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Gou "Kou" Matsuoka ([personal profile] fishybarrettes) wrote2020-08-02 02:35 pm

OOC: Route 29 App [WIP]

Player
Name: Box
Personal Journal: [personal profile] unseenbox
E-mail: boxofgrenades@gmail.com
AIM/Plurk/Etc.: [plurk.com profile] likeabox, AIM: bardwithnoname
Timezone: EST
Current Characters in Route: None!

Character
Name: Gou Matsuoka
Series: Free! aka Swimming Anime
Timeline: Probably between season 1 and season 2!
Canon Resource Links: wiki here!

Personality:
Just putting this out there: Gou Matsuoka is a massive fangirl. It’s kinda hard to miss, given the shoujo vision bubbles and sparkles that pop up whenever she catches an eyeful. Triceps, abs, calves, all muscles are welcome and appreciated, even if they belong to her brother. She’s surprisingly picky about them, too. Not just any cutie with a workout regime can catch her eye, as evidenced by the 4 out of 10 she gave a bodybuilder when she judged a muscle contest. One that she suggested, by the way. As time’s worn on, she’s gotten less and less concerned with concealing her inner pervert. She goes from just sitting in her fangirl dimension and the occasional odd comment to including the swim team’s “charm points” as a recruitment ploy in an assembly.

That doesn’t mean the swim team’s all fun and fetish fuel. She takes her duties as their manager extremely seriously, complete with calling for lunch checks and training regimens. Considering the club began largely as an excuse to hang out with each other and swim, it falls to her to keep them on task for all the, you know, competitions they have to actually try to win. While she started out by cribbing leftover notes from her brother, by this point, she’s confident enough to create her own -- pretty good ones, judging from Anime Macklemore Coach Goro’s assessment. Most of the recruitment drives, advertisements for the club, and special practices are largely driven by her, or at least heavily incorporate her ideas. She’s the one who found the map to the deserted training islands, after all. Hell, she signed them up for the prefecture relay that set the entire second half of the first season into motion. Gou’s a very gutsy manager, willing to take risks and unwilling to let the team slack off. In other words: she’s the Team Dad to Makoto’s Team Mom.

Gou’s all about connections. Whether from her brother to the Iwatobi crew or vice versa, she provides a handy link between the two. She always informs Rin of the swim club’s going ons, and she often gives the Iwatobi team insight into Rin’s behavior while he’s been away. While she’s an extremely strict and energetic manager, she cares for her brother’s friends a lot, to the point that they eventually become *her* friends, too. This is best shown by dropping her previous insistence on being called Kou -- she’s become comfortable enough around them that she doesn’t mind going by Gou. The swim club’s given her a place she belongs. It may not be as flashy or as important as swimming ‘for the team,’ but it does mean that she’s more accepting of her own quirks and foibles than she used to be. As mentioned above, she’s stopped giving even the slightest pretense of caring what other people think about her fangirling ways, and this extends to her masculine name.

Most importantly, her connectivity applies to her brother. During most relays and events, she constantly splits cheering for the Iwatobi team with him. Above all else, she’s proud of him when he acts the way he did before. Due to the Australia clusterfuck, Rin started acting cold and withdrawn. As such, whenever he does things like walk her home or celebrate winning by group hugging his friends, she’s usually seen smiling about it. While the series focuses more on its effects on Rin, their father’s death must have played some kind of role in Gou’s development, as well. It’s possible she’s gained something of a protective streak in the process. An attempt is being made to look after him and remain connected, even though he’s spent a lot of time away. She wants the best for everyone, which means Rin needs to get better and the swim team needs to make it to championships.

What Gou possesses, more than anything else, is focus. True, she can get lost in a shoujo bubble for a good couple of minutes, but she’s able to shake it off without too much effort if she has to. Hell, two boys have developed massive crushes on her, and she’s barely noticed either of them. She’s a driving force of the ‘Save Rin from Being A Douchebag’ contingent and doesn’t lose sight of that goal, or the more temporary one to gain an indoor swimming pool, throughout the entire first season. She can get a bit ahead of herself -- protein powder doesn’t belong in all the lunches, and asking before signing people up for events may be a good move -- but she’s the kind of person who can’t just sit around and do nothing. And sure, okay, her notebooks may be filled with the measurements of half the male swimmers in the prefecture, but that doesn’t limit her ability to pay attention to what really matters, or to see the bigger picture.

