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[ryuji]

	Ryuji Sakamoto: I think I just cracked my ass.
	APP INBOX BARBARIAN jay

Player Name: Jay
Age: 31
Contact: centerfold ; disc: trash#2958
Timezone: EST
Other character currently in game: Madame Director (NPC)

Character name: Ryuji Sakamoto
Age: 17; will age to 18 within the first month of the game
Canon: Persona 5
Canon point: Christmas Eve, post Reverie Station
History: Wiki link

Three key adjectives: vulgar, protective, hot-headed

Influential Events:

1. Father leaving his family.

Bluntly put, Ryuji had a particularly rough childhood. Throughout his most formative years, he had an extremely harsh, alcoholic father who would often seek to displace his anger onto his son through abuse. As someone who grew up in that environment, Ryuji had a skewed view of the world. Someone who he should love and someone who should love him back treated his family like garbage, which has put a lot of mistrust in him toward how he views adults, their role in society, and gave him a lot of skewed views towards masculinity.

He often sees himself as an underdog, a person who can rise above the odds that are dealt to him and persevere through them- despite the fact that he had been beaten down all throughout his rocky youth. When his father eventually leaves the family for unidentified reasons, Ryuji becomes the man of the house. Throughout the game, he states how much he cares about his mother and looks after her, even to the point of ensuring that there's food for her to eat when she gets home from work. He doesn't want to cause her any additional trouble than he's already caused, but there are a lot of things that happen that aren't under his control. The relationship he forms with his mom is really tight, and forms who he is as a person. He loves her and views her an amazing woman, especially due to how strong she is in the face of adversity, and how she fights to keep their little home of two afloat, most likely working herself ragged to do so.

These events influence him deeply in how he views people that can't fend for themselves, often becoming very protective of them and especially hard on himself when he fails them. When he sees someone who he perceives to be a good person (Ryuji is actually a decent judge of character), he can't sit by idly. He has to do something, no matter the personal cost or drawback that will come to him by doing so. That causes a lot of people to view him as a brash, violence prone person, but pulling back the curtain a little bit and trying to understand the motives behind it reveals a pretty deeply hurt kid, one who never throws punches on his own behalf, but for the sake of others.

2. His track coach, a supposed role model and beacon of Shujin Academy, breaks his leg.

Running has always been a major outlet for Ryuji's home life and vast personality faults. He's hyper, energetic, doesn't know when to stop, and can never seem to sit still for very long periods of time. There's a livewire that beats in time with his heart that propels him to buzz with energy, and the only thing that ever seemed to quell that urge was the track team. It was a chance at doing something he was good at (because he knew he'd never excel academically with how hard it is for him to focus and pay attention), a chance to eventually relieve some of his mother's worries and burdens; get a scholarship, and go to college if he continued the path he was on. And he was great at it.

However, his coach, who happened to be an Olympic Japanese volleyball player, resented the fact that the track team was gaining traction at school due to their various wins and rise in popularity. He personally wanted to propel the volleyball team to true stardom and devised a way to insert himself into the track team as their new coach... only to attempt to scheme his way into destroying it from the inside. A smart and ruthless man who acted on whatever whim he thought was necessary to succeed saw a major opportunity in Ryuji once he had learned about the nature of his life at home and saw how easy it was to rile this kid to anger. Ryuji, easily pissed off and agitated in part due to his rough upbringing and rambunctious nature, was a perfect target for his coach to go after. His coach spread the truth about the nature of his dad, and pushed a confrontation that ended up with the coach breaking his leg in an act of "self defense," permanently disabling Ryuji from ever advancing his natural abilities at track. It shattered Ryuji's hopes and dreams, and in retribution for the violent outburst against his coach, Shujin Academy's track team was forced to disband entirely.

Without a promise to get more out of life than what was handed to him, he decided to give up on everything: himself, his ability to excel, and the social norms that were expected out of him in order to "fit in." It wasn't long after he lost the ability to run that he started to dye his hair blond, run around with a chip on his shoulder, speak in expletives constantly, and loudly pronounce that adults can't be trusted. It was this event that shattered his trust with the rest of the world, and once he turned punk, he never looked back.

3. Meeting Joker and forming the Phantom Thieves.

Everything up until the point he met Joker had put him on a fast track to sub-standard mediocrity. He was failing his classes, accepted that he was going nowhere in life, and generally didn't care about the labels people started to put on him. A problem student. A loner. The Vulgar Boy. When Joker, a fellow delinquent that was sentence to probation for protecting a woman from a sleazy politician, transfers to Shujin Academy, they accidentally wander into the realm of the Metaverse and discover a layer of existence below the physical realm. Here, people with truly distorted desires become rulers of palaces that spawn forth from their corruption. Of course, this palace's ruler was none other than his track coach.

