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Post by teddy♥bear on Mar 16, 2012 15:02:56 GMT -5
Pony's name: Teddy Bear Pony's age: 23 Type of pony or animal: unicooorn Pony's cutie mark and special talent: His cutie mark is a teddy bear and his special talent is being extra snuggly ;]. Also he's pretty beast at magic. Employment: he teaches magic skillz to young unicorns. Current city: ponyville!
Appearance: Teddy looks like a teddy bear. He's soft and brown and floppy, from his mane to his tail, and is always huggable looking. He keeps both his mane and tail short so as not to get in his way, especially when studying. Being detail-oriented and punctual, Teddy can always be found in his golden watch. He's pretty average sized for a stallion--certainly not as big and buff as other stallions, but none too shabby in his physique either. He's a fast runner and has been known to run the distance between Canterlot and Ponyville like it ain't no thang.
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Personality Teddy's life happens one existential crisis after another. Because he was orphaned as a foal, he has no idea what his parents were like and so he has no idea where his personality came from or what it's supposed to be. The ponies who raised him always told him stories about his parents, but as the dead are often apotheosized in their lives' retelling, Teddy learned to take these stories with a grain of salt. Of course, he looked up to them as any young colt would, but the stories became more of a game to sift out their true personalities from the ones they acquired in the retelling. When they heroically saved the princess from non-delivered letters--what did that really say? Were they punctual? Communicative? Heroic wasn't a legitimate personality trait--it was a label stuck on ponies for the things they did that other ponies witnessed, be they actually impressive or not.
Thus, Teddy grew up thinking he was a miasma of different traits that he had yet to discover. In reality, he's not quite so complex. If anything, anypony asked about Teddy would just say that he's a really, really nice guy. Growing up as an orphan, he was eternally grateful to everypony who raised him and this gratefulness transferred onto every other pony. He will never go without saying 'please' and 'thank you' where it's called for, nor would he ever pass by a pony in need. Because he is so perpetually confused and involved in identity crises, he has become sort of meek and unassuming. Not that he cowers in the face of other ponies and socialization, just that he is unlikely to really offer any sort of resistance to anything. He's a good pony to have if you just need somepony to tag along and cheer you on and it is very easy to convince him to do things he might otherwise not want to do at all, like dress in a ridiculous costume or lurk somewhere awkward to find out something he didn't particularly care about knowing.
When it doesn't involve other ponies' lives, however, Teddy knows a lot. Growing up right next to the palace gave him access to all of the palace's libraries and resources and he devoured them like a very hungry caterpillar. He always loved to learn new things and he was lucky, because his grandparents had been around for a long time and knew things that not many other ponies knew. Teddy has always been a very good listener and he retains almost everything he hears and reads. He can recall obscure facts at will, whether they be academic or about his friends, which makes him a good ear for problems. When he was and older colt, fillies liked to tell him their problems because he always remembered them and he always had sage advice to give. Still, he is adept at giving advice, but any pretty mares that he has not known his entire life make him nervous. He is not good at being smooth unless he somehow manages to distance himself from his brain and can usually be found around attractive ponies stumbling over his words and saying odd things.
Since Teddy never had parents, he gained, throughout his life, a huge surrogate family. As such, family has become one of the most important things in his life. He can't stand to see ponies fighting with their siblings or parents, unless it's not serious, and he is almost always the pony to give in in his own fights just to make sure that no pony gets lastingly hurt. He's not very good at arguing in general, unless it's academic and he can pull from knowledge like a textbook. He almost always backs down, even when he's right, and doesn't realize that he was right and should not have backed down until it's too late. He is kind of like a doll, especially if a mare asks him to do something, in which case he will do it without a second thought. He often wishes that he was as cool and suave around the ladeez as his friends, but he would never have the courage to not be a doormat and so, he rolls through life as Teddy the Squishable and draggable.
Background Cotton and Polly Fill were instructors at the School for Gifted Unicorns. As such, they were personal friends of the princess and often sent off to learn new things in faraway lands. It was on one such expedition that Teddy was conceived and on another which he was orphaned. When Polly was pregnant, she and Cotton stayed in Canterlot, teaching the unicorns full time, but as soon as Teddy was born, they were sent off. For once, they didn't want to leave quiet little Canterlot, since that was where their foal was, but it was necessary that they go on this trip and so they vowed that, once they came back, they would no longer travel until their son could travel with them.
Unfortunately, this was not to be. Polly and Cotton left Teddy with his grandparents and sailed off for the Fillypines, but their return ship never made it back home. There was a storm at sea and the ship crashed into a sandbank. Some passengers managed to stay alive long enough to be rescued, but most drowned. Once the news came back in Canterlot, everypony who had known Cotton and Polly mourned, but none more so than their parents, who not only grieved for lost children, but for Teddy's lost parents. It was decided that he would live with Polly's parents, because they were a bit younger and lived on the castle grounds, having tended the castle garden for half a century.
Even though he had a legal guardian, Teddy grew up with more parents than any pony really needs. There were the grandparents he lived with, the grandparents he didn't live with, and then anyone who lived and worked near the castle who took pity on him and decided he needed another authority figure to make up for the ones he'd lost. Teddy was the orphan that was never starved for attention--he could look anywhere and there would be some pony who wanted to read to him, share with him, feed him. This, of course, made him most adept at socializing with adult ponies. He was a quiet little colt and tended to get picked on by the others in his class, and so learned to just stay flexible and out of the way.
