn't care, but Mishima sees through him.

Shin lied about exercising out of insecurity. Here, there is no first trial, no immediate threat of death. There's just Shin, a guy who hates his own frailness, lying so that he doesn't sound pathetic to others. He doesn't need a death game to be a liar.

Another interesting thing to point out is that he's still going by Sou Hiyori in YTTS. It could be that his AI was made to do so in order to copy his death game counterpart, but it also could indicate that even without his first trial, he's going to hide behind a stronger mask in any uncertain situation—either out of fear, or a general dislike and disappointment with his own identity.

It's due to his "lameness" that Shin has an issue with putting others on pedestals. He devalues himself so much that he thinks Mishima's amazing for the simplest things.

It makes this line from Shin's nightmare (that he has after fainting from exhaustion) hurt so much more:

While it may be some strange kind of foreshadowing or a way to showcase how the AI simulations went, it could also be that this is Shin's own belief voiced through his warped perception of Sara. Throughout the nightmare, his entire perception of reality is skewed. The bleeding eyes that stare at him through the walls, his body that lies dead on the floor while a mysterious hand reaches out to him—these things did not actually happen in the game. So, this line in particular is concerning (to say the least) if it describes how he thinks of himself!

I don't think his odd behavior and mistrust towards Sara is only projection from his relationship with Hiyori, but rather from a lifelong, deep-rooted fear and jealousy of strength in others as well. That's why his first trial is so effective at breaking him. It takes these subconscious fears of his and says, hey, you're right to feel that way. You actually will be taken advantage of and die for how weak you are. It doesn't magically give him fear out of nowhere—it confirms his pre-existing anxieties to an extreme. He elevates Sara to some untouchable terrifying concept because of her survival percentage rather than a simple high school girl who is just as scared and confused as everyone else.

This tendency to put others on pedestals might be why he was so close to Hiyori. Shin claims that Hiyori "knew everything" and he admired just how knowledgeable the man was. Shin genuinely looked up to him.

The way Hiyori reacts here makes me think that Shin was pretty open with him about his health and poor self-worth. Hiyori, as much of a "scary friend" as he was, did provide comfort. There's the blanket, the reassuring hand on his shoulder, the cup in his hands, a smile on Shin's face—Hiyori tells Shin he can become the person he wants to be. If no one else believed in Shin like that before, it's no wonder he was so attached to Hiyori despite the red flags he had.

Even if this part below is a deleted scene, I think this flashback of Hiyori asking Shin how he would treat his sibling if they were younger is worth pointing out:

Shin assumes his younger sibling will have a weak disposition like him (meaning that his issues could be genetic). It also shows that Hiyori was a source of encouragement for him if he was genuinely cheering for him.

Although, he might have deepened Shin's insecurities if he focused on telling Shin to become someone worthy rather than help Shin accept himself as he already was (especially if part of what he dislikes about himself is a chronic condition).

When Shin's cornered in the first main game, he snaps and fully gives in to the warped perception of the world that he has.

He pushes his fear onto the others. You're going to die for being weak, not me! Shin Tsukimi is a man who gets sick every winter, who faints from exhaustion, who devalues himself in the face of others far more impressive than he is. Shin Tsukimi can't survive in a death game, but Sou Hiyori could—a man with a scary personality and an impressive wealth of knowledge. And so, Sou Hiyori he'd be.

At least, he tries. Despite the terrifying schemes he creates and the lies he weaves, he can't disguise his physical weaknesses. They exist to humanize him. They exist to hint that, far before his villainous persona breaks down, he's a just human being with his own limits like everyone else.

Although, I'd argue that sometimes he uses his moments of weakness as a manipulation tactic too (like I mentioned earlier with Kanna). After arguing with Sara in the first main game, he has a pretty drastic physical reaction.

I do think he was genuinely feeling sick. I also think he absolutely could have hidden that fact (he's an excellent liar), but it's useful for him in this moment to paint Sara as the villain and himself as a poor victim. Seconds later, he recovers to keep the team guessing and foster doubt towards her.

None of this is to "baby" him as a character, but instead, to explore why he is the way he is. He can lie and scheme and act as a truly terrifying force! If he's weak and insecure, then it makes sense that he would develop these traits to disguise that part of him before the death game occurred. Because he is a great liar! I highly doubt he never lied before the death game—he's way too experienced for that. He throws away his entire identity and gets away with it for a pretty significant length of time.

TLDR: Shin's health issues and potential chronic illness aren't just things thrown in without a second thought. They're at the core of his character—his fear, his motivation, his humanity. He can't believe in anyone, because he's terrified that the second they see through the cracks, those stronger than him will kill him. His warped perception of strength and weakness (and the resulting paranoia) informs the major decisions he makes and the schemes he unleashes throughout the game. While I don't think his health issues are the only reason that he acts the way he does, they're a pretty significant part of it.

