[ooc] project_purity application
☣ Character
Character Name: Kazuhira Miller
Character Age: 27
Canon + Format: Metal Gear Solid (video game)
Background: wiki.
Canon Point: post-Peace Walker, after the final mission with Zeke.
[Optional] Previous RP History: Kaz has spent three and a half months in sirenspull, entering the game post-PW. When he first appeared in the city, he met Big Boss who had been there for nine months and living in a refurnished warehouse that was to become the new Outer Heaven. Kaz was taken by him to live there along with close to a dozen other people, some from the future and some from different worlds altogether, where he would work to help reestablish MSF in this strange new world. It was here he met Liquid Snake, his future killer, and ended up fighting with him, getting drunk with him, and then fighting with him some more before firmly establishing that Hey, This Guy Isn’t So Bad But He’s Still A Douche. He also met and grew close with Tsunayoshi Sawada, Triela, Shijima Kurookano and, shortly before Big Boss disappeared from the city, met the Boss in person. He and Big Boss also clashed a few times due to their feelings for one another beginning to take definite shape; after fighting like a pair of awkward kids, the two finally admitted to being in love.
Personality: Born into a world where war and all its facets--death, disease, loss--were nothing but simple day to day life for the people living in Yokosuka struggling to get by, Kaz was considered a child of war years before he even learned how to use a gun. Resourcefulness even of the underhanded variety was something he had to hold close to his heart and emotional bonds were few and far between. There was no childhood for him to speak of, and when you take those essential years away from a person, you force them to grow up. You force them to learn all the things a person twice their age must know to grow up in a harsh and unforgiving environment with no one to support them, nothing to depend on but their own willpower.
That’s the general impression you get when looking at the person Kaz has built himself into--a self-sufficient if not terribly ruthless person who will cling to survival with every last ounce of strength and then some--though that does not mean he is incapable of doing the things all young men at his age do and exhibiting behavior that is, in a word, immature. Whereas he’s capable of juggling a great many duties at once to make sure that Mother Base is running smoothly and its occupants are happy, he also somehow finds the time to scope out the dating scene and woo the few eligible women who live in the base. Whereas he’s worked as an efficient but highly demanding combat instructor known for his unforgiving, strict regiments, he hasn’t discarded his kindness nor his optimistic disposition that allows him to be an easily approachable person who still has it within him to throw a childish tantrum from time to time, but nothing that can’t be solved by a quick smack upside the head. He’s ambitious, but practical; extravagant, but still grounded in reality and the things he has to do to gain this success, not all of them honorable. He’s made questionable decisions, has forged alliances with the wrong people, and yet there’s no question that his heart is in the right place and these are the choices he believes will truly benefit not only himself, but those around him for the best.
It goes without saying that he’s a businessman through and through, and that this mindset was, like many things, instilled within him in the past. From living with his sick single mother whose only source of income to support them was through the tiny convenience store, to ending up managing it himself at the terribly young age of 10, to living in constant poverty for his entire early life, you have a better way of understanding why he places such a high priority on money and business when you need only look at the deplorable conditions of his early life in Japan. And even after he leaves the country a short time later and goes to live with the father who abandoned him and his mother, you can’t say that life completely improved for him, being the illegitimate son of an American soldier and a Japanese woman. Of course he was taken out of his poor living conditions and placed within a relatively safe, wealthy environment where he was able to receive a proper education and receive real citizenship (a luxury he couldn’t afford in Yokosuka), but it did little to relieve the guilt of leaving his ill mother alone in Japan, nor did it ease the stigma of living in post-war America as a Japanese-American citizen.
When both parents die within two years of the other, it could be said that the causes were due to his own bad decision-making; his father committing suicide due to depression caused from his son leaving him, and his mother eventually giving in to her disease, having long forgotten about Kaz due to mental deterioration. And yet, as far as we can tell, he doesn’t look back on it with open sadness; well-concealed regret and guilt, certainly, but he wouldn’t be where he is today if he didn’t keep looking to the future. He can be a very greedy person, even a selfish one, who always has business on his mind and who wouldn’t hesitate to hoard people like things, though looking at his childhood and the family he’s lost along the way, it’s not surprising. Anyone that offers him even a small amount of kindness is looked at fondly, treated like family, and for this reason it isn’t difficult to see why he makes friends easily.
