but you are gone - not for good but for now

OOC Information:
Name: Eren again
Are you over 15? Indeed!
Contact: moveslikejaeger

IC Information:
Name: Minato Arisato/Matthias Abbot
Canon and medium: Persona 3 FES
Age: 17
Preincarnation Species: Human. Shadow lived in him a little but human.
Preincarnation Appearance: Unremarkable as hell.
Any differences: His blue hair will darken to black, and he has better posture.
Preincarnated History: Basically kid gets Death stuffed into him in the accident that kills his parents. When he returns to this city, monsters called shadows are gathering and attacking, but only in a secret hour outside of regular time that only people with "the Potential" can function in. He must lead a mismatched team of high schoolers gathered in a special dorm due to having the Potential to defeat the twelve "main" shadows based on the first twelve major arcana of the tarot.

Except it turns out that defeating these summons Death from inside Minato and sets off the events that should cause the end of the world. Death, the harbinger of Nyx will summon Nyx to heed the wishes of a world full of people who wish to die. In the end, Minato gives his life energy to become the Seal and block those wishes, in the form of Erebus, from reaching Nyx.

And that's it. He dies. Game ends. Fuck your heart.

A more detailed explanation of his part in canon.

Reincarnated History: Matt's parents are from Locke City. Long before Matt was born, they moved to New York in order to find more lucrative and creative jobs--his father is a scientist, and his mother works for a fashion designer. Both of their days are taken up completely by their jobs, so he learned very fast how to make his life on his own. When his parents were around, however, they focused heavily on making sure he was polite and sociable, teaching him very young that it's not what you know but who you know, and it's not who you know but the impact you leave on them.

So from a very young age, Matt was charismatic and charming. He was sent to private all-boys schools until high school where he enrolled in a co-ed private school. He was given a very good education and participated in whatever extracurricular he could get his hands on, including the swim team and drama club through middle school and fencing lessons at the start of his senior year, while he worked on the school paper.

However, due to the failing economy, Matt's father lost his job, causing them to have to downgrade apartments, his father to take on several part time jobs just to be able to afford to live in the city at all. His mother picked up a part time job, as well and toward the end of the first semester of his senior year, Matt secretly picked up a job of his own, dropping out of the newspaper staff and yearbook committee in order to help his parents income when he knew it would be needed.

His parents found out, and became nervous that he'd begin to focus less on the education that they wanted for him, and called his mother's sister who lived only a little while away back in their hometown, where he visited in the summer in childhood. He arrived in the city in late December, after finishing his first semester of senior year, and moved into their spare room. His aunt and uncle had no children of their own but accepted him happily and enjoy the amount of housework he does (he does the dishes without asking). He began high school in the city after the Christmas break in January.

First Echo: When stopping at the vending machine before class on his first day, the student set to guide him to class got exasperated and told him they didn't have time for this. These words caused a flashback to his previous life in Iwatodai when he and a girl in a pink sweater (Yukari) were fleeing in a well-furnished dorm with the lights all out and nothing but green moonlight. In this memory he stopped to get a drink and she told him they did not have time for that. It will also bring back a feeling of confusion and urgency--like what they're fleeing from should not exist.

Preincarnation Personality: My disclaimer is that Minato Arisato is a mostly silent protagonist. This is what I came away with after having played the game and seeing his choices, the options given to him and the way people act around him. As such, everything here forward is my interpretation and therefore put into italics. I promise I'm not being an asshole, I'm just saying he can be totally different and his motivations are based on what you chose and played.

Minato Arisato can come off to people as a lot of things. He can come off as cold, he can come off as silly, he can come off as straight up lost it. He wears an expressionless face most of the time, seeming distant and alone. He can be smart or completely brainless, charming or ridiculous, brave or timid. He's this kind of mystery of a person that can act one way in one moment and completely differently in another. Knowing literally no one when he first arrives in Iwatodai, shuffled from place to place his whole life, Minato lacks a firm setting of how he should be, an understanding of what people expect of him. When played against who he is within his own self, this makes him a very strange sort of person. He's very internalized, he doesn't explain how he gets to conclusions he gets to, or the reasons he does the things he does. He has to rely on himself in order to figure out every step of his life. Having learned loss very early in his life, and the transience of all relationships ten years ago, Minato has taken it on himself to bear all his own burdens and to not rely on others to help him solve his problems. He lives in his own head, alienating himself accidentally from those around him.

Once he comes to Iwatodai, his life takes a big turn in the form of the relationships he builds. Though he still knows they could be broken and disappear in an instant, Minato's strength now depends on his relationships, in more than one way. He is chosen to lead SEES due to his natural ability with Persona, and his safety and the safety of his team depends on his relationships with the other members. He is faced with needing Social Links, drawing his power from them. And for what might be the first time in years, people are interested in him, and getting to be with him. In the end, he still remains mostly a dump for their emotions and issues, but he is faced with real people and real problems rather than shallow small talk and distance he seems to have received prior. Early on, responsibility is pressed to him, with Mitsuru asking him not only to lead SEES, but join Student Council to help her out. He's pushed to join a sports team and a cultural club, and in each of these places he finds someone else who wants to understand him and be his friend. They want his support as much as he wants theirs and Minato seems to need this. Everything seems to result in a social link for him, especially early on, every classmate representing a bond--a bond which has the ultimate goal of being unbreakable. Permanent. Etching Minato into the minds of his classmates forever.

Having always been an outsider prior, sent from home to home, moving around often after the death of his parents, this is something new to Minato. So sure, he slips up a lot with his weirdness. Hot sauce in his coffee and such like. But the eagerness to be with others is something that is sincere. The like of other people is something he can embrace wholeheartedly.

