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Aefenglom | Application
Apr. 25th, 2019 09:21 pmPlayer Information
Name: Possum
Age: 28
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
awkwardpossum
Other Characters: n/a
Character Information
Name: Peridot
Canon: Steven Universe
Canon Point: Post “Change Your Mind”
Age: Exact age unknown, but she’s at least a few thousand years old.
History:
The wiki section on this is actually very robust so I’ll just link that.
Personality:
If I had to distill Peridot's whole personality down to a single catchy sentence, it would be "horrible little tech goblin with a heart of gold." She has what one might call a ‘strong’ personality, in that she tends to be loud, blunt, abrasive, and doesn’t always think about her words before she opens her mouth. Energetic and passionate (often to the point of obsession), Peridot rarely does things in a manner that can be described as anything less than "turned up to 11". She's the kind of person who falls into her various hobbies and interests with an obsessive tenacity, doing things like watching a single episode of a TV show she likes over and over and over for a full 24 hours straight and launching into making extravagant and detailed shipping charts based off of that minimal content. In a single word, she's... Eccentric.
Peridot's early days with the Crystal Gems were full of a lot of hurt feelings and misunderstandings due to her previously sheltered life and general lack of socialization. She would spew out offensive and bigoted opinions without a second thought, and then fail to grasp why people would react to the things she said with anger. Largely this was because she spent the first several thousand years of her life doing nothing but working day in and out in isolation as a technician, conforming obediently to Homeworld’s rigid societal rules. As a result, she was poorly socialized, and never really learned how to factor unpredictable forces such as emotion and sentiment into her perception of the world. Letting such things cloud one’s own sense of objectivity was something that her leader Yellow Diamond was supposedly immune to, and like a good homeworld gem Peridot modeled her own behavior after her idol. Because of this, she had a hard time empathizing with people on Earth, and in the beginning she even lacked the proper terminology with which to discuss her own feelings. (We see this very early on in the episode "Too Far" when she tries to explain her feelings of frustration and guilt to Steven)
This isn’t quite as much of an issue now as it was when she first came to Earth; she is far more mindful of other people’s feelings now, and has a better sense of when to keep her thoughts to herself. Her roots as a scientist and engineer are at least partially to thank for this, as her previous job still informs her approach to problem solving, and the way she navigates the world. She’s always assessing new things and new situations carefully, and has zero shame about asking an endless number of questions. This is likely how she was able to adapt to life on Earth so quickly (compared to say, Lapis or Jasper), despite arriving there as an alien who was completely naive of the world outside her own tiny personal sphere. Peridot is keenly observant and seems to learn things by example, copying the mannerisms and actions of others (she picks up a LOT of habits and speech quirks from Amethyst in particular), and trying new things out for herself whenever she gets the chance. She has a curious mind, is eager to learn and picks up on patterns and learns new skills very quickly (if you're a musician, for a frustrating example of this just look to the episode "It Could've Been Great" and watch how absurdly fast she picks up an understanding of musical theory).
In some ways, this is all still a bit unnatural to her, and more often than not she’ll fall back on her intellect before her emotions when it comes to tackling a high pressure situation. Besides, old habits die hard; experience has cured some of her naivete, but you can’t really fix stubbornness, which is something Peridot has in spades. While she has gained a capacity for teamwork over the course of the series, she still very much has her own way of doing things and isn’t afraid to make that known through petty tantrums and arguments. That "objectivity above all else" world view still rears it's ugly head sometimes, and she tends to hold the view that, until proven otherwise, everything in the world has a “correct” path of simple cause to effect. This pretty much always lines up with how SHE would do something, and she can get pretty rankled real quick if something does not meet her expectations or give her the results she wants.
She applies this philosophy to social interactions as much as anything else, and it took her a while to understand that there’s not really a “correct” way to, say, react to a joke or an apology.
Peridot also has a proclivity for egotistical and self-aggrandizing behavior, often talking herself up or over-selling herself by using self-descriptors such as “precious” or “powerful” or “valuable”. It used to be that she’d focus on her own needs to the exclusion of everyone else’s, but now she knows how to strike a better balance and put her friend’s interests close to—or even sometimes above-- her own. She still talks herself up quite frequently though, usually in a manner that strangers will find grating or off-putting. It’s arguable that a lot of this behavior comes from her upbringing on Homeworld, where a gem’s usefulness and rarity determines their social standing. Additionally, Peridot is an “era 2” gem, meaning she was created during a time when her home planet was operating under a shortage of the resources needed to create new members of their race. This lack of available material accounts for her small size and lack of natural gem powers, and it’s possible her habit of bragging is a method of justifying her existence in some way, compensating for her physical shortcomings by attempting to highlight her cleverness and great intellect.
