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IN CHARACTER
Character Name: Chihiro Fujisaki
Canon: Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Canon Point: After Chihiro's death
In-Game Tattoo Placement: like this
Current Health/Status: Head wound diminished from deadly to disorienting
Age: 19 (thinks they're 17)
Species: Human
Content Warnings: Murder, and a complicated relationship with gender. Some sexism as well when it comes to societal expectations.
History: If I don't do something, nothing's ever going to change.
Personality:
As a child, Chihiro was bullied regularly for being "so weak despite being a boy". In order to escape this bullying, Chihiro began dressing as a girl instead. While this led to an end of the bullying, it did nothing to solve Chihiro's own sense of self worth or confidence issues.
At their base level, Chihiro is an incredibly timid person.
Even after changing the way they dressed to avoid bullying, they were often too weak to go outside and play with friends and discovered computers and programming as a result. While this led to them discovering their love and talent with the subject, it did little to get them comfortable interacting with other kids their age. Between that and their internalized feelings of "weakness", Chihiro is hesitant to initiate conversation, and quick to be intimidated into tearful silence when they do.
If you can get them talking about programming, however, they immediately light up and will eagerly talk your ear off for a bit before noticing, and then just as quickly apologize for taking up your time after.
And they will apologize a lot, quite often when they haven't even done anything wrong. Thanks to their history of being bullied when they were younger and their fear of being ostracized again if anyone should discover their secret, it's incredibly easy to drive Chihiro to tears or unnecessary apologies. When they first meet the protagonist of the game, Chihiro asks if they've met before (thanks to some left over familiarity from the amnesia) and apologizes when the protagonist says they haven't. And they regularly started crying when the other students were arguing and raising their voices with each other, whether Chihiro was actually involved in the argument or not.
Chihiro is also incredibly gentle and kind-hearted. In a conversation with Makoto, Chihiro reveals that they wouldn't even hurt a mosquito because it "might have a family", and even felt terrible for voting for Leon during the first trial since it meant they were sentencing him to death, despite him having killed one of the students already. The deaths occurring at Hope's Peak hurt them deeply, as did the fights that would break out between the other students.
Socially, Chihiro tends to prefer spending time with boys and will get awkward if girls fuss over them too much. This is for a couple of reasons. One, Chihiro has big dreams of getting strong enough to protect people, and tends to look up to boys as an example to learn from. The fact that one of the girls, Sakura, was easily the strongest person at the school, actually goes a way to revealing Chihiro's own, deeply ingrained misconceptions regarding the relationship between a person's sex and their strength, born from the bullying they endured as a child.
Chihiro also felt a sense of shame like they were misleading the girls at Hope's Peak, and worried about intruding into spaces they wouldn't actually be welcome if the girls knew of their secret, which is why they tended not to spend time alone with any girls.
Despite all of their self confidence issues, however, when push comes to shove Chihiro is ready to step up and do their part. When a laptop is discovered in the library of Hope's Peak, Chihiro immediately sets to work secretly fixing it up and creating a learning AI program that can continue to assist the other students even after their death. And when everyone's biggest secrets were being set up as a motive for murder, Chihiro decided to turn their fear into determination, promising the others that they would tell everyone as soon as they were strong enough.
Unfortunately this determination would ultimately lead to the one person they had trusted with their secret killing them, so Chihiro is experiencing a bit of a system reset there right now, as well as losing a whole lot of confidence in the reliability of trusting others.
Also, to specifically address my decision on how to approach the gender issue when it comes to Chihiro, for now I'm going to be using they/them pronouns specifically when referring to Chihiro for a couple of reasons.
One very simple one is that, whether internally Chihiro uses masculine pronouns or not, externally they present as feminine and will be assumed to be so by anyone they meet. Sticking with a gender neutral pronoun on my end in prose will help avoid any possibly conflict in the prose between both characters.
The other, bigger reason I'm going to be sticking with they/them for now is because I don't believe that Chihiro themself has sufficiently worked through any of these issues at this time to decidedly sway one way or the other in regards to their gender. When Monokuma "explains" Chihiro's secret to the other students, Monokuma puts it into very simple terms of a boy crossdressing as a girl to avoid being bullied, but Monokuma is the villain of the story and I'm hesitant to accept an official explanation from anyone other than Chihiro themself. The reasons for that are twofold.
One, trans and related concepts are not widely accepted or explored in Japan, and the language around the subject as well is relatively problematic and poorly defined. When discussing Chihiro's secret, the word "Otoko" is used, a term which can widely refer to trans girls or crossdressing boys. In the same vein of thought, Chihiro's own concepts of gender are centered pretty firmly around strength thanks to the bullying they experienced as a child. They associate strength with men and want to be strong themself. I believe that Chihiro themself needs to do a little introspection on the subject before slotting them neatly into any sort of category.
Two, in the photos of the student's lives at Hope's Peak before the tragedy, Chihiro is consistently shown still wearing a girl's uniform. This stands out to me because all impressions of Chihiro before the tragedy show a happy person confident in their own skin and their relationship with others. If Chihiro in a handful of days and a stressful environment was willing to start taking the steps to sharing their secret with the others, the Chihiro that was in a friendly, safe environment for two years would have certainly as well. The evidence that this is the case lies in the photograph of all the students in the pool. Chihiro with a secret made it quite clear that they were uncomfortable about the subject of swimsuits and would not swim with other people. Chihiro in the photos, however, is.
If Chihiro had once shared their secret with the other students of Hope's Peak, but also continued to wear the girl's uniform even after that, the concept that Chihiro is simply a boy wearing girl's clothes is a little difficult to swallow.
Abilities/Powers/Weaknesses & Warping: Ultimate Programmer. Not a supernatural or magical ability, just a natural talent.
Inventory:
- the lap top with alter ego written on it
- a duffle with exercise clothes in it
- their hope's peak student id
- the dumbbell that killed them
Writing Samples: TDM TL
OUT OF CHARACTER
Player Name: mel
Player Age: 30
Player Contact:
Other Characters In Game: Richie Tozier
In-Game Tag If Accepted: Chihiro Fujisaki: Mel
Permissions for Character: here
Are you comfortable with prominent elements of fourth-walling?: yep!
What themes of horror/psychological thrillers do you enjoy the most?: psychological, ghostly, etc.
Is there anything in particular you absolutely need specific content warnings for?: nah
Additional Information:
