matt; app info
Character Information
General
Canon Source: Death Note
Canon Format: manga
Character's Name: Matt (Mail Jeevas)
Character's Age: 20 (he is 19 in canon, but since his birthday was five days after his entry into his previous game, he's turned 20 and been 20 for approximately three weeks)
Conditional: If your character is 13 years of age or under, please clarify how they will be played. n/a
What form will your character's NV take? Matt's NV will take the shape of a folding portable video game system similar to a DS Lite, though somewhat larger. It will have a touch screen and a keyboard that slides out from underneath for text purposes, as well as the ability to do text posts written with his stylus. It's going to be black and red with a nice glossy finish on the top.
Abilities
Character's Canon Abilities: nothing superhuman, though he's of slightly higher than average intelligence, good with electronics, and a whiz at video games
Conditional: If your character has no superhuman canon abilities, what dormant ability will you give them? Matt, having no supernatural abilities, will acquire the dormant ability of technopathy, or the ability to sense and control the functions of electronic devices through only touch. What this entails is a beyond-human understanding of computers and other technological devices. He will be able to understand them almost to the point of communicating with them, and will be able to get information from them through touching. This will enable a lot of help with hacking, and will allow him to instantly troubleshoot things that are broken, as well as manipulate computer programs with his will. The ability will start out small, with only little devices being able to be affected, and will slowly grow to the point that he can hack and alter the programming of larger computers or networks.
His ability will not affect networks, or the internet, but only "hard" technology - he must be touching the device he's trying to alter, and it will work much better when he's physically touching the internal components, though he'll be able to do it through the cases of electronic devices with some effort. The drawbacks include that he will need an iron focus, which will be difficult considering his personality, and that extended use will result in nosebleeds, migraine headaches, exhaustion, muscle and joint stiffness, and a tendency to lose some emotional ability for a short time - as if he's become a machine himself.
Any hacking of plot-related items or the NV or NV network beyond a normal increase in security will be passed through all four other mods and must get a unanimous agreement, to avoid godmoding. Any entries hacked on the network with Matt's ability will need to be approved by the other player in question.
Weapons: Matt will arrive with a flare gun and a couple of smoke flares on him.
History/Personality/Plans/etc.
Character History: Matt is an extremely minor character in his canon, and not much information is given about his past, most of it coming from the supplementary informational book "How To Read," where we are told he comes from Wammy's House, an English orphanage for exceptional children. At Wammy's House, they are pushed to compete for the title of L's successor, the top detective in the world.
Matt was born on February 1, 1990. Due to the fact that Matt came from Wammy's House, we can assume that he was an orphan, though details of his history are unknown. I choose to play it that he was orphaned at a young age and was passed around to a few foster homes before his potential was noticed and he was sent to Wammy's House, probably settling in there somewhere between 6 and 8 years old. Once there, he would have been pushed from the start to reach his full potential. Most of the characters featured in the series that come from Wammy's House lack positive social skills - they are either ill-adjusted or manipulative, so it's pretty likely that they were primarily treated as students, and only secondarily as normal children, though they obviously had playtime and social interaction amongst themselves. Wammy's House residents are shown kicking balls around and otherwise playing, but it doesn't seem likely that they had a lot of concerned, individual loving attention. Matt was the third most intelligent student at Wammy's, but judging by the fact that his "intelligence" stat in the info book was lower than the two above him, and only slightly above other 'normal' characters in the series, the gap between him and Mello, the next highest, was probably quite a big gap. He likely didn't push himself very hard, slacked off or was otherwise hindered in some way, and he probably did a bit more playing than studying.
When L died, and Mello left the orphanage, abandoning his studies, Near was placed in the position of L's successor, and the pressure was off Matt. Somewhere between the ages of 14 and 19 (probably closer to 19), it's very likely he left the orphanage and took on some sort of job so he could live on his own. I imagine it was probably a job that fit his interests, and likely involved making, testing, or selling video games, and probably paid decently considering how he dresses and his addiction to video games. He may or may not have moved to the States, though I tend to think he would have stuck with what he knows, in England. When he was 19 years old, he was contacted by Mello, who was working on the case against Kira, a serial killer who supernaturally kills people that Kira considers criminals or useless to society, a case that L, the 'idol' of Wammy's House, died trying to solve, and which Mello was in fierce competition with Near, the other L successor, to get to the bottom of. Matt agreed to help Mello, and met him in the States, where Mello was camped out after being injured in a stand-off with some police officers. Having spoken with the current Mello player, we decided that Matt's reasoning for joining Mello was due primarily to a childhood friendship with Mello at Wammy's House, and Matt's interest in helping him with the Kira case.
