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[suppressings]

Player: Sarah
Age: 27
Contact: PM this journal OR ribcageblooms
Current Characters: NA

Character: Nobuchika Ginoza
Canon: Psycho-Pass | Season 3, Episode 2 - more specifically after Gino has transferred from the Ministry of Welfare's Public Safety Bureau to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs's Suppressing Actions Department
Age: 36


Background Information: Gino on the Psycho-Pass wiki | Background/setting of Psycho-Pass

Personality:

"It’s kind of pathetic but…I only learned to value my own life when I lost almost everything from it."

Gino is a complicated character, full of nuances and contradictions. More importantly, Gino is a study of what happens when someone breaks instead of bends under pressure, and has to slowly rebuild himself after said breaking.

In all fairness to Gino, he's suffered a lot in his life, due to the nature of the world that he's lived in. The Sibyl System and the use of Psycho-Passes came into effect in Japan when he was a child, and his family was one of the early casualties of the system. His father, Masaoka, then a detective, was labeled a latent criminal for having too high of a crime coefficient, and for someone who used to have an unwavering faith in the Sybil System's "decrees", having a latent criminal for a father was beyond embarrassing - almost downright taboo, even, as if his father's inherent criminality ran through his veins like a toxin, liable to taint Gino's own Psycho-Pass. Gino grew up a shy, insecure child that took the apparent betrayal of his father hard - constantly berated and bullied by his classmates for having a latent criminal for a father, shaping his world view that latent criminals are sub-human, more like hunting dogs than anything else.

It's the first of many betrayals that happen to Gino, the start of his slow spiral that culminates in his breaking. And the string of betrayals, one after the other - first his father becoming a latent criminal and then an Enforcer, his mother dying of what is implied to be grief and the lack of a will to live, Kogami's demotion to an Enforcer--

Because at his core, Gino is someone who is deeply, painfully sensitive - someone who cares way too much about the well-being of his friends and family first and foremost. A large part of his motivation in entering the Public Safety Bureau is to try and reconnect with his estranged father, and in the Sinners of the System movies it's implied that Gino pays for the best medical care that he can afford for his dying mother. He worries constantly about Akane's Hue when they work together at the Bureau, showing concern for her well-being when she undergoes a Memory Scoop and ends up reliving a traumatic event, to the extent of stopping the Memory Scoop when Akane shows signs of distress. Despite the estrangement in their relationship after Kogami is demoted to an Enforcer, he still shows respect for Kogami's detective skills and the conclusions that he presents during investigations, apologising for doubting Makishima's existence when new evidence surfaces, and hesitating to shoot Kogami with a hacked Dominator even when ordered to by his boss.

Caring too much wears Gino thin - failure and betrayal is always personal. Low self-esteem and self-loathing are Gino's greatest weaknesses - Gino treats his own failure to prevent some of these things from happening, such as Kogami's demotion when he was too caught up in the hunt for Makishima - as direct evidence of his own shortcomings, the reason why he's not good enough for people to stay. So Gino hardens himself, covers his fragile, bleeding heart with steel, acting outwardly cold and professional and keeping his distance from people, not letting anyone come too close to him for fear of potentially losing them again. Everyone he loves leaves him anyway, so what's the point? It's better not to love at all to spare himself the inevitable pain that comes.

And then Masaoka dies shielding him from a dynamite blast instead of following Gino's orders, and Kogami goes on the run - in one fell swoop, Gino loses both his father and his best friend.

That's the breaking point for Gino - his own Psycho-Pass, which was already starting to cloud, spikes beyond an acceptable range, and he himself is branded as a latent criminal, demoted to an Enforcer - making the same mistakes that his father did; despite his efforts in not repeating the sins of his father. It's ironic, in a way, that despite all his efforts in making sure that Akane does not follow the path that Kogami and Masaoka took, it's himself that is fallible.

But one of Gino's greatest strengths is his ability to pick himself back up again despite being shattered to pieces. Ultimately, Gino is his own worst critic, extremely self-reflective and cognisant of his own flaws - his inadequacy, his inferiority complex, and his laser-guided single-minded focus. While he was previously content to wallow and play the victim, he's changed - he checks out of rehab only after two months, just so that he can return to the Public Safety Bureau as an Enforcer and make a difference - and as dystopian as Japan is, it takes a special kind of person to throw himself into the fray to preserve that peace. He's not someone who can just sit idly by when the world needs his help.

