![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Dec. 5th, 2024 07:44 amOOC INFORMATION
Player Name: Gray
Pronoun Preferences: She/Her
Contact: PM or windupmonster @ Plurk
Are you over the age of 18?: Yes
Invitation Link: Here.
Current Characters: N/A
Link to Permissions: Permissions.
IC INFORMATION
Character Name: Akira Takahashi
Species: Youkai (Dodomeki)
Canon: A Terrified Teacher at Ghoul School!
Canon Point: Post Chapter 113 (Meiji Romance: Conclusion)
Character Age: ≈140
CRAU: No
Character Appearance: Here.
Powers and Abilities:
Dodomeki (taken) -
As a dodomeki, Akira can create functional eyes anywhere on himself or anyone/anything he's touched, up to 500 meters away from his current location. Some of these eyes can see spiritual energy; his main eyes (the ones on his face) cannot. If putting an eye on a person or living thing, he also has access to their other senses so long as that eye is active. (Hearing, smell, etc) People/Places touched by someone with at least one eye on them seems to count as him touching these people/places.
He can share what he's seeing with anyone nearby so long as they keep their eyes closed. If they're opened, he has to manually reestablish the connection.
Eyes can also pop out along his body when under great stress, like when he's excited.
Oni (taken) -
As a type of oni, Akira has immense physical strength. He's shown to be capable of ripping out a building's support beam and tossing it with one arm, along with punching clean through a humanoid torso. He also regularly exercises this strength, via holding down and subduing unruly patients as he puts it, so he could be considered slightly stronger than the default of his species.
Youkai form (taken) -
Akira is able to switch between his natural dodomeki shape and his human shape at will, or when his spiritual energy gets too low. This change offers no obvious benefits.
(Purely as a headcanon, in youkai form all senses other than sight are dampened.)
Medical Savant (kept) -
Akira is studied in many, many areas of medicine. "Internal medicine, surgical, pediatrics, gynaecology, etc etc" are the ones canonically listed. He's also shown to be able to accurately gauge a patient's temperature with only skin contact, and a patient's weight only by lifting them, down to the decimal point.
(For balance's sake and because the player feels it makes sense for the character, he will be played as having trouble with the fields of psychology/psychiatry.)
What Did Your Character Wish For? To see and learn as much as possible in the time he has.
What Potion Did They Receive? Golden
Did They Drink It? Yes
If Yes, What Element/Animal? Jackson's chameleon
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?
Akira's best friend in the whole world is Makoto Yamazaki, a doppelganger that suddenly appeared one day and he took in. As someone/thing incredibly unusual even by youkai standards Akira was the only one willing to hear Makoto out and learn more about him instead of shunning or even killing him, leading Makoto to seeing Akira as a savior figure and going along with most anything the other did solely out of gratitude. Akira, meanwhile, took up the mantle of being Makoto's protector.
The power dynamic shifted in high school, however. Due to a strange series of events Akira got a much needed wake up call, which resulted in the decision that the most trusted person in his life, Makoto, would be his moral compass. Makoto would teach him how to connect with others, how to behave and live peacefully in society, and that's a process that's been steadily ongoing for the past hundred or so years.
To this day Akira doesn't completely understand other people and various social rules, but he trusts Makoto and has a good idea of what behavior might and might not upset him, so that's what he tries to live by.
2. What are they most afraid of and why?
Youkai are like demons of old that are ruled by a vice, obsession, or desire. Akira's all-consuming desire is knowledge, and he structures his life around gaining as much of it as he can as often as he can. There are few times we see Akira genuinely upset, and the most notable example is during his climax in the Meiji Romance arc. He finds the manifest of a wealthy family that had been trafficking other youkai, discovering that there are over a thousand people he'll never have the chance to meet and learn about, which sends him into a murderous rage.