Stubbornness has always been something of a trademark for Kaz, and he presents it in his intense obsession to prove himself a winner no matter what. He hates losing, hates sacrifice, and absolutely can’t stand it when someone bigger than him comes along and bests him. When we first hear of his and Big Boss’ meeting (and later witness it for ourselves in the Drama CD), we hear of how Kaz was at an utter loss, having been completely bested by Big Boss and his unit while his own was all but massacred, and began to slowly crack under the strain; rather than surrender to an enemy, he attempted to detonate a grenade underneath him and take Big Boss with him, putting on a despairing front in order to get the other man’s defenses down. When that failed and they both survived the encounter, Big Boss attempted to get Kaz to join his unit by appealing to the younger man’s competitive nature, challenging him to a series of pointless games. When Kaz found himself losing every test, he decided he’d rather play dirty again by setting a trap for Big Boss, and when that failed, he began to lose it again and chose to make a quick getaway rather than let himself be conscripted into joining the prototype of what would become MSF. In addition to his refusal to admit defeat, these events also reveal other traits -- namely, his ability to lie perfectly under duress, the sneaky and often deceitful things he will do in his own interest (and later on, in the interests of others), and his tendency to crack under pressure, growing anxious and impulsive and even self-destructive. He has been compared to a samurai and does indeed display many of their characteristics. If the death he faces is an honorable one and on his conditions, he will embrace it without question.
Still, he does know the importance of life and isn’t the kind of person who would throw it away needlessly. He values the lives of his soldiers-in-arms like family and wouldn’t send them off to die if it could be helped, regardless of his “needs of the many” way of thinking. True, he does go behind Big Boss’ back a number of times, keeping in close contact with Cipher and Zero directly, but it’s done with the intentions of MSF in mind -- ironic considering he would have rather died than join up with them two years ago. He doesn’t just look at the organization like a business -- it’s a home to him, the only home he knows of. Even then, he still has a conscience and knows that what he’s doing is wrong on some level, wrong enough to eventually come clean with Big Boss and explain his reasoning in earnest. As much as he’ll go kicking and screaming along the way, it can be said that he’s perfectly capable of admitting when he’s wrong.
While MSF’s creed has always been loyalty to one’s self instead of a country or government, it’s hard to tell where exactly Kaz’s own loyalties lie. Certainly not to Zero, who he views as a means to an end, and not entirely exclusively to himself, as much as he’d like to say that he only looks out for his own comfort and well-being. More accurate would be that, in Kaz’s world, his loyalties and honor extend chiefly around the people and beliefs he fights with; he isn’t going to die poor, yearning for acceptance or for a force that would use and abuse him for its own ends. He has a curious relationship with Big Boss to this end, the very man he would have killed himself to destroy and the same commander he goes against by lying to uphold his bargain with Zero. And in spite of it all--the lies, the fights, the earlier attempts made on his life--the two couldn’t be closer, fighting together like brothers-in-arms some days and fighting against each other like an old married couple other days. To say that it would be simple affection doesn’t come close to describing it; Big Boss has become a piece of his world, his best friend and the only person he’s come close to loving since the death of his parents. As another character notes that nothing can tear them apart, it’s also worth mentioning that this is the man he chooses to stay beside when all is said and done, not with Cipher.
Kaz isn’t a perfect person, but he is a good one. A young man full of sunshine and life, he harbors his own shortcomings and insecurities, though has been fortunate enough to have the right people in his life who have helped him progress past them. From the feisty and somewhat desperate person we see two years ago in Columbia to the passionate, steadfast, and confident subcommander who works side by side with Big Boss to provide a home and purpose to mercenaries like them, we witness a strong person become even stronger, a person who has gotten back up on his feet for each time he’s been knocked off of them.
Appearance: here & here.