After joining Mello, Matt fell into place following orders, though they seemed to act familiar with each other, and Mello treated him as far more of an equal than he did with the other people he worked with previously, as well as trusting him more. This was probably because of their shared history at Wammy's House and possibly an old friendship. After meeting up, the first thing Matt and Mello did was find the police officers travelling to the States from Japan to help with the Kira case, finding the officers based on information previously given to Mello by a member of Near's police force. They tailed the officers to their destination, the place where Misa, a suspect to be Kira, was staying. Matt stayed behind while Mello continued on after another officer who was continuing to move. When Matt saw that it was Misa's place of residence, he let Mello know, and Mello bugged the room and conducted surveillance on Misa, while Matt watched over the police headquarters, where the other officer went. They maintained surveillance for quite some time, a task that Matt found boring, and at some point followed the group back to Japan. When Mello later discovered that Takada, a spokeswoman for Kira, was likely involved with Light Yagami, who he suspected of being Kira, and therefore had neccessary information, he formed a plan to kidnap her. Matt's function in this plan was to distract her bodyguards while Mello offered her a ride away from the scene on a motorbike, kidnapping her. Matt successfully distracted the bodyguards by shooting off a flare gun and creating a smokescreen, and then leading them on a car chase. Eventually he was surrounded by their many cars and, realizing he could no longer run, stepped out of his car expecting the bodyguards to keep him alive for questioning. However, this was a miscalculation, and he was shot multiple times against the side of the car. He died, cigarette still burning in his mouth.
Point in Canon: immediately following his death, during the Takada Kidnapping arc + after his time in St. Edelweiss, after the death post in which he was dropped from that game
Conditional: Brief summary of previous RP history: Matt is being imported from St. Edelweiss (stedelweiss). This journal (loadsavedgame) was used there. His journal entries can be found here and his logs can be found here.
Matt was only in St. Edelweiss Institution for approximately a month, but a lot happened in that time due to the out-of-game-week-to-one-day-in-game timeline.
St. Edelweiss is a game set in a mental institution in the 1800s in Switzerland. The patients underwent a great deal of psychological torture, and were subjected to often-brutal "therapies" where they were further tortured either physically or mentally. Matt endured a lot of damage in that game - bad living conditions, poor food quality, sleep deprivation due to an intercom that couldn't be turned off, a forced regimen of medication with nasty side effects that he didn't need, lack of cigarettes, and "laundry days" where clothes were taken and patients were kept naked in the cold were just part of what he had to endure along with the other patients. Understandably, this situation wore on his mentality to some extent, which will be covered in his personality section.
Matt was brought to St. Edelweiss immediately following his death in canon, and he was understandably quite confused. For the first while, Matt's primary goal was to find information about St. Edelweiss and try to find a way to get out. Through attempting to find information, he ended up developing a friendship with Hisoka Kurosaki, and through him he met Rin Asano, a girl from Edo-era Japan (and the only character he will remember in Siren's Port from St. Edelweiss). The three of them formed a sort of group who investigated and tried to find information, and Matt became very close to both of them, though he slowly grew more attached to Rin than Hisoka, developing something of a crush on her that both mellowed and intensified to a sort of love. Because of his connections with Hisoka and Rin, Matt became involved in a project to remember the names of the people who had died in St. Edelweiss, something he wouldn't have been overly interested in if it wasn't a project he was working on with them. During this time, there was a while where he sustained many nights of conversation with one of the staff, Yoshiya "Joshua" Kiryuu, substituting his video game addiction with word games played with Joshua, who frequently gave him cigarettes and matches when he asked for them.
