Post by Isaac Pace on May 14, 2011 2:17:20 GMT -5
isaac dalton pace.
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[/center][/b] Teacher.
GENERAL INFORMATION
FULL NAME: Isaac Dalton Pace.
NICKNAME(S): People have tried calling him Izzy. Don’t call him Izzy.
DATE OF BIRTH: August 8th, 1972.
AGE: Thirty-eight.
POSITION: Ancient Runes, History of Magic, Muggle Studies.
LINEAGE: Muggleborn.
WAND: Walnut, thestral hair, 12 ¾ inches. Fairly inflexible, unyielding.
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APPEARANCE
HAIR: Black.
EYES: Richly colored brown with a youthful, spirited spark to them.
HEIGHT: 5’ 8”.
WEIGHT: 155 lbs.
DETAILED: Hygienically speaking, Pace is as meticulous as a cat, and can often take just as long as a cat in getting ready for the day. He's always got a clean shave, unless he is purposely growing out a beard; his nails are always trim, teeth always clean, clothes always neatly pressed. His hair, while not particularly neat is nonetheless fashioned practically. He rarely changes things like that. Aside from that particular aspect, the man is an absolute train wreck to look at.
His clothes might be neat, but they never match. He can hang things up in a wardrobe, sure, but that doesn't mean he's gotten any better at picking them out again. You'd think it's some kind of rule he has, the way he turns up to class half the time. It's not a far cry from Hawaiian-print swimming trunks and a bathrobe. It's not that he's trying to be unconventional, even, it's just that the guy has absolutely no idea what he's wearing or why.
That being said, he doesn't really have a personal style. One day it might be green corduroy trousers and a red t-shirt. The next, it'll be a dress shirt and a pair of board shorts. In that regard he's totally unpredictable.
Physically speaking, it's difficult to say what kind of shape he's in. He's muscled, that's for sure, and the way he's so solidly built it would take no less than a well cast stunning spell to knock him over. That being said, he's also very skinny. Part of that is down to the fact that he's incredibly active (most of the time,) and part of that is down to the fact that he forgets or downright refuses to eat when he's in the middle of something 'more important'.
On the whole, he's a very small looking person. At 5' 8", he's not exactly tall. In fact, a good number of older students are taller than he is. Coupled with the fact that he seems to be composed out of nothing but wiry muscle, it can be easy to underestimate a man like Pace.
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PERSONALITY
[li] His job: He feels like it’s satisfying, it’s steady, and he’s comfortable with it. He really can’t hope to ask for anything more. It's not exactly what you'd call the perfect job for a guy like Pace, mainly because the perfect job for a guy like him would be no job at all. But he likes it because his loyalties lie with Hogwarts, and because it leaves him with enough time during the day to get on with other things that interest him.
[/li][li] Muggle cinema: He grew up with it, because he's the only wizard in his family. He never buys them, just goes to the theater to see them- mainly because he likes to yell and throw popcorn at the screen.
[/li][li] Muggle music: You can’t blame the man. It’s catchy, all right? Favorites include Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, the Beatles, Al Green, Stevie Wonder, and the Grand Funk Railroad.
[/li][li] Theater: He's the nut in box three belting out "Some Enchanted Evening" to the dismay of all the other patrons. He doesn't sing all that well, either.
[/li][li] Crosswords: Just one of those odd little things that make him who he is. He's always had a knack for crosswords, and they're more fun than just sitting around when there's nothing to do.
[/li][li] The Three Broomsticks: Isaac’s favorite place to go for a drink, and the food is great.
[/li][li] Dueling: Isaac is very athletic and naturally inclined to activity, but he's not inclined to being a team player. That's why he loves dueling. It's mental as much as it is physical, and there's no excuses. Win, lose, or draw, it's your skill against your opponent's.
[/li][li] Drooble's Best Blowing Gum: He's sort of addicted to it. He's got an addictive personality, and he figures chewing gum is better than a lot of other things he could find to get into.
[/li][li] People-watching: He's not really a social person, not naturally anyway. Isaac is good at talking to people, because he knows how they work, but very rarely does he get to know anybody on a personal level.He prefers to get to know people by their habits because it means he doesn't have to do the work that comes with an actual relationship.
[/li][li] Reading: He dislikes fiction because he finds it too irrational, but he loves to read non-fiction. Isaac can literally sit for an entire day simply reading. He tries to take in as much information about everything as he possibly can.
[/li][li] Violin: He's played ever since he was little, it's a real passion of his. It's the closest thing he can find to a soulful experience, and it's a mental thing as well.
DISLIKES:
[/li][li] Lethargy: He detests the idea of wasting time, but every so often he'll become totally lethargic and it's all he can do to drag himself to class and teach a lesson. When that happens, he'll just lay on the floor and stare at the ceiling for days on end, only getting up to teach.
[/li][li] Muggle post: It's inefficient and unreliable, two things he really can't stand.
[/li][li] His family: He's very private about his Muggle family. Not because they're Muggles, but because they essentially disowned him when they found out what he was. He tells himself that they are simple, cruel people but he's not so sure of that.
[/li][li] Divination: He thinks it's a load of nonsense. Isaac is a much more logical being- or he likes to think so, anyway.
[/li][li] The Daily Prophet: Pace feels that the paper has always been too easily swayed by things like political allegiance and Ministry standings to be a reliable source of news. He'll only ever use it to read through the classifieds, which he thinks are amusing.
