PLAYER Name: Raile Age: 25 Personal Journal: Railerat E-mail: literatehyaena [at] yahoo [dot] com AIM/MSN/etc:Railerat on Plurk and AIM
CHARACTER Name: Johan Liebert Canon: Monster Age: 20 Timeline: After the burning of the library, when he disappears If playing another character from the same canon, how will you deal with this? NOPE
Personality: At first, Johan seems like a polite, amicable, and a charming young man--not overly social and somewhat reserved, but easy to get along with; he's honest, hard working, and very smart. A gentle, caring person. This is all relatively true.
But far from the actual truth.
'Johan Liebert' is primarily intangible, infamously difficult to pin down in any single aspect.
As far as personalities go and are defined, Johan is both one of the most overwhelming and one of the most innocuous.
Johan is manipulative, cunning, deceitful... and dangerous. His stated goal as a child was to be the last one standing at the end of the world; despite this, he repeatedly invites Dr. Tenma, a man who saved his life, to pull the trigger and kill him. Possessed of a driving WORD (compulsion? motivation? sense of?) for destruction, he has a vision--a specific vision--of the end of the world. A cold, bleak wasteland, devoid of life...
He is compelled by fear and by death, and yet indifferent to them; the concept of the human being as monster is central to his canon, and Johan serves as the catalyst for this development in others--directly or indirectly, the 'Monster' in Johan feeds, inspires, or reflects the 'Monsters' in others around him. It is often intentional. Terrifyingly intelligent, Johan easily involves himself in concepts and 'worlds' (most notable the financial world)--the kind that most people spend their entire lives trying to master, or at least participate in--and masters them easily. His 'play' in such spheres is sometimes subtle, but always cruel--not to mention tremendous in scope. "Like a child disturbing a line of ants," according to more than one person. He treats people much the same way, but in his hands they become much more like tools, conveniences or contrivances in his plans--the pieces of his 'game' rather than the game in and of themselves.
Humans... can become anything. But death is the great equaliser. All humans are equal in death. And so humans themselves are simultaneously 'special' and nothing at all.
He is not, by technicality, a serial killer, but a mass-murderer; a serial killer must have killed at least four people and have a modus operandi--while Johan has killed far more than four people and certainly appears to have an initial pattern in victims, the final facts do not support this: the murders of several middle-aged couple (former foster parents of Johan all) were only the tip of a very large iceberg. He has systematically and indiscriminately killed dozens and dozens of people, either directly or indirectly--many of them were killed by a third party, either loyal to him or hired to do so, while others were simply driven to suicide... or just helped along. Of course, all third party killers were summarily executed by Johan himself. As a brilliant, sometimes nigh-whimsical artist of corruption and destruction, Johan is capable of devising flawless plans on a near-moment's notice, occasionally improvising new steps or twists as he thinks of them.
However, Johan lacks a cogent sense of self. He is a non-person, but at the same time, his 'self' is split into two people, as the Monster in A Nameless Monster splits in half, one half to go East, the other West. In a sense, he and Nina are two independent selves of a unifying identity, but because Johan himself is consumed by another concept of 'self'--or rather, the Monster--his self is always being consumed and consuming, in a constant, active state of erasure. Nina herself is a threat to his existence, just as much as she is essential to it, and so must be consumed or absorbed into him, just as Johan from A Nameless Monster consumes his original 'other half', the Monster who went West.
His sense of self is so elusive that he can easily "become" other people--people who do not exist, people who do exist, idealised concepts of people who could exist... this is most noticeable in the subtle alterations of his apparent 'self', but happens most momentuously when he takes his twin sister's memories for his own--or rather, subsumes them and then mistakes them for his own. He physically takes on her identity for a period of time (following the burning of the library), seamlessly adopting and shifting between into her personality and physical appearance and his own. This is an excellent illustration of his ambiguous and enigmatic relationship with his twin. He often refers to his sister as his "other self," and repeats various permutations of "you are me, and I am you," both to his sister and, once, to his mother's portrait (right before burning the entire mansion it is in), but Johan also frequently speaks of the meaninglessness of names, their unnecessary nature, and is periodically explained to be 'a person who does not exist.' Indeed, for the first half/two-thirds of Monster, Inspector Lunge believes 'Johan' to be nothing but an alternate personality of Kenzou Tenma.
This is revealed to be untrue, and the reasoning for his murders varies wildly. Often they are related to his immediate goals or the desire to eradicate and/or remove all traces of his existence from the world, to become a non-person, to protect his secret 'self'--but sometimes it was simply convenient, easy, or too much trouble to handle otherwise.
And sometimes it simply suited him to do so.
It is has been questioned whether or not he has true emotions; he certainly has no capacity for guilt, and there is no doubt that he possesses a nuance of maliciousness, but it is key that Johan's cruelty is rooted not in insensitivity, but indifference--or desire. His motivations are complex, and the driving sense of despair he manifests is characterised from a sense of loss, of being unwanted. His expression and experience are so empty that it appears as though he possesses, at most, very small fluctuations within a single band of neutrality and thought. It would still be incorrect to say that he does not express emotion--that he does not cry, or smile, or laugh. He does all of these things freely... but as an act. They are superficial displays and affectations rather than true emotional reactions. His true state, as it seems, is 'emptiness.'
In the end, however, the difference may be meaningless to all but himself. After all, Johan possesses extraordinary charisma, manipulative ability, insight, and intellect; whatever he feels is going to be as apparent to others as he wants it to be.
[CANON] Johan Liebert || Monster || No reserve || 1 of 2?
