Jessie Turnblatt (aka Moe-Moe no Mikoto) - Chosen of Benzaiten

[Angelic Crux]

 

Jessie Turnblatt (aka Moe Moe no Mikoto) Chosen of Benzaiten   "Uh... it's not essentializing, it's satire.  Besides, some of my best friends are kami... so I'm just going to itsudemowhenever; anytime do my thing!"   Legendary Title: Waifu of Mahou-Tsukai(Translator's Note: "Mahou-Tsukai" (magic-user) is also slang for a "virgin", referring to the mystical powers ascribed to yamabushi (mountain mystics) who refrained from touching women for 30 years. A more localized translation might be "neckbeard" or "basement-dweller".) Origin: Boring-ass Homeschooled Net-Dweller (Suburbia) Role: Degenerate Vtuber S'renctuaryA portmanteau of "siren" and "sanctuary". Part of Moe-Moe no Mikoto's branding, recognizing both her role as a place of emotional safety for shut-ins and a total time-waster for doom-scrollers. (Charismatic Leader) Pantheon: Bridging Past and Present, East and West, 2D and Meatspace Short-term Deeds: Soften a sugoivery; extremely hardened heart... publically. Long-term Deeds: Shock the world with the Power of Shut-Ins™ Band Deeds: To be determined Sincerity ○○•○○ Right Action

 

 

---

Attributes

	Physical	Mental	Social
Force	Might •○○○○	Intellect •••○○	Presence •••••
Finesse	Dexterity •••○○	Cunning •••○○	Manipulation •••○
Resilience	Stamina ••••○	Resolve •••○○	Composure ••••○

 

Skills

Academics •○○○○	Athletics ○○○○○	Culture ••••○ (Singing)	Close Combat •○○○○
Empathy ••••• (Parasocial)	Firearms ○○○○○	Integrity •○○○○	Leadership •••○○ (Deifans)
Medicine ○○○○○	Occult •○○○○	Persuasion ••••○ (Sincere)	Pilot ○○○○○
Science ○○○○○	Subterfuge •○○○○	Survival ○○○○○	Technology •○○○○

 

---

 

Edited January 13 by Angelic Crux
Ugh, spaces are real. (see edit history)

[Angelic Crux]

Concept:

Your Sweet Immortal Waifu

Short-term Deeds: Soften a sugoi hardened heart... publically.

Long-term Deeds: Shock the world with the Power of Shut-Ins™

Band Deed: TBD

 

Paths:

Origin: Boring-ass Homeschooled Net-Dweller (Suburbia*)

Role: Degenerate Vtuber Siren (Charismatic Leader)

Pantheon: Bridging Past and Present, East and West, 2D and Meatspace

 

Skills:

Primary (Role) - ••• - Persuasion, Leadership, Empathy

Secondary (Origin) - •• - Culture, Empathy, Academics

Tertiary (Pantheon) - • - Close Combat, Culture, Persuasion

Asset skills - Close Combat, Culture

 

Attributes:

Primary (Social) - Intellect (force) •••, Cunning (finesse) •••, Resolve (resilience) •••

Secondary (Mental) - Presence (force) •••••, Manipulation (finesse) •••, Composure (resilience) ••••

Tertiary (Physical) - Might (force) •, Dexterity (finesse) •••, Stamina (resilience) ••••

Favored Approach - Resilience

 

Callings & Knacks:

LoverGods marry, Gods [do sex], Gods cheat on one another. The pantheons are extended families of parents and Scions, with complex relationships between members. When those relationships become central to a God or Hero’s Legend, they’re a Lover. The Calling encompasses Legendary seductresses and divine cads, but also those famous for commitment to a single partner, those who fall into serially deep love affairs, or even the asexual but romantic. ••

Hearts AflameWhen you inspire passion or promote relationships on an epic Scale (inspiring an audience of millions, changing a culture’s attitudes on consent), imbue a point of Legend, rather than spending, to invoke your Legendary Title as a Feat of Scale. (Immortal)

