I finally finished my Yuu
I ended up changing a few things, but she's still really close to my original idea. Anyway, I thought it'd be a fun challenge to create a Yuu that has the personality tidbits we're given in the game, but still be my own creation. Hopefully I did a good job. The post itself will already be long, so I apologize for making it longer with this, but I still want to say some things. There's a very specific appearance I have in mind for her, and I can't draw, so I might have gone overboard in my description of her, though I tried to keep to the ways the game makes the characters different from each other. I know some of the trivia stuff is really weird, and some of it would be better in other categories, but those latter ones are in there because I couldn't think of ways to make them fit in the other categories. Also, this contains small spoilers for Books 6 and 7, so you can skip over this if you haven't seen/read those. Okay, that's everything, so here she is.
BIO
Name: Yuumi Katou (迦統 優光) Birthday: April 1 (Aries) Age: 15 Height: 162 cm (5'4") Dominant Hand: Ambidextrous Homeland: Japan, Kyoto Prefecture Family: Unnamed parents, Unnamed grandfather (deceased) Other Names: Yuu, Prefect, Herbivore (Leona), Shrimpy (Floyd), Mademoiselle Trickster (Rook), Child of Man (Malleus), Human (Sebek), Yuu-Yuu (Cater/Ramshackle ghosts), Pup (Crewel)
SCHOOL
Grade: Freshman Class: 1-A (No. 9 shared with Grim) Club: Gastronomy Club Best Subject: Music
PREFERENCE
Hobbies: Reading, Playing insturments Pet Peeves: Fighting for stupid reasons Favorite Food: Baked Butternut Squash Least Favorite Food: Crab Talent: Playing the fiddle
APPEARANCE
Yuumi has straight, midback length platinum blonde hair with asymetric hime style bangs, with the right side halfway down her forehead and the left side just barley covering her eye. With the end parts, the right side reaches her jawline and the left side reaches just below her chin. In Lilia's dream her hair got cut when she was dodging a sword, so it ended at ear length, though that was fixed with Idia's Dream Form Change chip. She has downturned dark brown eyes, peach skin, freckles across her nose and cheeks, and a beauty mark under her left eye. She also has a small bust and short, slightly thick eyebrows.
At school she wears the typical Night Raven College uniform with a black vest, and has her hair twisted up into a high side ponytail on the right side of her head. After her first shopping trip she bought some black cloth and a brown cord that she added to the left sleeve to mimic the other dorms. While not completely deaf, her hearing is bad enough that she wears hearing aids, which are white, though they change to silver later on. She also later receives some scars on the back of her right hand. Outside of school she dresses in a modest style, and when not in uniform she always wears at least one ribbon in her hair. No matter what she wears, she always carries her grandfather's pocket watch, which is made of copper.
PERSONALITY
Yuumi is usually a very upbeat and optimistic girl. She likes listening to people talk and, if she's close enough to the person, likes to talk herself, though she'll need alone time later to recharge. While usually friendly and patient, she can get angry and will yell at people, whether friend or stranger, when they do something she thinks isn't right. She's also not afraid to threaten or manipulate people to make them comply with her, though she'll never do anything that would physically or mentally hurt someone.
She can be naive, but she's willing to do whatever she can to keep up with the other students even though she can't use magic. Despite being absent-minded sometimes, she's very resilient and observant, and will use those things to her advantage whenever she can. Though she feels helpless and useless at certian times, she turns that into determination to do better.
Yuumi can be very cheeky, able to easily give back to insults or teasing when she wants. She can also be very blunt at times, though she tries her best not to hurt people with that specefic trait. She's also been told she can be scary when serious or angry, much to her own amusment. Despite all that, Yuumi is a very compassionate person, showing worry for people even if they've been mean to her in the past, and willing to forgive them as she thinks everyone deservses a second chance.
While normally very brave, sometimes to a stupid degree, she has a tendency to grab onto a person next to her when she's startled, nervous or anxious. Her biggest strength and weakness is her refusal to give up no matter what she's up against. All in all, Yuumi is a person that is sincere and reliable, and can get along with pretty much anyone, even if it takes the long way to warm up to each other.
She doesn't let it show, but everything that's happened has been slowly wearing her down. Each overblot and life threatening event has caused her more and more inner panic, and after Malleus, Yuumi's started to worry that it's become too much and she'll break at any moment. Her friends and the thought of going home are the main things keeping her together.
BACKGROUND
Yuumi is the daughter of a very successful businessman and a housewife. Her parents were very overprotective of her due to her disability, not allowing her to leave the house alone, even if it was just a couple blocks away. The only person that never treated her differently was her grandfather. She loved him very much and was always excited to spend time with him. Unlike her parents, he supported her love of and want to play music, even giving her some instruments that she played while visiting him, with her favorite and best being the fiddle.
One day, when she was ten, she went to her grandfather's house for the day. While reading in her bedroom there, she heard a noise in a different room. Since her grandfather was making lunch, Yuumi thought nothing of it and kept reading. A couple hours later she got concerned and left the room to find him unconscious in the kitchen. He died at the hospital later that day. After overhearing a doctor say he would have lived if he'd been found sooner, Yuumi's blamed herself for his death. She cried when she learned that, despite having a son, he'd left his beloved pocket watch to her.
After his death, Yuumi spent a lot of time in her room. Most of her time was spent playing the instruments she'd been given. Since the fiddle was her favorite, she played it the most, to the point where one of the strings broke. Her parents refused to get it fixed, as they were worried it might happen again with how she'd been acting.
In order to make sure that nothing happened to any of her other instruments, her parents took them and told her she could only play for a couple hours each day. When she became a middleschooler she hoped they'd ease up on everything, but things continued as usual and extended to her not being able to get a job or join school clubs.
