Lisa Imai ♫ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
traceofeffort) wrote2020-02-02 05:00 am
traceofeffort) wrote2020-02-02 05:00 am
Entry tags:
Application: Tramitem
Lisa is in play at tramitem. Some information has been redacted from this app for privacy.
Name: Salsa
Time Zone: MST (GMT-6)
Other Contact Info:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
eternities; MaxSalsa#9974 on Discord
Preferred method of contact: Plurk; if immediate response required, Discord
Current Characters at Tramitem: N/A
Reserve: Here!
Full Name: Lisa Imai
Nicknames: N/A
Canon: BanG Dream! franchise [Bandori for short] (BanG Dream! Girls Band Party [Garupa], worldwide server, plus anime)
PB: Sticking to her normal canon appearance; she can pass for a couple years older, I think.
Journal:traceofeffort
4th Walling: Sure, I guess. Lisa will probably get a kick out of it. Ironically she's at some risk of fourth-walling herself: her friends Aya and Hina perform the opening to Colorful Pastrale as part of Pastel*Palettes, and she herself performs the opening to at least one season of Cardfight Vanguard with Roselia, unless those retroactively change artists for safety reasons (or those canons get abstracted so they can be apped from anyway).
Canon Point: Shortly after the Neo-Aspect event on the WW server, and season 2 of the anime; season 3 of the anime started a few weeks ago and may or may not be worth updating for, but I can't do it now anyway, so it's out of consideration for now. I'll be ignoring Garupa Pico, the gag series, for everyone's collective sanity and also because most of the cast should rightly be dead if we took it as canon. Season 1 of the anime has been replaced by Poppin'Party Band Story 0 in the game and so can be ignored, season 2 is equal parts Poppin'Party and Roselia, and season 3 is shaping up to be equal parts Poppin'Party and Raise A Suilen but with occasional appearances by Roselia.
History: It is the era of the Girls Band. Groups of young women join together to aim for- well. Maybe we should back up a little bit, even if a single anime episode uses this hook to introduce nearly 30 relevant characters at once.
Lisa has lived in the same house for years, next door - she can literally jump a railing and be on the opposite balcony - to her childhood friend Yukina Minato. Yukina's father was a member of a reasonably successful band during their shared childhood, and taught Yukina to sing, and eventually Lisa to play the bass, the two having a number of jam sessions. Then over a short time, when the girls are in middle school or so, Yukina's father's band falls out of favor, and Yukina becomes driven to succeed as a musician to vindicate him, throwing herself into singing with ruthless dedication bordering on obsession. Lisa isn't prepared to keep up that pace, and it opens a bit of a rift between them: Lisa puts her bass down and lets herself focus on her other habits, but keeps an eye on Yukina all the same, staying as close as the other girl lets her.
Lisa's second year of high school comes. She's in the dance club, a fashionista, and knits amigurumi, and walks to school with Yukina every day. She hasn't practiced on the bass in months, maybe years, but it still sits in its stand, waiting. And then Yukina has what will be a fateful meeting with one Sayo Hikawa, guitarist with high standards that can't stay in a band because of them. Yukina and Sayo hit it off immediately, given neither is willing to accept anything less than perfection, and immediately begin to practice together. Lisa, uncertain but still wanting to support Yukina, attends at least some of those practices. But two instruments don't make a band. Ako Udagawa and Rinko Shirokane attend one of the new group's live shows, and Ako immediately is taken in, repeatedly requesting to audition as their drummer and being shot down every time. Lisa eventually convinces Yukina and Sayo to let her try out, and finds herself swept up in the flow, joining Ako's audition on her bass. It takes a single song for the four to click, and none of them can imagine switching any of these members out. Ako gushes about how awesome the band is to Rinko, who is a skilled pianist but extremely shy, and Ako eventually convinces her friend to try out as well. Yukina accepts Rinko into the band, decides that five members is a perfect number, and christens the group Roselia, with a blue rose motif.