CreatorAlmost every religion in the World has an explanation for where the universe, or its contents, came from. While the initial act of genesis is usually (though not always) ascribed to a Titan or Primordial, most pantheons include at least one member responsible for bringing something new into the World and giving shape to its myriad forms. Some Creators shape raw Primordial chaos and bring the World itself into being, some bring life or fertility as gardeners, child-bearers, and lifegivers, and still more consume or use raw materials as divine artists, craftsmen, builders, and artisans. Finally, some Creators don’t make anything physical at all, but instead inspire or guide others as inventors or architects. Many Creators are destructive in equal measure, taking a balance for their gifts from the World, but by no means all. ••

Touch of the MusesWhen working on an artistic project, double the successes earned on each roll made by an artistic partner. You have the option to spend Momentum and lend this benefit to yourself. (Immortal)

LeaderAll Gods command respect, with authority over their purviews, but some divine beings are Legendary for leadership itself. Divine kings, queens, CEOs, and motivational speakers, Leaders are those Gods, Demigods, and Heroes who make decisions for others, lay down laws, inspire their followers, and lead from the front. Although some Leaders are Judges, the two Callings are distinct; Leaders show their subordinates what’s expected, while Judges discern if they’ve followed it. •

Good ListenerWhen you make casual conversation with an SGC, that character will reveal information or an important detail that the Leader is looking for, if they know it. Before using this ability, tell the Storyguide what you’re seeking; if the SGC doesn’t know it, you immediately become aware that the character isn’t relevant to your quest. Even the most recalcitrant of characters eventually opens up and reveals a clue — this power requires no roll. (Heroic)

 

Birthrights:

Cult 3 - The DoujinkaiA secretive network of pop-cultural critics and devoted überfans that grew out of university fandom-circles in the 1970s.

Dedicated to supporting/critiquing Benten's less "classically" oriented artistic progeny.

International in the 21st century, but with a Japanese cultural locus.

Heavily involved in convention culture. (2 Light, 2 Shadow)

• Path Skills: Academics, Culture, Technology
• Tags: Social Club
• Followers: 1 Light, 1 Shadow (TBD)

Follower 1 - PenelopeAlways has some vintage manga or academic pop cultural treatise in her messenger bag.

Thinks that it's (almost) always better to rewatch/reread something than move on to something new.

Wants to ship everything., Personal Assistant (The Kyorinrin of Jessie's Old Fansite) [Helpful]

Guide 3 - Haruka-himeGot her start trying to seduce mountain mystics.

Claims to be the first kitsune to add Westerners to her body count, which allegedly includes...
- Henry Heusken, interpreter to Townsend Harris
- Pierre Loti, author of Madame Chrysantheme
- Thomas Blake Glover, Scottish Businessman and Masonic Sorcerer
- Durham Stevens, an officer in the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- Leonard Schrader, Academy Award-nominated brother of Paul Schrader

Considers herself in Benzaiten's debt after an "incident" working in the Hostess Industry in the 50s.

Has been bumming around outside Japan since her mother, Tamamo-no-Mae, returned to earth and shattered the Sessho-seki in 2022.

Sees a kindred culture-crosser in Jessie.

Finds Jessie's attachment to ACG culture utterly baffling., a 300 year-old thirsty Kitsune who's kinda settling down.

• Asset Skills: Culture, Persuasion
• Guide Stunt (5 successes): You may purchase this Stunt with successes from any roll made to hide the movements, activities, or presence of others. As long as those you are trying to protect don’t act to directly harm others or actively draw attention to themselves, beings of lower Tier than yours simply can’t find or detect them. Beings of equal or greater Tier suffer the Condition Wait, They Can’t Actually Be… if they discover or detect your protected targets. The Condition resolves if they attempt to initiate violence against your protected group, causing the aggressor to count as though they had rolled no successes on their Initiative roll.
• Purviews: Magic (Amatsukami)

Purviews:

Signature Purview: Yaoyorozu-no-Yamigami. Every physical object, animal, and even human soul is one of the kami. Even natural phenomena, abstract concepts, and ideas are kami. This Purview holds sway over the proverbial “Eight Million Gods,” allowing them to be spoken with and propitiated in order that they might perform miracles at the Scion’s request.

