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[personal LJ name]: chibidl
[other characters currently played]: None yet!
[e-mail]: chibi.tenshi@gmail.com
[AIM]: conglichang
Character: Clow Reed
Abilities: He has what one might call "extremely uncanny foresight". He sees the future with such frequency and accuracy that it is literally almost impossible to surprise him. His 'sight' manifests both in visions (which are very detailed but very mentally and physically draining) and as just 'knowledge' (very strong gut feelings that are almost always right). These predictions do, yes, often affect his actions. However, the sorts of things he sees are not generally things affected by choices yet to be made (he wouldn't be able to predict someone's next chess moves, for example, because he can't see inside their mind), but things affected by choices that have already been made - even if he doesn't necessarily know what those choices were (your secret decision not to take your car in for a tune-up last month means that it will break down on the way to work today).
(This does not mean that the player will be taking and using every little bit of OOC information that comes her way. There will be a little bit of actual OOC knowledge being used (with permission!) but a good deal of his foresight will be shown and not told, as if it's part of his personality or the player's writing style. He is not surprised by an event that would normally have been surprising, or he has advance awareness of a very small event that amounts to 'color and background' in a post - that sort of thing.)
He can also create sentient beings just ~magically~, but doing so is not an easy task. It has to be very meticulously planned, the research takes months or possibly years (and a lot of sketching and note-taking), and he needs some kind of raw material with which to make a viable living body. (Good luck finding that.) This is obviously not something he can take lightly, and it might not even be anything that he'd have the resources to up and do in the City.
Beyond that, there's just general, all-around magic. Clow's abilities here get very, very vague - he can manipulate time, yes, and weather, but neither on a global scale. Since time is kind of a thing that passes at one global rate, his ability and willingness to manipulate it is severely limited. Similarly, messing around with the weather too much is exactly how one gets on the wrong sides of the powers that be. For other useful bits of magic, he created the Clow Cards - which of course he doesn't have anymore. They were for highly useful and frequently-used areas of magic that would be prohibitively hard or annoying to try to do on the fly. He can of course stil do these things without them... they're just prohibitively hard or annoying. As one can guess, magic is probably not for doing silly things and showing off - at least, not 'useful' magic. Clow can make highly elaborate and beautiful illusions, although he tends to use them exclusively for showing off.
He also has more mundane abilities (which might or might not count for this section), including cooking, sewing, knitting, drawing, and playing the piano. None of these are things he does professionally - although he could probably have made a living as a chef or a tailor if he weren't a seer - and his abilities in art and music are the results of centuries of practice and not any kind of natural talent. He does not write music, nor does he draw for the sake of the art itself.
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Although Clow doesn't subscribe to the whole wish-and-payment system that Yuuko lives by (mostly because he doesn't grant wishes for a living), he is still bound by the same rules that Yuuko is. Although his ties with Fate put him on par with some gods in terms of raw power, they also severely limit what he can and can't do so that he is not a god. The net effects of his magic, therefore, must balance each other out or else Fate will exact some kind of 'payment' either from himself or from whoever benefits from the magic - even if they didn't necessarily wish for it.
Along more mundane lines, there's his little alcohol problem (which is only a problem if there's no alcohol), and of course the fact that he can't see two feet in front of his face without his spectacles.
History/background: Clow was born in England in the 1450's, one of the children of an unlikely betrothal between an English aristocrat and a Chinese sorceress - the second marriage for the former. His inborn magical talents were noticable even as a young boy, and as this made him obviously his mother's child it was she exclusively who trained him. Academics were his primary interest, but it soon became obvious that he had no choice but to learn to control and use the powers he was given. As a young man he traveled extensively and, although he originally had no intention of doing so, made quite a name for himself in Europe as a seer, earning him fame, some fear, and enemies. Reluctantly, he came to terms with this fact and threw himself entirely into his magic, partially for the sake of being able to defend himself from said enemies. Ultimately, he surpassed his mother - and pretty much everyone else - in power.
Sometime between then and the 19th century (after a long period of time in which he settled down, married for the first and only time, and had children and eventually grandchildren), he created the Clow Cards and the guardians Yue and Cerberus. Then, during the latter half of the 1800's he moved to Tomoeda, Japan, where he lived until his death sometime in the 1960's. There he finally met Yuuko Ichihara face-to-face (although they had likely heard of one another before) and with her help created the Mokona Modoki and set in place various plans for after his death. Of course, just because he wasn't physically around since then doesn't mean that he hasn't been meddling around on other worlds. It's even probable that he has had some way of communicating with Yuuko since then.