Roselia has a number of ups and downs over the next year and change. Yukina struggles over whether or not to cover one of her father's songs she finds in a box, and is eventually convinced by the whole band to give it a shot; Lisa finds herself called away from practice for work one afternoon and comes back to find the band has somehow nearly razed the studio in her absence; Lisa ends up writing lyrics, acting in a play, healing in an MMO, working her part-time job at the convenience store, and dueling Ako's sister's band in a death battle for nothing more than local supremacy, among other events. At one point in the fall the girls have a chance to play a festival, but can't seem to hold the audience's attention, and each of them blames themselves for the show being a failure, but Yukina also blames the others, and a rift begins to open, culminating in Ako and Rinko revolting and walking out. It falls to Lisa to soothe everyone's hearts - when she's not struggling herself - and after some soul searching across the board and a little guidance, everyone rediscovers why they love playing in Roselia, the girls coming together again and playing their greatest show yet, taking new pride in their identity as members of a band, not just talented individuals.
Lisa's third year begins somewhat eventfully, as Yukina finds herself approached by one CHU2, a talented producer and DJ that seeks to use Yukina's powerful voice to raise herself to stardom. Yukina refuses, not willing to abandon Roselia after everything they've been through together. Instead she takes the natural next step, arranging a self-sponsored show for Roselia, taking control of all the little details. This is harder work than she expects, and Lisa has to take over some of the arrangements, but eventually the work spills over to all five of them, who still can't really handle the load. But they manage it between themselves, putting on a show memorable enough to inspire another band in their circle of friends to try to put on a self-sponsored show of their own. A couple months later, Poppin'Party manages to get their act together, and Roselia plays that show with pride. CHU2 isn't done with Yukina yet, though... ((BanG Dream! 3rd Season picks up here, but is too new to apply with information from.))
Personality Lisa exists in Roselia - and in Bandori more generally - as the Mom Friend. She's caring, attentive, and everyone's advocate. She makes friends easily, is slow to anger, and gives all of herself to anyone that will have her. For better or worse, Lisa is bubbly and can go on for ages, although she has a bad habit of putting herself last that she's (slowly) getting better about. In a way, bass is the perfect instrument for Lisa: she keeps the tempo for everyone around her, and if you look behind the spotlight, you'll find her there, making sure everything goes smoothly. Sometimes that's even more literal - Yukina in particular does not function well on her own, and Lisa serves as some combination of morality pet and minder that's funny to watch but makes you wonder how her best friend functions day to day. Yukina is, incidentally, one of Lisa's larger weaknesses - if something happens between them, Lisa's entire mood shifts to something darker and shorter. That compounds with her low self-valuation, given she doesn't really accept compliments about herself in the spirit offered, and will tell you herself she's the weakest link in Roselia. Ako, Rinko and Sayo will debate that (at least two of the three will say they're the weak link), but she'll quietly just wave them off and continue to practice whenever she gets a chance.
Band work has to come at the expense of something, and Lisa will happily push anything aside for it. She makes vanishingly few appearances at dance club (showing up only whenthe plot requires she has to to stay on the register) and shifts focus away from being the most fashionable girl in the room where it'd get in the way of playing. She makes time for her friends and especially her bandmates, though, particularly Sayo and Rinko who seem to need a little more guidance than most. And while she needs to learn to take her own advice sometimes, she's getting better about putting herself first. When she was younger, the bass was something to have fun with, and a way to spend time with Yukina. Now, it's a passion, and a way to shoot for the top with her irreplaceable friends.
Physical description: Lisa is about average height for a Japanese girl, with long, wavy brown hair, eyes somewhere between gray and green, and a fair complexion. Her general bearing is open and she's used to commanding attention in a room, with easy smiles and a light voice. She tends toward skirts and dresses and always has her mind on what'll look cutest. She's famous for her cat-faced smile. Her signature accessories are a pendant of a pink bunny head with Xes for eyes, and matching earrings, all hanging from the bottom of the head with ears pointed straight down. Rinko handcrafts the band's costumes, and they trend toward gothic with occasional floral accents, often a blue rose for the band and something of the member's theme color; Lisa's is red-orange. Here's Lisa's default band costume from Garupa as a further reference, though her band outfits are ornate enough that her AU probably won't try to make or commission them herself... although she could always regain oneor six.
