Birth Name: Giichi Jo
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Arcana: Temperance
Appearance:
?
Height - 172 cm / 5 ft 7in
?
Weight - 65.5 kg / 144.5 lbs
? Fair-skinned, lean with some muscle. Dark brown eyes. Black hair bleached blonde to the root. Hair length is currently shoulder-length but up in a small ponytail, sweeps over his ears, and even-cut bangs hang down over his forehead. If not in the school uniform, he dresses inconspicuously, unless it's very late at night where his wardrobe becomes daunting.
History:
"Cut your hair, Giichi. You are not a woman."
Small, delicate fingers creased with age have raked down his proud mane time and time again. Pale nails split the dyed-blonde gloss of his hair before gripping it, twisting flowing strands like knots in her palms as she tugged at the roots. Giichi remembers the disdainful way his mother would speak of his appearance, back when he lived with her in the small apartment. She was a woman of small stature who ruled the house when her husband was away, and her reign as regent has since lasted the past three years in lieu of his extended absence. The man of the house had been exported overseas by a company under The Overseas Construction Association of Japan, Inc. (OCAJI) for a collaborative engineering project in Dubai. For him, his wife intended to rear their son for the household position in the meantime. To her, raising her son in his absence meant upholding the traditional values that have long been fundamental to her era of Japan. In order for her son to receive the respect he deserved from the social forces that be, he mustn't deviate either way. Giichi was going to be a determined youth, a man who worked to achieve and rarely met failure, a man who revered his superiors, was practical, marketable, and with an income to support his parents and lifelong career in a dedicated, expanding company. He was going to be an approachable, masculine, married, honored pride. The first step were first impressions, and that meant cutting his hair - as he was no longer a child but an adult headed for the working world. Giichi would compromise and cut from back-length to shoulder length, and tie up the excess in a tight tail.
"You are on that phone more than you speak to me. Is it a girl? You do not bring her here?"
Giichi often finds himself preoccupied with his cell in the evenings. He will steal glances under the dining table, reading texts that push paragraphs while his mother talks at him about her day with the Osaka Voluntary Action Center. He will be busy typing away in the doorway to his room while his mother rearranges cushions and floor chairs for her turn hosting her small study group. He will lay on his tatami bed late at night and quietly stream video of his smile to a faceless stranger on the internet, who says they are his age, that they are in the area, and that they wished he could lie in their bed so that they could kiss his hair. This faceless stranger goes by new names, new locations, and different offers of the same compliments. Giichi enjoys the attention his changing audience gives him, and he confides in them his insecurities as they tell him what they think he wants to hear. Giichi rewards those who console him with returns for requests and more time in his presence. Those who misstep and unwittingly dash him are met with cutting insults and an end of session, as he shuts off his phone and rolls over, consoling himself.
"It is 2.00. You out late? To do what, to disrespect me?!"
Giichi often felt his mother's punishment, as she felt that she needed to take up her husband's firm hand. That often translated literally. When she wanted him to do something, it was hardly a straightforward question. She would tag on a phrase to elicit a shame if he didn't, or word it in such a way that he would be selfish if he hadn't. And if he refused or she perceived it so, there would be a biting comment to validate just that. If it was especially egregious, the comment would be replaced with a slap across the face and a shrieking accusation. There were times when Giichi fell silent and bore the brunt of it until she felt she had said all that she needed, though she would later recycle comments as fuel for another disagreement. Other times, being taller and stronger than his mother, he would grab her by the hands and squeeze them, telling her in the tone he remembered of his father not to lay a hand on him again. Reciprocating touch like that had her spit obscenities and kick him at his knees. He would bear it with a restrained look of rage until he felt everything was enough to let her go and return to his room. He would close the door on her collapsing to the floor and wailing that her son attacked her, and that he was as petulant as a 'gijo' - a female prostitute.
"I raised you! I raised you! I don't want to be your mother and your father!"
