[OOC: Profile]
Mun alias: Haley
E-mail: BrightBlueInk@hotmail
Messenger name: BrightBlueInk (AIM)
Previous RP experience (if any): On my current game, Polychromatic, I play three characters:
From Princess Tutu:
Ahiru (quackingly.livejournal.com)
Autor (freakyfanboy.livejournal.com)
And from Chrono Crusade:
Chrono (tenmorehours.livejournal.com)
I also used to play an AU version of Mytho over at sortinghat_rp. (magicalmophead.livejournal.com)
Both RPs are more journal-based than logged based, but here’s a log I’ve done to show that I’m comfortable with logging:
http://community.livejournal.com/sortinghat_logs/393186.html
Character's full name: Prince Siegfried, AKA Mytho
Series: Princess Tutu
Gender: Male
Age: Unknown-he looks like a teenager, but was probably around Kinkan for a good ten years without aging a day.
Personality: In the show, Mytho really has something like three personalities.
Prince Siegfried, his true personality, is something we only see in full for around two episodes, but between those episodes, the information we’re given about him in The Prince and the Raven, and the glimpses of his personality we see with the heart shards, we can have a pretty good guess of what his personality is like.
The most important part of Siegfried’s personality is his love for people. The storybook he’s from says he was a Prince who “loved everyone and was loved by everyone.” He’s selfless and wishes the best for everyone, and he’ll do anything to ensure others are safe and happy, even if it means that he has to make sacrifices. It’s not that he doesn’t value his own life-he simply values others more. It’s both his greatest strength and his biggest flaw-it endears him to other people and shows what a truly good person he is, but it also has potential to put him in danger. Not that he himself minds-he’s strong, quietly confident and brave, and a trained warrior. He’ll face any danger that comes his way to protect others.
He also seems a little naïve, but very curious, particularly when it comes to others. He wants to understand how things work and how people think.
However, Siegfried was so willing to sacrifice for others that when a monstrous Raven threatened his Kingdom, he used forbidden magic to seal the Raven away, at the cost of shattering his heart. This gave rise to the main personality we see of him in the series, named “Mytho” by the boy who found him when he couldn’t remember his true name. Without his heart, his thoughts and emotions were almost completely gone, making him a shell of his former self. If someone asked him to do something, he’d do it, simply because he didn’t know better. He could barely feel pain or temperature, and when asked a question about his personal thoughts and feelings, all he could respond with is “I don’t know” or “not really”.
However, even without his heart, his love for people could still not be completely taken away from him. He’d do anything to protect others who were weak or helpless, but without his heart he could no longer assess danger at all: he’d run into a burning building to save a bird trapped in a cage, he’d jump out a window to protect a baby bird from a hawk…all with a near impassive look on his face.
Another thing that stayed with him was his love for dance. He’d spend much of his time dancing, although without his heart his dancing was technically perfect but emotionally dead.
However, as he slowly regained his heart, bits and pieces of his emotions and personality began to return to him. Out of all of his emotions, the ones that seemed to have the most affect on him when returned were likely Loneliness, Curiosity, Affection and Love.
While his emotions were being returned to him, the piece of his heart that contained Love was tainted with the blood of the Raven, corrupting his heart and showing one final, twisted personality. Under the influence of the evil poisoning his heart, Mytho-instead of loving everyone-wished to be loved by everyone, and also sought to sacrifice a pure maiden’s heart to the Raven in order to strengthen him. This Mytho, the “Raven Prince,” was selfish, emotionally and physically abusive towards those he’d been previously close to, and steadily growing insane as the blood took over his heart. He manipulated people by playing on their hopes and fears, and (probably with the aid of magic) made girls believe they loved him so much they’d be willing to give their own hearts to him. Fortunately, he was always stopped before he could complete the sacrifice.
Since Mytho had much of his heart back when this tainting started to take place, he struggled against the curse, which lead to the appearance of having two personalities inhabiting the same body-in fact, he even calls the affects of the Raven’s blood taking over his heart “another me”. As the evil blood begins to take him over, his true side becomes more and more weakened, but he fought with it until the curse ended-when someone confessed their love for him and broke the curse. He was then returned to his true personality as the Prince who loved all.
Fairy tale/myth/legend: The Little Mermaid
Role: The Mermaid (….merman?)