Meta Powers N/A. Lisa is unpowered and has mundane skills including "dance" and "play bass guitar" that will be her big-ticket "skill" regains.
Notable/Unique Needs: N/A
History: Lisa grew up in the American South with an uneventful childhood. Comfortably middle-class, no particular worries. Her father handled realty for a moderately-sized town. Everything was kosher. Yet, somehow she felt... a little empty. She made friends, but she never felt like she had exciting hobbies. She read books and stuff, but none of that really seemed worth talking about? She parked herself in front of the radio in her free time, at least, and that was cool. Lisa found she liked singing along, and she wasn't half bad at it. Not "take lessons and be a professional" good, not to herself, but it was fun.
That changed as she got a little older and got more into what she heard on the radio, and music videos, and she felt a little bit of a fire inside her. She threw herself more into singing, and she wanted something to do with her fingers. For Lisa's thirteenth birthday, she got an acoustic guitar. Nothing terribly fancy, but it was something, and she took to it with gusto. Everything on the radio, anything she could get her hands on sheet music for, she devoured all of it. It took effort, and time, but she loved the feeling, and her passion kept her diving into the project. Her friends both enjoyed seeing this and were almost concerned with her drive, but hey, if it made her happy and wasn't harming anything, why not? Not that she withdrew from them: she still made plenty of time for hanging out and keeping well connected. People are important, right?
A couple years passed. Lisa was getting decently good by now, enough that she was a common sight at the local bars and even the rare festival or party. Part gift, and part saved tip basket money from her playing, she ended up with her own pickup truck, and she began to push further out of home. New towns, new stages, new people. As her confidence grew, she got bolder, and picked up new and more complex music. And by the time she turned sixteen, she set her GPS for downtown Nashville, heart set on going all the way - on becoming a household name, like Taylor or Carrie or... well, you get the idea. By that time she'd positioned herself pretty well as a country act, with the occasional pop or rock song. Not that she'd managed to write anything herself that didn't sound like a third grader put it together, but hey, that's fine, right? That's what a label is for.
It hadn't been hard to set up a schedule. A couple nights a week, and longer on weekends, she made the couple-hour journey to the home of country music, and set up shop. A bar, a club, maybe a stage if she could find someplace. The crowds loved her, and she had the time of her life. But she never seemed to find her way in. No producers or execs ever approached her. She ran into real, established artists - or at least people she'd heard of - sometimes, but outside a show or two, nobody called back. She got a couple chances to work with people on a single-song basis, and ended up with some stuff she'd thought was good, but it never went anywhere. She had a few thousand SoundCloud followers, and a song or three on Spotify she'd gotten put there herself. She'd been good, but was she not good enough?
Two more years pass. Toward the end of her last year of high school, Lisa was getting ready to give up. She still loved music, but maybe it just didn't love her. Not enough. She couldn't keep going like this; it'd break her. And so she made plans to change things. Change herself. She couldn't go through life being the girl playing the bar downtown three nights a week. So she pulled out a wall-sized map, borrowed a Nerf gun with a sticky dart, and fired at random. Not quite "heads Carolina, tails California", but close enough, right?
A week later, she'd applied to half a dozen schools in New York City, and some weeks after that, she committed to Queens College. She found an apartment with another girl that she could barely afford - a combination of scholarship money, student loans, and funds from continued bar gigs kept her clothed, fed, and with a roof over her head - and began collegiate life that fall pursuing a degree in music, either helping make it or helping understand it. She figured she'd nail that down further after she'd gotten some distance into it, and didn't worry too much. She'd survived her first three semesters without too much issue, and by all accounts, she was in good shape to finish her sophomore year.
Lisa is about to not be in good shape.
