#sha ming

1/19

my fav gremlin from that space werewolf game (i am still in the tutorial 💔)

Y’know what? Yeah. That feels like how she would do it (I feel like she’s mimicking him to make fun of him while also being genuine about it)

Also

Stylish Gnosia boys 🥵🩵

In the game, it's abundantly clear that Sha-Ming puts saving his own skin above almost anything. Since first impressions are everything, we should start with his introduction. In loop 12, we begin with Sha-Ming skipping the first meeting. The reason for this is made very explicit: he's afraid of being attacked by Gnosia. Even when Setsu confronts him about it, it's clear he's more than fine with undermining the meetings to save his own life. The only way Setsu manages to get him to finally agree to attend is by threatening to kill him.

This isn't the only time Sha-Ming does something like this. At some point, Sha-Ming will interrupt a meeting to start small talk. He'll proudly explain to the player afterwards that he was derailing the meeting on purpose, to make himself a low-priority target for the Gnosia. Later on, when Sha-Ming grovels to escape cold sleep, you unlock Sha-Ming Note 4: "Will do anything to survive." Between this and his first note, "Speaks casually, but is careful not to stand out", half of Sha-Ming's notes are about how hard he tries to save his own skin. That's not even mentioning the aforementioned Small Talk event, as it doesn't unlock a note.

Sha-Ming's personality is also readily apparent in gameplay. I believe that how he behaves during discussions is extremely relevant. The creators of the game have said that when they were creating Gnosia's cast, they started by assigning them mechanical abilities and personality values (hidden stats that determine NPC behavior), and from there, worked backwards to flesh out character designs and backstories. As such, understanding the mechanical behaviors of characters is crucial to completely understanding their personalities.

Sha-Ming's selfishness is clear from his personality values. He has a very high Desire stat, which increases the chances of a character making plays that benefit themself over their team. He also has a low Neat stat, which reduces his willingness to take the side of people he trusts. This results in him being one of the most likely characters to throw his allies under the bus. Additionally, he has the single lowest courage stat in the game: in fact, it's tied for the lowest value of any personality value at .01. This makes him much less likely to fake claim roles as Gnosia, even when it would help his team, and makes him very cautious about going against the majority to support his allies.

The anime treats him very differently when he's Gnosia. In episode 9, Sha-Ming fake claims a role, and also advises Yuri to be careful to keep themself safe: a very clearly selfless kind of play that is uncharacteristic of him. The other two episodes in which Sha-Ming is Gnosia, 7 and 10, do things slightly differently. In both, Sha-Ming tries to skip the meeting by hiding in his room. But, in stark contrast to how it was in the game, the anime implies it's actually extremely noble of him to do so. In episode 10, Yuri says to him, "You're a Gnosia, but you don't want to deceive everyone by lying. But you also don't want to betray the other Gnosia, so you don't know what to do." According to the anime, he's actually trying to get himself put into cold sleep, without directly turning against his allies.