cereal

Applicant Info

◎ Name: Alison
◎ Journal: sparkle
◎ Contact: PM
◎ Current Character(s): N/A

Character Info

◎ Character's Name: Levi
◎ Character's Canon: Attack on Titan (manga)
◎ Character's Age: Unknown
◎ Canon Point: End of chapter 69
◎ Background/History: Wikia
◎ Is the character a hacker and/or do they have a sixth-sense? Not even close.

◎ Personality:

There are a number of things one could assume about a person with the lofty title of "humanity's strongest." Levi is basically none of them.

From the beginning, it's easy to see he's not your typical "hero" character. First, there's the immediately obvious: he's small. He looks disgruntled and sleep-deprived almost all the time. It took almost 70 chapters before we finally saw him crack a smile. He has a difficult personality as well: he speaks brusquely and often makes rude remarks—he curses frequently and tends to use informal/disrespectful speech. However, it's quite a bit easier to understand his personality when you learn where he came from. He lived most of his life in what is essentially a giant garbage can. Born to an impoverished prostitute who loved him but fell ill and died and then "raised" for a time by her brother (a sociopath, of course), Levi's childhood was spent either starving or being schooled on how to survive (read: knife people) in their bleak environment by his murderous uncle. The chances that he would emerge from such a pitifully unfortunate backstory as a normal, upstanding individual are pretty low.

Perhaps due to growing up in an underground slum, he's very neurotic when it comes to cleanliness: he's the very definition of a neat-freak. In fact, this is one of the first things we learn about him when he is introduced: after dispatching a titan or two, Levi notices he has blood on his hand and blade and immediately stops to wipe it off with a handkerchief, despite the fact that titan blood evaporates after a short time. Later in the story, when his squad arrives at the old Survey Corps headquarters, Levi wastes no time giving his first order: the place is filthy and he won't be having any of that, and immediately divides up responsibility for whipping it back into shape.

He places a very high priority on the chain of command and expects his subordinates to be competent and obedient (though he does acknowledge personal choice at certain times). If he's being a dick to someone below his rank, it's probably not because of that, but rather because that's just his default disposition. The strict nature with which he commands his current squad is for their own good and not because of any bloated sense of power. Even having that power, it's just not in his character to flaunt or abuse it. As for those who outrank him, he holds himself to the same standard: while he sometimes protests at first, he always follows orders from the commander of the Survey Corps, Erwin Smith, whom he trusts implicitly despite a very tumultuous beginning between the two of them. Levi does not have any particular talent for strategy, and he fully acknowledges this—of his decision to stay and fight with the Corps, he states that Erwin "sees something that he can't see" (insert short joke), and he never knows how things will turn out in the end. In this way, he's more of a follower than a leader

With that said, despite his 2/10 official "teamwork" score (see abilities section), Levi is not that terrible of a leader. His original squad respected him immensely, and it wasn't just because of his reputation. He's not a lenient squad leader by any means, but neither is he flippant or disrespectful towards those he outranks. My interpretation of this score is that it's more representative of him actually working in a team, as opposed to leading one—unlike his first squad who worked together quite well, Levi tends to veer off and deal with things on his own. He does this even when he is leading a team, but only if he knows the others can handle it and/or he has no other choice; abandoning his squad is never a preferred course of action.

Mentally, his greatest strength is keeping a cool head in sticky situations, which is good since he's pretty much always in a sticky situation. The flip side of that is a perpetual state of emotional constipation, which lends itself heavily to him being an unpleasant person. He's not 100% ice queen all the time, but if you're looking for a shoulder to cry on, you might want to look elsewhere. Essentially, his personality is his greatest weakness—he has very few desirable traits and he isn't in any rush to change that. I mean, what's the point of being a friendly person when most of your friends end up dead, right?