Personality: A fair bit of this Lisa's personality takes cues from her other self, but a critical absence of her single-minded canon best friend means she'll end up just a tiny bit unrecognizable. One of Lisa's core canon identities is the cheery gyaru girl, and while she's still a ball of positive energy - usually; more on that in a second - she lost some of her focus on fashion in the transition. She still takes time to make herself look good, but her style doesn't stand out so much anyore. She makes up for that with presence and charisma. She's outgoing, likes making friends and meeting new people, and knows how to control a room at least passably well. Unfortunately, that's blunted a bit by the recognition that she didn't have enough charisma - or at least enough skill - to land herself a record deal, and so she has moments of hesitation, occasionally bordering on insecurity. She has demons, but they're well-hidden, and so Lisa appears well-adjusted on the outside. That also means she tends to have one speed only when her heart is set on something, blazing forward with limited consideration for others, especially if she knows it'll be better for them in the long run - if she doesn't stop for anything, she won't get inside her own head, and everything will be fine! Probably. Lisa going all in on a problem is the kind of thing you want to get out of the way of; you'll be run over otherwise.
Lisa breathes music. She hums, and she taps her nails on desks, and she sings, and when her beloved guitar is to hand she plays. Sometimes even when it isn't, although she's mostly gotten better at not breaking into air guitar solos (unless she needs to attract attention). In keeping with her career up to now, it's largely country music, with bits of pop and rock and everything else, plus lately some guitar adaptation of classical music that college is stuffing into her head. Given it's a subject she likes, she's a solid performer in her classes, though she has trouble focusing her attention on her studies after a while. The same applies to her music itself - she can't practice a song for six hours. Eventually she burns out and ends up on Netflix. That also means she can't really stay quiet forever, because eventually she'll start tapping a foot or humming. Stealth is not Lisa's forte.
She's always been a people person, though how it manifests varies. She has fans, and she knows how to deal with them - talk about herself, gush on occasion, keep her mouth shut when it's not her turn but pay attention in case something important comes around. She has friends, too, and she values people that can see past "oh wow, you play music! Hey, do you know..." more than she can say sometimes. Maybe too much: she's aware she has some problems with jealousy if someone's stealing her people from her. She doesn't like letting things go with her precious people, either, tending to take on a person as a project if she thinks it'll help their life, and having a burning need to fix problems brought to her attention. She gets a bit physically clingy, too, with a limited concept of personal space; she runs on physical contact when she doesn't have an instrument to hand. If something spooks her, though, she backs off hard, and will actively work to get away from contact if she's truly scared. She doesn't really understand the reaction herself, but if she's being honest it's probably related to that insecurity in her own strengths.
Some of that social tendency manifests in less traditional ways. Lisa's turned into a bit of a party girl since she started college, giving her space to open up, let her hair down, and let go for a little bit. She's a little straight-laced normally, but when she lets her inhibitions take a break, she's even more open and bubbly, sometimes to her own detriment. She knows how to put a stop to things she doesn't like, though, even then. Her father's insistence on self-defense classes helps with that; she's not highly ranked, but she can discourage budding issues. It helps her center herself sometimes, too, but Lisa has a few too many deep-seated issues that a deep breath and some quick introspection just won't solve.
While she keeps in touch with her friends at home - Facebook remains a modern miracle - she's not connected enough, at this distance, to truly maintain a proper bond. So Lisa is on her own in New York City, not that she's ever let that stop her before. These are the years of your life where anything can happen, right? Lisa wants all of the things to happen. She came all this way to make a change - and change is exactly what she's going to get.
Physical description: Lisa is a couple years older here, a sophomore in college at nineteen. She still turns heads, but in a little different of a way, having grown up in the south and in the public eye, if in a minor fashion. Her wardrobe is a little more conservative now, though no less carefully chosen for that, with longer dresses and jeans, and shirts and jackets, with a lot of flannel and fleece to make up for New York being a lot colder than her usual. Her accessories are understated, but she can often be found with a set of golden earrings set with rhodonites. Lisa's tone is still bright, but there's a touch of long, drawn out sounds in it too, a comforting Southern drawl she falls deeper into if she's stressed, though she'll catch herself after a while.
