App to Thusia / Information

[border_of_life]

OOC:
Name: Reslari
Personal LJ or DW:

at_the_end_of_the_world 
Email: thegreatprinceutena@yahoo.com
Other Contact: AIM: Sodomu no Yami
Characters You Play/Have Played in Thusia: Nada.
Will You Need a DW Code?: Nope!

IC
Character Name: Yuyuko Saigyouji

Canon: Touhou Project

AU/OC/Previous Game: None of the above. OU!

Age: She's existed for over a thousand years, canon doesn't give a specific number other than that.

Appearance: Yuyuko is one of the shorter 'adult' characters in Touhou - shorter than say, Yukari, but not as small as the younger teenage characters/shortest adults. She has shoulder-length pink hair that's wavy/perhaps a bit curly on humid days, and dark red eyes. She doesn't look like she's very old - early 20s at most; the age she was when she died, and is also known for being apparently quite charming. She wears a blue kimono with Lots Of Extra Frills, and a bonnet-like hat with a hitaikakushi (a triangular piece of paper usually put on the foreheads of the dead in Japan) with a spiral-y ghost-shaped insignia.

 

 

http://i.imgur.com/0Z4vM.png This here is the series creator's... unique drawing style of her most recent incarnation.

 

http://i.imgur.com/ig2A4.jpg You can see why most prefer fanart.

 

Cause of Death: Canonly, it was suicide. More on that in the history section.

Impact of Death: She's been dead for over 1000 years, that isn't the part that's going to need adjusting to - it's going to be being alive again. She's also going to be a bit, though not blatantly outwardly because Yuyuko is more subtle than that, rattled by the 'not being able to go home' thing. She has an important job in her canon: she watches over and gives sanctuary to already judged souls that are awaiting reincarnation. She's the Princess of the Netherworld, in job and in title. Beyond that, knowing what she does about the seal on the Saigyou Ayakashi, she will be concerned that it will be awake again with her being alive once more, for the Saigyou Ayakashi tends to like to kill people even more than her powers do.

References Link: http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Yuyuko Yon!

Character Info: A little over a thousand years ago, Yuyuko was born into the renowned Saigyouji clan. Her life was a tragic one, and cut tragically short. Her family seemed to be cursed to be surrounded by death - she herself was born with the ability to manipulate spirits, but as she grew, so too did her power until the power to manipulate spirits became so strong she could manipulate a spirit right out of a living person's body, she was able to manipulate death itself. The most terrifying part of it, was that the power grew so quickly that she could not keep a handle on it, and it would kill many people. There was also the matter of the Saigyou Ayakashi, a beautiful cherry tree that her father had chosen to die beneath, and thus began a curse on it that led to it being able to entice people to lay beneath it, where it would then kill them. The combination of factors - the cursed tree tied to her name, and her own power over death which she couldn't control, eventually led to her taking her own life.

 

A thousand years later, however, and Yuyuko Saigyouji, ghost princess of the Netherworld... remembered none of that. Perhaps too much time had passed and her memory had decayed, perhaps a seal had been placed upon her, regardless, she remembered nothing of her human life. What is known is that for the last thousand years, Yukari Yakumo had been her best friend, she had taken a servant in the Netherworld by the name of Youki Konpaku - who eventually gave his position to his what is assumed granddaughter Youmu Konpaku - and had become the mistress and keeper of the mansion Hakugyokuro, where she watched over souls that had already been judged and deemed fit for reincarnation until they could be called back into the realm of the living. The Saigyou Ayakashi had been sealed by what she would later come to find out was none other than herself because of her suicide (with some outside help), and that she herself was outside of the reincarnation cycle so she could continue her duties to the Netherworld.

 

Contrary to what one might think of someone that was driven to such desperate lengths as to commit suicide, however, the Yuyuko of a thousand years later is... not sad, not depressed, has no anxiety issues. She is cheerful, for starters, with a highly easygoing nature that doesn't often lead to her becoming overly emotional for any reason. It's hard to get her angry - though her wrath is stated in canon as being widely feared, and given her gratuitous instant-death powers, rightly so.

 

She tends toward the extremely whimsical, and her behavior and speech patterns can be hard to follow at times. She floats from one thing to the next as though she has either no attention span, or, if one takes her 'I don't remember what I had for breakfast' statement to heart, no memory span. For instance, she was highly interested in the resurrection process the hermits used in Ten Desires, and nearly tried to do it to herself until she got bored of the idea and decided to go and take a nap instead. She does lose interest easily, or at least seems to.

 

Yuyuko is quite used to being a princess, and treated as such. It doesn't make her terribly bratty (though she isn't above being a little pouty at times), but instead gave rise to a more indulgent personality. She likes to eat, for instance. Contrary to fanon interpretation, she's not a glutton, it just so happens that she is a ghost that can eat, and she does like food, so she does like to eat. The same could be said about a lot of things she does, however. For instance, something the fandom never really picked up on, but is also a part of her character, is that she is a big reader. The library in Hakugyokuro is known as one of the largest. And it's implied she's read all of the books in there, so she can get indulgent in her reading. Basically, anything she likes to do, or finds she likes to do, she can, and sometimes does, get involved in a little too much.