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Personality:Clow is the quiet and reclusive sort, though not because he doesn't like people. Quite the contrary, but any wise man will tell you that too much of even a good thing can be undesirable. He often goes out of his way to make sure that others are happy - even occasional strangers, when he can, and even sometimes to his own detriment. He is introverted but genuinely friendly, and seems neither timid nor very quick to anger. "Peaceful" and "cheerful" might be words you'd use to describe him - but that would not be entirely accurate. Oftentimes his smile is a facade, or it means something other than happiness. It could be said that he is somewhat insane, as he finds amusement in some of the most twisted 'jokes' (the fact that most people thought he was joking when he mentioned his imminent death is very telling) and takes other, seemingly more trivial things, very seriously. Most of the things which can get him angry are very subtle things which, if you were paying proper attention, you should have noticed and avoided. Similarly, there will be no harsh words and rarely a frown from him to signal that you've done something wrong - just a slight and almost unquantifiable change in situation. The conversation will end, the subject will change, or you will suddenly be dealing with a quiet and distant magician rather than a smiling and playful man.
In addition, his foresight causes him to not completely live in the present. His recollections of events - much like his actions during them - are always colored by things that will happen in the future. This could explain his cheerful attitude - perhaps he has had time to come to terms with and accept bad things that happen before they actually do. It also might explain his reclusiveness, since it causes him to act perhaps a bit odd (which might be taken as insanity at the time) and he has no choice but to see at least a little ways into everyone's future. Being around huge crowds of people must be disorienting or at least a little awkward for him. Of course, his immense and towering ego doesn't really help with the 'getting along with people' thing, either.
Background setting: [the setting your character came from before PC] CardCaptor Sakura and xxxHolic pre-canon.
Physical description: He stands at about six feet tall and carries himself with an air of quiet and calm confidence, somewhat like the ancient relic he is. Although most famous for wearing elaborate Chinese silk robes and a cloak, he actually usually dresses in slightly-anachronistic suits, the most modern-looking of which being something that might have been designed in the 1950's.
(And here are some pictures because I'm lazy: Normal dress - Insanely elaborate robes)
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It took a bit longer than one would think to write that journal entry because Clow kept getting distracted. He kept staring off into space, thinking of how he'd much rather be somewhere else, doing something else, but there was nothing to do and no one else to do it with on such short notice. As the seconds ticked by, the 'things to do' and 'people to do them with' pools got smaller and smaller and there was a greater risk of leaving the things unfinished and the people unhappy. That was not what he wanted. Better to just sit here and tie up all of the loose ends.
Then, there was the question of what to write. There seemed to be something very important floating just in the back of his mind, as if he could pass to the next world in peace knowing that he had just written that one thing even if nobody ever got to read it. Yet, even knowing that nobody else would have to know was not enough for him to bring himself to write whatever it was. Time was running out and, appropriately, he wasn't sure how to end the entry, much less his life.
His eyes wandered to the window again as he forced them to stay open and his body to stay alive for just a few more minutes. Outside there was a cherry blossom tree, and as he stared at it a breeze came by and blew a particular blossom off of its branch before a nearby bee could even pollenate it.
"This is the sort of thing that people write poems about," he mused, smiling, as he began to pen that last half-sentence. "... But I'm not a poet..."
Indeed, he was not, but that smile remained on his face even as his pen slid off the page and the book clattered to the floor. It was there when the sun finally set, when spring turned to summer, and when the book, the pen, and the cadaver were all long gone. The joke hadn't been that funny, of course, but the irony was enough for him to pass away, satisfied. Even if no one else would ever know.
Sample post:
To do:
- Dishes
- Have that discussion with Yue and Cerberus. That went better than expected.
- all those other little details, like "memory erasure" and putting the cards away. It's so quiet in here now! Like when I first moved in, only with all my furniture still lying around.
- Finish that open bottle of wine. Ah, yes. Check~!
- Die.
That last thing seems so lonely, off there by itself. Almost like I'm not planning on doing anything after that! I feel like I should add more things, like perhaps "prank call everyone I know with a phone that doesn't exist" or maybe "find out where all those missing socks went". But I won't be around to check those things off, anyway - I'll be on vacation. So, there's really no point. Death will remain lonely.
I suppose I don't have to mince words: This wasn't something that I was looking forward to. I would have liked to stay if I could, and I'm going to miss... everything. And everyone. This life seems so pointless if I'm just going to leave it as if I have something else I'd rather do. At least I'll only have to do that once.
One last thing: If I may end on a deeply personal note, I want to confess tha
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