• Innate Power: You can speak with the kami of objects and animals, allowing you to communicate and attempt to influence them. They have Attitude 2 towards you by default. The kami of objects have a limited degree of agency, primarily taking unrolled actions to do things the object might have done anyway. Sweet talking the kami of a car could convince it to start without keys, but not to drive around by itself.

Innate Purview: Artistry. The Artistry Purview belongs to Gods renowned for their mastery of poetry, dance, storytelling, and other forms of art, as well as those who fill the hearts and minds of mortal artists with inspiration.

• Innate Power: You can express yourself through an artistic performance to communicate with those who experience it as though you were speaking to them, even if they don’t share a language. This can also bypass Complications that would apply to rolls made through ordinary conversation, like trying to avoid being overheard, but not to the specific art form you use. Only the intended recipient of the message (which can be “everyone”) can perceive it.

 

Boons:

Assumption of the Godform (Magic)Cost: Imbue 1 Legend
Duration: One scene
Subject: Self
Action: Simple

Where mere mortals must steal scraps of divine power to channel their magical might, yours flows freely from within you. For the rest of the scene, you gain Enhancement 3 on any Sorcery roll to perform spells that are related to any other Purview you have.

Heartfelt Expression (Artistry)
Cost: Imbue 1 Legend
Duration: Indefinite
Subject: All characters
Clash: Presence + Legend vs. Composure + Legend Range: Short
Action: Reflexive
Your emotions overflow into the souls of your audience. When you perform or create a work of art,
you can instill it with your current emotional state or the personal feelings that inspired it. Any affected character that witnesses the performance or artwork is deeply affected, raising their Attitude by one point. This does not stack with other magical Attitude bonuses.
This Attitude shift lasts even after you reclaim the Legend from this Boon. However, once you do so,
your painting, music, or other artwork won’t inspire any more characters with emotion. Seeing multiple pieces of art made with this Boon doesn’t stack their Attitude boosts.

Finishing Touches:

Legend 1

Virtues - Sincerity oo•oo Right Action

Health 00 bruised 0 injured 0 maimed 0 taken out

Defense: 4

Movement: 3

Skills: Occult 1, Culture 3 -> 4, Technology 1 -> 2, Subterfuge 1, Integrity 1

Attribute: Presence 4 -> Presence 5(!),

Four Points of Birthright: Mind Reader (••), Fame (••)

Edited January 15 by Angelic Crux (see edit history)

[Angelic Crux]

What does Jessie look like?

Jessie is a petite, fair-skinned Caucasian young woman of twenty two. She tends to skinniness, more by just not eating than by exercising, but has recently tried to include a bit more exercise and breathing content in her streams. Her dark hair falls a bit past her mid-back and is usually worn loose, or in a ponytail. Jessie sees herself as nerd-pretty, able to be the cutest girl in the room among "her people", but a little too plain to compete with girls who actually know how to self present.

She's been told she has a "Disney Princess voice" and, while she'd kind of agree, she has a complicated relationship with it. On the one hand, she feels a bit like people don't take her seriously because she's got absolutely no "big" physical qualities, but she also knows she probably owes her celebrity to how easy it is for her to sound cute.

How does she dress?

She tends to get her clothes from the less adventurous pickings at Hot Topic, favoring graphic tees in dark colors, hoodies, and jeans. Depending on her mood, she'll either go for a metal band t-shirt if she's feeling a little more aggressive that day or a t-shirt from some vintage, out of business anime distribution company (like ADV Films, AnimeVillage.com or US Manga Corps) if she's feeling a little more chill.