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the torture does not end.

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Shin Tsukimi and chronic illness as a core part of his character beliefs and motivations

While it's true that Hiyori was a big influence in Shin's life, I think Shin's health issues might have given him a jaded outlook on the world long before Hiyori entered the picture. The game points out his poor health too frequently for it to be irrelevant, so I've collected as much as I could on his physical condition for the purpose of diving into why it's a central part of his character, instead of just a minor detail thrown in!

His frailty is important enough to be called out in his character profile. It goes deeper than "Shin just doesn't eat enough" though. I believe that Shin has some kind of chronic illness—maybe more than one—that he's been dealing with his whole life, and YTTS makes the strongest case for this.

In YTTS, Shin is pained by the fact that he's always too skinny, and he admits to Kai that he's struggled with being underweight his whole life. This isn't because he doesn't want to eat, but because his body physically can't handle very many foods.

When Kai cooks something tolerable and nutritious for him, Shin gets a little carried away. He does want to eat! He gets excited when he gains even the tiniest amount of weight! It's funny to me that in his enthusiasm, he slips into his "scary personality" (he doesn't need a death game to be strange and off-putting). I think it's safe to assume that he has a stomach-related illness, at the very least.

He also has issues with temperature—most notably an intolerance to cold. He's always wearing winter clothes, and he keeps his heater outrageously high.

It's worth pointing out that he wants to keep warm to avoid catching a cold. He tells Kai in YTTS that he gets sick every winter, so his immune system isn't great. This could also be why he keeps his hands so clean—he knows how easily he can get sick and takes extra precautions to avoid it.

Though the below scene is humorous, it shows Shin's temperature intolerance in the other direction:

Steam makes him dizzy! He likes being warm, but in extremes, it looks like he can't handle heat very well either.

He gets exhausted faster than anyone else. While the characters explore and complete attractions in chapter two, Shin struggles to keep up.

While an argument could be made that he goes back to rest in his room to plot his schemes in secret, I do think he was genuinely physically drained as well. He faints while plotting his next move in the room (and gets a nightmare, but more on that later).

While his exhaustion is genuine, I think he also uses this moment of weakness to his benefit here in order to manipulate Kanna. She's afraid of losing the only person she has left, so Shin takes advantage of that fear to get her to follow along with his scheme.

Continuing with YTTS, Mishima's route further exposes and confirms that Shin struggles with physical exertion.

He can't do a single pushup, but not for lack of trying. How is he supposed to improve if he can't even lift himself off of the ground? But Mishima tells him how to modify it, and Shin takes his words into consideration. He does want to get stronger, and he starts doing squats when Mishima calls out his lack of exercise. What's funny to me is his outlandish, roundabout way of avoiding the topic of exercise or bragging about what little he was able to manage. It's also kind of sad that he didn't feel comfortable enough with himself to just tell the truth, though.

It's noteworthy that Shin takes pride in his swimming ability. For those with chronic illnesses, swimming is an excellent way to exercise without exhausting and damaging your body further. It takes all the weight and pressure off of your muscles and joints, which is especially important for dealing with and minimizing chronic pain.

When Shin attempts and fails to do a pushup, he tries to play it off like he doesn't care, but Mishima sees through him.

Shin lied about exercising out of insecurity. Here, there is no first trial, no immediate threat of death. There's just Shin, a guy who hates his own frailness, lying so that he doesn't sound pathetic to others. He doesn't need a death game to be a liar.

Another interesting thing to point out is that he's still going by Sou Hiyori in YTTS. It could be that his AI was made to do so in order to copy his death game counterpart, but it also could indicate that even without his first trial, he's going to hide behind a stronger mask in any uncertain situation—either out of fear, or a general dislike and disappointment with his own identity.

It's due to his "lameness" that Shin has an issue with putting others on pedestals. He devalues himself so much that he thinks Mishima's amazing for the simplest things.

It makes this line from Shin's nightmare (that he has after fainting from exhaustion) hurt so much more:

While it may be some strange kind of foreshadowing or a way to showcase how the AI simulations went, it could also be that this is Shin's own belief voiced through his warped perception of Sara. Throughout the nightmare, his entire perception of reality is skewed. The bleeding eyes that stare at him through the walls, his body that lies dead on the floor while a mysterious hand reaches out to him—these things did not actually happen in the game. So, this line in particular is concerning (to say the least) if it describes how he thinks of himself!

