Ipseity

[Quincunx]

In my efforts to become a more genteel bastard, I propose a thread of information:

 

Make a post to tell us one unique aspect of your Pen persona.

 

If someone's laid claim to a trait you also possess, post that! A thread full of hazy, non-unique replies is neither a fit companion to nor reference for 'The Person Above Me'.

 

Rydia has no _unique_ characteristics, and Minta's are so trivial they may as well not exist.

 

Rosemary has her glossolalia, her utter inability to talk about anything directly. If you asked her about this topic, she'd stare blankly for a few seconds, then mutter "What is there that could be such as I am? None to zero, this turning, but yet to have been contrariwise," and consider the matter settled. (Try being on the receiving end of that in live-action, and understand the boundless patience that is my honey.)

 

Tzimfemme snarls, "So I'm a bastard, am I?. . .hey YOU! Authorchick! How's this for a unique item. . .I DON'T LOVE MY MUSE!"

[Kasmandre]

Hm, I just realized that the Kasmandre that appears in my stories is a lot different from when I'm just posting in the Cabaret Room...when I'm around here, I just post as me (more or less, here I have a shotgun), and in the stories and such...

 

I guess one quality of Kasmandre is that he doesn't really trust anyone and tends to keep others at arm's length (basically, he's every bad habit or negative aspect of myself made into a person).

 

[EDIT: Posted by Quincunx:

 

Well, you unfortunately get to be the example of a challenged uniqueness. . . .Introverts aren't rare here, my Tzimfemme is also one. Refine ifyouplease?]

[reverie]

reverie/revery: reverie can never decide which way is better to spell his name so he uses both... Revery is surgically attached to the etc mark.

 

castle: castle is a castle... a living breathing sentinet poinging, hop-about- happy go lucky yet recently turned ghost dead died with a brain equal to that of confused puppy and or pile of rumble...

 

fountain: fountain has a green glowing ball in his head, that was placed there by a yoga experiment gone wierd...and the ball also happen to talk... but only to fountain...

 

bally: bally is a green glowing semi sentinent ball in fountains head, that no one else can see or here. How do we know he glows? Fountain said so...

 

 

revery

the dreamlost

"lot of luck"(?)

the dream continues...

Edited February 21, 2003 by reverie

[Wyvern]

Hmm... A challenging question, since Wyvern principally fits the common stereotypes of the unsuccessful villain. Overwhelming greed, lust, gluttony, and the similar traits have all been used by villains before him.

 

I suppose that one truly unique trait of Wyvern is his almost-dragonic characteristics. In appearence, when compared to other members of his brethren, he seems to share indentitical traits with them... yet in actuality, none of Wyv's traits function properly. He has a wyvern's wings, but cannot manage flight for more than a span of maybe two seconds, as he was never trained to fly(he took to studying scheming instead). He also has a wyvern's scorpion tail, but unlike other wyverns it has no deadly venom in it and is defective. Finally, Wyvern cannot breath fire like other members of his race... though he accidentally lets it all out when he sneezes and occasionally coughs up a bit of ash...

[Brute]

Hmmm...I'm kinda like Wyvern in a way. Many, many who have come before me have claimed to be drunkards, so I am not unique in that aspect. However, I doubt any of them have the desire and fervor that I contain to seek out booze of all flavors and consume it. I have yet to meet another that can boast of my stamina when it comes to the consumption of the greastest of all beverages; Booze. For it was unknown before me that anyone's liver left it's host body in pure disgust and contempt of the person's alcoholic tendencies. And lastly, but certainly not the least of my unique characteristics, is my greastest single achievement, the creation of that most prized artifact, the Decanter of Endless Booze.

 

In short, I'm the greast boozehound Terra has ever known, bar none.

[Falcon2001]

Hmm...Cioden isn't really unique all that much, he's your archetypical black mage, except that he's quite complex for being as power-hungry as he is. He HAS a good side, just chooses to ignore it completely for most of the time.

 

Falcon is freaking nuts. He has a tendency to bite people and do strange, unstable things, and has enough magical power to do it.

 

William Azunost has an Archangel living inside him named Izrael. Let's just say that Izrael is about the closest thing to a fallen angel they have in Heaven...he's freaking insane. He's a battle-hungry angel that's just waiting to get out.

