app: labyrinthum

[izanagis]

OOC INFORMATION
Player Name: kri
Pronoun Preferences: she/they
Contact: posolutely or kribbit on discord
Are you over the age of 18?: yes!
Invitation Link: here!
Current Characters: n/a
Link to Permissions: Permissions.

IC INFORMATION
Character Name: Yu Narukami
Species: human
Canon: Persona 4
Canon Point: deep sigh. after the events of P4 Dancing All Night
Character Age: 17
CRAU: No
Character Appearance: Image and description
Powers and Abilities:
A Persona is a manifestation of a person's inner thoughts, or hidden self. Having been honed and trained to fight in battle, they're pretty useful and have different effects, strengths, and weaknesses. Yu is a special Persona-user called a Wildcard, meaning he's able to summon and wield multiple different Personas, rather than just one. This comes in handy when fighting individually, or when you need a certain element or skill. He can have 12 on-hand at any one time, but without access to the Velvet Room, he is not able to switch them out. While Yu doesn't use any items to summon his Personas, I assume he would need to regain them one at a time. He would probably start with his first Persona, Izanagi.

What Did Your Character Wish For? "I wish we could all stay together"
What Potion Did They Receive? Golden
Did They Drink It? Not yet, but he's keeping it with him
If Yes, What Element/Animal? A fox

Character Questions:
1. Who is the person your character is most bonded with from their canon, or who is someone they miss the most and why?
There are so many different ways this question can go, because the entirety of Persona 4 is really about bonds! For this particular answer, I'm actually going to go with Nanako Dojima. All of his friends and family are important to him, but when Nanako is kidnapped in December, it had a huge impact on his entire team; it created both a rallying cry and a turning point. Yu's lowest point in the game comes at this moment, when he thinks she's died from her injuries: he nearly murders Namatame out of grief, anger, and desperation to end the case. In the end, he doesn't -- he sees sense. But this moment still galvanized his bond with his friends, and strengthens his resolve to see the case through to the very end.

Nanako is a particularly important character because she reminds Yu so much of himself as a child. This is particularly prevalent in December when she and Dojima are in the hospital, and Yu comes home everyday to an empty house. He was similarly lonely, growing up: an only child with absent parents who had to look after himself on his own. Seeing that in Nanako, he becomes determined not to let it happen to her. He becomes the companion for her that he needed as a child, and encourages Dojima to have a better relationship with her than he had with his own parents. In this way, she's a really pivotal character who shows him the importance of family and friends.

2. What are they most afraid of and why?
Being alone, essentially. Before he went to Inaba, Yu was fairly used to being on his own, and didn't really have any close friends. He never made close friends, purposefully, because he figured that getting close and then having to say goodbye would be more painful than never really having that friendship to begin with. Throughout the events of the game, this changes dramatically: he develops associations and very close friendships that mean a lot to him. His friends give him strength (in a very literal way), and even though he knows that they'll always be important to each other, it is very hard for him to go back to "the way things were:" leaving Inaba for the city, going back to an empty home and, functionally, a rather empty life. Before the events of the game, he thought he could keep from feeling alone by building up a wall. He thought it was less painful. Now, he just wants his heart to be connected with others. Not having that connection anymore would be devastating to him.

3. What are their emotional, mental, and physical weaknesses and why?
Emotional: Yu's biggest emotional weakness is distance. He builds up distance between himself and others, trying to be a variety of different things for a variety of different people. He tries to get to know people without letting them get to know much about him in return; most of his social links are based around learning more about the other person, and not vice versa. Opening up is hard for him, and a little scary. He presents a calm, capable front, because he doesn't want to cause trouble for others or make them worry; he wants to be seen as dependent and reliable, at the cost of people not knowing his real self as much.

Mental: While it makes him an effective leader, Yu has a tendency to be a strategic overthinker, even outside of battle. He often decides what to say or how to react to people based on what he thinks they'll approve of, and he tends to get lost in a train of thought when he's working through a problem. He's also very reticent about opening up to people, to the point where it makes him uncomfortable to do so, even when he desperately wants to be close to someone.

Physical: Yu is a powerful Persona user and he can hold his own in a fight. That said, outside of the TV world, he's capable of fighting, but he's a normal human with no powers. He's also largely self-taught and untrained, meaning he's learning as he goes. He relies on strength over speed (as a longsword user), and isn't as defensively strong as trained fighters.

