Ryoji Mochizuki (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lemonscarf) wrote2016-05-09 03:12 pm
lemonscarf) wrote2016-05-09 03:12 pm
Entry tags:
Ruby City - Application
PLAYER
Name: Silvie
Age: 27
Personal Journal:silvie
E-mail: mollymojave [at] gmail [dot] com
AIM/etc:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
relares
CHARACTER
Name: Ryoji Mochizuki
Canon: Persona 3 Portable
Age: Lanky Teenager (Physically) 11 (Actually) Ageless Abstract Concept (That Whole Death Thing)
Timeline: Post-Game (Good End) | One year post the events of DRRP R3, late December
Items with character at canon point: Ryoji will have been on a late-night stroll so he will be decked out in a winter coat and his trademark scarf, but no hat or gloves because he is irresponsible. This is what he's got on him!
▶ A tacky yellow cellphone covered in scratched-up Phoenix Ranger Featherman R stickers, with alltogether Way Too Many charms attached to it. (right pocket)
▶ A Holo Caster. ... there's a Sylveon sticker on the back, because someone hasn't learned from past mistakes. (around his neck)
▶ A case of Poké Puffs. Inedible for humans. (left pocket)
▶ A Klefki-shaped key ring of keys that has more charms than keys on it. (right pocket)
▶ Three crochet hooks, all of different sizes. (left pocket)
▶ A letter and a photograph, sent from Tokyo. The return address says it's from someone named "Ryuunosuke Uryuu". (right pocket)
▶ A ring that, when it catches the right light, seems to glow. (left hand, ring finer)
▶ Another ring, fashioned into a necklace using chain links. This one is made of plastic and obviously came from a vending machine. (around his neck, under his shirt)
▶ A set of photo stickers printed out from an arcade game. The edges are a little ragged, but it's been laminated to protect it from further damage. (tucked into his breast pocket)
▶ A bright yellow pocket book that looks like a Pikachu. It's got some money and an ID tucked in it, along with a few point rewards cards for local shops and stores. (tucked into his breast pocket)
If playing another character from the same canon, how will you deal with this?: N/A
Personality:
Ryoji isn't human and, honestly, that explains a lot. He's bright, friendly, and flirtatious--to anyone and everyone he meets, regardless if the situation calls for it or not. He's lighthearted to the point of being goofy and is easily entertained, from card games on a train to a friend's impressive skill at a crane game. He's someone who can take life's little knocks easily in stride. Ryoji is someone who is almost always smiling, even in moments of private heartache, because when it comes down to it he loves people and he loves being alive. He cherishes every moment he spends alive, from the time he spends at school to the outings he has with his his dearest girlfriend. He finds spots of happiness and beauty wherever he goes; for example, on his daily commute to school, Ryoji is fascinated by morning sunlight glimmering over the ocean and later is enchanted comparing to the sun setting over a river in Kyoto.
When people are first introduced to Ryoji, they are often taken aback by how forward he is: he's not afraid to ask someone in the same breath after introducing himself and he delights in showering his friends and loved ones in compliments. He's often not taken very seriously, because most of what comes out of his mouth is flirtatious nonsense. But here's the thing: when Ryoji says the world is a dazzling place and calls every girl a princess, he sincerely means it. Ryoji is open and honest to a fault; he's not someone who lies and is very bad at keeping secrets. On top of that, he's a very emotional person who wears his squishy, tender heart on his sleeve; no matter what he's feeling, it's written all over his face and in his body language. When Ryoji's happy, he smiles and laughs. He's easily moved to tears--at least, if it's for the sake of others. When it comes to his own heartaches, Ryoji smiles and tries to keep his grief close to heart... even though it's obvious just by looking at him when he's unhappy.
Taken straight from canon, Ryoji has a grand total of 23 days of living as a human under his belt. There's a lot about the world he just doesn't know about, let alone understand. Because he's such an earnest person, he takes most of what people tell him at face value. Ryoji would doubt his own knowledge and experience before someone else's; because he believes in the best of people, it's a simple task to fool or manipulate him. This can often lead to some pretty spectacular misunderstandings, especially when paired with the fact that he is incredibly impulsive and often pretty tactless. Ryoji rarely thinks before he acts, usually choosing to go with his gut when making decisions. He's fearless when it comes to flirting with girls he doesn't know; rejection doesn't bother him or keep him down in the slightest. Most notoriously, he was in cahoots with Junpei for a dumb plan to "mistake" the changeover time from boys to girls in a hot spring. (Don't worry, he got super executed for it. That's not happening again.)
As a Shadow, there are certain human nuances and social cues that go completely over Ryoji's head. He sometimes has difficulty understanding why humans do what they do. He's puzzled by concepts like "maybe you shouldn't ask other girls out on casual dates when you have a steady girlfriend" and "even though death is a natural end to life, people are sad when their loved ones die". Which isn't to say that he's not empathetic, because when he's given the space to sit and work out why Junpei, his best friend, is sad about losing a loved one he's able to recognize that his own way of thinking was cold and better understand Junpei's perspective.
