Post by Richard Safire on Jun 29, 2010 9:37:49 GMT -5
Player's Name: Ricardo "Harvey" Montalbán
Name: Richard Safire. Dr. Richard Safire. (*preens*)
Age: 29. (Honest. (33))
Birthday: March 23rd
Height: 5'4"
Weight: Not much.
Gender: Male.
Appearance: A tiny little man with soft, curly blond hair down to the backs of his knees, which he normally keeps in braids; his shining blue eyes, along with his last name, have earned him the nickname of Sapphire. He has delicate features and looks like he has a bit of a tan even when he's been out of the sun for months.
Personality: Sweet, helpful, outgoing, manipulative without trying to be; he tries to maneuver people into whatever place he feels is best for them and doesn't usually worry about whether it's his business. Thankfully, he has decent- if not perfect- instincts about such things, so at least the outcome of his maneuvering is usually good. Very good at getting people to do what he wants and think it was their idea in the first place.
He likes spending time with people and hearing about their lives, as well as exercise, archery, flower-arranging, cultures, languages, writing, and teaching. He falls in love easily and is a hardcore romantic, though his naivete is long since gone. Sapphire is extremely strong-willed, courageous because he has to be, and he really just wants to be happy, and for other people to be happy.
History: Sapphire was born in a little suburb in the San Diego area; he has an older sister and a younger one, his mother is a pretty successful architect, and his father sadly disappeared when he was in high school. As a child, he was fascinated by language and how people used it, and picked up a decent amount of French in his free time before he finished fifth grade; by the end of high school, he picked up some Latin, bits and pieces of Mandarin and was working on Spanish in school after he'd finished all the French they had to offer. (Since then, he's learned others.) He had a number of good friends- though being branded a complete nerd, he wasn't exactly popular- and a few dates of various genders; he got accepted into a great college, or at least his first choice. Life was pretty good.
And then on his eighteenth birthday, he awoke in the form of an adorable little bunny rabbit.
Well, technically speaking, he was a hare. This distinction was lost on him for quite a while, however, as having read Kafka in English class he hastily proceeded to flip the hell out until his mother came in and found him- or strictly speaking, until after his mother found him, briefly mistook him for his father, realized the problem, and then calmed him down as best she could while worrying about her son being a magical bunny rabbit.
Eventually, he managed to change back, and she told him of what she knew. There was a curse on the men of his father's line, some ancient thing leading back generations or something, that in revenge for a betrayal made out of cowardice they would turn into a hare whenever they showed their ignoble character (and, according to his mother, occasionally in less poetic moments, or on purpose). She wasn't sure whether this was related to his father's disappearance, but it was possible; he could have been hurt and stuck as a hare, or gone feral and run off, or even simply heard something about a way to break the curse (he knew there was one, just not what it was) and been unable to contact them.
Suffice to say he called into school sick for a few days until he got it under control, and spent quite a bit of his free time in college making himself toughen up. Sapphire is not the sort of person who likes fighting, but he took up martial arts anyway; he threw himself at his dreams, and became a linguistics major; and he did a few fairly stupid-brave things before balancing out and becoming the charming, outgoing fellow he is now.
Having run into a few minor magical people in the greater San Diego area, he took a break in the middle of getting his Ph.D. to work at Dunehelden for a couple of years, then took a sabbatical of a year and a half to finish and defend his thesis. Now, with his shiny, newly-minted doctorate, he's back.
For Werewolves/Shapeshifters
Shapeshifter Type: 4th/Misc
Shape: Brown Hare
Powers: Being a curse, he doesn't have any "naturally"-occuring powers outside of being able to turn into a hare, but after playing around with his powers a bit he's learned how to "bend" the magic attached to him- and it's shaped itself to his desires.
Being an intelligent man, he decided to learn the Star Wars stuff first and figured out a few minor mental-manipulation effects; mostly, how to influence people to pay attention to and believe what he says, to influence people to completely disbelieve what he says, and to inspire certain positive emotions.
Weaknesses: Turns into a hare when he's frightened or breaks someone's trust for selfish reasons. His magic otherwise is neither strong nor flexible, and active powers are unlikely to work at all on others with mental powers, the strong-willed, those with a strong desire to do something other than what he's suggesting, or even anyone expecting it.
Given it's curse magic, as well, his powers don't like turning off. He tends to walk around radiating shiny happy feelings without really trying, and he can't influence people selectively or for a short period: if he tries to make people listen to him (for example), he does it to everyone around him, and the more he does it the longer past his intent it lasts. A couple of minutes' worth doesn't stop fading out for 45 minutes or so, and one full class period's worth of trying can last all day. This can cause problems...
It really wouldn't work half as well as it does if he weren't so damned good at convincing people to do things they hadn't thought they wanted to do through completely mundane means.
For Staff
Position Applied For: Strictly speaking, Latin teacher. More generally, quite a lot of possible languages, linguistics, linguistic and cultural anthropology, and in a pinch, he could nail together a course about theories of early human history and development. (For the record, his doctoral thesis was focused on problems in language classification and whether there might be a system other than the language family system that was more universally useful.)
Qualifications: Five years of Latin and a reasonable amount of tutoring experience. Fluency in French, Spanish, and a few more non-European languages that Smoke should not be up all night looking up; some proficiency in Mandarin, Irish, and a few on top of that, focused on spoken language.