 

Cioden, Falcon, and William represent my Evil, Artistic, and Good sides respectively, so when I RP I basically have the attitude of Falcon and the magical powers of Cioden...along with the morals of William Azunost

 

Anyway, that's it for me.

 

[Peredhil]

Peredhil saunters in, adjusts a cuff, and reads.

 

Interesting challenge, to distill the entelechy of personae into something concrete. When I RP Peredhil, he is somewhat like me - only more so. Like slipping into a favorite pair of shoes, the fit is comfort and intuition.

 

Blather and caveat aside, I accede to your challenge! I trust the former Terran Moderators Makes a mental note to explain Terra in the History of the Pen project will be actively and assuagingly guiding and pruning this thread?

 

Avaunt and excelsior!

 

Peredhil is one of several Half-Elves here, one of several Planeswalkers. There are other Seekers of truth, and others at the Pen (a great many) who are sensitive and empathetic enough to see behind the masks and pleas for attention to the wounds and needs.

 

A unique trait though...

 

When playing Peredhil, I try to tone down my tendancy to seek the perfect word, the word that tastes, looks, feels the best. Thus I'd probably say "Large Pacific Clam" over the neater word "geoduck", or the perfect word, "gweduc".

Why? Why not arrogantly assume linguistic skills on the part of the listener, or force reading with a dictionary?

 

Because Peredhil's most notable characteristic is that he genuinely loves other people. This is the root cause of his Politeness, and an unexpected outgrowth on my actual character. I love people, therefore Peredhil is Polite. Not love in the physical sense, for the character Peredhil gave up sex countless ages and worlds ago. His wife, a plottwist legacy of Tolkein on whose character this one is formed, was raped repeatedly by orcs in the Misty Mountains and on her survival, fled for unattained healing to the Undying West. (This bleeds into the personae as foundational to Elladan and Elrohir, but that's another post.) Peredhil's love is that of a intelligent sensitive empathetic person for another. That of a friend (friend being defined with implications of verb in the noun (somewhat like defining the actions for an object in Visual Basic or C++)) for another friend.

Peredhil loves, therefore he accepts. He judges actions, but only after accepting the person. A free ticket? No, because he puts the group good before the individuals, but tends to put himself last.

 

He strokes his beardless chin and wrinkles his brow, then absently adjusts a cuff. I'm making an rambling hash of this, aren't I? But then, my focus is normally on OTHERS, not on myself.

 

Adjusts a cufflink and rotates his Ring absently. Notices what he's doing.

I do like nice clothes. As you can see, this is an Giorgio Armani suit, with a Calvin Klein silk shirt and an Ike Behar silk tie, handpainted with an Elven "V" rune. The V represents Vilya, my Ring of Healing. Once one of the Three, deactivated after the War that ended the Third Age of Middle Earth, and Reactivated (and enhanced) with Aule's help during my long stay in the West, before I found myself wandering.

 

I DO ramble on, don't I?

 

Stammers to a halt. Sorry, don't mean to be Rude. I know some of the readers here have limited time and/or short attention spans. One writes to the audience, you know.

 

Loving is so easily misunderstood. Perhaps we'd best leave it that I'm Polite. Excessively so. Good and Evil are so... relational... that they don't matter as much to Peredhil as good Manners. If he were ever to torture someone, he'd apologize nicely for the necessity of inflicting pain. Strange idea, the Polite Peredhil torturing? As a Healer of skill and power, he understands the necessity to occasionally inflict pain now for someone's healing and growth in the future.

Oof! the Thought occurs. That's something to warn you all about - I'm honest. I love you enough to tell you the truth, to hurt you with my view of the truth, and trust you enough that you'll deal with the growth necessary to accept the truth. So when you ask me something - be prepared for an honest answer, not empty reassurances. Because I'm a positive person, this has mislead people before...

 

I'm foundering. Talking about self, defining into boxes IS not my forte. Moderators? Feel free to clean this up!

 

With a hug to the Moderating team, and a bow to everyone else, he wanders out again.

[Rune]

aww, only one? Well feel free to pick one, Ill write a novel.

 

Rune is a demon. She has crooked horns and is missing her tail. She is also the only demon of her race that has the mental capacity and physical stature of a child. Demons of her gene are born adults because someone creates them with significant power for a purpose. They have no life cycle that creates change, although they can be altered based on events. Their appearance is based on their creation purpose. For an example, a servant demon that was created for battle would be large, bulky, and menacing. While a servant demon that was created for household work in a prominent castle would be slender, elegant, and attractive. Their personalities are entirely their own. Their bodies are crafted, but their minds are unique. In return an evil overlord could create a servant demon for battle that happens to faint at the sight of blood. It’s really a gamble when making a demon.

