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Entry tags:
application ( futurology )
APPLICANT INFO.
NAME: Anne
CONTACT:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
passiones
CURRENT CHARACTERS: Giorno Giovanna
ACTIVITY PROOFS:
CHARACTER INFO.
NAME: Anthy Himemiya
CANON: Revolutionary Girl Utena
AGE: 14 (but also possibly way older than that)
APPEARANCE: hair down shoes off SPRING BREAK WOO
CANON POINT: After leaving Ohtori Academy at the end of the series
BACKGROUND: Anime Anthy has a hard time. cw for incest, child sexual assault, intimate partner violence, suicide; these warnings continue throughout the personality section as well.
PERSONALITY:
SUITABILITY:
ABILITIES:
INVENTORY:
WRITING SAMPLES.
NETWORK SAMPLE: with jay.
LOG SAMPLE: with sebastian.
If you'd like more of an idea of Anthy's voice, I've got a few TDM threads that didn't quite reach AC length here!
NAME: Anne
CONTACT:
CURRENT CHARACTERS: Giorno Giovanna
ACTIVITY PROOFS:
APRIL: ⚔ | ⚔ | ⚔ | ⚔
MAY: ⚔ | ⚔ | ⚔ | ⚔
CHARACTER INFO.
NAME: Anthy Himemiya
CANON: Revolutionary Girl Utena
AGE: 14 (but also possibly way older than that)
APPEARANCE: hair down shoes off SPRING BREAK WOO
CANON POINT: After leaving Ohtori Academy at the end of the series
BACKGROUND: Anime Anthy has a hard time. cw for incest, child sexual assault, intimate partner violence, suicide; these warnings continue throughout the personality section as well.
PERSONALITY:
Anthy's story is one of duality as well as duplicity. She is a character best known for being deceptive, a girl who never appears quite right and has a thousand different faces to take on and off when she pleases. At the same time, she's clearly a girl who struggles to balance her different identities, especially towards the end of the series when the balance becomes different from anything she's ever experienced before. Anthy is both manipulated and manipulator, victim and culprit--plus, of course, damsel in distress and witch, the two roles she's best known for.
Anthy left her status as an innocent a long time ago in order to remove her brother's power, a power that was in such high demand that the constant use of it was killing him. She knew he wouldn't survive using it much longer, and she knew he wouldn't stop, so she made him stop. But as a result of doing so, she went from a bystander in Dios's story to its villain--and made herself a witch. The crucial factor here is that Anthy knew what would happen as a result of her actions--not in perfect detail, but she knew that she would be punished severely for taking away something so precious.
She did it anyway. When Anthy cares, she cares deeply and sacrifices parts of herself that she might be better off keeping. In this case, the punishment was not only severe but eternal. In becoming the witch in Dios's story, she became every witch, every villain, and the target of all of humanity's hatred. For thousands of years, she felt the physical manifestation of that hatred stab through her like swords every moment of every day, and it left her a twisted version of what she used to be. She was always a little manipulative and a little callous, willing to do what others would not, but by the time RGU starts, Anthy is bitter and vengeful. She distrusts people by default, because she knows what lies within their hearts, and she knows who they take their anger out on.
Anthy is capable of great cruelty or great kindness. Admittedly, the kindness is more rarely seen and often much smaller than her cruelties. She has a massive soft spot towards animals and will take them in at the drop of a hat, whether the animal in question is a monkey or a cobra. She's also been known to offer genuine comfort to those close to her every once in a while, although you really have to earn that; it's mostly directed towards Utena, sometimes Miki if he's very lucky.
And then there's Anthy's cruelty, which she exercises a lot and is often gleefully creative in its expression. Her cruelty is directed towards people in ways that may at times seem indiscriminate or accidental, but there is always a purpose behind it. At times it manifests so severely it amounts to psychological torture; at other times it's so subtle it's more like brainwashing. Anthy takes a vindictive pleasure in engineering suffering for people she perceives as cruel, especially abusers--which is hypocritical, since Anthy is rarely not cruel, but she couldn't care less about her own hypocrisy. Honestly, her viciousness is the only way she feels she's capable of striking out or expressing her feelings, and it's a feeling that's held true for most of her life.