Despite all the restrictions, she was never confined to her room and was allowed to be outside without supervision as long as she stayed in the yard, as well as being able to invite people over and go to others' houses, so she knew her parents were just overreacting due to her circumstances.
Even with the bit of freedom, there were times when she felt smothered and caged up. She was also often bullied, and often times felt like a complete burden. Despite this, she always did her best to stay optimistic, not wanting to worry her parents with everything. She did this by holding onto the hope that she'd have more freedom someday.
When she was fifteen Yuumi finally got an opportunitiy to stay home alone for a couple hours. She used that time to visit her grandfather's grave. It was while going home after this that the carriage came and took her to Twisted Wonderland.
TRIVIA
Her favorite dessert is strawberry cake (extra points if it has chocolate frosting).
Her favorite drink is banana milk.
She's allergic to peaches.
She's a messy eater and gets embarrassed when people point it out.
Even though she can sing, it's not as good as other students, and it greatly annoys her when it is mentioned.
Because she's an introvert she doesn't like how popular she got, though she'll never let that show and refuses to push people away.
She's scared of bugs.
She still has her grandfather's pocket watch because she was holding it when the carriage came for her.
Even though she still blames herself for what happened with her grandfather, she no longer allows it to put her down or depress her since she knows he wouldn't want that.
Some of her favorite memories are playing shogi with her grandfather, gardening with her mother and crafting with her father.
Yuumi knows some unique recipes because she read her grandmother's cookbooks as a way to feel connected to the woman she never got a chance to meet, as she died before Yuumi was born.
Even though she enjoys the freedom she has in Twisted Wonderland, it took a while to not feel gultiy for it, as she didn't want that freedom to be at the cost of transporting to a different world.
Her love language is physical touch.
Yuumi casually mentioned being a girl when Ace said there were no girls officially enrolled as students at NRC. She was very amused at how shocked Ace and Deuce were, and surprised at how quickly it spread.
Ace, Deuce and Grim started calling her Yuu because it felt less weird than saying "Youme" as a name. Since her friends always called her that, it was a name that stuck and is what everyone refers to her as.
After the winter holidays Yuumi started working at the Mostro Lounge on Wednesdays and every other weekend. She sometimes drags Grim along to help out, much to his annoyance.
When it comes to sounds, she can hear normal voices and shouting, as well as loud noises, though, depending on the exact volume, they always sound either farther away or quieter than they actually are, and she can't hear at all when it comes to whispering unless the person is right up against her ear. She sometimes needs help and to ask people to repeat themselves, but all in all she can function fairly well without her hearing aids.
Even though she could magically understand and speak the language of Twisted Wonderland, she's still learning the lip movements, which is why she needs to rely on actually hearing until she gets the hang of it.
Since nobody in Twisted Wonderland treats her differently due to her disability, except when it is absolutely necessary, she stopped wearing her hearing aids in the dorm, usually keeping them by her bed, which led to them also being destroyed and replaced by S.T.Y.X. Her new ones have been modified to be extra durable.
Her deeply buried insecurities about being hard of hearing resurfaced when she went through S.T.Y.X. without her aids, feeling like even more of a burden than she was just from being magicless. This caused her to go through a period where she once again didn't take out her hearing aids except for bathing and sleeping. It wasn't until the Pomefiore boys assured her they never felt that way that the insecurities once again went away and she stopped wearing them in the dorm again.
She has a knack for any instruments she plays.
She bought herself a fiddle in Foothill Town and cried when she played it for the first time, much to the confusion of her friends.
Due to all the stuff she did with the adults in her life back home, she's very good at strategizing, growing plants and fixing/building objects.
On occasion Yuumi likes to stargaze since she sometimes did that with her parents.
There's a lullaby her mother sang to her that Yuumi sometimes sings to herself or Grim. She also sang it to Malleus' egg in Lilia's dream.
She has a sensitive stomach, which makes club activities unpredictable.
The only reason she joined the Gastronomy Club is because Grim refused to even look at others, and they needed to be in the same club as one student.
Her hair was twisted up (with no accessories so she wouldn't stand out to people) when she came to Twisted Wonderland, which is why she wears it that way in school.
She wears her necktie in a bow shape.
Even though it's not a perfect replica, as the materials are different and there's no emblem, Yuumi is proud of herself for coming up with a way to show she belongs to a dorm even if it's not one of the official seven.
After getting back the clothes she'd been wearing before the carriage took her, she started wearing the flannel shirt she'd worn as a nightshirt since it was far too big on her since it had belonged to her grandfather.
She most often wears the boots she'd been wearing when she came, though she did buy more shoe varieties in case of special occasions. She also still occasionally wears the jeans she came in.
Despite prefering a modest style, Yuumi still wears t-shirts and shorts or short skirts on occasion, though she'll usually (but not always) wear something longer underneath them.
She taught herself to fight by watching YouTube videos. Though her stances aren't perfect and she's still a bit clumsy, she can hold up fairly well in a fight.
Due to learning through videos, she doesn't have a specific style she strictly follows.
Despite knowing how to fight, she never considered herself athletic, so she was surprised when she was good at sports.
While she's still not the greatest, she's been told by Silver and Lilia in his dream that she has swordfighting potential.
She writes, draws, and cleans with her right hand, and throws things, plays instruments and cooks with her left hand. For eating she uses whichever hand she feels like.
Her first name, Yuumi, means "gentleness, kindness" (優) and "light, radiance" (光). Her last name, Katou, means "Buddhist deity" (迦) and "unity, unification" (統).
