application ★ recolle

[promisedyou]

PLAYER
YOUR NAME: Len
18+?: Yes!
CONTACT: endlesseight | Len#0139 (Discord)
CHARACTERS IN GAME: N/A
RESERVATION LINK: Here!

CHARACTER: CANON SECTION
NAME: Shion Sonozaki
AGE: 17
CANON: Higurashi no Naku Koro ni

CANON HISTORY: Shion Sonozaki wiki + Minagoroshi-hen summary.
CANON PERSONALITY:

( As a warning: there will be mentions of sororicide, gross nail stuff, child abuse and underage drinking in this section of the application, given the nature of Shion's canon. )

".....Who am I? I never had a solid identity in the first place. I was Mion. Then I was Shion. I should have just accepted that."
— Shion Sonozaki, Meakashi-hen.

A lot of the time, Shion is mistaken for a different 'Mion', and in a way, they're not wrong. Born as 'Sonozaki Mion', she was meant to be the heir of the Sonozaki family, one of the three families that essentially run Hinamizawa. However, due to an accident when the twins swapped when they were small, the twin formerly known as 'Shion' was branded as Mion and they were permanently swapped. 'Mion' became Shion and 'Shion' became Mion; an event that would affect Shion for the rest of her life and how she acts from then on.

Due to the swap, Shion's normally tomboyish nature was something that she normally didn't reveal to others; instead, she would present herself as rather prim and polite - revealing a rather girlier side to her and using keigo to speak to others in a way that made it seem that she was below her standing. And to everyone else that didn't know that the swap happened to begin with? It was as if she was - after all, to the eyes of practically everyone else, she was the one who should have been discarded when the twins were born as the worthless dropout.

While in certain arcs, Shion does show quite a bit of jealousy towards her younger sister who stole her identity as Mion and ended up living a better life, especially at the end of Meakashi-hen, in general, she doesn't blame her sister for what happened; it was an accident after all. Not something that she should place the blame on her sister for just for wanting a specific type of tuna. It's in this way that she shows just how much she cares about Mion, even if she may not show it often on the surface as the real older sister.

Even though Shion might act somewhat indifferent towards her sister to the point where, unlike her sister, who wants to share everything and be treated as equals, as she even admits: "Just like everyone tried to distinguish between Mion and Shion..... I also tried to distinguish between us." This does not mean that she doesn't love her sister, though. She shows it in several ways - the first being by supporting Mion in love most of the time, even if she teases them a little more about it. The other is that she always feels bad - as spoken in Matsuribayashi-hen - that she forced the role of the 'heir' and all she wants is for her sister to be happy in the end on a normal basis.

And even though they might be identical twins who seem to be able to act like each other perfectly to a T when it's convenient to them - not to mention the fact that nobody can tell them apart, as Shion even admits: "Everyone else was desperate to tell us apart, but we sisters found that awfully ridiculous. There wasn't any difference between us. No one could tell us apart, even if we only swapped hats." - the twins definitely have their decisive differences; ones that only the two of them know.

One of those big differences is that Shion herself thinks herself as a 'cold' person in contrast to Mion, who is a lot more caring that she is. In Meakashi-hen, she talks about the fact that because their personalities are so different, the fact that they're identical gets in the way. It's a huge difference between her sister's line of thinking - that they should be the same and equal because they like the same thing and even almost react the same way to most situations, to the point where she admits that she feels bad for thinking that way.

It's because of this way of thinking that allows her to easily distance herself from the people she cares about and kill them. However, Shion does not simply kill with no emotion, in spite of the fact that she considers herself cold. The reason why she kills is because she's emotional; to the extent where she practically loses herself in it and eventually kills her own emotions in order to finish the job when she finds out that the reason she did the murders to begin with were completely pointless. But why exactly did she do the murders to begin with?

The answer to that is rather simple: it is love and jealousy that drives her; a love for a young boy by the name of Hojo Satoshi.

When it comes to love, Shion is more than a little impulsive. While the feelings that she has for Satoshi are genuine, they definitely come way too quickly - she realizes that she has feelings for him just knowing him for a few days and will even jump the gun and do rather drastic things for his sake: like giving him a solid alibi after he murders his aunt or become the manager for his baseball team. But it's because of this impulsiveness that sometimes she'll come up with anything if it means that it'll help her true love - even if it actually doesn't - especially when a lot of the time she either resorts to cute tactics or violence, especially with her stun gun.

However, the impulsiveness that she wears is a double edged sword - while the love she felt for Satoshi came too fast, the reasoning behind her love is superficial: she doesn't simply have feelings for him because of his stunning personality (at least, not initially) but because he was fun to poke at and tease, it colored her dull, otherwise seemingly boring life with something more than what she was given while she was trapped at St. Lucia's - the school she distinctly calls a 'prison' with its lack of boys, cliques that bullied others a lot, and "brainwashing". In fact, that school and how it worked made Shion a little rebellious.

Another good example of how she shows her love is when she almost makes the snap decision in Minagoroshi-hen to go ahead and kill Satoko's uncle who had abused her and managed to get away with it for days. And if she, the person who was entrusted to protect Satoko, couldn't save her, then who would? Even if she had to put blood on her hands, she'd do it if it meant that she'd be safe.