Kingdom territory of origin: He would appear to be a Northerner/European, but obviously he’d have to be from the ocean…
Adaptation: Prince Siegfried was the youngest son of the widowed King of mermaids, and was a merman himself. He was known among his people for his gentle, kind heart, and all of the mermaids loved him, and he, them. His greatest wish was to see those around him happy and smiling.
Siegfried, however, was also a very curious young merman, and was fascinated with the people who lived in the lands above the sea and called themselves humans. Until he was old enough to be allowed to swim up to the surface himself, he had to be contented with the stories of others who had swum out of the sea. Every time one of the mermen went up out of the sea for the first time, he would approach them and ask them question after question about the things they had seen, and they would tell him of sunsets and ships and rivers and towns and the humans that played along the beach.
Finally, the young Prince reached his fifteenth birthday, the traditional day for a merman to be allowed to swim out of the sea and see the lands above. He swam out to the sea and delighted in seeing the sun’s rays reflecting on the surface of the water, and the sand of the shores, and the beach where people walked and the town where they lived. Once he was allowed, he often went to the surface of the sea and delighted in all the new things he could discover.
One day, when he swam up out of the waves and looked around, he saw a ship full of people dressed in royal finery. They were celebrating their Prince’s sixteenth birthday, and as the ship sailed they danced on the decks. Siegfried watched the people dance on the decks in wonder, surprised that they could look so graceful even though they didn’t have fins and weren’t in the water.
As he watched he noticed a girl sitting away from the crowd, watching the dancers with sad, lonely eyes. Siegfried saw the girl and wished that he could cheer her up, and slowly began to swim closer and closer to her place on the boat so he could say or do something to make her smile-when a young boy timidly approached the girl and stretched out his hand, asking her if he could dance with her. The girl’s eyes lit up and she smiled, saying she would love to as she took the boy’s hand. The little merman watched as the couple faded into the crowd and started to dance, his golden eyes wide. If he could dance, would he make others happy, as well?
The Prince watched the humans on the boat for hours, carefully memorizing every detail, and watching as the human prince accepted gifts from the guests in attendance. Siegfried thought that surely the people there must all love the human prince as all of the merpeople loved him, but the prince’s face didn’t show a hint of a smile as he looked at the gifts, and to Siegfried his eyes seemed as lonely as the girl who had been left out of the dance. Surprised, Siegfried watched closely, wondering why the other prince would be so lonely, even when he was surrounded by so many from his kingdom.
The human prince soon drifted away to a quiet, unoccupied area of the boat as the party moved on to other festivities, and Siegfried followed him, watching him silently and studying him. They stayed this way for a while, and Siegfried vaguely noticed that the waves seemed to be crashing a little higher, the wind blowing through his hair a little stronger. He mostly noticed this because the waves were carrying him closer and closer to the deck where the human prince stood, and he was silently debating whether to make his presence known and ask the human boy what was wrong, or to hide. He was still pondering this when the storm that had been gathering strength began to put its full force against the party ship. The ship rocked violently and began to roll quickly through the waves, as the people on the boat began to scatter around, searching for safe places to hide until the storm’s passing. Siegfried watched in horror as a great wave swept onto the ship, crashing onto the lonely part of the deck where the human prince had retreated, and dragged the boy overboard and out into the sea.
Siegfried knew, because of stories of the bodies of sailors that had been shipwrecked floating down into the depths of the sea, that a human could not live in the ocean like mermen do, and if the prince remained in the water he would drown. So he dived under the waves and caught the human boy as he fell, and brought him back to the surface of the sea, struggling to keep his head above the water until the storm finally subsided. Then, he took the other prince to the shore and remained as long as he dared, before the sound of approaching human voices startled him and sent him swimming back to the sea.
Once he returned to his father’s kingdom, Siegfried could not help but start to wonder about the things he had seen: the people dancing aboard the ship, how happy the lonely girl looked when she was brought into the dance, and how strangely lonely the prince had seemed, and if he had succeeded in saving the human prince’s life. The more he thought about it, the more his thoughts consumed him. In his own kingdom the people felt happy and loved, and his father had other sons to help the populace. But in the lands above the sea people seemed lonely and unhappy unless they danced. But with his fins, he could neither dance or walk on the shore and inquire about the state of the prince. His curiosity and affection for the humans who lived on land finally consumed him, so he did something that was forbidden: he sought the help of the sea witch.
