OOC :: soulgemmed Application

[finalshowjo]

Player name: Mari
Contact info: ghoulfriend
Other characters currently played: None!

Character name: Sion Todo
Age: 13
Canon: PriPara
Canonpoint: Mid-episode 14

Background: Sion is a middle-school student at Paprika Academy in a (fictional) Japanese town called "Parajuku". We've never met her family, but she lives in a large, traditional Japanese-style house so it's likely they're quite wealthy. She is the national student champion of the board game Go, which is such a passion of hers that she even refuses to eat most foods that aren't black and white, just like the pieces on the Go board. (Even her self-proclaimed "rival" has never beaten Sion once in a game of Go.)

Sion's so talented at the game that she predicts no one who'll really offer her a challenge is likely to come along, so she resigns from competitive play in favor of searching for a new field to conquer. She selects the idol competitions that take place within the popular virtual reality theme park "PriPara", and (in canon) is scouted by a mascot character "manager" to join his fledgling idol unit. For the purposes of this game, however, I'm going to say that she met Kyubey instead and accepted a similar offer from him - both becoming an idol and a Magi.

Sion is therefore being taken from an extremely early canonpoint. The way her life is supposed to go, she'd become a PriPara idol alongside new teammates Dorothy and Reona West and compete for fame as part of the group "Dressing Pafé", learning how to have a less (literally) black-and-white, two-dimensional worldview along the way. Ultimately she also decides to join a "genius team" headed by a controversial celebrity idol in the hopes that they'll be able to show her colors she'll love more than black and white - new experiences, new perspectives, things that will make her a better-rounded person. (Episodic breakdowns of her PriPara career can be found here - "Shion" is the phonetic spelling of her name, but every piece of official merchandise, including her "autograph", romanizes it as "Sion" so that's what I'm using.)

Personality: As mentioned, Sion's love of Go defines most aspects of her lifestyle. Claiming to love white and black but hate grey, she sees the world in straightforward absolutes: all of life is a competition, and fulfillment comes from defeating strong opponents. She even attempts to compare new experiences to Go in order to understand them - until she likens singing to "reading ahead" on a Go board (taking future notes into account while singing the present one), she's absolutely tone-deaf. "Reading ahead" in general is her specialty - Sion is always trying to outthink other people much like players have to predict the other person's strategies in games of Go.

"Reading ahead" doesn't necessarily take societal norms into account, however, so although Sion comes across as a cool, stoic samurai-type, much of her behavior is downright odd. She's willing to challenge the school principal with her practice sword if she feels an injustice has been committed, will set up Go boards just about anywhere if she's feeling stuck in a rut and needs to think, and walks around with said Go board balanced on the top of her head to practice good posture for becoming an idol, for example. Sion does what Sion wants and openly proclaims that normal rules don't apply to her; this stubbornness, especially coupled to her willfulness, makes her difficult to get along with at times. (She also needs to be saved from said stubbornness on occasion: Sion is so used to feeling in control and confident that she tends to brood on experiences where her confidence is shaken.)

Like the game she loves, Sion is a person full of contradictory characteristics - passionate yet stoic, egotistical yet fair, intelligent enough to manipulate her entire class into doing what she wants yet oblivious enough that she mistakes a love letter for a letter of challenge. Sion is right when she accuses herself of having a narrow worldview: she's so wrapped up in her survival-of-the-fittest hyper-competitive warrior aesthetic that she completely misses all other aspects of life. So although she's also skilled in a multitude of traditional Japanese skills like kendo and archery, going to PriPara for the first time is a good experience for her because there she's cast as a punk idol instead of something more old-fashioned. Sion discovers that she loves punk and rock, and with that her world opens just a little bit.

She maintains her Go-and-tradition aesthetic, however, even in the way she speaks. Everyone in PriPara is partially a gag character, so everyone has a distinct verbal tic: Sion's is the frequent use of "yojijukugo" or old-fashioned four-character idioms that usually evoke various martial sentiments. (When playing Sion I'm going to substitute English idioms where I can, but I'll use Japanese ones if any are easily-understood and appropriate for the situation.) She also makes Go puns. Lots and lots of Go puns. Sion is a serious character in a not-serious show, and the dissonance between how seriously she takes herself and how absurdly she behaves is the source of most of the humor surrounding her.

To sum up, Sion isn't deep, but she's intense; she's not complex, but she's contradictory, and above all lives according to her own (Go-centric) code. For all its harshness and "survival of the fittest" rhetoric, however, she's never found herself in an actual life-and-death situation - so I'm hoping that getting her unwittingly over her head as a Magi will be an interesting way to challenge her in ways her canon never has (or will). In the meantime, let's GO together!

