Syl's Alter Egos

Er, characters.

Each shall have his/her own post, for the sake of simplicity. I'll be trying to get some pictures out of each one as well, but that'll be a little slower in coming.

Name: Joey (Joseph) Doesnothavealastname-Ihavetogivehimanewone
Age: 17
Sex: Male

Appearance: Joey stands a little short at about 5’8” (much to his pain) but makes up for it—being somewhat small and thin lets him climb on things other people have difficulty doing. He’s somewhat pale from the life of an indoorsman, though he can tan about about five minutes outdoors. His eyes are hazel, and he wears square glasses to see. His hair is dark brown and of an average length, with somewhat scattered bangs that go to either side of his face. One piece of hair is usually hanging across his forehead, between his eyes.

As for clothing, he prefers to stick to baggy jeans and cargo pants coupled with t-shirts, and the t-shirts will usually be related to rock bands, games, or sarcastic sayings, and 90% of them are black. If the weather is cold, he will wear long sleeves under the t-shirts or wear his favorite black gaming jacket. If he’s not wearing sleeves or a jacket, he’s always wearing cloth wristbands related to his favorite video games and animes. He's usually wearing two necklaces; one he occasionally alternates (but is usually a small metal sword), but the other, a dragon, he permanently wears.

Personality: He’s not all that good at being social. Joey tries, but he finds he says the wrong things even when he’s in a good mood. He usually leans more toward being sarcastic and serious and loves to poke fun at things and people, but he’s overall lighthearted. His attitude can change at the drop of a hat, though, meaning he can swing from laughing and cheerful and completely weird to moody in an instant. He tries not to. He likes having friends, but partially due to his social ineptitude, he often confines himself to staying in his bedroom with books, video games, his bass guitar, and drawing supplies. He never makes plans to go out with other people and they have to convince him to leave, though on rare occasion he’ll leave the house by himself to see a movie or do something else.

Bio: He doesn’t like to talk much about himself. Joey’s parents divorced when he was fourteen, which has never particularly bothered him unless something specific comes up, and he’s lived with his mom and two younger siblings. Other things have happened since, though, which have made him paranoid about the friends he keeps and how he acts around other people. He usually keeps his reasons to himself.

Name: Taiju Soulin
Age: 18
Gender: Male

Appearance: Taiju is approximately 5’11.5" and about 165 lbs; an average-looking build, although he does have a fair trace of muscle from the training he does on his own with swords. His hair is a medium brown and has a pointed tail cut; longer in the back than in the front, where the longer hair goes nearly to the middle of his shoulder blades. His bangs are scattered, long enough to frame about half of his face and usually off to the sides. His eyes are hazel, and he wears rectangular glasses. His overall facial features are plain, although he looks like he would be more at home in a library than on the road. More often than not, he has a bit of scruff lining his jaw as well.

His attire is likewise plain, consisting of either tanned or black pants, soft brown leather boots, and shirts of similar color to his pants. He also has a forest-green hooded cloak, which he wears any time he’s in town or when it’s cold. The cloak itself carries sentimental value. Other accessories include a pocket watch with a symbol raised into the lid and the chain of which hangs from his pocket, and a copper coin with a wolf paw print that he wears on a leather strip around his neck. He also carries a black cloth messenger bag for all of his belongings, which are usually few in number, and thin dual blades hanging from sheaths at his hips.

Personality: Taiju has a preference to be left alone. He generally won't care about the world around him as long as it doesn't try to bother him first. He's intelligent, but will often come off as cold or indifferent to people around him--it's not exactly intentional, so much as he doesn't always realize that how he interprets something won't be the same to others and his social skills are rather lacking. People are too complicated to him and he doesn't particularly like the majority of them, anyway. If someone can work past that, Taiju can be a decent enough person, it's just a matter of getting there. Taiju spends his free time near equally between reading or swordplay; he occasionally draws, but he prefers not to advertise the talent anymore.

Taiju also has an unfortunate tendency to turn toward alcohol when feeling particularly stressed. He doesn't do it often, particularly since he doesn't enjoy being falling-down drunk, but it's not uncommon for him to down a couple pints of ale when he can't find work or has been thinking about returning home again.