Because at the end of the day, Ryoji is a kind, gentle, and loving person. Although his very existence means the end of all things and it's in his nature to kill, the thought of bringing others pain is heartrending to him. Even before he regains his memories, he struggles an instinctive knowledge that his presence in the protagonist's life will cause her to suffer. Ryoji is willing to go to great lengths to spare others pain, often at his own expense. When he offers S.E.E.S. the chance to kill him so their memories of the Dark Hour would disappear, it was because he couldn't stand the thought of his friends suffering with the knowledge of their inevitable deaths.
It's safe to say that when Ryoji is around other people, he's very happy. But on the flip side, he's also someone who is very lonely and prone to melancholy when he's by himself. Isolated from others, without anything else to focus on, his thoughts inevitably center around things he's worried and afraid about. Before he regains his memory, he's anxious about what might happen the next day; he's painfully afraid that he might hurt his friends, and experiences bouts where he doesn't feel physically real and present.
After regaining his memory, only faint traces of Ryoji's usual cheerful and lighthearted remain; he's otherwise a very somber, subdued, and unhappy person. He's crushed by the truth of his own existence and the undeniable knowledge of mankind's fate. The fact is, he's a monster who flippantly played around at being a person in the midst of humanity's death throes. His existence is an undeniable herald to the end of human life. Furthermore, he knows there's no use in fighting against it; the Fall is inevitable and, for as long as he exists in the human world, there is no way to prevent it. As much as he loves being alive and cherishes the time he spent with his loved ones as a human being, Ryoji knows that it would have been far better if he never existed to begin with.
DRRP CRAU
... or, you know, that's what he thought before he was pulled from one world to the next, lost his memories again, and woke up in a creepy hotel where he was forced to participate in a murder game. Ryoji survived eight long weeks of being locked inside of a hotel, watching as the group of people he came to know and love as his friends grew smaller and smaller. Every week, someone died on between Thursday night and Friday morning. And then, in order to protect the group as a whole, they were forced to investigate, drive out, and vote to kill the culprit responsible. Understandably, Ryoji's not very fond of places where he can't see outside and he's yet to find a Friday morning where he doesn't crack open the bedroom doors to check on the people he's settled down to run a bed and breakfast with in Kalos.
Just in case.
In canon, Ryoji is an escapist to the extreme. He even goes as far to erase his own memory to try and hide from the reality of the Fall; when it comes back to him, he tearfully suggests to his friends that they ought to kill him and destroy their memories too to spare themselves the pain of their upcoming and unavoidable untimely demises before pulling away and hiding from them for a month. He bitterly regretted the fact of his own existence, because it meant the end of human life and thought. He didn't so much believe as know that there was no place for him in the human world.
So perhaps it's not so strange that in a surviving group that made up largely of people who experienced (and, in some cases, committed) the worst humanity had to offer, Ryoji eventually came to feel he had a place among them. Ryoji is deeply devoted to everyone who Monaka drew in to the hotel, but he feels the most connected to the other survivors--and to Silver and Meridiana, who took him by the hand and led him to a life outside of the hotel and beyond his ultimate destiny as the end of all things. Ryoji can never go back "home" to Iwatodai (not without bringing about the end of the world) but he will always have a place side-by-side with his friends.
Ryoji has spent the past year focused on supporting them and taking care of the people who came to Kalos: Silver, Dave, and Meridiana coexist in the slot of number one on the list of Ryoji's priorities. While he isn't hesitant to share his own unhappiness and grief with them--(because if he's learned anything from Monaka's murder hoel, it's that trying to bear up under sadness alone is a recipe for disaster)--he's found more healing in helping being the one who others lean on, rather than giving himself the opportunity to rest. He's become more open and frank about the fact that he's not human and why exactly he can't go home with the people he trusts, although he's still pretty evasive about it with strangers unless directly called on it.
On the surface level, Ryoji might not seem very different. He's still friendly, still flirty, still prone to melancholy when left to his own devices. What's changed about him is that he's open to the idea that there's a future, even for something like him; that, even as the culmination of an entire planet's worth of despair, he has the ability to spread hope and kindness instead. Ryoji never expected to have the chance to live a "normal" life. Frankly, part of him feels he doesn't really deserve it. But he's come to accept, little by little, that "Ryoji is Ryoji" is a fact that's more importan than "Ryoji isn't really human". And that Death, as Ryoji Mochizuki, is the beloved friend of some truly extraordinary people.
Background:
• Ryoji on the SMT Wiki
• Pharos on the SMT Wiki
The following links are good for understanding... what the hell kind of shitshow Ryoji is anyway, because the mechanics of P3 can be kind of confusing. The condensed version is: Ryoji is a Very Big Shadow who is the physical representation of the impending apocalypse, whose presence causes distortions in time and space and will eventually lead to the destruction of the collective subconscious.
• Shadow (Persona 3) on the SMT Wiki.
• The Dark Hour on the SMT Wiki
• The Fall on the SMT Wiki
• Nyx Avatar on the SMT Wiki
Dangan Roleplay R3 CRAU
Ryoji's time in the Hotel Monofornia can be divided into three periods: the first few weeks, when he thought he was a human; the middle period, after he remembered he was a Shadow and about the Fall; and the final weeks, when the survivors decided that there would be no more secrets between them.
