➝ app

[stressed]

Player
Name: Riv
Personal Journal: paopu
E-mail: melodicbluebird@gmail.com
AIM/MSN: ( aim ) sopheria flower
Timezone: EST

Character
Name: Tsubasa Hanekawa
Series: Monogatari Series
Timeline: After Tsubasa Cat
Canon Resource Links: I | II

Personality:

"You're really kind and really strong. Too kind and too strong. You're so kind that you're tired of life. You're so strong that you sold your soul to an oddity. You're so righteous that you overwhelm others."
At first glance, Tsubasa Hanekawa may appear like the perfect example of a class president. She's always on time for school, she keeps up with her studies, she makes sure that everyone else in class is in line and she never has a bad reputation at school. Things are not as they appear, however there is more bubbling under the surface. Tsubasa Hanekawa is far more complex than just the average "class pres". To Koyomi Araragi, Tsubasa is the perfect wife. She's the perfect example of what a woman should be.

That is what Tsubasa believes too. That she should be exactly that - she should be the perfect young woman. She holds that to herself almost to an unnatural degree. You see, her family situation is not like anyone else's. When she was young, her father ran off and then her mother remarried. Her mother then committed suicide, and later her stepfather remarried. Then, her stepfather died and her stepmother remarried-- those are her current parents. Now they are no longer people she can even recognize. The only thing that she has that relates her to them is her last name "Hanekawa". Her parents only associate with her because that is what is expected of them as parents. In turn, she believes that above all else, she should be what is expected of a young woman like herself. That is why she puts up the facade of the "perfect class president".

Tsubasa rarely shows anger toward anyone and if she does, it's with a smile. This is the first sign of her passive personality. Instead of standing up for herself and dealing with it, she will say what she thinks she should say and smile. She might give that person constructive criticism and scold them rather than showing how she really feels. Tsubasa is the kind of person who would help out anyone, show kindness to a stranger, and give anything of herself as long as it was able to be of use to someone. This, of course, isn't for the reasons that you think they would be for. She's not actually doing them for kindness, love, or affection. She does not hold any of the sentiments attached with her actions. It's simply that performing those actions are things she believes are expected of her. In reality, she's just going along with the flow and taking things as they come, dealing with them as she sees fit. She does not help people because she necessarily wants to, she does it because she thinks that is what is expected of her. It's because of this personality, that if you're around her long enough you might realize that you're not all you're cracked up to be. She overshadows you, and makes you realize all of your imperfections.

As a result of this type of behavior, she has a horrible relationship with her parents. Her stepfather can't stand that part of her personality, that twisted view on the world, and he often hits her. The first time he does so, Tsubasa says how she didn't even get mad at him for hitting her. She didn't stand up for herself, she gave him friendly advice with a smile and said "Father, you shouldn't hit young girls like that". Her having a bad life at home causes her to want to leave whenever she has the opportunity. The wanderlust that she has developed keeps her satisfied and away from home long enough for her to keep herself in a stable state of mind. She is the type of person who would rather run away from her problems than face them. For Tsubasa, staying far away from home is a way for her to cope with what she has to go through, she even has a dream of traveling the world by herself after she is finished with High School. In fact, she avoids going home at all costs on a daily basis. She so desperately does not wish to return home every day that she sees a "lost cow" oddity because she feels she has no home to return to. She feels lost. In Tsubasa Tiger this is solidified even further by Hitagi noticing that Tsubasa does not know what a home cooked meal is. All of the meals she prepares lack a feeling of warmth and love, something that Tsubasa never received.

After all, she didn't even own a room to sleep in. She would sleep in the hallways and be woken up every morning by their automatic cleaning vacuum, Roomba. This shows that Tsubasa lives a very solitary life and that she is actually a very lonely person. Furthermore, despite her having an almost celebrity-status at school and for being well-known as the "perfect class rep" she didn't have any friends. Instead, she spent all of her time alone.

When she is possessed by the hindering cat oddity we witness the most violent side of Tsubasa. It shows her pent up stress, her rage, her frustration. Because when Tsubasa is being possessed by the cat it's implied that they share a consciousness. The cat is simply taking everything that Tsubasa feels and dealing with it in the most hostile ways possible. The cat reacts to anything that is stressing Tsubasa. In Tsubasa Family it was her family, and in Tsubasa Cat it was her unrequited love and jealousy. It even goes as far as to try and kill the people responsible for Tsubasa's stress, putting her parents into a coma at one point. That is how badly her emotions that she has been stuffing down affect her.

