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Nigerian Giraffe
- Posts:
- 6
- Group:
- Admin
- Member
- #10
- Joined:
- August 16, 2011
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| WILLIAM ZALE |
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THE BASICS FULL NAME: William Oliver Zale
NICKNAME: William. Call him anything aside from William, and he will backhand you.
AGE: 42
BIRTHDAY: June 4th
GENDER: Male
PROFESSION: Teacher
PLAYBY: Jeremy Irons
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| THE ANIMAL |
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WE'RE ALL A BUNCH OF ANIMALS SPECIES: Nigerian Giraffe
OVERALL APPEARANCE: Tall, and spotty.
DISTINGUISHING TRAITS: He looks pretty stately, even for a giraffe.
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| APPEARANCE |
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PAINT US A PICTURE
HAIR: Fair, mousy brown.
EYES: Brown.
BUILD: Tall, slender and proudly.
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: William looks like a gentleman. He’s very handsome, collected and cool in appearance like some dapper spy out of a suspense movie. He dresses very well, and maintains himself with a great deal of care. It’s rare to see him ruffled or untidy.
OVERALL APPEARANCE: William is handsome and stately. He has the look of a man from another era entirely. With fair, soft brown hair he keeps well combed and styled elegantly and dark brown eyes under a heavy, broody brow he can and does often times look scholarly. His eyes manage to have a deep, imploring quality to them, and he has a slender, almost severe mouth.
He’s as fair skinned as he is fair haired, but tans nicely. He has long limbs and fingers with handsome, broad hands that are more accustomed to the covers of books and the grip of pens than the handles of heavy tools. He’s the sort of man one could imagine modeling expensive suits and escorting beautiful women to late night parties in some foreign country.
TYPICAL DRESS: He always dresses very well. Handsome suits are his typical, everyday wear though they are always rather stylish, with an old world flare and charm to them. They’re not the bland black and white, but rather stylishly cream, he favors lighter colors in his clothes. He wears ties quite often, as well as vests and suspenders but he’s mature enough, and classy enough to avoid looking like a nerd while doing so.
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| PERSONALITY |
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WHO ARE YOU?
William is complex, and secretive. Unfortunately for most around him, they will never know him as he really is and will invest their friendship in someone who probably does not deserve quite as much kindness as he seems to receive in his life.
He’s hypercritical and bitter, with a caustic humor and a severe dislike for most around him. He silently mocks, degrades, and dehumanizes most around him, resents those who seem to care for him most and is actually incredibly childish.
But, he manages to hide all of these things. He has an excellent front. Raised to be a gentleman, in a strict, stuffy atmosphere he fakes things like kindness, humor and complacency very easily in the situations where it matters most. He can convince people that he is their friend, though when in a moment of need of that friendship, he will mysteriously disappear.
He is prone to tantrums and boredom quite easily. He has little time to invest in those around him, finding much more interest in his own life and his own trials compared to anyone else’s. He despises personal information being shared as flagrantly as most have come to do, and remains a mystery to everyone around him, despite how close some people may envision themselves to be to William.
As a cynic, he views most people his age as pathetic and annoying. In social matters that will not reflect on his career or his reputation in places that matter, he can be a complete nightmare. Almost completely lacking in empathy, he is droll, dry and often times resorts to mocking others in such sincere ways that go against his perceived façade that others don’t often realize he is being cruel.
He’s emotionally detached, but can harbor a scorching, vengeance driven anger for longer than is at all healthy.
There are few people that he actually likes spending time with, and in those rare instances he can be clingy, possessive, controlling and negative. In most cases, he is a very toxic person, but having this fact drawn to his attention does not faze him at all.
Clever and bookish, he is capable of fascinating conversation and losing those around him with the large words and exceptional grammar that he uses. He knows he is smarter than most, and will not hesitate to bring this to anyone’s attention or esteem himself above someone else because he is so smart.
He is very prejudiced against Geis-less humans, despite having grown up rather close with them.
- STRENGTHS: He’s got an exceptionally high IQ, and is relatively impervious to most matters of the heart so he avoids being hurt and recovers almost instantly from most romantic failures. He is content to live on his own, he is very proud and despite how lofty his goals tend to be he finds no issue in attaining them.
- WEAKNESSES: He’s childish and hypercritical, meaning he chases most away from him when he does manage to get close to them and he does get quite lonely and morose sometimes. He panders to his whims, allowing himself the full experience of depression and making it a rather theatrical matter. Despite being a superb conversationalist and having a great deal of people who perceive themselves as his friends he is terrible at socializing – knowing only how he should act through observing others, not through any real connection to a situation most of the time.
