seo jiho.

stats.

dob: may 09 2017 / 30 years old skeleton: b02, wi; team bravo / vice captain

the political machine.

jiho learns what it means to socialise early. he's the third of four children; his mother is a lawyer, his father - the heir of a vast number of investment properties - teaches business studies at university. there's always a mixer to attend, even more so when jiho turns seven and his mother starts getting herself involved in local politics, joining various committees and councils and work groups jiho can't keep track of.

he's a popular kid. this is, in part, owed to his evol, but people also like jiho because he's friendly, easy-going, the kid on the playground who naturally takes a leading role in the friend group. his teachers love him, bumping up mediocre grades with personal bias.

when his mother wins her first election and steps into her duties as mayor of linkon city, jiho's fifteen years old and exactly the kind of child a public figure could wish for. in school, he gets voted class president. he graduates with more extracurriculars under his belt than most, even though he spends many of his afternoons tagging along to political garden parties and volunteering at animal shelters and orphanages. he is, admittedly, a little stretched thin, but this is easily ignorable with a teenager's energy.

jiho joins the academy right out of school, partly out of a sense of obligation, in the knowledge that it'll aid the family image to have a kid doing good, very public deeds. he's persistent. on the side, he follows his father's footsteps and earns himself a bachelor's in business administration. instructors praise his leadership skills. he makes friends easily, as he always has, and quickly gets promoted through the ranks once he starts working.

he has the skillset needed to justify his invitation to the unicorns roster - the tenacity, the skills in battle - but really, he's a dream come true for optics; media trained since childhood, the sort of sociability and leadership skills that can bring together fractured teams. jiho doesn't have a single solo kill under his belt, but he makes up for it with his demeanour at press conferences, his ability to stay calm under pressure. he's not someone you'd want to send into battle on his own, but he's the guy you'd want with you in a survival situation. his reliability is only called into question when jiho divides his time between team bravo and politics.

he steps back from his duties on the roster in spring 2047, instead putting his energy into his mother's re-election campaign. while his team hunts down wanderers, jiho puts on suits and talks to sponsors about what their funding will be put towards, should his mother win: a linkon city that'll keep striving to equal the divide between social classes, scholarships and community events and support networks for underprivileged children. he enjoys the networking, but misses his work, the colleagues and simplicity of it.

and then, a few months before he's meant to return from his sabbatical, two teams on the roster get wiped almost entirely, and jiho leaves the politicking to his siblings and throws himself back into the fold.

but is his mum, like, likeable?

it's very likely that your muse will have an opinion on park sungmi, jiho's mum - if not jiho himself - before ever meeting either of them, so here's a very quick rundown of her politics (as discussed with the main):

sungmi has built her platform on left-leaning, progressive legislation. her biggest setbacks have often been caused by a lack of funding for her causes. her partnership with ever is based on similar goals, though ever's motivations for sponsoring her so heavily have not been made clear.

jiho inherited his evol from his mum, but this isn't public knowledge. whether or not sungmi has used the ability to aid her political campaign is unknown, though jiho suspects she has, especially since he's encouraged to use his to charm sponsors. jiho is tight-lipped about this; your muse would have no reason to suspect that his mum's an evolver, beyond the logical conclusion that jiho might've inherited it from someone.

jiho doesn't involve himself much in his mother's policy, though he does sometimes serve as an advisor. he mostly helps out by being a public face: he might be present to cut a ribbon sometimes, or end up on a talk show to talk up a new development project. recently, the handling of operation pandia has caused a fairly big rift between them: jiho didn't voice any opinions ahead of it, and after the tragedy he's been having difficulties reconciling the positive intentions of the op and the human cost of it. he did give a lot of very polished, thoughtful statements to the press afterwards. while he might not agree with his mother on everything, he does think that overall her politics are a net positive in a sea of more conservative-leaning faces in congress.

encanto

evol is able to charm individuals through direct eye contact and can increase persuasive effects via speech.

