Masaomi Kida (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mellowyellow) wrote2012-10-10 01:42 pm
mellowyellow) wrote2012-10-10 01:42 pm
OOC ♪ HAVEN APP
Name: Wind
Contact Info:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
winddoesitbetter, or PM this account
Other Characters Played: N/A
Preferred Apartment: None
Character Name: Masaomi Kida (eventually Bakyura in the chatroom shared by several characters in the series)
Canon: Durarara!!
Canon Point: After he lands himself in the hospital but before he regains consciousness for his heart-to-heart with Saki. Last episode of the anime and thus near the end of the third novel.
Background/History: "Now it’s my turn to chase the past."
Personality: Masaomi Kida is quite the catch, if you can get past all the reasons he isn't. Spoiler alert, there are a lot of reasons.
This particular high school drop out happens to be a notorious(ly bad) flirt, a bit on the obnoxious side, and convinced that his jokes are actually funny. They're not. He's playful to a fault and over-animated, almost too passionate about what he enjoys. A true-blue extrovert who is always the most energized when surrounding himself with friends. His favorite pastime is to go out on the town and pick up girls, dragging his poor friend Mikado along with him when he can, but despite his big talk, he fails spectacularly. Of course, it's hard to get a girl to laugh with you rather than at you when you're flapping your elbows like a chicken.
Somehow though, when it matters most, even these outlandish traits can work in his favor. He's sensitive to others' feelings so long as they don't directly concern him and tries hard to make people feel better about themselves. The effort he puts into it is more than a little noticeable despite that it's often disguised as Masaomi's usual antics. In a way, that's all Masaomi's usual antics are: an attempt to raise everyone around him to his own excitement level. He wants a chance to be the hero, the good guy, a knight for all the princesses of the world. He has a certain charisma, an energy about him that can liven up any party and make anything his own. He can take charge or fool around; he scares away awkward silences and brings people together. All through joking around like a carefree dumbass. One of those people at whom someone can only shake their head and smile fondly while saying, "That's Masaomi for you."
Unfortunately, this too-happy-for-his-own-good image is little more than brightly colored wrapping paper meant to distract from the disappointing contents within. Masaomi doesn't act like a different person than he actually is or hide his true self behind a mask. What he does is willfully deny parts of himself because he doesn't want to or can't deal with them as he is. Chilling beneath the surface and shaping his otherwise sincere motives is a swirling miasma of guilt, depression, doubt, and self-loathing. It's partly for the benefit of others that he puts up the facade whenever he's with them, and it's partly for himself. He doesn't want anyone to know he's unhappy, especially why he's unhappy.
First and foremost, Masaomi is lonely. He has always been lonely. He has felt as if he has no place in the world, something that probably originated because his parents don't give a rat's ass about him or anything he does. He seeks out others in order to create that elusive place where he can belong, a place he lost when he moved to Ikebukuro, leaving his friend Mikado behind. In true Masaomi fashion, however, he has a tendency to search in all the wrong places. Faced with the transition from small town to big city, he dives head first into the thick of things and comes out the other end as the accidental but effective leader of a delinquent gang. After all, why settle for something small? If nobody cares, then he'll make them care. Masaomi isn't a flame, he's a firework! By forming his color gang the Yellow Scarves, the young rebel without a cause creates the place for himself that he’s wanted and thanks to Izaya is even able to find a girl with whom he can share it, Saki Mikajima.
Of course, the moment one utters the phrase “thanks to Izaya” is the moment shit hits the fan.
Guilt is one of the ultimate motivators. It is certainly one of Masaomi's. Though Izaya is the one who doesn’t answer his call for help, though the Yellow Scarves’ rival gang members are the ones who torture Saki, Masaomi Kida is the one who couldn’t save her. No actions anyone else may have taken against him shift an ounce of blame away from himself. He should never have allowed himself to become so dependent on Izaya’s help, he should never have allowed himself to become drunk with his victories, and he most definitely should never have allowed himself to freeze from fear. With the nurturing power of his anxiety and doubt, overwhelming guilt quickly spirals into depression and self-loathing.
