you're not me...!

[jamizoid]

THE 'TRUE SELF' MEME
(inspired by Persona 4)



"In Jungian psychology, the shadow or "shadow aspect" is a part of the unconscious mind consisting of repressed weaknesses, shortcomings, and instincts."

Everyone has another side to them that they keep hidden away, feelings they bottle up to save face or avoid conflict. But what if those feelings take a life of their own...?

Perhaps it's your best friend, a close family member, a hated enemy, or maybe it's just a complete stranger. No matter who it is, they are different now, possessing creepy yellow eyes, a distorted voice, and a disconcerting aura. Take care in what you say to them, though, because there are three little words that will set them off into an unstoppable rage...

How to:
Step 1: Post as your character with their name and canon
Step 2: Others respond stumbling onto your character
Step 3: WHOOPS. Character A has been replaced by their Shadow or Other Self!
Step 4: Play out the encounter! Will you start an epic boss fight? Have a pleasant chat? Or maybe just flat out ignore them? Run wild!

Comments

roland deschain / the dark tower (ota)

[deschains]

hoo boy

[whittling]

Roland? What are you doing out here?

[ It's his turn for the watch, and he could've sworn Roland had been sleeping soundly by the fire not minutes ago. Eddie frowns, sensing something, but not being able to put his finger on what. ]

Ren | Dramatical Murder

[not_your_dog]

Koujaku | Dramatical Murder | OTA

[hairofthehippo]

Shin Naohisa | original character | OTA

[prosperoustime]

[Crazy-ass scientist who likely has accepted any shadow self he has ever had... or maybe his shadow self is the "good" self that he left behind when he went mad...?]

Cassie Cage | Mortal Kombat X | OTA

[cassiefuckingcage]

[Hey, it's canon.]

Shiro | Deadman Wonderland |OTA

[wrecked_egg]

[[Couldn't pass this up. Expect Shiro, find the Wretched Egg! Or vice versa, whatever floats your boat.]]

Travis Touchdown | No More Heroes | OTA

[crownless_king]

[it being canon aside, let's be honest. Dude probably has a half dozen "true selves".]

Link // Legend of Zelda(s) // OTA

[linksintime]

[Rather than fill the comm up with various versions of Link, offering up Teenage OoT, Twilight Princess, Windwaker, Skyward Sword, and Hyrule Warriors. Specify which!]

Marie Kreutz l The Bourne Series l OTA

[reluctantaccessory]

Henry Townshend | Silent Hill 4: The Room | OTA

[roomed]

Naoto Shirogane - Persona 4

[shiroganeheir]

[I feel required to comment. Shadow Naoto is duality personified. And not very nice. You lizard-brained imbecile.]

Inquisitor Lavellan | DA:I | OTA

[nuvenin]

[astutes]

[ In the gardens she finds him, empty of the usual rabble that inhabit it during the day. An odd location, she thinks magic twisting around her as she shakes off for legs for too. Sometimes she slinks about Skyhold as a cat; creeping through cracks few know of, observing those she now serves. An easy way to discover which blades shall point to her first should the worst befall them all. ]

Enjoying the night time air, Inquisitor?

Cranky Kong | Games That Don't Need 'Character Development' To be Good

[goddamnjumpman]

Noriaki Kakyoin | Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

[lapidarius]

[The dungeon itself is a wide expanse of caves overgrown with jagged crystal formations; emeralds, by the look of them. The entire area is cold and empty, with very little light except for what's coming from the emeralds themselves--they appear to be glowing faintly.]

[The only visible differences between Kakyoin and his Shadow (apart from eye color) is that the latter wears a long white scarf draped over his shoulders. Shadow Kakyoin is skittish and afraid, pleading with anyone that finds him 'don't kill me, I don't want to die'. He also pushes others away, declaring that they can't possibly understand him if they can't see his 'real self'. When provoked, he turns into a marionette version of himself that fights by extending his scarf like a whip as well as weaponizing the emeralds growing out of the walls like projectiles.]

[starmark]

[So. This was stupid.