Eventually, Matt drifted away from Hisoka, though he remained close with Rin, with whom he developed a sort of shorthand method of speech that worked due to their shared experiences and great deal of shared information - a definite asset in the paranoid atmosphere of St. Edelweiss. Through talking to other patients and putting two and two together, Matt managed to work out a lot of information about how they were brought to St. Edelweiss and the history of the place itself - for example, he learned that people were brought from different points in their history and that the people left behind didn't notice the missing perso, leading him to believe that the people in St. Edelweiss were likely clones or alternate universe versions. He also learned that a previous batch of patients had been around and that there had been a fire, with only a few surviving. There were a lot of other tidbits about the game that he learned, and eventually he picked up pretty much every bit of information available at that time.
During this time, he also became friends with Yuffie Kisaragi, and Claire Bennet, who remained some of his best friends during his time in St. Edelweiss. Yuffie taught him a bit of self-defense, and Claire developed something of a romantic interest in him, which ended up with him kissing her, though no relationship ever formed. It was also during this time that Matt learned that he and Mello had both previously been in the Instituation, by being shown footage recorded of both of them - however, since the person with his name and face had acted differently than him, he realized it wasn't just a memory lapse. This further cemented his opinion that they were alternate universe versions of themselves, and shook his belief in the reality he could see and feel, contributing to his tendency for dissociation in St. Edelweiss.
Mello appeared in St. Edelweiss, and Matt and him started up their own investigations, along with Rin, trying to find out more information and form it into some sort of workable plan to escape. This, unfortunately, never came to fruition, and was interrupted by Matt's therapy.
Matt's therapy was something that broke his brain down more than anything else in the game besides "realizing" that the characters there were all AU doubles. This therapy was with Orochimaru and a young doctor's assistant named Gary. During the therapy, Matt was molested and essentially mindfucked to an extent that he blocked the therapy out of his memory altogether - he didn't remember it in St. Edelweiss, and will not be remembering it in Siren's Pull, as he really doesn't want to. Suffice to say that he woke up in the shower, having been there for somewhere between one and four hours, went back to his room, and warmed up with Rin comforting him. This incident gave him several triggers and mental hang-ups, which will be covered in his personality section.
Things became much more disjointed for Matt in St. Edelweiss after his therapy - he lost focus with his projects and lost a lot more sleep. He spent most of his time in St. Edelweiss getting an average of an hour of sleep a night, and he got into many arguments with other patients, venting anger and the aimless protective instincts he had towards Rin. He helped Mello after Mello's therapy, which left the other boy temporarily blind, and tried to get back into his previous scheming ways, though his lack of sleep and generally increasing mental instability kept him from doing much good. Also, during this time, Claire Bennet, one of his friends, died, an incident that further traumatized Matt.
He tried to pull things together by forming a sort of spoken code based on internet memes, computer terms, and video game slang with Jin Shirato. Before this could be completed, however, he had a run in with Malcolm Rivers, a serial murderer, in the hallway. Malcolm broke his arm, his jaw, broke his neck, and threw him down a flight of stairs.
It is after this in-game death that Matt will wake back up in Siren's Port. He will be arriving with a broken arm, fractured ribs, and pain in his jaw, neck and throat, and will be badly bruised. He will write off his lost memories of some of the people from St. Edelweiss as part of his dissociation, which he's very aware of.
Character Personality: Matt is a pretty minor character in the series he's in, so there's not a lot of very strong indication of what sort of person he is. Most of this comes from strong hints in the parts of the manga he's in, as well as the creator opinions about the character in the supplementary info book, "How to Read." To round it out a bit, I also took what traits seemed to fit him from his sun sign and blood type meanings, as they were listed in the info book as well.
There are two major points that we know about Matt's personality - he's a loner by nature, and he loves video games. Matt was described by the creator as someone who loves gaming and doesn't care much about the world. He seems to be quite inwardly focussed, and prefers his own company to that of others. While he's not a complete hermit, and does seem to be capable of friendly interactions, and is listed as having slightly higher social skills than the other kids from Wammy's House, he still seems to be pretty awkward socially and prefers to keep to himself. He sometimes overcompensates for his social awkwardness in uncomfortable situations by being overly polite. Matt has a more than slight obsession with video games, nearly constantly playing with handheld consoles, and seems to be quite technologically savvy, since he's shown in the comic at one point surrounded by laptop computers with complicated bugging systems set up. It's pretty likely he set these up himself, since his partner-in-crime Mello was never shown with that kind of equipment set up before, and for someone as obsessed with video games as Matt is, I imagine technological know-how would come in handy for setting up systems and likely keeping a home computer optimized so he could play the latest games.
