Difference between revisions of "Minamo Takagawa"

・ Photography. Her culture club. Noted for her melancholy and sometimes morbid topics, she usually photographs in black and white film, using an nearly antique Hasselblad camera. For color topics, she uses a digital camera.

・ Calligraphy. Noted for her beautiful brushwork, she still attends to hang out with one of her friends, though she is not a member.

・ Volleyball Club. Her athletic club. Minamo is known as an enthusiastic team player, but will never be a "star" on the team. She seems enjoy just being a team member.

・ Student Tutor. Tuesdays and Thursdays after school (other times available by request) for Gekkoukan students. Her specialties are the sciences in particular, Calculus and Physics which she can teach all the way to the university level. Many of the humanities she is "at grade" though still knowledgeable.

・ Apathy Syndrome Outreach. Gekkoukan's Health Committee and the local government have an organization that helps the authorities locate those stricken with Apathy Syndrome who often wander away from home or live alone. To save them from exposure or being exploited, volunteers comb the city's and check the homes of those at-risk to find or check up on such persons and call for pickup if necessary. While not committed to a schedule, Minamo helps out at least once a week (usually twice), usually on Saturday or Sunday during the day. Volunteers are required to wear an service armband as well as their school uniform to be easily identifiable to the community.

Minamo (Nyamo to most people) seems a shoe-in for the most popular girl in her year at her high school. She gets great grades, she's friendly and generous, endlessly energetic, volunteers for charity, and most importantly, she's pretty. Unfortunately, she's not. In fact, amongst the students she has a reputation for being a weird girl, in particular for the bizarre things she'll say or think, or how she's hopelessly dense about things any normal girl her age would know about (behaviors collectively referred to as "Nyamoism"). Amongst boys she's considered very pretty -- if she'd only sit there quietly. Once she opens her mouth, she's a "denpa-onna" ("tinfoil hat crazy"), so any boy who values his reputation should stay away from her. Then there's the reputation she might be a knife-crazy as it's said she was expelled from her last school for breaking a girl's ribs in a fight and that there's cellphone video of the fight on YouTube or NicoNico Douga.

Living On Borrowed Time - Minamo believes the years of her life she has left are very limited, perhaps a year or two. She wonders if she'll even live to see graduation and is certain she won't live to see twenty. As might be assumed, she can become uncomfortable or sad when discussions about higher education, careers, or marriage come up. She's known to become extremely maudlin on viewing cherry blossoms as she sees herself in the falling petals. She's surprised as to have found this feeling is not always depressing or grim, but liberating as well. There's so many things she wants to experience before she dies, there's new people to meet, friends to make, places to see, (bad) food she'd like to taste, and things to try. She knows she won't be able to do most of the things she wants to do, but doing as much of it as she can is good enough for her. There's no time to waste.

Book Smart; Life Clueless - Most of Minamo's stories begin with "about a year ago." This is because until a year ago, Minamo was a friendless, intensely withdrawn, shy girl essentially forbidden most normal social contact by her mother mandated schedule. She's been trying to catch up and be normal for the last year, but if she sometimes acts like a robot parroting something she heard or read in a magazine, that's because she is. For instance, she knows how to groom and dress to attract the attention of boys; she has no idea what people really do on dates, though.

Borderline Monophobic - She has a paralyzing fear of being alone, being that was her mother was against spanking and similar physical punishment and couldn't get into yelling at her daughter, so her favorite punishment of the young Minamo was to simply lock Minamo into a storeroom alone (or a closet at home) for a while and ignore her. She can function alone as long as isn't in a position where she has to dwell on it or she's in a safe place (like her room). She's aware of this hang-up and understands it's not a rational fear, but it doesn't go away.

Cheerful But A Little Plastic - On the surface, Minamo is the very picture of the "genki girl" - cheerful, optimistic, and energetic. Even if she's hurting inside, around others she'll try and fake it. Because she's really bad at faking her emotions, she comes across as obviously faking it. She believes that nobody would like a down and sad Minamo. People like cheerful and happy girls. Sad and depressed girls are girls who live alone and have no friends, and nothing makes Minamo break out in a cold sweat faster than the thought of being left alone.

A Little Morbid - Minamo's happy genki-girl personality is often only skin deep. She has another side of her personality that's quiet and sad. Some might consider this to be the "real" Minamo. It is the one that tends to look at everything she's done in her life in a critical (negative) light and is fixated on the fact that she'll die soon and that it's also nobody's fault but her own. It's the part of her that thinks "if I had just been a better person..." However, her genki-girl side is a direct result of her resolution to be that better person she should have been all along. More importantly, this is the side of her that Death whispers its silent wisdom to, and it's this "voice" that she uses when she asks the problems of others.

