What the Fuck is Up with Yukito Takeuchi: the Post
Alright, I promised that if he endgamed I'd write a massive psychological essay on Yukito and his Big Singular Backstory Spoiler and how that affected his character growth. This particular thing forms the entire basis for his character, to be completely honest-- in fact it was one of the very first things I decided about him. His entire character was made on a dare of sorts.
Someone told me that it was impossible to write an otherkin character and have them be taken seriously. I decided to take up that offer.
Instead, let's talk about how his brain works. When I was trying to settle on a personality for him, I realized I'd have to figure out how to write a horse in a human body that'd picked up on some human habits and social customs. Meaning I'd need to work through how a horse thinks. After doing a lot of research I will give my non-professional opinion on the matter: horses are afraid of fucking everything. EVERYTHING. You see, a horse's first and nearly only defense is to run. They're extremely fragile creatures (just about any injury is a death sentence, especially if it's to their legs) and they're not built to fight back at all. They can do quite a lot of damage if they do opt to engage someone, if a horse kicks a human in the head, they'll probably suffer brain damage if they don't outright die, but that is an absolute last resort. Ergo, 'stand and fight' is not an option when they are confronted. Their first reaction to anything unfamiliar is to panic and run.
Thus, Yukito's world is permeated by a haze of nearly-constant fear of everything around him, which can be negated if he has the safety of a familiar group. Horses, after all, are herd animals, and their second line of defense is being in a group. He strongly prefers the company of horses to humans simply because he has a better innate understanding of their behavior. They're safer and easier to deal with for him. Humans, by comparison, are pretty inexplicable. Social conventions are actually quite complex and difficult to learn, especially if you started out five years behind everyone else around you and you already have a nervous, perfectionist disposition. So, generally speaking, he didn't bother trying to integrate with his peers.
Competing only changed some of that. It did make him a bit more confident, but the biggest thing it did for him was teaching him how to swallow his fear long enough to put up a convincingly calm 'stage persona' of sorts. Dressage in particular emphasizes the aptitude of the rider, and seeming serene and in tune with your environment is a big part of that. He still avoided dealing with other riders (he prefers the company of horses, again) so he kind of accrued a bad reputation in the showing world as a snobby rich foreign kid. I like to imagine he got some kind of backhanded nickname along the lines of "The Ice Prince" (it's funny because you spell his name with the kanji for snow) (also Olympic dressage rider Isabell Werth was known as the Ice Princess in her younger years.)
Incidentally, the fact he thinks like a horse does is one of the reasons he's an outstanding competitor-- he works extremely well with horses of all kinds, and the level of unity between him and Pelleas (the horse he uses for most of his events) is unmatched. And while knowing the horse you're working with is basically a requirement for any sport involving horses, it's particularly important in dressage and eventing (which includes a dressage phase,) the two that he's the most known for. Pelleas being a fast learner helped but as bad as he is at teaching humans, Yukito is very, very good at teaching horses how to do the things they need to do. He's extremely gentle, patient, good at creating a safe and stable environment (because he knows exactly what will scare a horse,) and can intuitively 'get' a horse's personality and how to work with them the same way a people person can 'get' a human. Because of that, Pelleas was able to start in a bunch of events young and they had a lot of time to gain experience (they both started the moment they could age in to any given discipline, more or less.)
Anyway, long story short, Yukito never had any human friends and his parents were always deeply concerned about that but had no idea what to do because they're really loving, doting people but...not exactly the best parents in the world and never gave him a whole lot of direction. He'd be a huge mess if he hadn't grown up being around horses and being heavily involved in equestrian sports. Hope's Peak was supposed to be his big second chance, to start over in a place where nobody knew his reputation and make some human friends! He wanted to make his parents proud and he knew they were pushing for it (they'd asked him to do it and they almost never ask him to do anything) so he accepted without any second thoughts.
I think we all know how that turned out. Predespair Yukito probably made some friends (he probably ran in about the same circles he did ingame, plus Moko since the only reason they never got along ingame is that everything that could have gone wrong with their relationship went wrong) and had a massive unrequited crush on Kaede and Nana but never confessed to either of them.
Look, it took a bunch of people dying and mental breakdowns on both sides for him to say absolutely anything to Kaede, what do you expect? With Kaede in particular it was one of those things where everyone knew it, up to and including them, but neither of them could say anything to the other.
(I should probably do an essay sometime about why his three closest friends/The Six Hope Shards Crew were all Very Important People to him, but that's another textwall for another time. I can briefly bring up Kaede though-- Kaede was Very Important because of how stoic she was. Yukito really, really admired that and when she helped him in the first trial he sort of went <3 and had confusing kind of romantic feelings for her that he finally acknowledged after their secret exchange, but opted to not admit out of fear that she would reject him for being 'crazy.')
(RIGHT speaking of that I should also talk about how his parents reacted to the otherkin thing really quick-- long story short, Yukito sees his secret as being deeply shameful due to the way they treated it when he brought it up with him. He'd said he was a horse for years and years, and when he was like five they saw it as a cute little kid thing. When he was thirteen and advancing through the competitive ranks and already starting to have a bad reputation, it wasn't so cute anymore. They basically told him 'You know we love you, but that whole "I'm a horse" thing? Don't tell that to anyone else ever again.' And again, Yukito will do anything for his parents, so he shut up about it forever until Kaede happened.)