When Ryoji first arrived in the hotel, just like everyone else in the group, he suffered from memory loss. But what made Ryoji's situation unique is that he didn't just forget things that happened to him: without his memory of the confrontation with Aigis, Ryoji was able to fall back on the familiar, comforting lie that he was human. There were gaps in his memory, but weren't there always? Upsetting things were fuzzy around the edges, but wasn't that normal? His only clear memories were of Iwatodai, but wasn't that because meeting Minako changed his life? Ryoji clung fiercely to the illusion that he was human, even when others (such as Silver and Tsukiyama) started noticing that there were certain things that weren't right about him and holes in the flimsy history he provided.
During this time, Ryoji cheerfully and enthusiastically pursued friendships with the other people trapped in the hotel. He was particularly close with most of the young people, especially Silver--they started sharing a sleeping space together (usually Silver's room) within the first week of being locked up in the hotel, something they kept up for most of the game. He also picked up crocheting from Meridiana during this period, a hobby that helped him to cope through the whole experience; every week after a trial, Ryoji would crochet a square for both the victim and the culprit that he would add onto a memorial quilt. His first few weeks of memories were from before he had a human identity, so he was able to dismiss them as simple nightmares.
And then, after losing one of his closer friends, Ryoji recovered a memory that brought all of that to a halt: not only did he realize he was a Shadow and that he was going to bring about the end of the world, but all of the ugliness that was happening at the hotel that he'd been able to keep at an arm's length hit him at once. He immediately pulled back and withdrew from the others; he spent a few days sleeping on his own and, although it was obvious to his closer friends that someone was wrong, refused to speak of it. After the fourth trial, however, Ryoji realized just how dangerous it was for him to hold it in and reached out to Allie and shared what he remembered about himself. While he didn't volunteer this information to the others, it enabled him to at least go back through the motions of making it through to the end of each day.
(cw: cannibalism & suicide)
Things changed again in a drastic way late one Thursday evening when Silver, unable to sleep from eating too much mapo tofu, left their room and didn't come back. He was found alive, but badly beaten by an unknown assailant. The trial revealed that Silver stumbled on Tsukiyama, the mastermind behind the case, who accidentally attacked him with so much force that he nearly died. During the trial it came out that Ryuunosuke, one of Ryoji's closest friends, was so devoted to Tsukiyama that (because he believed Tsukiyama was the culprit) he lied and hid evidence to protect him. Eventually, the entire truth came out that Tsukiyama, who was actually a Ghoul who needed to consume human flesh to survive, tricked Meridiana, a revenant who needed fresh organs and to bathe in blood to survive, into killing someone so he could eat them. In the process of dragging all of this out, Tsukiyama pounced on the opportunity to drag Ryoji under the "SURPRISE: WE'RE INHUMAN ABOMINATIONS" bus. Even though Tsukiyama was the one who manipulated the whole case, because of the way the game's rules were set up Meridiana was considered the culprit and was executed.
Ryoji spent most of that weekend explaining what he was (if not what it meant) to the other Survivors and trying to look after Silver; however, he stopped sharing a room with Silver at this point due to Silver's injuries and the fact that Silver himself was withdrawing from the group. Monobear then presented the group with their final motive: if no one died by the end of the week, all their worst secrets would be revealed. On Friday morning, Silver's body was discovered. The truth of this case was that Silver killed himself to protect the group's remaining secrets--but in order to drive a wedge between the eight people who were left, Monobear used it as an opportunity to frame Allie.
This did not go over well. At this point, despite all odds, the survivors had forged a bizarre but unbreakable bond of faith: despite all of the evidence pointing to the contrary, not a single person believed that Allie was responsible for Silver's death. The group very literally turned on Monobear, accusing him of tampering with the crime scene and framing Allie. When he tried to regain control by hinting and then revealing that Ryuunosuke's secret that he was actually a serial killer rather than a medical student, things got even more out of control when every last member of the group shared every last horrible secret that Monobear could hold against them. For Ryoji, this was what his presence meant for his world and what being the "Super High School Level Harbinger" really meant. After that trial, it was obvious that there was nothing the mastermind could do to drive the survivors to kill again.
During the final investigation and trial, the group discovered that their captor was a little girl named Monaka who, when offered a contract that granted her magical powers after being cut off from human contact for years, had drawn them all from their varied worlds because she thought she could turn them into a second generation of people who dedicated their lives to spreading despair together with her. Despite everything that had happened and she'd done to them, Ryoji found himself pitying her in the way he pitied the humans who accelerated the Fall in his home world; he felt empathy towards her but, like the other survivors, voted to execute her so they could leave the hotel. With free access to the hotel, they were able to both find a way out and contact the outside world; in short order, a group called the Future Foundation would be there to rescue them.
But before the Future Foundation arrived, they were found by a another girl: Madoka Kaname, whose sincere wish for hope was so powerful that she transcended human existence and became a god. She was able to use the survivor's collective hope to revive the people whose lives were consumed by the murder games, so when the Future Foundation came to pick them up there were twenty people alive rather than just eight.
Ryoji was a little at a loss of what to do with himself. Unlike the others, he very literally couldn't go home--and part of him was afraid of what his presence would mean in another world. But during the farewell party, Silver took him by the hand and informed Ryoji that he'd be going to Kalos in the Pokémon world with him, Dave, and Meridiana. And so he went! And opened up a bed and breakfast, after they did a little bit of prerequisite wandering around the Region doing the whole Pokémon Trainer thing.
