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[windbreak]

Name: skarme
Journal: blitzente
Contact: blitzente


Character Name: Yosuke Hanamura
Series: Persona 4
Gender: Male
Age & Canon Point: 17, taken from after the True Ending but before Arena.
Entry position: Cadet
Requested Sponsor: He'll waffle for an extremely long time before settling on Ruby. If it's difficult to tell, he is not cool in the slightest.
History: Wiki link!

Abilities & Physical Abnormalities:
He's quick on his feet for a regular unathletic high school student, and has had some monster-fighting practice (though no formal training whatsoever) in using kunai, knives, fish and pretty much anything else that looks like it can be dual wielded.

Most significantly, he is capable of jumping through ordinary TV screens into a physical manifestation of the collective human subconscious that looks suspiciously like a bunch of JRPG dungeons (see note at the bottom). Non Persona users can similarly go inside TVs if they do it at the same time as him. He can't necessarily get out of it without help, though.

Apart from that, he has no notable abilities in the real world, but once he learns to junction he'll find out that his Persona, a wind-elemental ninja frog called Jiraiya, came along with him as a GF.

Personality:
Imagine the platonic ideal of a hopeless but unremarkable teenage boy and you probably already have something that looks a lot like Yosuke. An underachieving high school student and the son of the manager of the local department store, he commands very little respect from either his peers or his coworkers, and it's not difficult to see why: he isn't just pathetic in the sense that he's unimposing, easily flustered and chronically accident-prone, his romantic endeavours are pretty pathetic too. It's hard to call him insensitive as such - when he's on the clock, he can be considerably more diplomatic and socially savvy than anyone will give him credit for - but his ground state of being is one with his foot jammed firmly into his mouth, and the more nervous he is the more carried away he's likely to get. Amongst the investigation team of high-schoolers that comprises his closest circle of friends, he ends up primary sidekick to the leader more or less by default, but otherwise doesn't really stand out, being decidedly ordinary compared to his goofiest friends but too readily persuaded into goofy situations to count himself as one of "the actually sane ones"; by all appearances, he's content to hang back just outside the spotlight. He has a decent head for organisation and logic, though not always the observational skills or focus he'd need to make the best use of them, and that's about the best you could say of him at a glance.

However, a major theme of the game is that there's always more to a human being than the side of them they knowingly present to the world, and that goes for Yosuke too. Unlike a more villainous character in the game to whom he could be considered a foil, it's not really accurate to say that his extroverted exterior is a front - he genuinely enjoys the company of others, to the extent that a good chunk of his self-fulfillment in life comes from being able to help out the people he cares about, so he really is happy to cut them a lot of slack and stay out of trouble - but on some level he is painfully aware that he isn't the most inspiring person on the planet. In a psychological sense, this is his Shadow, the part of his personality he's least willing to admit: the resentment he semi-involuntarily feels towards anyone who appears to be doing better in life than he is.

This bitter awareness fuels a deeply-held yearning for something more. If he doesn't have enough to occupy himself with, as was the case at the start of the game when he'd moved away from the city six months ago and still hadn't made many close friends, he'll find excuses to seize on just about anything that seems to promise more excitement, be it murder investigations, surreal video-game style dungeon-crawling or bizarre fighting tournaments. This hankering for adventure coupled with his tendency to get carried away can in extreme cases get him so caught up in the narrative that he forgets his empathy for others - an example would be the worst ending of the game, where if the protagonist doesn't intervene he and another party member essentially murder a man in revenge who turns out not to be the killer they were chasing after all.

But the negative parts of his personality have their own flip sides, too. Yosuke does have a good heart, and although it's a tall order to overcome a Shadow completely, he's gradually working on it. One key part of this was his discovery that a life in the country where everyone knows him and can depend on him doesn't have to be as stifling as he used to make it out to be; he's learnt to take his connections to other people seriously, and even the death of an old crush who he later learns hated his guts is one he carries as a primary motivation for a long time, because she meant something to him. Another of his epiphanies involved his realising that if he can back up the people he cares for, he's improving and creating meaning for himself at the same time, which leaves a lot less room for resenting them.

In summary, Yosuke is a character whose earnestness makes up for many of his insecurities, embarrassing at times and a pain at others but dependable where it counts. In briefer summary, Yosuke is a hopeless teenager, but there are worse things to be.