He told the witch of his desire for legs so that he could go to the land and dance with the people there. The witch told him that she could make for him a potion which would split his fin into human legs, but if he did so he must give her payment-his ability to communicate. The Prince, believing the witch meant his voice, was saddened at the thought of being unable to speak to others, but he agreed, thinking that he could replace speech with the gift of being able to dance. But the witch was crafty-she didn’t mean his voice at all. The witch was jealous of the love the people had for Prince Siegfried and craved it for her own-she believed that if she had the prince’s pure heart she would be granted the merpeople’s love, and she knew that without his heart the prince would be unable to feel emotion or communicate his true thoughts. And so she tricked the Prince into giving his heart to her. As soon as he agreed to the payment, the witch fed the prince the potion, then, as his fins were splitting into legs, took out an enchanted blade and plunged it into his chest, taking out his heart for her own. Siegfried screamed in pain, realizing only then the payment the witch had truly demanded, but then the pain died, and his heart left his chest and went into the witch’s hands. She laughed, sure now that she had won the love of the kingdom-but the pure heart could not stand the evil of the witch and it shattered in her hands, the pieces scattering and floating out to the land where the Prince had desired with all his heart to make others happy. One piece of his heart sliced the witch’s hand as it fled from her, and so went to the land above stained with her blood.
The witch, furious, sought to kill the Siegfried for how his heart had rejected her, but at that moment his brothers found him with the witch and chased her away. They knew that Siegfried, now a human, would die if he remained in the water, and so-even though they mourned the fact that they could no longer see their brother if they did what they were about to do-they brought him to the shore above and carefully left him there, quickly swimming away before any humans could see them.
This is where Siegfried (Mytho) will start in Mukashi: the human prince (Fakir) will find him on the shore and give him the name of Mytho, then take him back to the palace to take care of him.
As for Mytho’s shattered heart, just like the show, he will be able to retrieve his emotions and have them returned to him. I’m thinking there will be two ways this will be possible:
(1) True to the original anime, the pieces of Mytho’s heart will seek people (that is, other characters) who are affected greatly by the emotion they represent and possess their hearts, heightening the emotion to unhealthy levels. If we do this, it’d probably be best to have the emotions affect characters one at a time-since, understandably, whoever has their character possessed won’t want them to be affected by this forever, and it would probably take Fakir and Mytho a while to travel around the various kingdoms trying to collect all the heartshards if everyone was possessed at once. (Also, this would ensure that Mytho wouldn’t get all of his heart too quickly…and, well, it’d just be easier in general to control the pace in which his heart is returned.)
However, since the RP is pretty small right now and new, and since players would probably be wary of having something so dramatic affect their characters right when they start playing them (aaaand understandably, when you think about it), there’s a second option for how he’ll regain his heart:
(2) If Mytho is in a situation that-under normal circumstances-would cause him to feel the emotion VERY strongly, the heart shard will resonate and feel him calling out to be restored to his heart, and the shard will return. However, this would have to have enough on an affect on Mytho to justify this. For example, to regain fear, it wouldn’t be as simple as someone jumping out and surprising him in a way that would make a normal person start a little. It would have to be a scene where Mytho is truly frightened to the point that, say, his life or someone he cares about would be in danger.
[Later edit: I'll probably be doing option #1 if I can't get enough players, since the mods reacted really favorably to the idea.]
I’m going to be sticking to the emotions that the anime uses for his heart shards: Disappointment, Loneliness, Sorrow, Affection, Fear, Curiosity, Regret, Devotion, Love, and Pride. (Hooopefully I’m remembering all those right, I’ll be double-checking as I go along to make sure I don’t miss any.) I’ll probably go in mostly the same order, as well, but I might skip around a little if it benefits the plot.
Also: like I mentioned in the more fairytale-like story above, the piece containing Love was tainted by the blood of the sea witch. This means that when Love is returned to him (whether it possesses another person or object and is then found and returned to him normally, or an event causes it to “resonate” and return on its own), the evil blood of the witch will begin to take over his heart and twist his personality and emotions in a way very similar to the “Raven Prince” from the original anime, with one change: instead of trying to find a heart to sacrifice for the Raven he will be filled with the witch’s selfish desire to place all focus on herself. He will seek other’s love without giving any of his own in return (not just romantic love, but any sort of affection or admiration), and if he cannot receive this, he will actively work against other’s happiness and “happy endings” (with varying degrees of success, of course). Since this will be a pretty dramatic change for him and make it that much harder for certain emotions to be returned to him, Love should probably be one of the later emotions he has returned to him.