Eventually, though, they bought a house near Lumiose City. And while Silver and Dave have been doing some hero work for the Future Foundation, Ryoji has been helping Meridiana run her bed and breakfast. It's ... not exactly a normal household, but by god the kids who live there are determined to love and support each other. And, against all odds, it seems to be working out.
Abilities:
▶ Good At Video Games: Ryoji is stupid good at video games. He spent Way Too Much Time while he was living in Port Island at the arcade, an escapist habit that he brought with him to the murder hotel and later to Kalos. He's particularly killer at fighting games and DDR.
▶ Monotranslate: As a side effect of being magically and then scientifically dragged across time and space, Ryoji's human form bleeds bright magenta blood. While he's only fluent in Japanese and can only speak (bad) conversational English and French, thanks to Monotranslate other languages are automatically translated into Japanese for him. Neato!
▶ Shadow: Ryoji is not human. He is actually a Shadow, a reality-warping physical representation of human emotion. Specifically, Ryoji is the physical amalgamation of an entire planet's worth of apathy and despair. His human form is exactly that: a shape that he's twisted himself down into in order to disguise himself and blend in with other humans. While he enjoys things like eating and sleeping, Ryoji doesn't necessarily need to; nor does he know what it's like to be hungry or feel tired.
His real form looks something like this and people who are sensitive to that sort of thing will be able to sense that he has a terrifying eldritch aura. Yikes!!
▶ Literally Death: Ryoji is, in a very literal sense of the word, the impending apocalypse of his home world. His presence warps reality so badly that it breaks time in his home world, causing a phenomena known as the Dark Hour--a twenty-fifth hour hidden between one day in the next. His presence draws Nyx closer to the surface of Earth and, once she completely descends during the Fall, the collective unconsciousness will end and all conscious thought on Earth will be destroyed. At the end of Persona 3 Ryoji, as the Avatar of Nyx, was sealed behind something called the Great Seal.
Another aspect of how reality kind of just ... breaks around him is that, without Monaka suppressing his nature, it's kind of pointless to try and shoot him even if you have a grenade launcher. Our you have a spiritual manifestation of your soul is a giant spear/machine gun lady. It's possible to attack and hurt him and even kill his human self, it's just. Really hard and kind of only possible if he lets it happen. Because he's a functionally immortal eldritch abomination and you can't punch out abstract concepts.
Network/Actionspam Sample:
Good morning everyone! Isn't it pretty today??? (ノ＞▽＜。)ノ
Well, to be honest, I think every morning is a pretty morning ☆
But all of that fresh snow that fell last night makes everything look so.........
｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆Fluffy & Sparkly｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆
Unfortunately, this morning is possible because it's very cold out! (๑>﹏<)⋆* ⁑⋆*
Which I guess is kind of a bummer, but I think it's exciting because.........
Cold weather is the best weather for scarves, which are the cutest & warmest winter accessories!（*＾＾*)
Did you know that scarves are the cutest and warmest winter accessory? It's a fact!! (•v•)ง
What sort of cute clothes have you been wearing this winter, Ruby City?
I'd love to know!! (ﾉ´ヮ´)ﾉ*: ･ﾟ
Prose Log Sample: The little town at the end of the train tracks is very quiet, very still, and very dark. In all his time in all the worlds he’s lived in, Ryoji has never encountered a place that’s as swathed in silence as this odd little town. Humans are very noisy and they don’t like the dark. Even at night, cities like Iwatodai and Lumiose always hummed with light and life. But this town—he can see that there are streets and buildings, but there are no lamps and there aren’t any lights in the windows that he can see.
The weather isn’t helping much, he thinks. There’s snow falling down from the sky in huge, downy flakes; the sort of snow that makes him want to twirl with his arms in a big circle and fall backwards into a snowbank for the sheer frosty joy of it. Silver calls this kind of weather feather snow, which Ryoji thinks is both very pretty and very fitting. Dave just calls it disgustingly pretty. But he’s from The South— (an ominous and undefined part of America that Ryoji can’t remember studying, but has to be real because that’s where Dave is from)—and can therefore be forgiven for hating something as pretty as this. Ryoji reaches into his pocket for his phone, pulling it out and flicking it open in a single practiced motion.
Just like on the train, there’s no signal. He blinks down at the screen, chasing away the prickles in the corners of his eyes. That’s … not okay, but as far as not okay things go Ryoji knows that it could be worse. After all, he’s still himself in all the awful, sad ways that he’s always been: he can tell without trying that if he wanted to be more honest, he could shrug his human self off like a jacket and allow himself to be more or less his usual monstrous self. He doesn’t really feel like it, though, even though his fingers and nose have started to get red from the cold; he’s got his scarf and his coat, but he left his gloves behind on the counter like Meridiana is always gently chiding him not to.
“Well,” Ryoji announces to nobody, “might as well get started.”
He steps off of the platform into a pile of disgustingly pretty feather snow. He pulls his scarf up over his nose, to keep warm and to hide the worried frown that he can’t seem to chase away from his face. He picks a direction and starts to walk. There will be light eventually, he hopes. Because if he can find light that means he’s found people, too, and he can start to feel a little more like himself again.