there isn't a time in his life jiho can recall not being able to use his evol, and in fact his parents would claim he had it even as a baby, charming the household staff and family friends with just a few moments of eye contact. it could just be that jiho was an unreasonably cute baby (he wasn't), but the precedent shows otherwise.

jiho himself doesn't realise he's using it until he's a tween. it's just part of him, the same way his looks and personality are: he knows what tone to use when he's asking for a favour or a toy, and most of the time he'll get it. it seems pretty harmless to him, and for the longest time he doesn't think twice about using it.

but then, as a teenager, he starts realising that he can be manipulative without meaning to be. like when he asks friends for things he knows they don't really want to indulge him in, adds just a little bit of persuasion into his voice, and gets what he wants. over time, he starts feeling guilt over it; especially later on, as a young adult, he mulls over the ethics of using his evol at all, tries to figure out ways to use it that aren't inherently harmful. it doesn't help that often, when he uses it, he does it without thinking, so second-nature is it to him. and then, after he's recovered from that first emotional car crash, another realisation hits: if people like him because he's charming them when he introduces himself with eye contact, does anyone really like him for himself, or is his entire social network just a huge, manipulative web?

in an idealised world, where everyone is equal, jiho would just stop using it. but the world isn't fair, and jiho's been given a gift. so if you're wondering whether your muse has been charmed by jiho - the answer is probably yes, though they're unlikely to have noticed. because, with colleagues and friends and people jiho respects, he doesn't go further than a bit of eye contact to smooth over an awkward conversation, or a suggestion played as a joke with people whom he knows are able to take said joke. or, in situation when his rank demands it, he keeps a teammate pushing themselves through injury until they can evacuate and settles petty disagreements. sometimes he uses it when he's advocating for his colleagues in front of the higher-ups, as a protective measure. and if your muse needs a hype man in the gym... but that's off-label usage.

it's reasonable to worry about jiho's ability to be manipulative, but i want to be very clear on this: he's aware of the concerns around it, he'll have brought it up with each of his teammates and have invited conversations with people on the roster outside team bravo, and he's responsible about his usage. he's never once used it while discussing strategy. if anything, think of his charm the way you might of a smile and a friendly demeanour on an attractive person: it gets him a leg up when he's meeting new people, but he's not pulling a kevin thompson.

(his evol use outside of these professional boundaries - like when working on his mother's campaign, or hammering out promo deals when a company wants his face on their product - is a different matter. he's the right guy to call if you're about to negotiate the cost the car you're buying used, or if your landlord is being difficult.)

your work wife's work husband

jiho's an easy man to get along with, as long as you do your job. he has high standards, both for himself and others, and he can be strict if they aren't met; he's not afraid to play bad cop if needed. but when he's pleased, or off-duty, he's an easy-going, social creature. jiho's protective of his team, and is happy to step in when someone's struggling to articulate themselves in front of a camera, the sort of professional social buffer that's useful to have around for people who don't like dealing with press. his loyalty is firmly with his team over the organisation, and he's willing to overlook small lapses in conduct as long as they aren't overly harmful. he's an emotionally intelligent -though not nurturing - guy who jumps to think strategy over comfort; if you approach him to talk about your shitty boyfriend, he's the kinda guy who, instead of buying you ice cream to wallow, will rent a u-haul.

jiho's a pistol user and decent with a shortsword, but (as mentioned above) not the kinda guy you'd want to send out into battle on his own. against wanderers, his evol is essentially useless; he works better as the glue of a team under pressure. he keeps a very calm head and isn't prone to panic. his promotion to vice-captaincy (and possibly to captaincy on a new team charlie) was rooted in that ability to push his teammates, his strategic capabilities and ability to handle clashing personalities, and not in his fighting prowess (though he can definitely hold his own! he's not on team bravo as a mascot). he can be prone to overworking himself, but he's a well-adjusted person with a life outside the job and tries to be mindful of the hours he's clocking in.