Pretty much everything about this scenario was, quite frankly, trying Jotaro's patience to his absolute last nerve. First, the matter of the portal they'd discovered through the TV set which, by all rights, should've been the work of an enemy Stand but offered no explanation of who the user might've been or where it had come from. Then there was the matter of Kakyoin's disappearance after trying to gather more information for them about the workings of the thing and what might lie on the other side. It'd happened fast, and pursuing was almost certainly a dangerous and foolhardy prospect, but it wasn't like the thought of doing anything else had ever once crossed his mind.

Whatever it was he'd been expecting, caves weren't it.

Still, despite the creepy atmosphere and the way the expanse of the setting is shrouded in shadow lit only by an eerie green glowing from the stones littering the walls, there didn't seem to be an overt threat here. It wasn't treacherous so much as it was just menacing, and the presence of the emeralds suggested that Kakyoin had to be somewhere nearby.

So, with his irritation rising and his hands jammed deep into his pockets, Jotaro surveyed the caves one last time and began to follow the path that led inward, letting the glowing stones light his way.]

Kirei Kotomine | Fate/stay night

[blackmass]

[heaven's feel by default, danganroleplay variant available upon request]

[Most of Kirei's dungeon is a flaming smoldering wasteland with some large unholy Thing off in the distance. The Shadow and its host, however, can be found in the one outwardly undamaged building: a church with a ruined interior.]

[Kirei's Shadow looks largely the same as its host, but has skin that cracks and falls apart in places like damaged marble. Underneath is broken and rusted clockwork, struggling to function and making quiet but very noticeable erratic ticking noises. Like Kirei himself, the Shadow is very calm and speaks evenly, but everything he says amounts to openly immeasurable self-loathing and the wish that he would have just disappeared years ago. Shadow Kirei asks everyone he sees at least once, 'do I have a right to exist?'

As Kirei hates but doesn't outright deny his Shadow, it doesn't change form--which is probably lucky, because if it did it would most likely end up some eldritch horrorterror.]

Celestia Ludenberg | Danganronpa

[gambliar]

[Celes' dungeon is a large, ominous-looking gothic castle towering over the landscape. The sky above it is always pitch-black, with a large red moon gazing down below. More or less what you'd expect from her. However, the interior is where things start to get weird. The first few rooms look similar to what you'd expect, minus the occasional crack in the walls and the fact that most of the rooms are completely barren. As the dungeon goes on, the cracks start to become large holes revealing walls not unlike you'd find in any Japanese home. Regular, unrefined furniture are strewn about in replacement of the ornate furniture that could scarcely be found throughout the first few floors.

As for her Shadow, it's hard to see the resemblance at first. Her trademark drills are missing, as is her standard clothing. Instead, the Shadow is wearing an ordinary black gym uniform. Even so, that face is definitely hers and those glowing golden eyes make it easy to tell just who's who.

Celes will be denying her Shadow completely, so it will turn monstrous and vicious. Its form in this state is like a large porcelain doll. However, it doesn't look right at all. Parts of its body are shattered, with massive raggedy plush doll parts bursting from the remains of her left arm, right leg, and face, to the point where the porcelain on her head looks more like a broken mask. The Shadow is wearing Celes' trademark gothic lolita style clothing, but great deals of it are torn off restitched together with much larger pieces of cloth that might belong to some washed up doll. Huge claws extend from both of her hands and numerous strings like you'd see on a puppet are coming out of each of her limbs. But rather than being attached to something to move them, they just seem to jut out and then wrap around her body like bandages. Razor sharp teeth line her mouth, and finally a large black and red witch hat adorns her head with the phrase "@#$& YOU!" embroidered on the front of the brim, to the side.]

Joseph Joestar || JJBA

[yankovic]

[Through the fog, it's not so much what the shadow does that grabs Joseph's attention by the figurative through. It's a question of how the bright-eyed doppelganger in front of him is even alive.

Knives littered "its" body. They were in its stomach, chest, legs, arms... all soaking its clothes a wet red and buried so deep it looked more like a corpse as it dripped heavily on the floor, pushing it into a bloody trail when he dragged his feet. None of this seemed to bother it.]

Weak, PATHETIC old man. You couldn't save her. You can't protect anyone. [The biggest knife, the source of most of the blood, was buried in the base of his doppleganger's throat, clinging sticky to its shirt. It bobbed grotesquely up and down as it spoke. A chill crawled down Joseph's stomach and stayed there.] Left him ALONE. Left it up to a boy you dragged into this mess by calling it FATE. Like it was your fate fifty years ago. Was Caesar Zeppeli's fate to die?