Eventually, his easygoing nature and the fact that he simply grew into his skin enough that bullies no longer scared him stopped him from being picked on for the most part and Teddy was able to figure out how to make friends his own age. There were the ponies that he had always known, from the castle, and those became his first friends, but eventually, the other colts realized that he was a great addition to any game, that he always played fair, and that he was never a sore loser. It is possible to say that Teddy was actually popular as a young colt--at least among the popular boys and as a figure in class that students looked up to on some level. If he'd been a human, he'd have been on some sort of class council. Maybe not as president, but certainly as something.
As he got older, Teddy's friends started to get their cutie marks. When it first started happening, he agreed with his grandparents that it was just Getting to be That Time and that his surely must be on the way. By the time everypony else in his class had their cutie marks and his flank was still unsettlingly, unchangingly blank, he stopped being able to listen to grandparents and their soothing assurances. In fact, Teddy just got glum. He was able to escape most ridicule because he was so well-liked, even though plenty of the other late bloomers in his class had not escaped, but this still did not comfort him. He knew, as much as he knew all of the facts from his history books, that the reason he had no cutie mark was because he never knew who his parents were and so he couldn't possibly know who he was.
Meanwhile, in all of his emotional turmoil, Teddy was getting good at magic. So good that his grandparents enrolled him in Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. For his entrance exam, he did not have to hatch a dragon, but rather a manticore. It took him awhile, but he finally did it and the sense of pride and accomplishment he felt was enormous--seeing all of his grandparents in the audience, cheering him on, his grandmother crying, was inspiring. Surely, he would get his cutie mark right then and there? That, however, was wrong, and Teddy left his entrance exam both happy and sad--and with a tiny kitten that could someday grow up to eat him alive. This didn't concern him, however, because Aristotle was adorable and a lovely companion, especially because his little kitten had no need to worry about cutie marks or judge him for not having his.
After his exam, however, he didn't have to wait too long for The Big Day to come. He started his studies almost instantly, which gave him access to even more books of spells. He had just discovered one that was frivolous and showy, but impressive and put on a big, flashy spectacle. He was walking on the outskirts of the palace when he stumbled across a group of tiny, scared earth pony fillies. None of them were old enough to have cutie marks--they were barely old enough to wander around on their own. Teddy immediately went over to comfort them, but it was no use. They were too distressed. In a desperate, last attempt to make them stop crying, Teddy transfigured a few blades of grass into a large bouquet of daises. The fillies quieted, surprised and then delighted by the display.
Pleased that he had started to get through to them, Teddy did a bit more--small things, so that he could keep going, but impressive things to such young fillies who didn't have much exposure to magic. He started to get tired, but they cried for more, and then it clicked--Teddy knew what he should do. Summoning the knowledge he'd gained that very morning, Teddy focused his energy on the sky. Half a minute later, there was a small, personal fireworks display for he and the fillies. Even Teddy watched in awe at his own display and when it had finished, he was so glad that the fillies were okay, he gave each of them a hug and sent them on their way. Then, suddenly, as if it just happened to remember that it was due, there was a flash of light on his flank as his cutie mark appeared.
Magic, then! Magic was to be his talent. For surely, that display had been what had set off his flank so arbitrarily. It didn't matter that hatching a manticore had been both more impressive and more useful--this was when his flank decided it was ready and so he could not complain. He turned his head, expecting something super cool, like smoke or mirrors or something else that was magicky in some way. Instead, what he saw was entirely unrelated--a teddy bear, just like his name. How could this be? No pony in class had a cutie mark as stupid as his. It was like his butt was proclaiming that he had no talent other than being fluffy--what a rip off.
It turned out, however, that Teddy was exactly what Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns needed. He couldn't remember there ever being a nervous breakdown when he'd gone to regular school, but at the Princess' school, they were a regular occurrence. Teddy became That Pony that anypony who had a problem could cry on or talk to. Even when Teddy got stressed, he was calm, because he didn't really know how to be anything other than calm--and when it came to studies and reading, he didn't see a point in stressing. The point of reading and studying was to learn, not to freak out, and that was how Teddy managed to get through school and graduate at the top of his class.
When he graduated, however, he was at a loss for what to do with his life. He didn't really have any skills, other than being snuggly, and he really didn't want to take up gardening like his grandparents, since he wasn't strictly good at it. He couldn't adventure, like his parents, because he tended to get seasick, and anyway, he didn't know that he had the right temperament, being that he had never known what they were like. So, with nothing to do and nowhere to go, he packed up and moved to Ponyville. This decision was much more spur of the moment than decisions that Teddy was used to making, but the spontaneity made him feel connected to his late parents and he was happy to have that, at least.
Upon arriving in Ponyville, however, it turned out that he had even less to do. The ponies there did most things by hoof, sans magic, except for specific activities and those were activities that Teddy wouldn't have been able to do, magic or not--things like sewing or cooking. The best he could do was take notes with his horn and let other ponies look at how adorable his manticore kitten was. In the end, however, his academic skills paid off. It turned out that the unicorns of Ponyville who were not necessarily gifted in magic needed some help focusing their skills and Teddy, as the patient, gifted, and snuggly magic school graduate, was the perfect candidate to teach them. He now teaches magic skills to young unicorns by Cheerilee's school some afternoons and weekends.
Anything else you'd like to add: his bffl is whiplash & his manticore kitten is named Aristotle
Your name: grrrrreta Your age: legal bitchezzz. Roleplaying experience: nevar. How you found us: i did not. Other characters: uhmmm lots. blizzard, rarity, dash, rose, eris. >>
Roleplaying sample:
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Post by teddy♥bear on Mar 18, 2012 13:17:56 GMT -5
DONE. WHAT.
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