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[peripheries]

PLAYER INFO

Name: Ru/Brigit
Preferred Contact: worldtype
Age: 30+


CHARACTER INFO

Character Name: Kaworu Nagisa
Canon: Neon Genesis Evangelion (manga)
Age: 15. (It’s usually listed as 14 for all pilots but most of them simply share a birthday with their voice actors. Kaworu is the only one who has a birthday based on canon events and he would be 15 by his first appearance in the show.
If Under 16, why is this character a good thematic fit for Somnia?: Evangelion is a canon that puts children through horrors. Not just the horror of putting their life on the line in battles against otherworldly creatures but the horror of the very nature of what it means to be alive. Characters constantly question their place in the world and oscillate appreciating given a higher purpose and resenting the pressure and danger that comes with it. The struggle to understand one’s own contradictions and the contradictions in others and learning to find the value in connection despite misunderstandings is a huge thematic element.

Kaworu himself is a good fit specifically because he spent most of his life isolated from emotions, to the point where he believed he was not even capable of feeling them. He was raised thinking he knew what the world was like and what people were like and possessed a very cynical view of everything. Not much really phases him so he wouldn’t be all that afraid of what Somnia has to offer him.

Just before he died, his capacity to feel was reawakened and he realized how much he was actually interested in the idea of having a bond with someone and actually experiencing love and friendship. Unfortunately, he never got that chance but in Somnia, he could find that and finally be able to actually start to grow as a person.
Canon Point: Post death
Wiki Link(s): Here

SOMNIA-SPECIFIC QUESTIONS

1. Dreams are how Sleep chooses you. What might draw your character into Somnia— a wound, a wish, a weakness? Would they follow the dream, or run from it?

Kaworu would follow the dream! Canon implies that Rei (and thus likely he too) does not really experience dreams that often due to their nature as angels put into human form. So dreaming would be a fascinating curiosity for him and perhaps even something of a comfort. He’s never had the chance to be in a world that is fluid and able to be shaped as his entire fate had been pre-determined since birth. Furthermore, he is innately curious about anything and everything and would be unable to resist trying to reach out and grasp another experience.

Although he claims he died satisfied, the satisfaction came from the fact that his existence had been so devoid of anything else. There is still a part of him that wants more than the kindness of a mercy kill. He is drawn to the concept of love and what it actually is. When his emotions first awakened, he found the sensation of love to be overwhelming and unpleasant and yet it lingered within him. What is it like to feel that for someone? What is it like to have someone to feel that for you? To miss you? To feel sad if you died. Kaworu wants to have and know these experiences for himself. He’s spent his life alone, without kindness or affection, and there’s a hole inside him that he needs to have filled. Could mattering to someone fill that hole and help him create his own sense of self rather than following the one that was created for him?

Somnia would offer him chances he would never be able to have otherwise to learn.

2. Somnia is a slow unraveling—of worlds, and of selves. How does your character respond to fear, transformation, and losing control? Do they fight, adapt, collapse?

Kaworu has a very strange sense of self because he has never really possessed much control within his own life. He’s been raised with the understanding that he is a tool created for a single purpose and everything that he has experienced has been in service of said purpose. Kaworu goes along with this predetermined fate but ultimately resents that he has no choice nor does he even get to reap any rewards from his actions.

If he were to unravel, Kaworu would at first likely accept this as a natural consequence of being in this dream, just like he accepted his previous fate. To resist is as pointless as fighting the tide. It is best to simply adapt to the flow. However, if he felt things were being purposefully manipulated, he would resist and try to use his own will to shape the world. If he could lose things that matter to him in the unraveling, he would fight tooth and nail to protect them.

Kaworu moves with the flow until he sees the need or space to act on his own free will.

3. Connection is the only constant. What kind of bonds does your character form— fast and burning, slow and wary, deep and desperate? How might that shape their time in this world?

Kaworu is very new to bonds, only having made a few recently, but both were wrapped up in intense feelings. After being told to watch Shinji Ikari by SEELE, Kaworu bonded extremely hard to the other male pilot and became obsessed with trying to get Shinji to admit that he cared for Kaworu and that they were friends. This culminated in Kaworu telling Shinji to mercy kill him, which in Kaworu’s mind, would prove that Shinji cared about him enough to spare him from a worse fate. …Yikes.

His other major bond was with Rei Ayanami, his female counterpart. Kaworu resents Rei for being raised outside of a facility and being allowed to make connections with other people. She lived the life that he wanted and as much as he wishes they were the same, he comes to realize that makes them quite different.

These bonds, however, were largely pre-determined as they are all Evangelion pilots wrapped up in the same mechanisms being orchestrated by SEELE and thus bound to meet eventually. Somnia would provide Kaworu the opportunity to make real bonds and connections with people without the baggage that seeped into his few other bonds. Kaworu is driven to seek others out and understand them because relationships are curious to him. He would go forward without much fear and attempt to reach out to nearly everyone he encounters.

Even though he made mistakes while trying to be friends with Shinji, they were largely done out of inexperience and a childlike selfishness. Kaworu does have the capacity to care about others and a gentle heart beneath the cynicism that he was raised with. If given the opportunity, he has the capacity to form deep bonds and grow as a person beyond his current confines.

4. What are two major forces in your character’s personality that are often in conflict? (Ex: logic vs emotion, power vs guilt, obedience vs rage, etc.)

Kaworu is a creature made up of parts that do not fit together. Humans and angels are diametrically opposed by their very being and only one species can survive. As much as Kaworu identifies himself as an angel, the reality is that he is too human to ever truly be like his brethren. Angels do not possess emotions. They are beings of pure instinct, attempting to reach their progenitor Adam, to restore angel supremacy on earth just as Kaworu was raised to do. While they may display curiosity about humanity, they have no desire (or capability perhaps) to connect with them.

Kaworu, on the other hand, does possess emotions and a desire to connect with others, especially once his human side is truly awakened. He understands that closeness with others often brings pain and misunderstanding and, given his position, is a waste of time, yet he cannot resist the inherent pull that humans feel towards each other in their search to find meaning. Despite his resistance to it, he does have a heart like a human and he is capable of all of the same joys and fears they are.

At the same time, he is too much of an angel to ever truly fit in seamlessly with humanity. He is often clocked by others immediately as “creepy and inhuman”. Even as human behaviors and conventions are explained to him, Kaworu feels the need to pick them apart, examine them, and critique them. He believes he is the only one who is behaving logically and anyone who doesn’t agree with him simply doesn’t see the world as it is. He doesn’t know how to understand people’s feelings and perhaps doesn’t even want to, beyond how doing so would benefit them.

Kaworu ultimately resents the fact that he was created to be a creature with such conflicting sides. He wishes that he were either one or the other, an angel or a human, a creature driven by pure logic or a creature that is driven by emotion and connection. He fits in nowhere and is cursed to always be an outsider because he cannot devote himself to one part of himself or the other. He is always forced to be both.

VESSEL SELECTION
Which Vessel Type are you choosing: Token or Offering? Offering
Why does this Vessel type feel appropriate for your character?
I think it feels appropriate because it fits with Kaworu’s nature as a human body possessing an immeasurably powerful soul and brings the trauma that he has felt from it to the forefront. Being unable to hide and instead embrace his power is something that he always wished he could do. An offering would force him to confront what it means to have such a powerful form and for people to see you as you really are. (Or what he thinks he really is.)
Choose one OR list three subclass options within your chosen Vessel type that you think would suit them: Seraph!

Samples: TDM top level here