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The Great and Lovable Peridot ([personal profile] periphrasing) wrote2016-10-07 01:11 pm
Entry tags:

Lost Carnival | APP



PLAYER
Name: Possum
Contact: [plurk.com profile] awkwardpossum
Other Characters: Spyro

CHARACTER
Character Name: Peridot
Age: She's an ageless space alien so who. Actually knows. Probably not much older than a few hundred years??
Species: Gem
Canon: Steven Universe
Canon Point: Sometime after Kindergarten Kid
Character Info: Thank God For Wikis

Personality:
When Peridot was first introduced to the series, she played the role of the show’s first actively dangerous antagonist as an agent of the mysterious and nefarious Gem homeworld. The Crystal Gems viewed her as an immediate threat, an image that she supported through a cold demeanor and ruthless tactics. She even attempted to kill Steven on multiple occasions, and was working towards the imminent destruction of the entire Earth.

Fast forward to current canon, and it’s obvious that she has come a long, long way since her first days of taunting and antagonizing Steven and his friends. Now a rebel and a Crystal Gem herself, it wasn’t easy for her to make it this far. Peridot is a Gem who, in addition to being naturally stubborn and prone to frustration when things don’t go her way, just thinks differently than most other people. She has a shrewd and calculating approach to tackling problems, and she values objectivity and logic above almost anything else. When she first started working alongside the show’s protagonists, she didn’t know how to factor unpredictable forces such as emotion and sentiment into her calculations, because she simply did not understand them or their relevance. We see this ignorance at it’s finest on the Moon Base, where she voiced her rather controversial opinions about the true effect of Rose’s supposed victory on the Earth; IE, she viewed that struggle as ultimately pointless, as it directly resulted in Homeworld implanting the Earth with the Cluster, putting them all in the peril they were facing at the time. This is a prime example of how her mind works, and, UNSURPRISINGLY, she could not fathom why her Crystal Gem allies were so ruffled by her simply stating objective face. She generally had a hard time empathizing with other people, and even lacked the proper terminology with which to discuss her own feelings.
At first, this was a major obstacle that kept her from really understanding other people’s perspectives, and it took her a while to learn that efficiency and logic don’t automatically make a given solution the “best” solution. She still doesn’t always get it 100% of the time, but she’s at least more aware of people’s feelings being A Thing, and does her best to be more considerate.

One of Peridot’s greatest strengths is her intelligence and propensity for quick thinking. She is exceedingly clever, and it’s a trait that she’s both aware of and loves to brag about whenever she gets the chance, claiming that she’s “smarter than the average Peridot”. Indeed, she has a tendency for boastfulness and overconfidence that can come off as grating to many people. This behavior seems to be, at least in part, a defense or coping mechanism to help preempt the negative judgements of others. Made on a planet facing a crisis of dwindling resources, and emerging into a society that prioritizes function and productivity over just about everything else, it’s no surprise that she would slip into the habit of talking herself up as much as possible. On Homeworld, she likely felt the need to justify her existence (an existence made possible at the expense of some of those limited resources) and prove that she’s just as good, if not better than any other Peridot, regardless of her lack of powers and small size. As a byproduct of this, she is practiced in taking what others may cite as weaknesses and spinning them into strengths that only add to her impressive nature. She’s not short, she’s compact. Her size only adds to her rarity and importance. Etc, etc.

You only have to look at how much her tolerance of other types of Gems and Humans has grown to see that she has become fairly open-minded as well, and is capable of learning quickly. Her understanding of Earth and human culture, while still far from perfect, has vastly improved in just a matter of months. That’s not to say she doesn’t still have tolerance issues; Kindergarten Kid was a good indication that she still has a lot to work on as far as her ability to understand others goes, and the carnival is sure to provide many opportunities for putting that to the test. Her innately blunt personality can cause friction on that front, and it makes her a bit difficult to get along with. However, those who can look past her weird quirks and rather rude manner of speaking to stick around long enough to earn her trust will find Peridot to be an incredibly loyal person. She’s genuine and straightforward in her convictions, and isn’t afraid to mouth off to a higher-up in order to stick up for someone she cares about.

Abilities:
-Doesn’t age (♫because her age isn’t real and her body’s an illusion♫)
-Very sturdy, with a high damage threshold, ability to reform her physical body when grievously wounded. Can’t be truly harmed unless her gem is damaged.
-Can generate translucent green bubbles around dormant gems (and other objects) and teleport them away.
-Metallokinesis. This is a recently discovered power and she’s still not super great at it, but she can move metal objects with her mind.

CARNIVAL
Soul Colour: Lime Green
Ideal Jobs: Engineer (Supervisor), or Repair Tech if supervisor is not possible
Relevant Experience: She was literally created to do tech and mechanical stuff for a highly advanced alien society, and had the know-how to do so from the moment she emerged from the ground. She’s adaptable, and as a veteran, she’ll have picked up on a good deal of magic by game start. Assuming that she’s placed in a repair/tech job from the get-go, she would have held that position down consistently for her whole history there. Tech is what she likes, and it’s what she excels at. In practice, her leadership skills are pretty questionable, but she can talk a big game and she likes to think that she has the capability to lead others.