Your Character's 'Event Memory': Ako's audition, with Lisa accompanying. Four girls take up their instruments and begin to play a rock song, and almost immediately Lisa feels herself pulled in even as she plays her bass along to the tune. This is nothing like simply playing an instrument by oneself - is this what being in a band is like? It's a heady feeling, and it lasts for a while, even after the song (or the memory, in this case; she won't get that far in, but it's far enough) ends.
Anything else? Lisa is going to be a music driven character in some capacity for basically the whole game, and I'm sorry in advance for what will probably be a combination of bad puns and bad music. I can promise that at least her canon music is good! Also I'm sorry the OOC sections went on so long, Bandori is getting to be a big media project and only growing larger.
First Person (50 word min) or Third Person (250 word min): Lisa on the TDM; since I didn't get tags on her top-level, here's a network thread and a log thread.
tramitem. Some information has been redacted from this app for privacy.APPLICATION - TRAMITEM
Player Information
Time Zone: MST (GMT-6)
Other Contact Info:
Preferred method of contact: Plurk; if immediate response required, Discord
Current Characters at Tramitem: N/A
Reserve: Here!
Character Information
Nicknames: N/A
Canon: BanG Dream! franchise [Bandori for short] (BanG Dream! Girls Band Party [Garupa], worldwide server, plus anime)
PB: Sticking to her normal canon appearance; she can pass for a couple years older, I think.
Journal:
traceofeffort4th Walling: Sure, I guess. Lisa will probably get a kick out of it. Ironically she's at some risk of fourth-walling herself: her friends Aya and Hina perform the opening to Colorful Pastrale as part of Pastel*Palettes, and she herself performs the opening to at least one season of Cardfight Vanguard with Roselia, unless those retroactively change artists for safety reasons (or those canons get abstracted so they can be apped from anyway).
Canon Point: Shortly after the Neo-Aspect event on the WW server, and season 2 of the anime; season 3 of the anime started a few weeks ago and may or may not be worth updating for, but I can't do it now anyway, so it's out of consideration for now. I'll be ignoring Garupa Pico, the gag series, for everyone's collective sanity and also because most of the cast should rightly be dead if we took it as canon. Season 1 of the anime has been replaced by Poppin'Party Band Story 0 in the game and so can be ignored, season 2 is equal parts Poppin'Party and Roselia, and season 3 is shaping up to be equal parts Poppin'Party and Raise A Suilen but with occasional appearances by Roselia.
Canon Information
Lisa has lived in the same house for years, next door - she can literally jump a railing and be on the opposite balcony - to her childhood friend Yukina Minato. Yukina's father was a member of a reasonably successful band during their shared childhood, and taught Yukina to sing, and eventually Lisa to play the bass, the two having a number of jam sessions. Then over a short time, when the girls are in middle school or so, Yukina's father's band falls out of favor, and Yukina becomes driven to succeed as a musician to vindicate him, throwing herself into singing with ruthless dedication bordering on obsession. Lisa isn't prepared to keep up that pace, and it opens a bit of a rift between them: Lisa puts her bass down and lets herself focus on her other habits, but keeps an eye on Yukina all the same, staying as close as the other girl lets her.
Lisa's second year of high school comes. She's in the dance club, a fashionista, and knits amigurumi, and walks to school with Yukina every day. She hasn't practiced on the bass in months, maybe years, but it still sits in its stand, waiting. And then Yukina has what will be a fateful meeting with one Sayo Hikawa, guitarist with high standards that can't stay in a band because of them. Yukina and Sayo hit it off immediately, given neither is willing to accept anything less than perfection, and immediately begin to practice together. Lisa, uncertain but still wanting to support Yukina, attends at least some of those practices. But two instruments don't make a band. Ako Udagawa and Rinko Shirokane attend one of the new group's live shows, and Ako immediately is taken in, repeatedly requesting to audition as their drummer and being shot down every time. Lisa eventually convinces Yukina and Sayo to let her try out, and finds herself swept up in the flow, joining Ako's audition on her bass. It takes a single song for the four to click, and none of them can imagine switching any of these members out. Ako gushes about how awesome the band is to Rinko, who is a skilled pianist but extremely shy, and Ako eventually convinces her friend to try out as well. Yukina accepts Rinko into the band, decides that five members is a perfect number, and christens the group Roselia, with a blue rose motif.