Name: Raile
Age: 25
Personal Journal: Railerat
E-mail: literatehyaena [at] yahoo [dot] com
AIM/MSN/etc: Railerat on Plurk and AIM
CHARACTER
Name: Johan Liebert
Canon: Monster
Age: 20
Timeline: After the burning of the library, when he disappears
If playing another character from the same canon, how will you deal with this? NOPE
Personality: At first, Johan seems like a polite, amicable, and a charming young man--not overly social and somewhat reserved, but easy to get along with; he's honest, hard working, and very smart. A gentle, caring person. This is all relatively true.
But far from the actual truth.
'Johan Liebert' is primarily intangible, infamously difficult to pin down in any single aspect.
As far as personalities go and are defined, Johan is both one of the most overwhelming and one of the most innocuous.
Johan is manipulative, cunning, deceitful... and dangerous. His stated goal as a child was to be the last one standing at the end of the world; despite this, he repeatedly invites Dr. Tenma, a man who saved his life, to pull the trigger and kill him. Possessed of a driving WORD (compulsion? motivation? sense of?) for destruction, he has a vision--a specific vision--of the end of the world. A cold, bleak wasteland, devoid of life...
He is compelled by fear and by death, and yet indifferent to them; the concept of the human being as monster is central to his canon, and Johan serves as the catalyst for this development in others--directly or indirectly, the 'Monster' in Johan feeds, inspires, or reflects the 'Monsters' in others around him. It is often intentional. Terrifyingly intelligent, Johan easily involves himself in concepts and 'worlds' (most notable the financial world)--the kind that most people spend their entire lives trying to master, or at least participate in--and masters them easily. His 'play' in such spheres is sometimes subtle, but always cruel--not to mention tremendous in scope. "Like a child disturbing a line of ants," according to more than one person. He treats people much the same way, but in his hands they become much more like tools, conveniences or contrivances in his plans--the pieces of his 'game' rather than the game in and of themselves.
Humans... can become anything. But death is the great equaliser. All humans are equal in death. And so humans themselves are simultaneously 'special' and nothing at all.
He is not, by technicality, a serial killer, but a mass-murderer; a serial killer must have killed at least four people and have a modus operandi--while Johan has killed far more than four people and certainly appears to have an initial pattern in victims, the final facts do not support this: the murders of several middle-aged couple (former foster parents of Johan all) were only the tip of a very large iceberg. He has systematically and indiscriminately killed dozens and dozens of people, either directly or indirectly--many of them were killed by a third party, either loyal to him or hired to do so, while others were simply driven to suicide... or just helped along. Of course, all third party killers were summarily executed by Johan himself. As a brilliant, sometimes nigh-whimsical artist of corruption and destruction, Johan is capable of devising flawless plans on a near-moment's notice, occasionally improvising new steps or twists as he thinks of them.
However, Johan lacks a cogent sense of self. He is a non-person, but at the same time, his 'self' is split into two people, as the Monster in A Nameless Monster splits in half, one half to go East, the other West. In a sense, he and Nina are two independent selves of a unifying identity, but because Johan himself is consumed by another concept of 'self'--or rather, the Monster--his self is always being consumed and consuming, in a constant, active state of erasure. Nina herself is a threat to his existence, just as much as she is essential to it, and so must be consumed or absorbed into him, just as Johan from A Nameless Monster consumes his original 'other half', the Monster who went West.
His sense of self is so elusive that he can easily "become" other people--people who do not exist, people who do exist, idealised concepts of people who could exist... this is most noticeable in the subtle alterations of his apparent 'self', but happens most momentuously when he takes his twin sister's memories for his own--or rather, subsumes them and then mistakes them for his own. He physically takes on her identity for a period of time (following the burning of the library), seamlessly adopting and shifting between into her personality and physical appearance and his own. This is an excellent illustration of his ambiguous and enigmatic relationship with his twin. He often refers to his sister as his "other self," and repeats various permutations of "you are me, and I am you," both to his sister and, once, to his mother's portrait (right before burning the entire mansion it is in), but Johan also frequently speaks of the meaninglessness of names, their unnecessary nature, and is periodically explained to be 'a person who does not exist.' Indeed, for the first half/two-thirds of Monster, Inspector Lunge believes 'Johan' to be nothing but an alternate personality of Kenzou Tenma.
This is revealed to be untrue, and the reasoning for his murders varies wildly. Often they are related to his immediate goals or the desire to eradicate and/or remove all traces of his existence from the world, to become a non-person, to protect his secret 'self'--but sometimes it was simply convenient, easy, or too much trouble to handle otherwise.
And sometimes it simply suited him to do so.
It is has been questioned whether or not he has true emotions; he certainly has no capacity for guilt, and there is no doubt that he possesses a nuance of maliciousness, but it is key that Johan's cruelty is rooted not in insensitivity, but indifference--or desire. His motivations are complex, and the driving sense of despair he manifests is characterised from a sense of loss, of being unwanted. His expression and experience are so empty that it appears as though he possesses, at most, very small fluctuations within a single band of neutrality and thought. It would still be incorrect to say that he does not express emotion--that he does not cry, or smile, or laugh. He does all of these things freely... but as an act. They are superficial displays and affectations rather than true emotional reactions. His true state, as it seems, is 'emptiness.'
In the end, however, the difference may be meaningless to all but himself. After all, Johan possesses extraordinary charisma, manipulative ability, insight, and intellect; whatever he feels is going to be as apparent to others as he wants it to be.
Most of the time.