When Matt was in Wammy's House, he was ranked as the third most intelligent student there, though he wasn't considered as a successor to L because it seems he didn't have the disposition to be chosen. Also, considering his stats and how they rank among the other characters, I'm guessing the gap between his intelligence and the successors to L that were chosen was a pretty big gap. He is slightly more intelligent than the average person, with quick wits and lots of book learning, but judging by his preference for staying in rather than going out and his low social skills, it seems pretty likely he doesn't have a lot of 'street smarts.' He also seems to be a bit more comfortable taking orders, though he knows when to volunteer important information without having to report every little thing. He also seems to be quite a composed person, generally remaining calm and without a lot of expression even in bad situations, his rating for emotional strength sits around the same level as the older police officers in the series, so he has quite a bit of control over his emotions, but is still able to be broken. The one exception to this emotional strength is his cockiness and overconfidence. This is fully demonstrated in his death scene - he thinks he knows what the bodyguards surrounding him are going to do, and starts telling them his opinion, but he is mistaken and ends up paying for that miscalculation with his life. A bit of recklessness and a lower strategic knowledge is also shown in the way he goes on a car chase, allowing himself to get trapped in a relatively short period of time by cars coming around front of him.
Matt seems to be a bit lazy, and a bit messy, since in the comic his personal space while carrying out surveillance was littered with snack wrappers and other rubbish, as well as a very-full ashtray with cigarette butts. He seems to subsist mostly on snack foods like chips and candies, and what tidiness he does have seems to be dedicated to his computers and games. He seems to be quite casual, and has a very short attention span, claiming to be bored with watching something that never changes. Similar, again, to other former Wammy's residents, he has a high ability to split his attention - at one point he's shown talking on a cell phone, smoking a cigarette, playing a video game, and keeping an eye on multiple surveillance screens seemingly with little effort on his part. He also seems to have a pretty addictive personality, a common thing among the people who came from Wammy's House, and it's notable that he's one of very few characters in the series that's portrayed with a smoking habit - and judging from that full ashtray, it's a pretty mean smoking habit. If he can't get his hands on some cigarettes, he'll probably be quite grouchy while he's going through withdrawals.
Finally, judging by Matt's somewhat quirky sense of dress and the way he converses with Mello, it seems that Matt has a good sense of individuality and a touch of eccentricity. Though he's more comfortable taking orders in the type of scenario he was in, an investigation, he definitely has a sense of self and his own manner of quirkiness.
Conditional: Personality development in previous game: As mentioned in the history section, St. Edelweiss was a very brutal place for all the characters there. Matt, like everyone, was very affected by this place. At his core, he is still Matt, but he has a host of mental issues, traumas, dissociation, and triggers left over from the things that happened to him there.
Matt is still his intelligent, lazy, and asocial self, addicted to video games and cigarettes, a bit snarky, and with a keen insight into the things that happen around him. With a bit of sleep and recovery, this sharpness will come back to him, though he may be disjointed at first while he heals and recovers from the immediate physical and mental damage that St. Edelweiss left on him.
The most notable changes in Matt's personality are his increased willingness to talk to others, his mental hang-ups and triggers, and what could essentially be called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
While in St. Edelweiss, Matt had to speak to others more than he had ever needed to at home, or would in most other games. Both to get information, and keep his sanity, Matt listened to the intercoms nearly religiously, and quite frequently spoke to people, whether to play mind games, or to keep himself from going mental cooped up in his room alone, he would speak to people and, in some cases against his will, form bonds with them. This led to him caring a bit more about others after St. Edelweiss than he would have if brought straight from canon.
Matt also has a slew of mental hang-ups and triggers related to PTSD from the things he went through in St. Edelweiss. He's more prone to dissociation when traumatic events happen in Siren's Port (having one dissociative episode makes a person more prone to having them in the future) and may have flashbacks, bad dreams, and other emotional effects from the psychological and physical torture he endured. He's also a great deal more paranoid, will refuse to take medication prescribed by doctors (due to the medication he was fed in St. Edelweiss), and distrusts the world around him and its reality. For the first while, he may actually disbelieve that things are real, and may only trust Rin. This will eventually pass, as he becomes more accustomed to the City, and forms new bonds, enough to feel safe there. As time passes, he will slowly start moving closer back to his core personality from canon.
