Application for thewake_rp
Personal Information
Name: Nerdo
Age: 24
Personal LJ: Nerdorama09
Email / AIM / MSN: AIM Nerdorama09
Current Character(s): I'm a noob
Character Information
Character Name: Souji Seta/main character
Fandom: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4
Source: Just in case. And the fan wiki.
Character History: Here's his wiki in case I miss something.
Like most RPG protagonists, not a lot of Souji's history before coming to the town of Inaba and starting his adventure there is known. What we do know is that he has two living parents who move frequently for job-related reasons, either taking Souji with them or sending him to live with relatives when they go overseas, as is the case in Persona 4: he arrives in Inaba to spend a year or so with his maternal uncle, Ryoutaro Dojima, and his younger cousin Nanako. Just before arriving, though, he has a strange dream-like encounter with an old man named Igor and his taciturn lady assistant Elizabeth, who cryptically claim that he'll find great calamity and mystery in Inaba...which starts with a strange over-friendly gas station attendant shaking his hand. The night after moving in, Souji has another strange "dream" of pursuing a shadowy figure shrouded in fog. After chasing it down, it agrees to lend Souji its power for now...whatever that means.
To cut a long story with almost no save points short, Souji starts at his new school, makes friends with a friendly jock (Chie Satonaka) and a karma sink (Yosuke Hanamura), as well as finding out about one of Inaba's local rumors, the Midnight Channel, where mysterious figures appear on TV screens on rainy nights. In addition, an Inaba local who'd made national news turns up mysteriously murdered, and Souji, Yosuke, and Chie wind up inside a weird world inside the TV. There they find a strange room that seems to be connected to the victim, as well as a suspicious cartoon bear-like creature who (eventually) kicks them back out into reality.
That's all weird enough, but when Yosuke's unrequited crush Saki ends up dead in the same manner as the first murder victim, he insists on exploring the TV World and seeing if it's connected to the murders. Once there, the Souji and Yosuke (and their new bear pal Teddie) discover the monsters that kill people who wind up in that world, called Shadows, and Souji fights them with his new, instinctive power of summoning a Persona. He ends up in a tougher fight when they find where Saki died and a monster based on Yosuke's own self-doubts suddenly attacks. Souji defeats it, and Yosuke accepts that he has a darker side sometimes, thus granting Yosuke a Persona as well.
Armed with some first-hand knowledge of Personas and Shadows, as well as the guidance of Teddie, Souji and Yosuke are prepared when Chie's BFF Yukiko is the next person to end up on the Midnight Channel and inside the TV World, and all three go in to save her, this time managing to rescue the victim from her self-loathing before the Shadows kill her. This pattern will repeat over the next several months, with the "Investigation Team" rescuing several other teenagers and adding them to Souji's harem their ranks: next are freshman quasi-delinquent Kanji Tatsumi and a teenage pop idol on sabbatical named Rise Kujikawa. Teddie the TV bear mascot also (somehow) manifests his own Shadow and the team defeats it, making him a Persona-using part of the team, as well as for some reason giving him a physical human body he can use to travel to the real world. Teddie is weird.
Through all of this, Souji also has to deal with school, clubs, and friendships (and really lame nature campouts where Yosuke gets him in far too much trouble) - as the mysterious old man Igor told him, his relationships to others strengthen his Personas and those of his comrades. Plus, everyone around is fairly awesome, and it never hurts to keep busy. School, two clubs, part-time jobs, fishing, beating up monsters on rainy afternoons...whatever.
Souji and the Investigation Team also work on solving the mystery behind the murders and kidnappings (behind the backs of Souji's detective guardian and a mysterious young PI named Naoto Shirogane, of course). Their first actual break comes in the summer when a disturbed teenager named Mitsuo Kubo kills their teacher and claims responsibility for all the murders on the Midnight Channel, before ending up in the TV World himself. They fight their way to him and "save" him from his own Shadow, but though he ends up in police custody, the kidnappings continue a month or two later (after a cameo-filled trip to the setting of Persona 3, naturally).
