ren "i'm a dad" amamiya } joker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
phantomshow) wrote2025-05-30 08:21 pm
phantomshow) wrote2025-05-30 08:21 pm
(i'll reveal your true form)
Player: rae.
Contact: Plurk (gothmoth), Discord (gothestmoth), & journal PM are all good!
Age: 40something
Other Characters: N/A
Name: Ren Amamiya (aka Joker)
Canon: Persona 5 Royal
Canon Point: Post-game; True Royal ending
Age:17 18
Backstory: Persona 5 and Royal at Megami Tensei Wiki.
Significant game choices:
+ All Confidants maxed
+ No romance path taken
+ All social stats maxed (Knowledge, Charm, Kindness, Guts, Proficiency)
+ Third semester unlocked
+ All of Maruki’s offers rejected
+ True Royal or “Return” ending achieved
+ Maxed Persona Compendium (minus Satanael, only available in NG+)
Additional game choices related to Akechi (decided on with Mega):
+ Accepted aquarium date
+ Met all of Akechi’s third awakening flags (referred to the two of them as rivals, accepted the Confidant rank 8 duel, remembered their promise after the fight in Shido’s Palace)
+ Spent many nights during third semester with Akechi at the jazz club
Personality: The three core pillars of Ren Amamiya’s personality are an unshakeable sense of justice, a fiercely defiant will, and a near-bottomless heart.
Ren is an outcast in his world. In the before-game story, he interceded on behalf of a woman being assaulted; the man sued, and Ren earned a conviction on false charges. This choice resulted in a year of probation and a reputation as a criminal that followed him from his small rural hometown to Tokyo. Action like this is unusual for a collectivist society like Japan. (Source!) Ren’s defiance of the social order would be viewed as disrespectful, but it is undeniably the right choice to make in following his sense of justice.
After the trauma of his arrest, Ren is quiet and withdrawn, determined to spend the next year flying under the radar, passively enduring the harsh social shunning that follows him. He adopts a meek disposition and wears non-prescription glasses to appear less threatening. However, this facade quickly crumbles when faced with the choice to again intervene to save the life of a stranger, fellow student Ryuji Sakamoto. This moment of rebellion awakens his initial Persona, Arsène, and highlights his tremendous empathy, which also informs his sense of justice.
Ren cares so much about other people, to the point where he regularly places his own safety at risk to help others. He willingly endured capture, drugging, physical abuse, and his potential death in playing out an elaborate stratagem designed to protect his friends. He routinely puts others first as the leader of the Phantom Thieves, taking drastic extralegal actions to right wrongs and reform society with full awareness that his capture would violate his probation. Ren’s personal security is simply less important to him than doing what’s necessary to enact justice.
Nowhere in the game does Ren’s willingness for self-sacrifice manifest more than during Royal’s third semester, where he must choose whether to accept “salvation” from his current painful reality or fight the escapist fantasy he was offered. The “True Royal” ending for this part relies on Ren surrendering his own happiness by refusing the false reality. This world granted his wish for another chance with his Confidant Goro Akechi, a life where Akechi, free of his troubled past, never committed crimes and was never killed in the Metaverse. Winning that battle not only cost Ren his freedom, as he was imprisoned for violating his probation, but it also appeared to cost Akechi’s life. Though distraught, Ren chose to honor his rival’s wishes to “carve his own path” rather than indulge his own desire to keep Akechi alive but a brainwashed husk of his true self.
That same self-sacrificing nature is perhaps Ren’s greatest weakness. While selflessness is a virtue, Ren tends to take it too far. He places himself dead last on any list of priorities, at the expense of his own physical safety and emotional security. A loyal friend and good listener, Ren offers sound advice and support whenever it’s needed, but he gives of himself endlessly while asking very little in return. He has shouldered too much responsibility and been forced to make impossibly hard decisions, and while he has carried those burdens with courage and grace, he does not ask to include his friends in hauling that weight.
