Cecil Gershwin Palmer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
semanticjellyfish) wrote2013-11-02 01:08 pm
semanticjellyfish) wrote2013-11-02 01:08 pm
Entry tags:
Ruby City Application
PLAYER
Name: Box
Age: 24
Personal Journal:unseenbox
E-mail: boxofgrenades@gmail.com
AIM/MSN/etc: bardwithnoname = aim;![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
likeabox
CHARACTER
Name: Cecil Gershwin Palmer
Canon: Welcome to Night Vale
Age: Nobody knows. Really, no one. We can assume he’s not immortal. Maybe. He’s probably somewhere in the ballpark of the thirties. His PB is Danny Pudi, specifically as Abed from Community, simply for headcanon’s sake. He doesn’t have an definite canon description.
Timeline: after Yellow Helicopters.
If playing another character from the same canon, how will you deal with this?: N/A
Personality:
Tune into Cecil’s little show, and the first thing you’ll notice is that he’s probably the most unflappable person on earth, not counting other folks born without wings. His smooth, sonorous radio voice makes absolutely everything in his presumable hometown sound as routine and ordinary as possible. Everything from new specials at the library (that shouldn’t be entered, as librarians are vicious and the biography section is all Helen Hunt) or a new way to get readership up for the (imaginary) newspaper gets reported on in the same, matter of fact tone of voice. The sponsor ads are all horror stories, and the day’s events may or may not count, too. He dips his toes into liberal thoughts, like when he denounces the Apache Tracker as a racist jerk, but this is contradicted by the very strange state of Night Vale’s fascist government, which he appears to endorse wholeheartedly. Even this vague yet menacing government, complete with secret police and re-education programs, doesn’t faze him.
That’s probably why Cecil tends to come off as relatively calming. All things considered, anyway. Oh, sure, he revels in the aftermath of Glow Clouds or the latest round of secret police round ups, but on the whole, he acts as a sort of town wide security blanket. This type of behavior is best exemplified by the Street Cleaning Day incident, when he emphasizes how the entire town’s come together now, and how everything’s starting to clear up, even with all the dead people still as dead as they’ll ever be. He, notably, doesn’t so much cover up the horrors of the day, but instead reports on them accurately and focuses on how the very real danger has passed. This marks a notable departure from Desert Bluff’s radio station, which hides the horrors and covers them up with paper thin enforced happiness. Not that Cecil doesn’t enjoy the strangeness of his town -- goodness, no -- but there’s an air of soothing to the tone of his broadcasts, and it’s essential to both the town itself and who he is.
Of course, accuracy can be a bit of a stretch at times. Cecil isn’t exactly the most professional of broadcasters. He routinely sends interns out to their deaths, and seems very blase about them, like those (often horrible) deaths are just part of the job -- which they are, but still. Not only that, but he constantly goes off topic during the show. Sure, he might apologize for his asides beforehand, but he’s still going to veer off to talk about his personal life at any given opportunity. When he goes on his first date with Carlos, he reads through the news as quickly as possible at the front of the show, solely so he can have the rest of the time to talk about it. Everything from his deep, abiding hatred for Steve Carlsberg to eating an enchilada on air is perfectly acceptable to broadcast to the entire town.
Cecil can be extraordinarily petty, and he’s more than capable of abusing his position in the pursuit of his grudges. Just say the words “Telly the Barber’ in his presence and you’ll see. All he did was give Carlos a haircut, and Cecil practically called out a hit on the guy, eventually driving him to madness and the Sand Wastes. He also notices and comments on the tiny faults of others, from unsalted corn muffins to Steve Carlsberg’s unacceptably dry scones and unrotated tires. He’s even comments on Carlos’ faults at times -- he chews too loudly and doesn’t understand basic invisible architecture. He’s prone to passive aggressiveness on occasion, too. He brings up an argument he had with Carlos, and Carlos’ agreeing to spend more time with him and less investigating various scientific things, as if he wasn’t involved at all.
When Cecil isn’t buying the government line or airing his grievances, he often shifts into a melancholic temperament. He routinely ponders the void around them, and their place in that void, and basically just likes saying the word void a lot. Not only that, but he’s pondered his own existence, the meaning of words, the lack of meaning of words, and the possibility that his broadcasts are reaching no one at all. Most of his broadcasts end with philosophical mumbo jumbo, some of it quite insightful, some probably pulled out his ass, but all of it tied under the general theme that just living another day, and making it through that day, is something worth celebrating. He’s urged his listeners to pray for others’ safety before, particularly Dana’s, and once, his own.
