Info

[axecop]

OOC:

Player Name: GG
Contact: DM journal, theggnator

IC:

Name: Joseph Oda
Canon: The Evil Within
Canon Point: Post-game
Age: 33

Appearance: Japanese (Canadian-born 2nd gen immigrant), 5'9", slender but solid athletic build, dark brown eyes and black hair. He is never willingly without his trademark glasses, and while working never without his black leather gloves. If he has any control over the matter he is usually well-dressed with his hair and clothing neatly styled and professional.

Voice: Yuri Lowenthal (also Joseph's natural state of existence: being wounded and tormented)

Spoken language(s): English, some French, very little Japanese

CONTENT WARNING: The canon information below contains dark themes such as graphic violence, child death, mental illness, alcoholism, and suicide.


Personality: A homicide detective with the Krimson City Police Department, Joseph is a consummate professional. A man of words and intellect, he is well-spoken, polite, and gentle, with a dry wit that slips out on occasion. He does his best to remain calm and pleasant even when dealing with unreasonable people, and it takes a truly inhuman amount of frustration before his patience wears thin.

A severe perfectionist, Joseph is careful and by-the-book, following rules to the letter in the course of his job. He could generously be called "uptight," though he isn’t completely inflexible-- he is fruitfully partnered up with notorious loose-cannon Sebastian for nearly a decade, though frequently finds himself wrangling his brash partner back in line. At the same time, bold and impulsive personalities like Sebastian's keep Joseph from getting too clinical, too fussy, or too worried about the rules to get the job done.

Joseph is a skilled investigator, meticulous and organized. He is very observant, frequently taking notes in his notebook and catching details that others may miss. Even more than his fellow detectives, Joseph pieces together disjointed clues in a canon where "reality" is constantly shifting and frequently nonsensical.

He may be the bookish type, but that's not to say that Joseph is passive, weak, delicate, or incapable of taking care of himself. He's an excellent shot, skilled with a variety of firearms, and in one memorable sequence runs around brutally splattering enemies' heads with a fire axe. Violence is a tool in his arsenal, but one that he only wields as a last resort.

He takes his vow to serve and protect very seriously and he has little tolerance for people who flout the law, who willfully misbehave, or who harm others with their own selfishness. He also will never hesitate to stand up for a person in need. Joseph believes that a police officer's badge is a privilege and comes with an obligation to be an example to others.

As forgiving and patient as he is with other people, he is doubly hard on himself, taking his flaws and failures to heart and blaming himself for things he would never blame on someone else. He has a hard time forgiving himself for even honest mistakes and gets unfairly upset with himself for being a burden to others, even when the situation is completely out of his control. He values his competence and effectiveness over all of his other personal traits, as though he is only worthwhile when he is useful. At the same time, he takes it upon himself to solve problems that are entirely too big for him to tackle, such as his partner's alcoholism. It is at times like this when his patience slips and he can be uncharacteristically reckless, desperate to prove that he can handle everything he takes on and desperate not to let anyone down.

During his tenure in the STEM system, Joseph is targeted by the game's antagonist, Ruvik, who tortures people with their fears and neuroses. We don't know what Joseph experiences while away from Sebastian, but he clearly suffers the worst symptoms out of the three protagonists. STEM reveals dark feelings that Joseph carefully represses-- frustration, anxiety, despair, and a perceived lack of control over his life. His perfectionism causes him no shortage of emotional distress, and he suffers from suicidal depression. Ruvik roots out these weaknesses and torments Joseph with them, nearly turning him Haunted on several occasions.

Joseph is terrified of hurting his partners and discouraged at his perceived liability to them. At one point, he is so frightened of hurting Sebastian that he puts a gun to his head (the DLCs reveal this was only one of at least four suicide attempts he made within the STEM system- all unsuccessful.) Though Joseph is able to fight off these urges as the game progresses, they are clearly traumatic for him, and he is likely still deeply scarred by them as well as the other nightmares he experienced inside STEM.


Abilities/Skills:
- Police Detective: A talented homicide detective, Joseph is highly intelligent and organized with sharp deductive skills. He's more observant than the average person.
- Lockpicking/Bomb Disposal: Joseph is shown to be skilled at picking even complicated locks and dismantles complex explosive devices without breaking a sweat. This seems to be a unique skill of his, perhaps suggesting previous experience on a bomb squad or other specialized training.
- Combat: Joseph is physically fit and comfortable with using multiple types of firearms. He's also shown to be capable with improvised weapons (fire axe, molotov cocktails.) He uses violence only as a last resort, but doesn't flinch if the need arises.