When she has to clean up, she goes for a bit of a dark academia look, generally a blazer, a white blouse, tie and gray skirt. She's considering shifting into a more professional formal look, but isn't really ready to admit she's actually a full-on adult (it feels less weird going out in a nice "studenty" outfit than full-on business getup when you still live in your mom's basement).

Given her weeb-space celebrity, she has a fair few low-key cosplay outfits (sailor fuku, navy swimsuit, maid outfit, etc.) but tends to only wear them to conventions. She'd rather die than be seen in them when doing her work for the Amatsukami, unless she's actively doing "brandwork".

Who are her family and friends?

Jessie lives with her parents, Reginald and Amy Turnblatt, just outside of New Haven, Connecticut. While their house is in a rather nice neighborhood, her parents are a bit on the lower-end of the incomes for the nearly-upper-class, forested little community. A mild classism, and her lame hobbies, contributed to Jessie turning to the internet for much of her young socialization.

Reginald Turnblatt, 73, is a (now retired) former Lecturer of East Asian Literature, having formerly taught at Yale. Finally having the free time to interact a bit with Jessie, he's consistently putting low-key pressure on her to go back to university and finish her degree, but doesn't belabor the point given that she contributes more to the household with her "internet job" than her mother. He spends a lot of his time with his college friends and, while proud of Jessie's association with the Amatsukami, secretly wishes she'd been chosen by a more "literary" Pantheon, like the Shen or the Devas. But then, it's hard for Jessie to ever do right, given that Reginald feels a bit like he never got tenure due to the stigma of having a kid with a student.

Amy Turnblatt, 41, is a housewife who always wished things went differently. She never finished her own degree, after getting pregnant with Jessie, but of the two parents, enjoyed being a guide-on-the-side to her daughter more than Reginald enjoyed having a kid around. Where her own parents always emphasized "academics, academics, academics!" Amy overcorrected a bit, trying to always foster Jessie's talents, up to and including unschooling her after a series of bullying incidents. Amy's been struggling with depression for several years, and her anhedonia gives Jessie a great sense of inadequacy: Am I really someone who can touch people's hearts if I can't even make my mom smile?

Given that she was homeschooled and dropped out of college, Jessie doesn't have many friends where she lives. However, she spends a lot of time on Discord and has stayed in touch with "Lady Stonedheart", an old friend from her time posting to fanfic websites. She doesn't know much about Lady Stonedheart except that she lives in Oregon, owns a coffee shop, and enjoys the arts. They act as a bit of a confessional for one-another, and Jessie hasn't told Lady Stonedheart about her calling to serve Benzaiten.

Does she have any rivals?

Simone Grande is a vlogger who singled out Moe-Moe no Mikoto as being problematic. While Simone got totally ratio'd in the Twitter dust-up (Jessie didn't directly fire back, but she did lean on her Doujinkai contacts to get Simone's tweets trashed), Jessie nonetheless had her ego a bit pricked that there were a significant number of female influencers who openly talked about how much they hate Vtubers. There's a bit of an on-going cold war, with Simone seemingly content to just drop occasional snide comments rather than try to drop a whole 40-minute "exposé".

Meilin Wang is a Scion of Laozi that called Jessie out for a tweet from her personal account that said "1+ billion people, still can't animu" in response to the new "Journey to the West" CG animation out of China. Jessie was ready to make a flame-war of it, but was advised by her guide, Hanako-hime, to be one who closed the gap between cultures, not broaden them. While Meilin probably still sees Jessie as course and uninformed, Jessie's made a particular effort to be respectful towards the Shen and Devas, as a frequent home-country to certain syncretistic kami.

Tell me more about your character backstory.