Matt has a couple of triggers that may bring on panic attacks - specifically, being seen naked or forced to be naked, and being called the nickname "Joystick." He'll also want to never be without a pack of cigarettes or a video game console of some sort, having been deprived of these simple pleasures for so long, the loss of them will seem much worse than it would have in his canon.
Another major change is that Matt will retain the determination he had in St. Edelweiss to not go home, but to help others get home if they want to. He doesn't want to go home to die, and would rather stay alive in a place that isn't home. His sense of self-preservation in general has increased, and while he can still be reckless, he's far less likely to throw himself into something stupid that could get him killed. The constant danger and torture has made him value a peaceful life much more than he had in canon.
Character Plans: Essentially, I would like Matt to heal, and to be able to find some closure after his time in St. Edelweiss. I would like to continue his CR with Rin Asano, and I would like to regain some of his CR with Yuffie as well. He will likely help Rin in whatever she's doing, and be supportive - once he recovers, they will probably become Schemers, Inc. again, planning and gathering information and working together.
Also, I want him to get a new cat.
Appearance/PB: image - I will be playing him with his canon colour scheme of dark brown hair and blue eyes, rather than the fanon redheaded version.
Writing Samples
First Person Sample
[a video post engages, with the device lying on its side in the dead grass of the abandoned baseball diamond. the sun is shining brightly, it is midday, and the sounds of the City can be heard in the background.
after a few moments of silence, there's a sort of sputtering sound, a low pained groan, and a sharp series of wracking coughs, followed by a whimper, and then spitting. Matt's hand comes into view, and knocks the NV, which turns a bit so he's visible, dressed in a tattered and filthy black and red striped shirt, face smudged with blood, hair a mess, and goggles hanging around his neck. he coughs a few more times, spits a mouthful of bloody saliva on the ground, and makes a low moan. his face is deathly pale]
Fuck, what...I can't remember...
[his arm is cradled against his chest, and he sits still, breathing shallowly, leaning on his left hand on the grass, eyes closed. his voice is groggy]
Okay, okay. Grass, maybe the Courtyard.
[he's muttering, talking to himself quietly. he tries to move his right arm, and then makes a low groan through grit teeth]
Fuck, that hurts. [a few panting breaths, and his eyes open again, scanning around himself blearily]
Ooookay, not the Courtyard. But where...? This reminds me of...
[his eyes fall on the NV, and he freezes, staring at it for a moment before reaching out for it tentatively and picking it up]
Recording, huh? [he clears his throat, winces at the pain in his neck and jaw, and speaks evenly]
Where is this place, and how did I get here?
[a long pause, while dark blue eyes scan the device]
So, where am I now?
Third Person Sample
He'd been asleep almost constantly for the three days since his arrival in this new City, and the shadows under his eyes still wouldn't go away. Matt stood in the bathroom of the apartment, staring at his face for a few long moments. His hair was long, too long, brushing at his collar in the back and hanging below the jawline in the front. He needed it cut, but that was the least of his concerns. The cigarette he'd smoked on the balcony left him dizzy, and his head throbbed with the sick sensation of having overslept while still needing more sleep. If nothing else, his arm was in a sling against his chest, half-healed after his trip to the hospital, and he was recovering despite turning down the medication that they'd tried to give him.
No more medication, nothing other than paracetamol purchsed at a proper chemist's and sealed on the top with vacuum tightened plastic. Yes. That would do, fractured ribs and all.
He didn't want to go back to sleep, though. He wanted to see Rin, and maybe eat something. Butter chicken, or fish and chips, something unhealthy and full of fat and tasting like something other than the awful gruel he'd been subjected to for...how long it was, he couldn't even remember. His stomach growled, and he looked down, then back at himself in a mirror. Civilisation. What a novel concept.
Matt couldn't help laughing a little, a series of hitched chuckles at his own traumas that jarred his fractured ribs and sent a dizzy wave of pain through him. Awkwardly, he opened the bottle of paracetamol and took three of the pills, washing them down with a mouthful of water.
Coffee would have to do, to start. And after that, he would go out by himself and get a bit of sun, just because he could.