Character Questionnaire
8. How does he feel about religion?
Mixed emotions. Partially contemptuous, but partially intrigued by the way that faith and humanity combine to remake the world.
9. What are his political beliefs?
Beneath the posturing he tends to be committed to anything that distributes power away from monolithic entities. The most frequent position he has is a sort of psudo-punkish opposition to forces/entities he perceives to be oppressive. Paradoxically, he tends to have more trust for powerful individuals, seeing these dictatoresque people as simply being part of history, and as such will rise and fall quite naturally, and thus without significant danger to the greater world.
10. Is he street-smart, book-smart, intelligent, intellectual, slow-witted?
A strange mix. Very clever academically, he’s limited by his limited attention span if a topic doesn’t interest him completely. Conversely, he is incisive and highly erudite when it comes to matters that he’s personally involved in, such as Magical Theory and CompSci. He’s developing a bit more street and social sense, but he tends to prefer to deal with people with a full hand. Without any sort of leverage, his ability to manage would be questionable. He’s got quite a wide span of general knowledge, but it tends to come in bursts and clumps, a result of his somewhat haphazard interests and informal approach.
11. How does he see himself: as smart, as intelligent, and uneducated?
He sees himself as one who can pick up on the fallacies and concealments of others. He knows he’s highly adaptable mentally when it comes to most fields of study, an attitude that may cause him some problems further down the track. He takes pride in his pride at learning.
12. How does his education and intelligence – or lack thereof - reflect in his speech pattern, vocabulary, and pronunciations?
He’s got a very broad vocabulary and can be quite wordy when he’s drawn into a technical discussion, but mostly he tries to be a laconic, professional badass, with varying degrees of success.
13. Did he like school, his teachers, his schoolmates?
Mostly no, but a number of specific teachers and classes that aroused his interest were very much enjoyed/liked. He was one of those students that needed a fairly uncommon approach. Definitely a Socratic Method student.
15. Did he graduate? High-School? College? Does he have a PHD? Master’s?
He has a masters in Computing Science. Masters Thesis was on heuristic security agents within distributed networks. He was considering doing a PhD at some stage, but being able to bitchslap reality somewhat diminished the importance of this. He has various little projects he likes to work on though, research or otherwise. He’s beginning to speculate as to the viability of magical AI as a bit of a blue-sky idea, although at this point he’s convinced that it would probably require a few more people, and a more sophisticated grasp of magic.
16. What does he do for a living? How does he see his profession? What does he like about it and what does he dislike.
He tends to do a lot of contract work. He’s found a lot of ways of trimming expenses through the discrete use of magic. If he needs money in a hurry, he heads to a casino and mind magics his way to poker winnings. He gets a bunch of smaller income streams from remote administration of various smaller servers. Large amounts come from contract work, but this tends to be a bit bursty. Usually well paying though, so he’s not too worried. He quite likes the sort of work he’s presently doing; IT stuff in a non-IT related field. He enjoys work that challenges him in new ways, or work that actively makes things harder. He really dislikes boring, repetitive, mechanistic work.
17. Did he travel? Where? Why? When?
He has. Digitally, all over the place. He’s got a fairly widespread network of buddies, most of which related to computer/hacking/coding. He’s travelled around America a bit, and a few forays to central Europe. He’s done some work for what he suspects to be Russian gangsters, but he’d probably do it again for reasons of pride and finance.
18. What did he find abroad and what does he remember?
A certain measure of delight at the variance in the human experience, and a certain degree of amusing cynicism at the similarities. He really likes Chinese food. He’s a regular at the local Chinese places.
19. What were his deepest disillusions? In life? What are they now?
Good things happening to bad people, and vice versa still gets him, that hasn’t changed. He gets a real kick from making things right, though. He’s quite disillusioned about people not being there for him one way or another, although he’s coming to accept/rationalise this as an inevitable consequence of freedom/free will.
20. What were the most deeply impressive political or social, national or international, events that he experienced?
31. How does he react to stress situations? Defensively? Aggressively? Evasively?
They're a challenge. Faster, more impulsive, he tends to crunch data very quickly in those situations and come to a conclusion. Sluggishness can transform into speed very abruptly. It does depend on the situation though, he can panic if he's out of his depth.
Stressboner. Workers harder. Mentally charges onwards, if that makes sense. Can get a bit twitchy.
32. Does he drink? Take drugs?
No, and nothing stronger than energy drinks, that he imbiles frequently.
33. How is his health? What does he do for it?
Lots of jogging. His ‘regular’ meals are quite healthy. Snacks and ‘coding food’ on the other hand…
34. Does he feel self-righteous? Revengeful? Contemptuous?
Think Samuel L Jackson from Pulp Fiction. He’s got a big self-righteous streak that often strays into self-indulgent delusions, but it tends to be tempered by cynicism. He knows why revolutions are called that, everything comes back to how it was before, revolutionaries replacing the tyrants with other tyrants. So he tries to restrain himself in that respect.
