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[bookface]

Name: Freshy
Contact Info: IM- herosuits / Plurk- deuil
Other Characters Played: N/A
Preferred Apartment: N/A

Character Name: Rohan Kishibe
Canon: Jojo's Bizarre Adventure
Canon Point: Post Part 4, 'Diamond is Unbreakable'.
Background/History: Wiki link! I'll also be taking bits of canon information from his spin-off short stories, listed here.
Previous Game History: N/A
Personality:
In the kindest term possible, Rohan Kishibe is an eccentric. A less generous observer might call him bizarre, and people who know him more intimately may say that Rohan is just plain unpleasant. In any event, there's nothing about Rohan Kishibe that's strictly conventional, and that suits him fine.

Defined by his passion for his work as a mangaka, he pursues material and inspiration for his serials with a fervency that shocks and alarms most people— the most important thing when drawing a narrative, for Rohan, is the pursuit of realism, of there being an element of reality even to the most bizarre or fantastical story. He's incredibly thorough with respect to his subject material, and defies and disdains complacency without regarding his proclivities as anything too out of the ordinary. Be it to split a spider in two and lick its insides to find out what it tastes like, or to buy a whole span of mountains in order to pursue the possibility of finding a youkai, Rohan approaches his eccentricity with a flippancy that suggests that his methods are completely normal to him. And why shouldn't they be? Rohan Kishibe is Rohan Kishibe, and he changes and compromises himself for no one. He has the audacity to ignore others' discomfort in favor of his craft, and even finds joy in being beaten up if it contributes to material for his manga, if only because he knows his superior ability to render something in a raw and effective form. Because he's abundantly aware of his own talent, he affords himself leeway in many and most situations, which subsequently comes across as arrogance, selfishness, and pridefulness on his part. Oblivious to his own childish pushiness, Rohan is a self-professed introvert who dislikes interacting with others, and claims to have started drawing because he can avoid people. This is why he doesn't keep assistants despite his demanding schedule, which actually turns out not to be demanding at all, since he can crank out 19 pages of material in 4 days (5, if he has to do color pages). He's just that good, inhumanly so.

And it's precisely that, being a prodigy— if you could call a genius mangaka that— which gives Rohan an inflated sense of importance, which is, to a degree, well-earned through his singular passion for his work, and for his passion towards having people read his material. The distinction here is that he doesn't want his material to be appreciated: he wants people to read his manga, but he famously states that he doesn't care about the money or fame or prestige that may come along with it. In this sense, Rohan considers his career a pursuit, and not the means to an end; and in this sense, he's an artist in the purest sense. The only thing he's afraid of is that people will stop reading his material, and that he'll be left with nothing to do, with no ambition.

This singular mindset, of course, contributes to Rohan's extreme polarity and his extreme pickiness. If he's interested in anything at any given moment, he'll invest himself in it tirelessly— but on the flipside, anything he dislikes, he dislikes just as thoroughly, and just as vocally. His finicky nature makes him quite judgmental at times, prone to shutting people down, and frankly pretty insensitive and/or immature. He believes in wavelengths, and doesn't hesitate to tell anyone when he finds them repellent or incompatible with his artistic tendencies, or just his general sensibilities; he dislikes the protagonist of his canon arc, Josuke Higashikata, fairly openly, and insults him without much reservation. Because he himself is so painfully blunt, Rohan disdains Josuke for being a liar who always says one thing and does another (which incidentally turns out to be a positive trait of Josuke's, more often than not), calls Josuke's friend Okuyasu Nijimura an 'idiot' constantly, and seems to hold grudges and self-affirmed opinions near and dear to his heart. It's completely canon that he thinks that there's no one more amazing than he is (everyone else is regarded as lesser, and to himself, rightly so!!), that he values manga and pretty much nothing else, and that one of his favorite things is to say no to people who think they're hot shit.

So. Rohan Kishibe is...pretty difficult to get along with. Though he does have his good sides, like his ability to identify and be frank about something that really impresses him, his appreciation for people who take risks and shows some guts. The most notable event in relation to his willingness to compliment someone for their general worth is his spar with the Rock-Paper-Scissors kid, who Rohan spares and saves for having strength of will and a flair for the dramatic. He's not a self-sacrificing person, but he has a moral compass that he doesn't concede, and he gives respect where he feels respect is due. One of the notable people that Rohan openly likes is a boy by the name of Koichi Hirose, who Rohan thinks is relateable, likeable, and courageous. When Koichi shows up in a time of crisis, Rohan says sincerely that "that's what I respect about you". If he likes someone, he's willing to help or do favors, however reluctantly— fandom calls him a huge tsundere, but who knows.

