Character Information Name: Futaba Sakura
Canon: Persona 5
Canon Point: December 24th
Age: 15
History: Futaba on the Persona wiki.
Personality: While Futaba is a fairly complicated character, the two main facets of her personality would be that she is absolutely brilliant, and she suffers from moderate anthrophobia. The anthrophobia stems from witnessing the apparent suicide of her mother (later ruled a murder) approximate 2 years before the game began. This was an extremely traumatic moment for Futaba, and she withdrew from the world. Futaba convinced herself that her mother's suicide was her fault, that she didn't deserve to keep on going after driving her mother to suicide. She was then passed around by relatives who did nothing to help her, which made her guilt worse and caused her to withdraw more, and then she was finally adopted by Sojiro, and rather than force her to move forward, he allowed her to continue to pull away, until she became a complete shut-in. And she stayed that way for two
years.
While this would not have been sustainable for most people, Futaba's intelligence, combined with Sojiro's willingness to give her whatever she asked for, allowed her to 'live' despite being essentially alone 24 hours a day. She had all the technology she wanted, she had all the books she wanted, she could learn everything she needed to and then do whatever she wanted to online! And in a way, this kept the 'real' Futaba alive, in spite of her isolation. She could still be friendly and clever and egotistical, she was just doing it online. She created a whole life for herself on the internet, trying to replace the life she was hiding from.
But eventually that had to end, and her loneliness won out, and she convinced the Phantom Thieves to steal her heart and fix her. In the process, they were able to restore her memories of her mother, which in turn allowed her to come to terms with the guilt she had felt over her mother's death. And it gave her friends! Which...is not the same as suddenly being cured of her anthrophobia. Just because it had been created for all the wrong reasons didn't mean it was going to magically go away.
And she wants to make it better, and is working on it slowly, but even when she is in a setting where she should be able to relax the old symptoms still manifest, When she is hanging out with her friends somewhere enclosed and away from strangers, she still has a tendency to close herself up, sit curled up in a ball, crouch on a chair as if waiting to bolt. In crowds she walks close to people she knows. Strangers still make her want to bolt, and she has to force herself not to. When she manages to go shopping by herself, she describes it as being awkward and sweaty and she wanted to run away the whole time. But she's trying.
In the moments where her fear really subsides though, we see a Futaba whose intelligence shines so brightly it's almost blinding. She learns very quickly and loves doing so, going out of her way to try and understand anything she doesn't. We see in moments where she and Makoto seem to leave the rest of the team behind in a conversation how easily she can pick up and run with someone else's idea.
Of course, her intelligence lends itself to other problems too. She has a wit that often comes out as sarcasm, isn't above insulting people who don't seem to understand what she understands (although not in a mean way, she's usually teasing she's just...bad at it) and becomes very demanding when she's trying to figure something out and needs something or feels distracted.
She also has a fairly noticeable ego, reinforced by the fact that she really is ridiculously smart and she knows it. Some of it is an act, reinforcing for people around her that they need her and that she's important and she matters. But a lot of it is genuine, because she knows exactly how useful she actually is.
The two years she spent almost entirely online have also left her with a lot of what could be politely called bad habits and impolitely called 'she's a massive internet nerd.' She knows all the internet memes and watches way too many livestreams and collects sentai figures and makes ridiculous bad in-jokes. Basically, she's a big dork.
Abilities: Persona -
Necronomicon - When summoned, Necronomicon is a neon flying saucer that Futaba can ride around inside. It passively allows the people she is teamed up with to recover energy and health, and gives Futaba access to information about the immediate vicinity and the enemies they are fighting. It also allows her to cast periodic buffs on her team, increasing their agility/strength/defense, casting emergency heals, or occasionally shielding them from damage.
Strengths: Brilliant, loyal, forgiving, kind, determined
Weaknesses: Impulsive, anthrophobic (moderate to mild), egotistical, rude, obsessive
God/Shinki: God
Why?: Futaba already plays the part of a god in a lot of ways in canon. She's given a persona that lets her see everything going on and she has acted like a goddess of justice on the internet hacking to help people and save the world.
Also, she has already gone through a memory-loss situation in canon, and is defined in a way by having recovered from it. She doesn't need to go through it again.
Top 3 Choices: Theia,
Hyperion or
Mithra.
God Type: Futaba will be a
mostly benevolent god, wanting to help people who pray to her, especially people who are lonely or lost. But she will also at times be mischievous and tricksy and won't be above playing pranks or doing a bit of ironic punishment on people she thinks deserve it. She will mainly focus on the prayers of teenagers and kids, to be fair. She's not that fond of most adults.
Power: Light Manipulation. Think lasers and holograms. But since this is Futaba, also think floating hard-light computer terminals and television shows projected onto the sky and putting overlays on the sunrise to make it cooooooler.
Writing Sample Sample: Futaba finally ducked her head out of the room she'd woken up in and peered into the hallway. The walls were made of stone, stone far too similar to her palace for her liking, but they were criss-crossed with shimmering green lines that almost reminded her of circuitry.
Hmm.
It had been nearly an hour since the, what had he called himself, Shinki? The Shinki had explained everything to her, handed her a note, and left, and she'd spent most of that time processing it. Well, she'd spent most of it psyching herself up to leave the room, but a good chunk of it was processing too. Gods. Shinkis? She was a god now, apparently, which was completely ridiculous. And yet…
"Hello?" She called out, listening to her voice echo off the stone. Nothing. "Hey anybody out there?" Still nothing. "Yo show your face or I'm gonna wreck you!"
Still nothing. And that had been her best Ryuji impression too…
After a count of ten, Futaba huffed out a breath, her lips vibrating with the burst of air, and then stepped out into the hallway, the only sound her sneakers on the stone. And...nothing happened. No shadows. No alarms. She scanned the hallway again slowly, reaching out to trace her finger over one of the green lines. There was a crackle and a spark and she yanked her hand back, shaking the brief pain away from her skin.
"Dude it's electric…" She said, and then snickered at herself. She reached up to adjust her glasses as she leaned closer to study the energy lines as they passed. They were moving through narrow passages in the stone and...hmm. It really was like a big circuit...
Okay.
Okay. She might not have known what was going on yet, putting aside the insane god thing, but she could figure it out! And she wasn't going to get anything done hiding back here anyway. She could just imagine her friends frowning at her if she tried to retreat back into a safe space again. So.
So.
SO.
She glanced behind her, dead end. And the green lights all seemed to be 'flowing' in the other direction anyway so…
"Thataway!" She declared to herself, the hallway, and anyone within probably a hundred feet, as she pointed in the direction she needed to go. Mostly to finally convince herself to actually do it. And then she folded her hands behind her back, and started off to see exactly what this temple of hers looked like.
Other Anything Else?: Not that I can think of!
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