This may also similarly influence her attachment to material belongings; she has been shown to be extremely possessive of her things such as her limb enhancers and tech, because she considers those things a large part of her identity; in “Too Short to Ride”, she blurted out that “(tech is) all that I am” when Amethyst tried to wreck the new tablet that Steven got for her. This shows a severe lack of confidence underneath that veneer of ego, which is kind of tragic?But also like... On the other hand. One of her favorite activities is flaunting her knowledge for the sole purpose of showing off how much smarter she is than most people, and making them feel dumb. THIS IS NOT AN EXAGGERATION, she literally admitted this to Amethyst and Steven (in the episode "Back to the Kindergarten"), because she is horrible.
So, that's a lot about her weaknesses and flaws. But what about that "heart of gold" part?
While Peridot can be abrasive, she really doesn't have a single cruel (metaphorical) bone in her entire hard-light body. She's caring and passionate, and she has grown to be an extremely loyal and dependable friend. Even if she’s averse to saying it outright, she shows how much she loves her friends through her actions; she loves to clown around and try to cheer them up with her ridiculous antics (literally bending over backwards to make Lapis laugh) and bad jokes. She cares a LOT about what her friends think of her (ex: she was extremely upset when Amethyst was mad at her for making jokes at her expense in “Too Far”, and Lapis leaving at the end of “Raising the Barn” utterly devastated her, launching her into an extreme depression that took ages for her to get over). She is very considerate of Lapis’s past trauma and tries to be protective of her, admonishing her other friends for treading too close to triggering topics. The ending of “Hit the Diamond” also showed us that she is willing to put herself in harm’s way to defend her loved ones, as she tried to surrender herself to the Rubies in order to get them to lay off the others. “Raising the Barn” lent further credit to this courageous streak, as Peridot was extremely reluctant to leave Earth behind when it seemed like it would soon be under immediate threat from the Diamonds. Lapis wanted to turn tail and hide, but Peridot was determined to stay and fight and defend what they’d already created there.
Abilities & Skills:
ABILITIES
-Doesn’t age (bc gems are bullshit immortals)
-Very sturdy, with a high damage threshold (even by gem standards). Has the ability to release her physical form and return to her gem when grievously wounded in order to regenerate. Can’t be permanently harmed or killed unless her gem is damaged.
-Can generate translucent green bubbles around dormant gems (and other objects) and teleport them to a set location.
-Metallokinesis. She can move metal objects with her mind, which lets her do ludicrous things like fly around on a hovering garbage can lid. (Note, the wiki calls it ferrokinesis, but. It’s never explicitly stated OR shown in the show that it only affects iron, and I'm a pedantic shit :T)
SKILLS
-Exceedingly fast learner
-Familiarity with, and the ability to create, extremely advanced technology
-Horticultural knowledge (she and Lapis started their own farm)
-Extremely good at memorizing patterns and lists
-Artistic
Inventory/Companions:
Pumpkin stayed behind with Lapis when Peridot left temporarily but I'll link this again jic.
Choice: Dragon
Reason: As mentioned above, Peridot was basically “born” a powerless runt into what is traditionally a society of super-powered rock aliens. To compensate for this, she’s extremely prone to self-aggrandizing and egotistical behavior, often making bold claims of her magnificence and importance. Given her track record with this, I think it would be REALLY enjoyable to play out her navigating living with ACTUAL power and the increased status/respect that the people of Geardagas have for dragons. It would make for an interesting character arc for her, which would be nice considering she has kind of completed what will probably be her only major arc in canon already. Granted, if this is approved she’ll be absolutely shitty and obnoxious and get a big head about it, but it’ll be great to play her getting to be a bit of an asshole again (within reason), and presumably she will eventually learn that with great power comes great responsibility, or something.
(I’d make her an acid/poison dragon and she would have the worst hoarding tendencies, and it would be terrible and cute.)
REVISION: It's not just the idea of having raw power that makes the idea of playing her as a dragon appealing. It's the reputation that dragons apparently have in Geardagas, cited in the intro of the bestiary entry: "The rarest of Monsters, Dragons are seen in old faerytales told by man and Fae alike as being fearsome creatures, powerful and revered."