There is one unifying element, between all of Cecil’s many shades: he wears his heart on his sleeves. Constantly. He’s practically incapable of stopping. He says what he feels, and he feels what he says, and he means every word of it. Even when the words he’s saying don’t match how he feels. This shows itself most clearly when Cecil’s afraid. Due to Cecil’s generally calm persona on air, whenever he is afraid, it’s always shown through the tone of his voice, and is all the more affecting for it. And make no mistake, Cecil is quite capable of fear. When he’s forced to read a statement announcing Strexcorp’s arrival in town and takeover of his broadcasting station, he sounds flat out terrified, despite the text declaring the town “perfectly safe.” The state of Desert Bluff’s radio station (that red stuff sure ain’t ketchup) makes his overt fear of the company that owns the other town very, very reasonable. He’s also shown to be deeply terrified of mirrors, to the point of covering them up whenever possible, and his own Station Management, which drove him to curl up in a ball under his desk. And, on one occasion, he completely shattered on air because he thought Carlos died.
So that’s the other thing in his heart that he wears on his sleeves. Love. And the thing of it is, he seems to have so much of it. Not only, although most obviously, for Carlos, but for his job, and his town, and most of the people in that town. He’s the type of person who knows everybody’s name, who goes to PTA meetings despite not having children, who comments on John Peters -- you know, the farmer? -- or how Hiram McDaniels, certified a five headed dragon and mayoral candidate, is very handsome. He claims he fell in love with Carlos instantly, and at first, you sort of think he’s bullshitting about it, but over time it becomes abundantly clear that no, not really. He makes instant, snap realizations at times, and he believes in those realizations so much it can be intense and dizzifying. He felt instantly at home on the radio, too, after all.
Cecil seems to be fueled by an endless well of enthusiasm. Seriously, the guy nearly drove into a pocket of shadow energy simply because Carlos kissed him. He’s optimistic and kindly disposed, and doesn’t seem to possess a lick of common sense. He can be easily distracted at times, like with cute cat videos during a crisis of doubles, or by Carlos calling him or speaking in his general direction, although he’s gotten better at handling the latter. He sometimes gets so blinded by tiny details that he misses the bigger point. He’s a reporter. He can’t not report. Even on strange objects that appear on his desk that he immediately touches, or angels that he technically can’t report on at all. Whether he’s a true believer of what his government espouses or he’s simply very, very good at faking it is a bit murky, but the truth is that he has a tendency to seemingly ignore anything that clashes with what he intends to report on, giving credence to the idea that this guy’s had his memory repeatedly toyed with, an assertion backed up by later canon.
When he’s off the air, he can’t really contain his enthusiasm. At all. He tends to speak with more likes and in a higher pitch, and he’s been known to report on conversations with Carlos where he only says “Oh” in different tones. He also tends to be a little less flowery in person, and much more casual in general. It isn’t as if he’s a different person, just a slightly less prepared one, and a bit more gawky at the edges.
Cecil, in a way, is defined by Night Vale. And Night Vale, in turn, defines him. Cecil is wonderful and terrifying, arbitrary and thoughtful, weird and ordinary, and, above all else, ruled by love.
Background: the wiki knows all
Abilities: Radio Presence - How much of this is something the Radio Station does, something the community does, or something Cecil does on his own is a bit murky, but Cecil seems very, very capable of influencing others’ opinions over the radio. This is best exemplified by how he basically gets Telly the Barber shunned by the entire community, just because he’s mad about Carlos’ terrible haircut. Again, I wouldn’t call it a supernatural power, because it’s very difficult to determine if it is, but he’s got some real charisma on the radio, and in the almost inevitable event he starts up a show here, there’s a very good chance it’d come into play.
Oh, also, he doesn’t require air to breathe due to some Night Vale shenanigans that occurred about twenty episodes ago.
First Person: [Audio]
Well! While I find all these cobblestones very charming -- although the empty buildings motif is a little overplayed, don’t you think? -- I’m afraid I really must get back home to my beloved Night Vale very soon. I’ve-- Well. To be honest? I’ve never missed a broadcast before, not even when I caught that terrible bout of throat spiders, and I-- I really don’t want to start now. I mean, these… oh, is that a Banshee I hear? Or perhaps an untrained soprano trying too hard to hit those high notes? I apologize, listeners, my Pre-Reform Gaelic is really lacking.
But…. I don’t think Station Management-- I don’t think they approve of sudden absences like this. I mean, I can’t exactly check from here, but, well, I remember what happened to Intern Brent when he took a day off for a case of sudden onset emphysema -- so much screaming…. and ugh, the state of his shoes---! So! If-- if someone could please put in a good word for me -- please, no pens or other writing implements -- I would be eternally grateful! Depending on how long eternity lasts, of course.