The "rival" private investigator Naoto is kidnapped, and the Team rescues him her in the usual course of things, gaining a valuable ally when she realizes that despite appearances Souji was not, somehow, behind the whole thing. With Mitsuo eliminated as a suspect and Naoto on the team, the investigation actually progresses a good deal, interrupted only briefly by a generally embarrassing school culture festival (let's just say that Yosuke continues to be a karma sink and leave it at that.)
Things turn serious when Dojima confronts Souji about meddling with the investigation and arrests him - thus leaving Souji's indescribably adorable little cousin Nanako home alone for an evening, a chance the kidnapper takes instantly. The kidnapper reveals his identity in the process - Taro Namatame, married lover of the original murder victim - but Nanako and he both end up in the TV World and Souji's uncle is seriously injured trying to pursue them. Souji and the team rescue Nanako and defeat Namatame after he gets "possessed" by a strange, god-like Shadow being.
Namatame, Dojima, and Nanako all end up in the hospital after the rescue. Nanako's illness, apparently caused by overexposure to the TV World, causes her to gradually get worst and, by early December, she dies...briefly. Souji and his friends confront Namatame in his secure hospital room (after stopping Dojima from just murdering the guy), but, after Souji realizes that the evidence pointing to Namatame as murderer doesn't fit together and calms the righteously furious Yosuke down, everyone decides to spare the man. Later, when confronted more calmly (it helps that Nanako miraculously recovered thanks to Teddie doing...something), Namatame explains that he didn't kill the two murdered victims, and had in fact been attempting to protect people by putting whomever appeared on the Midnight Channel into the TV, where he thought it was safe. Since everyone he put in there had been rescued, he thought it was working...until he wound up there himself and realized it was full of monsters.
Leaving Namatame accepting his sentence as a kidnapper (however well-meaning), the team realizes they still hadn't solved the original question of who the murderer was. By process of elimination, Souji, Yosuke, and Naoto are able to deduce the real culprit - Tohru Adachi, the bumbling junior police detective who had "helpfully" kept them pointed in exactly the wrong direction in their investigations. They confront Adachi, who outs himself as the real culprit under pressure and bolts into the TV. Pursuing him, the Team finds the previous amiable whiner with a newly revealed sadistic streak and incredible control over the malleable world inside the TVs. He claims his new plan is to help that world overrun the real one with Shadows and choking magical Fog - a plan that's well underway and will destroy humanity within about three weeks. As the citizens of Inaba gradually undergo more and more panic at the fog overrunning their town, Souji and the team delve deep into the TV World and, finally, take down Adachi and the mystical entity behind his power, the Heavenly God of Fog (Ame-no-Sagiri). The God insists that humanity will be better off as oblivious, unthinking Shadows, but when defeated, concedes to the protagonists' strong wills ("Mankind's desires are my desires") and departs, leaving no fog to trouble Inaba or the rest of the planet.
World saved and the sun out again, the Team sits down to a well-deserved rest and celebration over the winter holiday, and Souji lives out his remaining months in Inaba peacefully and happily with the friends he's made...
...until the last day of Souji's stay in Inaba. Nagging doubts and loose ends surrounding the solved murder case and the still-foggy TV World cause Souji to do just a bit more detective work. With the help of Nanako and his friends, he gains deeper insight into the truth through dogged pursuit of it, and determines exactly who it was who gave the power to access the TV World to him, Namatame, and Adachi - that gas station attendant from the first day.
When cornered, the mysterious person finally reveals her true identity - Izanami, the Shinto goddess of the dead, among other things. Showing her true colors to the Team, she admits she was behind everything via proxies like Adachi and Ame-no-Sagiri, playing a game with herself to determine the fate of humanity. She tells them to meet her in the TV World if they insist on not being satisfied with their role as pawns. One dungeon later, the Team confronts the Goddess, who insists that their arrogance has grown out of control if they're no longer willing to serve as test subjects for humanity's worthiness, and engages them in a fight to the death. After revealing her monstrous true form and being beaten down even then, Izanami-no-Okami decides to just screw it and auto-kill the entire party. Souji doesn't take any of that crap and, with the encouragement of his true bonds with his friends and with humanity, stands back up and summons his true Persona, Izanagi-no-Okami, who dispatches his "wife's" curses with raw truth, driving Izanami away and freeing the "TV World" from the influence of her deathly aura and magical fog.