It's important to note that Anthy is particularly cruel towards those who remind her of herself. The most obvious example of this is her constant persecution of Nanami. While this dynamic is clearly in part self-defense, since Nanami is jealous of her and tries to sabotage her as a result, there are also clear parallels between their behavior that make Anthy's repartees much more vicious. Nanami is just as petty and vindictive on the outside as Anthy is on the inside; more than that, Nanami is a victim of her older brother's psychological and sometimes physical torment, just as Anthy is. Anthy hates to see her weakness reflected in anyone else; it disgusts her, and so she takes every slight Nanami gives her personally, punishing Nanami as a convenient substitute for punishing herself.
If all of this seems to imply that Anthy doesn't like herself very much, well, she doesn't. There are about a million reasons why, but the most obvious is the constant external reinforcement that she's worse than worthless: she's the central figuring of suffering in the world. She's the place where people bury their hatred; to most people in the world, even if only subconsciously, she is the ultimate evil. And Anthy knows this. Add to that the fact that she's been abused by her brother for who knows how long, unable to escape or do much to better her situation, and it's not much of a surprise that she hates herself. Towards the end of canon, as Akio's plan for the End of the World is nearing fruition, she tries to kill herself for reasons that even she struggles to articulate. Still, the implication is that she believes Utena's pain would be less, her fate would be easier if Anthy wasn't there. Anthy is the vehicle of Utena's destruction, so wouldn't it be easier if she were gone?
None of Anthy's positive feelings are easy for her. Once upon a time, her closest bond was with her brother Dios, and look where that got her. The more the curtain over Anthy's true emotion is drawn back over the course of the series, the more the viewer realizes that she's really struggling to keep her feelings towards Utena neutral or negative. She doesn't know, and doesn't want to know, how the world will change if she begins to genuinely care for someone. It will turn her life upside down, when she's found a way--an absolutely miserable way, but a way nonetheless--to cope with the life she's living. She certainly never expected Utena to rescue her, and it's a fact that will leave her reeling for a long, long time. After all, she's very convinced she's not worth it.
Anthy is quick to become a doormat in any relationship. A significant part of this tendency is because, as aforementioned, she does feel she deserves to suffer and that suffering is her role in this world. Additionally, she's been a victim for so long that she's no longer sure how to stop being a victim. Her instincts for preserving her own safety are well and truly shot after all this time.
But the other reason is this: it is very, very easy to manipulate people when they feel sorry for you. If she's seen as the victim, some well-meaning individual will come to "save" her; if she works hard enough, she can get them to do whatever she wants them to. From the very beginning of canon, Utena is marked for death, but Anthy gives no hint of this at the start of their relationship. Instead, she blinds Utena to her manipulations by making herself appear vulnerable and alone--which she is, but in a much more complicated way than she allows Utena to know.
She has trouble making genuine connections and becomes entirely bewildered when they happen anyway. One of the reasons she struggles with Utena is that Utena is so earnest; she's easy to manipulate, but at the same time says exactly what she's thinking, genuinely tries (albeit sometimes clumsily) to understand Anthy, and desperately wants her to be happy. For Anthy, for whom distrust, hatred, and pain have long been the norm, this is genuinely frightening. She'd much rather deny and bury her feelings than invest her time and energy in a positive connection that, to her, seems ultimately doomed.
But at the same time, Anthy has been deeply touched by Utena's kindness. Despite all of her lying and deception, despite who and what she is, despite the ultimate betrayal, Utena sacrificed herself to set Anthy free, and that's not the type of gesture Anthy can deny. At this point in time, Anthy's main challenge is reconciling all of her preconceived beliefs--of her role, of her worth--with a world where someone would do that for someone like her. It's forcing her to look at things in a new light, and while it's painful and incredibly difficult, she is at least trying. Trying isn't something she's done in a fair few centuries.
