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[dwellsinthedetails]

PLAYER INFORMATION

Name: Jill
Contact: setecastronomy
Characters Currently Played: n/a

CHARACTER INFORMATION

Character Name: Yusuke Kitagawa
Canon Name: Persona 5 (game only; the wiki includes stuff about an anime adaptation)

Background: canon in general, character-specific

Canon Personality: Yusuke is, to put it mildly, an odd duck. Growing up in near-total isolation, with only Madarame and the occasional other pupil for company and no friends in school, has left him with little idea of how general social cues work; he gets upset when Ann accuses him of stalking her and doesn't understand why rearranging Futaba's Featherman figures draws her ire. He sees pretty much everything in terms of art, finding beauty and inspiration in damn near everything; his language is very formal and flowery (TV Tropes notes that his Japanese-language dialogue is archaic), and he tends toward the melodramatic, especially when someone points out his eccentric behaviors. It's also worth noting that he's the only male character in the Persona series to date to wear a yukata to a festival. He has next to no sense of money management, despite his best efforts to the contrary - when he has a little money, he buys art supplies, and if there's any left over he buys... more art supplies, and then remembers food and transit are also things.

Continuing in the vein of understatement, he has some Issues thanks to his father figure using him and stealing credit for his work (to say nothing of the negligent homicide of his mother). Even though he turned a blind eye to the plagiarism and Madarame's strange customers, justifying it again and again in the face of accusations and even evidence to the contrary, he was miserable in that environment and only didn't leave sooner because he believed he had no choice; once he was given one (and convinced he should take it), he embraced it wholeheartedly. He has very strong principles about what art should be for, and 'money' is not it. Any attempt to spin his work for solely financial gain is sure to piss Yusuke off. In general, he will fiercely defend that which he believes to be right - which leads to his struggle to admit to Madarame's misdeeds in the first place, in some ways. The ordeal has left him with a deep-seated distrust of anyone offering their mentorship, even though taking one such opportunity would be a boon to his future career. He’d rather muddle through understanding and portraying the human heart on his own, for all it’s a more difficult route than accepting aid from those with influence.

Madarame’s betrayal throws Yusuke into an artistic crisis of sorts, where he tries to reconcile the beauty he’s been chasing with the pits of nastiness also present in the world. This struggle genuinely bothers him until he puts his finger on the root cause – people are capable of holding, portraying and acting on multiple, sometimes contradictory impulses – after which he feels much more settled in both his art and his own life.

In many ways, Yusuke is the most compassionate member of the Phantom Thieves. Despite generally mistrusting mentor figures after gaining his Persona, Yusuke has a hard time seeing the worst in people, including the one who hurt him the most. He can't bring himself to completely hate Madarame; he's one of the first to coax Futaba into a normal, face-to-face conversation (even after altering her Featherman figures); and he even finds some shred of sympathy for Akechi, who sold the Phantom Thieves out for his own ends and proved to be a pretty awful person in general. There is very little he wouldn’t do for the people he calls his true friends.

Canon Abilities: Yusuke is a Persona user, specialising in the Bufu (ice elemental) line of spells and strong physical attacks. A list of the skills his Persona can learn is here, and it can keep a maximum of eight at once; I’d like to play it as Yusuke first regaining the ability to summon and the first three skills on the list (Bufu, Giant Slice, Sukukaja), as in canon, and work through the others over time. He summons by literally ripping a mask off his face, officially taking the 'worst summon method ever' prize from SEES (which is impressive, considering). The act of summoning within the Metaverse also changes the summoner’s clothes to reflect their inner will of rebellion, with Yusuke’s getup apparently drawing from Japanese rockabilly fashion (I’m taking TV Tropes’ word for it). At the end of Yusuke’s Confidant link, his Persona evolves form, gaining boosted Ice immunity, a resistance to Wind attacks and the skill Evade Fire – another thing I’d like to hang onto until a ways down the road, rather than giving him the second-tier Persona outright.

In related combat news, he's not half bad with a katana. Yusuke’s the only katana wielder in-series so far to bother sheathing it when not in use (the fact that he does so is part of his follow-up attack animation, with the attack’s damage not being shown until he’s done putting it away). Masamune, Yusuke’s endgame-on-my-save katana, is a giant pink-and-purple-sheath affair (no really it's practically as long as he is tall) with strong attack power and a low chance of inducing the Sleep ailment on its targets.

The Metaverse also makes it possible to wield a model gun as though it were the real thing, since the Shadows under attack think it’s a real gun (running out of ammo after a set number of rounds, 24 in the case of his endgame gun on my save file, and resetting the next exploration). How that might pan out in this setting I have no idea, but at the very least suddenly finding himself with a model assault rifle should be entertaining.

He'd say his primary talent, though, is his artistic skill; he's good enough to get into exhibitions on his own merit (and for an old man to claim a teenager’s work as his own) and earn consideration for formal sponsorship, and to get a fine arts scholarship at his high school. His main area of focus appears to be painting, but he also draws like he breathes. This art talent extends to cloning skill cards, which the protagonist can use to customize his Personas.