Wish: "Survival of the fittest! Sturm und Drang! I wish to cross swords in a new challenge that will let me see beyond black and white!"

Sion's wish is selfish and active, as cultivating her own skills and outlook is her top priority: she seeks to excel as a Magi for its own sake, so becoming a Magi in and of itself grants her wish. Because her wish is focused on competition and knowledge, her magical abilities focus on information-gathering, enhancing her already-uncanny ability to "read ahead" with additional information so that she can make smarter moves in combat.

Power: Sion's passive ability is psychometry - by touching objects she'll be able to see what happened to them within the past 5 hours. This will mostly be used when scouting for Nightmares, witches, and other challenges: Sion won't seek to kill magical girls as she likely won't realize at the beginning just how unlike a game this world is, but that doesn't mean she won't compete with them for Grief Seeds. Knowing this information will help her track enemies and make informed decisions about how to approach her battles.

Her active ability is the ability to turn her microphone weapon into a sword; fighting with a weapon that weakens the opponent first instead of being able to deal a blow right off the bat adds to the "challenge" of fighting Nightmares and witches, and Sion wished for a challenge. She was also thinking primarily of becoming an idol for a change of pace when she made her wish, so her weapon reflects the fact that she's consciously pairing her strength (competition/a sword) with something new to her (rock/singing).

Since her passive ability leans towards metagamey/godmodey, I will always ask for ooc permission from other players before using it in a thread if the information she'd learn would pertain to their character. I am also fine with limiting how far back she can read to fewer than 5 hours, but since "5" is pronounced "go" in Japanese I'm go-ing for maximum puns here.

Weapon: Sion's magi weapon is a microphone that, when using her active ability, turns into a katana; she fights her opponents by singing at them to weaken them before dealing the final blow with the sword. Although her song causes the target pain when they listen to it, this effect will wear off when she stops singing - so even though this is a long-range weapon she's limited by the fact that she'll have to keep singing even while dodging/moving around.

Sample:

"Well, you see, young lady, we've had a rush on..."

"Overriden." Sion placed a hand on the wooden bowls the shopkeeper had put on the counter; the jolt of information as she touched them still shocked her senses, but she was growing accustomed to it. "No one has handled these materials all day. I shall pay the labeled price, not a jacked-up figure you've created because you know the scarcity of your wares."

"Scarcity?" The shopkeeper blinked at her. "Well, now that you mention it, yes, I suppose there aren't many places you can get an item of this sort, which makes its value - "

"'A leopard's spots cannot change!'" Thrusting a finger in his face, Sion stood tall. Behind the shopkeeper's shocked face, she fancied she could see a grid forming, stones clicking and flashing at intersections as she countered every tactic he attempted. Simple. Too simple! He sought to duck and weave; therefore, she simply had to stand firm. "No matter which tricks you try, I shall always see through them. Please ring me up at the indicated price."

The shopkeeper looked at her somewhat tiredly. "Is this even for you, young lady...?" he muttered under his breath, but the clack of his old-fashioned cash machine satisfied Sion. She pulled out her purse, counting the bills while trying to keep contact with them to a minimum; she doubted anything extracted from an ATM would have much of a history attached to it still, but privacy was privacy and magic a tool, not a crutch. She would have to monitor herself to ensure her mental skills did not rust from overuse of her magical ones. Even if "practice made perfect".

Transaction completed to her satisfaction, she hefted her prize off the counter, ignoring the rush of visions of the shopkeeper grumbling to himself the last time this particular item had been moved. "You have my gratitude," she allowed with a bow over the top of her purchase, and then headed out of the store. If her observations of Nightmare activity were correct, there should be a lull in attacks today - they had rarely been coming all at once, though Sion understood that this could change at any time. She should be able to get home, set up her prize, and still have time before taking to the streets tonight.

"Haste makes waste," she muttered to herself, steadying the bowls atop the wooden table when she noticed them beginning to rattle. It had taken her far too long, in retrospect, to pinpoint the one store that might have what she was looking for and even longer working odd jobs around this strange new town to save up for it, but at last she had the final touch for her customized (magical) house. At last her settlement into this new life would be complete.

Sion nodded in satisfaction, stopping at a red light heedless of the stares she was getting for having gone shopping in her kendo uniform - she had dressed to impress. One hand snuck up to scoop a few stones from one of the wooden bowls; she cupped them in her palm, feeling them dormant, ready for new histories to be written upon their smooth surface.

The light changed. Sion stepped forward. At long last, she was ready - to Go!

[[ You can also read some sample threads here, here, and here! ]]