Third Person:
He had a new watch, the very old fashioned sort. It didn’t tick inside, but of course, ticks were only abstractions of seconds that flew together or spread apart, varying according to the person spending those precious increments of time. The clocks at home didn’t tick very much, either. Or they did, but they ticked too quickly, or too slowly, or off beat, two ticks to a tock or two tocks to a tick in some obscure exchange rate they didn’t cover in fourth grade spacetime continuum studies.
Which was a very neat trick, really! And he certainly didn’t mean to imply the watches were substandard or inefficient or that reading text on those tiny screens was very difficult, not even a little. It’s just, well, he didn’t really see the point in holding the medium sized pocket watch, made of glinting, shiny metal, in order to talk to people. It seemed much easier to talk to them in person, or wait around until they were around to talk to. He even remembered, or dreamed he remembered, some chatter on a grey train ride that ended with his arrival here. A gloomy, dreary sort of conversation, but hey, it was early in the morning, and waking up in some strange place with no way out would be enough to make anyone a bit cranky, he supposed.
Anyway, there were much bigger problems than the non-ticking of his watch. When he looked up, no helicopters flew overhead. No blue ones. No black ones. And, quadruple checking, no yellow ones. Not a single one. Still, he kept glancing up at the sky, just in case some hid behind a plume of clouds, lurking, waiting to strike. The park seemed reassuringly similar, too. Howls and screeching from beyond a gate, the sort that should be firmly locked and never mentioned because to know the depths that lurked beyond them would be inviting calamity and ruin. Also, he thought he saw a pen or two inside the stores. He tried to find a member of the secret police to report it to, but no bushes wavered in the breeze, no vans pulled up next to him while he walked, no footsteps sounded behind his, just a moment out of step.
The thing is, he had another watch. And it ticked, in the way he heard clocks tick elsewhere. One tick, one tock. Not too slow. Not too fast. If opened, it would show gears and whirring bits inside, not grey goo or people on a screen. A time showed on the face. It was different than the time here, the one proclaimed on the clocktower in brilliant, imposing numerals. He felt no urge to change the watch to match the other. The one true timepiece in all of Night Vale should stay that way, even if he wasn’t physically located in Night Vale at the moment.
The sun went down hours ago, the moon seemed as unreal as ever, and Cecil tried to order the stars into patterns. If he closed his eyes, he could almost picture them floating somewhere above an Arby’s.
Name: Box
Age: 24
Personal Journal:
unseenboxE-mail: boxofgrenades@gmail.com
AIM/MSN/etc: bardwithnoname = aim;
CHARACTER
Name: Cecil Gershwin Palmer
Canon: Welcome to Night Vale
Age: Nobody knows. Really, no one. We can assume he’s not immortal. Maybe. He’s probably somewhere in the ballpark of the thirties. His PB is Danny Pudi, specifically as Abed from Community, simply for headcanon’s sake. He doesn’t have an definite canon description.
Timeline: after Yellow Helicopters.
If playing another character from the same canon, how will you deal with this?: N/A
Personality:
Tune into Cecil’s little show, and the first thing you’ll notice is that he’s probably the most unflappable person on earth, not counting other folks born without wings. His smooth, sonorous radio voice makes absolutely everything in his presumable hometown sound as routine and ordinary as possible. Everything from new specials at the library (that shouldn’t be entered, as librarians are vicious and the biography section is all Helen Hunt) or a new way to get readership up for the (imaginary) newspaper gets reported on in the same, matter of fact tone of voice. The sponsor ads are all horror stories, and the day’s events may or may not count, too. He dips his toes into liberal thoughts, like when he denounces the Apache Tracker as a racist jerk, but this is contradicted by the very strange state of Night Vale’s fascist government, which he appears to endorse wholeheartedly. Even this vague yet menacing government, complete with secret police and re-education programs, doesn’t faze him.
That’s probably why Cecil tends to come off as relatively calming. All things considered, anyway. Oh, sure, he revels in the aftermath of Glow Clouds or the latest round of secret police round ups, but on the whole, he acts as a sort of town wide security blanket. This type of behavior is best exemplified by the Street Cleaning Day incident, when he emphasizes how the entire town’s come together now, and how everything’s starting to clear up, even with all the dead people still as dead as they’ll ever be. He, notably, doesn’t so much cover up the horrors of the day, but instead reports on them accurately and focuses on how the very real danger has passed. This marks a notable departure from Desert Bluff’s radio station, which hides the horrors and covers them up with paper thin enforced happiness. Not that Cecil doesn’t enjoy the strangeness of his town -- goodness, no -- but there’s an air of soothing to the tone of his broadcasts, and it’s essential to both the town itself and who he is.
