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Your name: Vivi
Your journal:

vivider
Contact: It's usually easiest to reach me on AIM at a wild vivi, just ignore the away message!
Other characters played at Passing: None, this is my first.

Character name: Minato Arisato
Character fandom: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3
Version: 2
Canon point: A couple years post-canon.
Importing development from old game? Yes, from

dramadramaduck, where I played him for about two years.
Background: His Megaten wiki entry.

Changes from canon, if AU: As I said, I played him at DDD for two years, so quite a lot happened to him. I'll put it in bullet point so that it's easier to follow (I hope).

→ Minato befriended Shinji Ikari from Evangelion, and through that also became friends with Asuka and Kaworu from the same world. When the Eva kids went through canon and ended up post-End of Eva, their world was left decimated, and they had nowhere to go. It was about November of the P3 timeline, and Minato invited them back to live in their dorm. They became de facto members of S.E.E.S, with Kaworu as an analytic backup type like Fuuka, and Asuka taking the drugs that allowed her to manifest her own Persona. (The consequences of her taking those drugs were understood and played out eventually.) Shinji was dropped at some point during this.

→ He also befriended Russia from Hetalia, calling him Ivan, and ended up a determined and steadfast friend of his. He learned some basic Russian through their association.

→ Itsuki Koizumi from Haruhi was one of Minato's first friends on the community, and slowly over time they became extremely close. When P3 canon finished, Minato was dead, or at least left stranded holding back Nyx in another dimension; Itsuki searched for and found a way to bring him back by making a deal with the Marquis from Neverwhere. Though they both owed the Marquis enormous favors, Minato did come back to life. I wrote up a brief summary and link roundup in case this needs more detail.

→ Alive again, Minato got a job working for Kanzeon Bosatsu from Saiyuki, and acquired his worldhopping capable mirror from her. Working for her mostly included forging signatures for her, doing more paperwork, and making popcorn when she watched interesting things in her lotus pool.

→ He got an apartment living with Asuka and Kaworu in Iwatodai. They both play violin, and convinced him to take up the viola. Minato took to it naturally, but wasn't in any way a prodigy at it.

→ Somewhere around this time we got an active Persona 4 cast, including Naoto Shirogane. Due to popular fan theories, the Naoto player and I agreed to have them be cousins who used to see each other when they were young and then lost touch after their respective parents died. They reconnected through the community with some awkwardness (at least on Minato's part). I timeskipped Minato one year to bring him up to the timeline the P4 cast was in for simplicity.

→ Shortly before I dropped him, he began dating Itsuki romantically. They weren't extremely serious about each other and were more testing it out.

→ I hope to play him dead again in Passing, with the assumption that there's no way for him to escape his fate for long. It's an ongoing theme in P3 that Minato has to "take responsibility" for his choices, and evading death through his deal with the Marquis was essentially breaking the agreement he made to do that. Therefore, he's dead again, and stuck living in the dreamworld at OPN.

Personality: As a person, Minato is withdrawn. That isn't to say he isn't social - merely untalkative and unemotional. Throughout the game he grows more and more responsive to people, starting out extremely biddable but becoming almost pro-active by the end. He is capable of becoming friends with virtually anyone, and ranks those friends, as is apparent, higher than his own life. He is almost absurdly loyal and just as absurdly silent about it. For him, actions speak almost everything; he says little more than what is absolutely necessary. What he does say, though, is usually perceptive and intuitive, both spot on and helpful. He takes almost every opportunity he can to help someone.

He's extremely mature by virtue of being extremely repressed. He has a whole barrel full of issues that rarely reach the surface, and for the purposes of most of his interactions, he's a strangely quiet and unresponsive little Japanese kid. But the reasoning behind why he's so quiet is more complicated than that. Although we know that he was orphaned at a young age, and that when he does appear as a high school junior he's unnaturally or at last unhealthily apathetic, the only clue we have as to what life was like for him in the time in between is that he'd lost his memories of his parents' death, and subsequently also the memories of the massive Shadow, Death, being sealed into him. This amnesia was not from a supernatural source: this was his psyche's way of dealing with those events.

This would set a trend for him. Minato frequently and commonly represses any and all emotions, particularly the stronger, more negative ones. He has abandonment issues and something of a martyr complex, because he doesn't attach himself to people easily. The events of the game forced him to become attached, and while post-game he's more comfortable with others and being friendly, and is more in tune with social cues, he still latches onto what friends he makes with both hands. He will literally do anything for them.

But, as mentioned briefly above, Minato is definitely a moral person. He is a people pleaser and desperate to belong, in a way, but this is balanced by a strong ability to read and understand those around him. He is sympathetic and empathetic, and will never resort to violence if there is another option. To Minato, there are no 'villains' - there are only people. He isn't one to judge. After all, it takes a certain kind of person to accept with equanimity voices only he can hear and people only he can see.

Abilities:
→ He has the RPG protagonist ability to be good with any weapon he picks up.

→ He can also summon his Persona. He's an oddity even in canon in that he can summon any of them that he wants, but he can only carry a dozen of them at once, so if accepted I'll predetermine which ones these are and stick with them for the duration of his time in Passing.

What exactly is a Persona? It's a physical manifestation of someone's inner personality. Minato's mutable nature means that he has a lot of these. What it actually looks like is a kid shooting himself in the head (it's not a real gun, though) and summoning a big mythological spirit or demon. He can perform a lot of various magic spells and physical techniques with this, including elemental attacks, healing, and attribute boosting (support).

→ Usually by the end of the game he has max courage, intelligence, and charm. This means he's good at getting people to do what he wants, has little self-preservation instinct, and was the top student in his grade at school.

→ He's basically a very powerful jack of all trades. If this needs capping in any way, just let me know and I'll be happy to cooperate. :)

Writing sample: The audio clicks on, and there's a crackling of static before the sound of tentative strings. It's not exactly clear what's going on - a note flubbed here and there, abrupt starts and stops; it's Minato tuning his viola.

Then nothing but quiet breathing. It's slow, deep. It has the indefinable quality of weariness. The first opening strains of Bach's Prelude No. 1 filter through, soft and hesitant at first but gaining speed as he falls into the music.

Despite being undeniably melancholy in tone, there's an element of hope to the song, fierce persistence that suits Minato well. He goes quite comfortably through the majority of the first movement, perhaps a mistake here or there, but overall a passable rendition and certainly one played with emotion. And then, partway through the song - about two minutes in - there's a long, high screech as his bow slides off the strings, abrupt and startling.

Breathing, still quiet but louder now. Faint rustling as he puts away the viola and walks to the computer, sits down, and sees it was recording.

Minato isn't thrilled by it, but there's nothing he can do now. And how many people would be able to tell that he isn't as unbothered by recent events as he tries to put across? He doesn't want them to worry. It'd turned out to be a mistake to keep it from them that he was going to die during that long, long February, but Minato doesn't think this is the same at all. They have enough to deal with, and he could deal with this, his own feelings about coming back to life.

He doesn't say anything. He realizes he never got to play through the climax.

Voice sample: Here are some of my favorite threads with him, listed and with context. You can also find his own posts at

dormition and at DDD.

One: Visiting Russia in Stalingrad to make sure he was okay lead to accidental shooting and hot cocoa back at the apartment.
Two: Naoto finally found out the truth about Persona.
Three: Just after Minato was resurrected, he went to visit Itsuki.
Four: Under slightly AU circumstances as a ghost, he met L and tried to befriend him. His core personality remained intact, though, which is why I'm linking to it.