- LIKES: Books and musty, sunny rooms, leafy plants, hot days and plenty of sun, the color white, birds and fish, playing chess and other logic games, reading, being provided with a perfect moment to insult someone, compliments and being fawned over.
- DISLIKES: Too much noise, stupid people, books being vandalized or used in a disrespectful manner, too much rain and cold, his privacy being invaded, disorder, provocative women, bad manners, the police, most people, rumpled clothing, promiscuous women.
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| HISTORY |
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HOW DID YOU GET HERE?
William was born in Kent, England to a Geis-less in the military profession, and a canary housewife. They were both very young, and Thomas was killed in an automobile accident when William was only five years old, leaving Anne alone with her son.
With a well to do family, mother and son were never left to live a life of anything less than luxury. He was schooled in a private, boy’s academy for several years and spent his summers in sprawling estates by the sea. He was never really exposed to any kind of prejudice or hatred from the humans around him in his youth, thanks in most part to the society that they a part of and the manners that were imposed on all people within it.
He discovered his Geis when he was five – a giraffe – and the celebration was a small, private one between he and his mother and several house attendants who were more or less forced into participation. It was a quiet affair, and then following the celebration the matter was spoken of very little and he was restricted the right to shift because of the size of the creature he became.
It was when he was twelve that things changed considerably for William and his mother. Anne grew ill, developing a stomach cancer and in her age she began to lash out at most around her. Most staff at this point in time elected to leave the house, and when they attempted to hire more help they found trouble in doing so – mostly due to the fact most humans were fearful of prospective violence done to them by William or his fraying mother, and a reluctance to enter servitude under anyone with a Geis for the fear it might give them even more of a superiority complex. The staff had remained on only for so long as it had simply out of loyalty to Thomas’ memory.
This is where his separation from Geis-less society began.
The groundskeeper alone remained with the family, a stubborn old man whom had served in war with Thomas’s father. He helped William adjust to the task he was suddenly presented with – caring for his mother as she began to degrade both physically and mentally at an alarming rate.
His days were spent only in her company, with books to distract her from her melancholic reveries and her temperamental mood swings. He desperately pursued the books, reading them to her in an attempt to keep her from dissolving into the tears that broke his heart and lamenting her lost husband, or criticizing her son for being less like his father and more like her own brother – bookish, boring, and content to do nothing with his life.
The only other socialization he got outside of his boring tutor was with the groundskeeper, who would do shopping for the family as well as all of the maintenance around the house. Instead of being raised by his own mother or father, William began to learn from the groundskeeper, Louis and took to treasuring the older man’s company a great deal – which his mother soon noted and began to degrade him for, accusing him of the desire to abandon her for Louis.
At first, his mother’s attacks hurt William deeply. Her cruel words would cause him to cry sometimes, always in the secret of another room when she finally slept however, for fear that she would scold him more. The intermittent cruelty, broken up by moments of deep, motherly love and affection in which she wept for her cruelties to her son toyed with his emotions. For his own safety, he began to unconsciously harden against most emotions during this time, and began to resent spending the days at his mother’s bedside between the moments when his tutor would help him escape through the exercising of his mind.
He passed through puberty with no exposure to girls, and after a brief period of white hot frustration and curiosity, he was surprisingly bored with the idea of romance and sexuality. He preferred his books and his logic, and there was no youth left in him any longer at the age of fourteen. He was as dry, as brittle, as boring and as old as the books he would pour through, and it was something that Louis assured him was a tragedy, but something he could not really see the heartbreak in.
Anne lingered on until William was nineteen, whithering slowly each day. She finally came to a point where she no longer spoke, but seemed rather catatonic and remained bed ridden for the last two years of her life, in which William – grown now, a handsome, but ghostly pale and disconnected young man – continued his duty and read to her through the long hours of the days.
Louis passed before Anne, only just a week ahead of her, expiring on the lawn following a severe heart attack and he lay in the grass until dusk before William finally discovered him. The death hit him as hard as anything could hit the emotionally crippled young man; he was numbed for a few days, shocked and rather lonely but he viewed the ordeal with more of an idea to move on than a real upset. He attended Louis' funeral, and bid him farewell as an old friend, admitting with a surprising coolness that he was the closest thing to a parent in his life since his father’s death.