Of course, accuracy can be a bit of a stretch at times. Cecil isn’t exactly the most professional of broadcasters. He routinely sends interns out to their deaths, and seems very blase about them, like those (often horrible) deaths are just part of the job -- which they are, but still. Not only that, but he constantly goes off topic during the show. Sure, he might apologize for his asides beforehand, but he’s still going to veer off to talk about his personal life at any given opportunity. When he goes on his first date with Carlos, he reads through the news as quickly as possible at the front of the show, solely so he can have the rest of the time to talk about it. Everything from his deep, abiding hatred for Steve Carlsberg to eating an enchilada on air is perfectly acceptable to broadcast to the entire town.
Cecil can be extraordinarily petty, and he’s more than capable of abusing his position in the pursuit of his grudges. Just say the words “Telly the Barber’ in his presence and you’ll see. All he did was give Carlos a haircut, and Cecil practically called out a hit on the guy, eventually driving him to madness and the Sand Wastes. He also notices and comments on the tiny faults of others, from unsalted corn muffins to Steve Carlsberg’s unacceptably dry scones and unrotated tires. He’s even comments on Carlos’ faults at times -- he chews too loudly and doesn’t understand basic invisible architecture. He’s prone to passive aggressiveness on occasion, too. He brings up an argument he had with Carlos, and Carlos’ agreeing to spend more time with him and less investigating various scientific things, as if he wasn’t involved at all.
When Cecil isn’t buying the government line or airing his grievances, he often shifts into a melancholic temperament. He routinely ponders the void around them, and their place in that void, and basically just likes saying the word void a lot. Not only that, but he’s pondered his own existence, the meaning of words, the lack of meaning of words, and the possibility that his broadcasts are reaching no one at all. Most of his broadcasts end with philosophical mumbo jumbo, some of it quite insightful, some probably pulled out his ass, but all of it tied under the general theme that just living another day, and making it through that day, is something worth celebrating. He’s urged his listeners to pray for others’ safety before, particularly Dana’s, and once, his own.
There is one unifying element, between all of Cecil’s many shades: he wears his heart on his sleeves. Constantly. He’s practically incapable of stopping. He says what he feels, and he feels what he says, and he means every word of it. Even when the words he’s saying don’t match how he feels. This shows itself most clearly when Cecil’s afraid. Due to Cecil’s generally calm persona on air, whenever he is afraid, it’s always shown through the tone of his voice, and is all the more affecting for it. And make no mistake, Cecil is quite capable of fear. When he’s forced to read a statement announcing Strexcorp’s arrival in town and takeover of his broadcasting station, he sounds flat out terrified, despite the text declaring the town “perfectly safe.” The state of Desert Bluff’s radio station (that red stuff sure ain’t ketchup) makes his overt fear of the company that owns the other town very, very reasonable. He’s also shown to be deeply terrified of mirrors, to the point of covering them up whenever possible, and his own Station Management, which drove him to curl up in a ball under his desk. And, on one occasion, he completely shattered on air because he thought Carlos died.
So that’s the other thing in his heart that he wears on his sleeves. Love. And the thing of it is, he seems to have so much of it. Not only, although most obviously, for Carlos, but for his job, and his town, and most of the people in that town. He’s the type of person who knows everybody’s name, who goes to PTA meetings despite not having children, who comments on John Peters -- you know, the farmer? -- or how Hiram McDaniels, certified a five headed dragon and mayoral candidate, is very handsome. He claims he fell in love with Carlos instantly, and at first, you sort of think he’s bullshitting about it, but over time it becomes abundantly clear that no, not really. He makes instant, snap realizations at times, and he believes in those realizations so much it can be intense and dizzifying. He felt instantly at home on the radio, too, after all.
Cecil seems to be fueled by an endless well of enthusiasm. Seriously, the guy nearly drove into a pocket of shadow energy simply because Carlos kissed him. He’s optimistic and kindly disposed, and doesn’t seem to possess a lick of common sense. He can be easily distracted at times, like with cute cat videos during a crisis of doubles, or by Carlos calling him or speaking in his general direction, although he’s gotten better at handling the latter. He sometimes gets so blinded by tiny details that he misses the bigger point. He’s a reporter. He can’t not report. Even on strange objects that appear on his desk that he immediately touches, or angels that he technically can’t report on at all. Whether he’s a true believer of what his government espouses or he’s simply very, very good at faking it is a bit murky, but the truth is that he has a tendency to seemingly ignore anything that clashes with what he intends to report on, giving credence to the idea that this guy’s had his memory repeatedly toyed with, an assertion backed up by later canon.