One last condition to both help motivate Fakir and Mytho to want to search for the heart shards and to tie in an element from the original fairytale: as long as Mytho is without his heart, his feet will slowly but steadily start to be more and more painful to dance on. In a way, this is almost as if his legs (which are magical) reminding him that the wish that made him want to have them in the first place is fairly impossible without being able to feel things like devotion and affection.
Current area of residence: He’ll start the game on the shore by the bay and be taken to live at Prince Fakir’s castle nearby the town of Mundi soon afterwards.
Sample journal entry:
I keep trying to stop myself from thinking about it, but I can’t.
That prince, sitting on the boat all by himself…it seemed like all of those people were there for him, weren’t they? There for his birthday, it sounded like. So why did he distance himself so much from them? I don’t understand. When I had my birthday party, I was glad that everyone had come to wish me a happy one. I wished I had more time to talk to all of them! But…it seemed like he didn’t want to be there at all. How strange…
He seemed so lonely. But if he’s lonely, he’s doing it to himself, isn’t he? …Or is he?
Of course, I don’t know for sure that he even survived falling from the boat…I think I managed to keep his head out of the water most of the time…was it just their heads that humans need to keep out of the water? Or was it something else? I hope it’s just their head…
I wish I could go and see for myself. And I wish I could dance and make others happy like that boy…if both the girl and the prince were lonely…are humans themselves lonely? If I learned to dance, could I make them all feel happy again? Would they smile? I want to know!
If I had legs, then I could learn to dance, and I could walk on the land with humans, couldn’t I?
…Everyone here is happy…but there’s people on the land that are lonely…
I’ve heard the sea witch has the power to grant wishes…would she be able to give me legs? I know we’re not supposed to talk to her, but…I just want to help people. That’s not a bad thing, right?
I think I will ask her.
Roleplay sample:
The boy watched everything with empty, lonely eyes.
Mytho couldn’t understand why he found the dancing so magical, but he did. The girl with a blue dress twirling around on the dance floor reminded him of the waves of the sea. Which was important to him because…why?
The seashells the girls wore on strings around their neck would have made his heart ache, if it was in his chest to begin with. But-although you couldn’t tell by looking at his him, except for the detached look in his eyes-it had been taken away and shattered. So now, no matter how much any reminder of his former home might have made him miss his father and his brothers who lived under the sea, he could not remember them. Even if he did, he wouldn’t have missed them. The love he had for them, for his people, for his home under the waves, was gone, along with every emotion he’d ever felt. Everything, but…
He suddenly stood up from his chair and walked through the dancing couples, slowly, until he reached the center of the room. He paused there, just for a moment, then went up on his toes and started to dance. It was graceful, technically excellent. He took into account the tempo of the music, every beat, and he glided across the floor so beautifully that the couples slowly stopped in the middle of their dance to turn and watch him. He was, truly, one of the best dancers they’d ever seen…
Except that there was no emotion in his dance. There was no joy or sadness communicated, no longing, no expression at all. His face had the same impassive, detached expression it always did. It was as if his soul had flown out of his body. Murmuring amongst themselves, the couples turned back to their dance, whirling around the heartless boy, a sea of warm, welcoming emotion standing in contrast to the lonely dancer at the center of the floor.
The song was nearly finished when the girl in the blue dress twirled with her partner and leaned against the heel of her shoe…which promptly snapped. She gasped, her hands slipping out of her partner’s, and braced herself for the impact of falling against the floor…
Which never came. Instead, a pair of gentle but strong arms had wrapped around her, stopping her fall. She opened her eyes, expecting to see her darling Christopher’s face, only to look up into a pair of distant golden eyes. “O-Oh!” was all she could make out as she jumped out of Mytho’s arms. “I-I’m sorry, I-“
“Judith! Judith, are you alright?”
The Prince and the girl both turned to watch as Christopher ran to her side. “I’m fine!” she said quickly, waving a hand dismissively and getting up to her feet, careful not to put weight on her broken shoe. She turned to the boy sitting on the floor. “Thank you, but that was almost a little silly. Why would you dive like that just to save someone from a trip on the floor?”
Mytho blinked, an ever-so-faint frown on his face as he considered the girl’s question. Why? That was an odd question. Wasn’t it? But she wanted to know…why did he catch her? He paused carefully, drawing in a soft breath as he considered the question, before staring up unblinkingly at the girl as he gave his honest answer.