Roselia has a number of ups and downs over the next year and change. Yukina struggles over whether or not to cover one of her father's songs she finds in a box, and is eventually convinced by the whole band to give it a shot; Lisa finds herself called away from practice for work one afternoon and comes back to find the band has somehow nearly razed the studio in her absence; Lisa ends up writing lyrics, acting in a play, healing in an MMO, working her part-time job at the convenience store, and dueling Ako's sister's band in a death battle for nothing more than local supremacy, among other events. At one point in the fall the girls have a chance to play a festival, but can't seem to hold the audience's attention, and each of them blames themselves for the show being a failure, but Yukina also blames the others, and a rift begins to open, culminating in Ako and Rinko revolting and walking out. It falls to Lisa to soothe everyone's hearts - when she's not struggling herself - and after some soul searching across the board and a little guidance, everyone rediscovers why they love playing in Roselia, the girls coming together again and playing their greatest show yet, taking new pride in their identity as members of a band, not just talented individuals.
Lisa's third year begins somewhat eventfully, as Yukina finds herself approached by one CHU2, a talented producer and DJ that seeks to use Yukina's powerful voice to raise herself to stardom. Yukina refuses, not willing to abandon Roselia after everything they've been through together. Instead she takes the natural next step, arranging a self-sponsored show for Roselia, taking control of all the little details. This is harder work than she expects, and Lisa has to take over some of the arrangements, but eventually the work spills over to all five of them, who still can't really handle the load. But they manage it between themselves, putting on a show memorable enough to inspire another band in their circle of friends to try to put on a self-sponsored show of their own. A couple months later, Poppin'Party manages to get their act together, and Roselia plays that show with pride. CHU2 isn't done with Yukina yet, though... ((BanG Dream! 3rd Season picks up here, but is too new to apply with information from.))
Personality Lisa exists in Roselia - and in Bandori more generally - as the Mom Friend. She's caring, attentive, and everyone's advocate. She makes friends easily, is slow to anger, and gives all of herself to anyone that will have her. For better or worse, Lisa is bubbly and can go on for ages, although she has a bad habit of putting herself last that she's (slowly) getting better about. In a way, bass is the perfect instrument for Lisa: she keeps the tempo for everyone around her, and if you look behind the spotlight, you'll find her there, making sure everything goes smoothly. Sometimes that's even more literal - Yukina in particular does not function well on her own, and Lisa serves as some combination of morality pet and minder that's funny to watch but makes you wonder how her best friend functions day to day. Yukina is, incidentally, one of Lisa's larger weaknesses - if something happens between them, Lisa's entire mood shifts to something darker and shorter. That compounds with her low self-valuation, given she doesn't really accept compliments about herself in the spirit offered, and will tell you herself she's the weakest link in Roselia. Ako, Rinko and Sayo will debate that (at least two of the three will say they're the weak link), but she'll quietly just wave them off and continue to practice whenever she gets a chance.
Band work has to come at the expense of something, and Lisa will happily push anything aside for it. She makes vanishingly few appearances at dance club (showing up only when
Physical description: Lisa is about average height for a Japanese girl, with long, wavy brown hair, eyes somewhere between gray and green, and a fair complexion. Her general bearing is open and she's used to commanding attention in a room, with easy smiles and a light voice. She tends toward skirts and dresses and always has her mind on what'll look cutest. She's famous for her cat-faced smile. Her signature accessories are a pendant of a pink bunny head with Xes for eyes, and matching earrings, all hanging from the bottom of the head with ears pointed straight down. Rinko handcrafts the band's costumes, and they trend toward gothic with occasional floral accents, often a blue rose for the band and something of the member's theme color; Lisa's is red-orange. Here's Lisa's default band costume from Garupa as a further reference, though her band outfits are ornate enough that her AU probably won't try to make or commission them herself... although she could always regain one
Meta Powers N/A. Lisa is unpowered and has mundane skills including "dance" and "play bass guitar" that will be her big-ticket "skill" regains.