The rage is able to be redirected, but what ultimately gets him to calm down is the realization that keeping up with his behavior as-is will only isolate himself from those around him and rob him of yet more opportunities to meet and learn about new people. Sure, learning things from books and such is an option, but he craves the firsthand knowledge one can only get from seeing, hearing, or experiencing something yourself, and for that he needs others in his life and has made truly drastic changes in order to keep them there.
So simply put, his biggest fear is isolation, be it physical, emotional, or mental. There is nothing to be learned in a vacuum, and that's a nightmare.
3. What are their emotional, mental, and physical weaknesses and why?
Akira's biggest weakness, according to the text, is his "lack of common sense." His mind works so differently from those around him that things most people would consider obvious by his age, especially things like social cues and basic moral dilemmas, don't come as easy to him. This was no doubt compounded by growing up in a might makes right society where most problems were simply beat into submission by the strong. After over a hundred years of How To Be Normal training from his best friend he has a good enough idea of how to behave in common social scenarios, but it's far from second nature. He still has to catch and adjust himself, and if he's riled up for whatever reason chances are it's already too late to pull back on his leash. Mans is a freak.
This also leads into his intellectual weakness. He's sharp as a tack, but his judgement can be clouded by his desires to the point of putting others or himself in danger. If something won't kill you it's fine, because he can just patch you up afterwards good as new. We've seen this happen even in situations where he isn't sure he has complete control and everything will be okay--provoking a powerful entity with an injection because he wanted to see if it would work.
As an oni, Akira is physically strong. As a lesser kind of oni, however, he struggles with anything heavier than the average grown man even though he claims to get plenty of exercise via holding down unruly patients. It's also said his physical prowess doesn't extend to running particularly fast, preferring to compensate for it with vehicles instead. It should also be noted that his greatest asset, his eyes, are still vulnerable to everything normal eyes are vulnerable to, so while he can get crazy with it he still needs to be careful.
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 biggest would have to be that while he describes acts of medical violence he imagines inflicting on others with great detail and glee, they aren't the goal but the means to an end. He takes no joy in harming others or even seeing them hurt--even in interpersonal conflicts where violence is more often than not what most others will resort to, what with the boiling youkai blood and all--what he wants is the information these acts provide in spite of the harm they cause. He sees himself as a gentle, loving man, and will gladly use peaceful methods if they can tell him all of what he wants to know.
It just so happens this isn't usually the case, so he's accepted that in order to make an omelet you have to break a few eggs.
5. What would make them happiest and why?
Being able to see a hint that the world he's working towards will happen. One of his stated reasons for managing his island's local orphanage is to nurture curious youth that may one day, either due to age or abilities or what have you, be able to discover things he can't.
Despite being a long-lived species with an average life expectancy of around 1000, Akira is well aware that one day he will grow old and he will die. Even 1000 years isn't long enough to learn as many things as he'd want to in an ideal world, so he tends the soil for the younger generation to continue the work of learning in his stead, applying what they learn, and learning even more from what comes of that.
Eventually knowing everything is both impossible and incredibly boring, every day there's newer and more secretive things to find, but seeing what he does know being put into use by those more capable would be a dream come true.
6. What characteristics does someone need to have to be your character's ideal significant other?
First and foremost, and I know this is gonna come as a shock, someone just as curious as he is. He only has the patience to be around someone with no imagination or wonder at all for so long, so that's the biggest thing.
Secondly, something much easier to achieve: being kind. Having grown up in cutthroat high society, high youkai society no less, he finds the ability to be kind in a cruel world endlessly fascinating. He wouldn't be able to stay with someone who finds joy in harming others or seeing them miserable, either directly or indirectly, even if it's less about being a caretaker and more about just being a good person.
In fact, it ups your chances even further if you're someone he himself can take care of. Just a little. He adores doting on his loved ones, please allow him to dote.
7. Would your character make a sacrifice to save someone else and why or why not?
Putting aside the usual "it depends", yes. His logic for roughing up any patients or would-be patients on occasion is that with his extensive medical experience he can just fix any harm he causes so the end result is the same. This logic also extends to himself and getting into potentially harmful situations.