Carnival History:
This is long, so I’ll bold the bits with relevant changes/events...

Peridot arrives at the carnival, gets tricked into using her metal powers to cheat at one of the games and winds up with some debt to pay off.

That 60’s Show: The first major stop, and things sure get off to a wacky start here. Peridot definitely tries some marijuana, and…. It does absolutely nothing to her, except gross her out with its weird skunk smell. She regrettably does not possess the biological systems required to process and enjoy having a toke on a fat zoot.
Fae drugs, being made of all kinds of ridiculous magic, are a different story. When The Psiionic asks the Ringmaster to hook him up, Peridot somehow winds up taking a crack at the stuff too. She kind of doesn’t remember much of what happened after that but by the time she sobers up, she has sharp teeth and monster claws??? WHoops

Asgardians: These guys were a bit much for Peridot. Sure, she can appreciate the aesthetic appeal of nice beefy soldier, but they’re all so loud and boisterous. Also they break??? So much stuff???? SHE’D LIKE TO KNOW WHY *THEY* AREN’T GETTING STUCK WITH CARNIVAL DEBT FOR ALL THE SHIT THEY’RE WRECKING?

Netherworld: This place made her super uncomfortable. The fact that these people are all supposed to be dead doesn’t make much sense or sit very well with her, and it opens up this whole can of philosophical worms about human lifespans that she really does not want to think about??

Wizards: Like 90% of Peridot’s time here was spent trying to explain basic scientific concepts to magical folk, and proudly flaunting her knowledge of ~muggle technology~. For the most part though, like much of the rest of the carnival staff, she found these guys kind of insufferably smug, which lead to some… Conflict. At one point she got into a heated debate with a wizard, which ended with him calling her an “irritating little goblin” and subsequently jinxing her. The jinx was probably meant to turn her into some kind of humiliating barn animal form, but instead it just sped up the transformation process and left her with pointy, swively ears.

Scifi Utopia: ...Now this is more like it. Peridot has a fantastic time here, both because she gets to bask in the presence of high-tech once more, and because it opens up all kinds of opportunities for her to brag about how “Homeworld did this/that better”.

Super Heroes: Learning that flight capable humans do exist would probably have been a really interesting experience for Peridot, but instead she spent most of her time here being really churlish and uncomfortable whilst side-eyeing Amethyst’s new shapeshifter friend.
Peridot’s pupils permanently change to a slitted shape while she’s here. It’s a symbol! A symbol of just how not jealous she is.

Steampunk: With the INTERLOPER out of the way, things go more or less back to normal by the time the Carnival reaches this world, although things are still just a little bit off between her and Amethyst. The vast majority of Peridot’s time here is spent lamenting how the natives in this place have absolutely no industrial design sense whatsoever. She does find some of the contraptions kind of amusing though, and anything with visible moving parts, she is pretty much hypnotized by. An urge to tweak some of the steampunk tech with magic earns her the rare ability to manipulate fire through her claws and breath.

Omnipresent Super Being Part 2: In theory, Peridot can jam down with a being whose entire presence basically just boils down to existing as a bunch of thinky thoughts. In practice? It’s a little unsettling. She does get over it enough to ask the all knowing deity some questions about understanding her gay emotions, and how to deal with them.

Vampire World: This fucking sucked. That cannot be overstated enough. Any delusions Peridot had about being useful in a fight thanks to her metal powers go right out the window When the Vampires Attack. She turns out to be pretty much helpless when it comes to driving off the invaders, and she’s really bitter about that failure once the dust clears. When her metallokinesis fails during a fight at one point, she tries falling back on her underdeveloped fire magic and kind of triggers a “hulking out” of transformational side effects; she gains a tail, her knees and elbows erupt with spikes, tiny horns sprout from her forehead. And even after all that flash, she still fails to make much of an impact. She had never felt the need to train or try to become more powerful before now, but after contributing essentially nothing to a battle wherein a bunch of her coworkers died, it started to sound like a good idea. When her debt is cleared, she willingly signs on a contract for another year in exchange for improving her control and the scope of her metal and fire powers.

Summerlands and Crossroads: At both of these stops, Peridot’s still trying to cope with turbulent emotions following VAMPIRE WORLD fallout. This is when she applies to take on the vacant Engineer supervisory position, hoping to feel a little less useless by taking on a more important role.

Existing Contract:
Another 1 year, 1 day contract, but this time it’s a willing agreement rather than a repayment of debt. However much time passes between the closing of events in Vampire World (when she signs it) and game start, that’s how far into this contract she is.
Details:
Another year and one day of service at the carnival in exchange for an increase in the power of her metal and fire magics.

Current Changes:
-Small horns
-Sharp teeth
-Claws
-Tail
-Spines accumulating on knees/elbows
-Slitted pupils
-Animal-like ears
-Ability to channel and produce heat through her claws/breathe fire

SAMPLES
There's a lot more than 10 comments here whoops
Test drive meme starter is the focus here.