JIGOKU-CHO APPLICATION

[aceslow]

PLAYER INFORMATION

PLAYER: Fey
ARE YOU AT LEAST 18 YEARS OLD?: Yes
CONTACT: PM, otherwise contactable on plurk at wisdombitch
CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A

CHARACTER INFORMATION

NAME: Kim Kitsuragi
CANON: Disco Elysium
CANON REFERENCE: CANON WIKI CHARACTER WIKI
CANON POINT: Post-Tribunal, taken from the three day gap during Harry's recovery
CRAU HISTORY: N/A
AGE: 43
APPEARANCE: IN-GAME PORTRAIT. Kim is a 43 year-old biracial Asian/White man with thick, moon-shaped glasses, a slightly receding hairline, and the hopes and dreams of a mustache on his upper lip. He habitually wears clothing well-suited for his universe's version of NASCAR racing and has a narrow, lean physique that has been described unflattering by other characters in the game as short and scrawny. He holds himself very upright and proper at all times and despite all of the above generally working against him, has a distinct air of authority to his bearing.
CONTRACT PAYMENT: A free Revachol, able to determine its own fate without the interference or all-seeing eye of the Moralintern dictating their every move, established without need for further war or bloodshed. This is a motivation he'll have mixed feelings on - mainly that it's a desire he's repressed in himself and will be disturbed that the powers that be could identify desires even he could not - but it will prove to be an extremely strong one.

QUESTIONNAIRE:

How do you define "success"? What is something you're ambitious about?

Kim has tunnel vision and dedicated himself to a singular purpose without wavering early in life. For him, success is dictated solely by professional success. This goes hand-in-hand with attaching his self-worth to what has been dictated by both society and his superiors. He puts great stock in tangible things that he can be proud of: titles and honours, accolades and achievements. If he manages to achieve these things, it becomes something in which he bases self-actualization around; they are as much his identity as the other, arguably more important parts of himself. In this, most if not all personal successes have been tossed to the wayside. He does not register romantic, social, or personal fulfillments as matters of success and is apt to completely overlook them as being frivolous and somewhat embarrassing.

While his greatest ambition - to reach the ranks of detective in the RCM - had been achieved, he is always ambitious for more and craves legitimacy in the public eye. Even if he would not take on a promotion to Captain, he would be hugely fulfilled by gaining the title of yefreitor, a title that's purely symbolic in nature and comes with no additional responsibilities, powers, or pay raises.

That being said, there is still a long-squashed idealist inside of Kim that slowly reawakens over the course of the game as he remembers why he joined the ranks of the RCM in the first place. He does truly have a love for his city and his people and feels a great desire to protect it, to better it, and to keep the people within it safe. He finds that he gains just as much satisfaction in tasks that would gain him no accolades but poses as important community service that helps the lives of the people around him. It is a far lesser ambition, but there is a kind man underneath all of that pride and fear of embarrassment, and while he sometimes fails in conceiving of how to help others outside of his designated role, if he accomplishes them, he feels a great deal of personal success and satisfaction.

What is your favorite diversion? Hobbies, indulgences, vices? Would you put off important things for that diversion, or would you be more strict about how you spend your time and/or money?

Kim is a man who controls his own vices to an unhealthy degree. He tries to squash the things that bring him joy into a little box to be hidden away from the world; he finds them embarrassing and against the flawlessly professional facade he attempts to maintain. A good example of this is the fact that he allows himself a single cigarette a day. An unnecessary trial of will, he calls it, pointing out that it would be far easier just to quit altogether, but he can't quite bring himself to do so.

Kim is painfully aware of how he's perceived, and his favourite hobbies don't fit into the image he wishes to cultivate. He's nevertheless unwilling to put aside the loves he cultivated in boyhood and deep down at the heart of it all, he still thinks they're cool and is eager to find kindred spirits who agree with him. As it turns out, he has a lot of indulgences! He is a self-professed Torque Dork, endlessly fascinated by heavy machinery (he loves his vehicle most of all, but has an enduring love for aircrafts and construction machinery) and spends a great deal of time meticulously improving a vehicle that doesn't even belong to him. He loves driving exceptionally fast and absolutely blasting Speedfreaks FM, an incredibly raunchy and altogether disreputable station that plays crude, fast-paced music, as DJed by an obnoxious duo, one of which who named himself after a sex act (DJ Flacio, in the house!). He's fascinated by Revolutionary-era technology and aesthetics to the extent that he runs around in what is effectively cosplay instead of in a police uniform, habitually buying historical clothing from thrift stores and tailoring them himself to fit his physique. He used to collect action figures, has a professed interest in Wirral (this universe's version of D&D), reads science-fiction, loves the highly unpredictable and violent Tip Top Tournee (this universe's version of NASCAR) and does crossword puzzles every night.