And then he leaves Inaba as he's supposed to, sent off tearfully by his friends and satisfied with a job really, really thoroughly done.
Character Personality: Being a blank slate as many RPG protagonists are, Souji's personality is open to a lot of interpretation, but there are a few aspects that definitely stand out. The first is Souji's generally calm and potentially ice-cold demeanor. When things get serious, Souji always, always keeps focused and collected, even if on the inside he's boiling with anger - that only makes him more calm and focused. This concentration also makes him a skilled fighter - it's not clear when he learned how to use a sword, but he's perfectly capable with one, as well as having a good grasp of tactics and, where appropriate, the ability to manifest a wide variety of Personas.
When things aren't so serious, though, he's a friendly if quiet and distant guy. Souji's not terribly excitable (except maybe around his little cousin - it's infectious), but he's not above the occasional joke or witty comment when he does feel the need to speak. More than that, though, he's a wonderful and well-practiced listener. His quiet attentiveness makes him a bit of a magnet for people to share their personal problems with, and he's perfectly willing to listen, and help out when he can (although in Souji's experience, people usually just need to talk about their problems, and tend to ignore actual advice anyway.) This leads to a lot of deep and lasting friendships (and more than one possible romance - his day planner is seriously a mess) with people around him. His kindness, levelheadedness, and all-around charisma also makes him a capable leader of a group of amateur detectives in Inaba, despite not really knowing the first thing about detective work.
Souji's also a master of adapting to situations, able to read people well and respond appropriately. If it seems like he acts differently around different people, it's not any kind of duplicity on his part, just a natural knack for wearing the right face for the right situation, which is probably why he has the power of the Wild Card and the Fool arcana when it comes to Persona. He is not, however, a pushover - if someone's getting on his nerves or those of his friends, he'll let them know. He's also, notably, one of two people in the entire town of Inaba who doesn't appear to have some kind of crippling personality disorder. Honestly, for all his ability to laser-focus when required, he's a pretty laid-back guy.
The reasons for Souji's personality - distant but friendly, quiet but devoted - are only hinted at in canon. The most logical conclusion given in-game hints, and the one supported by the manga adaptation, is that Souji has difficulty keeping friends due to constantly moving for the sake of his parents' work. He makes them easily, and will do a lot for them, but ultimately, he knows he'll have to leave them, and so he tends to try and stay somewhat aloof. This probably ceased to be the case in Inaba, where he became pretty much everyone's "big bro" and come to realize that you can stay friends with people even if you can't see them every day, but...we never do really see inside his head, so it's hard to say for sure.
Powers: Souji's main form of power is the supernatural phenomenon known as "Persona", after Carl Jung's psychological theories on the "masks" people present to the world. A Persona is an aspect of someone's personality that has awakened to his or her conscious control, represented by an image drawn from mythology - demons, fairies, and legendary heroes are all fair game. Effectively, someone awakened to this power can "evoke" the Persona through a symbolic motion to perform various magical spells (the standard JRPG assortment of elemental damage, physical damage, status effects, instant death...), protect himself from enemy attacks, etc. This is the only known effective way to combat monsters of suppressed human emotion called Shadows that appear in places and times of mystical significance, such as inside a parallel world accessible through television sets in the town of Inaba.
Normally, (at least in Persona 3 and 4), every individual is limited to one Persona, which can "upgrade" into an improved version with sufficient mental resolve. Souji is one of three known exceptions to this, a "Wild Card" who can access other Personas due to a unique connection to humanity's Collective Unconscious. By defeating Shadows and combining other Personas together, Souji can use a wide variety of different Personas, all of which are strengthened by his emotional bonds of trust with other people (called "Social Links"). He can only use one at a time, however, and can only "know" twelve at once.
Personas also come with a few side perks, such as allowing humans to access Inaba's TV World at will and stay in it with minimal negative effects from the magical fog. However, Persona-users also attract Shadows like flames attracting very angry, very large moths.
He can also eat grass, moldy miso, whole jugs of cold barley soup, and his surrogate little sister's pudding with no ill effects other than temporary nausea and haunting guilt. Yukiko and Chie's "curry" still stymies him, however.