Even as he slowly resolves his worst issues, he never forgets them. They remind him regularly of the consequences of his actions and of the people he has put in harm's way, giving him a foundation on which to base his pride. (If he doesn't help this person, he’ll never be able to look Mikado in the eye again, etc.) But these reminders at times also wreak havoc on his decision making skills which are already subpar at best, flushing the boy down more than one angsty teenage emotional spiral of misery.
Having experienced what he has, he has an almost inhuman determination, perhaps desperation, not to allow his friends to fall into "the dark side" of Tokyo the way he did. He will evade, lie, act, cheat, betray, kill, and die to make sure it doesn't happen. Nothing makes him angrier, nothing makes him more frightened, than losing it all again. Every transgression made toward them, every subtle sign of discomfort, he wants to change it. He didn't have anyone to hold him back before, so now he wants to be that person for others who need him.
What's grown out of this combination of motives is a fierce but faulty protectiveness. Not a possessiveness, but a misguided loyalty and will to preserve the peace he so enjoys, even if his methods mean he may never again be able to experience that peace himself. He’d rather give it all up then let it be taken from him again. Whether a person be a friend, an acquaintance, or a member of his gang, he places their safety into his own hands with a firm and steady belief that what they don't know won't hurt them.
This ties into one of Masaomi's coping mechanisms: a type of escapism made possible through intense compartmentalization. He has trouble seeing himself as one all-around person. Often he sees himself in parts and worries about what others will think when they see a side of him they don’t usually see. At times this fear is founded, which only fuels his concern even in situations where it’s not. When Mikado arrives in Ikebukuro, Masaomi splits his life into two realities, temporarily disregarding the reality of his life with his gang in order to start with a clean slate in the reality of his life at Raira Academy. In one reality, he is the amazing best friend of Mikado and Anri and failure flirt extraordinaire; in the other, he will punch an overzealous gang member across the room for not following orders. He keeps each reality as separate from the other as possible, so when the two worlds start to mix, he does all he can to stop it. His advice to both sides usually consists of "stay away from X," and any further questions will be answered with vague ambiguity or silence before the conversation is steered back to its correct reality. He takes it upon himself to watch out for problems on all sides and react accordingly, without informing those he's trying to protect of his other reality.
How can he tell them, when he's managed to convince himself his friends would hate him for it? He hates himself for it, after all. He hates himself for hiding it, for feeling like he has to hide it, for how he's handled past situations, for repeating the same mistakes. If he can hate himself so thoroughly, how can they not?
If it isn't noticeable enough already, Masaomi has some glaring trust issues. This isn't surprising when even his girlfriend spent a year in the hospital supposedly unable to walk, when in reality she had recovered some time before. He will avoid entrusting his fate to adults in particular so long as he has the choice. They're great for occasional advice, but if he sticks around too long, they'll betray him eventually. A history of parental negligence heaped on top of Izaya's cruel manipulation leaves him unable to count on the older generation to the extent that he doesn't even consider it an option. When faced with dire, suicidal circumstances, he has a ridiculously powerful but kind man towering above him telling him he shouldn't have to kill or die in a place like Tokyo, and instead of ask for help, he smiles and laughs and plays pretend like nothing is wrong until he can get moving again. His problems are his own.
It is, however, possible for Masaomi to enjoy someone's company, love them wholeheartedly, while knowing they are lying to him. Trust isn’t necessarily required for him to like someone because if it was, he would have no one to like. Rather, he ends up allowing others excuses for their lies while giving himself no quarter. Anri and Mikado both hide things from him, just as he hides things from them, but he is the one who doubted them not the other way around, so he’s the worst.
It's this sort of thinking that brings about moments when he allows himself to brood or be serious.
Alone, he has little to distract himself from his thoughts and the claustrophobic atmosphere of the gang-infested city streets. The change in not only expression but body language the moment he finds himself without an audience is readily apparent, as if a string that holds his head high and shoulders up is suddenly cut. Usually the only person who gets to see this kind of helpless brooding is Saki, though Izaya has a knack for bringing it out of him when he tries.
When Masaomi Kida gets serious, it's another story. When Masaomi Kida gets serious, he gets serious. And everyone is going to know about it. He is well aware of the horrors of which people are capable, that life is never fair, but he can only face his obstacles head on with a deadly glare and a nail puller to the ribs. He didn't gain the respect necessary to lead a gang through pretty words. Despite the silly jokes, the flirting, the insecurity, the guilt - Masaomi is a fighter at the core. He lives to survive, and to give others the same chance. If someone gets in the way of that, he will mess them up. When something is truly important to him, he won't let go of it so easily, even when it does nothing but hurt.