Abilities: Kaz is, first and foremost, a formidable soldier with a charismatic edge that lends for a very gifted knack at public speaking. So personable is his attitude when dealing with subordinates that it’s been said his mere presence raises morale (in reality, this is a game mechanic; when adding Kaz to any staff on your base, his role as deputy commander keeps the rest of the staff in good spirits). On his own, he’s a respectable--though somewhat impulsive--commander, and although his leadership qualities are somewhat lacking due to his relatively young age and therefore his lack of true combat experience, he’s been shown to have no problem securing positions that enable him to take charge over groups of people who are far older than him. As an officer in the JSDF, his talent was so apparent that even Big Boss notes that he would have had no problem rising through the ranks if he had stayed; as a mercenary who found work in Columbia with a rebel group that opposed the government, he served as a combat instructor despite not having any prior experience on the battlefield. He’s a quick learner and a good teacher by most standards, independent enough to make his own decisions and run with them until the end. A subcommander whose own stern dedication compliments that of his partner’s, Big Boss, but also contrasts with it due to the lighthearted, easy going way he carries himself, making him someone any soldier can very easily get along with.
Combat is still something of a new area for him, evident in the rank his ingame stats list for his Combat Unit rank -- a solid B. He knows CQC (Close Quarters Combat) having been taught it by Big Boss, but has yet to reach the area of expertise that the older man has. He can and has utilized a number of firearms including rifles and handguns, explosives such as hand grenades, and has even on one occasion used a sword in the Drama CD to go up against Big Boss with, though his expertise with it can be presumed to be lacking given how Big Boss was able to dodge every blow from it with ease. Putting him on a pedestal against Big Boss wouldn’t even begin to compare to the other man’s skill (but then again, what does?), but Kaz is, in his own right, a skilled and dangerous fighter whose resourcefulness and sheer determination to prevail above all else has proven that he can be just as capable on the battlefield as men twice his age.
Intelligence work is where he really shines, but that’s to be expected given his nature. His ability to flawlessly lie under pressure makes him suitable for spy work, and he can maintain deceptive images as covers for long periods of time (though whether or not they’re very believable depends on who he’s trying to trick. after being fooled the first time, Big Boss was certainly able to see through his subservient guise when Kaz attempted to lay a trap for him on their first meeting). His stats also peg him as a superb, A-ranked cook, and it’s a definite certainty that he, at some point early on when Mother Base was shorthanded, worked with the mess hall staff to feed MSF’s growing population.
Intellectually, he has a lot going for him and can be considered as something like a prodigy. Other than his native tongue of Japanese, he can speak English fluently, learning the basics first as a child writing to his father in the United States and then being expected to master the rest in a very short period of time after moving to the country at the age of 10. Further hints lie in his stories of having to take college classes in his early teenage years, the curriculum implied to have something to do with sciences, biology and anatomy and botany, explaining why every bio for him in later canon goes to lengths to say he’s well-read. Considering his age and background, it’s an astounding feat in its own.
Items/Weapons: Kaz will be bringing his sunglasses, an M1911A1 handgun, and...a guitar. Yes, really.
☣ Samples
First Person Sample:
[good morning, Boston. the post that greets the Network today is an audio entry, and a busy one at that. even though the sound quality isn’t perfect, pops of static occasionally coming through, it’s clear enough for the listener to tell that there’s a great deal of activity going on here: voices, primarily those of women, can be heard laughing faintly, some far away as if in the distance. the loudest one is that of a young lady, a teenager, giggling something. “You make it sound so cute! What is it again?”
and then, a decidedly male voice:]
Japanese. Anata mo, totemo kawairashii oto. [more giggling. you can practically hear the man grinning.] I could teach you some phrases, if you’d like. Maybe over dinner? You guys seem pretty accommodating, but I think it’s safe to say you don’t serve things like curry or anything remotely like that for meals. [teasing, almost purring the words out:] Maybe we could, ah…find somewhere nice in the city?
[the girl says something indistinct, squeaking with happiness, and fleeting footsteps can be heard seconds later. the man chuckles lightly, relaxing in whatever cushions he’s sitting in. when he notices the CLD recording, he speaks again, brightly and cheerfully.]
This place has everything, doesn’t it? Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but beautiful women don’t usually wait on you when you go to church, right? N-not that I’m objecting or anything--different world, different culture--but wow...this city sure knows how to make an abductee feel welcome. Is the rest of the town like this, or did I luck out?
Third Person Sample: An incredibly heterosexual log.