Ryuji and Joker discover the potential of personas from a cat trapped in a jail cell on the way out, and learn that they can force a person's heart to change if you steal their darkest desires from them in this "cognitive" world. Shortly thereafter, Ryuji finds solace and acceptance- two things he had never had in his life before- in the band of teammates he meets up with during the events of Persona 5. It's there that his true personality is revealed- a caring, somewhat broken person that's mostly just fed up with the way the world is run. And everyone that eventually joins their team shares that same ideal with him.

For the first time in forever, when he and Joker establish the Phantom Thieves, Ryuji has a purpose in life. At first, the desire is to become famous, but that need eventually changes and warps over time as he realizes just how important his friends are to him... and how much they actually need him. Instead of rejecting the need to fit in, he finds his place in a group of fellow misfits that quickly become his entire world. Very quickly, he becomes one of the most fiercely loyal members of the team.

4. Letting go.

Eventually, Ryuji begins to confront and reconciliate with the rest of the track team that he had once been friends with in his time before becoming a Phantom Thief. At first, these reunions are tenuous, and there's a sense of guilt and shame for what he did. As time goes on and he begins to learn from new experiences and begin to understand what makes people tick through their forays into the Metaverse, some of that anger and naivete eventually subside, and he looks to make peace with his former teammates. He martyrs himself to take the brunt of their anger- offering to let them beat the hell out of him if it makes them feel better-- and they do. Having settled the score with the old gang, he refreshes himself in his resolve towards his new friends.

In the end, he learns a valuable life lesson that changes him for the better. People aren't always going to be forgave for the things that they've done in the past, but it doesn't mean that they can't work in life towards being a good person afterward. He learns to let go of what's keeping him chained down, reconciling his own ambitions as he finally figures out what freedom truly means to him. It's an aesthetic where you aren't controlled by anyone but yourself. It's this concept that he wants to protect and nurture, and even as he says goodbye to the track team forever, he recognizes that he'd like to run again one day. Even if it's not for a team, and only for himself... so that he can feel free and unencumbered.

5. A sacrifice for his friends.

At the climactic conclusion of the Phantom Thieves' heists, Ryuji sacrifices himself to make sure that his friends can escape from a palace safely. If it comes down it, he'll risk everything just to be able to see his friends make it out alive. He almost falls to his death to make sure that they're secured an exit route. Believing that Ryuji has died back in the palace, his team becomes extremely emotional, showing that they cared a lot about him.

It shows a lot of development for him as a character- not that he's ever going to change from being that feisty, rambunctious dweeb who wants to get into fights at the drop of a hat, but more that he has a reason to fight and protect the people he loves. He will go the distance, prove himself, and come back alive still standing. That's the essence of who Ryuji Sakamoto is- someone that can be relied on, someone who's often misunderstood, but also someone who gives his somewhat beaten up heart to the people he truly wants to fight for.

Link to Samples: TDM (multiple 5+ threads)

Previous game: Reverie Station
Important notes:

1. Davesport Backpack

At one point, the gravity on the station went completely on the fritz due to meteoric debris hitting the rings circling the station that preserved g-forces for the inhabitants within. At the same time, due to Space Ghost Bullshit, people also began becoming completely paralyzed- making for a really dangerous situation where they couldn't control their bodies as they began suffocating while floating. Ryuji happened upon Dave who was, for all intents and purposes, one of the affected people who had become paralyzed. Ryuji took Dave and draped him around his back, carrying him back to his room where it was safe.

In an effort to try and keep Dave awake and conscious so that he wouldn't drift off and eventually lose the ability to breathe, Ryuji started talking to him... about pretty much everything. Rambling, he told Dave about how his coach broke his leg, and hinted that he had problems back at home that were still unresolved. He didn't know it at the time, but slowly, he was starting to form pretty deep feelings for Dave, and when his hand started to twitch to indicate that he was going to be alright, Ryuji realized that he was actually panicking a lot the entire time. When the pending crisis was resolved, he got a chance to question himself later as to why he was so scared that something would happen to Dave. It then dawned on him that the fear he had at something bad happening wasn't just because he has weird complexes about loss and people leaving his life, but rather, that he had genuine romantic feelings for him.

In the weeks following, they both attempted to flirt with each other, but it was awful. They went on a not-date involving listening to some music together in Ryuji's room and he wanted to spill his heart out to Dave right then and there, but chickened out. Then, on the observation deck, he told Dave that he was worried about what he thought about him. In a moment of honesty for the both of them, they confessed and held hands as a burrito they flushed down the toilet months ago wafted on by outside in the great vacuum of space. Yeah.