“I don’t know.”
E-mail: BrightBlueInk@hotmail
Messenger name: BrightBlueInk (AIM)
Previous RP experience (if any): On my current game, Polychromatic, I play three characters:
From Princess Tutu:
Ahiru (quackingly.livejournal.com)
Autor (freakyfanboy.livejournal.com)
And from Chrono Crusade:
Chrono (tenmorehours.livejournal.com)
I also used to play an AU version of Mytho over at sortinghat_rp. (magicalmophead.livejournal.com)
Both RPs are more journal-based than logged based, but here’s a log I’ve done to show that I’m comfortable with logging:
http://community.livejournal.com/sortinghat_logs/393186.html
Character's full name: Prince Siegfried, AKA Mytho
Series: Princess Tutu
Gender: Male
Age: Unknown-he looks like a teenager, but was probably around Kinkan for a good ten years without aging a day.
Personality: In the show, Mytho really has something like three personalities.
Prince Siegfried, his true personality, is something we only see in full for around two episodes, but between those episodes, the information we’re given about him in The Prince and the Raven, and the glimpses of his personality we see with the heart shards, we can have a pretty good guess of what his personality is like.
The most important part of Siegfried’s personality is his love for people. The storybook he’s from says he was a Prince who “loved everyone and was loved by everyone.” He’s selfless and wishes the best for everyone, and he’ll do anything to ensure others are safe and happy, even if it means that he has to make sacrifices. It’s not that he doesn’t value his own life-he simply values others more. It’s both his greatest strength and his biggest flaw-it endears him to other people and shows what a truly good person he is, but it also has potential to put him in danger. Not that he himself minds-he’s strong, quietly confident and brave, and a trained warrior. He’ll face any danger that comes his way to protect others.
He also seems a little naïve, but very curious, particularly when it comes to others. He wants to understand how things work and how people think.
However, Siegfried was so willing to sacrifice for others that when a monstrous Raven threatened his Kingdom, he used forbidden magic to seal the Raven away, at the cost of shattering his heart. This gave rise to the main personality we see of him in the series, named “Mytho” by the boy who found him when he couldn’t remember his true name. Without his heart, his thoughts and emotions were almost completely gone, making him a shell of his former self. If someone asked him to do something, he’d do it, simply because he didn’t know better. He could barely feel pain or temperature, and when asked a question about his personal thoughts and feelings, all he could respond with is “I don’t know” or “not really”.
However, even without his heart, his love for people could still not be completely taken away from him. He’d do anything to protect others who were weak or helpless, but without his heart he could no longer assess danger at all: he’d run into a burning building to save a bird trapped in a cage, he’d jump out a window to protect a baby bird from a hawk…all with a near impassive look on his face.
Another thing that stayed with him was his love for dance. He’d spend much of his time dancing, although without his heart his dancing was technically perfect but emotionally dead.
However, as he slowly regained his heart, bits and pieces of his emotions and personality began to return to him. Out of all of his emotions, the ones that seemed to have the most affect on him when returned were likely Loneliness, Curiosity, Affection and Love.
While his emotions were being returned to him, the piece of his heart that contained Love was tainted with the blood of the Raven, corrupting his heart and showing one final, twisted personality. Under the influence of the evil poisoning his heart, Mytho-instead of loving everyone-wished to be loved by everyone, and also sought to sacrifice a pure maiden’s heart to the Raven in order to strengthen him. This Mytho, the “Raven Prince,” was selfish, emotionally and physically abusive towards those he’d been previously close to, and steadily growing insane as the blood took over his heart. He manipulated people by playing on their hopes and fears, and (probably with the aid of magic) made girls believe they loved him so much they’d be willing to give their own hearts to him. Fortunately, he was always stopped before he could complete the sacrifice.
Since Mytho had much of his heart back when this tainting started to take place, he struggled against the curse, which lead to the appearance of having two personalities inhabiting the same body-in fact, he even calls the affects of the Raven’s blood taking over his heart “another me”. As the evil blood begins to take him over, his true side becomes more and more weakened, but he fought with it until the curse ended-when someone confessed their love for him and broke the curse. He was then returned to his true personality as the Prince who loved all.
Fairy tale/myth/legend: The Little Mermaid
Role: The Mermaid (….merman?)