Name: Silvie
Age: 27
Personal Journal:
silvieE-mail: mollymojave [at] gmail [dot] com
AIM/etc:
CHARACTER
Name: Ryoji Mochizuki
Canon: Persona 3 Portable
Age: Lanky Teenager (Physically) 11 (Actually) Ageless Abstract Concept (That Whole Death Thing)
Timeline: Post-Game (Good End) | One year post the events of DRRP R3, late December
Items with character at canon point: Ryoji will have been on a late-night stroll so he will be decked out in a winter coat and his trademark scarf, but no hat or gloves because he is irresponsible. This is what he's got on him!
▶ A tacky yellow cellphone covered in scratched-up Phoenix Ranger Featherman R stickers, with alltogether Way Too Many charms attached to it. (right pocket)
▶ A Holo Caster. ... there's a Sylveon sticker on the back, because someone hasn't learned from past mistakes. (around his neck)
▶ A case of Poké Puffs. Inedible for humans. (left pocket)
▶ A Klefki-shaped key ring of keys that has more charms than keys on it. (right pocket)
▶ Three crochet hooks, all of different sizes. (left pocket)
▶ A letter and a photograph, sent from Tokyo. The return address says it's from someone named "Ryuunosuke Uryuu". (right pocket)
▶ A ring that, when it catches the right light, seems to glow. (left hand, ring finer)
▶ Another ring, fashioned into a necklace using chain links. This one is made of plastic and obviously came from a vending machine. (around his neck, under his shirt)
▶ A set of photo stickers printed out from an arcade game. The edges are a little ragged, but it's been laminated to protect it from further damage. (tucked into his breast pocket)
▶ A bright yellow pocket book that looks like a Pikachu. It's got some money and an ID tucked in it, along with a few point rewards cards for local shops and stores. (tucked into his breast pocket)
If playing another character from the same canon, how will you deal with this?: N/A
Personality:
Ryoji isn't human and, honestly, that explains a lot. He's bright, friendly, and flirtatious--to anyone and everyone he meets, regardless if the situation calls for it or not. He's lighthearted to the point of being goofy and is easily entertained, from card games on a train to a friend's impressive skill at a crane game. He's someone who can take life's little knocks easily in stride. Ryoji is someone who is almost always smiling, even in moments of private heartache, because when it comes down to it he loves people and he loves being alive. He cherishes every moment he spends alive, from the time he spends at school to the outings he has with his his dearest girlfriend. He finds spots of happiness and beauty wherever he goes; for example, on his daily commute to school, Ryoji is fascinated by morning sunlight glimmering over the ocean and later is enchanted comparing to the sun setting over a river in Kyoto.
When people are first introduced to Ryoji, they are often taken aback by how forward he is: he's not afraid to ask someone in the same breath after introducing himself and he delights in showering his friends and loved ones in compliments. He's often not taken very seriously, because most of what comes out of his mouth is flirtatious nonsense. But here's the thing: when Ryoji says the world is a dazzling place and calls every girl a princess, he sincerely means it. Ryoji is open and honest to a fault; he's not someone who lies and is very bad at keeping secrets. On top of that, he's a very emotional person who wears his squishy, tender heart on his sleeve; no matter what he's feeling, it's written all over his face and in his body language. When Ryoji's happy, he smiles and laughs. He's easily moved to tears--at least, if it's for the sake of others. When it comes to his own heartaches, Ryoji smiles and tries to keep his grief close to heart... even though it's obvious just by looking at him when he's unhappy.
Taken straight from canon, Ryoji has a grand total of 23 days of living as a human under his belt. There's a lot about the world he just doesn't know about, let alone understand. Because he's such an earnest person, he takes most of what people tell him at face value. Ryoji would doubt his own knowledge and experience before someone else's; because he believes in the best of people, it's a simple task to fool or manipulate him. This can often lead to some pretty spectacular misunderstandings, especially when paired with the fact that he is incredibly impulsive and often pretty tactless. Ryoji rarely thinks before he acts, usually choosing to go with his gut when making decisions. He's fearless when it comes to flirting with girls he doesn't know; rejection doesn't bother him or keep him down in the slightest. Most notoriously, he was in cahoots with Junpei for a dumb plan to "mistake" the changeover time from boys to girls in a hot spring. (Don't worry, he got super executed for it. That's not happening again.)
As a Shadow, there are certain human nuances and social cues that go completely over Ryoji's head. He sometimes has difficulty understanding why humans do what they do. He's puzzled by concepts like "maybe you shouldn't ask other girls out on casual dates when you have a steady girlfriend" and "even though death is a natural end to life, people are sad when their loved ones die". Which isn't to say that he's not empathetic, because when he's given the space to sit and work out why Junpei, his best friend, is sad about losing a loved one he's able to recognize that his own way of thinking was cold and better understand Junpei's perspective.
Because at the end of the day, Ryoji is a kind, gentle, and loving person. Although his very existence means the end of all things and it's in his nature to kill, the thought of bringing others pain is heartrending to him. Even before he regains his memories, he struggles an instinctive knowledge that his presence in the protagonist's life will cause her to suffer. Ryoji is willing to go to great lengths to spare others pain, often at his own expense. When he offers S.E.E.S. the chance to kill him so their memories of the Dark Hour would disappear, it was because he couldn't stand the thought of his friends suffering with the knowledge of their inevitable deaths.
