Willow the Trickster Magician

[madimpossibledreamer]

I *should* be working on Shadowed Suspicion...but I'm having fun.  More headcanons about how she runs her Family, but mostly her irezumi and irezumi youkai.  (Sometime I'll even do the background of how the process of binding the spirit during the tattooing process works.)

 

Willow (Akiyama) has utterly mastered both normal magic and drawing on her irezumi.  She’s even managed to cast the spells without noticeably invoking her irezumi youkai, partly because she’s got illusion so she can hide it.

In canon, Willow has a sneaky sense of humor, but it’s not as mischievous as Akiyama’s.  Still, as much as she scares everyone, she doesn’t mean harm, often scaring people into doing things that are good for them or having them waste time when they aren’t going to get in trouble with their matriarchs.  It is well-known that irezumi youkai have some effect on their gokudou, and it is also a commonly known fact that the kitsune has made Akiyama worse. 

Akiyama-gumi headquarters is well-known to be a cat heaven, with the entirety of a yakuza Family looking after them.  More than a few Akiyama-gumi have cats incorporated somewhere in their irezumi, sometimes even as their irezumi youkai.  (It actually makes them popular in the neighborhood, especially with the elderly ladies and elderly men.)

She also is known to fight with a razor fan, when she physically fights.  She prefers magic or blackmail or manipulating people into not fighting, but loves fighting Miyamoto since it usually draws her friend out of her shell and it’s just fun.

And there’s jokes that the teaset refers to the legendary, terrifying tea ceremonies that Akiyama puts on.  Mostly, she uses them as an intimidation tactic, getting her victim into a space where they can’t run away if they want to be polite and have to sit through what is basically an interrogation or blackmail session.

The ume (plum blossom) kimono is a transition from late winter to early spring and a reference to Buffy.  Natsukawa and Akiyama discussed their irezumi and coordinated a little.

And of course Willow has to have willow branches and willow leaves in her irezumi.

Woman in ume kimono with a kitsune mask and a tail, fan, teaset.  She’s petting a cat at her feet.

Willow-branches/leaves down the front, sleeves.  A maneki neko caught in the branches on one side, peach in the other.  Daruma doll probably somewhere in the branches as well.  (She could be Jewish, but I feel it’s fair to make her Buddhist here instead, especially with the Oz Buddhist connection thing.  Not that there’s anything wrong with being Jewish, but she’s full-blood Japanese and the percentage of Jewish people in Japan is super low.  She’s probably super inquisitive about it and probably likes it, but wouldn’t consider herself Jewish any more than she’d consider herself other religions.  She grew up with Buddhism but aside from meditation and a few other concepts found it largely unhelpful, since she has no desire to transcend life—it’s far too interesting where she is now.)  Sakura blossoms everywhere.  Foxfire in there, too.

*cats? Good luck, predictions, wealth

*plum blossom-health, luck, new start

*willow tree? (sweetness, grace, ghosts, spring, probably)

*magic

*no horses, frogs, spiders

*could maybe go with ghost, but no magic boost

*kitsune? For general magic? (shapeshifting, spirit possession, pyromancy, elemental powers, divination, long life, wisdom, trickster, invisibility, rice, messenger, go-between, foxfire lanterns, rain, illusion, dream messages, fly, fire breath, weather control, wealth and success)

*spring flowers: camellia (red-love, yellow-longing, white-waiting-probably not for yakuza since not for samurai), violet (small love, sincerity, small bliss-probably not), peach (truth, purity, faithfulness, protection against thunder/evil), sakura (wabi-sabi-transience, imperfection, gentle, kind), sakurasou

*something Buddhist? (daruma-good luck, perseverance, dutiful)

*fujin-powers similar to a wizard