When Anne died, William was suddenly alone. He reacted to her death with as much feeling as he did to Louis’, however; he suddenly recognized a freedom.
He abandoned the Zale home the day following her funeral, taking with him a suitcase of his clothes and most treasured books. Left with what little remained of the squandered Zale fortune, he took a year to roam the world and in that year he finally experienced romance (though it was detached, and usually spanned a few nights at most in unfamiliar hotel rooms) and discovered he was terrible at it thanks in large part to his ‘lack of emotions’, as several young women put it for him.
He returned to Kent, if only for the familiar setting and began attending a nearby university where he excelled, playing polo and passing for a human despite the presence of his Geis. Quite used to ignoring the urge to shift, he did not once stretch that muscle throughout his entire college career – which lasted nearing ten years as he pursued a doctorate.
During college William met a young woman named Hazel. She was a handsome girl, with lovely dark eyes and pale skin, a healthy laugh and an admirable sense of humor and she was completely smitten with him. She worshipped the handsome, broody young man, and here was started his desire for being fawned over.
She pursued him doggedly, convinced of a mystery to him, a depth to him despite his lack of most emotion and in an attempt to do what he thought he ought to be doing at his age; William began to date the young woman. They were the poster couple for the university – she attended school for a degree in music and dance, with a lovely voice and a talent for dancing that promised a brilliant career, and he a doctorate in literature and education. While he attended school, William did little outside of his studies, and the only work experience he had during that time came in the form of volunteering for certain committees, which he only did upon Hazel’s suggestion.
They married when Hazel obtained her degree, and as though this signaled the moment when William would suddenly open up to her and reveal to her his inner most self, Hazel suddenly changed. She wanted to know things, she asked him questions, asked him to share and he found not only did he not want to, but he could not. It no doubt hurt Hazel, and instead of finding some newfound ability to care William regarded her with as much compassion and love as he had before – treating her like an absolute stranger. It saddened the lively young girl a great deal, she began to gain weight and her young career fizzled and floundered. William told her she was growing fatter and no one wanted a fat dancer, much less a fat wife, demonstrating the truth of his inner most self with a startling cruelty that did nothing for poor Hazel’s emotional state.
After two years of marriage, Hazel, deeply, agonizingly in love with William despite his flaws, but unable to live with him committed suicide.
William was in a state of shock for a great deal of time. Her death hurt him on some level the other deaths he had experienced had not – he had failed in the role of husband. Of course, no one blamed him or drew this to his attention, but it certainly put him under a higher level of scrutiny and with it suddenly revealed that he was a Geis, his social circle shrank even quicker, despite the initial outpouring of sympathy he had received. He had killed bright, sweet, loving young Hazel. The sudden criticism and coldness he received from the humans around him turned him against them entirely, feeling ostracized and mistrusted, even mistreated when a few shop owners refused him service following the revelation of his heritage. Wronged, he took to hating humans quickly, and he was as prejudiced towards them as anyone who might have grown up in a country where they were the minority.
Perhaps the hatred burned so strongly for another reason - through some form of anger towards his father for dying and dooming him to the life he had been living.
By this time William had graduated, and with no lingering ties, and the last of his meager funds he uprooted himself from Kent and everything familiar and moved across the ocean to begin teaching in America. He started his journey on the east coast, in a college in Delaware, where he discovered he absolutely detested college aged children, and even more so the ardor with which most of his female students regarded him.
He moved on again then, this time across the nation and to California at the bequest of one friend he retained from his days in Kent University. Instead of taking up a post at a college, William took a position at a high school – Saxis Central – which he discovered he rather preferred to college. Enthralled by the theatrics and the drama that took place before him, he found a humor in the circus-like lives of his pupils, and relished the ignorance most female students awarded him, and the blithe natures of most adolescents.
With the bitter outlook, and sarcastic wit enough to entertain his pupils, as well as a nature nearly as unconcerned as the youths around him, most students have taken quite a liking to Mr. Zale, and he is very happy with his career and his lack of social life.
- FAMILY: Deceased.
- FRIENDS: Milo Martin
- LOVE INTERESTS: None.
- PETS: None.
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| THE BEAST |
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NOW, WHO'S THE REAL ANIMAL...
NAME: Prawnkus
AGE: 4
OTHER CHARACTERS?: Judas Vant
TIME ZONE: CMT
BEST METHOD OF CONTACT: Leave a message with my receptionist. |
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