[Thorny purple vines hung limply around its body. Around the knives, arms, neck...]

You could defeat a god, but not HIM.

[Blood and vines dragged behind it, just as dead as its yellow eyes. Lifelessly, they stared at nothing in particular. Not even at Joseph. It dragged that cadaver of a body slowly across the room, towards him.]

Old men are supposed to die first. [The most Joseph could think to do was step back. Too horrified to think to move in the few seconds his own shadow was gurgling at him, striking nerves in all the right places and sending a pang through his chest, much less process what was going on.] WHY DIDN'T YOU?

[detonatable]

[Yellow-eyed monsters that lurked in fog was something Rail was painfully familiar with, something that she had no interest in encountering ever again.

The fog itself felt like an endless maze, and Rail couldn't tell exactly how long she'd been walking, but two figures up ahead catch her attention. The closer she gets, one she recognizes - she only knew one giant old man. But he seems preoccupied with the other figure, and she can't tell what exactly is going on through the fog.]

Old man!

[Maybe not a good time to interrupt? Ah well, she'll do what she wants. As she approaches from behind though, her quick steps come to an abrupt stop.

There's two of them.

And one looks like they should be dead.]

[yourfaceimean]

[This was not what Jotaro expected to come across today, though that was not even a surprise at this point. 'Expect the unexpected', right? Even so, this was an especially gruesome sight, his grandfather being assaulted verbally by a bloodied and broken version of himself.

Well, he couldn't just leave him, not while he was so obviously being attacked by an ENEMY STAND!!!, so instead Jotaro just made his way over to his grandfather, standing behind him as if to offer support.]

Gramps.

[He placed a hand on his shoulder then. He wasn't the type to argue things, especially not with an enemy so clearly in front of them.]

Harvey Finevoice | Atop the Fourth Wall

[milliondollarpipes]

[Harvey's dungeon is a grey, dilapadated suburban home. From the outside, it looked like a normal place, if long-abandoned. But the door locks behind whoever enters, and all the windows are boarded shut.

Inside, everything is destroyed. There's not so much as a single piece of furniture that hasn't been smashed, leaving the floors strewn with splintered wood and shattered glass. Dried blood stains some of the walls and debris rust-brown. From outside, the house didn't look especially large, but the hallways here seem to go on forever. Doors don't always open onto the same place twice, and it can be difficult to tell one devastated room from another. Perhaps the empty bottles of liquor scattered around could act as guides?

After a labyrinthine and probably deeply frustrating search, one might eventually find the back door. This one opens, out onto a small graveyard covered in weeds. Harvey can be seen sitting out amongst the stones in the middle of the yard, but he won't respond to being called.]

Naomi Kimishima | Trauma Team

[chatwithdeath]

[For the danganroleplay variant, read here. Otherwise, for the normal variation...]

[The dungeon stands as a dark, Victorian-style Hospital crudely mashed with torii gates and other symbols of the Shinto faith; a life she's uprooted from and forced to leave behind, but still knows of. The entire place itself is falling apart, just barely staying together. Entering inside gives way to the heavy scent of medicines mixing with decomposition and old blood. And unlike the decorum outside, the inside is almost cathedral-like despite there being plenty of full body pure culture tubes standing as columns and IV bags dripping crude black liquid on shelves in the larger rooms. With several floors, three doors require codes in order to progress further, the last permitting access to the Hall of the Order. There resides one massive culture tank with wires awaiting its 'patient' to be hooked up beneath the chipped stained glass window.]

[Shadow Naomi, in the meantime, slips through the fog like a literal shadow. A doctor much like Naomi, she's garbed as a Delphi Agent - no, more like a Leader. Orange trimmed black lab-coat and dress with her skin sporting patchy bruising from the disease inside her body, she praises external forces and devotes herself to a higher power while placing herself above many. Her fate is to be left to His will, and His will has predestined her to bring His judgment to humanity. As Adam before her, she will be Eve, finishing the job of blessing mankind with death. Those Naomi is close to, she wants to tempt them into assisting her; otherwise, she will remove them. Her intent to bring harm indiscriminately again will drive the usually collected Naomi into extreme denial.]

Tohru Adachi | Persona 4

[pitythefool]