In Tsubasa Cat we learn that Tsubasa has been hiding her feelings for Koyomi while she helps him with his relationship troubles. She is further shown to be very passive when it comes to her feelings with others, hiding them and silently dealing with them on her own. She believes it to be the most efficient way possible to deal with her feelings. It's kind of a martyr complex. She cares so little about herself that she puts everyone else's needs on top of hers. Her self esteem isn't very high, and so if she has negative feelings involving someone else she will keep it from them and smile. She never stands up for herself, ever. However it should be known that she's still very capable of a lot of nasty feelings and emotions! Especially when it comes to other people. She was even spiteful of Kanbaru, an underclassman of hers, when she received a message from Koyomi - but Tsubasa didn't. Tsubasa is the kind of person who will pile all of her emotions until they boil over and it becomes a huge mess. Her sadness, jealousy and bitterness all boil over once again in Tsubasa Tiger after she sees her parents reconcile and eat breakfast together without her. Her pent up emotions are so bad that they create a giant tiger who hates everything and burns things down, including her house. I'm serious.

In the end, Tsubasa really isn't your average class president.

She's just a girl who has got a lot of inner turmoil along with a cat oddity.

Abilities:

It is important to note that the oddity is as much Tsubasa Hanekawa as it is Hindering Cat.

During Golden Week, Tsubasa encountered a cat that had seemingly been hit by a car and gave it a proper burial. After that, it was revealed that the cat was actually an oddity that in return for burying it began to possess Tsubasa. When it possessed her, it would change her hair white and give her cat-like features (ears, fangs, claws, and yellow eyes). She would also gain superhuman strength and the ability to drain the life out of people on physical contact.

The cat would possess Tsubasa at night, sucking the life force out of people and helping Tsubasa cope with her stress that way. The protagonist, Koyomi Araragi, found out that the cat was going after specific people whom were the source of Tsubasa's stress. To protect her family, herself, as well as many others - he gained the aid of a former vampire Shinobu and suppressed the cat.

However the cat wasn't really gone. When Tsubasa begins getting bad headaches they are the side effect of the hindering cat. If her stress reaches a high point she gets a migraine and the cat takes over. In Tsubasa Cat the same scene repeated itself, instead this time the cat was more focused on taking out the one person that it hated - Koyomi. After a battle between Koyomi and the cat, Shinobu was able to use her vampiric power once again to subdue the cat, causing Tsubasa to appear normal once again.

In Tsubasa Tiger it's shown that the cat still has the ability to come out, but is far less hostile than it was previously. It seems to abide by Tsubasa's feelings more than before, even going as far as to tell Hitagi that the cat wouldn't touch her because Tsubasa wouldn't want Hitagi to be hurt. In Tsubasa Tiger the cat can also help Tsubasa's stress simply from jumping or running around, allowing her to do things without the risk of being dangerous. There's still the chance that in the game Tsubasa could turn into the cat again, though it would probably be far closer to how it was in Tsubasa Tiger than in Tsubasa Cat because of her canon point. The chances of her turning into the cat, as well, are most likely slim unless something really stress-inducing happens to her. In Tsubasa Tiger the only reason why the cat came out once again was because Tsubasa's home she had lived in for 15 years had burned down. This was the result of the tiger named Kako, an oddity created from Tsubasa's negative feelings and envy that she ignores. The tiger began burning places down as a result of Tsubasa's emotions, the first being the Hanekawa residence because she was envious of her parents getting close with one another. After Koyomi comes along and helps Tsubasa resolve her feelings and take Kako back into herself as it was a part of her, she is able to become whole once more. After this, she has to dye her hair black every morning because her hair becomes striped like a tiger. Though, that specific instance will probably not happen in the game.

It's also implied that the hindering cat and Tsubasa share a consciousness when she is being possessed by the cat. However, when the cat stops possessing her she has no recollection of what happened. She can also communicate with the cat if she communicates through written word (ex. a letter).