Have feedback about my writing?  I want to hear it!

(Not sure if this is modus operandi at Pentamerone or not, but I'd like to do it.)

Feel free to tell me how you feel - unless it contains excessive profanity or threats, I will leave it up.  I also encourage you to talk to me over AIM.

The Fool came equipped with a shockingly good sense of time, place, events, and patterns.  It processed so very many things unconsciously.  It spat back proverbs, platitudes, and warnings in beautiful prose or, on occasion, meter.  It dabbled in the stream without ever creating its own disturbance; it was a medium, not a message.

That was what It thought, when It did think about Itself, which was actually quite rare.  The Fool liked to think about other people.  The problem was, the Fool had a good grasp on human nature...in entire.  In parts, things got messy.  And what the Fool grasped depended a great deal on the manifestation the Fool took.  And the Fool never knew which manifestation it was in.

Like any manifestation, the Jester had Its flip-side: Hero.  The Fool considered Hero to be the most trying of It's aspects, because the Hero was the aspect that snuck up without any warning at all.  Hero was the aspect that whispered, very quietly at the edges of thoughts, that perhaps The Fool should create a disturbance in the stream.

The Fool disapproved.

The Hero was unswayed.  And it was louder than usual, right at the moment, while The Fool walked alongside another Hero-type.  The man's presence should have put The Fool right back in It's Jester aspect, but the Hero kept asserting itself.

You're somewhere new now.  Maybe you don't have to be what you always were.

OOC →

NAME: Phix

AIM: bluephix

TIME ZONE: Mountain Time or Central Time

 

IC →

NAME: The Fool (alternately "The Protagonist," "The Wanderer," "The Beggar")

 

SOURCE MATERIAL: The Tarot - the Fool is more an idea than a specific character in any given fairytale.

 

APPROXIMATE AGE: Ageless.  Hard to tell, as the appearance is very fluid.  As a human, certainly does not look its age.

 

GENDER/PREFERENCE: Usually androgynous.  Mostly asexual.  See character description.

 

PERSONALITY: The Fool is, as archetypes go, incredibly amorphous and fluid.  Known also as The Hero, or the Protagonist, the Fool sometimes represents the passage through stages of life.  In artwork, this is portrayed by the Fool's depiction as a "wanderer."  Sometimes, the Fool is a beggar.

In literature, the Fool can play foil to multiple characters simultaneously, changing masks (or removing them) as the situation requires.  Also in literature, the Fool can be companion to a monarch, undignified and usually humiliated, but incredibly wise, and often the messenger of crucial information.

As an archetype, the Fool does not fear for its existence, but is instead threatened by the fact that its personality is dependent on its surroundings and its current incarnations.  Highly intelligent and, ironically, strong-willed, the Fool has become increasingly bitter as the years have passed.  Resentful that its nature depends so much on others, the Fool is unable to care for them as equals, as it both surpasses its surroundings in raw capability, and is oddly dependent on them for manifestation.

Exquisitely able to mimic and mock at will, the Fool now often takes the mask of the Gentleman, playing the role with an androgynous, elegant abandon that unsettles people, although they could not say why.  The Fool's other current favorite masks are the harlequin and a courtesan.

STRENGTHS:  The Fool is incredibly observant and intelligent, able to store incredible amounts of information and know when to use it.  It has a well-honed wit and produces excellent satire.  The Fool is also very empathic, and can usually tell when people wish each other harm.  Also stemming from its empathy, it can usually tell how to alleviate tense situations, and how to calm people; intensely charismatic, The Fool is usually trusted on short acquaintance.  Its intelligence and status as a court jester has led The Fool to be unusually good with logic problems (although it is rarely asked to solve them).

 

WEAKNESSES:  The Fool's personality is malleable, so there is very little constancy in its actions.  As it mimics and mirrors the surrounding people, it may be either very well-suited to its environment, or very poorly-suited.  It regards truth as a fluid concept, perhaps owing to its own fluid personality, and can thus both lie and break promises lightly.  Those who deal often with The Fool may therefore regard it as untrustworthy.  The Fool is also bitter enough about its lonely existence that it tends not to trust anyone, and therefore it does not accept help or advice even when they would be beneficial.

 

HISTORY: The Fool has developed strangely over time.  Once bound to a single incarnation (the Wanderer), The Fool was limited by its single form, but also surer of itself.  As literature grew more prolific, the archetype grew more varied, and The Fool's "adolescence" was spent in multiple, separate incarnations presided over by a separate soul.  This troubled The Fool, who found itself unable to feel at home in any one body, or to use the knowledge it had accrued between bodies.  The Fool was oddly disjointed, for it presided over its bodies like a soul, but its bodies contained their own wills and motivations.

The Fool consolidated itself, grafting aspects of its incarnations into one body.  It realized that it was amorphous, an idea.  There was no place for it in the world of people, at least not living side-by-side with bodies that contained only one mind and only one soul.

...so The Fool wandered.  It wandered until it came to Pentamerone, and now it lives with the other characters.  Its problems are different than theirs, in many ways, but at least they can understand The Fool's difference from humanity, and The Fool's resentment at being so dependent on others.

 

SKILLS & ABILITIES:  It might seem that The Fool can read minds, but this is not so; The Fool is simply highly observant and inhumanly-aware of slight mannerisms and tell-tales - the twitch of an eye, the sheen of sweat, the beat of the pulse in the throat.

It would also seem that The Fool can shapeshift, and perhaps this is so, although it is an ability that The Fool does not often use.  The Fool has chosen a form that can take on many aspects, and is able to reproduce the nuances of posture and expression in order to appear very different.

 

APPEARANCE:  The Fool is almost always tall and slender.  It has a penchant for dressing in pinstriped suits, accessorized (depending on its mood) with anything from pocketwatches to cravats to white gloves to a glass-topped walking stick.  It also likes painting its face and dressing as a woman (at least; whether or not it actually has a gender remains known only by The Fool itself), and enjoys playing on its archetype by dressing as a harlequin, with a checkered suit and a sceptre.

The Fool has an unusual range of facial expressions and postures, which it tends to switch between quickly in order to unsettle people.

The Fool either has no scars or notable birthmarks, takes care to cover them up, or simply never manifests them.

 

PB: Mostly Tilda Swinton, although I would also use some tarot art from various decks, and perhaps fashion photoshoots for The Fool's more flamboyant masks.