Character Name: Kazuhira Miller
Character Age: 27
Canon + Format: Metal Gear Solid (video game)
Background: wiki.
Canon Point: post-Peace Walker, after the final mission with Zeke.
[Optional] Previous RP History: Kaz has spent three and a half months in sirenspull, entering the game post-PW. When he first appeared in the city, he met Big Boss who had been there for nine months and living in a refurnished warehouse that was to become the new Outer Heaven. Kaz was taken by him to live there along with close to a dozen other people, some from the future and some from different worlds altogether, where he would work to help reestablish MSF in this strange new world. It was here he met Liquid Snake, his future killer, and ended up fighting with him, getting drunk with him, and then fighting with him some more before firmly establishing that Hey, This Guy Isn’t So Bad But He’s Still A Douche. He also met and grew close with Tsunayoshi Sawada, Triela, Shijima Kurookano and, shortly before Big Boss disappeared from the city, met the Boss in person. He and Big Boss also clashed a few times due to their feelings for one another beginning to take definite shape; after fighting like a pair of awkward kids, the two finally admitted to being in love.
Personality: Born into a world where war and all its facets--death, disease, loss--were nothing but simple day to day life for the people living in Yokosuka struggling to get by, Kaz was considered a child of war years before he even learned how to use a gun. Resourcefulness even of the underhanded variety was something he had to hold close to his heart and emotional bonds were few and far between. There was no childhood for him to speak of, and when you take those essential years away from a person, you force them to grow up. You force them to learn all the things a person twice their age must know to grow up in a harsh and unforgiving environment with no one to support them, nothing to depend on but their own willpower.
That’s the general impression you get when looking at the person Kaz has built himself into--a self-sufficient if not terribly ruthless person who will cling to survival with every last ounce of strength and then some--though that does not mean he is incapable of doing the things all young men at his age do and exhibiting behavior that is, in a word, immature. Whereas he’s capable of juggling a great many duties at once to make sure that Mother Base is running smoothly and its occupants are happy, he also somehow finds the time to scope out the dating scene and woo the few eligible women who live in the base. Whereas he’s worked as an efficient but highly demanding combat instructor known for his unforgiving, strict regiments, he hasn’t discarded his kindness nor his optimistic disposition that allows him to be an easily approachable person who still has it within him to throw a childish tantrum from time to time, but nothing that can’t be solved by a quick smack upside the head. He’s ambitious, but practical; extravagant, but still grounded in reality and the things he has to do to gain this success, not all of them honorable. He’s made questionable decisions, has forged alliances with the wrong people, and yet there’s no question that his heart is in the right place and these are the choices he believes will truly benefit not only himself, but those around him for the best.
It goes without saying that he’s a businessman through and through, and that this mindset was, like many things, instilled within him in the past. From living with his sick single mother whose only source of income to support them was through the tiny convenience store, to ending up managing it himself at the terribly young age of 10, to living in constant poverty for his entire early life, you have a better way of understanding why he places such a high priority on money and business when you need only look at the deplorable conditions of his early life in Japan. And even after he leaves the country a short time later and goes to live with the father who abandoned him and his mother, you can’t say that life completely improved for him, being the illegitimate son of an American soldier and a Japanese woman. Of course he was taken out of his poor living conditions and placed within a relatively safe, wealthy environment where he was able to receive a proper education and receive real citizenship (a luxury he couldn’t afford in Yokosuka), but it did little to relieve the guilt of leaving his ill mother alone in Japan, nor did it ease the stigma of living in post-war America as a Japanese-American citizen.
When both parents die within two years of the other, it could be said that the causes were due to his own bad decision-making; his father committing suicide due to depression caused from his son leaving him, and his mother eventually giving in to her disease, having long forgotten about Kaz due to mental deterioration. And yet, as far as we can tell, he doesn’t look back on it with open sadness; well-concealed regret and guilt, certainly, but he wouldn’t be where he is today if he didn’t keep looking to the future. He can be a very greedy person, even a selfish one, who always has business on his mind and who wouldn’t hesitate to hoard people like things, though looking at his childhood and the family he’s lost along the way, it’s not surprising. Anyone that offers him even a small amount of kindness is looked at fondly, treated like family, and for this reason it isn’t difficult to see why he makes friends easily.
