[synodiporia] App

[razorblade_empress]

P L A Y E R;
NAME: Zoe
AGE: over 30
PLAYER JOURNAL: zoifox
TIMEZONE: EST
CONTACT: fireplacecat; zoifox#4733 @ Discord; pm via character journal(s)
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: Raidou Kuzunoha XIV, Minako Arisato, Cassandra [Claymore]

C H A R A C T E R;
NAME: Yukino Mayuzumi
CANON: Persona 2
POINT IN CANON: The end of Eternal Punishment
AGE:20
APPEARANCE: As seen here.
CANON HISTORY: Can be found here.
CANON PERSONALITY: The first Persona game's description of Yukino describes her as "an older sister to all the students," the person everyone trusts, and that comes through in the Persona 2 games as well (albeit less so in Eternal Punishment, where she's a minor character with relatively little screen time). In Innocent Sin, Yukino is generally a calm, steady presence, always there with a pertinent observation or some words of advice, and a voice of reason when the rest of the party is in danger of going off the rails. She's also the party member with the most experience dealing with both Personas and demons, and she'll gladly offer both advice and assistance to Tatsuya and company to get them through it, or point them to someone else who can help (usually her former classmate Eriko). Perhaps a better example of this "older sister" tendency, though, would be her interactions with Anna Yoshizaka, a high school student and former star athlete who was left disabled after a hit-and-run accident. Anna became depressed and began acting out; in Innocent Sin, she eventually joins the Masked Circle, becoming the antagonist Lady Scorpio. Yukino, seeing some of her former delinquent self in the younger girl, persistently attempts to get through to her whenever her path crosses with that of the party, much to Anna's anger and bewilderment. In Eternal Punishment, she seems to have played a similar role in the life of that side's Anna, albeit offscreen.

Of course, she's not a saint. She's an ex-yankī, and some of that's stuck with her. One of her available solo demon "contacts" (read: negotiation tactics) is called "Speak with Fists." And she does have a temper; when her friend Maya is denied time off at the beginning of Eternal Punishment, Yukino's immediate response is to offer to go in and "straighten that [expletive] out" - which demonstrates her loyalty to Maya, but would probably not have helped the situation if Maya had let her go through with it. Most of the time, though, she's better at keeping that temper reined in, or at least channeling it properly.

She's also not without her own doubts and fears. She dreams of being a professional photographer, and she'd once dreamed of becoming a teacher like Ms. Saeko, the teacher who had helped the then-delinquent Yukino the way Yukino tries to help Anna. Late in the game, provided the correct choices are made, Yukino confronts her shadow, who gleefully tells the party (and Anna, whose life they've just saved) that Yukino lacks the intelligence to be a teacher or the eye to be a photographer, reminding Yukino of the way she'd used to take her anger out on everyone around her because it had been easier than dealing with things. Yukino herself acknowledges her less pleasant traits and admits that she'd once had no idea what she'd wanted or why she should even go on living, but points out that her friends have taught her differently, and given her the courage to keep going no matter how many times she falls. And then she shoos the rest of the party onward and prepares to take on her shadow by herself - although Anna soon joins the fray as well - which if nothing else demonstrates her courage, her sense of priorities - a friend of the other party members is in danger and they can't waste any more time - and a willingness to sacrifice herself for the greater good. That last comes up once again when she sacrifices her own ability to summon a Persona so that someone else can have it instead, and then returns to the city with Anna to go fight heavily armored Nazis, as one does. Never let it be said that Yukino Mayuzumi backs down from a fight.

In Eternal Punishment, she presumably still has her Persona thanks to timeline weirdness, and in the later parts of the game joins her former classmates from St. Hermelin in the streets of Sumaru City, fighting off an entirely different group of invaders. Again, as one does.