 

Since demons of her gene are created from magic, they lack the ability to control it. There are legends that a wizard attempted to teach his servant demon a simple cleaning spell, and the outcome was a poof and a missing demon. It seems that the use of magic overloads their systems or perhaps just throws their entire plane of existence out of whack resulting in a form of death to the creatures. Rune, on the other hand, can use magic and most others are still quite perplexed as to why. Studies have been done to ensure that she was crafted and is of the same race and all proved they were true. Her childish antics and inability to be useful to a normal person who would own a servant demon has caused her to be sold from one person to another as a sort of novelty item.

 

Rune uses magic by scribing words into the air in her native language. Since she has the personality of a child most of the time the words are spelled incorrectly and result in an undesirable effect. Rumors that she was a source of evil associated the symbols with the runes that local pagans were using for worshipping purposes. She can also speak telepathically and often her intellect increases when needed but can only be spoken telepathically. For example when asked to solve a complex word puzzle, Rune would have no idea but if she concentrates often her abilities are increased and she can answer via the telepathic channel but cannot speak the answer. This ability has lead some to believe that she is actually more powerful than she appears although it has not been proven.

 

She is 3 foot tall. She wears her hair in two short pigtails that stick out on either side of her head behind her horns. She calls them nubbins, as they aren’t quite long enough for pigtails, and look more like nubs than anything. Her pants are too big and she trips on them often. She doesn’t wear shoes because her feet are so small. She watches where she walks so that she doesn’t squish the buggies. She is an optimist and ignores the fact that she is different from the others of her race. Due to her age, she speaks her mind and does not pay attention to society’s standards. She is likely to tell someone how great he or she is to his or her face, because she sees no reason to hide the truth. On the flip side her outspokenness has gotten her into trouble when the truth isn’t quite as pretty.

[Gwaihir]

Gwaihir's most obvious unique trait is his obsession with Wiggly Cabbages, but I think it stems from a deeper, probably more interesting trait--Gwaihir tends to get obsessed about everything. He walks around in a cheerful dream, missing most of his world, so he tends to look rather messy with ink and dirt all over.His loves are writing, and discovering new things, particularly Wiggly Cabbages...and he is very protective of them.

Also, his spaceyness, and preoccupation can make his speech rather child-like at times.

 

Myth is based on the principle of a person who is at heart very kind, trusting and loving, but then grows up in a cruel, utterly uncaring society, and is early forced to be involved in the death of the only person she really cares about (doesn't sound so cliched when I'm not condensing so much ; ). She is taught that caring and trust just get you hurt, and impulsiveness gets you killed. So she is always a person who tries to act cruel and calculating....she gets very very good at the act, but it is also fake.

[Kasmandre]

Looking at his earlier post and the comment on it:

 

Crud, that's a good point. I guess that's what I get for posting when I'm not exactly at my awakest.

 

Alright, if I'm gonna get unique I'm gonna have to go wider: Kasmandre basically represents every tendency within myself that I dislike: my distrust, my anger, my arrogance, everything that I'd like to dispose of if I could. Kasmandre willfully destroyed a beautiful, utopian society to get revenge on one person. Realistically, he should be a villian. But he's not. Somehow, he becomes a hero and savior. He really doesn't change his personality, he just starts doing the right thing instead of the opposite. Despite all the cr*p in his personality, he's a force for good. It's a pretty big paradox and I'm not even sure exactly how it works, but it does.

 

Bottom line: he's an evil guy who does good. He doesn't have an evil side to his personality, he doesn't have berkster rages, he isn't a madman with split personalities, he's just a fundamentally misanthropic a*****e who somehow gets around that and does the right thing.

[Lady Celes Crusader]

While I did project lots of who I am in my personae (including my passion for cats, my refinement (as Ozy mentions) and most of her temper). Something I believe distinguishes her a bit from me and from the other Pen char:

 

She tends to be feminine like a 18th century damzel while, at the same time swearing like a farmer when she's mad (which doesn't happen too often).

 

In the end, she's a bit of a caricature of who I am, but way more feminine than I.