Samples
First person: ((Setup: some kind of crisis! A storm or a "natural" disaster is tearing up the city even more than normal, or some kind of godlike being is killing everyone. Again. Also sorry this is short, but he's a man of few words, and you don't want a lot of bracket-action.))
We need to secure a part of the city for people who can't fight. If you can fight, meet me at this spot and we'll work on making a perimeter inside the West sector, it seems least hard hit. Teddie, Chie, [other fighting castmates], you guys good to fight?
Nanako, [other civilian castmates], find somewhere to get under cover for now. I'll come get you when there's a safe zone set up. Promise.
Third Person: Even if he's figured out a little Bending by now, Souji's still a fan of doing most of his hobbies by hand. There's no point to creating pre-folded origami after all, or doing sleight-of-hand with real magic, and most importantly there's the serious business of cooking to consider. Something as vital as good food is too important to trust to his mind when a simple distraction could result in something inedible. Or worse than inedible should his mind wander to Chie or Yukiko...
Souji carefully cracks first one egg, then another into a pan, followed by a measured cup of milk, stirring the mixture immediately with a fork to break up the yolks. How much went in an omelet again...? He goes with his gut feeling of a couple tablespoons, followed by the same amount of butter, leaving out salt in favor of a dash of soy sauce. In a sudden flash of curiosity, he checks his refrigerator (using his long arms to keep scrambling the eggs) for smoked salmon. It looks like he has a little left, and he quickly removes it and chops it up to throw inside the omelet once it starts firming up. He could always taste-test the first one himself to make sure it was a good combination.
Cooking is a simple task as far as what Souji's been through recently, but it's an important one. Everyone has to eat, after all, and they might as well enjoy it. Hopefully, his friends would like getting a home-cooked meal, even if this place still wasn't exactly home...after checking a bite of the first omelet (a larger one then necessary to taste-test - this was Souji's breakfast too, after all), he nods, satisfied, and begins on the second. The good thing about omelets is they cook fast, so he should be able to make enough for everyone fairly quickly.
Name: Nerdo
Age: 24
Personal LJ: Nerdorama09
Email / AIM / MSN: AIM Nerdorama09
Current Character(s): I'm a noob
Character Information
Character Name: Souji Seta/main character
Fandom: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4
Source: Just in case. And the fan wiki.
Character History: Here's his wiki in case I miss something.
Like most RPG protagonists, not a lot of Souji's history before coming to the town of Inaba and starting his adventure there is known. What we do know is that he has two living parents who move frequently for job-related reasons, either taking Souji with them or sending him to live with relatives when they go overseas, as is the case in Persona 4: he arrives in Inaba to spend a year or so with his maternal uncle, Ryoutaro Dojima, and his younger cousin Nanako. Just before arriving, though, he has a strange dream-like encounter with an old man named Igor and his taciturn lady assistant Elizabeth, who cryptically claim that he'll find great calamity and mystery in Inaba...which starts with a strange over-friendly gas station attendant shaking his hand. The night after moving in, Souji has another strange "dream" of pursuing a shadowy figure shrouded in fog. After chasing it down, it agrees to lend Souji its power for now...whatever that means.
To cut a long story with almost no save points short, Souji starts at his new school, makes friends with a friendly jock (Chie Satonaka) and a karma sink (Yosuke Hanamura), as well as finding out about one of Inaba's local rumors, the Midnight Channel, where mysterious figures appear on TV screens on rainy nights. In addition, an Inaba local who'd made national news turns up mysteriously murdered, and Souji, Yosuke, and Chie wind up inside a weird world inside the TV. There they find a strange room that seems to be connected to the victim, as well as a suspicious cartoon bear-like creature who (eventually) kicks them back out into reality.
That's all weird enough, but when Yosuke's unrequited crush Saki ends up dead in the same manner as the first murder victim, he insists on exploring the TV World and seeing if it's connected to the murders. Once there, the Souji and Yosuke (and their new bear pal Teddie) discover the monsters that kill people who wind up in that world, called Shadows, and Souji fights them with his new, instinctive power of summoning a Persona. He ends up in a tougher fight when they find where Saki died and a monster based on Yosuke's own self-doubts suddenly attacks. Souji defeats it, and Yosuke accepts that he has a darker side sometimes, thus granting Yosuke a Persona as well.