4. What discrepancies are there between their inner self (who they feel they are) and their outer self (how they present themselves to others)?
The front that Yu presents to others is cool, charming, dependable, and likable. This is partially accidental, and is based in part on his need to be somewhat people-pleasing, his desire to be seen as capable and independent, and his relative quietness. Beneath that cool exterior, he's actually a huge nerd who tells bad jokes and does absolutely bonkers stuff (like stick his hand in the department store TV), it's just that people somehow don't notice -- probably in part due to his quietness. On a more serious note, his true self is quite a bit more lonely than he'll ever let on. He spent a very long time keeping people at arm's length. Now that he's seen how it feels to have people to rely on, he realizes just how lonely he was. And he's more ready to admit how disappointing it was, coming home to an empty house everyday.

5. What would make them happiest and why?
Yu is happiest when he's with his friends. For a long time, Yu just didn't make connections. His trials in Inaba forced his hand; he had to make connections in order to get stronger. Now that he has, he realizes just how important it is not to be alone; it can be fun, challenging, and extremely rewarding. He's unlocked a deep well of caring that he had bricked up before. And, honestly, beneath all his protag swag, he's sort of just a normal little guy. There are a lot of times when he says something to the effect of "my friends are my strength" -- he knows, now, that he can't do everything on his own, and he no longer wants to.

6. What characteristics does someone need to have to be your character's ideal significant other?
Patience, honesty, and open-mindedness. Yu is a people-pleaser in a lot of ways, but he doesn't lie, and he's quick to point out when others are. His bonds deepen most when other people are true to themselves: when they show who they really are, beneath the front they put up for others. And-- honestly, it's those funny little quirks he enjoys the most about people. Humans are so much more endearing under their masks: their dorky humor, stupid decisions, weird habits. Those are the things he enjoys the most about people. As a protagonist, he tends to put his time and attention in a lot of different places, so someone would need a lot of patience and open-mindedness to deal with him needing to continue meddling with pretty much anyone and everyone.

7. Would your character make a sacrifice to save someone else and why or why not?
One could say that choosing to save people and fight against evil is a type of sacrifice in itself, but it's basically the only one Yu will make. This isn't because he's selfish, but because he's an unfortunate combination of optimistic and uncompromising. He fully believes --and he's yet to be proven wrong!-- that when he works together with his friends, when they're all united for a common goal, there's nothing that can stop them. That they'll always come out on top. In the end, I think he would make a sacrifice to save someone else, if it got really dire, if it really came down to it. But he'd try every other avenue first, and he'd fight to the bitter end before letting it happen.

8. What is one thing they would tell their younger self if they had the chance, or if your character is young, what is one thing they would want their older self to remember?
It's not something he would say with so many words, but Yu would want his younger self to know that he doesn't have to try to be so strong for everyone else all the time. That it's okay to need people. That it's okay to be upset, or to not be okay with something. Yu spent so much of his life trying not to be a bother; he'd want his younger self to know that it's not "being a bother" to want human contact, or for your parents to be there, or to have lasting friends. It's okay to want things and to speak up for what you want, and it's okay not to be perfect. These are things he still struggles with now, even though he tries to be true to himself more these days.

9. When in dire circumstances does your character fight, flee, freeze or fawn and how does that look?
This is a weird one for Yu. When the circumstances are less dire, he tends toward the fawn response. He'll acquiesce to a lot, and tends not to push unless things get really tense. But when they do, when the circumstances get really dire, he becomes confrontational and uncompromising, veering firmly into "fight" territory. One of his most common dialog responses in the game is "that's not true," indicating that he's not afraid to confront something that's wrong. But he has a leader's head on his shoulders, too; when he comes up against a fight he can't win, or when it comes to protecting a social link, he will go with a flight response to get out of a bad situation.

10. Why did your character make the wish they did?
Yu's wish basically amounts to being able to stay together with his friends. He doesn't love being so far away from them, and something he fears deeply is to lose touch with them. To grow apart. To be left behind. Missing his friends, being alone again, having to essentially go back to the way things were before he went to Inaba -- "I wish we could all stay together" is sort of the low-hanging fruit that solves those issues. If he had been prompted before making that wish, he might have made it more thoughtful, something like "I wish for our hearts to always be connected," or something like that. But under any thoughtfulness he could bring to a wish, the thing he really wants, selfishly, unreasonably, is to stay with them.


Samples:
One log sample
One network sample