Application . Ruby City

[routinequestioning]

PLAYER
Name: JenniO
Age: Old Enough To Know Better, Young Enough Not To Give a Damn
Personal Journal: armistice_day
E-mail: jgorudjevATgmail.com
AIM/MSN/etc: nineteendegreesATplurk

CHARACTER
Name: Ryotaro Dojima
Canon: Persona 4
Age: 42
Timeline: Post-canon

Personality: I’ll be exploring Dojima’s personality through use of his canon archetype, “The Hierophant” - a figure from the Tarot representing, quite literally, “things as they are”. The Hierophant has one foot in the world of the Senses, the other in the world of Meaning— Dojima inhabits this space between the Self and the Other, possessing knowledge of and isight into the structure of the World. Well, until he doesn’t.

By nature, Dojima is a perceptive, intuitive man— good qualities in a Detective. He’s a creature of reliable, regular habits - good qualities in a Father. He’s figure of influence, leading others without a lot of obvious effort— a “good guy”.
But life can sucker-punch the best of us, and when it hits Dojima below the belt, it hits hard, shifting him off his footing, destabilizing him. He develops blind spots in regard to his own behavior and (in one particular case, that of his junior partner, Tohru Adachi) the behavior of others. With the balancing figure of his wife gone, his regular habits are compromised, his reliability as a Father suffers. He draws inward,his influence shrinking, obsessed with satisfying a double need for escape and vengeance.
Dojima’s story in (my chosen iteration of) canon is one of a man weathering crisis and emerging from it. He emerges not the same man as he was before in-game events or even before his wife’s death, but a new and better man— or, at the very least one with cleared vision.

Among Dojima’s dislikes and fears, we find those things most opposed to the archetype of the Hierophant. First, confusion and loss, contraventions of what the orderly mind considers the natural order. The de-centering of Dojima’s family unit is likely something he didn’t fear until it happened, but it is such a widely destructive event precisely because it is a thing unimaginable to a man who no-doubt felt he had done everything possible to keep his family safe.
Obviously, excuses don’t go down well with the Detective. One can’t accept from others what one doesn’t accept from one’s self. He’s not an easy man to work with or for, demanding and exacting— but when he does cut Adachi slack, it comes at his own impetus, not when it’s pleaded for.
Perhaps most centrally, while he is of a natural disposition to help the weak and powerless, weakness in himself is harder for Dojima to bear. Confronted by his perceived shortfalls as a husband/protector and father, he drinks his the noise of his problems down to an acceptable level - or escapes into his work, solving problems that can be crossed out on a board or documented in a form proving sadly more simple than being fully present for his daughter.

The Hierophant is a strong figure, a guardian who protects and instructs, who aids the community by serving as a point of stability, an indication to others the ways in which the world works— or doesn’t.
We see in Dojima a physically powerful man— yet one who is no longer young, and who drink and smokes too much for his daughter’s comfort (or even his own). A man who is driven in the pursuit of justice, but whose pace is (before game resolution) is driven out of sync by his obsession with finding his wife’s killer.

Dojima is all too aware of his age, and feels it— but as much as he jokes about it, he finds it a firm place to stand. He relates well to Youth (in the case of his Nephew and his assorted pals), but definitely from a fatherly perspective, with an eye to knowing better.
Dojima is all too aware of his loneliness. He’s selfish in his grief, unable to fully move forward with his life in any meaningful way— until crisis comes along and shifts him. In spite of this, he forms attachments with Souji and with Adachi. His relationship with his nephew is easy to understand. His relationship with Adachi may be more difficult to fully grasp, but then, being who he is, it’s probable that Dojima sees things others (and even Adachi himself) have missed about his junior partner.
Dojima is all too aware that he’s a crap Father. He knows that his daughter needs him, but he folds her need for him into his own need to somehow avenge or explain his wife’s death. In the end, through the unfolding of canon events, Dojima is confronted by the specter of loss once more and comes to realize that while the order of his family may be broken, it isn’t lost, and though it will never be the same, it can be a whole. In the end, he turns outward to aid his child, realizing that escape into his work isn’t the answer to easing the pain of loss.

Dojima is a classic figure in his way, a good man struggling against his baser desires— for vengeance, for self-indulgence, for wrath. He is by nature a big-picture thinker, yet one with an eye for fine detail— the good-guy detective with feet of clay. He’s paternalistic and temperamental, yet earnest and generous. At close of canon, we see him turning a corner, shedding the errors and the heavy load he’s been shouldering. Learning to walk again will presents it’s own set of challenges, but he’ll no doubt do so on his own terms, as the Hierophant is meant to do.


Background: http://megamitensei.wikia.com/wiki/Ryotaro_Dojima

Abilities: Handgun/sidearm proficiency. Good in a fistfight and quick on his feet for a Detective— or an old man. Well-honed instincts (with certain notable lapses), a talent for deductive reasoning, and an eye for detail due to years as a Detective Inspector. Can hold his liquor remarkably well.

Network/Actionspam Sample: http://trashpalace.dreamwidth.org/1396.html

Prose Log Sample:
Some days, Nanako will make him a sort of junior bento. There are carrot slices with smiles cut into them, a folded omelet. Cucumber sticks that form a tiny house. Puffy clouds of rice. He eats it all without really tasting it, then orders a sandwich, or maybe just has another cup of coffee and has someone grab him something later.
A cop’s life is full of sandwiches. Hot or cold, greasy or relatively healthy— the quickest way to fit a meal in. They come in foil wrappers and waxed paper and those white styrofoam containers that are technically forbidden by the Department due to environmental guidelines. Dojima glances down at his desktop, imagines them all passing, like a parade. A parade of days. A calendar of lunches eaten at his desk. Dinners, too, some days. Now, more than before.

Today, there’s no bento. No smiling carrots, no little nori-bear lumbering up an omelet hill towards his cucumber house. Today Dojima sits at his desk and checks over Adachi’s reports while he waits for his sandwich. He wonders if it had been stupid to say “surprise me”, when Adachi had asked what he wanted. Asked in that long-suffering way of his, like he hadn’t really wanted to go to June’s.

He's seen how Adachi eats. Like a starving man. Not the kind of man who would appreciate smiley faces carved into his food. That's the privilege of fatherhood.

Whatever it is, Dojima thinks, it had better not have any goddamn sprouts on it.