He keeps his secrets locked up inside himself, sharing very little of his own suffering. Morgana notes that Ren’s hands shake when signing his name for a video store membership agreement, and we’re meant to infer this is lingering trauma from his previous trial and conviction, with a false confession likely among the documents he was pressured into signing. Idle animation of Ren after the brutal interrogation following Sae’s palace shows him holding the side of his head where he’d been beaten, implying persistent pain, but he never speaks up about it. Ren simply doesn’t address things that bother him, instead focusing on the mission and on helping others through their problems. He uses selflessness as a mask for his own troubles the same way he wears glasses he doesn’t need as armor against the pain of the real world.
He tends to keep quiet, allowing others to carry the conversation, but when he does speak, Ren can be extremely funny. His dialogue choices usually include good-natured jokes, and he uses humor as a tool for breaking tension and reassuring his friends.
Ren typically appears as a calm, collected, and confident young man, but his rebellious side shows more openly in the Metaverse when he acts as Joker, the showy and sometimes reckless leader of the Phantom Thieves. His anger is righteous and well contained, and it stems from witnessing and experiencing injustice, but rather than allow it to fester and corrupt him, he uses it to fuel his actions toward seeing justice done.
Ren is highly resilient and adaptable, taking unexpected conflicts in stride and rising above the odds to change fate. Finding himself spirited away to a desolate wasteland of horrors and forced to endure monstrous bodily transformations will be challenging for him, but Ren thrives in chaos and will meet each trial as he always does - with a grin as sharp as his dagger and the spirit of rebellion blazing within and the iron determination to fight injustice.
Powers/Abilities:
Supernatural
+ Persona user: A Persona is a summonable manifestation of a person’s inner self, often described as a part of that person’s soul or “a mask used to face hardship.” In P5, Personas are awakened by the person’s feelings of rebellion against injustice and desire to fight said injustice.
Ren’s initial Persona is Arsène, which is the Persona he’ll have with him on arrival. While initial Personas for Wild Cards (more on that below) typically don’t reach a high level, due to P5’s Velvet Room and Skill Card shenanigans, it’s possible to create or develop a lower level Persona into one of a higher level and with different skills than they would normally learn. Arsène reappears around the middle of the game wielding two spells that are typically learned by Personas in the mid-60 and up levels, Eigaon and Brave Blade.
+ Eigaon is a Heavy spell of Curse (Dark) magic used against a single target, with a 99% accuracy rate and a cost of 12 SP (aka magic points). For simplicity’s sake, we can say Ren can use this spell about 12 times in a battle before the store of magic power is depleted.
+ Brave Blade is a Physical spell that deals Colossal damage to a single target with a 90% accuracy rate and a 35% chance of the resulting hit being a Critical knock-down. It costs 24% of the user’s health, which means it can really only be used about 4 times in a fight before Ren would become too exhausted to continue and potentially pass out.
Arsène’s innate build gives him a passive resistance to Curse attacks but weaknesses to Bless (Light) and Ice magic.
+ Wild Card variant (dormant): Most people awaken a single Persona. Some, however, possess the potential to collect and use a potentially infinite number of Personas; these people are known as Wild Cards. When this ability is active, Ren is able to carry up to 12 different Personas at a time, and freely switch between them in battle.
Fully realized Wild Cards who have accepted a contract with the Velvet Room (as Ren has) are also able to create and grow bonds with other people (called Confidants in P5, Social Links in P3/P4), which provide the Wild Card with a certain measure of power, depending on how strong the bond has grown. (For purposes of this game, Confidants can just be considered deep connections with another person, without any supernatural gifts involved. TL;DR it’s an extremely intense “power of friendship” sort of thing.)
+ Third Eye (dormant): An ability gifted by a supernatural being that allows Ren to focus his sight well enough to spot hidden treasure, traps, clues, etc.
(To recap: Ren’s 3 allowed powers upon entry are 1) his Persona Arsène, with 2) Eigaon and 3) Brave Blade. Everything else is dormant, subject to potential regain later in the game.)
