☆ GoF . PERSONALITY
Feb. 1st, 2020 11:12 pm Mikale Godono is a boy driven by contradictions. The personality he appears to have on the outside typically betrays how he feels on the inside, putting him in a similar slump as his very best friend, Satou. But unlike Satou, who knows what kind of person she wants to be and just can't seem to get there, Mikale is so lost that he doesn't know what he wants to be like... just what he wishes he wasn't.
Many of Mikale's traits are traced back to when he was a child. Mikale "Reed" (as he is technically supposed to be called) grew up in an abusive family situation. However, Mikale is not a person who lets himself be defined by his past. His past self, who kept quiet and suffered for it, is part of what Mikale wishes he wasn't. Rather than let it define him, Mikale has grown from the experience in a strong, self-reliant, and caring person. He is a teenager who is still growing comfortable with who he is. The key word there being still growing.
A starting point is Mikale's confidence... or lack there of. To an outsider, Mikale is a very confident person; he typically has a big grin on his face and seems to be fearless and reckless in his fighting. It always seems like he's got a situation under control and he seems very able to handle himself. Not many people would automatically assume the truth-- that for all of his confident antics, Mikale actually has very little self-confidence. What he has is a lot of confidence in others.
When he's fighting someone or completing a job, Mikale is typically doing so under the orders of someone that he trusts. He may not trust himself, but he is absolutely trusting towards those he loves. This causes Mikale to do many dangerous and reckless things, despite his personal opinions. He doesn't believe in himself and has come to think of his doubt as a weakness and his contradicting beliefs as false. The strongest example of this flaw in action is the way that Vinita turns Mikale into a murderer, ordering him to kill "bad people". Even though Mikale hates murder and thinks it is wrong, he believes that following Vinita's orders is for his own good and that she must know what she's doing. After all, he loves her as family and believes she would never put him in harm's way.
However, this dangerous flaw does have its silver lining. For one, Mikale won't bend his will to just anyone. There are only a handful of people that he ever trusts enough to take orders from. The contrast of his dark childhood to current situation has taught Mikale to be careful about who you trust. He knows his mother had their best interest in mind, but he also knows now that she was not making trustworthy decisions. He will only put complete confidence in someone after deciding they really do know what they're doing. That isn't to say that Mikale cannot personally make judgment errors (Vinita is a bit of a judgment error), but it does mean that he won't take orders just because he likes a person.
Secondly, this trait makes Mikale incredibly loyal. Once Mikale has decided that he trusts someone, he will trust them blindly. He can believe in people even when they don't believe in themselves, despite having a problem doing this for himself. Mikale is very supportive towards those he likes and will believe in their happiness no matter what personal expense it comes at. This ranges from following Vinita's orders to supporting Satou and Shugo's relationship because they're happy together, even when he secretly wishes he could be Satou's boyfriend instead.
Towards those he likes, Mikale is incredibly dedicated and very loving. He's the type of person who is happier to shower those he loves with happiness than be spoiled back. Even if the affection is one-way, Mikale is able to love and care for people without returned affection because "being loved back isn't why I like them." Mikale will go above and beyond to make people happy, provided he is interested them. His mood brightens significantly in their presence and he's addicted to the confidence boost that his loved ones give him, so tends to follow them around and be very clingy--- something that completely contradicts his typical image of a loner. His life centers around the happiness and well-being of his loved ones rather than his own, as evidenced by how he withstood years of abuse for his mother's sake or, more recently, how Mikale is absolutely dedicated to Satou.
Once again, this trait is a double-sided coin. Mikale isn't going to bend over backwards for a stranger, but he will do it without complaining for his family and friends. He works himself ragged and doesn't know when to take a break. His self-sacrificing attitude traces back to the first paragraph of this personality section; Mikale does not know what he wants to be like. He has no plans for what he wants his future to become. Just what he doesn't want. So he doesn't have anything to work towards. The closet thing Mikale has to a plan for his future is to have happy people in it. If he were to ever establish his own life goals then this trait would change, giving Mikale a reason to question if he has the time to help every single person he loves with every single thing, but right now he does not have anything "important enough" to compete with helping his loved ones.
The problem tends to be getting Mikale to like you. He's very picky. Though he can easily make friendships on the surface, it's hard to convince him to get passed that. Mikale will quickly and easily befriend someone for work or reasons that benefit him, but tends to treat those he meets as business acquaintances rather than actual friends. It is because he treats more people coldly than he treats warmly that Mikale often comes off as being a loner and isn't often pegged as a friendly person right off the bat in his canon. He won't make the first move in friendship because he doesn't have the confidence to initiate a proper friendship, nor does he have the drive. He already has people to love and doesn't actively seek to raise the number.
Instead, Mikale needs to be constantly pestered about becoming friends. The more confident another person is that they can be the friends, the more that Mikale will believe it and the more effort he'll make in return. But unless the other party is expressing equal interest, Mikale finds friend making too difficult, too scary, and too time consuming. However, a balance does need to be met; Mikale is a shy person and gets flustered and scared when he's smothered, so too much of a shove from the other side will scare him away. A "scared away" Mikale clams up, gets a bit cranky, and pretends to go need a bathroom break and then secretly ditches you.
In an RP setting, this means that Mikale will start the game with a slightly timid and uncertain personality. It's important to note that the "first impressions" of being a confident love wolf are made in his canon, where he has Vinita to give him orders. But Vinita won't be in the game with him. Mikale will be starting the game with no one to provide his usual guidance. At the start, the first impressions he makes will likely be of the unstable teen who isn't sure what he's doing. He'll need to make a few friends before his surface personality can build up again. Until then, he'll probably seem really uneasy in his new environment and flop around like a confused fish out of water.