Armed with some first-hand knowledge of Personas and Shadows, as well as the guidance of Teddie, Souji and Yosuke are prepared when Chie's BFF Yukiko is the next person to end up on the Midnight Channel and inside the TV World, and all three go in to save her, this time managing to rescue the victim from her self-loathing before the Shadows kill her. This pattern will repeat over the next several months, with the "Investigation Team" rescuing several other teenagers and adding them to Souji's harem their ranks: next are freshman quasi-delinquent Kanji Tatsumi and a teenage pop idol on sabbatical named Rise Kujikawa. Teddie the TV bear mascot also (somehow) manifests his own Shadow and the team defeats it, making him a Persona-using part of the team, as well as for some reason giving him a physical human body he can use to travel to the real world. Teddie is weird.
Through all of this, Souji also has to deal with school, clubs, and friendships (and really lame nature campouts where Yosuke gets him in far too much trouble) - as the mysterious old man Igor told him, his relationships to others strengthen his Personas and those of his comrades. Plus, everyone around is fairly awesome, and it never hurts to keep busy. School, two clubs, part-time jobs, fishing, beating up monsters on rainy afternoons...whatever.
Souji and the Investigation Team also work on solving the mystery behind the murders and kidnappings (behind the backs of Souji's detective guardian and a mysterious young PI named Naoto Shirogane, of course). Their first actual break comes in the summer when a disturbed teenager named Mitsuo Kubo kills their teacher and claims responsibility for all the murders on the Midnight Channel, before ending up in the TV World himself. They fight their way to him and "save" him from his own Shadow, but though he ends up in police custody, the kidnappings continue a month or two later (after a cameo-filled trip to the setting of Persona 3, naturally).
The "rival" private investigator Naoto is kidnapped, and the Team rescues him her in the usual course of things, gaining a valuable ally when she realizes that despite appearances Souji was not, somehow, behind the whole thing. With Mitsuo eliminated as a suspect and Naoto on the team, the investigation actually progresses a good deal, interrupted only briefly by a generally embarrassing school culture festival (let's just say that Yosuke continues to be a karma sink and leave it at that.)
Things turn serious when Dojima confronts Souji about meddling with the investigation and arrests him - thus leaving Souji's indescribably adorable little cousin Nanako home alone for an evening, a chance the kidnapper takes instantly. The kidnapper reveals his identity in the process - Taro Namatame, married lover of the original murder victim - but Nanako and he both end up in the TV World and Souji's uncle is seriously injured trying to pursue them. Souji and the team rescue Nanako and defeat Namatame after he gets "possessed" by a strange, god-like Shadow being.
Namatame, Dojima, and Nanako all end up in the hospital after the rescue. Nanako's illness, apparently caused by overexposure to the TV World, causes her to gradually get worst and, by early December, she dies...briefly. Souji and his friends confront Namatame in his secure hospital room (after stopping Dojima from just murdering the guy), but, after Souji realizes that the evidence pointing to Namatame as murderer doesn't fit together and calms the righteously furious Yosuke down, everyone decides to spare the man. Later, when confronted more calmly (it helps that Nanako miraculously recovered thanks to Teddie doing...something), Namatame explains that he didn't kill the two murdered victims, and had in fact been attempting to protect people by putting whomever appeared on the Midnight Channel into the TV, where he thought it was safe. Since everyone he put in there had been rescued, he thought it was working...until he wound up there himself and realized it was full of monsters.