Mundane
+ Proficient in fighting with knives/daggers
+ Proficient with guns (mostly trained in a shooter video game called Gun About)
+ Some skill in gymnastics (trained with friend who is a competitive rhythmic gymnast)
+ Capable at using a wrist-mounted grappling hook
+ Proficient in stealth (essential for thieving)
+ Proficient with persuasive speech (trained with a skilled public speaker); capable of recruiting Shadows to join his cause/become new Personas and bargain for additional money or items
+ Highly skilled at cooking (mainly curry but other dishes such as those found in a beef bowl shop as well) and preparing coffee (trained by a master barista)
+ Highly proficient in making thief tools (lock picks, smoke bombs, etc.)
+ Some skill at fishing
+ Skilled at precision games like darts, billiards, hitting a baseball at a batting cage
+ Some skill at playing shogi (taught by a friend who is a competitive shogi master)
+ Speed reader
+ Skilled at gathering information and making connections, highly insightful
+ Highly intelligent, skilled at crossword puzzles
+ Capable of driving a vehicle, despite not having a license. He is not known to be the best driver but he at least knows which pedals do what, and he has a year’s worth of experience driving the Monabus in the Metaverse.
+ Some experience with working a small vegetable garden
Inventory: Ren will be wearing his winter casual clothes (black blazer, off-white V-neck sweater, dark blue jeans, brown boots) and his black-frame glasses, which are non-prescription and for aesthetic purposes only. In his jeans pockets, he carries his wallet, cell phone, and a single black leather glove, formerly owned by Goro Akechi, used to challenge Ren to a duel.
He’d also have with him a dark blue shoulder bag, which contains: a book of crossword puzzles, a pen and pencil, the Perma-Pick (reusable lock pick that does not break), a copy of the stargazing guide book Night Skies, a selection of Confidant keepsake items (these unlock abilities in NG+ but for purposes of this game will just be ordinary items of sentimental value - Futaba’s Promise List, Chihaya’s Fortune Tarot Card, Ryuji's Sports Watch, Morgana’s Scarf, Lavenza’s Cell Key, Sojiro’s Recipe Notes, Sae’s Business Card), and FINALLY could he also please have let’s say 3 single doses of Takemedic, a custom blend medicine developed by Ren’s sketchy back alley doctor Confidant Dr. Takemi? It’s a healing item used in the Metaverse to restore 200 HP to a single person but it’s real world medicine, not supernatural in nature.
(Obviously if any of this is Too Much feel free to nix it, I’m just thinking of what Ren would have reasonably packed in his bag during the train trip from Tokyo to the countryside at his point of canon departure.)
Game Plans: The thing that interests me the most about tossing Ren in this game is to see what a Wild Card will do without access to all of the power and resources he’s previously had at his disposal, with the added challenges of adapting to a monster transformation that will test his core values and sense of self. Since Ren is the game’s protagonist, the player is encouraged to pick the “right” answers that lead to overall success, so what we see in the game is usually Ren at his best. I’m interested in exploring what Ren is like when not at his best, by diving into his more negative emotions, and seeing what kind of growth he can achieve from new, more difficult trials that he realistically cannot always win.
Also, he still owes Akechi a rematch to their earlier duel. He promised!!
Monster Choice:
+ Celestial; Angel: This choice is a good fit for Ren’s personality, as a genuinely kind, caring, helpful, and protective person. The compulsion for order would be a great challenge for him, as a Trickster (another name he’s called throughout the game) is more chaos-aligned. Also, his eyes are known to be intense, so giving him many extra eyes all over would be interesting!
+ Infernal; Demon: This choice is the best thematic fit for Ren, being a chaos-aligned Trickster as mentioned above. During the fight against the God of Control, Arsène evolves into Satanael, and it’s noted by another Phantom Thief that the way to defeat a misbehaving god is with a demon lord. However, the challenge for Ren with this monster type would be not giving in to hedonism and going overboard with the chaos to the point of hurting other people.
+ Undead; Vampire: Ren is incredibly self-sufficient and self-sacrificing. Giving him a monster form that forces reliance on other people for survival would be fun to explore.