Notable/Unique Needs: N/A
Earth AU
That changed as she got a little older and got more into what she heard on the radio, and music videos, and she felt a little bit of a fire inside her. She threw herself more into singing, and she wanted something to do with her fingers. For Lisa's thirteenth birthday, she got an acoustic guitar. Nothing terribly fancy, but it was something, and she took to it with gusto. Everything on the radio, anything she could get her hands on sheet music for, she devoured all of it. It took effort, and time, but she loved the feeling, and her passion kept her diving into the project. Her friends both enjoyed seeing this and were almost concerned with her drive, but hey, if it made her happy and wasn't harming anything, why not? Not that she withdrew from them: she still made plenty of time for hanging out and keeping well connected. People are important, right?
A couple years passed. Lisa was getting decently good by now, enough that she was a common sight at the local bars and even the rare festival or party. Part gift, and part saved tip basket money from her playing, she ended up with her own pickup truck, and she began to push further out of home. New towns, new stages, new people. As her confidence grew, she got bolder, and picked up new and more complex music. And by the time she turned sixteen, she set her GPS for downtown Nashville, heart set on going all the way - on becoming a household name, like Taylor or Carrie or... well, you get the idea. By that time she'd positioned herself pretty well as a country act, with the occasional pop or rock song. Not that she'd managed to write anything herself that didn't sound like a third grader put it together, but hey, that's fine, right? That's what a label is for.
It hadn't been hard to set up a schedule. A couple nights a week, and longer on weekends, she made the couple-hour journey to the home of country music, and set up shop. A bar, a club, maybe a stage if she could find someplace. The crowds loved her, and she had the time of her life. But she never seemed to find her way in. No producers or execs ever approached her. She ran into real, established artists - or at least people she'd heard of - sometimes, but outside a show or two, nobody called back. She got a couple chances to work with people on a single-song basis, and ended up with some stuff she'd thought was good, but it never went anywhere. She had a few thousand SoundCloud followers, and a song or three on Spotify she'd gotten put there herself. She'd been good, but was she not good enough?
Two more years pass. Toward the end of her last year of high school, Lisa was getting ready to give up. She still loved music, but maybe it just didn't love her. Not enough. She couldn't keep going like this; it'd break her. And so she made plans to change things. Change herself. She couldn't go through life being the girl playing the bar downtown three nights a week. So she pulled out a wall-sized map, borrowed a Nerf gun with a sticky dart, and fired at random. Not quite "heads Carolina, tails California", but close enough, right?
A week later, she'd applied to half a dozen schools in New York City, and some weeks after that, she committed to Queens College. She found an apartment with another girl that she could barely afford - a combination of scholarship money, student loans, and funds from continued bar gigs kept her clothed, fed, and with a roof over her head - and began collegiate life that fall pursuing a degree in music, either helping make it or helping understand it. She figured she'd nail that down further after she'd gotten some distance into it, and didn't worry too much. She'd survived her first three semesters without too much issue, and by all accounts, she was in good shape to finish her sophomore year.
Lisa is about to not be in good shape.
Personality: A fair bit of this Lisa's personality takes cues from her other self, but a critical absence of her single-minded canon best friend means she'll end up just a tiny bit unrecognizable. One of Lisa's core canon identities is the cheery gyaru girl, and while she's still a ball of positive energy - usually; more on that in a second - she lost some of her focus on fashion in the transition. She still takes time to make herself look good, but her style doesn't stand out so much anyore. She makes up for that with presence and charisma. She's outgoing, likes making friends and meeting new people, and knows how to control a room at least passably well. Unfortunately, that's blunted a bit by the recognition that she didn't have enough charisma - or at least enough skill - to land herself a record deal, and so she has moments of hesitation, occasionally bordering on insecurity. She has demons, but they're well-hidden, and so Lisa appears well-adjusted on the outside. That also means she tends to have one speed only when her heart is set on something, blazing forward with limited consideration for others, especially if she knows it'll be better for them in the long run - if she doesn't stop for anything, she won't get inside her own head, and everything will be fine! Probably. Lisa going all in on a problem is the kind of thing you want to get out of the way of; you'll be run over otherwise.