Stubbornness has always been something of a trademark for Kaz, and he presents it in his intense obsession to prove himself a winner no matter what. He hates losing, hates sacrifice, and absolutely can’t stand it when someone bigger than him comes along and bests him. When we first hear of his and Big Boss’ meeting (and later witness it for ourselves in the Drama CD), we hear of how Kaz was at an utter loss, having been completely bested by Big Boss and his unit while his own was all but massacred, and began to slowly crack under the strain; rather than surrender to an enemy, he attempted to detonate a grenade underneath him and take Big Boss with him, putting on a despairing front in order to get the other man’s defenses down. When that failed and they both survived the encounter, Big Boss attempted to get Kaz to join his unit by appealing to the younger man’s competitive nature, challenging him to a series of pointless games. When Kaz found himself losing every test, he decided he’d rather play dirty again by setting a trap for Big Boss, and when that failed, he began to lose it again and chose to make a quick getaway rather than let himself be conscripted into joining the prototype of what would become MSF. In addition to his refusal to admit defeat, these events also reveal other traits -- namely, his ability to lie perfectly under duress, the sneaky and often deceitful things he will do in his own interest (and later on, in the interests of others), and his tendency to crack under pressure, growing anxious and impulsive and even self-destructive. He has been compared to a samurai and does indeed display many of their characteristics. If the death he faces is an honorable one and on his conditions, he will embrace it without question.
Still, he does know the importance of life and isn’t the kind of person who would throw it away needlessly. He values the lives of his soldiers-in-arms like family and wouldn’t send them off to die if it could be helped, regardless of his “needs of the many” way of thinking. True, he does go behind Big Boss’ back a number of times, keeping in close contact with Cipher and Zero directly, but it’s done with the intentions of MSF in mind -- ironic considering he would have rather died than join up with them two years ago. He doesn’t just look at the organization like a business -- it’s a home to him, the only home he knows of. Even then, he still has a conscience and knows that what he’s doing is wrong on some level, wrong enough to eventually come clean with Big Boss and explain his reasoning in earnest. As much as he’ll go kicking and screaming along the way, it can be said that he’s perfectly capable of admitting when he’s wrong.
While MSF’s creed has always been loyalty to one’s self instead of a country or government, it’s hard to tell where exactly Kaz’s own loyalties lie. Certainly not to Zero, who he views as a means to an end, and not entirely exclusively to himself, as much as he’d like to say that he only looks out for his own comfort and well-being. More accurate would be that, in Kaz’s world, his loyalties and honor extend chiefly around the people and beliefs he fights with; he isn’t going to die poor, yearning for acceptance or for a force that would use and abuse him for its own ends. He has a curious relationship with Big Boss to this end, the very man he would have killed himself to destroy and the same commander he goes against by lying to uphold his bargain with Zero. And in spite of it all--the lies, the fights, the earlier attempts made on his life--the two couldn’t be closer, fighting together like brothers-in-arms some days and fighting against each other like an old married couple other days. To say that it would be simple affection doesn’t come close to describing it; Big Boss has become a piece of his world, his best friend and the only person he’s come close to loving since the death of his parents. As another character notes that nothing can tear them apart, it’s also worth mentioning that this is the man he chooses to stay beside when all is said and done, not with Cipher.
Kaz isn’t a perfect person, but he is a good one. A young man full of sunshine and life, he harbors his own shortcomings and insecurities, though has been fortunate enough to have the right people in his life who have helped him progress past them. From the feisty and somewhat desperate person we see two years ago in Columbia to the passionate, steadfast, and confident subcommander who works side by side with Big Boss to provide a home and purpose to mercenaries like them, we witness a strong person become even stronger, a person who has gotten back up on his feet for each time he’s been knocked off of them.
Appearance: here & here.
