App time!

[very_elaborate]

PART 1 - Out of Character
NAME: Jill
AGE (must be 18 or older): 27
E-MAIL: minkhollow at gmail
AIM: thehermitof
PLURK: setecastronomy
DROPBOX: n/a
TIME ZONE: Eastern US
PREFERRED METHOD OF CONTACT: email, PM, plurk


PART 2.a - In Character Non-WH13/Eureka Canon Characters
Full Name: Kanji Tatsumi
Nicknames: n/a
DOB/Age: January 19, 1996 | 16
Birthplace: Inaba, Japan
Gender: male
Sexuality: …Naoto-sexual. (He’s canonically very confused on this point, actually, but I figure he’s settled on ‘I like Naoto and the rest doesn’t matter,’ so don’t ask him to pin it down beyond that.)
Species: human
Fandom: Persona 4
Journal: very_elaborate
PB: game art
Holoprojection Human Interface PB: n/a
Canon Point: late March 2012, post-True Ending of the game

Appearance: Kanji’s already six feet tall, and not completely done with puberty yet; one last growth spurt isn’t out of the question. He has a very muscular build, a scar over his left eye, and multiple piercings on his left ear. He keeps his hair cut short and bleaches it; he’s also fond of skull-and-crossbones motifs on his clothes, including a tattoo on his left upper arm.

History: Kanji’s family owns a textile shop in Inaba’s shopping district. He grew up around the fabric and developed an early love for sewing, knitting and other handicrafts – that promptly got him mocked at school after he fixed a girl’s bag for her. As his classmates started teasing him for possibly being gay on account of his more feminine interests, Kanji threw up some thick walls and started overcompensating like crazy. He was afraid of being rejected, so he cut out the middle man and gave people something they would want to reject.

He skipped school, got into a number of fights, and got on the wrong side of the police a few times, most notably for beating the shit out of a biker gang. (Because they were keeping his mother awake nights.) After telling a camera crew to get out of his face while they were filming a TV special on said biker gangs, Kanji ended up being kidnapped, tossed inside a TV (long story; the short version is, it turned out to be a crazypants goddess’s social experiment) and forced to confront his inner demons. At first he rejected his Shadow’s claims of being part of himself – because really, who wants to think they’re gay when that’s only been framed to them as a Bad Thing? – but after being rescued by a group of second-year students from his high school, he finally admitted he just wanted someone to accept him as he is. This acknowledgement transmuted his Shadow into a Persona, and then he joined the older students in investigating the TV situation. (Two people had already been killed by being thrown into TVs, and one of Kanji’s rescuers was kidnapped the same way he was.)

It was because of the case that Kanji met Naoto, who first came poking around and asking him questions before he was even kidnapped (there were a few red flags that he’d be the next victim; both Naoto and the second-years were poking around on that basis). Naoto confused the hell out of Kanji at first, to the point of actually making him wonder if he was gay after all, but he took a liking to the kid anyway. When Naoto deliberately went on TV to trigger another kidnapping, Kanji was especially worried pissed off about it.

In between investigating a serial murder/kidnapping case and actually going to school on a regular basis for the first time in ages, Kanji also returned to knitting, spurred on by a kid who lost his friend’s stuffed rabbit to bullies. Kanji made a replacement… and one for the boy to keep… and then the kid’s mom and teachers wanted some… and eventually, he ended up selling them at the textile shop. They’re… very elaborate. And adorable.

After some shenanigans at school (including a cross-dressing pageant, but the less said about Kanji’s turn as Marilyn Monroe the better), the group figured out who was behind the kidnappings – and that the same person wasn’t behind the murders. In the course of tracking down the asshole detective behind the murdering part, Naoto got knocked out by a less-aware Shadow; Kanji panicked, made with the revival item, and hugged Naoto hard the second he could. When they finally got out of the TV world, he took Naoto to get dinner and then home, and they (finally, to most of their friends’ eyes) got around to admitting they liked each other. (It’s provided Kanji with something of a resolution to his sexuality crisis, if… not entirely, given Naoto’s gender crisis. But he’s not worried about it anymore; he likes Naoto, and he can live with whatever that makes him.)

At the time Kanji’s picked up by the camera, the group’s finally solved the mystery of why anyone could enter/throw someone else into a TV in the first place, and put a stop to Izanami’s dumbass social experiment.

Personality: Kanji’s bark is worse than his bite. But don’t take that to mean he has no bite at all; this is a kid who went up against a biker gang by himself, in middle school, and won. He’s quick to get his dander up, especially if he suspects he’s being insulted or someone’s calling the things he likes into question.

That said, he does have a very squishy center under that tough exterior. Kanji only went after the biker gang in the first place because the ruckus they made was keeping his mother awake at night; he also can’t stand bullying and dislikes being accused of it. He’s finally come to understand what his father’s last request that he be a “real man” actually meant – embracing all parts of himself, taking responsibility for his actions, and helping the people around him instead of creating more trouble for them.

Kanji is not one of nature’s scholars, mostly going to school because of the mandatory attendance policy; he often slept or ate his way through the investigation side of the TV-world shenanigans. But he’s not stupid – he was the first to try his TV-world glasses when the fog in the real world got worse, and he can see through a pile of bullshit as well as the rest of the group.

He loves kids and hates hospitals. He’s also not what you’d call fond of law enforcement.

Special facts/special abilities about your character: Kanji is a native Japanese speaker, and… semi-conversational in English. It’s on his school’s curriculum, but between skipping classes and not being a terribly dedicated student in the first place, well. The combo punch of the Farnsworth doing some of the heavy lifting and total immersion the rest of the time (for one thing, Naoto’s not going to let him rig the system at school by taking the help) will sharpen his English skills eventually, though.