Strengths/Weaknesses:

+ Managing - Gou’s already a team manager, and as such, it’s possible she’d be able to show her pokemon team the path to the Elite Four. She’s definitely the type to pay attention to type match ups and building a well balanced group to take on all comers.

+ Drive - If Gou wants something, not much can stop her. She’ll go above and beyond the call of duty to make championship dreams come true, if that’s what she wants.

+ For the Team - She cares deeply about what her friends and family are going through, which means that even though she’s competitive, she wouldn’t push her pokemon too far. She’d also probably put aside Elite Four challenging/Gym Badge runs to push any canonmates (or other friends she makes) to come along with her or else help them get there on their own.

+/ - Strict - On the one hand, her strictness as a manager allows little leeway for lazing around, but on the other, she can turn overly critical and pushy real fast.

+/- Take Charge - On the positive end, she can get things done without having to wait around for others to come on board. On the other hand, she *does* have a habit for making decisions that affect the team without asking them first.

- Fangirl - Yes, she will ogle cute boys and their muscles. No, you can’t stop her.

- Touchy - Like her brother, she has a serious temper, and she’s been known to get in people’s faces to boss them around. See: “Call me Kou!”

- Couch Potato - Ironically enough? For a sports team manager, she’s terrible at athletics. No running, no swimming, no nothing.

Pokémon Information
Affiliation: Trainer
Starter: Plusle
Password: Swedish Fish

Samples
First Person Sample:
Okay, so! I have a few questions for you today!

One! Is there some kinda… people gym around here? I know there’s that fight club in Saffron -- you know, next to the real gym -- but is there a place where guys can work out around here and not necessarily Hitmonlee or Machokes? I’ve got my reasons for needing this, I promise!

Two! If I’m building a team… is it better to play to your strengths or cover your weaknesses? See, I’ve got this li’l electric guy for a starter-- uh, Plusle, I think that’s what the dex called him-- and I’m not sure if I should go looking through caves for a ground type in case we get into some trouble, or another speedy guy to beat the other teams before they have a chance! What do you think?


Third Person Sample:

Well, good news was, Gou found a shore. Cherrygrove didn’t have much, just a Mart, a Center, and some houses, but it definitely had a sandy outcropping. And the ocean, another important part. Sure, it was small, and closed in, and probably much too chilly to swim in, even if she wanted to, but a beach is a beach, and it reminded her a bit of home. She stood in the surf, shoes safely deposited in her new backpack, eyeing the distance from the sand to the crumbly rocks around the water. She couldn’t do advanced wind-resistance theory like Rei-kun, but she could eyeball some of it pretty well. Her new electric pal -- she really needed to think of a name for him soon -- kept poking at the water and setting off sparks.

“Alright! We’ve done a couple battles with Pidgey, and I noticed that you don’t seem to do a lot of damage…” Okay, it was enough to put the hurt on the Pidgeys, sure, but battles couldn’t be won with Thunder Waves and a lack of Paralyse Heals alone! Plusle looked up, and seemed a bit nervous, or else extra-jolty for a second. Gou pointed out to sea, her other hand on her hip. All she needed was some heroic wind and she’d be in business. “So! I’ve devised a training plan to make your electric shocks put some more hurt on our opponents! If you practice on the rocks,” here she swiveled to point at the two boulders on the beach, “we can build up some staying power without fainting our opponents in the process!” She wasn’t sure if pokemon understood people, but if nothing else, they seemed to get tone, because the Plusle stood up and a sparkish firework jolted out of his paw.

“Ready?!” She wished her backpack came with a whistle, but she didn’t really need one. Plusle dug in and took his mark on the shore. She smiled to herself, let out a little breath, and shouted, “Shock it!”

Someday soon she’d have a team again, and whether it consisted of people or pokemon, she wouldn’t settle for anything less than the best. So what if the move turned out to really be called Nuzzle, or that she’d started by practicing on rocks. Everyone starts somewhere. What other place could there be, besides the shore.