Echoing Girl of the Ghost Valley

PLAYER INFORMATION

PLAYER: gsai
ARE YOU AT LEAST 16 YEARS OLD?: y
IF UNDER 18 YEARS OLD, PLEASE STATE YOUR AGE: n/a
CONTACT: pm this journal
CHARACTERS PLAYED: Reimu Hakurei (musou_tensei, Bridget (kickstart_my_heart)

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OOC INFORMATION
Player: gonsai
Age: 26
Personal Journal: gonsai
Contact Info: aim = gonsaifong
Other Characters: n/a

IC INFORMATION
Characters Name: Kyouko Kasodani
Age: Unknown, but appears young enough to pass for a young teenager
Canon: Touhou Project
Canon Point: Post Ten Desires
Species: Yamabiko, a youkai of mountain echoes. Dog-like in nature.
Gender: Female.
Orientation: Given she'll be in a child slot, it's not really an issue, but it should be noted that Touhou does not give any canon indication of its characters having sexuality. Subjects of relationships and sexuality never come up. Their orientations are therefore left entirely open to interpretation. Due to the prevelence of femmslash in the fandom, I personally default most of them to bisexual. Especially considering they are stuck in a time period before Japan's major westernization that introduced the concept of homophobia.

History: Touhou wiki link

Appearance: http://i.imgur.com/8grSQ.jpg
Kyouko has teal hair and eyes and brown, furry ears and tail. The ears and tail, dog-like in appearance, are traditional physical characteristics of yamabiko. When preparing her echoing power, her ears vibrate rapidly. This is another aspect that comes from myth, and can also be seen in the Pokemon Audino, which is also based on the yamabiko.

Personality:
"She lives in the mountains, and when she hears a joyous sound, she replies back with a loud voice. A good youkai with kind heart."

Kyouko is among a race of youkai called yamabiko which don't partake in the normal terrorizing of humans that some youkai do. In spite of her jokes about "filling the morning with their screams", Kyouko is generally nice to the heroes of the story (except for Youmu, for reasons to be described later). She is kind spirited and will try to help out anyone that needs it. It's just her way, really.

Being a neophyte of the Myouren Temple, Kyouko studies Buddhism quite extensively, and tries to reflect the principles of that faith. She can echo sutras from memory, and will often quote various sutras and precepts as the time calls for it ("Greetings are the heart's oasis.") when going about her duties. Given her primary duty is to greet temple visitors, her audio memory comes in great handy. It also helps that she's cute.

Kyouko is also very enthusiastic. It may be because she's young, but she has great energy, even for as early in the morning as her scenes in canon take place. Before dawn she is sweeping, cooking, greeting visitors, accepting challenges from interlopers, and basically preparing the whole temple before anyone else is even awake. Her energy channels into her greeting, giving a hearty "Good morning!" to the heroes, far louder than some would expect (much to Marisa's annoyance, actually). She goes about everything with this sort of gusto, and is all smiles during.

One thing she doesn't tolerate is killing. When Youmu shows up at Myouren with her swords drawn, Kyouko treats her far faaar differently than she did the other heroes. She becomes aggressive and righteous, shaming Youmu for daring to kill anyone, be they fairies or youkai. Youmu, of course, hadn't killed anyone at all, but Kyouko jumped to the conclusion anyways and attacked with a fury the other heroes were not subject to. Whether this had to do with her Buddhist training or something deeper in her past is unknown.

Kyouko, unfortunately, has become a bit bored with her life in the temple, though. While she tries her best and is dutiful, a lot of the deeper meaning of her training is lost on her and her restless youthful energy has desperately come out in other ways. She formed a rock band with Mystia Lorelei as a result and has started really throwing herself into music with a message of rebellion and punk rock culture. In some ways, it coincides with her Buddhist beliefs of challenging one's perceptions of reality. But in most ways... she's still just a kid and frustrated with the world.

Now for a bit of headcanon/filling in the blanks.

There is something of a depressing point to be made about the matters that drove Kyouko (and others like her) to Myouren Temple to begin with. Given it's a temple for youkai, they often take in those with nowhere left to go. Human reason and science forced Kyouko out of her home in the mountains, her entire existence threatened by the denial of the supernatural. Even with her constant smile and high energy, there is that weight still carried with her. She doesn't show it often, and prefers to not talk about it, but it's still very much reality.

It is thought, perhaps, that her darker treatment of Youmu has something to do with this. The idea of dying, of being killed or wiped out, frightens her deeply. Existence for youkai born outside of Gensokyo is extremely grim. They have no protection from xenophobic humans, who would wipe out youkai either directly or indirectly by no longer respecting their existences. Kyouko is no exception to this, as she was likely born outside Gensokyo.

She attached herself to Buddhism because she honestly had nothing left. The emptiness of secularism was frightening, threatening to pretty much unmake her. Now, with spirituality on her side, she echoes sutras in the mountains of Gensokyo, retaining her place in the way of the world as a youkai. And it scares some humans, too. That's always a nice bonus. But what she really wants is for them to believe again...

Abilites: As a Yamabiko, Kyouko has power over echoes. This means she can control soundwaves once she's heard them personally at least once. This means she can do things like change the volume of sound, imitate sounds and voices, and project soundwaves to such an intensity that they can be used as a form of self-defense. She can also create "echo chambers" that form from walls of sound, bounding soundwaves off of one another indifinitely. She mostly uses this power to memorize sutras and perform music, as well as her ever cheerful greetings of paritioners to the Myouren Temple.

Other: n/a

SAMPLES
First Person: Anything under this tag should do

Third Person:

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