Difference between revisions of "Tatsuya Suou"

Revision as of 04:09, 21 November 2009

Profile

A third-year student who's become the most popular attendee of Seven Sisters Academy without even trying, Tatsuya Suou is tall, good-looking and seems mature for his age. The serious and withdrawn younger son of a disgraced police family, Tatsuya is seen by his peers as cool, dangerous and mysterious, who legendarily defeated an entire gang in middle school, making him the number one target for the female students (especially a certain one), and an object of admiration, fear and/or envy from the males. In truth, Tatsuya is a listless, directionless young man who finds it difficult to deal with others, usually coming across as blunt, callous and cold. Tatsuya seems to have a lot of problems with authority figures, in particular his overly perceptive homeroom teacher, and his overly 'perfect', police detective older brother.

Skills

Can Fall Asleep ANYWHERE, Cutting Classes to Save the World... Or Work a Part Time Job, Fastest Runner at Seven Sisters (But Still Can't Escape Ginko), Giving His Older Brother an Ulcer, More Issues than Rolling Stone, Nervous Habit: Lighter Flicking, Nice Haircut, Phoenix Corps Featherman Identity: Red Hawk, Problems With Authority, Secret Skill: Electric Guitar, Secret Skill: Sound Imitation, The Paradox Boy, This Continuity is Probably Not His Fault... Maybe, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Personality

<tab>Like many Persona characters, much of Tatsuya's personality is informed by his Zodiac sign and his Major Arcana affiliation; in Tatsuya's case, these are Leo and The Sun, respectively. While these would both suggest someone more outgoing and larger than life than Tatsuya is, it's important to keep in mind the traumatic events that have deeply affected him over the course of his development. In effect, his tarot could be seen as being 'reversed', giving him the opposite outward personality than you might expect.

The person Tatsuya appears to be to everyone around him is very serious and withdrawn; most of his peers don't even try to joke around with him, because they think he wouldn't be interested in it, or they're scared of him. Though some of the people in his homeroom class (3-B, for the curious) treat him in a somewhat familiar manner, none of them would presume to call themselves Tatsuya's FRIENDS. He's not the sort of person who has friends, to them. He's the sort of person that they admire from afar, and when trouble happens - such as raising the ire of another school's gang leader - they usually point it at him, not because they want to see Tatsuya get hurt (not most of them, anyway) but because he seems like he can handle it: Because of his aloof behaviour, he seems more adult and mature than the other students, and with his scary reputation he seems like he's the most capable student at Sevens.

The worst part is that he probably is.

A lot of this apparent behaviour from Tatsuya comes from his desire to be independent, which has a few significant causes itself. He wants to be independent because he doesn't want to hurt anyone else; he knows what can happen when he loses control of himself emotionally, unleashing the fiery and unbridled power of his Persona, Vulcanus. So he keeps himself on a tight emotional rein, and he avoids forming close emotional connections with anyone that might put a chip in his facade. As far as he's concerned, he's fine by himself in any situation, no matter how dangerous it might be, if it means nobody else gets hurt because of him. Furthermore, he wants to be independent both personally and financially because he doesn't want to have to depend on anyone else, especially his family. This is mainly because of his disappointment in his parents after his father was forced to retire in disgrace, and the subsequent nagging from his 'perfect' older brother, Katsuya. But some of it also comes from a trauma he can't remember, when he lost his best friends in the Masquerade, and 'Big Sis' apparently died.

However, much as Tatsuya tries to avoid entanglements with others, he simply can't do so completely. His brother's protective nature, trying to guide Tatsuya into having a future, is a constant irritant to Tatsuya who has something of an inferiority complex because of his brother's apparent elite status; he doesn't believe he can be as good as Katsuya, and resents his 'perfect' brother's attempts to make him try. His sometime substitute teacher teacher, Saeko Smith, is another person who doesn't just sit back and let Tatsuya drift through life, instead keeping on him about his future and his performance at school - especially his tendency to cut class for other 'priorities'. This trifecta of people who make Tatsuya's life difficult and complicated is completed by fellow Seven Sisters Academy student Lisa Silverman, also known as 'Ginko'; a decidedly Caucasian girl who apparently speaks very little English, Lisa is famous both for her popularity at Sevens, and her relentless pursuit of Tatsuya.

Tatsuya, notably, tries to avoid Lisa with almost palpable desperation; normally he seems to not really notice or care what other students think of him, be they the seemingly endless parade of girls with crushes on him, or the guys who are terrified or in awe of him.. But not so with Lisa, whose singleminded intensity scares the bejeezus right out of him. If left alone with her, he will be nearly overcome with primal terror, and find the first available avenue of escape.

Deep down, though, Tatsuya is a good person who genuinely cares about other people... Otherwise, he wouldn't try to distance himself from them for their own safety. Because he's so withdrawn, Tatsuya doesn't have a very soft touch when it comes to interpersonal relationships, and when he has to deal with people he can be blunt, callous and insensitive. He doesn't waste time sparing other people's feelings most of the time, and when he ends up having to comfort or inspire someone, it makes him decidedly awkward and uncomfortable. Despite this, people DO look to him to do these things, and often look up to him as a leader; for his part, Tatsuya doesn't see himself as a natural leader or anything like that, and he's not especially decisive, but he has a natural charisma that shines through his introverted exterior, and when combined with his mature and capable demeanor, it draws others to him. Eventually, Tatsuya may grow more comfortable with a leadership role, but this would require him to resolve some of his more prickly issues.

Unfortunately for Tatsuya, aside from his desire to 'be independent', he doesn't really know what he wants to do with himself. He's on the cusp of adulthood, but he has no idea what to do for a career, or anything like that. As a child, he wanted to be a policeman like his father, who he saw as a hero that stopped the bad guys and protected the innocent, but he lost that dream when he became disillusioned with his father. 'Big Sis' also inspired him to help other people realise their dreams, but Tatsuya has forgotten that as he has everything related to the Masquerade and Big Sis - his only relic of that time is the lighter Jun gave him, which he keeps on his person at all times, and is prone to flicking the cap as a habit. Directionless and umotivated, lacking anything to center himself, Tatsuya drifts through life wherever events take him.

Despite this, though, Tatsuya has a tremendous force of will. It's seldom applied, making him sort of a 'sleeping dragon' - someone with tremendous, world-shaking potential, but who hasn't really had the drive to make USE of it. His willpower is strong enough to (hypothetically, since it hasn't happened yet) break through an alteration of the timeline by Philemon himself, and to see him through potentially horrific situations. Whether Tatsuya will truly live up to his potential, and come into his own as a person and a leader, remains to be seen.

History

Born on July 27, 1991, Tatsuya Suou came into the world as the younger son of a respected police detective and a housewife. By that time, the Suou family had already seen the birth of another son, Katsuya, about six years earlier, and the two siblings got on about as well as brothers do with that sort of age gap between them; too much difference for them to be real friends, but not too much to avoid a certain level of sibling rivalry, especially as Tatsuya's arrival removed Katsuya from the position of 'the baby', and forced him into a position of some responsibility, forcing him to look after his younger brother.

For the most part, Tatsuya grew up as a fairly normal kid for the first few years of his life. Of course, this would be a pretty boring story if nothing happened to him at all, and so one day he had a fateful meeting that would change the course of his entire life. When he was eight years old, Tatsuya's brother brought him to a festival, but left him at the Araya Shrine while he himself went off to go look around. Though initially he was quite resentful at being abandoned by his brother, soon Tatsuya met another little boy, and they decided to play a game based off of the super sentai show, 'Phoenix Corps Featherman'; soon enough, they were joined by two more children, a gaijin girl and a chubby boy, and the four of them became fast friends. They called their group the Masquerade.

Tatsuya and the first boy, whose name was Jun, became best friends almost immediately. Even when they weren't playing with the other two children, they did almost everything together, and even exchanged keepsakes; Tatsuya gave Jun his father's watch, and Jun gave Tatsuya his father's lighter, an older Zippo engraved with the phrase 'The Most Important Things Can't be Seen with the Eyes'.

After a few weeks of this, the Masquerade expanded a bit further when they met a middle school girl at the Araya Shrine. This girl, who they only knew as Big Sis, became the unofficial fifth member of their group. She played with them, and taught them weird German poetry and the importance of being optimistic. In some ways, her role with the group sometimes shifted more into the territory of 'mothering'. But, perhaps more importantly, she taught the other members of the Masquerade a game: The Persona Game.

Unfortunately, their closeness to Big Sis made it all the worse for the young members of the Masquerade when she revealed that she was going to be moving away. Jun, the gaijin girl and the chubby boy all figured, with all the logic of a small child, that if they locked Big Sis in the shrine overnight, she couldn't leave them; only Tatsuya protested, and in order to keep him from ruining their scheme, the other kids locked him in the shrine as well, before they left, with the intention of returning the next morning to let Tatsuya and Big Sis out. Thing seldom work out how you plan them, though. While Big Sis kept Tatsuya's spirits up in the shrine that night, playing games with the distraught boy, tragedy crept up on them in the form of Tatsuya Sudou. Sudou, an insane student at Seven Sisters Academy, wanted to burn down the shrine for no better reason than to watch the pretty flames... He neither knew nor cared that there were two living people inside. As the shrine began to burn, Tatsuya managed to escape to go for help, but Big Sis couldn't follow him. Instead, the eight year old found himself confronting Sudou, with Big Sis frantically pounding on the door to the shrine from inside, trying to get out; Sudou stabbed Tatsuya in the back, and Tatsuya reflexively responded by summoning his Persona, Vulcanus, who burned off half of Sudou's face, chasing the madman away before blood loss caught up with Tatsuya.

Waking up in the hospital, Tatsuya had no idea what happened to Big Sis. Believing her dead in the shrine - as the other members of the Masquerade did, though they thought Tatsuya was dead as well - he slowly started to block out what had happened, burying the traumatic memory, as well as his power, deep down. Despite this, after Tatsuya's near death his father became obsessed with the serial arsonist case, and was within a hair's breadth of being able to arrest Tatsuya Sudou for the crimes when Sudou's father Tatsuzou stepped in. Using his connections and political power, he was able to destroy Suou's career entirely, forcing him to resign from the police force in disgrace, and threatened the Suou family, forcing him to keep quiet about what happened.

This was a turning point for the whole family, the very moment when they fractured and began to fall apart. Much of the will to live went out of the parents, as they tried to bear up under the weight of their disgrace with quiet dignity, and Katsuya was forced to step in as the 'breadwinner', tossing aside his own plans in order to try to restore the family name, as well as to provide a future for his younger brother. But Tatsuya was crushed. He had idolised his father, seen him as a pillar of strength and justice, and to have him do something which Tatsuya, from his youthful perspective, saw as weak and spineless, destroyed that forever. He didn't understand why his mother didn't do anything about it, and just quietly accepted things; in one fell swoop, Tatsuya's desire to follow in his father's footsteps as a police officer was reduced to ash. At that moment, Tatsuya resolved to become independent, even taking up part-time jobs once he was old enough.

Because of his family's reputation, and also his general attitude - somewhat aloof, riding a motorcycle, and so on - Tatsuya attracted a lot of trouble in middle school. Sometimes, these turned to fights, and in one particularly serious instance, Tatsuya's Persona ability resurfaced; he summoned Vulcanus, and nearly killed the other boys. This incident had two main consequences: One, it cemented Tatsuya's reputation, adding an even more dangerous element as the story grew in the retelling, making it sound like he'd defeated a whole gang by himself. And two, it gave Tatsuya another reason to withdraw from others, making him afraid of himself and his mysterious power. Not wanting to get hurt, or to hurt anyone else, Tatsuya withdrew into himself, becoming serious and lonely. Even now that he's in his last year at Seven Sisters, this is still the case, though it somehow just makes him enormously popular... But how long can his policy of safety through non-involvement with others last?