It's safe to say that when Ryoji is around other people, he's very happy. But on the flip side, he's also someone who is very lonely and prone to melancholy when he's by himself. Isolated from others, without anything else to focus on, his thoughts inevitably center around things he's worried and afraid about. Before he regains his memory, he's anxious about what might happen the next day; he's painfully afraid that he might hurt his friends, and experiences bouts where he doesn't feel physically real and present.
After regaining his memory, only faint traces of Ryoji's usual cheerful and lighthearted remain; he's otherwise a very somber, subdued, and unhappy person. He's crushed by the truth of his own existence and the undeniable knowledge of mankind's fate. The fact is, he's a monster who flippantly played around at being a person in the midst of humanity's death throes. His existence is an undeniable herald to the end of human life. Furthermore, he knows there's no use in fighting against it; the Fall is inevitable and, for as long as he exists in the human world, there is no way to prevent it. As much as he loves being alive and cherishes the time he spent with his loved ones as a human being, Ryoji knows that it would have been far better if he never existed to begin with.
DRRP CRAU
... or, you know, that's what he thought before he was pulled from one world to the next, lost his memories again, and woke up in a creepy hotel where he was forced to participate in a murder game. Ryoji survived eight long weeks of being locked inside of a hotel, watching as the group of people he came to know and love as his friends grew smaller and smaller. Every week, someone died on between Thursday night and Friday morning. And then, in order to protect the group as a whole, they were forced to investigate, drive out, and vote to kill the culprit responsible. Understandably, Ryoji's not very fond of places where he can't see outside and he's yet to find a Friday morning where he doesn't crack open the bedroom doors to check on the people he's settled down to run a bed and breakfast with in Kalos.
Just in case.
In canon, Ryoji is an escapist to the extreme. He even goes as far to erase his own memory to try and hide from the reality of the Fall; when it comes back to him, he tearfully suggests to his friends that they ought to kill him and destroy their memories too to spare themselves the pain of their upcoming and unavoidable untimely demises before pulling away and hiding from them for a month. He bitterly regretted the fact of his own existence, because it meant the end of human life and thought. He didn't so much believe as know that there was no place for him in the human world.
So perhaps it's not so strange that in a surviving group that made up largely of people who experienced (and, in some cases, committed) the worst humanity had to offer, Ryoji eventually came to feel he had a place among them. Ryoji is deeply devoted to everyone who Monaka drew in to the hotel, but he feels the most connected to the other survivors--and to Silver and Meridiana, who took him by the hand and led him to a life outside of the hotel and beyond his ultimate destiny as the end of all things. Ryoji can never go back "home" to Iwatodai (not without bringing about the end of the world) but he will always have a place side-by-side with his friends.
Ryoji has spent the past year focused on supporting them and taking care of the people who came to Kalos: Silver, Dave, and Meridiana coexist in the slot of number one on the list of Ryoji's priorities. While he isn't hesitant to share his own unhappiness and grief with them--(because if he's learned anything from Monaka's murder hoel, it's that trying to bear up under sadness alone is a recipe for disaster)--he's found more healing in helping being the one who others lean on, rather than giving himself the opportunity to rest. He's become more open and frank about the fact that he's not human and why exactly he can't go home with the people he trusts, although he's still pretty evasive about it with strangers unless directly called on it.
On the surface level, Ryoji might not seem very different. He's still friendly, still flirty, still prone to melancholy when left to his own devices. What's changed about him is that he's open to the idea that there's a future, even for something like him; that, even as the culmination of an entire planet's worth of despair, he has the ability to spread hope and kindness instead. Ryoji never expected to have the chance to live a "normal" life. Frankly, part of him feels he doesn't really deserve it. But he's come to accept, little by little, that "Ryoji is Ryoji" is a fact that's more importan than "Ryoji isn't really human". And that Death, as Ryoji Mochizuki, is the beloved friend of some truly extraordinary people.
Background:
• Ryoji on the SMT Wiki
• Pharos on the SMT Wiki
The following links are good for understanding... what the hell kind of shitshow Ryoji is anyway, because the mechanics of P3 can be kind of confusing. The condensed version is: Ryoji is a Very Big Shadow who is the physical representation of the impending apocalypse, whose presence causes distortions in time and space and will eventually lead to the destruction of the collective subconscious.
• Shadow (Persona 3) on the SMT Wiki.
• The Dark Hour on the SMT Wiki
• The Fall on the SMT Wiki
• Nyx Avatar on the SMT Wiki
Dangan Roleplay R3 CRAU
Ryoji's time in the Hotel Monofornia can be divided into three periods: the first few weeks, when he thought he was a human; the middle period, after he remembered he was a Shadow and about the Fall; and the final weeks, when the survivors decided that there would be no more secrets between them.