Jessie:

Some of it's pretty boring, to be honest. Mom was too young and Dad was too old when I came along, so it was kind of like just having a big sister and a grandpa. I mean, I don't blame them for it or anything but... I always just kind of felt like I was a misfit fruit from a misfit tree. Except, I mean... they're both good people. Even if I didn't really appreciate that always? Or, I guess, I mean I didn't always appreciate that about my Dad.

I always appreciated my Mom. Even if she sometimes was a little clingy and over-involved. But, y'know... she made home, or at least everywhere that wasn't the study, really feel like home.  I didn't have a lot of friends, growing up, but... I didn't really mind since I just wanted to come back home. She'd play piano, and I'd sing, or we'd draw together. She... I really miss that. Like, y'know, when we were really close. She was even the person who first encouraged me to write fanfic. Or, y'know, to post it.

I didn't really get along at school. I mean, it's not like I had NO friends, but... I didn't really have anyone that close. Like, even if I was into manga, I was more into shoujo stuff and yaoi and the only guys at my school were all about shounen and mecha and that kind of stuff. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but... it wasn't my scene. So, y'know, discovering Archive of Our Own was a big thing for me. I had lots of people reading my stuff, telling me how good it was and... I mean... even if stuff at school got worse and worse, it meant when Mom pulled me out, I had a community. I guess she probably expected me to spend less time in my room and more time with her, but... that's not really how it went.

It's something I think about a lot. How much of a sanctuary it can be, being with your own people, even if they're a world away. I always, always felt like... y'know... my soul belonged in Japan. Like, even before I'd ever picked up a book that talked about mono no aware or knew the meaning of natsukashii, there was just... a vibe about it. Like I was a little dandelion that'd been blown across the pacific. And being able to spend all day with other people who felt that way... it helped. Especially since, y'know... they encouraged me in ways I think my parents wouldn't have really understood.

Amateur voice-acting. Discord karaoke nights. Twitch streaming. I was at uni when I started really getting into it. Getting followers. I couldn't do both, so I took a semester off. I thought, y'know... this'll be it. I'll hit my peak, and then finish uni and maybe come back to it. God, it broke my heart, though. I had a special all night stream for it, "Singing Until I End Myself". Yeah, I know, cringe title, but... it felt a little bit like that. Like stepping away from my friends, my community, was just... throwing myself away.

I... don't actually remember my visitation. Or, I don't remember most of it. I mean, I was streaming, but it was on my old Vtuber account, before the Moe Moe one, so... at least it's on stream. It just sounds like I'm talking to myself, though. And my avatar bugging out, of course. I was like 8 monsters in and... on fourteen hours? I was almost asleep, but... the one thing I do remember was the way she seemed to glow like gold. Benzaiten. And, I mean... people say my voice is musical, but... her voice actually sounds like... like... music.

I know she didn't pick up on my mic, but... me praying to her did. Begging? Let's call it praying. Before I threw up on myself. I mean... it was a lot of Monster. And ramen. The spicy, imported ones.

...

A little part of me still wonders. Like, why me? Of all the Vtubers, of all the otaku, of all the internet degens... what made me worth blessing?

[PerilousAdventures]

On first impression seems to be order, if you need help with something let me know:

Sure here's a guide stunt for the Kitsune:

Guide Stunt (5 successes): You may purchase this Stunt with successes from any roll made to hide the movements, activities, or presence of others. As long as those you are trying to protect don’t act to directly harm others or actively draw attention to themselves, beings of lower Tier than yours simply can’t find or detect them. Beings of equal or greater Tier suffer the Condition Wait, They Can’t Actually Be… if they discover or detect your protected targets. The Condition resolves if they attempt to initiate violence against your protected group, causing the aggressor to count as though they had rolled no successes on their Initiative roll.
 

[Angelic Crux]

Much appreciated! I slapped it on in there.

Are there any things on which you'd want me to go into more detail? More than happy to spill ink on something that seemed clear to me, but hasn't quite come across yet.