And, well, Rohan isn't without his personal affectations. He was quite attached to his childhood babysitter by the name of Reimi Sugimoto, who was killed by the antagonist of the canon arc in order to save Rohan's life. It's implied that the shock and trauma of Reimi's death, combined with his young age (he was 4 at the time) contributed to Rohan forgetting the event entirely, but he eventually reunites with Reimi, who lingers in Morioh as a ghost, through a series of bizarre occurrences that involve finding the serial killer that killed Reimi in the first place. This is the first time we see Rohan show a degree of morality, when Reimi asks Rohan and Koichi to help bring justice back to Morioh: though he initially refuses because the whole thing sounds troublesome, a moment later, he agrees by saying that "it might be interesting to interview a killer". Rohan is rarely straightforward about his moral initiatives, but it's pretty clear, nevertheless, when he feels a sense of duty to do the right thing.

And finally, when Reimi is finally ready to leave Morioh (aka die for real) and be at rest after the death of her killer, Rohan admits that he's sad to see her leave, which is his earnest display of personal sentimentalism. Albeit with a disclaimer: "since this is the end, fine, I'll be honest—".

So, yes— Rohan is mostly unpleasant, childish in his absolute sense of self (he doesn't even think of going easy on little kids, says he loves making them cry), and blunt (he's so rude, really), but you'll never find someone as unshakeable in his resolve or as reliable when it comes down to it, to things that anyone has to do that coincides with Rohan's own goals.

Abilities/Powers:
First and foremost, there are a few terminology issues that come up when explaining Rohan's powers, so I'll outline them here! Rohan is what the Jojo canon refers to as a 'Stand user', which is a fancy label for someone who has the ability to use a supernatural power called a Stand. Without getting into too much of the nitty gritty about how Stands work and getting too in-depth about the rules and regulations behind them, the most important thing to note is that Stands are only visible to other Stand users, that they can only be hurt by other Stands, and that they're a spiritual manifestation/reflection of the user's psyche/self. Thus the name 'Stand'-- it's an abbreviation of the phrase "Stand By Me".

Rohan's Stand is called 'Heaven's Door', which allows him to literally open people up like a book and read their thoughts, past history, and personal information. In addition to reading them, Rohan can also 'fill in' the pages of his subject's book with commands or conditions (such as "you cannot see Rohan Kishibe"). It is not understood as to how long these commands last, but they seem to be in effect until Rohan decides to erase them of his own volition. He can issue complex commands such as the ability to learn a language in a matter of moments ("you can now speak conversational Italian"), and it is unknown as to how improbable these commands can get before they become impossible. He can also erase his subject's memories by ripping out pages from them as you would do with a book. People who have had Heaven's Door used on them have no idea that anything's been done to them at all, and are immobile while they are being read.

Though there were specific restrictions regarding the activation of his powers against his subjects in the beginning of the series, Rohan has evolved through canon to be able to transmutate people into human books almost instantaneously. However, there are some instances where, if his subject is too stubborn or is singularly fixated, his written commands will not stick (demonstrated in a fight against a man with a Stand called Cheap Trick). He cannot save a dying person by writing in a command such as "you will not die", or read a dead person's memories: all he'll see in the pages of a dead person's book are the words "dead", written over and over again.

Since this is an INCREDIBLY godmode-y ability, I'll definitely have a permissions post up regarding the extent of its use. Also, since this is very much a writing-based ability, I imagine that it'll have restrictions with respect to Haven's setting.

Items/Weapons: His sketchbook, pencase containing three dip pens, and an inkwell.

Sample Entry: Test Drive post!
Sample Entry Two:

Rohan rarely draws for his own benefit.

No, that assertion isn't entirely correct— Rohan draws so that his material will be read, which is an action that, in itself, is partly for his own personal fulfillment. So the more accurate assessment would be to say that Rohan rarely draws privately, for a goal outside of cultivating new material, cultivating a sense of reality that he can use in the future. He doesn't draw out of sentimentalism, because sentimentalism isn't important; nothing matters to Rohan aside from his profession as a mangaka, and nothing is more important than his manga.

This is what he tells himself as he tries to sketch a picture of Reimi Sugimoto, a murdered girl now dead and gone, a figure in his life that came and passed so quickly that she might as well not even have existed at all. He frowns at his efforts, tears out the page full of half-completed profiles and figures, dissatisfied and annoyed at how two-dimensional his drawings seem, how inconsequential.

"If I introduced this version of her in my manga," he says out loud, to no one in particular, "people would forget she existed by the next update."

Vocalizing it solidifies his irritation, and he settles back in his chair, squashing the paper in his hands to toss it into the wastebin sitting nearby. He can't quite put a finger on why it bothers him, that he can't remember Reimi as well as he'd like, or that he can't do her image justice (which is an idea that he loathes, because he's Rohan Kishibe).

Rohan rests an elbow on his armrest, his chin on his hand. He tries to remember, recalls what the monk told Rohan about what Rohan had said when he was four years old and crying, four years old and confused, distressed about Reimi's death:

"Reimi let me leave out the window."

Rohan rarely draws privately, because he understands that Heaven's Door can't give him access to memories that are far in his past, and every attempt to draw Reimi Sugimoto the way he remembers her will fail.

He settles, closes his eyes, and thinks about the next 19 pages of Pink Dark Boy instead.