I don't think his odd behavior and mistrust towards Sara is only projection from his relationship with Hiyori, but rather from a lifelong, deep-rooted fear and jealousy of strength in others as well. That's why his first trial is so effective at breaking him. It takes these subconscious fears of his and says, hey, you're right to feel that way. You actually will be taken advantage of and die for how weak you are. It doesn't magically give him fear out of nowhere—it confirms his pre-existing anxieties to an extreme. He elevates Sara to some untouchable terrifying concept because of her survival percentage rather than a simple high school girl who is just as scared and confused as everyone else.

This tendency to put others on pedestals might be why he was so close to Hiyori. Shin claims that Hiyori "knew everything" and he admired just how knowledgeable the man was. Shin genuinely looked up to him.

The way Hiyori reacts here makes me think that Shin was pretty open with him about his health and poor self-worth. Hiyori, as much of a "scary friend" as he was, did provide comfort. There's the blanket, the reassuring hand on his shoulder, the cup in his hands, a smile on Shin's face—Hiyori tells Shin he can become the person he wants to be. If no one else believed in Shin like that before, it's no wonder he was so attached to Hiyori despite the red flags he had.

Even if this part below is a deleted scene, I think this flashback of Hiyori asking Shin how he would treat his sibling if they were younger is worth pointing out:

Shin assumes his younger sibling will have a weak disposition like him (meaning that his issues could be genetic). It also shows that Hiyori was a source of encouragement for him if he was genuinely cheering for him.

Although, he might have deepened Shin's insecurities if he focused on telling Shin to become someone worthy rather than help Shin accept himself as he already was (especially if part of what he dislikes about himself is a chronic condition).

When Shin's cornered in the first main game, he snaps and fully gives in to the warped perception of the world that he has.

He pushes his fear onto the others. You're going to die for being weak, not me! Shin Tsukimi is a man who gets sick every winter, who faints from exhaustion, who devalues himself in the face of others far more impressive than he is. Shin Tsukimi can't survive in a death game, but Sou Hiyori could—a man with a scary personality and an impressive wealth of knowledge. And so, Sou Hiyori he'd be.

At least, he tries. Despite the terrifying schemes he creates and the lies he weaves, he can't disguise his physical weaknesses. They exist to humanize him. They exist to hint that, far before his villainous persona breaks down, he's a just human being with his own limits like everyone else.

Although, I'd argue that sometimes he uses his moments of weakness as a manipulation tactic too (like I mentioned earlier with Kanna). After arguing with Sara in the first main game, he has a pretty drastic physical reaction.

I do think he was genuinely feeling sick. I also think he absolutely could have hidden that fact (he's an excellent liar), but it's useful for him in this moment to paint Sara as the villain and himself as a poor victim. Seconds later, he recovers to keep the team guessing and foster doubt towards her.

None of this is to "baby" him as a character, but instead, to explore why he is the way he is. He can lie and scheme and act as a truly terrifying force! If he's weak and insecure, then it makes sense that he would develop these traits to disguise that part of him before the death game occurred. Because he is a great liar! I highly doubt he never lied before the death game—he's way too experienced for that. He throws away his entire identity and gets away with it for a pretty significant length of time.

TLDR: Shin's health issues and potential chronic illness aren't just things thrown in without a second thought. They're at the core of his character—his fear, his motivation, his humanity. He can't believe in anyone, because he's terrified that the second they see through the cracks, those stronger than him will kill him. His warped perception of strength and weakness (and the resulting paranoia) informs the major decisions he makes and the schemes he unleashes throughout the game. While I don't think his health issues are the only reason that he acts the way he does, they're a pretty significant part of it.

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bestfriends

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I've just replayed Kai's miniep and these scenes remind me of each other

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I know shin is clowned on often for being insane and beefing with a high schooler but in his defense if all the grown adults around me put all their trust into this 17 year old girl who happened to have the highest survival rate out of any of us and then acted like I was weird for pointing it out I too would think everyone there except me was gullible and stupid

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Shin and Midori's friendship was for sure unhealthy but it's also much more complicated than "Midori is pure evil and exists only to cause Shin misery" and there's so much to analyze about it. I use both "Midori" and "Hiyori" for Seaweed-head and Shin is just Shin. There's a little bit of Kai analysis too for comparison. Be warned because there are a LOT of words beneath the cut as I ramble about these characters in a somewhat organized fashion!!

Yes, the Shin AI called Hiyori scary, and he recognized that his friend liked to see him anxious. Shin panicked when Sara accidentally imitated Midori, and he felt that his friend had some kind of darkness inside of him that he didn't want any part of. Their dynamic is absolutely concerning considering that when Shin took on the name Sou Hiyori, he adopted a cruel and manipulative personality—something he learned from experience. Shin freely admitted he feared Hiyori, and Sara said that Shin knew “how scary Midori can be" far before the Death Game occurred. Those feelings absolutely matter, but they are not the whole story.