It's a little selfless, a little selfish, a little sacrificial, and a little self-sabotaging, but in the end, it's just a lot of Masaomi Kida.
Abilities/Powers: Masaomi has the remarkable ability to recite the most embarrassing lines you’ve ever heard with a straight face. Other than that, he’s your average human teenager who occasionally gets angry enough to beat down assholes twice his size.
Sample Entry: "Those who laugh at sexuality cry at the lack of it."
Sample Entry Two: From![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
adstringendum.
Masaomi had thought he'd had nightmares before. He'd laughed about them with Mikado and made fun of Fai's. But he'd never really had them. He'd never seen horrors like that so vividly before last week. It had taken him a while to remember the event. If one could call it that. What it had really been was seven days of testing his mental endurance. The overwhelming need to think about anything, anything other than the stench of death, the sight of blood, the feeling that the entire city was warping around him, taunting him, laughing at what an idiot he was. He didn’t have that kind of endurance.
He deserved what he'd gotten, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to say those words out loud. That would mean acknowledging what he'd done, and he didn't quite feel ready for that. He didn't feel ready for anything. What the hell had that been? A nightmare within a nightmare, a screw up within a screw up. He barely remembered anything, and yet he knew it had happened. He’d pissed off the wrong person. He’d done it on purpose. He’d damned the consequences, and they’d damned him. How was he supposed to feel about something like that? What was wrong with him?
The thought of seeing another person right then, any person, made him sick to his stomach. How pathetic could he get? And yet instead of rise above that nausea, he locked himself in his room for over an hour, trying to sort things out in his head while staring blankly at his splintering ceiling. How everything had happened, the order in which it had happened, the reasons he’d been forced to see those grotesque, gory recreations around every corner. Only when his throat ran dry was he willing to risk even running into a housemate, slipping out of his room and into the kitchen.
It wasn't a housemate he ran into.
When he returned to his room - glass of water in hand, hair sopping wet from a dunking - to see Jinx of all people panicking there, he didn't know what to do. And with the brazen courage of a lion, he froze up in the doorway.
Contact Info:
Other Characters Played: N/A
Preferred Apartment: None
Character Name: Masaomi Kida (eventually Bakyura in the chatroom shared by several characters in the series)
Canon: Durarara!!
Canon Point: After he lands himself in the hospital but before he regains consciousness for his heart-to-heart with Saki. Last episode of the anime and thus near the end of the third novel.
Background/History: "Now it’s my turn to chase the past."
Personality: Masaomi Kida is quite the catch, if you can get past all the reasons he isn't. Spoiler alert, there are a lot of reasons.
This particular high school drop out happens to be a notorious(ly bad) flirt, a bit on the obnoxious side, and convinced that his jokes are actually funny. They're not. He's playful to a fault and over-animated, almost too passionate about what he enjoys. A true-blue extrovert who is always the most energized when surrounding himself with friends. His favorite pastime is to go out on the town and pick up girls, dragging his poor friend Mikado along with him when he can, but despite his big talk, he fails spectacularly. Of course, it's hard to get a girl to laugh with you rather than at you when you're flapping your elbows like a chicken.
Somehow though, when it matters most, even these outlandish traits can work in his favor. He's sensitive to others' feelings so long as they don't directly concern him and tries hard to make people feel better about themselves. The effort he puts into it is more than a little noticeable despite that it's often disguised as Masaomi's usual antics. In a way, that's all Masaomi's usual antics are: an attempt to raise everyone around him to his own excitement level. He wants a chance to be the hero, the good guy, a knight for all the princesses of the world. He has a certain charisma, an energy about him that can liven up any party and make anything his own. He can take charge or fool around; he scares away awkward silences and brings people together. All through joking around like a carefree dumbass. One of those people at whom someone can only shake their head and smile fondly while saying, "That's Masaomi for you."