AU INFORMATION:

Race: Hume
Job: I would love to do some combination of Samurai and either Monk or Thief (probably Monk-Samurai or Samurai-Thief), even though Yusuke’s not affiliated with Liciae anymore. It’d either get him a katana early on or help him handwave past SUDDEN PROFICIENCY when he eventually regains one. For the others, Monk resonates well with his canon fighting style, and Thief, well, Phantom Thieves. If the Samurai thing isn’t feasible, I’ll go with Monk primary, Thief secondary.
Nation Affiliation: Crimson Rose, by way of Liciae

AU Background: Yusuke was raised by his mother near Hunter’s Green. Even before his father’s death in the war, the family was lucky to hover near the middle of the social hierarchy; living so close to a trading post has allowed Yusuke and his mother to make up for the knock in status brought about by his father’s absence. Yusuke himself was very young at the time, and doesn’t really remember his father.

His ability to hold his own in a fight caught the attention of a moderately influential church official, who offered to mentor Yusuke and help him secure a place at the Academie to round out his knowledge base. However, his mentor quickly began stealing credit for his work, making it next to impossible for Yusuke to get any traction on his own, and stalling as much as he could on that promise to sponsor him into school as the war escalated and it looked like ‘cannon fodder’ would be more useful than ‘student.’

Fortunately, the peace treaty was declared before Yusuke got shipped out to die, but he’d had enough of the empty promises and exploitation by someone he’d been taught was supposed to look out for his best interests. This was not the justice his mother had taught him to value, and he saw nothing honorable in staying within a broken system; he can barely imagine how deep the rot may go, but someone else will have to uncover that. The Crimson Rose struck him as the perfect opportunity to better live up to his personal ideals while striving for a peace that will keep the people he cares for safe. It’s not easy, but he’s used to a certain degree of hardship, and at least he gets credit for his own actions.

AU Deviation: First and foremost, rather than only having an abusive mentor figure who kinda cared for him but mostly saw him as a means to an end, Yusuke’s had a stable home life with his mother properly in the picture, this time around. Rather than looking to preserve her memory, he actually knows and loves her since the opportunity wasn’t stolen from him early in life. Joining the Crimson Rose was as much to keep her safe as any more lofty desire for peace.

His mother’s presence has shaped him differently in other ways, too. She taught Yusuke to draw when he was younger, but other than dabbling in it occasionally he hasn’t pursued it with his original fervor; SUDDEN TALENT is going to confuse the hell out of him when it hits. She managed to instill something of a sense of money/resource management in him, and without the ready temptation of art supplies more of it actually stuck. He’s also somewhat better with everyday social graces, though he still vastly prefers having some kind of protocol framework to fall back on.

Yusuke’s a little older than his canon incarnation – 20 or so to canon’s 16 – which gives him a little more perspective on the workings of everyday life; he’s less prone to fits of melodrama. He’s had a crisis of faith much more than an artistic slump, and while some aspects of the thoughts that led him to break with the church line up with his original plot arc (mainly being betrayed and used by a mentor figure), the religious aspect in this AU changes the stakes, as does the fact that he had to figure it out on his own, since even telling his mother could have potentially put her in danger. Notably, he cut ties completely rather than attempt to force justice he wasn’t sure would be properly served, a sharp deviation from joining the Phantom Thieves specifically to hold Madarame accountable for his actions.

RP Sample:
-What in life will you sacrifice your all to protect, and why?
My mother; she taught me everything I know, and sacrificed a great deal that I may have as good a life as she could give me. I do what I do that she may avoid suffering further from this war.
-What is your deepest heart's desire, and why?
Peace; my mother’s safety; the ability to take credit and responsibility for my own actions. The first will make the latter two infinitely more achievable.
-What is it you fear the most, and why?
That all of this will be for nothing; that we and our contributions will be forgotten; that I will only find the same rot in the rest of Astrean as that which drove me to leave Liciae. The very thought of that futility is too much to contemplate.
-What can you never forgive, and why?
Those who would exploit their power in order to further their own ends, at the cost of those they are meant to be helping advance in the world or protecting. I looked away from my former mentor’s actions for far too long, until it was all too apparent he never intended to provide his sponsorship in the first place.
-What qualities do you seek in comrades, and why?
Those who are true to themselves and willing to help others, no matter the cost. Those are the people who will be at your side no matter how dire the situation becomes.
-What kind of people you seek to surround yourself with, and why?
I do not typically seek out the company of others, unless the protocol of a situation demands it. Socialising for socialising’s sake has never been one of my strong points.
-It is the night before a great battle, where are you and what are you doing?
In my quarters, seeing to it that all my equipment is at the ready and doing my best to remain calm.
-Why is it you serve your liege?
The justice and honor my mother taught me to uphold are the justice and honor that defend those with less, and work for the right to life of all people. While I admit I can only speculate about the state of affairs in Dalvarus, the Liciaean authority is certainly not all it portrays itself to be, and no good will come of continued fighting without working toward common ground and compromise, and seeing what virtues each system has and what problems need to be done away with.
-What is necessary to earn your loyalty?
Integrity, above all else; one must be willing to match their message with actions that support it, rather than diminish its worth.
-What is necessary to lose your loyalty?
Continual failure to follow through on promises made, especially large ones. Stealing credit for the work of others. Obvious hypocrisy.