When Ryoji first arrived in the hotel, just like everyone else in the group, he suffered from memory loss. But what made Ryoji's situation unique is that he didn't just forget things that happened to him: without his memory of the confrontation with Aigis, Ryoji was able to fall back on the familiar, comforting lie that he was human. There were gaps in his memory, but weren't there always? Upsetting things were fuzzy around the edges, but wasn't that normal? His only clear memories were of Iwatodai, but wasn't that because meeting Minako changed his life? Ryoji clung fiercely to the illusion that he was human, even when others (such as Silver and Tsukiyama) started noticing that there were certain things that weren't right about him and holes in the flimsy history he provided.
During this time, Ryoji cheerfully and enthusiastically pursued friendships with the other people trapped in the hotel. He was particularly close with most of the young people, especially Silver--they started sharing a sleeping space together (usually Silver's room) within the first week of being locked up in the hotel, something they kept up for most of the game. He also picked up crocheting from Meridiana during this period, a hobby that helped him to cope through the whole experience; every week after a trial, Ryoji would crochet a square for both the victim and the culprit that he would add onto a memorial quilt. His first few weeks of memories were from before he had a human identity, so he was able to dismiss them as simple nightmares.
And then, after losing one of his closer friends, Ryoji recovered a memory that brought all of that to a halt: not only did he realize he was a Shadow and that he was going to bring about the end of the world, but all of the ugliness that was happening at the hotel that he'd been able to keep at an arm's length hit him at once. He immediately pulled back and withdrew from the others; he spent a few days sleeping on his own and, although it was obvious to his closer friends that someone was wrong, refused to speak of it. After the fourth trial, however, Ryoji realized just how dangerous it was for him to hold it in and reached out to Allie and shared what he remembered about himself. While he didn't volunteer this information to the others, it enabled him to at least go back through the motions of making it through to the end of each day.
(cw: cannibalism & suicide)
Things changed again in a drastic way late one Thursday evening when Silver, unable to sleep from eating too much mapo tofu, left their room and didn't come back. He was found alive, but badly beaten by an unknown assailant. The trial revealed that Silver stumbled on Tsukiyama, the mastermind behind the case, who accidentally attacked him with so much force that he nearly died. During the trial it came out that Ryuunosuke, one of Ryoji's closest friends, was so devoted to Tsukiyama that (because he believed Tsukiyama was the culprit) he lied and hid evidence to protect him. Eventually, the entire truth came out that Tsukiyama, who was actually a Ghoul who needed to consume human flesh to survive, tricked Meridiana, a revenant who needed fresh organs and to bathe in blood to survive, into killing someone so he could eat them. In the process of dragging all of this out, Tsukiyama pounced on the opportunity to drag Ryoji under the "SURPRISE: WE'RE INHUMAN ABOMINATIONS" bus. Even though Tsukiyama was the one who manipulated the whole case, because of the way the game's rules were set up Meridiana was considered the culprit and was executed.
Ryoji spent most of that weekend explaining what he was (if not what it meant) to the other Survivors and trying to look after Silver; however, he stopped sharing a room with Silver at this point due to Silver's injuries and the fact that Silver himself was withdrawing from the group. Monobear then presented the group with their final motive: if no one died by the end of the week, all their worst secrets would be revealed. On Friday morning, Silver's body was discovered. The truth of this case was that Silver killed himself to protect the group's remaining secrets--but in order to drive a wedge between the eight people who were left, Monobear used it as an opportunity to frame Allie.
This did not go over well. At this point, despite all odds, the survivors had forged a bizarre but unbreakable bond of faith: despite all of the evidence pointing to the contrary, not a single person believed that Allie was responsible for Silver's death. The group very literally turned on Monobear, accusing him of tampering with the crime scene and framing Allie. When he tried to regain control by hinting and then revealing that Ryuunosuke's secret that he was actually a serial killer rather than a medical student, things got even more out of control when every last member of the group shared every last horrible secret that Monobear could hold against them. For Ryoji, this was what his presence meant for his world and what being the "Super High School Level Harbinger" really meant. After that trial, it was obvious that there was nothing the mastermind could do to drive the survivors to kill again.
During the final investigation and trial, the group discovered that their captor was a little girl named Monaka who, when offered a contract that granted her magical powers after being cut off from human contact for years, had drawn them all from their varied worlds because she thought she could turn them into a second generation of people who dedicated their lives to spreading despair together with her. Despite everything that had happened and she'd done to them, Ryoji found himself pitying her in the way he pitied the humans who accelerated the Fall in his home world; he felt empathy towards her but, like the other survivors, voted to execute her so they could leave the hotel. With free access to the hotel, they were able to both find a way out and contact the outside world; in short order, a group called the Future Foundation would be there to rescue them.
But before the Future Foundation arrived, they were found by a another girl: Madoka Kaname, whose sincere wish for hope was so powerful that she transcended human existence and became a god. She was able to use the survivor's collective hope to revive the people whose lives were consumed by the murder games, so when the Future Foundation came to pick them up there were twenty people alive rather than just eight.
Ryoji was a little at a loss of what to do with himself. Unlike the others, he very literally couldn't go home--and part of him was afraid of what his presence would mean in another world. But during the farewell party, Silver took him by the hand and informed Ryoji that he'd be going to Kalos in the Pokémon world with him, Dave, and Meridiana. And so he went! And opened up a bed and breakfast, after they did a little bit of prerequisite wandering around the Region doing the whole Pokémon Trainer thing.