Time heals most wounds, and the adage is true for Gino - he has learned to forgive himself and has come to terms with who he really is, after years of denying himself, and it's something that he continues to learn each and every day, even if it took tears and blood and loss for him to get to this point. We see this in the fact that Gino doesn't wear glasses anymore, when he had originally started wearing them to conceal how similar his eyes looked to Masaoka's. It shows, when Gino visits Masaoka's grave and admits that he thinks himself of a terrible son, never realising how much he craved for Masaoka's acceptance and approval until his father was taken away violently from him. Gino has finally accepted that he is his father's son, for better or for worse - leaning into their shared traits: their stubbornness to a fault, their strong sense of justice, loyalty to those who have earned their trust and most importantly, that they are both married to their work.

Where Gino was formerly outwardly cold and rigid to the point where he came across as kind of a callous, self-righteous asshole who was a stickler for the rules, now even with his cool and confident exterior, he smiles more, comes off as a little bit more relaxed to the point of cracking jokes and teasing Shimotsuki when he knows that it will get her riled up - he knows which rules should be bent and which lines should be toed instead of staying within the confines of the boxes that have been laid out for him, and he's been forced to open up and realise that Sibyl's decrees aren't always correct, that his superiors aren't constantly trustworthy. Gino's steel facade has cracked, but that just means that he can stitch himself back together and make himself better.

Abilities & Inventory:

No supernatural abilities to speak of - Gino is a human in peak physical health. As part of his training as an Enforcer, he's been trained in combat, particularly in judo, karate and kendo, and is very skilled at handling firearms (both smaller weapons and larger, long-distance rifles while acting as a sniper). He is definitely more than capable of holding his own against heavily augmented cyborg mercenaries in hand-to-hand combat.

After losing his left arm in a dynamite explosion, he has a metal prosthetic fitted that functions just like a regular arm would - correspondingly, it's slightly heavier and and stronger than a flesh-and-bone arm.

Gino is also a capable detective and investigator who is suited for undercover and infiltration work, smart and cunning and capable of quick thinking and acting under pressure. He's very intelligent, having graduated second in his class and being a lawyer by training. He also holds dog therapist and garden design licenses.

Inventory: A fully loaded handgun + a box of bullets, a standard issue Wristlink communicator and his beautiful pet husky Dime

Suitability & Plans: So! Two things. First is that Gino is quite frankly a basket case of tumultuous emotions in a snazzy trench coat, and he kind of has a tendency to keep his issues to himself and not confront any of his problems. Second is that the world of Psycho-Pass is... kind of a mess, and that's putting it lightly, especially when Gino is kind of being treated like a criminal at every turn - it's implied that it's not as bad as it could be when he's part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs rather than the Public Safety Bureau, but there is that stigma and the fact that Gino is very well aware that he is pretty much a second class citizen.

My goal is really to take Gino out of that environment to see how he can flourish as a character without the confines of his canon, and also because the whole concept of affecting his environment through his dreams and thoughts and coming to terms with his identity and his Complicated Feelings, since moving on is a process that is pretty much ongoing and not just static. His self-loathing hasn't just disappeared overnight, unfortunately. Sharing his trauma and/or some of his tragic backstory (because hoo boy, was Gino the plot punching bag in Psycho-Pass) during some of the nightmare mechanics will also help him to move on and look forward instead of looking backwards.

Gino is someone who is proactive and kind of gets shit done (it's implied that's why Frederica poached him for her team in Foreign Affairs), and he's used to being in the thick of danger, so I think he'll do just fine in events. He's also friendly and civil enough that he would probably make a bunch of connections without any real problems, and really, I just want to give Gino the semblance of a normal life or what could have been without the threat of execution by gas chamber hanging over his head once he's outlived his usefulness as a latent criminal - some of the softer aspects of the game will probably help with that!

Test Drive Sample: Sample

Questions: i'm good, thank you!