Bio: Taiju's childhood, up until about the age of ten, was fairly simple. He lived with his parents and brother, who was three years his junior, in the family blacksmithing shop. He was never too thrilled with his father, Damek, and usually preferred to spend time around his mother, Kadea. The only thing he particularly enjoyed were the fighting lessons he took from his father, who used to be a soldier. It was clear that Damek and Kadea didn't particularly enjoy each other's company all the time, either--their marriage was arranged and a bit strained for that reason.

Damek believed very firmly in roles of masculinity and was determined to raise his sons in a very strict manner, which Taiju didn't adhere to. He practiced his swordplay for the sheer joy of it and turned to other hobbies such as reading and crafting, the latter of which he visited a friend in the market to learn--things that Damek didn't like. This began to cause feelings of resentment between the two, particularly when Taiju's younger brother, Nale, grew old enough to begin learning the blacksmithing trade and how to fight as well. Damek showed heavy favoritism toward his younger son. Kadea, on the other hand, fully supported both of her children and encouraged Taiju to continue what he enjoyed (sometimes behind her husband's back). Damek continued to try to limit what Taiju did, taking to burning books or taking the things Taiju made.

The fighting between Taiju and his father become more common and more violent over the years, until one fight ended with Taiju's near death at age fourteen. At that point, Taiju left home, unable to live around his father anymore and determined to take care of himself.

Since then he's been working odd jobs, living scarcely but managing. He spends much time traveling to and from various towns, having little else to do with himself. He wants to return home at some point and see his mother again, to make sure she's faring well, but also abhors the idea of seeing Damek again.

Name: Zakuro Hanson
Age: 18
Sex: Female

Appearance: Zakuro stands at about 5'8" with a slim, athletic figure and an average sort of skin tone. Her features could be described as "cute," giving her a somewhat youthful appearance, with the faintest hint of Japanese to them. Her hair is straight and black, falling a little below her shoulders, and she usually has it kept up loosely in a pair of chopsticks. Her eyes are bright green.

Her normal attire consists of jeans or capri pants with fitting t-shirts, which normally have some sort of artsy or interesting design on them. She's also rather in love with red high-top converse and wears them until they wear out entirely. Her ears are pierced twice but she's not very fussy about the earrings; under normal circumstances she wears small silver loops in the first set and simple studs in the second, unless she needs to dress up.

Personality: Zakuro is generally a cheerful sort of person. She likes to smile and laugh and see other people do the same. Others have an easy time getting along in her presence. Zakuro tends to try to cheer up others and see the positive side of a situation while ignoring the negatives; some might actually question the way she tends to handle things others might have trouble with. Rarely does she think of the future, preferring to live cheerfully in the now instead of worrying about other things that will happen later.

Hobby-wise, Zakuro loves two things in particular: guitar and basketball. She regularly plays basketball on her school team, though wouldn't really consider making a career of it, and plays her electric guitar daily--more often than not with Joey, with whom she's been friends for longer than either of them can really remember.

Bio: Zakuro's lived in the same house for years with her parents, with whom she doesn't get along the greatest. Her father's a bit strict and her mother has become something of an alcoholic in the past three or four years. In fact, Zakuro doesn't get along much with most of her family--she doesn't know her grandparents on her mother's side very well, and the ones on her father's side are stricter than her father actually is. From her father's side is where she gets her Japanese heritage, and her grandparents, being more old-fashioned, are less than thrilled by his marriage to a Caucasian woman, causing overall family tension.

She did, however, love her uncle Zack, her mother's brother. He didn't live with them but visited as often as he could to spend time with his niece. For Zakuro, he was the only family member she could really speak freely with, and it seemed to be similar on his side. They were very close, sharing everything between them and goofing around constantly.

Zack committed suicide via drug overdose when Zakuro was fourteen. She found out then that he must have been severely depressed when a search of his apartment yielded several bottles of strong antidepressants, something she had never known about him. It was a painful blow, to say the very least.

She's over it now, but she still misses him greatly. Zack's death, and the knowledge of his depression, forces her to pay special attention to anyone she cares about if they're upset; as a result, she tends to be more anxious about Joey as well, whose disorder she knows about.