His biggest success story is his daughter, Kuniko, who he adopted after bringing her home from an encounter that literally crushed him and ripped his insides into outsides by the mindless monster she was at the time. Even after all of this, with no guarantee it wouldn't escalate even further, he still offered out a hand to this creature trying to kill him and said please, let me help you. He doesn't regret his actions one bit, coming out of it both with a bright young girl of his own and a cool new scar to add to his collection.
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?
Start learning to live with others much, much earlier.
Even now this is still his biggest roadblock, and in a perfect world perhaps if he included properly interacting with other people into his studies as a child he might be further along than he is today. He might have also avoided some gruesome mistakes he'd made as a child, improving his relationship not only with his best friend Makoto, but his little brother Kurai, who after a childhood of witnessing Akira care little about the lives and feelings of those around him now sees his brother as an inhuman monstrosity and isn't shy about saying so.
9. When in dire circumstances does your character fight, flee, freeze or fawn and how does that look?
Technically speaking, he Fawns. He doesn't enjoy conflict and would like to avoid it as best he can, first trying to fix whatever the problem might be to appease his or someone else's would-be aggressors so things don't escalate. He does not, however, submit to the aggressor or roll over should this not work. He firmly stands his ground until the threat is past, and if it doesn't then he'll relent and match the energy he's being given tit for tat. He doesn't like violence, but that doesn't mean he isn't capable of it, or afraid to use the strength he was born with in order to keep he and his as safe as he possibly can.
10. Why did your character make the wish they did?
To him it wasn't even making a wish, per se, but reaffirming the goal he's been working towards all along. He doesn't need the help of any mystic powers or divine intervention to do what he's aiming to do, bound and determined to make it happen as best he can with whatever resources he has available at any given time. For as long as he's able to draw breath he's going to be learning about the world around him, wish or not, and if the powers that be in Labyrinthum want to help him with that, sure! Why not!
If they want to keep him from that goal, however, they're going to be find out just how powerful a youkai's desire is.
Samples:
Log Sample (Overflow)
Network Sample
Player Name: Gray
Pronoun Preferences: She/Her
Contact: PM or windupmonster @ Plurk
Are you over the age of 18?: Yes
Invitation Link: Here.
Current Characters: N/A
Link to Permissions: Permissions.
IC INFORMATION
Character Name: Akira Takahashi
Species: Youkai (Dodomeki)
Canon: A Terrified Teacher at Ghoul School!
Canon Point: Post Chapter 113 (Meiji Romance: Conclusion)
Character Age: ≈140
CRAU: No
Character Appearance: Here.
Powers and Abilities:
Dodomeki (taken) -
As a dodomeki, Akira can create functional eyes anywhere on himself or anyone/anything he's touched, up to 500 meters away from his current location. Some of these eyes can see spiritual energy; his main eyes (the ones on his face) cannot. If putting an eye on a person or living thing, he also has access to their other senses so long as that eye is active. (Hearing, smell, etc) People/Places touched by someone with at least one eye on them seems to count as him touching these people/places.
He can share what he's seeing with anyone nearby so long as they keep their eyes closed. If they're opened, he has to manually reestablish the connection.
Eyes can also pop out along his body when under great stress, like when he's excited.
Oni (taken) -
As a type of oni, Akira has immense physical strength. He's shown to be capable of ripping out a building's support beam and tossing it with one arm, along with punching clean through a humanoid torso. He also regularly exercises this strength, via holding down and subduing unruly patients as he puts it, so he could be considered slightly stronger than the default of his species.
Youkai form (taken) -
Akira is able to switch between his natural dodomeki shape and his human shape at will, or when his spiritual energy gets too low. This change offers no obvious benefits.
(Purely as a headcanon, in youkai form all senses other than sight are dampened.)
Medical Savant (kept) -
Akira is studied in many, many areas of medicine. "Internal medicine, surgical, pediatrics, gynaecology, etc etc" are the ones canonically listed. He's also shown to be able to accurately gauge a patient's temperature with only skin contact, and a patient's weight only by lifting them, down to the decimal point.