What also matters is that alongside the bad parts, there were good parts, too. Shin is smiling in the lost memory and the photographs we see of him. He's comfortable enough to "playfully say good morning" and call Hiyori selfish and laugh with him. He's comfortable enough to tell him that he's like a big brother to him. He's distraught reading the test data because he learned that Midori got close to him just to hurt him. Because they were close!! Close enough for Shin to idolize his intelligence, to think of him as an anti-hero, to call him family, and to grieve his absence. The relationship was bad enough that Shin confessed he would've been relieved to learn that Hiyori died, but there was enough good there that Shin was desperate to see him again and did "all kinds of things" in an attempt to make that happen. Those feelings can coexist, and the war between them is a critical part of his character.

And Midori is a difficult character to figure out, but I think in his own messed up way, he genuinely did care about Shin. Midori, however, thinks that breaking people means loving them. He thinks killing Shin with his own hands is affection that no one else can understand. And it's horrible, but it's definitely a product of how he was raised. Kai's mini episode heavily implies this without mentioning Midori at all.

Also!! It's fascinating to compare and contrast Kai and Midori as children of Asunaro. Kai's computer files lovingly record everything Sara likes, which is similar in sentiment to Midori's book of test data on Shin filled with diary-like entries and poems. They both have an unusual dedication to a specific participant.

In Kai's mini story, when Sei asks Kai to kill him because he’s already dying, he can't follow through with it. Kai knew the pitiful love of a father, even if that love came to him in scraps wrapped up in so many layers of suffering. He knew the love of a brother unrelated by blood, even if that connection was fleeting. He later experienced the peace of cooking and cleaning and living a mundane life for the people he cared about, and he admitted he didn’t know what true affection was until then—that it was changing him, that it scared him. To him, even though he was raised as an assassin, killing someone was not loving or merciful. He got the chance to experience the world outside of the darkness he grew up in, and he slowly learned what it meant to take care of someone and be cared for in return (even if, in the end, he's betrayed by the same hand which gave him that peace).

What was different for Midori, similarly a child of Asunaro, that made him believe killing is a loving act? Or that hatred allows him to satisfy others? How can he say that he loves humans, but also call them toys, as though people are just possessions created for his own entertainment? The few lines we get from the woman who's likely his mother don't paint a great picture.

From the vague details we get in the lost memory scene, it seems like Shin lived in Midori's house for a while. Or, at the very least, he had access to it on a regular basis. Half the shelves contain Shin's items. He has a heater that he can only use at full blast when Midori isn't there, meaning that he stayed in his house even when the man was gone. The exact reason for why Midori was so disproportionately obsessed with Shin isn't defined, but I wonder if, similar to Kai, he was intrigued by what "normal" life felt like. The Shin AI says that you could find people like himself anywhere. Midori is destructively curious about people and their emotions, so I think that if he's given something he's never experienced before—like living a comparatively mundane life alongside Shin, who genuinely looked up to and admired him—then he's going to pick it apart until he understands. And he's going to love doing it, even if in the pursuit of that desire, the people around him suffer.

In spending so much time with him, Midori might have grown to care about Shin on a deeper level than most, like how Kai slowly grew to care about Sara. It's just that while Kai wanted to keep Sara out of the darkness, Midori seemed thrilled to drag Shin into it. Unlike Kai, who distances himself in fear of tainting other people's innocence and happiness, Midori "loves" people until they can't handle it anymore. He exhausts them, and they break down or die.

It seems like he was constantly in Shin's space or crossing acceptable boundaries. He had his hand on Shin's shoulder in the flashback, he always stared and shot glances at him, he excessively took photos and put them on display. While Kai's love is quiet, distant, and secretive, Midori's love is loud, obsessive, and intrusive. It's a fascinating contrast.

Shin was right to fear him. Even if Midori did actually care for him in his own distorted way, Shin didn't owe it to him to reciprocate something that hurt him—something that was always going to get him killed in the end. But Shin did care about him to some degree. He was lonely in Hiyori's absence, with nothing to remember him by but the confused emotions the man left in his wake and the memories of the abnormal adolescence he experienced alongside him.

Midori may have cared, but his affection definitely messed Shin up. That's what makes their interactions in the game so fascinating and painful. They're on completely different wavelengths, from completely different worlds. Shin grew up without the sibling he should have known, and he might have latched onto Midori as a substitute. However, Midori's twisted concept of love could never have done anything but hurt him in the end.

People can genuinely care for you and still hurt you so much, and YTTD depicts that concept so well.

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smile for me ❤️

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been in a poster making kind of mood