Kingdom territory of origin: He would appear to be a Northerner/European, but obviously he’d have to be from the ocean…
Adaptation: Prince Siegfried was the youngest son of the widowed King of mermaids, and was a merman himself. He was known among his people for his gentle, kind heart, and all of the mermaids loved him, and he, them. His greatest wish was to see those around him happy and smiling.
Siegfried, however, was also a very curious young merman, and was fascinated with the people who lived in the lands above the sea and called themselves humans. Until he was old enough to be allowed to swim up to the surface himself, he had to be contented with the stories of others who had swum out of the sea. Every time one of the mermen went up out of the sea for the first time, he would approach them and ask them question after question about the things they had seen, and they would tell him of sunsets and ships and rivers and towns and the humans that played along the beach.
Finally, the young Prince reached his fifteenth birthday, the traditional day for a merman to be allowed to swim out of the sea and see the lands above. He swam out to the sea and delighted in seeing the sun’s rays reflecting on the surface of the water, and the sand of the shores, and the beach where people walked and the town where they lived. Once he was allowed, he often went to the surface of the sea and delighted in all the new things he could discover.
One day, when he swam up out of the waves and looked around, he saw a ship full of people dressed in royal finery. They were celebrating their Prince’s sixteenth birthday, and as the ship sailed they danced on the decks. Siegfried watched the people dance on the decks in wonder, surprised that they could look so graceful even though they didn’t have fins and weren’t in the water.
As he watched he noticed a girl sitting away from the crowd, watching the dancers with sad, lonely eyes. Siegfried saw the girl and wished that he could cheer her up, and slowly began to swim closer and closer to her place on the boat so he could say or do something to make her smile-when a young boy timidly approached the girl and stretched out his hand, asking her if he could dance with her. The girl’s eyes lit up and she smiled, saying she would love to as she took the boy’s hand. The little merman watched as the couple faded into the crowd and started to dance, his golden eyes wide. If he could dance, would he make others happy, as well?
The Prince watched the humans on the boat for hours, carefully memorizing every detail, and watching as the human prince accepted gifts from the guests in attendance. Siegfried thought that surely the people there must all love the human prince as all of the merpeople loved him, but the prince’s face didn’t show a hint of a smile as he looked at the gifts, and to Siegfried his eyes seemed as lonely as the girl who had been left out of the dance. Surprised, Siegfried watched closely, wondering why the other prince would be so lonely, even when he was surrounded by so many from his kingdom.
The human prince soon drifted away to a quiet, unoccupied area of the boat as the party moved on to other festivities, and Siegfried followed him, watching him silently and studying him. They stayed this way for a while, and Siegfried vaguely noticed that the waves seemed to be crashing a little higher, the wind blowing through his hair a little stronger. He mostly noticed this because the waves were carrying him closer and closer to the deck where the human prince stood, and he was silently debating whether to make his presence known and ask the human boy what was wrong, or to hide. He was still pondering this when the storm that had been gathering strength began to put its full force against the party ship. The ship rocked violently and began to roll quickly through the waves, as the people on the boat began to scatter around, searching for safe places to hide until the storm’s passing. Siegfried watched in horror as a great wave swept onto the ship, crashing onto the lonely part of the deck where the human prince had retreated, and dragged the boy overboard and out into the sea.
Siegfried knew, because of stories of the bodies of sailors that had been shipwrecked floating down into the depths of the sea, that a human could not live in the ocean like mermen do, and if the prince remained in the water he would drown. So he dived under the waves and caught the human boy as he fell, and brought him back to the surface of the sea, struggling to keep his head above the water until the storm finally subsided. Then, he took the other prince to the shore and remained as long as he dared, before the sound of approaching human voices startled him and sent him swimming back to the sea.
Once he returned to his father’s kingdom, Siegfried could not help but start to wonder about the things he had seen: the people dancing aboard the ship, how happy the lonely girl looked when she was brought into the dance, and how strangely lonely the prince had seemed, and if he had succeeded in saving the human prince’s life. The more he thought about it, the more his thoughts consumed him. In his own kingdom the people felt happy and loved, and his father had other sons to help the populace. But in the lands above the sea people seemed lonely and unhappy unless they danced. But with his fins, he could neither dance or walk on the shore and inquire about the state of the prince. His curiosity and affection for the humans who lived on land finally consumed him, so he did something that was forbidden: he sought the help of the sea witch.