(For balance's sake and because the player feels it makes sense for the character, he will be played as having trouble with the fields of psychology/psychiatry.)
What Did Your Character Wish For? To see and learn as much as possible in the time he has.
What Potion Did They Receive? Golden
Did They Drink It? Yes
If Yes, What Element/Animal? Jackson's chameleon
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?
Akira's best friend in the whole world is Makoto Yamazaki, a doppelganger that suddenly appeared one day and he took in. As someone/thing incredibly unusual even by youkai standards Akira was the only one willing to hear Makoto out and learn more about him instead of shunning or even killing him, leading Makoto to seeing Akira as a savior figure and going along with most anything the other did solely out of gratitude. Akira, meanwhile, took up the mantle of being Makoto's protector.
The power dynamic shifted in high school, however. Due to a strange series of events Akira got a much needed wake up call, which resulted in the decision that the most trusted person in his life, Makoto, would be his moral compass. Makoto would teach him how to connect with others, how to behave and live peacefully in society, and that's a process that's been steadily ongoing for the past hundred or so years.
To this day Akira doesn't completely understand other people and various social rules, but he trusts Makoto and has a good idea of what behavior might and might not upset him, so that's what he tries to live by.
2. What are they most afraid of and why?
Youkai are like demons of old that are ruled by a vice, obsession, or desire. Akira's all-consuming desire is knowledge, and he structures his life around gaining as much of it as he can as often as he can. There are few times we see Akira genuinely upset, and the most notable example is during his climax in the Meiji Romance arc. He finds the manifest of a wealthy family that had been trafficking other youkai, discovering that there are over a thousand people he'll never have the chance to meet and learn about, which sends him into a murderous rage.
The rage is able to be redirected, but what ultimately gets him to calm down is the realization that keeping up with his behavior as-is will only isolate himself from those around him and rob him of yet more opportunities to meet and learn about new people. Sure, learning things from books and such is an option, but he craves the firsthand knowledge one can only get from seeing, hearing, or experiencing something yourself, and for that he needs others in his life and has made truly drastic changes in order to keep them there.
So simply put, his biggest fear is isolation, be it physical, emotional, or mental. There is nothing to be learned in a vacuum, and that's a nightmare.
3. What are their emotional, mental, and physical weaknesses and why?
Akira's biggest weakness, according to the text, is his "lack of common sense." His mind works so differently from those around him that things most people would consider obvious by his age, especially things like social cues and basic moral dilemmas, don't come as easy to him. This was no doubt compounded by growing up in a might makes right society where most problems were simply beat into submission by the strong. After over a hundred years of How To Be Normal training from his best friend he has a good enough idea of how to behave in common social scenarios, but it's far from second nature. He still has to catch and adjust himself, and if he's riled up for whatever reason chances are it's already too late to pull back on his leash. Mans is a freak.
This also leads into his intellectual weakness. He's sharp as a tack, but his judgement can be clouded by his desires to the point of putting others or himself in danger. If something won't kill you it's fine, because he can just patch you up afterwards good as new. We've seen this happen even in situations where he isn't sure he has complete control and everything will be okay--provoking a powerful entity with an injection because he wanted to see if it would work.
As an oni, Akira is physically strong. As a lesser kind of oni, however, he struggles with anything heavier than the average grown man even though he claims to get plenty of exercise via holding down unruly patients. It's also said his physical prowess doesn't extend to running particularly fast, preferring to compensate for it with vehicles instead. It should also be noted that his greatest asset, his eyes, are still vulnerable to everything normal eyes are vulnerable to, so while he can get crazy with it he still needs to be careful.
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 biggest would have to be that while he describes acts of medical violence he imagines inflicting on others with great detail and glee, they aren't the goal but the means to an end. He takes no joy in harming others or even seeing them hurt--even in interpersonal conflicts where violence is more often than not what most others will resort to, what with the boiling youkai blood and all--what he wants is the information these acts provide in spite of the harm they cause. He sees himself as a gentle, loving man, and will gladly use peaceful methods if they can tell him all of what he wants to know.