Add all these things up and it looks like a recipe for a fairly unpleasant person. It's true that he is tough to be around, and that he seems like an asshole on the surface. However, while he may seem to dislike people in general, he does not undervalue human life. While he's stated himself that he's willing to be the bad guy if it's for the sake of humanity, Levi gets no satisfaction from having to hurt or kill people or watch soldiers essentially being sent off to die, even if they’ve consciously joined the Survey Corps and thus “dedicated their hearts” to humanity. It’s for the same reason that he doesn’t act recklessly—he has lost countless comrades to titans, after all. Despite the hefty title of humanity's strongest, it's important to note that he isn’t prideful about it. He's perfectly aware of his own capability, but he isn't cocky.

This is a complex character who isn't always painted in a complex way. He's not just the stoic warrior guy, or the potty-mouthed bad boy, or the strict disciplinarian captain. Under a prickly (but squeaky-clean!) exterior, there is a genuinely good guy—sometimes you just have to squint to see him.

(Get it? It's another short joke.)

◎ Powers/Abilities:

Levi’s stats are a bit ridiculous, as you can see. The combat rating is based primarily on proficiency with the Three-Dimensional Maneuver Gear (3DMG), which is the somewhat complicated contraption used to fight titans. See this handy illustrated diagram!

The main thing to report here is that Levi is pretty much universally considered to be the best at using the 3DMG, and thus the best at killing titans. He's very quick, and his small stature lends itself well to this particular kind of combat. Beyond being exceptionally skilled at this (and fairly proficient at hand-to-hand combat as well, though this is not a very valuable skill in fighting giant, regenerating meat-monsters), Levi does not have any sort of extra-human abilities.

◎ Weapons & Other Special Inventory: 3DMG set, a small knife, a shitty flintlock handgun, and two dusters (priorities, you know)

CEREALIA-Specific

◎ Element: Air
◎ Sense: Sight. Of all the senses he could lose, he'd definitely be screwed over the most by sight. Also, his ability to quickly assess a dangerous situation is mostly by sight.
◎ Seven Character Traits:

Positive: Loyal, cool-headed, honest
Negative: Rude, unfriendly, fastidious
Both: Morally gray

Samples

◎ First-Person Sample: Link!

◎ Third-Person Sample:

Thinking about it, it wasn't really so strange that Levi often preferred the company of animals over other people. There was something to say for sharing a space with someone who doesn't do all the annoying things that people do. A cat wouldn't spend an entire evening yapping about her latest science project. A bird wouldn't need to ask a million stupid questions up to and including whether he had permission to go take a leak. Dogs… well, dogs were a little too friendly and dependent, but still preferable to quite a number of people he'd met. (Plus, there was all the licking - no thanks.)

He owed a lot to his horse. Horses, too, asked zero questions, which was especially nice considering the "adventures" this one had been on, and would likely keep going on. It didn't even sign up for this. It didn't "offer its heart to humanity." Still, even though his specialty usually required him to dismount first, Levi knew there had probably been numerous times when he would have been in trouble if it weren't for having such a good horse. He'd even told his squad, back in the forest after switching to the maneuver gear but before everything went to hell - "take care of my horse."

The horse made it back. The others didn't.

He thought about them whenever he saw their horses, too. Of course, they were all ridden by other people now, but that wasn't so strange, either, was it? How many times had this happened before? Sometimes even the horses themselves didn't make it back. Sometimes nothing came back at all, and it was like the person never even existed. Somehow it made it all worse, having nothing to return to their families. Times like those, he would put his vague dislike of people in general aside. If there was one thing they all had in common, it was this. Everyone knew someone like that: eaten, crushed, buried in the rubble. Times like those, he remembered that despite how insufferable people could be, and how terrible they often treated each other, it was still humanity he always fought for in the end. He had offered his heart to humanity. It's just that, as of yet, he'd always been one of the lucky ones who got away while it was still beating.

The horse snorted, and the present came back into view. He'd been lost in thought, absent-mindedly patting his horse's head. It didn't happen often. He told himself he was probably just overly tired. Yeah, that must have been it. A good night's sleep would clear his mind, surely.

It was then that he received a grim reminder of one key advantage humans had over horses, and that was that horses shit wherever they want. And this one just had.

Gross.

◎ Is your character retaining any previous game memories? Nope!