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Player Information

Player Name: Dragon
Pronouns: He/him
Age: way way over 18
Preferred Means of Contact: ultimaweapon
Invitation: Link
Other Characters In Game: N/A
Do you have any plans for this character in the game? No specific plans! Poppi is here to expand her experiences, learn new things, and develop as a person.

Character Information

Character's Full Name: Poppi
Character's Pronouns: she/her
Character's Canon: Xenoblade Chronicles 2
Character's Canon Point: Postgame
Character's Age: 0 (chronologically, she was activated less than a year ago)
Did your character willingly come to Iyashikei? If yes, why? Yes. Poppi believes that this is a valuable opportunity to expand her horizons and push back against her own fears. This is also a step towards becoming more independent and understanding herself.
Will they need any special accommodations upon arrival? No

Character's History: Wiki link. Also in her history is the Powered-up Poppi optional quest which features her getting a crash-course education and an upgraded "grown-up" form.

Character's Personality: (Please pick ONE way to show your character's personality. You can either provide a general explanation of their personality or you can answer all of the following Character Questions. Maximum of 1200 words for either method.)

Questions:

1. Tell us about who your character is and what someone’s first impression would be upon meeting them. How would your character act once someone got to know them?

Poppi is generally cheerful, bright, and friendly -- very content with her existence, happy to be Tora's Blade, and glad to have traveled with and learned so much from her friends. In most situations, she's surprisingly confident, but not arrogant; she has the power and conviction to back up her words. Although she is an artificial Blade, identifies as such, and appears as such, no one could mistake her for anything less than a person.

Those who get to know her get to discover her fears and worries. She isn't experienced and relies on others for guidance while she's learning, and she deeply fears that her existence is a technological advancement that will destroy the world, as technology had done once before. Most importantly, whether happy or sad, angry or calm, she possesses a deep, pure humanity in the depth and clarity of her emotions and feelings. When Rex suffered a brutal defeat and wanted to give up, Poppi alone swayed him with a deep emotional appeal that emphasized how much he'd already done, and how she and Tora relied on him. When she had to keep a promise by letting someone sacrifice themself, her sadness and grief were total, absolute, and heartbreaking.

Her mood can change surprisingly quickly. She went from confidently beating down and coming literal inches from killing Lila to proudly accepting her as a sister the moment Lila ripped out the control device that was forcing her to fight. Her despair at the prospect she might destroy the world quickly because relief when Mythra promised her that if it ever looked like Poppi would do something like that, Mythra would destroy her, and delight when they sealed their agreement with a Nopon promise ritual. Again, her emotions are very pure, and don't get tangled up in each other or unnecessary details or circumstances.

2. What is something unique and interesting about them, or what is a fun little tidbit that sets them apart from the crowd?

Poppi has a self-destruct mechanism which she is surprisingly blasé about, installed solely because Tora's grandfather thought self-destructing is a hero's most daring and noble act. She's entirely okay with this because the explosive in question is safer than most of her other functions. Funny, but also a very real insight into her fear that she could destroy the world someday...

3. What does your character think their flaws are? What do they think their strengths are? What are their actual flaws and strengths?

Poppi has a pretty good handle on her strengths and flaws, in part because she's pretty emotionally intelligent and in part because she hasn't been active long enough to have developed misconceptions about herself. Her lack of experience is a real and self-identified flaw, something that often gets in the way of her understanding situations and events. She relies heavily on following Rex's lead, but that means when Rex stops moving forward, Poppi is lost and confused.

Poppi is not aware that being created by Nopon has given her a different perspective than most. For one, she never had a conventional family and upbringing, instead being activated at about a middle-school level. This isn't actually so much of a problem on Alrest, where Blades have neither, but she doesn't have the promise of returning to her core crystal and emerging anew -- and it's still odd for other people. She also isn't aware that many of her mannerisms are very weird, since they emulate Nopon physiology and custom with a human form and figure.

Strengthwise, Poppi accurately assesses her exceptional physical and combat capabilities, and also understands that battle is more than that. She defeated a technically-superior model simply because Tora told her not to lose, which was all the motivation she could ask for (as she explicitly states, mid-fight). What she doesn't understand is how emotionally intelligent she is; she just knows what she feels and thinks, without realizing that she's actually better put-together than almost anyone else in the cast.

4. What is a common misconception other characters have about your character?

Because she is generally in her α form, hasn't got very much life experience, and speaks using Nopon dialect which (deliberately) sounds cutesy, people naturally think she's a middle-school girl or thereabouts, and treat her as such. Not true! Definitely true when she was first activated, but even in the short time since then Poppi underwent significant growth, both organically and engineered. Her actual mental age corresponds to her adult-appearing QTπ form, and her cognition and mentation are fully developed thanks to both her experience and a deliberate upgrade.

The biggest confounding factor in this perception is the huge gulf between that developed mind and the experiences she's had in the course of getting there. Instead of 20+ years of life, she's had several months at most, so her foundation and comprehension aren't where people expect a person of that age and development to be. So it isn't fair to treat her either as a child or an adult; properly, she just needs to be taken for who and what she is, a unique experience.

Character Abilities:
Blade overview
Poppi α abilities
Poppi QT abilities
Poppi QTπ abilities

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Any comments or questions you would like us to know? A funny meme is also welcome!