Vengeful and Envious - Minamo, despite her basically cheerful and forgiving nature, has a dark side. It stems from years of resentment and a feeling of entitlement she cannot shake. It starts with rage towards a mother whose love she feels entitled to, hatred towards a father who wasn't there to make up for her mother's shortcomings, and resentment towards her younger brother for stealing her parents attention and ends in a frustration of a world that is simply unfair. When she was timid and shy, this anger had no way to express itself. Now that she's found her voice, Minamo finds all parts of her have found expression, not just the parts she wants. She tries to keep it under control but it comes to the surface quickly for some things. Feeling like she is being condescended to or being picked on outright is the easiest way to provoke her. Her desire for retribution against such people (which she justifies that stupid people need repeated, direct lessons to learn) begins with unreasoning emotional rage but can crystallize into a cold, clinical homicidal intent.

She's A Little Spacey - No She's A Lot Spacey - Despite her efforts to remake herself, from her lonely past, Minamo is prone to daydreaming to entertain herself when she's bored. The truth is that Minamo finds reality a little dull and thinks it could be a lot more interesting. Given that her imagination is could be called inspired (to put it nicely) or just odd (to be blunt), her daydreams can be pretty weird. With her life having become a lot of interesting in the last year or so, she finds she has more on her mind and doesn't daydream as much, but there's a big difference between "as much" and "never." When life gets boring, Minamo checks out and visits Wonderland. Occasionally, even if she's not bored she'll still go off on some tangent.

School Gives My Life Meaning - Minamo gets fantastic grades, her class notes could be used to give lessons, and her intuition of the kinds of material will be on tests that borders on uncanny. She knows where to go and what to do in order to utilize her study-time efficiently. Minamo has been in class in some form or another her entire life. Before she was born, her mother read textbooks to her as well as in the crib. As soon as she was old enough to be put into daycare, she was in an academic "headstart" creche. From the day she could actually go to something resembling school, she's been enrolled in schools that require a uniform. On Sundays, her mother had her signed up for special Sunday private schools. After her classes, it was time for university prep and cram schools until dark, then off to her mother's restaurant's back room to do her homework. During vacations and school breaks, she would be enrolled seven days a week in whatever schools or programs that were offered, regardless of cost (or distance). Until her arrival at Gekkoukan, she only ever owned a set or two of clothing that wasn't a school uniform; she'd often outgrow them without wearing them once. School isn't what her life revolves around, it is her life; she knows nothing else. She has a lot more free time since coming to Gekkoukan and she spends it in quiet desperation trying to figure out what she's supposed to be doing with all this time that doesn't involve class. Because of this, however, Minamo understands teachers and the institution of school, she knows exactly how to "play" teachers to get what she wants and she displays a cynicism when it comes to navigating school institutions and rules that doesn't show up elsewhere in her life.

Not Mom But Mother - Those speaking with Minamo will find she's unfailingly very formal when she mentions her mother and father. She's estranged from her parents and has a lot of rage towards them, yet she still loves them and feels she should be a properly respectful daughter and is secretly desperate for their affection and approval. Her relationship with her father can be described as distant and resentful for not being there for her. For her mother she feels resentment bordering on hatred. She rarely mentions her newborn brother at all.

Teenager - Minamo is a teenager. Unlike a lot of child-adults, Minamo has a lot of the hangups that teenagers have (on top of her other problems). She has body image issues - she finds her legs too skinny, her hips to be non-existent, and in that horrible height where she's too tall to fit her definition of "moe cute" and too short to be a "cool" woman. She believes she's on the flat-chested side (and she's right in this case). She has confidence issues (who can blame her). It doesn't help that her mother enrolled her in school by falsifying documents a full year she was legally allowed to be to give her daughter a headstart so her body development lags behind other girls by two years on average. She's frequently envious of traits in other girls she admires but doesn't feel she has herself. She's often more mature than she thinks but a lot less mature than she could be.

Contempt For (Her Own) Life - Simply put, Minamo doesn't really value her own life. She has low self-esteem from her mother's negative attitudes towards everything she does (meant as a method to make her daughter strive harder, it just crushed her daughter's confidence). Plus, when you've wasted your chance at life and am living on borrowed time, does it really matter if it ends a few months early? She enjoys life and what it has to offer, however, so isn't prone to needlessly self-destructive behavior like cutting or ridiculous risk-taking -- usually. She's also cautious or even cowardly if she's startled. Only if she has a moment to think about her situation does she become willing to throw her life away. Life is judged by how one lives their life, not by how long it lasts. As long as the end is worth it to her, she has no problem dying.