The mutual killing fucked him up pretty badly because he was reasonably sure he'd be targeted early on. You can see how strong his flight response is in a couple of his earlier threads (sorry I'll dig up links later, just take my word on this one.) He tried to mostly avoid being seen in trials even when he was trying to help (and he wanted to help, if only to avoid dying, though being better liked/seen as useful was a nice bonus.) And then the second trial happened.
Yukito figured out Nana was probably being framed very early on, as in not long after taking a look at the hairs (because if you moved a body to cover up where you killed someone, why would you leave a piece of evidence as obvious as that lying around?) He panicked almost right away and figured as Nana's Partner in Justice/friend he had to defend her because it was very possible nobody else would.
Well, he kind of succeeded! He at least got Nana off the chopping block. For the record, what he was going to say in the trial to try and convince people to not take his place was "I'm not even human." So he almost dropped his secret there, but stopped just short of saying it.
SPEAKING OF WHICH. A lot of people were apparently confused by the nature of Goro's "execution" in chapter two. It'd probably clear things up a lot to say that was intended for Yukito (which is why it was written by me.) The execution (which evanescent-espirit helped me come up with) was supposed to exploit the fact that he a.) sees himself as a prey animal, b.) acts like one, and c.) losing his legs is literally the worst thing that could happen to him. Not just because it'd make riding almost impossible without a highly specialized saddle, but it'd mean that his primary and most reliable defense against any attempts on his life would be unusable. A horse that can't run is a dead horse.
(Also I can't believe only one person outright guessed his secret after Hajiro's trial-- his and Kaede's response titles were meant to be read back to back. "But We're Only Human." "Well, Not All of Us.")
Back to the second trial, the reason why Yukito hated Moko for so long and why he hated her more than Kimi, who actually did most of the work for the framing attempt, is mostly because Moko and Nana had actually...kind of gotten along and could be considered acquaintances. Betraying your friend/friend-ish person is like The Worst Thing You Can Do Ever to him because herd mentality, more or less (also because he has so few friends himself he wouldn't want to do anything to lose them.) The fact that they were just trying to find a way to force a tie in the votes didn't matter to him, because wasn't it true that most people were fine with the idea of saving someone's life, especially since they were all reasonably sure it was an accident at that point. So why couldn't she have been honest and admitted it? As far as he was concerned what she (and by extension Hasumi and Kimi) did could have got Nana killed if Yukito hadn't worked so hard to make sure he could prove Nana was innocent.
They almost made up when Moko let him into Nana's room after her death but then Moko decided she didn't want to hold a mastermind vote after Nana's trial and ooooooooh boy did that ever make him livid. Nana had one request for her and she couldn't do it. They both read the suicide note together, they both knew she'd died for it, and Yukito had come in (with the wrong suspect in mind...) fully intending to have a mastermind vote and leave. And Moko backing out in his eyes let the other two (whom he was reasonably sure were Chouko and Mona) also back out their votes, which as far as he knew led to them not getting to have the mastermind vote. So Nana died for nothing. I said in his app he's not actually as virtuous as people might think-- it's more like his singular virtue is absolute loyalty. His values will usually reflect the values of those around him-- previously it was those of his parents, Nana kind of took the place of being his moral compass in the mutual killing scenario, and then once she died you could see him mirroring Kaede the most strongly. That's also why Nana's death fucked him up so much and you see him actually raise his voice for the first time ever in that trial. He was keeping it together because that's what Nana would have wanted, and because if he tried to do his usual thing and keep it civil people would be more likely to try and hold the mastermind vote. And when that didn't happen...well...he sort of lost all faith in humanity at that point. They were all gonna die because even when someone who was gentle and good and pure died to give them a chance to get out, they wouldn't take it.
(Also he was almost positive at that point Mona had been the one to screw up the suicide, and since Moko revealed by talking in English-- which he speaks fluently-- that she'd had a conversation with Mona at some point in time, he thought she was covering for someone. Again. Which gave him twice the reason to hate her.)
So what does the future hold for Yukito? Well...it's not looking good for a while unless endgame makes it better/worse. He's gone from being mildly afraid of humans to what could be a full-blown case of anthropophobia, and he definitely has PTSD at this point if the screaming nightmares about finding his friends dead/dying himself weren't enough of an indication. It's going to take him years to recover, and he probably won't be able to compete in anything other than endurance riding just because he won't be able to handle crowds. I think Nyneve should be aged in by the time he gets out, so theoretically he'd be able to compete at a much higher level but it comes down to a question of whether or not he'd want to ride with her, he might just want to spend time with Pelleas instead because Pelleas is practically his brother at this point since they grew up together.
Given a few years and a looooooooot of therapy, he'd probably decide to start doing hippotherapy for PTSD victims like himself. It'd be his way of contributing something positive to the world and making up for the fact he's technically implicit in the deaths of a lot of people.
And that's about everything I wanted to cover! If you actually stuck around for this whole essay you're a trooper and I salute you. o7 If this fails to answer any questions, please send me some! I love talking OCs and whatnot. I might do an addendum later if there's enough interest.