Vehicle Choice: A Citroën H van with the Spacious quality please!
Sample: Current TDM; Previous TDM.
Contact: Plurk (gothmoth), Discord (gothestmoth), & journal PM are all good!
Age: 40something
Other Characters: N/A
Name: Ren Amamiya (aka Joker)
Canon: Persona 5 Royal
Canon Point: Post-game; True Royal ending
Age:
Backstory: Persona 5 and Royal at Megami Tensei Wiki.
Significant game choices:
+ All Confidants maxed
+ No romance path taken
+ All social stats maxed (Knowledge, Charm, Kindness, Guts, Proficiency)
+ Third semester unlocked
+ All of Maruki’s offers rejected
+ True Royal or “Return” ending achieved
+ Maxed Persona Compendium (minus Satanael, only available in NG+)
Additional game choices related to Akechi (decided on with Mega):
+ Accepted aquarium date
+ Met all of Akechi’s third awakening flags (referred to the two of them as rivals, accepted the Confidant rank 8 duel, remembered their promise after the fight in Shido’s Palace)
+ Spent many nights during third semester with Akechi at the jazz club
Personality: The three core pillars of Ren Amamiya’s personality are an unshakeable sense of justice, a fiercely defiant will, and a near-bottomless heart.
Ren is an outcast in his world. In the before-game story, he interceded on behalf of a woman being assaulted; the man sued, and Ren earned a conviction on false charges. This choice resulted in a year of probation and a reputation as a criminal that followed him from his small rural hometown to Tokyo. Action like this is unusual for a collectivist society like Japan. (Source!) Ren’s defiance of the social order would be viewed as disrespectful, but it is undeniably the right choice to make in following his sense of justice.
After the trauma of his arrest, Ren is quiet and withdrawn, determined to spend the next year flying under the radar, passively enduring the harsh social shunning that follows him. He adopts a meek disposition and wears non-prescription glasses to appear less threatening. However, this facade quickly crumbles when faced with the choice to again intervene to save the life of a stranger, fellow student Ryuji Sakamoto. This moment of rebellion awakens his initial Persona, Arsène, and highlights his tremendous empathy, which also informs his sense of justice.
Ren cares so much about other people, to the point where he regularly places his own safety at risk to help others. He willingly endured capture, drugging, physical abuse, and his potential death in playing out an elaborate stratagem designed to protect his friends. He routinely puts others first as the leader of the Phantom Thieves, taking drastic extralegal actions to right wrongs and reform society with full awareness that his capture would violate his probation. Ren’s personal security is simply less important to him than doing what’s necessary to enact justice.
Nowhere in the game does Ren’s willingness for self-sacrifice manifest more than during Royal’s third semester, where he must choose whether to accept “salvation” from his current painful reality or fight the escapist fantasy he was offered. The “True Royal” ending for this part relies on Ren surrendering his own happiness by refusing the false reality. This world granted his wish for another chance with his Confidant Goro Akechi, a life where Akechi, free of his troubled past, never committed crimes and was never killed in the Metaverse. Winning that battle not only cost Ren his freedom, as he was imprisoned for violating his probation, but it also appeared to cost Akechi’s life. Though distraught, Ren chose to honor his rival’s wishes to “carve his own path” rather than indulge his own desire to keep Akechi alive but a brainwashed husk of his true self.
That same self-sacrificing nature is perhaps Ren’s greatest weakness. While selflessness is a virtue, Ren tends to take it too far. He places himself dead last on any list of priorities, at the expense of his own physical safety and emotional security. A loyal friend and good listener, Ren offers sound advice and support whenever it’s needed, but he gives of himself endlessly while asking very little in return. He has shouldered too much responsibility and been forced to make impossibly hard decisions, and while he has carried those burdens with courage and grace, he does not ask to include his friends in hauling that weight.
