Application for Guys and Dolls: Kurama

Nov 11, 2010 02:49

PLAYER
[journal] lady_flamewing
[age] 21
[previous characters] N/A


CHARACTER
[series] Yu Yu Hakusho
[full name] Shuuichi Minamino (Kurama)
[age] Physically: 19; however, Kurama is a demon in human form - his actual age is unknown, but estimated at somewhere well over several hundred years
[gender] Male
[canon point] Post-series
[reference]
1) Series
2) Character
[personality] Kurama is calm, cool, and collected. He is depicted throughout the series as being exceptionally mature and very hard to perturb - we see him angry only a few times, all generally related to his adversaries threatening his friends, his families, or taking advantage of the innocent. This is evidence of his capability - most likely brought on by his time spent living as a human - to form deep and loyal relationships, something most demons appear incapable of, but it also provides evidence that he has a very deep-rooted duality. He is willing to sacrifice his life or well-being for those he cares about - but he is also capable of setting aside any pity, of having no mercy when exacting his revenge. And revenge can be a long time coming for him - Kurama is nothing if not patient. His teammates often complain that his battle style consists of sitting back and waiting, of never taking action until he fully understands his opponent's power, skill, and motivation.

This tendency of his also offers insight to several other points of his character. Kurama is extremely intelligent - although, this may be a slightly unfair assessment, given how long he is assumed to have been alive - consistently earning top marks in his high school classes. He has, however, foregone college to take a job in his stepfather's company - possibly because further schooling would be rather meaningless for him. He plans almost constantly, always managing to come up with some way to win his battles, to do what needs to be done - and sometimes, to save the lives of his teammates, his family, and his friends.

He also lies extremely well - he has had to, for the past 19 years, to continue to live in his guise as a human. But he is well-known for downplaying his own talents, for making opponents think he is much weaker than he is. He is also not a stranger to taking damage in battle, to lure his opponents into a false sense of security - all the while, making it look as if he is more seriously injured than he is. He knows how to fight, knows his own limitations - and when it is necessary, knows how to push himself beyond them.

Underneath it all, though, he is a demon, and though he has chosen to live permanently in the Human World, his name is still whispered among demons as someone you definitely don't want to cross. His powers lie in the control and manipulation of plants, and there is a great deal of evidence that he is one of the masters - a teammate mentions that even a blade of grass on the side of the road is a deadly weapon, and that he originally teamed up with Kurama to avoid ever having to fight him in the future.

His greatest weakness may also be his greatest strength - his tendency to turn to self-sacrifice. He suffers from a sort of mother complex: he feels that he has taken advantage of his human mother, that he can never fully pay her back for what she has taught him about love - and this leads him to a certain amount of devaluing of his own life. Several times we have seen him attempt to sacrifice himself for the good of his mother, for the good of the team, or for the ultimate end result in the bigger picture - only to be saved by his friends, or by some amount of hidden power he has managed to develop without being fully aware.

Kurama is a good teammate - and an exceptional friend. He seems to be rather difficult to get to know at first, with a tendency to adhere strictly to societal rules and to remain rather soft-spoken and unobtrusive, but it seems that once he familiarizes himself with a situation or the people around him, he opens up. With his team, he is much more relaxed, occasionally displaying his wit and intellect with a sarcastic remark or a subtle joke. His teammates trust him as the one they can turn to for a plan, or an explanation, or even a levelheaded referee for whatever argument they might be having at the time.

But to those on the other side of the spectrum, Kurama is a terrible opponent. He is quite capable of running circles - physically and intellectually - around nearly anyone to face him, and he will go as far as necessary to take his opponents down. For those who face him with dignity and honor, Kurama responds in kind - he is loathe to kill those he meets in the battle arena, preferring to give them the opportunity to live, to improve, or even to find new direction in their lives. But for those who take dirty tactics, who harm innocent bystanders, or who threaten those he cares about - Kurama will often stop at nothing short of complete destruction.

[orientation] There is no concrete information about Kurama's sexual orientation - in the manga, we are given a brief glimpse into his childhood, where he appears to be fond of a female classmate, and in the anime, some of his interactions with his teammates might be construed as flirtatious. However, given the lack of substantial evidence, it seems safe to claim that his orientation is UNKNOWN.
[appearance] No changes.
[wish] The lasting happiness of those he cares about - his family and his friends, both his teammates and the people he has met in the course of working for the Spirit World.
[requested house] Hibu House
[misc notes] Being a demon, Kurama does have supernatural powers - the most notable being his ability to control plant life. But it has been mentioned a few times in the series that his demonic influence on his human body has given him heightened senses - smell being the most prominent, but presumably the others as well as a sort of sixth sense when it comes to reading the energy signatures of other people.

SAMPLES
[Smut Drabble] Kurama's back arches as calloused fingers trace his sides and warm breath ghosts across his skin. There is a brief moment of pain as those fingers dig into his hips hard enough to bruise - Kurama has never been one for selecting the gentlest of customers - and shame flickers briefly across his mind: this is not something that Minamino Shuuichi would do. But then there are chapped lips pressed to his, and those hands are trailing back up his body to wind into his hair, and the shame burns out as quickly as it came: because to Kurama, this is natural - the press of bodies and the slide of skin, the heat pooling in his stomach and the trembling of his limbs.

He lets instincts he'd forgotten he had take over, and with a deft twist of his hips puts himself above his customer, his hair falling loose in a curtain of red that cuts them off from the rest of the world. There's a smile on his lips as he leans down to brush soft, teasing kisses across heated skin, and it stays even as their positions change again, and his wrists are pinned to the bed beneath him - disappearing only when the pleasure surging through his body becomes too much to handle, and he throws his head back and howls.

[Prose Log] Every morning, Kurama meets the servants who come in to dress him with his hair piled carefully atop his head, fixed in place by combs and pins and the few decorative accessories he has been allowed - and no one ever asks questions. People assume that it is just one more quirk from an outsider: and they certainly never connect it to his odd tendency to raise a hand to his neck when he finds himself in dangerous or stressful situations. For this, Kurama is grateful - because he isn't sure he can quite explain his lingering inability to let anyone near his hair.

So every morning, he wakes well in advance of the servants' arrival and takes his place at the small vanity in his room. And in the slowly retreating darkness, he first brushes and then carefully arranges his hair, instinctively leaving it loose enough at the nape of his neck for him to work his fingers into. Because even though the jade bracelet that sits oddly heavy on his wrist saps his powers - even though he lacks the energy to keep his customary stockpile of seeds wound into the loose hairs at the nape of his neck - there are some habits that are just too hard to break. And just in case - in case the bracelet breaks, or is stolen, or he discovers some way to get around its seal - he needs to have his routine firmly established: so that when he can finally resume storing his unobtrusive arsenal in its customary place, no one will ever have a reason to suspect that anything has changed.
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