Special Ability: Acceptance

All living beings hold a fear of change, no matter how much they deny it. The greatest change is death, the namesake of Minamo's Arcana, to pass beyond the veil to places which may or may not exist. However there are many other lesser fears that hold a person back from doing the things they desire to do in life. Death understands that the true enemy of life is not Death, but the fear of change that prevents one from living life to the fullest. To perceive this fear in others is one of the powers granted to Minamo - even if she cannot know the actual personal faces of someone's fears, she knows them by their presence.

When she uses her power, she first sights her targets and sees the sum of their fears, which appears to her as a roiling shadow that is the counterpart of every living thing. Then Minamo produces a tiny, flickering match-like flame in her hands, representing her life. While she may use a lighter or a match, in reality she needs no props. Like moths to a flame, the fear of her target is drawn to Minamo, who bargains with her target's fears with her life. Then Minamo simply blows the flame out, snuffing it. The fears of her target rush into her temporarily, this is the essence of Acceptance for Minamo.

Acceptance for the target is to be temporarily totally liberated from fear. It fills the target with a fearless spirit and unimaginable strength, all of which come from inside. The distance between desire and reality vanish to nothing. Victory is easy when you no longer fear harm, to fly is easy when you're no longer concerned with consequences. It is truly better to die knowing something than to live wondering about it. Yet, fear is also what preserves life, and to be totally liberated from fear also can result in a dangerous contempt for life and an inability to differentiate fantasy from reality, and so Minamo's gift can be a double-edged sword.

Persona - Archangel Sariel

The Archangel Sariel (Aramaic: זהריאל, Greek: ‘Ατριήλ, 'Command of God') is one of the Archangels of the Earth. His name has variations in translation, most commonly Suriel, though others exist.

Like Raphael, Sariel is associated with healing and protection. Most importantly for Minamo, he is also a benevolent Angel of Death, and is considered to have taken the soul of Moses to heaven, as well as imparting wisdom to Moses. He is persistently associated with the angel Azrael in Islamic tradition by some translations. While generally regarded as an archangel, in some sources, he's also identified as a fallen angel.

As Minamo's Persona, Sariel appears as a young Caucasian man who is very tall and physically divinely perfect possessed of long silvery blond hair and supernaturally blue eyes which reflect more light than they take in. His features are beautiful to the point of being androgynous. Four brilliant white feathered wings sprout from his back. There is a sense that Sariel is never far from Minamo, and even should she favor another Persona at the moment, those sensitive to Personas will feel him to be nearby (either to the right of her or behind her), though if she hasn't called him he cannot act.

He has something of a playful nature towards Minamo, like an older brother. He's very protective of his "younger sister" but can be a bit condescending as well occasionally calling her "little sister" (妹ちゃん - imouto-chan).

Resonance

The intensity of Minamo's resonance varies hugely with the senser. She resonates the most strongly in those who are facing some great change in their life, even if they do not recognize it. Her resonance is an emotion best described as "pining" (as in to pine to someone) or the Japanese "natsukashii" (懐かしい). This often translates to something the senser has lost, but is really a call for senser to search for that which is missing - the change they need to go through in order to fulfill their lives.

As an RP tool, the level of this feeling is completely up the player sensing it but suggestions are:

For most people, who face no big changes the resonance is like hearing a sentimental tune on the radio - pleasant but easily ignored. For those tired of their lives and seeking more, it gives a sense that they've lost something in their lives and must search for something more. For those fearful of the change they face, a sense that they've lost something familiar and dear and must find it again. For those hateful and denying of change, the fear they will inevitably lose something precious to them.

Sense: A bittersweet feeling, sad and happy at the same time. The feeling is best described as akin to graduating school at the moment you realize you're truly leaving the familiar places and loved ones behind. The sadness is of losing something that will be lost forever, the fondness is that of the memories that will remain, and finally the uncertain hope that is the future.

Sound: A long-forgotten yet sentimental song is half-heard by the person who senses her. The memory is rarely enough to recall the song's title or melody, only the sense that they're hearing something they once loved and lost. A maudlin sense of partings and things forgotten, leading perhaps to reflection of how much has changed to the present.

Scent: An unrecalled yet potently sentimental scent is half-smelled by the person. For instance, the scent of some favorite food prepared by a now deceased parent, or the scent of summer berries when you picked them with a now deceased grandmother. Otherwise similar as the "Sound" entry.