Shut-in Showdown Round 1 Poll 13
Uncle Grimmly (Luigi's Mansion) vs Columbina (Genshin Impact)
Uncle Grimmly
Columbina
Info & propaganda under the cut!
Uncle Grimmly
"Bio: ‘Adrift in the darkness, he tends to keep to himself, which suits the rest of the family just fine.’
Age: 45 years old
Everything points to Uncle Grimmly already being a reclusive, rarely seen ghost long before the game's events. I also think he was a loner in life. He is like that just because. Maybe he's a misanthrope. Maybe he hates light. Anyway, unlike other named ghosts, he only comes out when the mansion has a total blackout (late in the game). That's because he loves the darkness, and stays only in pitch black areas.
The first thing he does is lock the door to the breaker room to prevent anyone from restoring power. He is found alone in another room (in front of a mirror), and is ridiculously easy to defeat. So after at most a few days in the mansion and the canon one night in which the entire game takes place, Luigi vacuums him and puts him back into a portrait.
This is an obscure submission, I think. But he's not called Hermit of Darkness for nothing, right?
He's hard to find (because the game's clue doesn't narrow down his location). He turns invisible whenever Luigi looks at him. It's stated he loves mirrors, specifically to practice scary poses in front of. He periodically makes the weakest ever ‘boo’ sound, striking the pose in the image I linked. His concept has everything to be terrifying, but he's just... trying his best to scare people away. Think of the comedy value.
Quote: ‘Nobody will find me because I'm old, cranky and, by gum, people are afraid of me!’" - anonymous submitter
Columbina
“She was disconnected from the rest of the world because she is the reincarnation of a lost god and everybody wanted to use her for her power/pray to her for salvation. She ran away from her pseudo-military job to go live alone in a cave because of this. While she was only physically shut in for a few months, emotionally she's been cut off since her birth several decades (centuries? I don't remember the timeline) ago. Even after making friends with the main characters, she struggles to understand human emotions and gets overwhelmed by crowded spaces and the attention she gets as a god, so she spends a lot of time hiding in her cave instead.
[Propaganda]: She is a certified Weird Girl! She reads as autistic in a lot of ways, particularly her difficulty understanding emotions and relationships and disconnect from her own identity.
She learns about friendly teasing and immediately decides to ragebait her tsundere friend to show how much she cares.
She has world breaking powers but she's also rejected by the natural order which makes her so tired she spends most of her time sleeping.
She sings an uncanny little song constantly.
She gave herself a silly little title to express herself." - @paradoxspaceheater