Powerful and revered. All monsters and witches possess real, raw magic power that would be new and exciting for Peridot to have, but dragons are the only ones with the degree of history and legend surrounding them that provide the kind of external validation that I believe is necessary to really make this angle work. Having newfound abilities is great and all, yes, and she could get an ego boost from being just about anything in this setting... But having actual evidence in the world to point to and back up the idea that she's in some way "better" than the other monsters is what makes this particular choice appealing. EVERYONE will be coming in with new abilities. To paraphrase (periphrase) a certain Pixar villain, "when everyone's super, no one will be... Unless you're a dragon and you have a library of history books to back you up in telling you how great and powerful your species is."
Basically, to me, Peridot just having new magical abilities wouldn't be enough to achieve what I'm aiming for here. It wouldn't have the same sense of validity to back up all her "I'm the best" bluster in the way that I'm looking for. Obviously being a dragon would not ACTUALLY make her "the best" in as much as anyone can ever truly be "the best", but it provides extra ammunition for her claims and problematic behavior. She'd talk herself up regardless of what she wound up becoming but being a dragon provides her the reputation of being the BIGGEST kind of monster. The rarest kind of monster (barring Fae, of course). Dragons being applicable to these two descriptors is particularly noteworthy to me because 'rareness' is literally a concept that Homeworld gems place emphasis on in the show, with the rarer types of gems being of a caste above the others in terms of importance and respect... and Peridot has at multiple points shown positive enthusiasm towards the idea of someone being "HUGE".
Obviously from an OOC perspective I want to make it clear I'm not looking to use this as an excuse to power game or get one up over on the other PCs; that is something I intend to be very mindful of, and at the end of the day Peridot is still Peridot. She's kind of a goober, and a bit of a clumsy idiot sometimes. Development will come from her eventually realizing that just because she has these abilities, that doesn't actually make her any more valuable as a friend, or a person. As for the Cwyld, an extra weakness to it would provide the sort of serious counter-measure required to eventually make her realize that being the biggest and the rarest isn't actually all that it's cracked up to be. I don't think she would take the information that dragons are more susceptible to it very seriously at first because, you know, how could that even be possible if dragons are so tough? Once she does see the threat for what it is, it'll give her extra motivation to help research a cure, especially if it means saving her own scales. Peridot has undergone a lot of development over the course of the show, but evidence still pops up from time to time demonstrating that she isn't entirely free of all her biases. She still bears the scars of spending a few thousand years in Homeworld's toxic society. She still has a whole lot left to learn about the world, and I'd like for her to learn that sticking to her real strengths-- strength of mind, strength of character-- is what makes her really powerful.
Sample:
Here
TDM top level for a more recent in-setting sample.
Name: Possum
Age: 28
Contact:
Other Characters: n/a
Character Information
Name: Peridot
Canon: Steven Universe
Canon Point: Post “Change Your Mind”
Age: Exact age unknown, but she’s at least a few thousand years old.
History:
The wiki section on this is actually very robust so I’ll just link that.
Personality:
If I had to distill Peridot's whole personality down to a single catchy sentence, it would be "horrible little tech goblin with a heart of gold." She has what one might call a ‘strong’ personality, in that she tends to be loud, blunt, abrasive, and doesn’t always think about her words before she opens her mouth. Energetic and passionate (often to the point of obsession), Peridot rarely does things in a manner that can be described as anything less than "turned up to 11". She's the kind of person who falls into her various hobbies and interests with an obsessive tenacity, doing things like watching a single episode of a TV show she likes over and over and over for a full 24 hours straight and launching into making extravagant and detailed shipping charts based off of that minimal content. In a single word, she's... Eccentric.
Peridot's early days with the Crystal Gems were full of a lot of hurt feelings and misunderstandings due to her previously sheltered life and general lack of socialization. She would spew out offensive and bigoted opinions without a second thought, and then fail to grasp why people would react to the things she said with anger. Largely this was because she spent the first several thousand years of her life doing nothing but working day in and out in isolation as a technician, conforming obediently to Homeworld’s rigid societal rules. As a result, she was poorly socialized, and never really learned how to factor unpredictable forces such as emotion and sentiment into her perception of the world. Letting such things cloud one’s own sense of objectivity was something that her leader Yellow Diamond was supposedly immune to, and like a good homeworld gem Peridot modeled her own behavior after her idol. Because of this, she had a hard time empathizing with people on Earth, and in the beginning she even lacked the proper terminology with which to discuss her own feelings. (We see this very early on in the episode "Too Far" when she tries to explain her feelings of frustration and guilt to Steven)
This isn’t quite as much of an issue now as it was when she first came to Earth; she is far more mindful of other people’s feelings now, and has a better sense of when to keep her thoughts to herself. Her roots as a scientist and engineer are at least partially to thank for this, as her previous job still informs her approach to problem solving, and the way she navigates the world. She’s always assessing new things and new situations carefully, and has zero shame about asking an endless number of questions. This is likely how she was able to adapt to life on Earth so quickly (compared to say, Lapis or Jasper), despite arriving there as an alien who was completely naive of the world outside her own tiny personal sphere. Peridot is keenly observant and seems to learn things by example, copying the mannerisms and actions of others (she picks up a LOT of habits and speech quirks from Amethyst in particular), and trying new things out for herself whenever she gets the chance. She has a curious mind, is eager to learn and picks up on patterns and learns new skills very quickly (if you're a musician, for a frustrating example of this just look to the episode "It Could've Been Great" and watch how absurdly fast she picks up an understanding of musical theory).