When he’s off the air, he can’t really contain his enthusiasm. At all. He tends to speak with more likes and in a higher pitch, and he’s been known to report on conversations with Carlos where he only says “Oh” in different tones. He also tends to be a little less flowery in person, and much more casual in general. It isn’t as if he’s a different person, just a slightly less prepared one, and a bit more gawky at the edges.
Cecil, in a way, is defined by Night Vale. And Night Vale, in turn, defines him. Cecil is wonderful and terrifying, arbitrary and thoughtful, weird and ordinary, and, above all else, ruled by love.
Background: the wiki knows all
Abilities: Radio Presence - How much of this is something the Radio Station does, something the community does, or something Cecil does on his own is a bit murky, but Cecil seems very, very capable of influencing others’ opinions over the radio. This is best exemplified by how he basically gets Telly the Barber shunned by the entire community, just because he’s mad about Carlos’ terrible haircut. Again, I wouldn’t call it a supernatural power, because it’s very difficult to determine if it is, but he’s got some real charisma on the radio, and in the almost inevitable event he starts up a show here, there’s a very good chance it’d come into play.
Oh, also, he doesn’t require air to breathe due to some Night Vale shenanigans that occurred about twenty episodes ago.
First Person: [Audio]
Well! While I find all these cobblestones very charming -- although the empty buildings motif is a little overplayed, don’t you think? -- I’m afraid I really must get back home to my beloved Night Vale very soon. I’ve-- Well. To be honest? I’ve never missed a broadcast before, not even when I caught that terrible bout of throat spiders, and I-- I really don’t want to start now. I mean, these… oh, is that a Banshee I hear? Or perhaps an untrained soprano trying too hard to hit those high notes? I apologize, listeners, my Pre-Reform Gaelic is really lacking.
But…. I don’t think Station Management-- I don’t think they approve of sudden absences like this. I mean, I can’t exactly check from here, but, well, I remember what happened to Intern Brent when he took a day off for a case of sudden onset emphysema -- so much screaming…. and ugh, the state of his shoes---! So! If-- if someone could please put in a good word for me -- please, no pens or other writing implements -- I would be eternally grateful! Depending on how long eternity lasts, of course.
Third Person:
He had a new watch, the very old fashioned sort. It didn’t tick inside, but of course, ticks were only abstractions of seconds that flew together or spread apart, varying according to the person spending those precious increments of time. The clocks at home didn’t tick very much, either. Or they did, but they ticked too quickly, or too slowly, or off beat, two ticks to a tock or two tocks to a tick in some obscure exchange rate they didn’t cover in fourth grade spacetime continuum studies.
Which was a very neat trick, really! And he certainly didn’t mean to imply the watches were substandard or inefficient or that reading text on those tiny screens was very difficult, not even a little. It’s just, well, he didn’t really see the point in holding the medium sized pocket watch, made of glinting, shiny metal, in order to talk to people. It seemed much easier to talk to them in person, or wait around until they were around to talk to. He even remembered, or dreamed he remembered, some chatter on a grey train ride that ended with his arrival here. A gloomy, dreary sort of conversation, but hey, it was early in the morning, and waking up in some strange place with no way out would be enough to make anyone a bit cranky, he supposed.
Anyway, there were much bigger problems than the non-ticking of his watch. When he looked up, no helicopters flew overhead. No blue ones. No black ones. And, quadruple checking, no yellow ones. Not a single one. Still, he kept glancing up at the sky, just in case some hid behind a plume of clouds, lurking, waiting to strike. The park seemed reassuringly similar, too. Howls and screeching from beyond a gate, the sort that should be firmly locked and never mentioned because to know the depths that lurked beyond them would be inviting calamity and ruin. Also, he thought he saw a pen or two inside the stores. He tried to find a member of the secret police to report it to, but no bushes wavered in the breeze, no vans pulled up next to him while he walked, no footsteps sounded behind his, just a moment out of step.
The thing is, he had another watch. And it ticked, in the way he heard clocks tick elsewhere. One tick, one tock. Not too slow. Not too fast. If opened, it would show gears and whirring bits inside, not grey goo or people on a screen. A time showed on the face. It was different than the time here, the one proclaimed on the clocktower in brilliant, imposing numerals. He felt no urge to change the watch to match the other. The one true timepiece in all of Night Vale should stay that way, even if he wasn’t physically located in Night Vale at the moment.
The sun went down hours ago, the moon seemed as unreal as ever, and Cecil tried to order the stars into patterns. If he closed his eyes, he could almost picture them floating somewhere above an Arby’s.