He keeps his secrets locked up inside himself, sharing very little of his own suffering. Morgana notes that Ren’s hands shake when signing his name for a video store membership agreement, and we’re meant to infer this is lingering trauma from his previous trial and conviction, with a false confession likely among the documents he was pressured into signing. Idle animation of Ren after the brutal interrogation following Sae’s palace shows him holding the side of his head where he’d been beaten, implying persistent pain, but he never speaks up about it. Ren simply doesn’t address things that bother him, instead focusing on the mission and on helping others through their problems. He uses selflessness as a mask for his own troubles the same way he wears glasses he doesn’t need as armor against the pain of the real world.
He tends to keep quiet, allowing others to carry the conversation, but when he does speak, Ren can be extremely funny. His dialogue choices usually include good-natured jokes, and he uses humor as a tool for breaking tension and reassuring his friends.
Ren typically appears as a calm, collected, and confident young man, but his rebellious side shows more openly in the Metaverse when he acts as Joker, the showy and sometimes reckless leader of the Phantom Thieves. His anger is righteous and well contained, and it stems from witnessing and experiencing injustice, but rather than allow it to fester and corrupt him, he uses it to fuel his actions toward seeing justice done.
Ren is highly resilient and adaptable, taking unexpected conflicts in stride and rising above the odds to change fate. Finding himself spirited away to a desolate wasteland of horrors and forced to endure monstrous bodily transformations will be challenging for him, but Ren thrives in chaos and will meet each trial as he always does - with a grin as sharp as his dagger and the spirit of rebellion blazing within and the iron determination to fight injustice.
Powers/Abilities:
Supernatural
+ Persona user: A Persona is a summonable manifestation of a person’s inner self, often described as a part of that person’s soul or “a mask used to face hardship.” In P5, Personas are awakened by the person’s feelings of rebellion against injustice and desire to fight said injustice.
Ren’s initial Persona is Arsène, which is the Persona he’ll have with him on arrival. While initial Personas for Wild Cards (more on that below) typically don’t reach a high level, due to P5’s Velvet Room and Skill Card shenanigans, it’s possible to create or develop a lower level Persona into one of a higher level and with different skills than they would normally learn. Arsène reappears around the middle of the game wielding two spells that are typically learned by Personas in the mid-60 and up levels, Eigaon and Brave Blade.
+ Eigaon is a Heavy spell of Curse (Dark) magic used against a single target, with a 99% accuracy rate and a cost of 12 SP (aka magic points). For simplicity’s sake, we can say Ren can use this spell about 12 times in a battle before the store of magic power is depleted.
+ Brave Blade is a Physical spell that deals Colossal damage to a single target with a 90% accuracy rate and a 35% chance of the resulting hit being a Critical knock-down. It costs 24% of the user’s health, which means it can really only be used about 4 times in a fight before Ren would become too exhausted to continue and potentially pass out.
Arsène’s innate build gives him a passive resistance to Curse attacks but weaknesses to Bless (Light) and Ice magic.
+ Wild Card variant (dormant): Most people awaken a single Persona. Some, however, possess the potential to collect and use a potentially infinite number of Personas; these people are known as Wild Cards. When this ability is active, Ren is able to carry up to 12 different Personas at a time, and freely switch between them in battle.
Fully realized Wild Cards who have accepted a contract with the Velvet Room (as Ren has) are also able to create and grow bonds with other people (called Confidants in P5, Social Links in P3/P4), which provide the Wild Card with a certain measure of power, depending on how strong the bond has grown. (For purposes of this game, Confidants can just be considered deep connections with another person, without any supernatural gifts involved. TL;DR it’s an extremely intense “power of friendship” sort of thing.)
+ Third Eye (dormant): An ability gifted by a supernatural being that allows Ren to focus his sight well enough to spot hidden treasure, traps, clues, etc.
(To recap: Ren’s 3 allowed powers upon entry are 1) his Persona Arsène, with 2) Eigaon and 3) Brave Blade. Everything else is dormant, subject to potential regain later in the game.)