In some ways, this is all still a bit unnatural to her, and more often than not she’ll fall back on her intellect before her emotions when it comes to tackling a high pressure situation. Besides, old habits die hard; experience has cured some of her naivete, but you can’t really fix stubbornness, which is something Peridot has in spades. While she has gained a capacity for teamwork over the course of the series, she still very much has her own way of doing things and isn’t afraid to make that known through petty tantrums and arguments. That "objectivity above all else" world view still rears it's ugly head sometimes, and she tends to hold the view that, until proven otherwise, everything in the world has a “correct” path of simple cause to effect. This pretty much always lines up with how SHE would do something, and she can get pretty rankled real quick if something does not meet her expectations or give her the results she wants.
She applies this philosophy to social interactions as much as anything else, and it took her a while to understand that there’s not really a “correct” way to, say, react to a joke or an apology.
Peridot also has a proclivity for egotistical and self-aggrandizing behavior, often talking herself up or over-selling herself by using self-descriptors such as “precious” or “powerful” or “valuable”. It used to be that she’d focus on her own needs to the exclusion of everyone else’s, but now she knows how to strike a better balance and put her friend’s interests close to—or even sometimes above-- her own. She still talks herself up quite frequently though, usually in a manner that strangers will find grating or off-putting. It’s arguable that a lot of this behavior comes from her upbringing on Homeworld, where a gem’s usefulness and rarity determines their social standing. Additionally, Peridot is an “era 2” gem, meaning she was created during a time when her home planet was operating under a shortage of the resources needed to create new members of their race. This lack of available material accounts for her small size and lack of natural gem powers, and it’s possible her habit of bragging is a method of justifying her existence in some way, compensating for her physical shortcomings by attempting to highlight her cleverness and great intellect.
This may also similarly influence her attachment to material belongings; she has been shown to be extremely possessive of her things such as her limb enhancers and tech, because she considers those things a large part of her identity; in “Too Short to Ride”, she blurted out that “(tech is) all that I am” when Amethyst tried to wreck the new tablet that Steven got for her. This shows a severe lack of confidence underneath that veneer of ego, which is kind of tragic?But also like... On the other hand. One of her favorite activities is flaunting her knowledge for the sole purpose of showing off how much smarter she is than most people, and making them feel dumb. THIS IS NOT AN EXAGGERATION, she literally admitted this to Amethyst and Steven (in the episode "Back to the Kindergarten"), because she is horrible.
So, that's a lot about her weaknesses and flaws. But what about that "heart of gold" part?
While Peridot can be abrasive, she really doesn't have a single cruel (metaphorical) bone in her entire hard-light body. She's caring and passionate, and she has grown to be an extremely loyal and dependable friend. Even if she’s averse to saying it outright, she shows how much she loves her friends through her actions; she loves to clown around and try to cheer them up with her ridiculous antics (literally bending over backwards to make Lapis laugh) and bad jokes. She cares a LOT about what her friends think of her (ex: she was extremely upset when Amethyst was mad at her for making jokes at her expense in “Too Far”, and Lapis leaving at the end of “Raising the Barn” utterly devastated her, launching her into an extreme depression that took ages for her to get over). She is very considerate of Lapis’s past trauma and tries to be protective of her, admonishing her other friends for treading too close to triggering topics. The ending of “Hit the Diamond” also showed us that she is willing to put herself in harm’s way to defend her loved ones, as she tried to surrender herself to the Rubies in order to get them to lay off the others. “Raising the Barn” lent further credit to this courageous streak, as Peridot was extremely reluctant to leave Earth behind when it seemed like it would soon be under immediate threat from the Diamonds. Lapis wanted to turn tail and hide, but Peridot was determined to stay and fight and defend what they’d already created there.