"Drastic times call for drastic measures" is probably a good line for Shion Sonozaki, because it describes her methods quite well. When she overhears her sister talking over the phone about people who had sneaked into the saiguden, she immediately thinks that - given the situation and how going in there is such a huge taboo - that her sister and the rest of her family are plotting to get rid of her. It's times like this where Shion shows her quick thinking in spite of her paranoia (and not to mention that she was suffering from a hangover) by using her stungun to knock out both her grandmother - the head of the family - and her sister, the heir, before she almost immediately gets to plotting.

Of course, her intelligence doesn't just show up when things get bad for her in the heat of the moment. She shows a lot of it when she tries to escape her all girls' school, St. Lucia at the beginning of Meakashi-hen; how she's taken weeks to plan things out in her head and then excellently execute them. It also goes to show that she's actually rather manipulative as well: she uses her acting skills that she's managed to obtain for all the times she's pretended to be her sister to good use in order to make people feel a certain way - like she does with Keiichi when she intentionally says things to him in order to put a seed of doubt in his head - or to even do things for her. While sometimes it can get malicious, this isn't always the case.

Another thing to note is that while she might have love in her heart, Shion is rather realistic about the situation most of the time and is even a bit of a pessimist at times. She's quick to believe when Satoshi suddenly disappears the day after Watanagashi that he was 'spirited away', taken by her family and killed, because there's absolutely no way that some so-called god just made him disappear for no reason.

While Shion may tend to be realistic and a pessimist, that doesn't mean that she shows it all the time; in fact, as she tends to wear the mask of 'Shion Sonozaki', a rather polite girl - most of the time - it's not something that she shows towards other people and instead keeps it primarily to herself. In front of others, she tends to act energetic to the point where she'll even tease and mess around with people - hell, she'll even make inappropriate jokes or even boldly flirt with her sister's crush; partially to tease her sister and hope she makes a move instead and partially because she genuinely enjoys it, too.

SKILLS/ABILITIES:

While Shion is a normal human being through and through, due to her time being born as Mion, she has several skills, as follows:

• As a twin, she's fairly good at acting. She can pretend to be her sister almost perfectly to the point where it's difficult to draw a line on which twin she is. In general as well, she's always pretending to be a stereotypical nice girl as Shion.
  
• She is good at working a gun - as she actually uses one in Matsuribayashi-hen - and it's assumed that she knows quite a bit of unarmed combat as well.
  
• She's described as someone who's actually rather decently strong - she manages to carry bodies in both Watanagashi-hen and Meakashi-hen with nearly no problems and she even says that she hides.
  
• It's stated in canon that she's good at games - in fact, she's always beaten her sister, who is actually decent at games.
  
• She also knows how to ride a motorbike with absolutely no issues, too.
  
• Shion is also a rather decent cook, given that she sometimes has to buy groceries when she's living in an apartment separate from her parents.

CHARACTER: AU SECTION
AU NAME: Mio Sonozaki (園崎 愛音)
AU AGE: 17
PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES: Replace the green hair and the aquamarine eyes with the more typical black hair, brown eyes.

AU HISTORY:

( As a note: I have permission from the Mion Sonozaki [penalizing] player for parts of this history! )

☆ Born as Mio Sonozaki, the eldest twin sister in a rather wealthy, Japanese family. While she doesn't have any other siblings, she does have a rather large extended family that comprised of a good majority of the people in their small little town.
☆ The money that they earned was due to the establishment of a canned meat company, which was founded by the twins' grandparents which started as a purely Japanese company, but soon became an international one.
☆ Because of this, Mio was raised as the heiress of the company and learned management and business skills that were necessary for the job. It meant that she would tend to be busy when she wasn't doing things at school or at home. This doesn't mean, however, that she didn't have time to be with others. Her schedule was just slightly tighter than someone who just attended school and went home.
☆ Due to the fact that they were twins, they would sometimes impersonate the other for laughs to confuse family and friends. At the end of the day, however, they would always go back to being who they really were.
☆ As the older twin, she would have to take care of her younger sister sometimes and it's because of this that she dotes on Kotone - who was also a bit of a crybaby when she was younger. Unlike her sister, she was the mature one out of the two of them - she would never cry (at least, until she got older and decided to use crocodile tears more often as herself) unless she was pretending to be her younger sister. And on a general note,
she tended to do this when it benefits her and she could get something out of it.
☆ Right before secondary school, her mother was going to become the head of the US branch of the family company, which meant relocating to Recolle. Of course, this was known far in advance, so the family made preparations by brushing up on their English skills which helped them adjust to the move.
☆ Upon arriving to Recolle, Mio was not only put into high school, the amount of training that she would have to do to prepare herself for the job once she was of age as the heir of the Sonozaki family increased quite a bit, to the point where she sometimes became rather busy, although it wasn't to the point where it was overwhelming.
☆ It was easy for her to make friends due to her high standing and personality of hers, although Mio made sure that people that she befriended didn't just like her just because she was the heir - unless it benefited her.
☆ Because of how somewhat taxing the work was, Shion knew that she would have to pass the plate to someone else, which is when she started coming up with a plan to marry someone who would be fitting to lead the company so she wouldn't have to do the hard work herself. It's because of this that she tries to flirt with others who she finds applicable for that sole purpose.
☆ While attending school and learning how the company works in preparation was a lot, that doesn't mean that she's been slacking - even if she does mess around like the mischievous girl that she is - and she is, in fact rather intelligent due to her vast knowledge and studying.
☆ But that doesn't mean that she doesn't think that all of this isn't dull; in fact, she doesn't like the fact that everyone is supposedly 'set in stone' for her. It feels like she's a bird trapped in a cage that wishes to be free to do whatever she wants.
☆ Unlike her sister, who her parents dote on and are investing in her college life, Mio was told that she didn't have to go to college and could instead just start working for the company. But she doesn't want that, so she's been making plans on going to college anyway to see if she can get a different job so that her future husband - or wife, she's not picky and they say beggars can't be choosers - so she can live the life that she wants to, not the one that her parents laid out for her.
☆ But for the time being, she's trying to take it as easy as she possibly can in spite of studies - for both school and as the heiress - as she finishes up her last year of high school as a senior.
☆ She's also a part of the twins club that her sister made, but since she's so busy she's only a part of it by name so she doesn't actually attend all that often.