 

All of what was said above probably paints her as the biggest airhead in Touhou, and if you only look shallowly at her actions and words, you would be right. But the truth of the matter is, for all her whimsy, for all her indulgence, even for all the way she can act like she completely missed the point and went off on a completely different tangent as she does sometimes...

 

... Yuyuko is probably one of the smartest, most observant characters in the series. Every action of hers, even the most random ones, has a purpose. Going out during the Imperishable Night, and making all the metaphors about 'eating a dragon' was entirely her way of haranguing her poor servant Youmu as she, herself, devised what was causing the endless night and guided them toward the source. If she's involved in something, she's usually the first to figure out, or at least guess right, what is going on or who it at fault. Even if she takes the most roundabout, frustratingly random, incomprehensible path to get there.

 

Her friendship to Yukari is the final note to be touched upon here; it's implied she knew the youkai since her time as a human. Over time, they became so good of friends, in fact, that they can essentially read each other without even needing to really speak in order to accomplish an end. With a few vague clues and a good distraction, Yukari led Yuyuko to the heart of the Lunarian capital on the moon, and Yuyuko took over from there in a remarkable tag-team effort between them that involved absolutely no direct communication, and she stole a pitcher of valuable sake.

Old Game Info: Nada.

Abilities (after Powercap): While Danmaku is nonlethal by nature (stunning, painful, but not lethal despite being magic laser bullets in mass quantity) and therefore untouched, her final Perfect Cherry Blossom spellcard will not be available because it was her resurrecting herself, and she can't exactly do that while she's already alive.

 

Also, since she's not a ghost anymore, AND not connected to the Saigyou Ayakashi, her immortality, any increases to physical strength, and other ghost features are out, leaving her essentially no more or less physically powerful or vulnerable than an average human.

 

Now for the meaty part - her ability to invoke death. Or, to be most precise, her ability to manipulate/control spirits/souls. Because they link to each other. Her natural ability to attract spirits will remain more or less entirely intact, but her ability to specifically call them to her will likely be limited to whatever she can sense in her vicinity. It might also exhaust her to have too many spirits called (or bound to her will) at once. And to call the spirit out of a living being (read: kill them) will leave her exhausted. Very exhausted. Like... perhaps a couple, two, three if she really pushes it an IC day before basically needing to conk out for a while. Moreso if she tries to combine 'taking the soul out of something living' and 'binding it to her will' or has others already to her, etc. Also, given that it was her being human, and the frailties of the human form that helped contribute to why she couldn't control her powers when she was still alive, there's a small chance her control might slip with her being alive: for instance, the power accidentally leaking and killing something she wasn't aiming for and leaving her tired and vulnerable, or not working when she tries to use it.

Items Brought In:  Just her fan.

 

Samples:

Write a third person sample on the subject of your choice.
--Should be three to four hundred words.

There were a great many things one got used to after being dead for a thousand years. Fear, for instance, was one of those things quickly and easily forgotten. After all, when you were dead, what was there to fear? It wasn't as though you could die again. While Yuyuko could also perceive physical sensation - odd for, perhaps, most forms of ghost but the bourei she was - pain was another alien thing. Oh sure, sometimes danmaku fights hurt, and with the nature of bourei, even she wasn't exempt from stubbing her toe on the corner of a table, but none of it would, or could even be life threatening. In fact, all injuries subsided quickly and she could easily forget about them.

 

Here, this place, it was different. A bad kind of different. A confusing kind of different. She wanted to push it to the back of her mind and carry on with her life. This was not something anywhere close to what she'd learned to deal with in her many long years of existence, and it was uncomfortable in a way she simply wanted to forget about.

 

She winced, hissed, and held the bleeding gash, her body listing and pressing a shoulder against the wall. That wound should have gone away a while ago. Perhaps it never should have existed in the first place. Regardless of what was happening, Yuyuko didn't like it one bit, and if she had anyone to talk to but the monster laying stunned in the hall, she might've voiced her objections loudly.

 

The beast had caught her off-guard with a swipe, she'd let a reactionary blast of Danmaku, not even of any particular type or pattern off in its face, and she was starting to realize now, as a strange wave of dizziness overtook her, that perhaps that wasn't such a good idea because the creature was growling as it gained its feet again.

 

This wasn't fair. This wasn't nice. She could feel her fingers and toes going cold, and a feeling tightening in her chest that was something she thought she'd never have to feel again because she never needed to: Fear. The beast's eyes narrowed, her eyes narrowed, went out of focus, and came back again. One last shot. One last shot and she could go seek help, aid, something, anything that she wasn't entirely sure what she needed, as it was something she hadn't had to think about in so many years.

 

"I'm sorry," she breathed, her light voice more airy than usual. "But I have to go now. Don't wait up for me."

 

Its muscles tensed, claws gleaming in the dimming light, but before the wound coil could unspring toward her, it suddenly jerked once, straight upward as though someone had pulled a string at the center of its back, then fell limp to the ground. A moment later, its ghostly form swirled once around the woman, and disappeared.

 

Yuyuko gave a sort of half-smile, dazed though it was. She wasn't looking at the creature. "Perhaps later, young creature. I have... something I need to do."

 

And off down the hall she continued, leaving a dribbled trail of blood.