Name: Richard Safire. Dr. Richard Safire. (*preens*)
Age: 29. (Honest. (33))
Birthday: March 23rd
Height: 5'4"
Weight: Not much.
Gender: Male.
Appearance: A tiny little man with soft, curly blond hair down to the backs of his knees, which he normally keeps in braids; his shining blue eyes, along with his last name, have earned him the nickname of Sapphire. He has delicate features and looks like he has a bit of a tan even when he's been out of the sun for months.
Personality: Sweet, helpful, outgoing, manipulative without trying to be; he tries to maneuver people into whatever place he feels is best for them and doesn't usually worry about whether it's his business. Thankfully, he has decent- if not perfect- instincts about such things, so at least the outcome of his maneuvering is usually good. Very good at getting people to do what he wants and think it was their idea in the first place.
He likes spending time with people and hearing about their lives, as well as exercise, archery, flower-arranging, cultures, languages, writing, and teaching. He falls in love easily and is a hardcore romantic, though his naivete is long since gone. Sapphire is extremely strong-willed, courageous because he has to be, and he really just wants to be happy, and for other people to be happy.
History: Sapphire was born in a little suburb in the San Diego area; he has an older sister and a younger one, his mother is a pretty successful architect, and his father sadly disappeared when he was in high school. As a child, he was fascinated by language and how people used it, and picked up a decent amount of French in his free time before he finished fifth grade; by the end of high school, he picked up some Latin, bits and pieces of Mandarin and was working on Spanish in school after he'd finished all the French they had to offer. (Since then, he's learned others.) He had a number of good friends- though being branded a complete nerd, he wasn't exactly popular- and a few dates of various genders; he got accepted into a great college, or at least his first choice. Life was pretty good.
And then on his eighteenth birthday, he awoke in the form of an adorable little bunny rabbit.
Well, technically speaking, he was a hare. This distinction was lost on him for quite a while, however, as having read Kafka in English class he hastily proceeded to flip the hell out until his mother came in and found him- or strictly speaking, until after his mother found him, briefly mistook him for his father, realized the problem, and then calmed him down as best she could while worrying about her son being a magical bunny rabbit.
Eventually, he managed to change back, and she told him of what she knew. There was a curse on the men of his father's line, some ancient thing leading back generations or something, that in revenge for a betrayal made out of cowardice they would turn into a hare whenever they showed their ignoble character (and, according to his mother, occasionally in less poetic moments, or on purpose). She wasn't sure whether this was related to his father's disappearance, but it was possible; he could have been hurt and stuck as a hare, or gone feral and run off, or even simply heard something about a way to break the curse (he knew there was one, just not what it was) and been unable to contact them.
Suffice to say he called into school sick for a few days until he got it under control, and spent quite a bit of his free time in college making himself toughen up. Sapphire is not the sort of person who likes fighting, but he took up martial arts anyway; he threw himself at his dreams, and became a linguistics major; and he did a few fairly stupid-brave things before balancing out and becoming the charming, outgoing fellow he is now.
Having run into a few minor magical people in the greater San Diego area, he took a break in the middle of getting his Ph.D. to work at Dunehelden for a couple of years, then took a sabbatical of a year and a half to finish and defend his thesis. Now, with his shiny, newly-minted doctorate, he's back.
For Werewolves/Shapeshifters
Shapeshifter Type: 4th/Misc
Shape: Brown Hare
Powers: Being a curse, he doesn't have any "naturally"-occuring powers outside of being able to turn into a hare, but after playing around with his powers a bit he's learned how to "bend" the magic attached to him- and it's shaped itself to his desires.
Being an intelligent man, he decided to learn the Star Wars stuff first and figured out a few minor mental-manipulation effects; mostly, how to influence people to pay attention to and believe what he says, to influence people to completely disbelieve what he says, and to inspire certain positive emotions.
Weaknesses: Turns into a hare when he's frightened or breaks someone's trust for selfish reasons. His magic otherwise is neither strong nor flexible, and active powers are unlikely to work at all on others with mental powers, the strong-willed, those with a strong desire to do something other than what he's suggesting, or even anyone expecting it.
Given it's curse magic, as well, his powers don't like turning off. He tends to walk around radiating shiny happy feelings without really trying, and he can't influence people selectively or for a short period: if he tries to make people listen to him (for example), he does it to everyone around him, and the more he does it the longer past his intent it lasts. A couple of minutes' worth doesn't stop fading out for 45 minutes or so, and one full class period's worth of trying can last all day. This can cause problems...
It really wouldn't work half as well as it does if he weren't so damned good at convincing people to do things they hadn't thought they wanted to do through completely mundane means.
For Staff
Position Applied For: Strictly speaking, Latin teacher. More generally, quite a lot of possible languages, linguistics, linguistic and cultural anthropology, and in a pinch, he could nail together a course about theories of early human history and development. (For the record, his doctoral thesis was focused on problems in language classification and whether there might be a system other than the language family system that was more universally useful.)
Qualifications: Five years of Latin and a reasonable amount of tutoring experience. Fluency in French, Spanish, and a few more non-European languages that Smoke should not be up all night looking up; some proficiency in Mandarin, Irish, and a few on top of that, focused on spoken language.