AU PERSONALITY:

☆ One of the biggest changes in her personality will be that since she didn't switch places with her sister, she doesn't exactly have to pretend to be girly, and instead her true, tomboyish nature comes out at full force. That isn't to say, however, that she won't use her charms to her advantage - she knows that it's there and she's willing to use what she's got to help herself out - but more that she doesn't have to force herself to be polite and use keigo, like she did as Shion.
☆ Also, because she doesn't have to pretend to be the younger sister instead of the older sister that she actually is, she tends to be a little overprotective and more affectionate (even if she'll still tease her) towards her younger sibling. It's not to an excessive amount that it's overbearing. She doesn't get to show this side of her often as Shion, due to the fact that she was always pretending to be the younger sibling.
☆ In addition to the above, since she's both the family heir - which I'll explain below how she acts as that - and the older sister that has to take care of her younger sister, regardless of them just being just a few short seconds apart, Shion had to grow up pretty quickly. Which makes her a little more mature than her canon counterpart, but that doesn't mean that she won't tease or troll when she wants to.
☆ Due to her parents working at a canned meat factory, Mio, unlike Shion, won't have the same phobia of canned meat; instead, she'll have a slight distaste for it - given that she's the heir of the company - but not to the point where she won't buy canned foods altogether and not eat them at all in the slightest bit.
☆ Even though she's the family heir, it holds a different significance to how being the family heir works in canon - while it gives Mio stability, there's a lot of work put into it that she isn't exactly a fan of and would rather have someone else do instead of her.
☆ Like it's stated above, Mio isn't exactly enthusiastic about the idea of becoming the family heir and honestly wants to push it off to someone who would be more suitable to the job than her. But even so, she's a rather proper (and rather intelligent) student, even if she'll sometimes be a little 'bad' by playing pranks and being a bit of a trickster.
☆ And because of the above, she actively looks for someone that she can marry - preferably someone with a stable income - which leads to Mio ending up a bit of a flirty character.
☆ In addition to that, as the heir of the Sonozaki family, she does have quite a bit of business and management knowledge that she didn't have in her canon proper.
☆ Mio is also rather intelligent period, due to the pressures of being the family heir. Her parents wanted her to essentially be the "perfect heir" - have good grades, be a good student - and even though she only fulfills half of that requirement, given that she's not necessarily the greatest student in terms of behavior, but she acts like it in front of teachers and other staff so that she doesn't get in trouble with her parents. But with everyone else, she'll definitely peel off that proverbial mask to mess around with people.
☆ She'll definitely act cute when it benefits her, although because the swap did not happen in this version of her history she tends to be more of a tomboy - she'll wear pants instead of skirts and less frilly things generally but that doesn't mean that she won't go with a more feminine style when it suits her, especially on dates and special occasions.
☆ While it's not as avert as it was in canon, Mio, in some ways, feels a little jealous of her younger sister sometimes. The big factor in this is the fact that Mio gets to practically do whatever she wants while she, on the other hand is chained down by responsibilities and duty.
☆ Also in sharp contrast with her canon counterpart who is prone to sharp emotional outbursts, Mio does not have this problem at all and tends to deal with things rather cooly in general.
☆ She also won't have the Hinamizawa syndrome here in Recolle, so she won't be as prone to becoming entirely paranoid or having murderous tendencies. It's also why she won't have the "drastic times call for drastic measures" type of mentality that make her do things that are ultra violent.
☆ Another thing to note is that since as Mio, she isn't shipped away to a private boarding school, she's rather indifferent to religion rather than completely disgusted by it to the point where she considers it a 'living hell'.
☆ Even with the changes though, she is still the same girl who will tease her sister to the point where she'll get slightly annoyed by it. Oh, and she'll tease other people as well just for the sake of her own enjoyment but it's generally innocuous. At least, unless they give her a good leeway into something a little more than that.

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