He’s really damn good with all things fabric (knitting, sewing, ‘why the fuck are you putting those colors/patterns/fabrics together,’ you name it). He can also more than hold his own in a fight, even when outnumbered.

And now, HOW DO PERSONA: Hokay, so. Here’s the TV world. Damn, that is a sweet collective unconscious, you might say. (TVs just happened to be a convenient window into it.) Except for when it’s overrun by Shadows, the vast majority of which aren’t really capable of thought beyond ‘hey, there’s a tasty human morsel, I’ma kill it.’ Shadows are basically all the crap that humanity represses and would rather not think itself capable of, and the ones feeding off a particular person’s fears and insecurities are particularly powerful.

Deny that your Shadow is part of yourself, it goes nuts and tries to kill you and anyone else in the vicinity. Accept that your Shadow is part of yourself, get a Persona, which is damn useful to have in fighting other Shadows. Different Personas have different skill sets (the game’s protagonist can change between a bunch of them, but most people only have the one). To summon a Persona you break your tarot card (don’t ask how it fixes itself after you’re done Persona-ing – probably magic).

Kanji’s is this guy, specializing in heavy physical and electrical damage. (Spells: Ziodyne (heavy electricity damage, one target), Maziodyne (heavy electricity damage, multi-target), Elec Amp (50% increase to electricity damage done), Vile Assault (heavy physical damage, one target; bonus if target’s already down), Primal Force (severe physical damage, one target), Power Charge (boosts output of next physical attack), Matarukaja (boosts party’s attack effectiveness for three rounds), Regenerate 3 (recovers some HP on each turn).)

If he were to try Persona-ing inside the Warehouse, it’d feel no worse than a typical TV-world battle; however, if he tried it in town, which probably wouldn’t occur to him outside of a true emergency, he’d get one or two attacks in before the effort took a major toll on him. Seeing as no one currently around has healing spells, it’s probably fair to say the drain would keep him incapacitated for a couple days.

(Kanji’s sunglasses are tangentially related. For the duration of the investigation, the TV world – and, briefly, Inaba itself – were shrouded in not-entirely-natural fog; the glasses made it easier to see through the stuff.)

What is arriving with your character? Clothes (black leather jacket, black sweater with skull and crossbones on it, black pants, brown boots); cell phone; bag with knitting needles, a few balls of yarn, and a half-finished plushie in it; wallet, containing his ID, a few thousand yen and his Persona card; the sunglasses he got from Teddie for navigating the TV world (but hey, in his case they’re also damn good shades).


PART 3 - Writing Samples
1. First Person Writing Sample: [There’s a kid on the Farnsworth! If he looks like he wouldn’t be out of place in a biker gang… well, you’re not the first to think so.]

The hell kind of phone is this thing? [He turns the Farnsworth around a couple times, treating everyone to a quick view of his room.] Anyway, uh. Not that I’m complaining, exactly, but I figured you guys were gonna shove me in the direction of a school. Isn’t the school year just getting going?

Least I’m used to the small town thing. But, uh, anyone know where I can get some yarn? What I have with me ain’t gonna last long.

2. Third Person Writing Sample: There is no way this is not gonna suck. Seriously, why do they all have to be humiliated just because Yosuke-senpai thought signing the girls up for the regular pageant would be funny?

Kanji’s at least glad he’s not stuck with Chie-senpai dolling him up; that’s probably going to be a minor disaster. On the other hand, Rise-chan’s way too excited about this. She practically drags Kanji to the practice building and into the drama club’s room. He has no damn idea what she’s looking for, so he lets her poke around – and gets a sinking feeling in his stomach when she finds a blonde wig and squeals.

“Perfect!” she says, a few minutes later, having dug a white dress and heels out of a cabinet. “We’ll have you looking like Marilyn in no time.”

Kanji frowns. “Who?”

Instead of explaining, Rise-chan drags Kanji back to the classroom building and starts dolling him up. He’s sure he looks terrible, and he doesn’t know why he needs heels when he’s already the tallest person in the group, and he’s more than a little pissed that Rise-chan puts more makeup on his tattoo than his face (“A skull and crossbones tattoo just doesn’t go with the look, Kanji-kun”).

He’s banking on Teddie winning this thing. Between the fact that Naoto definitely knows how to make someone look like the opposite sex and Teddie’s natural… Teddie-ness, he’s practically got it in the bag. Kanji just wishes they could skip to that part without him having to go on a stage in front of half the school in a dress.

3. First or Third person Sample: He’s in a bedroom by the time he feels like he can do more than smile and nod, and Kanji proceeds to beat the hell out of the pillow on top of the futon. (How they managed to find a futon in America, assuming this actually is America and not another TV-world kidnapping, he may never know.)

This is such bullshit, from the goo to the story about ‘dangerous objects’ – even he can tell there’s more to it than that, and Naoto would probably tear that story to shreds in five minutes if given the chance – to the fake name on his passport. Like hell he’s going to bother learning entirely new characters just to be able to sign something.

There’s also a school ID in the pile of stuff he got, with the same fake name on it, but nothing that old guy had to say implied he’s expected at school any time soon. Weird; it looks like it’s spring. He’ll have to ask about that at some point.

From the look of the map this place might actually be more isolated than Inaba – not that it matters if Kanji supposedly can’t get more than 15 miles out of town anyway. Just as well he’s used to making his own entertainment, really.

He sighs, flops back on the futon with his back up against the wall, and opens his bag. Sooner or later he’ll figure out who to ask questions of, but right now the most likely thing to take the edge off his mood is finishing this damn rabbit. At least he’ll probably be able to sell those just as easily here.


PART 4 - Disclaimers
Was this character held for you? Yup!
Can this character be canon-punctured? Yup!