He told the witch of his desire for legs so that he could go to the land and dance with the people there. The witch told him that she could make for him a potion which would split his fin into human legs, but if he did so he must give her payment-his ability to communicate. The Prince, believing the witch meant his voice, was saddened at the thought of being unable to speak to others, but he agreed, thinking that he could replace speech with the gift of being able to dance. But the witch was crafty-she didn’t mean his voice at all. The witch was jealous of the love the people had for Prince Siegfried and craved it for her own-she believed that if she had the prince’s pure heart she would be granted the merpeople’s love, and she knew that without his heart the prince would be unable to feel emotion or communicate his true thoughts. And so she tricked the Prince into giving his heart to her. As soon as he agreed to the payment, the witch fed the prince the potion, then, as his fins were splitting into legs, took out an enchanted blade and plunged it into his chest, taking out his heart for her own. Siegfried screamed in pain, realizing only then the payment the witch had truly demanded, but then the pain died, and his heart left his chest and went into the witch’s hands. She laughed, sure now that she had won the love of the kingdom-but the pure heart could not stand the evil of the witch and it shattered in her hands, the pieces scattering and floating out to the land where the Prince had desired with all his heart to make others happy. One piece of his heart sliced the witch’s hand as it fled from her, and so went to the land above stained with her blood.
The witch, furious, sought to kill the Siegfried for how his heart had rejected her, but at that moment his brothers found him with the witch and chased her away. They knew that Siegfried, now a human, would die if he remained in the water, and so-even though they mourned the fact that they could no longer see their brother if they did what they were about to do-they brought him to the shore above and carefully left him there, quickly swimming away before any humans could see them.
This is where Siegfried (Mytho) will start in Mukashi: the human prince (Fakir) will find him on the shore and give him the name of Mytho, then take him back to the palace to take care of him.
As for Mytho’s shattered heart, just like the show, he will be able to retrieve his emotions and have them returned to him. I’m thinking there will be two ways this will be possible:
(1) True to the original anime, the pieces of Mytho’s heart will seek people (that is, other characters) who are affected greatly by the emotion they represent and possess their hearts, heightening the emotion to unhealthy levels. If we do this, it’d probably be best to have the emotions affect characters one at a time-since, understandably, whoever has their character possessed won’t want them to be affected by this forever, and it would probably take Fakir and Mytho a while to travel around the various kingdoms trying to collect all the heartshards if everyone was possessed at once. (Also, this would ensure that Mytho wouldn’t get all of his heart too quickly…and, well, it’d just be easier in general to control the pace in which his heart is returned.)
However, since the RP is pretty small right now and new, and since players would probably be wary of having something so dramatic affect their characters right when they start playing them (aaaand understandably, when you think about it), there’s a second option for how he’ll regain his heart:
(2) If Mytho is in a situation that-under normal circumstances-would cause him to feel the emotion VERY strongly, the heart shard will resonate and feel him calling out to be restored to his heart, and the shard will return. However, this would have to have enough on an affect on Mytho to justify this. For example, to regain fear, it wouldn’t be as simple as someone jumping out and surprising him in a way that would make a normal person start a little. It would have to be a scene where Mytho is truly frightened to the point that, say, his life or someone he cares about would be in danger.
[Later edit: I'll probably be doing option #1 if I can't get enough players, since the mods reacted really favorably to the idea.]
I’m going to be sticking to the emotions that the anime uses for his heart shards: Disappointment, Loneliness, Sorrow, Affection, Fear, Curiosity, Regret, Devotion, Love, and Pride. (Hooopefully I’m remembering all those right, I’ll be double-checking as I go along to make sure I don’t miss any.) I’ll probably go in mostly the same order, as well, but I might skip around a little if it benefits the plot.
Also: like I mentioned in the more fairytale-like story above, the piece containing Love was tainted by the blood of the sea witch. This means that when Love is returned to him (whether it possesses another person or object and is then found and returned to him normally, or an event causes it to “resonate” and return on its own), the evil blood of the witch will begin to take over his heart and twist his personality and emotions in a way very similar to the “Raven Prince” from the original anime, with one change: instead of trying to find a heart to sacrifice for the Raven he will be filled with the witch’s selfish desire to place all focus on herself. He will seek other’s love without giving any of his own in return (not just romantic love, but any sort of affection or admiration), and if he cannot receive this, he will actively work against other’s happiness and “happy endings” (with varying degrees of success, of course). Since this will be a pretty dramatic change for him and make it that much harder for certain emotions to be returned to him, Love should probably be one of the later emotions he has returned to him.