Lisa breathes music. She hums, and she taps her nails on desks, and she sings, and when her beloved guitar is to hand she plays. Sometimes even when it isn't, although she's mostly gotten better at not breaking into air guitar solos (unless she needs to attract attention). In keeping with her career up to now, it's largely country music, with bits of pop and rock and everything else, plus lately some guitar adaptation of classical music that college is stuffing into her head. Given it's a subject she likes, she's a solid performer in her classes, though she has trouble focusing her attention on her studies after a while. The same applies to her music itself - she can't practice a song for six hours. Eventually she burns out and ends up on Netflix. That also means she can't really stay quiet forever, because eventually she'll start tapping a foot or humming. Stealth is not Lisa's forte.
She's always been a people person, though how it manifests varies. She has fans, and she knows how to deal with them - talk about herself, gush on occasion, keep her mouth shut when it's not her turn but pay attention in case something important comes around. She has friends, too, and she values people that can see past "oh wow, you play music! Hey, do you know..." more than she can say sometimes. Maybe too much: she's aware she has some problems with jealousy if someone's stealing her people from her. She doesn't like letting things go with her precious people, either, tending to take on a person as a project if she thinks it'll help their life, and having a burning need to fix problems brought to her attention. She gets a bit physically clingy, too, with a limited concept of personal space; she runs on physical contact when she doesn't have an instrument to hand. If something spooks her, though, she backs off hard, and will actively work to get away from contact if she's truly scared. She doesn't really understand the reaction herself, but if she's being honest it's probably related to that insecurity in her own strengths.
Some of that social tendency manifests in less traditional ways. Lisa's turned into a bit of a party girl since she started college, giving her space to open up, let her hair down, and let go for a little bit. She's a little straight-laced normally, but when she lets her inhibitions take a break, she's even more open and bubbly, sometimes to her own detriment. She knows how to put a stop to things she doesn't like, though, even then. Her father's insistence on self-defense classes helps with that; she's not highly ranked, but she can discourage budding issues. It helps her center herself sometimes, too, but Lisa has a few too many deep-seated issues that a deep breath and some quick introspection just won't solve.
While she keeps in touch with her friends at home - Facebook remains a modern miracle - she's not connected enough, at this distance, to truly maintain a proper bond. So Lisa is on her own in New York City, not that she's ever let that stop her before. These are the years of your life where anything can happen, right? Lisa wants all of the things to happen. She came all this way to make a change - and change is exactly what she's going to get.
Physical description: Lisa is a couple years older here, a sophomore in college at nineteen. She still turns heads, but in a little different of a way, having grown up in the south and in the public eye, if in a minor fashion. Her wardrobe is a little more conservative now, though no less carefully chosen for that, with longer dresses and jeans, and shirts and jackets, with a lot of flannel and fleece to make up for New York being a lot colder than her usual. Her accessories are understated, but she can often be found with a set of golden earrings set with rhodonites. Lisa's tone is still bright, but there's a touch of long, drawn out sounds in it too, a comforting Southern drawl she falls deeper into if she's stressed, though she'll catch herself after a while.
Your Character's 'Event Memory': Ako's audition, with Lisa accompanying. Four girls take up their instruments and begin to play a rock song, and almost immediately Lisa feels herself pulled in even as she plays her bass along to the tune. This is nothing like simply playing an instrument by oneself - is this what being in a band is like? It's a heady feeling, and it lasts for a while, even after the song (or the memory, in this case; she won't get that far in, but it's far enough) ends.
Anything else? Lisa is going to be a music driven character in some capacity for basically the whole game, and I'm sorry in advance for what will probably be a combination of bad puns and bad music. I can promise that at least her canon music is good! Also I'm sorry the OOC sections went on so long, Bandori is getting to be a big media project and only growing larger.
Writing Samples