SUITABILITY:
Anthy is in the interesting position of not really believing in ALASTAIR's mission at all, but being entirely willing to go along with it anyway. There are a few simple reasons for this, and they're all pretty self-serving. The biggest one is that she is looking for Utena, and she's got no idea of where to find her. To Anthy, the nature of reality is in no way firm and fixed, so it's entirely plausible to her that Utena could be anywhere in the multiverse. As such, she would much prefer a position of action rather than a desk job--Utena won't come to her, after all. Secondarily, Anthy will be largely willing to help others not out of her own altruism (which isn't her greatest attribute, let's be real) but because she knows that Utena and the few others she's tentatively begun to call friends in Ohtori would think that helping others is the right thing to do. It's not much to hang the hat of morality on, but for Anthy it's enough.
ABILITIES:
The issue of Anthy's powers is a little complicated, because the nature of Revolutionary Girl Utena is big-time magical realism, where the rules are made up and the points don't matter. There are a lot of powers that Anthy is implied to control, but they're never delved into with respect to how they work, how she controls them, where they came from, etc. For the ease of roleplaying Anthy's powers in as straightforward a way as possible, I'd like to reduce her powers at game start to the powers that are as close to confirmed as RGU gets. Then I can regain other powers via the bonus bank, with exciting things like rules and limits tacked on to them. Here are my thoughts on that division of powers:
GAME-ENTRY POWERS
- Affinity for/communication with animals: This one is also only implied throughout the series, but Anthy is much more attuned to animals than to people and seems to have an unnatural ability to communicate with them, even bend them to her will at times.
- Immortality: Anthy has been around for a long-ass time without aging or (obviously) dying. As this is a passive power and probably the most explicit of her abilities, I'd like her to enter the game with it. I would like her to age normally in the game, though! What with being free of unending torment now and all.
- Chu-chu: This isn't technically a power, but there are a lot of implications throughout canon that Chu-chu is some kind of familiar to Anthy. He doesn't provide her with any obvious magic boost, but he does seem more intelligent than your average mouse-monkey-thing and is very protective of Anthy, as well as appearing to mirror her mood at times.
REGAIN POWERS
- Glamour: One of the more frequently-used of Anthy's powers. Anthy is able to manipulate her appearance at will; there appears to be no upper limit to the kinds of glamours she can project.
- Illusion: Basically the same as glamour, but it works on the environment around her.
- Transformation: Of objects (eg, the famous transformation sequence) or living things (eg, poor Nanami). I would want to regain transformation of objects and living things separately.
- Negation of others' abilities: Evidenced by her removal of Dios's power. This is only evidenced once explicitly in canon and would obviously be much weaker than permanent removal for actual gameplay, should it be regained.
For completion's sake, Anthy also has canonical access to the Sword of Dios (described in history link), but it's no longer accessible to her and likely won't be a thing she pursues in any way in Futurology.
If that doesn't work or needs revision in any way, please feel free to let me know! I'm happy to edit.
INVENTORY:
- Chu-chu (see above)
- one outfit (white shoes and beret, pink dress and vest)
- a small suitcase with a few toiletries and a change of clothes
WRITING SAMPLES.
NETWORK SAMPLE: with jay.
LOG SAMPLE: with sebastian.
If you'd like more of an idea of Anthy's voice, I've got a few TDM threads that didn't quite reach AC length here!
no subject
NAME: Anne
CONTACT:
CURRENT CHARACTER: Also apping Giorno Giovanna (
CHARACTER INFO.
NAME: Anthy Himemiya
CANON: Revolutionary Girl Utena
AGE: Perpetually 14, but also millennia old (exact age not specified)
APPEARANCE: here
CANON POINT: After leaving Ohtori Academy at the end of the series
BACKGROUND: Anime Anthy has a hard time. cw for incest, child sexual assault, intimate partner violence, suicide; these warnings continue throughout the personality section as well.
PERSONALITY:
ABILITIES:
INVENTORY:
HATHAWAY.
SUITABILITY:
INCENTIVE:
SPECIALIZATION:
WRITING SAMPLES.
NETWORK SAMPLE:
@ sieglinde
ACTION SAMPLE:
@ fugo