Abilities: Kaz is, first and foremost, a formidable soldier with a charismatic edge that lends for a very gifted knack at public speaking. So personable is his attitude when dealing with subordinates that it’s been said his mere presence raises morale (in reality, this is a game mechanic; when adding Kaz to any staff on your base, his role as deputy commander keeps the rest of the staff in good spirits). On his own, he’s a respectable--though somewhat impulsive--commander, and although his leadership qualities are somewhat lacking due to his relatively young age and therefore his lack of true combat experience, he’s been shown to have no problem securing positions that enable him to take charge over groups of people who are far older than him. As an officer in the JSDF, his talent was so apparent that even Big Boss notes that he would have had no problem rising through the ranks if he had stayed; as a mercenary who found work in Columbia with a rebel group that opposed the government, he served as a combat instructor despite not having any prior experience on the battlefield. He’s a quick learner and a good teacher by most standards, independent enough to make his own decisions and run with them until the end. A subcommander whose own stern dedication compliments that of his partner’s, Big Boss, but also contrasts with it due to the lighthearted, easy going way he carries himself, making him someone any soldier can very easily get along with.
Combat is still something of a new area for him, evident in the rank his ingame stats list for his Combat Unit rank -- a solid B. He knows CQC (Close Quarters Combat) having been taught it by Big Boss, but has yet to reach the area of expertise that the older man has. He can and has utilized a number of firearms including rifles and handguns, explosives such as hand grenades, and has even on one occasion used a sword in the Drama CD to go up against Big Boss with, though his expertise with it can be presumed to be lacking given how Big Boss was able to dodge every blow from it with ease. Putting him on a pedestal against Big Boss wouldn’t even begin to compare to the other man’s skill (but then again, what does?), but Kaz is, in his own right, a skilled and dangerous fighter whose resourcefulness and sheer determination to prevail above all else has proven that he can be just as capable on the battlefield as men twice his age.
Intelligence work is where he really shines, but that’s to be expected given his nature. His ability to flawlessly lie under pressure makes him suitable for spy work, and he can maintain deceptive images as covers for long periods of time (though whether or not they’re very believable depends on who he’s trying to trick. after being fooled the first time, Big Boss was certainly able to see through his subservient guise when Kaz attempted to lay a trap for him on their first meeting). His stats also peg him as a superb, A-ranked cook, and it’s a definite certainty that he, at some point early on when Mother Base was shorthanded, worked with the mess hall staff to feed MSF’s growing population.
Intellectually, he has a lot going for him and can be considered as something like a prodigy. Other than his native tongue of Japanese, he can speak English fluently, learning the basics first as a child writing to his father in the United States and then being expected to master the rest in a very short period of time after moving to the country at the age of 10. Further hints lie in his stories of having to take college classes in his early teenage years, the curriculum implied to have something to do with sciences, biology and anatomy and botany, explaining why every bio for him in later canon goes to lengths to say he’s well-read. Considering his age and background, it’s an astounding feat in its own.
Items/Weapons: Kaz will be bringing his sunglasses, an M1911A1 handgun, and...a guitar. Yes, really.
☣ Samples
First Person Sample:
[good morning, Boston. the post that greets the Network today is an audio entry, and a busy one at that. even though the sound quality isn’t perfect, pops of static occasionally coming through, it’s clear enough for the listener to tell that there’s a great deal of activity going on here: voices, primarily those of women, can be heard laughing faintly, some far away as if in the distance. the loudest one is that of a young lady, a teenager, giggling something. “You make it sound so cute! What is it again?”
and then, a decidedly male voice:]
Japanese. Anata mo, totemo kawairashii oto. [more giggling. you can practically hear the man grinning.] I could teach you some phrases, if you’d like. Maybe over dinner? You guys seem pretty accommodating, but I think it’s safe to say you don’t serve things like curry or anything remotely like that for meals. [teasing, almost purring the words out:] Maybe we could, ah…find somewhere nice in the city?
[the girl says something indistinct, squeaking with happiness, and fleeting footsteps can be heard seconds later. the man chuckles lightly, relaxing in whatever cushions he’s sitting in. when he notices the CLD recording, he speaks again, brightly and cheerfully.]
This place has everything, doesn’t it? Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but beautiful women don’t usually wait on you when you go to church, right? N-not that I’m objecting or anything--different world, different culture--but wow...this city sure knows how to make an abductee feel welcome. Is the rest of the town like this, or did I luck out?
Third Person Sample: An incredibly heterosexual log.