Abilities & Skills:
ABILITIES
-Doesn’t age (bc gems are bullshit immortals)
-Very sturdy, with a high damage threshold (even by gem standards). Has the ability to release her physical form and return to her gem when grievously wounded in order to regenerate. Can’t be permanently harmed or killed unless her gem is damaged.
-Can generate translucent green bubbles around dormant gems (and other objects) and teleport them to a set location.
-Metallokinesis. She can move metal objects with her mind, which lets her do ludicrous things like fly around on a hovering garbage can lid. (Note, the wiki calls it ferrokinesis, but. It’s never explicitly stated OR shown in the show that it only affects iron, and I'm a pedantic shit :T)
SKILLS
-Exceedingly fast learner
-Familiarity with, and the ability to create, extremely advanced technology
-Horticultural knowledge (she and Lapis started their own farm)
-Extremely good at memorizing patterns and lists
-Artistic
Inventory/Companions:
Pumpkin stayed behind with Lapis when Peridot left temporarily but I'll link this again jic.
Choice: Dragon
Reason: As mentioned above, Peridot was basically “born” a powerless runt into what is traditionally a society of super-powered rock aliens. To compensate for this, she’s extremely prone to self-aggrandizing and egotistical behavior, often making bold claims of her magnificence and importance. Given her track record with this, I think it would be REALLY enjoyable to play out her navigating living with ACTUAL power and the increased status/respect that the people of Geardagas have for dragons. It would make for an interesting character arc for her, which would be nice considering she has kind of completed what will probably be her only major arc in canon already. Granted, if this is approved she’ll be absolutely shitty and obnoxious and get a big head about it, but it’ll be great to play her getting to be a bit of an asshole again (within reason), and presumably she will eventually learn that with great power comes great responsibility, or something.
(I’d make her an acid/poison dragon and she would have the worst hoarding tendencies, and it would be terrible and cute.)
REVISION: It's not just the idea of having raw power that makes the idea of playing her as a dragon appealing. It's the reputation that dragons apparently have in Geardagas, cited in the intro of the bestiary entry: "The rarest of Monsters, Dragons are seen in old faerytales told by man and Fae alike as being fearsome creatures, powerful and revered."
Powerful and revered. All monsters and witches possess real, raw magic power that would be new and exciting for Peridot to have, but dragons are the only ones with the degree of history and legend surrounding them that provide the kind of external validation that I believe is necessary to really make this angle work. Having newfound abilities is great and all, yes, and she could get an ego boost from being just about anything in this setting... But having actual evidence in the world to point to and back up the idea that she's in some way "better" than the other monsters is what makes this particular choice appealing. EVERYONE will be coming in with new abilities. To paraphrase (
Basically, to me, Peridot just having new magical abilities wouldn't be enough to achieve what I'm aiming for here. It wouldn't have the same sense of validity to back up all her "I'm the best" bluster in the way that I'm looking for. Obviously being a dragon would not ACTUALLY make her "the best" in as much as anyone can ever truly be "the best", but it provides extra ammunition for her claims and problematic behavior. She'd talk herself up regardless of what she wound up becoming but being a dragon provides her the reputation of being the BIGGEST kind of monster. The rarest kind of monster (barring Fae, of course). Dragons being applicable to these two descriptors is particularly noteworthy to me because 'rareness' is literally a concept that Homeworld gems place emphasis on in the show, with the rarer types of gems being of a caste above the others in terms of importance and respect... and Peridot has at multiple points shown positive enthusiasm towards the idea of someone being "HUGE".
Obviously from an OOC perspective I want to make it clear I'm not looking to use this as an excuse to power game or get one up over on the other PCs; that is something I intend to be very mindful of, and at the end of the day Peridot is still Peridot. She's kind of a goober, and a bit of a clumsy idiot sometimes. Development will come from her eventually realizing that just because she has these abilities, that doesn't actually make her any more valuable as a friend, or a person. As for the Cwyld, an extra weakness to it would provide the sort of serious counter-measure required to eventually make her realize that being the biggest and the rarest isn't actually all that it's cracked up to be. I don't think she would take the information that dragons are more susceptible to it very seriously at first because, you know, how could that even be possible if dragons are so tough? Once she does see the threat for what it is, it'll give her extra motivation to help research a cure, especially if it means saving her own scales. Peridot has undergone a lot of development over the course of the show, but evidence still pops up from time to time demonstrating that she isn't entirely free of all her biases. She still bears the scars of spending a few thousand years in Homeworld's toxic society. She still has a whole lot left to learn about the world, and I'd like for her to learn that sticking to her real strengths-- strength of mind, strength of character-- is what makes her really powerful.
Sample:
Here
TDM top level for a more recent in-setting sample.