Leaving Namatame accepting his sentence as a kidnapper (however well-meaning), the team realizes they still hadn't solved the original question of who the murderer was. By process of elimination, Souji, Yosuke, and Naoto are able to deduce the real culprit - Tohru Adachi, the bumbling junior police detective who had "helpfully" kept them pointed in exactly the wrong direction in their investigations. They confront Adachi, who outs himself as the real culprit under pressure and bolts into the TV. Pursuing him, the Team finds the previous amiable whiner with a newly revealed sadistic streak and incredible control over the malleable world inside the TVs. He claims his new plan is to help that world overrun the real one with Shadows and choking magical Fog - a plan that's well underway and will destroy humanity within about three weeks. As the citizens of Inaba gradually undergo more and more panic at the fog overrunning their town, Souji and the team delve deep into the TV World and, finally, take down Adachi and the mystical entity behind his power, the Heavenly God of Fog (Ame-no-Sagiri). The God insists that humanity will be better off as oblivious, unthinking Shadows, but when defeated, concedes to the protagonists' strong wills ("Mankind's desires are my desires") and departs, leaving no fog to trouble Inaba or the rest of the planet.
World saved and the sun out again, the Team sits down to a well-deserved rest and celebration over the winter holiday, and Souji lives out his remaining months in Inaba peacefully and happily with the friends he's made...
...until the last day of Souji's stay in Inaba. Nagging doubts and loose ends surrounding the solved murder case and the still-foggy TV World cause Souji to do just a bit more detective work. With the help of Nanako and his friends, he gains deeper insight into the truth through dogged pursuit of it, and determines exactly who it was who gave the power to access the TV World to him, Namatame, and Adachi - that gas station attendant from the first day.
When cornered, the mysterious person finally reveals her true identity - Izanami, the Shinto goddess of the dead, among other things. Showing her true colors to the Team, she admits she was behind everything via proxies like Adachi and Ame-no-Sagiri, playing a game with herself to determine the fate of humanity. She tells them to meet her in the TV World if they insist on not being satisfied with their role as pawns. One dungeon later, the Team confronts the Goddess, who insists that their arrogance has grown out of control if they're no longer willing to serve as test subjects for humanity's worthiness, and engages them in a fight to the death. After revealing her monstrous true form and being beaten down even then, Izanami-no-Okami decides to just screw it and auto-kill the entire party. Souji doesn't take any of that crap and, with the encouragement of his true bonds with his friends and with humanity, stands back up and summons his true Persona, Izanagi-no-Okami, who dispatches his "wife's" curses with raw truth, driving Izanami away and freeing the "TV World" from the influence of her deathly aura and magical fog.
And then he leaves Inaba as he's supposed to, sent off tearfully by his friends and satisfied with a job really, really thoroughly done.
Character Personality: Being a blank slate as many RPG protagonists are, Souji's personality is open to a lot of interpretation, but there are a few aspects that definitely stand out. The first is Souji's generally calm and potentially ice-cold demeanor. When things get serious, Souji always, always keeps focused and collected, even if on the inside he's boiling with anger - that only makes him more calm and focused. This concentration also makes him a skilled fighter - it's not clear when he learned how to use a sword, but he's perfectly capable with one, as well as having a good grasp of tactics and, where appropriate, the ability to manifest a wide variety of Personas.
When things aren't so serious, though, he's a friendly if quiet and distant guy. Souji's not terribly excitable (except maybe around his little cousin - it's infectious), but he's not above the occasional joke or witty comment when he does feel the need to speak. More than that, though, he's a wonderful and well-practiced listener. His quiet attentiveness makes him a bit of a magnet for people to share their personal problems with, and he's perfectly willing to listen, and help out when he can (although in Souji's experience, people usually just need to talk about their problems, and tend to ignore actual advice anyway.) This leads to a lot of deep and lasting friendships (and more than one possible romance - his day planner is seriously a mess) with people around him. His kindness, levelheadedness, and all-around charisma also makes him a capable leader of a group of amateur detectives in Inaba, despite not really knowing the first thing about detective work.
Souji's also a master of adapting to situations, able to read people well and respond appropriately. If it seems like he acts differently around different people, it's not any kind of duplicity on his part, just a natural knack for wearing the right face for the right situation, which is probably why he has the power of the Wild Card and the Fool arcana when it comes to Persona. He is not, however, a pushover - if someone's getting on his nerves or those of his friends, he'll let them know. He's also, notably, one of two people in the entire town of Inaba who doesn't appear to have some kind of crippling personality disorder. Honestly, for all his ability to laser-focus when required, he's a pretty laid-back guy.