Basically, he's a huge nerd in a glass cosplay-shaped closet. He's so passionate about his hobbies that he clearly pours a great deal of time and money into them and is experienced enough with them that his expertise borders on the professional, glimpses of which come out when he feels either a burst of enthusiasm too great to be contained or feels offended enough to issue them as points of pride instead. He would never put off truly important things for them and is too much of a responsible adult to waste all of his savings on them, but he probably spends more time and money on them than is necessarily wise.

An oni of the Shuten Clan has gone completely berserk, and is going on a violent rampage through the city. You can't stop him, but you CAN lead him elsewhere, but you only have two choices: a road by a discotheque with a large crowd in front, or the nearby park that you do not know is unoccupied, and may have children present. What do you choose, and why?

At the end of the day, Kim is a pragmatic man, and would go for the fewest casualties possible. If the oni's violent rampage affects the outside of the discotheque, then he knows for an absolute fact that the list of casualties would be unacceptably high. While the death of children is unspeakably tragic - and Kim would feel absolutely horrible if any children were to be hurt - at the end of the day, he would acknowledge through the tragedy that if he had a chance to do it over again, he would make the same choice. Sometimes your best option is just to mitigate the amount of damage done, and difficult choices must be made. The people outside the discotheque are someone's children as well and while sentiment would argue that the lives of children must be protected beyond anyone else's is a sweet one, all lives have equal value at the end of the day. If challenged on this, he would argue that innocents don't deserve death by virtue of the fact that they happen to be older than the lives that may be in the balance and that they too are somebody's children. He would be firm in the fact that he did the correct thing and made the only choice that was viable underneath the circumstances.

He would, of course, try his best to protect anyone in the park once he got there, and despite what his cool-headed logic says, would be absolutely ripped apart with guilt by his decision if children were to be killed. Just because he knows something is the right choice doesn't meant it's the easy choice. After that, all he could do is try to move on with his life and make amends to the best of his ability.

You've worked with your Faction awhile now and you feel like the reward of your contract is within reach. But at the last moment, you are told you have even more service to pay beforehand, an obscure clause in the contract being exploited to keep you under your boss's thumb even longer. Your Faction Leader hasn't spoken on this, and might be able to dispute it. Do you go to your leader? Do you argue the dispute yourself? Do you begrudgingly accept the additional work? Something else?

To Kim, having his work exploited and having to jump through loopholes and additional tasks in order to achieve what he wants is simply a natural part of life. In his job with the RCM, he spent an agonizing fifteen years working juvie, a job that he found humiliating, demeaning, and downright unpleasant. He holds himself to incredibly high standards of professionalism and duty, but others without such standards rose rapidly in the ranks while he was trapped posing as a teenager well into his thirties, likely in part due to the bigotry he faced as a racial and sexual minority.

All of this is to say that while encountering more service to pay would frustrate him, he would not be even remotely surprised by its existence. His life has always been one of endless obstacles, and nothing is ever as easy as it intially seems. He would pursue an appeal through official channels, but would be extremely careful about it; he's painfully aware of the fact that making a fuss and becoming even more noticeable in the eyes of his superiors could counteract what he's doing and would inspire them to keep him in their service for even longer. As such, he would word everything as diplomatically as possible and emphasize his professionalism and his commitment to their cause in hopes that after years of hard work, he'll be able to achieve his goals. He would double down on his dedication to his work and try to be so good at his job that nobody would have any excuse to find him lacking. It's all about control: at the end of the day, the only thing he can control is himself, so he'll ensure that everything he has control over is done without peer. Underneath it all, however, would be a low-burning, simmering anger he will keep with him, and over time, it would lead to disillusionment with the entire process. Kim really does engage in the sunk-cost fallacy though, and no matter how disillusioned he becomes, it would take something far worse than worker exploitation for him to even consider changing his course.

POWERS & ABILITIES: Kim is an ordinary human being with no supernatural skills.

His ordinary skills include:
- A talent with deduction and good old-fashioned detective work in addition to field autopsies
- Extremely well-organized
- Some proficiency in working with machines (predominantly with vehicles) as well as an interest in other electronics and sewing
- Driving skills (driving very, very fast)
- Advanced first-aid training
- Basic self-defense & firearm training
- Experience in undercover infiltration work
- Incredibly good at pinball

SUITABILITY: Disco Elysium is a game with themes that cover sex, sexual assault, drug addiction, alcoholism, poverty, violence, racism, homophobia, and suicide. In-game, Kim is a grown man who deals with all of the above, either personally or through his occupation as a detective, and on top of his years dealing with murders and other violent crimes, he spent a year working in the morgue. He's very well-suited to this game's themes to the point that all of the above themes will be far more familiar to him than anything else in the game!

FACTION SUITABILITY:

SHUTEN CLAN:

Kim's place in the Shuten Clan would inevitably a somewhat non-traditional one considering the basis of their power. Being that Kim's not opposed to lying and isn't particularly powerful, he seems immediately unsuited for working for them. But even those who are motivated and fueled by sheer physical might are in need of brains behind the operation who can translate that power into something tangible, and this is where Kim would come in. He is organized to a fault and could funnel that strength into avenues that he feels are worth pursuing, or keep them from wasting even their great supply of money in ways that are ineffective or insufficient. Kim is also a great fan of community service and would make an effort to use his brainpower to redirect funds and manpower to the places he feels need it most and would relish the sensation that he's making a direct impact. There is also an impulse deep within him that relishes the feeling of having some sort of power over others, particularly those he feels deserve it, and the Shuten Clan would satisfy this in him. On a more surface-level approach, he'd at least enjoy the sports portion of it; you won't find him wrestling in the ring, but he'd rather like to watch everyone else do so.

TAMAMO CLAN:

As addressed above, Kim has a great many indulgences and vices that he does his best to suppress. Being in a faction that endorses engaging in these creature comforts and encourage him to lose himself in such fancies would be a novel, tempting experience for him, and his experience and love for flights of fancy would benefit him in this faction. It would take a great deal for him to crumble, but it would be a refreshing change from his norm, and he would bring an obsessive expertise on the things that bring him pleasure to the table. As with other factions, he would likely participate more as an organizational force and would take solace in the fact that he isn't inflicting too much harm by providing people with good food, good drink (and good sex), even if some people get disappeared in the process. As a person who doesn't concern himself much with societal change, the idea of allowing each individual to chase their bliss and become too occupied with carnal pleasures to deal harm to others will appeal to him. A society that abides by individualism isn't an ethos he objects to provided everyone more or less gets along.

SUTOKU ALLIANCE:

With his experience in information gathering and undercover work, Kim would make for a valuable asset to the Sutoku Alliance. He writes everything down with an obsessive clarity, no detail too small to escape his notice, and in the process will gather even unimportant information that may become important at a later date. He has great pride in his intellectual skills, moreso than his physical ones, and would flourish in a position where this is recognized instead of belittled. To fight others with logic instead of fisticuffs comes naturally to him and he could be swayed that those able to be ruined with sordid information may be deserving of it, depending on what blackmail he gathers. To work to empower the people would be a refreshing change and would foster the ember of revolution he still carries with him in his heart, and he would appreciate the focus on individualism allowing him to remain his true self for the first time since his early 20s. Kim also recognizes the importance of the financial sector, as well as the significantly less flashy infrastructure that keeps a city going; it may not seem exciting, but he has seen the ramifications of things like real estate, plumbing, roads, etc. failing in real time. Their ideals of asceticism would also fit well with his tendency to delay gratification and deny himself little pleasures in life as a point of principle. Working with the Sutoku Alliance, like the other three, would take him out of his comfort zone in a way he wouldn't choose to do himself, but shaking his methods up like that could be the change he needs to confront his own long-held, outdated beliefs.

DEPT OF ENMA:

The Department of Enma is, on a surface-level, the most obvious fit for Kim. As a long-time detective and cop in his own world, he would fit into Enma quite comfortably. While it's an impulse he sometimes tries to curb in himself, he craves the benediction of legally sanctioned authority over others and the ability to exercise that power while still telling himself that he's in the right. While he would do his best not to personally engage in corruption and would quietly disapprove of it, he's more than used to turning a blind eye to police brutality and underhanded means and, at times, tacitly approves of it to accomplish what he believes should be accomplished. He can be convinced that the end justifies the means and holds onto the altogether false ideal that if he himself is not corrupt, then he is not culpable in the larger problems of the organization. This is patently false, of course - he is incredibly culpable in their crimes, made all the worse for his knowledge that it's wrong - but a self-delusion he happily labours underneath in his desire to maintain his status quo. He is bitter and disillusioned in many ways and can be swayed to the belief that the status quo is the lesser of two evils, that change through small measures is possible, and that order is the least violent course the world can take. He may resist in small ways, but those will only achieve individual good while ignoring the rot that runs underneath it.

SAMPLES

TDM TOP-LEVEL | KIM & GREG | KIM & KAMUI