Because friend making isn't the only thing that makes Mikale uncomfortable. New things in general put Mikale on edge. If he's in the company of someone that he trusts then he'll be able to try new things, but the moment he's on his own he loses that courage. This quirk causes Mikale to feel more comfortable setting routines and establishing a norm, which he will be quick to find for himself in the game. He'll order the same thing at a restaurant every time and probably only ever visit that one restaurant, unless someone is there to encourage a change. In his canon, Vinita takes advantage of how nervous Mikale is and almost trains him to dislike making his own decisions. In contrast, Satou works hard to encourage confidence so that Mikale will make his own choices and be proud of them. Meaning that in the game, with his canon point, Mikale is still experimenting with decision making and trying to break his shell. Mikale is at a canon point where he is beginning to transition between Vinita's way of crippling him and Satou's help with his recovery.
Satou does a lot for Mikale. By this point in Mikale's "canon" he has benefited immensely from the positive factors Satou (and those he associates with her) bring into his life. Unlike the other people Mikale trusts, who have often used him or had strings attached to their company, Satou asks nothing of Mikale but that he be happy.
The most notable benefit is that confidence that Mikale clearly lacks. While Vinita discouraged Mikale from making his own choices, Satou frequently puts him in situations where he has to decide for himself and is careful to make sure his decisions work out. He is now more likely to shake up his routine and doesn't crumble if his routines are set off track. He lives in a very positive environment now where he is constantly being praised for what he does right and gently critiqued for what he does wrong. Not only does Mikale gain confidence in his own abilities, but he turns old skills into hobbies. For example, Mikale has always been good at cooking, cleaning, and managing his life. Nowadays, he experiments with new gourmet recipes and has turned his domestic skills into a hobby. It's a positive cycle, since he gets praised for what he does and that encourages him to do more. He isn't oblivious anymore either. In game, Mikale will be seeking cr that keeps that cycle positive.
Being quickly rewarded and seeing quick results is a common attribute to most of his preferences. Mikale enjoys cooking because he can quickly and easily judge success and get praise. Similarly, he enjoys school subjects like math and music because of the quick results that he can easily identify as good or bad. The gray area of subjects like art and literature make him uneasy, and he's most comfortable doing things with a clear right or wrong. When it comes to studying right/wrong subjects and taking tests with right/wrong answers, Mikale is very successful and consistently gets excellent grades. Give him an open-ended question, however, and it'll probably be left blank or have a textbook answer in it. He is simply not confident in his personal opinions and afraid of being told his opinion is wrong. The positive influence of Satou has helped Mikale overcome this fear by getting to his teachers, but it is still a hurdle that he has trouble jumping.
Another benefit from Mikale's new life comes from school itself, though he once again credits it to Satou. Mikale has been able to branch out and become more friendly because he's enrolled in school. His socially awkward quirks continue to surface all over the place, such as how he has a hard time initiating a conversation or even carrying one, but he is more active in starting social interactions. He used to seem like quite the loner because he was discouraged from making friends outside of his family. Now that he is going to school and having positive encounters with classmates, Mikale is more willing to not only accept social advances but to actually try to make friends. At his current canon point Mikale is even enrolled in the cooking and tennis club, and he is able to attend club meetings without Satou to support him.
However, it should be noted that this is a work in progress; like mentioned earlier, Mikale is still very shy and scared. Push too hard and, though he'll make some effort not to, he's probably going to run away or at least close himself off.
Finally, Mikale is beginning to realize he can be happy outside of his family. This is a huge step for him, since most of his life has been unhappy and he's justified it with the logic of "at least my family is happy". As earlier stated, Mikale has always lived a life with no future in mind. By moving in with Satou, Mikale has completely abandoned the wishes of his family and he is now in a position where he is technically their enemy. He's made a huge decision for his future by leaving them and pursuing a new life with Satou. It's a big decision and a big deal for him, and has led to him beginning to experiment in making more choices for himself and deciding to do more things for his benefit alone. Mikale is more likely to look at two options and ask himself "What to I want to do?" rather than "What is best for everyone else?".
And okay. She's been mentioned a bunch, so it's probably worth making suspicions a fact; Mikale really likes Satou. Loves Satou. He would do anything for her. Whether he's protecting her, spoiling her, showing her love, anything. In fact, love is a very big deal for Mikale. He spends the start of the series flirting up a storm and being very physically affectionate, but that was because he was told to (Satou flusters to unconsciousness when flirted with). In truth, Mikale is more interested in emotional bonds than physical. He actually does not like to be touched at all and gets very uncomfortable in big crowds where he could get bumped.
So don't touch him unless you want him to be uncomfortable around you forever.
All in all, Mikale is a shy kid who tries to act tough. His act is usually successful and he's learning to turn it into a real persona, but he is still a socially awkward boy at the core who needs some confidence. Really badly. Someone do something.
But the most important fact that I want to stress about Mikale is that for all of his timidness, he isn't a kicked puppy. He's gone down that road and doesn't intend to go down it again. It is unlikely that Mikale will ever speak poorly of those who have hurt or taken advantage of him, canon or no, because he is not that kind of person. He will not walk around trying to get pity from people, but the exact opposite: he will be trying to be stronger, trying to become more confident, and trying not to be the child he was before. He may not be there 100%, but he is moving forward. Not backwards.