The reasons for Souji's personality - distant but friendly, quiet but devoted - are only hinted at in canon. The most logical conclusion given in-game hints, and the one supported by the manga adaptation, is that Souji has difficulty keeping friends due to constantly moving for the sake of his parents' work. He makes them easily, and will do a lot for them, but ultimately, he knows he'll have to leave them, and so he tends to try and stay somewhat aloof. This probably ceased to be the case in Inaba, where he became pretty much everyone's "big bro" and come to realize that you can stay friends with people even if you can't see them every day, but...we never do really see inside his head, so it's hard to say for sure.
Powers: Souji's main form of power is the supernatural phenomenon known as "Persona", after Carl Jung's psychological theories on the "masks" people present to the world. A Persona is an aspect of someone's personality that has awakened to his or her conscious control, represented by an image drawn from mythology - demons, fairies, and legendary heroes are all fair game. Effectively, someone awakened to this power can "evoke" the Persona through a symbolic motion to perform various magical spells (the standard JRPG assortment of elemental damage, physical damage, status effects, instant death...), protect himself from enemy attacks, etc. This is the only known effective way to combat monsters of suppressed human emotion called Shadows that appear in places and times of mystical significance, such as inside a parallel world accessible through television sets in the town of Inaba.
Normally, (at least in Persona 3 and 4), every individual is limited to one Persona, which can "upgrade" into an improved version with sufficient mental resolve. Souji is one of three known exceptions to this, a "Wild Card" who can access other Personas due to a unique connection to humanity's Collective Unconscious. By defeating Shadows and combining other Personas together, Souji can use a wide variety of different Personas, all of which are strengthened by his emotional bonds of trust with other people (called "Social Links"). He can only use one at a time, however, and can only "know" twelve at once.
Personas also come with a few side perks, such as allowing humans to access Inaba's TV World at will and stay in it with minimal negative effects from the magical fog. However, Persona-users also attract Shadows like flames attracting very angry, very large moths.
He can also eat grass, moldy miso, whole jugs of cold barley soup, and his surrogate little sister's pudding with no ill effects other than temporary nausea and haunting guilt. Yukiko and Chie's "curry" still stymies him, however.
Samples
First person: ((Setup: some kind of crisis! A storm or a "natural" disaster is tearing up the city even more than normal, or some kind of godlike being is killing everyone. Again. Also sorry this is short, but he's a man of few words, and you don't want a lot of bracket-action.))
We need to secure a part of the city for people who can't fight. If you can fight, meet me at this spot and we'll work on making a perimeter inside the West sector, it seems least hard hit. Teddie, Chie, [other fighting castmates], you guys good to fight?
Nanako, [other civilian castmates], find somewhere to get under cover for now. I'll come get you when there's a safe zone set up. Promise.
Third Person: Even if he's figured out a little Bending by now, Souji's still a fan of doing most of his hobbies by hand. There's no point to creating pre-folded origami after all, or doing sleight-of-hand with real magic, and most importantly there's the serious business of cooking to consider. Something as vital as good food is too important to trust to his mind when a simple distraction could result in something inedible. Or worse than inedible should his mind wander to Chie or Yukiko...
Souji carefully cracks first one egg, then another into a pan, followed by a measured cup of milk, stirring the mixture immediately with a fork to break up the yolks. How much went in an omelet again...? He goes with his gut feeling of a couple tablespoons, followed by the same amount of butter, leaving out salt in favor of a dash of soy sauce. In a sudden flash of curiosity, he checks his refrigerator (using his long arms to keep scrambling the eggs) for smoked salmon. It looks like he has a little left, and he quickly removes it and chops it up to throw inside the omelet once it starts firming up. He could always taste-test the first one himself to make sure it was a good combination.
Cooking is a simple task as far as what Souji's been through recently, but it's an important one. Everyone has to eat, after all, and they might as well enjoy it. Hopefully, his friends would like getting a home-cooked meal, even if this place still wasn't exactly home...after checking a bite of the first omelet (a larger one then necessary to taste-test - this was Souji's breakfast too, after all), he nods, satisfied, and begins on the second. The good thing about omelets is they cook fast, so he should be able to make enough for everyone fairly quickly.