2. Viral Outbreak (cw: body horror)

After the discovery of the entrance codes to the Medical Bay, a viral outbreak occurred on the station, infecting the Reverie Operators with a strain that either turned them into a ghost, made their skin slowly morph into copper, or undergo a necrotic transformation that ate away at their bodies. Ryuji had been inflicted with the zombie strain of the virus, and everyone he loved and cared for around the station began suffering. The virus hit Ryuji hard and fast, making him lose a finger first, and then an arm (which he tried to glue back on by way of his best friend Hajime's glue gun).

During this stint, he had a very important conversation with Erika Mishima about the transience of life. About how there are two ways to die in this world: one, when your body is gone and there's nothing left of you to inhabit the world, and a second death, when your name is said for the last time by anyone who remembers you. They talked about a philosophical stance on what happens when you take a cup of water out of a river and whether or not the river is still "in" the cup- and Ryuji admitted to her that the relationships he has and the friends he's made are what defines him, not his physical body. They skirted around the topic, but Ryuji and Erika both knew that at this current rate, Ryuji was going to die.

Dave, having been slowly fading away via the ghost virus, tries to communicate with Ryuji one last time before he's unable to speak any longer. They manage to hold hands through a Oujia board planchette, something Ryuji wanted to do... one last time. Dave told Ryuji that he was going to fuck around with time to fix things, which meant more Dead Daves running around. Even in this state, Ryuji initially resisted, still not comfortable with the idea of Dave dying in any capacity. Dave mentioned that doing this would reset their timelines, that there would be another Dave and another Ryuji scrambling about and trying to figure out their relationship. Ryuji finally agrees, putting faith in another version of himself to live on, even if it wasn't the same "them" that were holding hands via a cursor. Ryuji accepts the fact that he's going to die.

Setting himself up in the Observation Deck so that he can look out into space when it happens, Ryuji leans up against a console and watches. He donated some of his blood to Ryo Asuka, a scientist and close friend, in the hopes that maybe if none of this works out, Ryo can find a cure for other people after he's gone. At this point, Ryuji has lost his jaw and is unable to speak any longer. Dave is a fully fledged ghost and can't speak with him any more. Haru was slowly turning into a statue. He reflects on a few things quietly as the virus continues to degenerate his body- how he had slept up here frequently with his best friend on board, Hajime. How he had come up here after having his first taste of alcohol. How he held hands with Dave up here. He closes his eyes and, unable to keep his consciousness any longer, falls asleep.

Whether or not Ryuji really did die, he doesn't know. All he knows is that he woke up some time later, with grotesque, permanent markings on his back, centered around his spine and rib cage, from where he had started to decompose. Oddly enough, his detached finger remained. He wound up putting it in preservatives and gifting it to his boyfriend.

...

3. The Metaverse

A few months into his stay at Reverie, the MetaNav reappeared on his communicator. For those who had no idea what was going on, they were accidentally pulled into the Metaverse- with no apparently clear way of exiting it. During this time, Ryuji went in frequently to help in aiding yanking people out of there. He witnessed his friend Minato's second persona awakening. He took a massive hit for Akechi, who couldn't summon his own persona at the time (due to him having a palace in the Metaverse that needed to be infiltrated, unbeknownst to the other persona enabled users).

Towards the end of all this, he finally encountered Dave's shadow. Turns out, it was a repressed bullshit baby of all his broken feelings towards failure at protecting the people he cares about. Shadow Dave attempted to kill Ryuji to get him out of the Metaverse in an ironic twist of trying to protect him. Dave and Ryuji teamed up to distract Shadow Dave, as the cognition began spitting out multiple copies of him from various death points in his life (I'm sorry to whoever's reading this). Ryuji stole mini-Dave's shades and stopped them from fighting and trying to kill them, eventually landing on a really dumb strategy to distract the real Shadow Dave long enough to be sylladex'ed the hell out of there. Ryuji came out with a weird treasure, since he was still carrying the shades. A trashloss jpg artifact of his glasses that made the user see a pixelated and otherwise shitty version of the world if you put them on.

This was really important to his development, as it opened the both of them up to talk about the various weights of the baggage that they keep and bring with them into their relationship. They landed on a solution to eventually work out Shadow Dave's issues, Ryuji promised to never go into the Metaverse until that was resolved, and they both agreed that it's okay to not be okay all the time. A hugely vast improvement for Ryuji, who mostly keeps a lot of his own problems buried deep inside him, only letting it out from time to time in the form of dumb jokes.

Chosen path: Barbarian
3 Abilities: Persona summoning - Seiten Taisei (equipped with Matarukaja/attack up party buff, lightning absorption and wind weakness), Danger Sense, Reckless Protection
Why this path?: Ryuji is the Magnus Burnsides of the Persona 5 cast; he's constantly rushing in, being the group tank, etc, and relies heavily on his physical abilities. The path actions in Barbarian fit with his ideals very closely... namely, being able to self sacrifice in order to better protect his party. Raging, anger, smashing shit with his ax. That's all Ryuji all the time.

blurb code by photosynthesis