Some of his classmates called him 'gijo' too. They thought it was clever when they heard his name: Jo, Giichi. It followed him through the years as he felt it manifested in this strange paradox of his identity. His physique was typical male, his voice baritone, he thought romantically of docile women and the girls in his class did take to him and his care for his appearance. But in spending his time preparing to understand business ventures and programming language in computer systems, he also spent time idolizing the art of modern kabuki, often saving up yen when he could for a ticket to see performances in the Osaka Shochikuza theater, and buying makeup to paint his face in the canvas of a female caricature. He adored its historical form of art and the exceptional way it allowed him to escape and express ideas otherwise repressed by his mother and the concept of role. It happened to be most often expressed in the explanation of femininity, something he considered most at odds with him and yet so relevant. Having decided one day back when he was a first year student at Rakkoken High to show this appreciation, he went to the restroom with a pouch of makeup, and after some minutes, left as a colorful persona, stalking the halls with a wild and cleanly-drawn face paint. The fun he thought he'd have in provoking silly or awed reaction was turned out not as plan. While a few did find his antics good-natured and funny, it was mostly met with ridicule and rejection from most students for the bizarre, unnerving look and as a stunt so early in the semester. He was turned out of homeroom as well, reprimanded by the teacher for intentionally trying to disrupt class by violating dress code. Giichi tried to play it off as a class clown joke regardless, though among the many nicknames he later received - from the accepting 'Jichi-chan' to the damning 'Gei-ichi' - 'gijo' was whispered about. It would follow him most through the years as they were spent with nearly the same classmates.
"Move out? You will not help support me while your father is away?"
This was an argument for Giichi's final year at Rakkoken High. In a turn of events, the contracting company involved with OCAJI had offered Giichi's father to stay another two years in Dubai on extended work for a closely-related engineering project. This was proposed to him three months before he was due to return back to Japan, but in a phone call to his wife, he told her he chose to accept the offer. He lamented not physically being there for his family, but that his paid vacation days would roll over to this new project, and he planned to take two weeks off to visit them after initial work was settled. His wife would relay this information to Giichi, praising her husband for his dedication and the livable income that deposits into their shared account. Giichi, however, thought it would be a fair time to propose that he consider his own prospects. He wanted to find his own apartment after graduation and securing a job - or at the very least, a paid internship. He asked if she would help him get started with a little finance, to which she questioned why he would rush to leave the house so quickly, to leave her as a mother alone in an apartment with no son or husband, and to do it so long before his father came home. She told him it was foolish to ask for money when she would be the one needing it if he left her, as the expenses for him living on his own would be much more than if he just stayed home with his mother. Giichi succumbed to her argument, but he kept thinking about ways he could escape his mother's domain and be free to explore his sense of self and direction where he felt he was groomed to be shortsighted.
"This was on the doorstep... How could you shame us...?"
It was a quiet, tense dinner after Giichi's first day of third year. On the table between he and his mother was a manila envelope, and beside that were a several sheets of paper. They all were printed with digitally-edited collages of screenshot text messages and photos. The texts were between a number of different screen names, but the subject matter focused on intimate and incriminating moments from a correspondent who was also fond of sending pictures of himself in makeup and suggestive poses. The familiar face in the room was superimposed beside his own racy promises, tirades against his family, violent threats against school, and his questionable adventures prowling the streets of Osaka in beastly face paint and delinquent-like clothing. Some of these, Giichi knew were blatantly out of context or were vented words regrettably said in anger and confidence, but much of it wasn't, and all of it could not be explained away or excused. To be exposed like this must have been payback from some anonymous student at Rakkoken that he unwittingly connected to, and totally berated when they had upset him somehow. Giichi was shamed silent as his mother wailed and sobbed, calling her son a shame to her and the family. When she turned to screaming that he get out and throwing the nearest object at her son, Giichi shot up with a wrathful flip of the dining table and stormed out of the apartment. When he returned six hours later into the early hours of the morning, the door to his apartment wouldn't budge despite being unlocked. He nearly busted the door driving his shoulder through, and stepped over the dining table and chairs that looked intentionally built into a barricade.