Unfortunately, this too-happy-for-his-own-good image is little more than brightly colored wrapping paper meant to distract from the disappointing contents within. Masaomi doesn't act like a different person than he actually is or hide his true self behind a mask. What he does is willfully deny parts of himself because he doesn't want to or can't deal with them as he is. Chilling beneath the surface and shaping his otherwise sincere motives is a swirling miasma of guilt, depression, doubt, and self-loathing. It's partly for the benefit of others that he puts up the facade whenever he's with them, and it's partly for himself. He doesn't want anyone to know he's unhappy, especially why he's unhappy.
First and foremost, Masaomi is lonely. He has always been lonely. He has felt as if he has no place in the world, something that probably originated because his parents don't give a rat's ass about him or anything he does. He seeks out others in order to create that elusive place where he can belong, a place he lost when he moved to Ikebukuro, leaving his friend Mikado behind. In true Masaomi fashion, however, he has a tendency to search in all the wrong places. Faced with the transition from small town to big city, he dives head first into the thick of things and comes out the other end as the accidental but effective leader of a delinquent gang. After all, why settle for something small? If nobody cares, then he'll make them care. Masaomi isn't a flame, he's a firework! By forming his color gang the Yellow Scarves, the young rebel without a cause creates the place for himself that he’s wanted and thanks to Izaya is even able to find a girl with whom he can share it, Saki Mikajima.
Of course, the moment one utters the phrase “thanks to Izaya” is the moment shit hits the fan.
Guilt is one of the ultimate motivators. It is certainly one of Masaomi's. Though Izaya is the one who doesn’t answer his call for help, though the Yellow Scarves’ rival gang members are the ones who torture Saki, Masaomi Kida is the one who couldn’t save her. No actions anyone else may have taken against him shift an ounce of blame away from himself. He should never have allowed himself to become so dependent on Izaya’s help, he should never have allowed himself to become drunk with his victories, and he most definitely should never have allowed himself to freeze from fear. With the nurturing power of his anxiety and doubt, overwhelming guilt quickly spirals into depression and self-loathing.
Even as he slowly resolves his worst issues, he never forgets them. They remind him regularly of the consequences of his actions and of the people he has put in harm's way, giving him a foundation on which to base his pride. (If he doesn't help this person, he’ll never be able to look Mikado in the eye again, etc.) But these reminders at times also wreak havoc on his decision making skills which are already subpar at best, flushing the boy down more than one angsty teenage emotional spiral of misery.
Having experienced what he has, he has an almost inhuman determination, perhaps desperation, not to allow his friends to fall into "the dark side" of Tokyo the way he did. He will evade, lie, act, cheat, betray, kill, and die to make sure it doesn't happen. Nothing makes him angrier, nothing makes him more frightened, than losing it all again. Every transgression made toward them, every subtle sign of discomfort, he wants to change it. He didn't have anyone to hold him back before, so now he wants to be that person for others who need him.
What's grown out of this combination of motives is a fierce but faulty protectiveness. Not a possessiveness, but a misguided loyalty and will to preserve the peace he so enjoys, even if his methods mean he may never again be able to experience that peace himself. He’d rather give it all up then let it be taken from him again. Whether a person be a friend, an acquaintance, or a member of his gang, he places their safety into his own hands with a firm and steady belief that what they don't know won't hurt them.
This ties into one of Masaomi's coping mechanisms: a type of escapism made possible through intense compartmentalization. He has trouble seeing himself as one all-around person. Often he sees himself in parts and worries about what others will think when they see a side of him they don’t usually see. At times this fear is founded, which only fuels his concern even in situations where it’s not. When Mikado arrives in Ikebukuro, Masaomi splits his life into two realities, temporarily disregarding the reality of his life with his gang in order to start with a clean slate in the reality of his life at Raira Academy. In one reality, he is the amazing best friend of Mikado and Anri and failure flirt extraordinaire; in the other, he will punch an overzealous gang member across the room for not following orders. He keeps each reality as separate from the other as possible, so when the two worlds start to mix, he does all he can to stop it. His advice to both sides usually consists of "stay away from X," and any further questions will be answered with vague ambiguity or silence before the conversation is steered back to its correct reality. He takes it upon himself to watch out for problems on all sides and react accordingly, without informing those he's trying to protect of his other reality.
How can he tell them, when he's managed to convince himself his friends would hate him for it? He hates himself for it, after all. He hates himself for hiding it, for feeling like he has to hide it, for how he's handled past situations, for repeating the same mistakes. If he can hate himself so thoroughly, how can they not?