[Cyril Darkcloud]

Cyril is a quiet man, slow to speak and measured in his words. For the sake of his daughter he has undergone exile to these “lands where life is lived far from the sky,” as his people would express it, and he seeks nothing else than to return home that he might hold his child again. His people make their home in mountain peaks that are often swept by exceedingly violent storms and this has led them to develop both a relentless tendency to hope in the face of the harshness of life in such a place as well as an almost mystical relationship with the free and unceasing movement of wind. As a result of his wanderings, both of these characteristics have become quite pronounced in Cyril.

 

Here at the Pen, he will seldom be found inside the Keep as he cannot long abide the restrictions of enclosed spaces and prefers those remote and wild places where after difficult reflection thoughts might burst into the windy movement of words.

 

His one companion is a small owl named Whisper.

[Valdar and Astralis]

Shattered persona, that is Valdar. Not quite a shapeshifter, nor lycropathic, he pops from big cute doggy, to mr sexy longears, to hyper gnomepowered ranger (sorta only in EQ, but eh).

[lumpenproletariat]

You'd have to ask someone else for uniqueness or rarity on lumpen...

I am myself, if I need a character for a roleplay, I'd usually create one, sometimes it happens that lumpen is molded to those needs, other times I'd rather go with something else.

 

lumpenproletariat is..no one

[Quincunx]

The thread has taken a turn I didn't anticipate when people differentiated why their characters are unique as compared to their realities--but that is interesting of itself!

 

Now, to those who have read this thread and don't feel they had a unique trait to confess--make one up on the spot (fairly broad in scope--something that only becomes relevant on Tuesdays, or when you wish it, won't collide with many others) and hold yourself to it! It's astonishing how quickly the irritations of one immutable point will form the seed-pearl of a persona. Many of us have appellations, short phrases that define us as easily as names, much like the custom title field; an appellation gives the readers a correct snapshot of you. Your uniqueness will form itself into an unshakeable appellation; since appellations are formed from readers' expectations, you cannot give yourself one*. Imagine having a permanent phrase, how much solidity it will give a persona.

 

--Tzimfemme, the naked mage

 

*Rather, if you have the strength of will and/or personality to appellate yourself, you already HAVE a unique aspect, and don't need to follow this guide.

[The Portrait of Zool]

(OOC: I have avoided this for years, and don't know if I got it right - but great thread Tzimm! )

 

 

Zool talks to cats as he passes them on the street. He gives a dogs a wide birth, even as they come bearing gifts in his dreams.

 

Zool is of completely erratic and unpredictable nature, not so much from depth of opinion as breadth of choice, upon which he stands as if it were a windy mountaintop of wet ice, off of which he could slide in any direction at any instant.

 

Zool has so completely alienated and pissed off his muse with his obnoxious and overbearing thinking that she imprisoned him in his own likeness, so that one day he may see how in his loud flatness he is his own worst enemy.

 

Zool is a fool, but it is an artfully orchestrated foolery with a painstaking silliness etiquette, sometimes even coming together to make a point. Zool would never admit that though; to do so would be to admit to seriousness, in which case he 'knows' he would instantly keel over in green sizzling death.

 

Zool is fearful of any kind of focus, even as he is attracted to ley line convergences.

 

Zool is what old men who totter around in colorful ill-fitting clothes and laugh a lot were like when they were younger, if they survive. Zool is what young boys who wander around daydreaming all the time are like when they are almost grown up, if they survive.

[Zadown]

The Dreamer is unique in his blatant power - the few who can oppose him without help are higher celestial, planar or abyssal beings. He used to be one of the rare unaligned ones walking the Void between and the Paths beyond, now he is corrupted by chaos but still not quite chained by it.

 

I find it very difficult to write about him any more, I lack the spark of chaos in myself to do that. *sigh*

[Tamaranis]

The OOC origin of Tamaranis is such that he's a somewhat typical evil, poweful, wizard who lives in a tower somewhere... The specifics of his IC history probably aren't mirrored too often, but something that is perhaps unique is that it is almost impossible for him to become angry. From what I've seen most evil characters are capable of a sort of great and terrible anger which often drives them to do terrible things. When Tamaranis does terrible things it is because he has calmly decided they're in his own best interest.

 

Also most characters, when angry, become several times more deadly and dangerous. In theory, if Tamaranis were to become enraged, it would make him less deadly. He is used to his mind being in perfect order, and wouldn't be able to use his powers to their full extent if it were otherwise.