"Mother, please eat."
Since then, his mother fell into a rapid state of decline. At first, she just wouldn't speak to him after that night. When he returned considerably late after the incident just to avoid home, she would ignore his greeting and refuse to look in his direction. Then he'd notice after a while when he returned that objects in the house weren't moved or touched since the morning. Asking his mother about it would receive him no acknowledgement. Voice messages on the house phone asking about study group plans, missed volunteer hours, and Giichi's slacking school attendance began to stack up. More often he would come home to find her sitting on the floor sofa, hardly moving from her slouched posture, staring at one channel on the television. When food in the fridge was left untouched and the smell of breakfast and dinner ceased to exist in the apartment, Giichi began to take care of it and his mother. She became less and less like the active person she once was. It seemed like something ill befell her like what seems to be catching wind throughout Osaka. Looking at the state of his mother only urged him to return to school, where recently he is catching up with assignments and classes.
Personality: Giichi can be very sociable if given the time of day, but he's often not one to directly initiate first and so stands by. If he has an interest in someone and wants to engage first though, he tends to use suggestion techniques that he's internalized to try and send that signal. While he feels he doesn't give off an air of confidence, he does tend to assert himself when he's made a decision rooted in emotion. Giichi views himself not as someone who can do no wrong, but as someone who shouldn't be, and that does take an aggressive turn when he's in fear or certain he has a physical or psychological advantage. Otherwise, he may attempt to save face and try to repress the harbored feeling of being slighted. Becoming angered or defensive is like a switch for him, and the reaction is often immediate.
Giichi likes to joke about and express himself in the exaggerated and dramatic style of theatrical kabuki, and indulging in things like female pop idols and workouts. He enjoys joking around with bravado and he yearns to make connections with people he feels he can be loyal to and who will uplift him too. Giichi has the capacity to be romantic - if only it weren't perverted into self-validation and thrill, which is his usual mode. It does stem from his internal tumult and finding ways to deal with his perception of self. While Giichi is not ashamed of the concept of a "feminine side", he does not resolve the idea of femininity or a balance of traits that he associates with it, as the greatest influences on the view are his couple of timid, demure admirers at school, and his mother.
//
Name of Persona: Chimaera
Appearance:
Side ref:
A grotesque blend of muscle and material with figures from creatures famous for their connection with power and ruin, the Chimaera is a powerful force of might and flame that seems insurmountable. In this form, femininity presented foremost before the wretched, daunting, and contorted faces of the beasts. With the ferocious, maned head and body of a lion, a smaller, comely human female figure arches its spine from the lion's prosternum. Between the jagged teeth of the blank-eyed lion, in the back of its mouth is the porcelain face of the human female, with blank half-lidded eyes and a somewhat somber expression at rest. From her temples are a the ribbed horns of a goat that appear like tusks curving up from the lion's mouth. What look like strapping, brutish forearms and mechanical, pointed claws of the lion actually sprout from the female figure, and act like the whole creature's powerful forearms in its place. The creature's hind legs are the lion's own, taking on the animal's shape and not the resemblance of hands like the forearms. Off the underside of the creature from where the female figure's pelvis merges into the lion's abdomen, six mechanical domes rest like a female lion's teats, confounding more elements of the feminine and masculine. The underbelly soon takes on the mechanical shaft of twisting tail, that heads with a serpent. When its mouth is closed, looking dead onto its snout appears the same porcelain face of a female with the same twinge of a somber expression. When its mouth opens, the porcelain face is revealed to be a facade, splitting in half to reveal fangs and the serpent's tongue. Standing over twice the height of its wielder and its body consuming space, the Chimaera's presence demands.
Types of Skills: Fire / Physical