35. Does he always rationalize his errors? How does he accept disasters and failures?
36. Does he like to suffer? Does he like to see other people suffering?
He has a bit of a Schadenfreude streak, but it’s very shortterm, and more related to feeling challenged by worthy enemies. It’d be more accurate to describe it a mix of cynicism and pride that he’s one of the movers that rose above it. Punkish, almost. Suffering will exist and always will, but you can still fight against it for a better tommorow, and constantly move towards a more humane way of living.
37. How is his imagination? Daydreaming a lot? Worried most of the time? Living in memories?
Constantly blended into his day to day life. After his awakening he quite often splits off his awareness and works them in shifts, almost, with one resting and the other idly musing about something that interests him. These days he sometimes adds a third that just relaxes, occasionally chipping in with input to the other two streams. Alternatively, he makes himself a living Star Trek episode, with one part being pragmatic, one humanistic, and the final a bit blue sky.
38. Is he basically negative when he faces new things? Suspicious? Hostile? Scared? Enthusiastic?
LEEROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOY JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENKINS! In an intellectual sense, though. Well, mostly. The bus thing was a one-off, though.
39. What does he like to ridicule? What does he find stupid?
¬¬The complacently powerful/arrogant. Self delusional people.
40. How is his sense of humour? Does he have one?
Sardonic, and morbid.
41. Is he aware of himself? His weak spots? Idiosyncrasies? Is he capable of self-irony?
He’s aware that often what he says and what he does in terms of rights and obligations tends to be a bit asynchronous, but he prefers it this way, and he tends to be quite open about it. He’s aware to an extent that the entire ‘rebellion’ philosophy sort of thing is a complete crapshoot success wise, and often ends up perpetrating worse injustices. He’s sort of internalized this though, seeing himself as a bit of a neutral force of Nemesis, so to speak, castigating the deserving and giving a bit of hope to the downtrodden, or at the very least leaving metaphorical burning dog poo in choice locations.
42. What does he want most? What does he need really badly, compulsively? What is he willing to do, to sacrifice, to obtain? What is he craving for?
Relevance. A cause he can actually believe in without skeptisising himself out of it.
43. Does he have any secrets? Are they holding him back?
He’s found/done a fair bit of stuff over the years, supernaturally or otherwise, that could both get him into trouble, and get other people into trouble. Nothing truly scarring or cause for psychological distress, though. He’s becoming a bit worried about what happened during his <initial mage becoming sequence term>. There’s always someone better out there, and if HE could break into the very fundamental keystone of magic, what’s a simple mind, or collection of memories, values, etc? He’s becoming aware that the brain in the jar scenario is increasingly feasible.
Some of the flashes of insight/other memories he had during his initiation have worried him a bit as well. There’s many possibilities for the future, and many of them he didn’t like the look of.
44. How badly does he want to get what he claims as his life objectives? How does he pursue them?
Quite badly, but he enjoys taking the long way to them. He pursues them in the manner of the economic planner. Bit by bit, and perfectly willing to accept setbacks if there’s been other gains, such as experience, resources, prestige, or time, even if other areas have reported losses.
45. Is he pragmatic? Does he think first? Is he responsible? Or is he all action? A visionary? Passionate? Quixotic?
Yes to all of the above. Except when he isn’t. His planning style and general approach to goals tends to be about as consistent as a magic 8ball. He’s not averse to a bit of skullduggery, but he finds a metaphorical heroic attack montage very appealing mentally, so in conflict he tends to fluctuate between careful planning and measuring, and rapid, relentless action.
46. Is he tall? Short? His weight? How does he feel about his size? His posture? His walk? Does he want to project an image of a younger, older, more important person? Does he want to be visible or invisible?
A little taller than average. Lanky. He tends to alternate between good-natured lurking and rapidly seizing the spotlight. A lot of his social methods/mannerisms could be boiled down to wanting to be respected for his abilities, so he tends to be quite reserved until he feels he’s in a strong area, at which point he becomes more dashing, almost vivacious.
47. How are his gestures? Vigorous? Weak? Controlled? Compulsive?
He tends to alternate between slow, measured motions and rapid bursts of activity, particularly when he’s excited or emotionally involved. He tends to talk with his hands once he gets going.
48. Is he energetic or sluggish?
In the discourse of Miyamoto Musashi, he’s not interested in speed, merely quickness. Of course actually putting this into practice is another matter, but he generally doesn’t mind taking the occasional momentary breather to pause and collect himself.
50. Prevailing facial expressions? Sour? Cheerful? Dominating?
Cocky smiles mixed with delighted focus. He tends to wear his emotions on his sleeve in most respects, although deeper feelings tend to be well concealed.