POINT OF DEPARTURE: N/A
VETERAN?: Yes, of the backstory Jaunts (Moebius/the Spark/Belljar). As for her whereabouts since then, I'd like to go with the odyssey option.
ABILITIES: Similar to characters from the later games, Yukino is capable of summoning a Persona in or out of battle to cast spells or use other skills. However, the games that feature Yukino don't have Wild Cards - anyone who can use a Persona is able to equip any Persona in the party's common pool, as long as they have at least some affinity with the Persona's Arcana. The affinity level dictates how much SP a spell will cost as well as the frequency of beneficial mutations, such as increased stats or a new spell: a higher affinity means cheaper magic and a greater chance of mutations. Yukino's highest affinities are with Empress (her primary Arcana), Strength, Hermit, Temperance, Star, Fool, Sword, and Coin. Her initial Persona is Vesta, and her ultimate is Durga; she's also shown using Brigid in the Persona 1 manga.

(It should probably be noted that Personas in the Persona 2 games aren't created via fusing other Personas together as they are in the later games. Instead, the party needs a requisite number of Tarot cards of the correct Arcana, which can be gotten via demon negotiation, or "contacts". Additionally, some Personas require a Material card specific to that particular Persona. Personas that are no longer viable can be traded back to the Velvet Room for fabulous prizes items. They do still need to be relatively close in level to that of the party leader, but there's more leeway than there is in other games; it's possible to have a Persona a few levels stronger than whoever's got it equipped at the moment.)

It's also possible for Yukino to perform combo attacks with other party members, provided their Personas have the requisite component skills. This is unlikely to come up unless other castmates pop up, but I'm listing it for completeness' sake.

There are instances in the games of a Persona user being able to sense another Persona user due to "resonance" from that person's Persona, although this is probably seen most often right before boss fights. This is also listed for completeness' sake, because it's not something I'd want to have her do without permission.

In addition to all of this, Yukino has been shown tapping into the power of her equipped Persona to pull off impressive feats of strength; on at least two occasions, she's used this to force open doors a person of normal strength could not. Even without her Persona, she's a decent fighter, using razorblades and other thrown weapons as her main melee weapons. In the first Persona game, party members could also use a ranged weapon, which in Yukino's case was a double-barreled shotgun. She does not require a medium like cards or Evokers to summon a Persona; she does it by force of will.
INVENTORY: A set of razorblades and a digital camera, plus an assortment of unused Tarot cards.
ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW? Yukino is aware of the Innocent Sin timeline and what happened there, but doesn't have any direct memories of it due to the timeline changes. I'm assuming she has access to Durga as a result. Vesta I'm not sure on.

M A R K S;
JUSTIFICATION: In order by Arcana:
High Priestess: She doesn't actually have a very good affinity with High Priestess in canon, but she does generally show a lot of sound judgment and common sense.
Empress: Her primary Arcana, and the Arcana of her ultimate Persona... which given the series she's from probably also works as an argument against. Those "big sister" tendencies of hers probably fit this Arcana best.
Judgment: Yukino is explicitly been shown to have accepted her past mistakes; she doesn't deny her shadow's accusations, but demonstrates that she's been able to move on.
VETO:
Fool: If there is one thing Yukino is not, it is inexperienced.
Justice: While Yukino does have a strong sense of justice, the colder aspects of the Arcana really don't fit her.

S A M P L E S;
ACTIONSPAM SAMPLE:
[It's more than a little weird to come back from wherever the hell she'd been for the past however long it's been and find herself surrounded by complete strangers instead of the Travelers she remembers. It's also more than a little irksome to hear that they'd apparently just beaten the hell out of Nyarlathotep of all people; she owes him several punches in the face for the shit he'd pulled on Maya and the kids alone, and hearing that she'd only juuuuuust missed a chance to do exactly that is frustrating, to say the least.

Can't really be helped, though. She's just going to have to deal.

And to figure out what's what, which she is not going to accomplish by just standing around on an isolated piece of giant peppermint. So she strides across the chocolate, talking to people, checking out a bunch of those "created spaces" (and if those and the vastly increased food availability don't demonstrate how much things have changed since she was last in Liminal Space, she's not sure what does), and generally trying to regain her bearings. She does eventually run across a few people she recognizes, which doesn't exactly make her feel better but does make her feel less like some kind of relic, and spends some time catching up. She even snaps a few pictures of this Liminal, more because she needs the practice than to record it for posterity. Durga. she thinks, would probably approve.]

PROSE SAMPLE: Here