Eventually, though, they bought a house near Lumiose City. And while Silver and Dave have been doing some hero work for the Future Foundation, Ryoji has been helping Meridiana run her bed and breakfast. It's ... not exactly a normal household, but by god the kids who live there are determined to love and support each other. And, against all odds, it seems to be working out.
Abilities:
▶ Good At Video Games: Ryoji is stupid good at video games. He spent Way Too Much Time while he was living in Port Island at the arcade, an escapist habit that he brought with him to the murder hotel and later to Kalos. He's particularly killer at fighting games and DDR.
▶ Monotranslate: As a side effect of being magically and then scientifically dragged across time and space, Ryoji's human form bleeds bright magenta blood. While he's only fluent in Japanese and can only speak (bad) conversational English and French, thanks to Monotranslate other languages are automatically translated into Japanese for him. Neato!
▶ Shadow: Ryoji is not human. He is actually a Shadow, a reality-warping physical representation of human emotion. Specifically, Ryoji is the physical amalgamation of an entire planet's worth of apathy and despair. His human form is exactly that: a shape that he's twisted himself down into in order to disguise himself and blend in with other humans. While he enjoys things like eating and sleeping, Ryoji doesn't necessarily need to; nor does he know what it's like to be hungry or feel tired.
His real form looks something like this and people who are sensitive to that sort of thing will be able to sense that he has a terrifying eldritch aura. Yikes!!
▶ Literally Death: Ryoji is, in a very literal sense of the word, the impending apocalypse of his home world. His presence warps reality so badly that it breaks time in his home world, causing a phenomena known as the Dark Hour--a twenty-fifth hour hidden between one day in the next. His presence draws Nyx closer to the surface of Earth and, once she completely descends during the Fall, the collective unconsciousness will end and all conscious thought on Earth will be destroyed. At the end of Persona 3 Ryoji, as the Avatar of Nyx, was sealed behind something called the Great Seal.
Another aspect of how reality kind of just ... breaks around him is that, without Monaka suppressing his nature, it's kind of pointless to try and shoot him even if you have a grenade launcher. Our you have a spiritual manifestation of your soul is a giant spear/machine gun lady. It's possible to attack and hurt him and even kill his human self, it's just. Really hard and kind of only possible if he lets it happen. Because he's a functionally immortal eldritch abomination and you can't punch out abstract concepts.
Network/Actionspam Sample:
Good morning everyone! Isn't it pretty today??? (ノ＞▽＜。)ノ
Well, to be honest, I think every morning is a pretty morning ☆
But all of that fresh snow that fell last night makes everything look so.........
｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆Fluffy & Sparkly｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆
Unfortunately, this morning is possible because it's very cold out! (๑>﹏<)⋆* ⁑⋆*
Which I guess is kind of a bummer, but I think it's exciting because.........
Cold weather is the best weather for scarves, which are the cutest & warmest winter accessories!（*＾＾*)
Did you know that scarves are the cutest and warmest winter accessory? It's a fact!! (•v•)ง
What sort of cute clothes have you been wearing this winter, Ruby City?
I'd love to know!! (ﾉ´ヮ´)ﾉ*: ･ﾟ
Prose Log Sample: The little town at the end of the train tracks is very quiet, very still, and very dark. In all his time in all the worlds he’s lived in, Ryoji has never encountered a place that’s as swathed in silence as this odd little town. Humans are very noisy and they don’t like the dark. Even at night, cities like Iwatodai and Lumiose always hummed with light and life. But this town—he can see that there are streets and buildings, but there are no lamps and there aren’t any lights in the windows that he can see.
The weather isn’t helping much, he thinks. There’s snow falling down from the sky in huge, downy flakes; the sort of snow that makes him want to twirl with his arms in a big circle and fall backwards into a snowbank for the sheer frosty joy of it. Silver calls this kind of weather feather snow, which Ryoji thinks is both very pretty and very fitting. Dave just calls it disgustingly pretty. But he’s from The South— (an ominous and undefined part of America that Ryoji can’t remember studying, but has to be real because that’s where Dave is from)—and can therefore be forgiven for hating something as pretty as this. Ryoji reaches into his pocket for his phone, pulling it out and flicking it open in a single practiced motion.
Just like on the train, there’s no signal. He blinks down at the screen, chasing away the prickles in the corners of his eyes. That’s … not okay, but as far as not okay things go Ryoji knows that it could be worse. After all, he’s still himself in all the awful, sad ways that he’s always been: he can tell without trying that if he wanted to be more honest, he could shrug his human self off like a jacket and allow himself to be more or less his usual monstrous self. He doesn’t really feel like it, though, even though his fingers and nose have started to get red from the cold; he’s got his scarf and his coat, but he left his gloves behind on the counter like Meridiana is always gently chiding him not to.
“Well,” Ryoji announces to nobody, “might as well get started.”
He steps off of the platform into a pile of disgustingly pretty feather snow. He pulls his scarf up over his nose, to keep warm and to hide the worried frown that he can’t seem to chase away from his face. He picks a direction and starts to walk. There will be light eventually, he hopes. Because if he can find light that means he’s found people, too, and he can start to feel a little more like himself again.