History:

Joseph Oda became a detective in the Krimson City Police Department ten years ago, partnered up with notorious wildcard Detective Sebastian Castellanos. It was not expected that the buttoned-up, by-the-book Joseph would last long with the loose-cannon Sebastian, but the two proved an excellent team. Joseph and Sebastian were famous within the department for cracking even the most difficult homicide cases, and their partnership developed into a close, trusting friendship as well.

In February 2012, a house fire claimed the life of Sebastian's daughter Lily, and his marriage to fellow detective Myra crumbled in the ashes. In late August, Myra disappeared under suspicious circumstances. A grieving and alcoholic Sebastian sank into paranoid mania, developing wild conspiracy theories about what happened to his family and pushing the limits of his badge.

All the while, Joseph did everything he could to support his partner, but couldn't pull Sebastian out of his spiral no matter what he tried. Desperate to save his best friend but unable to reach him any other way, Joseph filed an Internal Affairs report on Sebastian. It was not the wakeup call Joseph hoped it would be. Sebastian had been careful to keep his drinking from impacting his work, and the investigation cleared him to return to the force without incident. All the report did was strike a tremendous rift in Joseph and Sebastian's friendship, though they continued on as partners in a professional respect. Both carried deeply complicated feelings about the situation, and neither were good at expressing those feelings or knowing how to mend the rift.

Meanwhile, Sebastian's wild theories were all totally correct, all involving the dark dealings of a mysterious group named Mobius-- who among other plots, had infiltrated the police department and had eyes and ears everywhere.

One day, while responding to an incident at Beacon Mental Hospital with their junior partner, Juli Kidman, Joseph and Sebastian hear an ear-splitting high-pitched noise. From this point on, they have been remotely drawn into "STEM"--a machine constructed at the hospital by Mobius. By connecting people’s minds together, it creates a false reality that can be molded and shaped by those within it. For much of the game, the protagonists don’t realize that the world they see is nothing more than a patchwork Inception-like “dream” that happens to take place within the mind of a sadistic serial killer.

The detectives arrive to find a massacre inside the hospital, and they are quickly attacked by a burn-scarred figure in a tattered hood-- Ruben Victoriano, AKA "Ruvik," the betrayed creator of the STEM system and aforementioned serial killer. The world of STEM is created from the memories of the people plugged into it, but only the host can consciously influence the environment. With Ruvik as the host, STEM is a nightmarish hellscape, a gruesome playground that he can change however he likes. He gleefully tortures the other minds trapped within by preying on their fears and insecurities. Those who he manages to break completely become the Haunted: deformed zombie-like creatures that Ruvik can then mold into even more grotesque monsters as he sees fit.

Initially, Sebastian is alone as he struggles through Ruvik's twisted world, but he finds Joseph unconscious a few chapters in. As Joseph awakens he complains of feeling ill and suffers a splitting headache. Then he abruptly transforms into a Haunted and tries to strangle Sebastian. Sebastian fights him off, and Joseph is able to recover himself with some effort. Later, he turns again and attacks Kidman; she is made to "kill" him, and he wakes up a short while later, unharmed, with nothing but an uneasy feeling that he lost control again. Though he and Sebastian fear that Joseph may turn permanently at any moment, they soldier on together because that's what partners do.

In addition to the murderer and the monsters out to kill them, Joseph is continually tormented by intrusive thoughts and the urge to succumb to the evil influence. Fighting back gives him nosebleeds and causes him to cough blood. Eventually, he's so frightened of turning that he steals Sebastian's gun and attempts suicide. Sebastian is quick to disarm him and tells him off, but it's apparent that Joseph's condition is worsening by the moment. Ruvik soon appears in person and tries directly forcing Joseph to transform-- Sebastian stops this by injecting a syringe (healing item) into Joseph's spine, causing him to pass out from the shock.

When Joseph awakens this time he is alone, but much more mentally stable-- somehow protected by Sebastian's intervention. Reuniting with Sebastian, the two detectives discover that Kidman is a mole working for Mobius, and is after Leslie, an innocent patient with an unusually strong connection to Ruvik. When Kidman attempts to kill Leslie, Joseph leaps in between them and takes a bullet in the chest. He falls to the ground wounded just as Sebastian plummets through another crack in reality.

Joseph survived this injury, though his body was removed from the STEM machine by Mobius agents a few moments before Sebastian awakens. Though his current whereabouts are unknown, he is confirmed to be alive.

(Though I guess nobody who wrote TEW2 bothered to mention WHERE he is or WHAT he's been doing or any of that, just that he's alive and they'll tell us "later" so that's one way to deal with a major character in your horror game sequel, just GREAT actually THANKS I HATE IT)


Inventory:
- Clothes from home
- His gun, a Colt M1911A1 semi-automatic .45 handgun, and 2 clips of ammo