One last condition to both help motivate Fakir and Mytho to want to search for the heart shards and to tie in an element from the original fairytale: as long as Mytho is without his heart, his feet will slowly but steadily start to be more and more painful to dance on. In a way, this is almost as if his legs (which are magical) reminding him that the wish that made him want to have them in the first place is fairly impossible without being able to feel things like devotion and affection.
Current area of residence: He’ll start the game on the shore by the bay and be taken to live at Prince Fakir’s castle nearby the town of Mundi soon afterwards.
Sample journal entry:
I keep trying to stop myself from thinking about it, but I can’t.
That prince, sitting on the boat all by himself…it seemed like all of those people were there for him, weren’t they? There for his birthday, it sounded like. So why did he distance himself so much from them? I don’t understand. When I had my birthday party, I was glad that everyone had come to wish me a happy one. I wished I had more time to talk to all of them! But…it seemed like he didn’t want to be there at all. How strange…
He seemed so lonely. But if he’s lonely, he’s doing it to himself, isn’t he? …Or is he?
Of course, I don’t know for sure that he even survived falling from the boat…I think I managed to keep his head out of the water most of the time…was it just their heads that humans need to keep out of the water? Or was it something else? I hope it’s just their head…
I wish I could go and see for myself. And I wish I could dance and make others happy like that boy…if both the girl and the prince were lonely…are humans themselves lonely? If I learned to dance, could I make them all feel happy again? Would they smile? I want to know!
If I had legs, then I could learn to dance, and I could walk on the land with humans, couldn’t I?
…Everyone here is happy…but there’s people on the land that are lonely…
I’ve heard the sea witch has the power to grant wishes…would she be able to give me legs? I know we’re not supposed to talk to her, but…I just want to help people. That’s not a bad thing, right?
I think I will ask her.
Roleplay sample:
The boy watched everything with empty, lonely eyes.
Mytho couldn’t understand why he found the dancing so magical, but he did. The girl with a blue dress twirling around on the dance floor reminded him of the waves of the sea. Which was important to him because…why?
The seashells the girls wore on strings around their neck would have made his heart ache, if it was in his chest to begin with. But-although you couldn’t tell by looking at his him, except for the detached look in his eyes-it had been taken away and shattered. So now, no matter how much any reminder of his former home might have made him miss his father and his brothers who lived under the sea, he could not remember them. Even if he did, he wouldn’t have missed them. The love he had for them, for his people, for his home under the waves, was gone, along with every emotion he’d ever felt. Everything, but…
He suddenly stood up from his chair and walked through the dancing couples, slowly, until he reached the center of the room. He paused there, just for a moment, then went up on his toes and started to dance. It was graceful, technically excellent. He took into account the tempo of the music, every beat, and he glided across the floor so beautifully that the couples slowly stopped in the middle of their dance to turn and watch him. He was, truly, one of the best dancers they’d ever seen…
Except that there was no emotion in his dance. There was no joy or sadness communicated, no longing, no expression at all. His face had the same impassive, detached expression it always did. It was as if his soul had flown out of his body. Murmuring amongst themselves, the couples turned back to their dance, whirling around the heartless boy, a sea of warm, welcoming emotion standing in contrast to the lonely dancer at the center of the floor.
The song was nearly finished when the girl in the blue dress twirled with her partner and leaned against the heel of her shoe…which promptly snapped. She gasped, her hands slipping out of her partner’s, and braced herself for the impact of falling against the floor…
Which never came. Instead, a pair of gentle but strong arms had wrapped around her, stopping her fall. She opened her eyes, expecting to see her darling Christopher’s face, only to look up into a pair of distant golden eyes. “O-Oh!” was all she could make out as she jumped out of Mytho’s arms. “I-I’m sorry, I-“
“Judith! Judith, are you alright?”
The Prince and the girl both turned to watch as Christopher ran to her side. “I’m fine!” she said quickly, waving a hand dismissively and getting up to her feet, careful not to put weight on her broken shoe. She turned to the boy sitting on the floor. “Thank you, but that was almost a little silly. Why would you dive like that just to save someone from a trip on the floor?”
Mytho blinked, an ever-so-faint frown on his face as he considered the girl’s question. Why? That was an odd question. Wasn’t it? But she wanted to know…why did he catch her? He paused carefully, drawing in a soft breath as he considered the question, before staring up unblinkingly at the girl as he gave his honest answer.
“I don’t know.”