It just so happens this isn't usually the case, so he's accepted that in order to make an omelet you have to break a few eggs.
5. What would make them happiest and why?
Being able to see a hint that the world he's working towards will happen. One of his stated reasons for managing his island's local orphanage is to nurture curious youth that may one day, either due to age or abilities or what have you, be able to discover things he can't.
Despite being a long-lived species with an average life expectancy of around 1000, Akira is well aware that one day he will grow old and he will die. Even 1000 years isn't long enough to learn as many things as he'd want to in an ideal world, so he tends the soil for the younger generation to continue the work of learning in his stead, applying what they learn, and learning even more from what comes of that.
Eventually knowing everything is both impossible and incredibly boring, every day there's newer and more secretive things to find, but seeing what he does know being put into use by those more capable would be a dream come true.
6. What characteristics does someone need to have to be your character's ideal significant other?
First and foremost, and I know this is gonna come as a shock, someone just as curious as he is. He only has the patience to be around someone with no imagination or wonder at all for so long, so that's the biggest thing.
Secondly, something much easier to achieve: being kind. Having grown up in cutthroat high society, high youkai society no less, he finds the ability to be kind in a cruel world endlessly fascinating. He wouldn't be able to stay with someone who finds joy in harming others or seeing them miserable, either directly or indirectly, even if it's less about being a caretaker and more about just being a good person.
In fact, it ups your chances even further if you're someone he himself can take care of. Just a little. He adores doting on his loved ones, please allow him to dote.
7. Would your character make a sacrifice to save someone else and why or why not?
Putting aside the usual "it depends", yes. His logic for roughing up any patients or would-be patients on occasion is that with his extensive medical experience he can just fix any harm he causes so the end result is the same. This logic also extends to himself and getting into potentially harmful situations.
His biggest success story is his daughter, Kuniko, who he adopted after bringing her home from an encounter that literally crushed him and ripped his insides into outsides by the mindless monster she was at the time. Even after all of this, with no guarantee it wouldn't escalate even further, he still offered out a hand to this creature trying to kill him and said please, let me help you. He doesn't regret his actions one bit, coming out of it both with a bright young girl of his own and a cool new scar to add to his collection.
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?
Start learning to live with others much, much earlier.
Even now this is still his biggest roadblock, and in a perfect world perhaps if he included properly interacting with other people into his studies as a child he might be further along than he is today. He might have also avoided some gruesome mistakes he'd made as a child, improving his relationship not only with his best friend Makoto, but his little brother Kurai, who after a childhood of witnessing Akira care little about the lives and feelings of those around him now sees his brother as an inhuman monstrosity and isn't shy about saying so.
9. When in dire circumstances does your character fight, flee, freeze or fawn and how does that look?
Technically speaking, he Fawns. He doesn't enjoy conflict and would like to avoid it as best he can, first trying to fix whatever the problem might be to appease his or someone else's would-be aggressors so things don't escalate. He does not, however, submit to the aggressor or roll over should this not work. He firmly stands his ground until the threat is past, and if it doesn't then he'll relent and match the energy he's being given tit for tat. He doesn't like violence, but that doesn't mean he isn't capable of it, or afraid to use the strength he was born with in order to keep he and his as safe as he possibly can.
10. Why did your character make the wish they did?
To him it wasn't even making a wish, per se, but reaffirming the goal he's been working towards all along. He doesn't need the help of any mystic powers or divine intervention to do what he's aiming to do, bound and determined to make it happen as best he can with whatever resources he has available at any given time. For as long as he's able to draw breath he's going to be learning about the world around him, wish or not, and if the powers that be in Labyrinthum want to help him with that, sure! Why not!
If they want to keep him from that goal, however, they're going to be find out just how powerful a youkai's desire is.
Samples:
Log Sample (Overflow)
Network Sample