It's because of this that Minato is such an accepting person. He can befriend everyone from one of the most sought-after girls in school to the robot to a little girl whose parents are going through a divorce to a dying man. He can find someone to connect with everywhere from a slowly dying online game to a bookstore in town. Having lived mostly on the outside, there's no real outline for him to follow in the people he spends time with and this really shows. He makes time for pretty much everyone, helps everyone as equally as he can to the best of his abilities.

And all of this is just the social aspect of his life. Minato has a great deal riding on him at night, being the leader of SEES inside of Tartarus. When it comes to a battle situation, Minato's friends put their lives in his hand making him a good strategist. Despite having a team full of people who want to fight every night, Minato can only choose a few to train at a time. Despite a robot who always wants to be at his side, a shota who wants to get stronger, a senpai who wants to train and a classmate who wants to be a hero, Minato has to develop a thick enough skin to say no, and a quick enough mind to know who will play well where, using skills and strengths and weaknesses to make their path through Tartarus as safe as possible. Within the Dark Hour, Minato stops being Minato and starts being the leader, starts making the decisions, the hard calls and he draws the responsibility to himself.

And in the end, his decisions are ultimately what cause the world to start to crumble. Minato is the one who has to take responsibility. And he does so without complaining. Minato's core is responsibility and duty. To his friends, his classmates, and the entire world. Even if he was scared to face Nyx, even if he thought he couldn't do it, he used the relationships he'd been so eager to form, so desperate to strengthen--and he used those and the sincerity of everyone's feelings for him as his strength. In those moments, Minato was not forgettable, not fading, not transient, but firmly and decidedly alive. In the moment Minato chose to die, he also realized that he was pretty much immortal in the memories and hearts of the people he had connected with. It was his duty to them to take responsibility for the actions he'd taken. He'd released Death, he'd brought Nyx down. And that, in the end is what makes Minato who he is.

Minato puts everyone before himself. He's strong and determined, and incredibly powerful. He will fight until the very end, he will get the best grades, become brave, alter his personality to be more charming. He will do and say everything right. He will spend time with someone every single day or back off for a month. Even if someone's mad at him, he will keep trying.

Because he needs people. Minato Arisato needs other people to survive. No matter how much they know him, no matter how much they use him, other people are his strength and his motivation. And he's happy, knowing that they, and their children and their children's children can live. Even if he had to give that up himself.

I made myself sad. Thank you and good night.

Any differences: He talks. A lot. Right off the bat he's charismatic and sociable. Minato is not that way in canon, beginning as a quiet and isolated soul. He doesn't have the heavy burdens of his past self--his family is alive and mostly well, and he doesn't have to worry about fighting monsters yet.

Minato's a lot more stable, not having moved around as a child, so a lot of that thing he does where he doesn't really rely on others is completely gone. He's used to a concrete, set life. Granted that's all about to change. He's able to adapt differently. Better in some ways--he can retain a cheerful disposition and connect with others in new, unknown situations. But worse in others--he's mentally a lot more fragile. He hasn't been damaged yet, so the damage shows much worse when it comes in.

While his quirky humor remains intact, he's less likely to use it around someone who wouldn't understand that this is indeed a joke, and he's not being serious. He knows how to act around people far more than his previous incarnation, so, sadly, he will be much less of an oddball. Alas.

Abilities: MINATO USES PERSONAS A SHIT TON. Kid's has an ability they call the Wild Card, a rare ability where they're a player character and therefore somewhat of a blank slate and they can summon dozens of different personas, but only one at a time. Each has its own different skill set, weaknesses and strengths, and need an Evoker (a gun-shaped tool, which you point to your own head and shoot) to summon one, though.

That aside, Minato can wield one-handed swords, two-handed swords, bows, spears and axes. He can also fight with his fists. Because he's from FES and not P3P. He has natural leadership abilities, as well.

Roleplay Sample - Third Person: Matthias has never been the new kid before. It's a strange experience, a new school, especially so late in his whole school career. He doesn't need a uniform, so he feels over dressed in a nice jacket and dark pants. He makes a note from now on that he'll just wear something basic. Jeans, maybe a nice shirt. He's out of his element, but he still smiles and chats with the classmate showing him around. She was somewhat cold earlier, and he's glad she's warming up. She was probably tired--first day back after vacation and all.

He sits absentmindedly in his math class, staring out the window, rather than paying attention to the teacher. He went over this unit before break in his old school, so he doesn't have to pay attention. He wonders who that girl in the pink is. She was cute, but she seemed angry, and like she wasn't a huge fan of him... the guy. Whoever he was seeing through the eyes of. He's pretty sure he's never seen the girl before, but for all he knew, it was a memory of a TV show his parents had been watching. Though he's not sure it's their kind of TV program.

He's glad he's the new kid today. He has a lot to think about. He wonders what kind of clubs this school has, what sports he might still be able to get into, if there's anything that might make him look better to universities. He chats with everyone who approaches him, student or teacher, trying his best to slide in seamlessly. It occurs to him that this isn't an easy task--he has no friends here, barely any family, and no history that he was old enough to make a concrete memory of.

He finds himself, by lunch, longing for the familiarity of the city. This is a city, of course but it's not the city. It's not his city. His aunt and uncle are not his parents. He should be graduating with his friends at the end of this semester, but instead, he's got a whole new group of people to make friends with. And while he's well-equipped for it, it's daunting. And at least for this lunch period, he's glad he has the mystery of the girl in the pink sweater.

Roleplay Sample - Network: This here.

Any Questions? If you need to clear up any lingering questions or concerns, here's the place to do it.