If it isn't noticeable enough already, Masaomi has some glaring trust issues. This isn't surprising when even his girlfriend spent a year in the hospital supposedly unable to walk, when in reality she had recovered some time before. He will avoid entrusting his fate to adults in particular so long as he has the choice. They're great for occasional advice, but if he sticks around too long, they'll betray him eventually. A history of parental negligence heaped on top of Izaya's cruel manipulation leaves him unable to count on the older generation to the extent that he doesn't even consider it an option. When faced with dire, suicidal circumstances, he has a ridiculously powerful but kind man towering above him telling him he shouldn't have to kill or die in a place like Tokyo, and instead of ask for help, he smiles and laughs and plays pretend like nothing is wrong until he can get moving again. His problems are his own.
It is, however, possible for Masaomi to enjoy someone's company, love them wholeheartedly, while knowing they are lying to him. Trust isn’t necessarily required for him to like someone because if it was, he would have no one to like. Rather, he ends up allowing others excuses for their lies while giving himself no quarter. Anri and Mikado both hide things from him, just as he hides things from them, but he is the one who doubted them not the other way around, so he’s the worst.
It's this sort of thinking that brings about moments when he allows himself to brood or be serious.
Alone, he has little to distract himself from his thoughts and the claustrophobic atmosphere of the gang-infested city streets. The change in not only expression but body language the moment he finds himself without an audience is readily apparent, as if a string that holds his head high and shoulders up is suddenly cut. Usually the only person who gets to see this kind of helpless brooding is Saki, though Izaya has a knack for bringing it out of him when he tries.
When Masaomi Kida gets serious, it's another story. When Masaomi Kida gets serious, he gets serious. And everyone is going to know about it. He is well aware of the horrors of which people are capable, that life is never fair, but he can only face his obstacles head on with a deadly glare and a nail puller to the ribs. He didn't gain the respect necessary to lead a gang through pretty words. Despite the silly jokes, the flirting, the insecurity, the guilt - Masaomi is a fighter at the core. He lives to survive, and to give others the same chance. If someone gets in the way of that, he will mess them up. When something is truly important to him, he won't let go of it so easily, even when it does nothing but hurt.
It's a little selfless, a little selfish, a little sacrificial, and a little self-sabotaging, but in the end, it's just a lot of Masaomi Kida.
Abilities/Powers: Masaomi has the remarkable ability to recite the most embarrassing lines you’ve ever heard with a straight face. Other than that, he’s your average human teenager who occasionally gets angry enough to beat down assholes twice his size.
Sample Entry: "Those who laugh at sexuality cry at the lack of it."
Sample Entry Two: From
adstringendum.Masaomi had thought he'd had nightmares before. He'd laughed about them with Mikado and made fun of Fai's. But he'd never really had them. He'd never seen horrors like that so vividly before last week. It had taken him a while to remember the event. If one could call it that. What it had really been was seven days of testing his mental endurance. The overwhelming need to think about anything, anything other than the stench of death, the sight of blood, the feeling that the entire city was warping around him, taunting him, laughing at what an idiot he was. He didn’t have that kind of endurance.
He deserved what he'd gotten, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to say those words out loud. That would mean acknowledging what he'd done, and he didn't quite feel ready for that. He didn't feel ready for anything. What the hell had that been? A nightmare within a nightmare, a screw up within a screw up. He barely remembered anything, and yet he knew it had happened. He’d pissed off the wrong person. He’d done it on purpose. He’d damned the consequences, and they’d damned him. How was he supposed to feel about something like that? What was wrong with him?
The thought of seeing another person right then, any person, made him sick to his stomach. How pathetic could he get? And yet instead of rise above that nausea, he locked himself in his room for over an hour, trying to sort things out in his head while staring blankly at his splintering ceiling. How everything had happened, the order in which it had happened, the reasons he’d been forced to see those grotesque, gory recreations around every corner. Only when his throat ran dry was he willing to risk even running into a housemate, slipping out of his room and into the kitchen.
It wasn't a housemate he ran into.
When he returned to his room - glass of water in hand, hair sopping wet from a dunking - to see Jinx of all people panicking there, he didn't know what to do. And with the brazen courage of a lion, he froze up in the doorway.