Mundane
+ Proficient in fighting with knives/daggers
+ Proficient with guns (mostly trained in a shooter video game called Gun About)
+ Some skill in gymnastics (trained with friend who is a competitive rhythmic gymnast)
+ Capable at using a wrist-mounted grappling hook
+ Proficient in stealth (essential for thieving)
+ Proficient with persuasive speech (trained with a skilled public speaker); capable of recruiting Shadows to join his cause/become new Personas and bargain for additional money or items
+ Highly skilled at cooking (mainly curry but other dishes such as those found in a beef bowl shop as well) and preparing coffee (trained by a master barista)
+ Highly proficient in making thief tools (lock picks, smoke bombs, etc.)
+ Some skill at fishing
+ Skilled at precision games like darts, billiards, hitting a baseball at a batting cage
+ Some skill at playing shogi (taught by a friend who is a competitive shogi master)
+ Speed reader
+ Skilled at gathering information and making connections, highly insightful
+ Highly intelligent, skilled at crossword puzzles
+ Capable of driving a vehicle, despite not having a license. He is not known to be the best driver but he at least knows which pedals do what, and he has a year’s worth of experience driving the Monabus in the Metaverse.
+ Some experience with working a small vegetable garden
Inventory: Ren will be wearing his winter casual clothes (black blazer, off-white V-neck sweater, dark blue jeans, brown boots) and his black-frame glasses, which are non-prescription and for aesthetic purposes only. In his jeans pockets, he carries his wallet, cell phone, and a single black leather glove, formerly owned by Goro Akechi, used to challenge Ren to a duel.
He’d also have with him a dark blue shoulder bag, which contains: a book of crossword puzzles, a pen and pencil, the Perma-Pick (reusable lock pick that does not break), a copy of the stargazing guide book Night Skies, a selection of Confidant keepsake items (these unlock abilities in NG+ but for purposes of this game will just be ordinary items of sentimental value - Futaba’s Promise List, Chihaya’s Fortune Tarot Card, Ryuji's Sports Watch, Morgana’s Scarf, Lavenza’s Cell Key, Sojiro’s Recipe Notes, Sae’s Business Card), and FINALLY could he also please have let’s say 3 single doses of Takemedic, a custom blend medicine developed by Ren’s sketchy back alley doctor Confidant Dr. Takemi? It’s a healing item used in the Metaverse to restore 200 HP to a single person but it’s real world medicine, not supernatural in nature.
(Obviously if any of this is Too Much feel free to nix it, I’m just thinking of what Ren would have reasonably packed in his bag during the train trip from Tokyo to the countryside at his point of canon departure.)
Game Plans: The thing that interests me the most about tossing Ren in this game is to see what a Wild Card will do without access to all of the power and resources he’s previously had at his disposal, with the added challenges of adapting to a monster transformation that will test his core values and sense of self. Since Ren is the game’s protagonist, the player is encouraged to pick the “right” answers that lead to overall success, so what we see in the game is usually Ren at his best. I’m interested in exploring what Ren is like when not at his best, by diving into his more negative emotions, and seeing what kind of growth he can achieve from new, more difficult trials that he realistically cannot always win.
Also, he still owes Akechi a rematch to their earlier duel. He promised!!
Monster Choice:
+ Celestial; Angel: This choice is a good fit for Ren’s personality, as a genuinely kind, caring, helpful, and protective person. The compulsion for order would be a great challenge for him, as a Trickster (another name he’s called throughout the game) is more chaos-aligned. Also, his eyes are known to be intense, so giving him many extra eyes all over would be interesting!
+ Infernal; Demon: This choice is the best thematic fit for Ren, being a chaos-aligned Trickster as mentioned above. During the fight against the God of Control, Arsène evolves into Satanael, and it’s noted by another Phantom Thief that the way to defeat a misbehaving god is with a demon lord. However, the challenge for Ren with this monster type would be not giving in to hedonism and going overboard with the chaos to the point of hurting other people.
+ Undead; Vampire: Ren is incredibly self-sufficient and self-sacrificing. Giving him a monster form that forces reliance on other people for survival would be fun to explore.
Vehicle Choice: A Citroën H van with the Spacious quality please!
Sample: Current TDM; Previous TDM.