What are your plans for the character in-game? Mainly to toss a character who is infinitely more sociable than and not nearly as single-minded as my existing loser into the setting and see what happens - he's a character who would get a kick out of the adventure and mystery that comes with landing in a video-gamey jamjar, but also a character who defines a lot of his self-worth by his connections to other people (which would have to be painstakingly rebuilt), and I think some fun conflicts could come out of that.

Anything else? If possible, I'd prefer not to nix his TV-diving ability! Since he wouldn't know where to find an exit once inside, it would be IC for him to shy away from it anyway, and it could leave room open for player plot much further down the line (never mind the spirit world thing...). I will if there's no way to allow or nerf it, though. also booya, Dragon D<



i) IC questionnaire

What do you prefer to be known as? Yosuke Hanamura. Nice to meet ya.
How old are you? 17. I'm a second year at - oh, hold on, no, going into third year. Uh, third year of high school, that is. If you even have those around here. ...Man, that feels a little weird to say.

Do you have any history in combat? Combat? You mean, as in the army or the police or whatever? Yeah... no, not really. It's a long story.
If so, have you ever killed? Well, again... [He looks suddenly uncomfortable.] Let's go with no.

i) How do you feel when you get involved in some project that calls for immediate and rapid activity? [This is more his kind of question. He rallies.] Just leave it to me! [There's a beat, and then one impressive instant in which his confident grin becomes a hunted look without apparently passing through any other expressions in between.] Wait, what kinda activity are we talking about, exactly?

ii) Do you organize and initiate leisure activities? Well, duh! You know what they say about all work and no play.

iii) What role do you take when working in a group? Heh, I don't like to brag, but I'm pretty good at making people pull together. ...Maybe not so hot on the actual plans, though.

iv) How talkative are you around other people? I don't mind talking. Talking's fun. I guess it depends on who I'm with, and... [He flushes red. It's possible that his mind just went someplace he'd rather not associate with a work interview.] what there is to talk about... probably?

v) What three things would you want to have with you on a desert island? State your reasoning. Oh, this is one of those puzzle questions where it's basically cheating to have any of them be "a way off the island", isn't it? I'm never any good with these. I mean, a cell phone would be nice - you wouldn't want to be totally cut off - but even if you didn't use it to ask for help... Oh yeah, and signal would be a problem, I guess... [He trails off.] Can we come back to this one later?

vi) Is it important to be liked by a wide range of people? I don't know... Well, no, I do know. I think it's complicated. It's... rough, going out of your way to be all things to all people. But if you start with being true to yourself, give people a chance to learn they can rely on you, let your life pick up its own meaning... all of that happens naturally. You can't even think of it as separate. [He rubs his nose, embarrassed.] Heh heh.

vii) When the odds are against you, is it worth taking a chance? Mm, maybe, maybe not. Sometimes the odds might be a lot less crazy than they look, you know? And... some kinds of people can make them seem less crazy just by being around, but that's a little different.

viii) Do you consider yourself to be an impulsive person? [He laughs nervously.] I-I'd say I'm usually on top of things...

ix) Would you agree that planning things ahead takes the fun out of life? Hey, you want to keep things open, but you don't want them to be too chaotic either. That way lies madness.

x) Do you like surprises? There's good surprises and bad surprises. [He coughs hurriedly.] Moving on.

xi) Do you sometimes wonder if there is something wrong with you? What kind of question is that?

xii) Do you consider yourself to be smarter than your superiors, and disagree with their decisions? Nah, that kind of thing's more trouble than it's worth. At least it doesn't matter so much when you've got a leader you know you can count on.

xiii) Lastly, how do you feel about cabbages? How do I feel? Uh... not much of anything. Am I supposed to? I mean, they sell pretty well...

iii) bracket/commentspam RP sample

Seriously, dude. What's her problem?

[It's not entirely clear - he's too busy shaking his head to look up - but apart from the half-empty glass of juice sitting in front of him and looking almost as forlorn as he does, there's nobody else nearby in the cafeteria who this lanky young man could be addressing.]

Okay, maybe Zainah isn't a cute name after all. I was just being polite! You can't just up and ask to borrow a book from someone if you don't even know what to call them! I didn't even get to say anything else! Geez...

[He groans and buries his face in his folded arms, his mop of hair dusting the surface of the table.] Oh, man... what am I gonna do?

[He seems to be pretty out of it. The most considerate course of action at this point would probably be to leave him alone.

...Haha. Yeah, right.]