[/li][li] Heights: One of the few truly irrational things about him, he can't stand being up high. Whether on a broom or a balcony, etc., heights make him nervous to the point of distraction.
[/li][li] Inactivity: Except for when he's in one of his moods, he detests not being able to do something- anything at all. In his own mind it's totally plausible that he could one day die of boredom. He is impatient in that sense.
[/li][li] The country: He hates the quiet, open space. It all seems dull and dead to him, and it makes him feel depressed. The fact that he grew up in the country doesn't make him like it any better.
[/li][li] Empty rooms: He's a total pack rat. He stockpiles all kinds of things. Not in excess, but Pace likes a bit of healthy clutter around the place. He's got posters and pictures on the walls, articles, stuff littering shelves, etc.
[/li][li] Ghosts: Even the ghosts at Hogwarts. They bother him, fundamentally speaking.
[/li][li] Arrogance: If you've done something, tell him all about it. He'll be happy for you- really. But Isaac can't stand it when people think they're on some kind of other plane because they're rich, or they're this, they're that.
STRENGTHS: Determined, friendly, meticulous, logical, humorous (in his own, slightly bizarre way.)
WEAKNESSES: Addictive personality, handles stress poorly, diffident, easily bored, prone to nervous activity, internalizes negative emotion.
ERISED: Isaac sees himself sitting happily with his family in his childhood home.
BOGGART: He sees himself falling indefinitely from some high place.
DEMENTOR: The fight he had with his oldest brother, back when Isaac was 11 and his brother was 14.
DETAILED: Isaac is a difficult man to fathom. He's full of contradictions and half-truths, and there are so many to keep track of that even he has forgotten exactly who he is and who he isn't.
Isaac loves to learn, but he thinks academics is a waste of your time. He prizes logic above else, and yet he's tormented by emotion and regret, the most illogical thing which comes to mind. He'll work until he physically can't, at which point he'll collapse into inactivity for days. Isaac is well adept at socializing but as a general rule he's suspicious of people and their motives.
The truth of it is, Pace is as average as they come. Despite his decidedly unambitious nature, Isaac still wants to feel as though he's done something with his time. Honestly, he's not even looking to be remembered. It's the peace of mind he's after, the surety that he can look himself in the mirror and say, 'yes, I did something today,' which is why he's always so desperate to fill up his time with things like crosswords and puzzles, going to the theater or the pub, etc. True, those things are about as inconsequential as a pixie's big toe, but they're his way of coping, dealing with what he sees as the boredom of life.
Isaac is also the sort of man who knows many people without ever being known himself. He is very private about his own self in that way. But he's also very cunning in the way he goes about it. People know him as the guy who dresses oddly, they know him as the man who shouts at the actors on a cinema screen and the man who sings along to show tunes tunes you wouldn't expect him to know. People know him as the guy who was born chewing a piece of Drooble's gum. People don't know him as a man abandoned by his family, as the failed auror, the man who was once a twin, or the man who traveled the world trying to reconcile with his own past.
Most people miss how truly mild mannered he is, and it's partially due to the fact that he does a marvelous job trying to hide that himself.
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HISTORY
MOTHER: Carolyn R. Pace (nee Caddogann,) 65 years old, Muggle.
FATHER: Jack D. Pace, 68 years old, Muggle.
SIBLINGS: Thomas M. Pace, 41 years old, Muggle. Charles B. Pace, 40 years old, Muggle. Jacob A. Pace (twin,) deceased at 6 years old, magical ability remains unknown. William B. Pace, 36 years old, Muggle. Theo D. Pace, 34 years old, Muggle.
DETAILED: (From here on out, things will be written a wee bit stylized, I wanted to use it as a kind of back up to the role play sample, so you can get a better feel for the tone of the character and the way I write. Just because I'm pretty new at this and want to make sure the tone comes through okay. Thanks!)
HOW ISAAC GREW UP IN HOLLINGTON: Some people? They're born to be astronauts or prima ballerinas. Some people are born to be astrophysicists or, you know... Primo's delivery guys. And sometimes a guy is born and you can tell he's destined to be that kid who trips over his own shoelaces all the way up through college. That one awkward kid you hate being around because he makes you feel like an incompetent jerk.
None of those kids were Isaac. That's because Isaac was born to be a farmer. He grew up in one of those small-time villages where nobody had a sense of humor and where the local's idea of a good time was a pig roast to celebrate the fact that they'd managed to drag through another meaningless year.
I'm not going to tell you about dad's drinking problem, or mom's lack of fidelity to her husband. All those little things that go on in the country because nobody is around to see. I don't need to tell you that Isaac's twin Jacob fell off a high rock ledge and died at the tender age of six. We don't really need to get into the way that tore the family apart, and it's probably not important that I mention dad leaving, Isaac becoming the twin who didn't die, rather than the kid who stuck around. Or even that his brothers kept their distance after that because nobody really wants to be associated with that sort of thing, do they? None of that's very important.
Sheep and roasted pigs. Those were about the only important things in need of recalling at Hollington.
Of course, it wasn't all bad. There was a library at the local schoolhouse, decently equipped, all things considered. It was one of those places that was only there so it didn't have to be used. Like a GE in the middle of Amish country. Isaac spent a lot of his time there, keeping to his own. Nothing changed. Things never really do, in a place like that.
That was how Isaac grew up in Hollington.
HOW ISAAC GOT TO HOGWARTS: First, the letter was a joke. Then, a prank. Then, it was one of those crackpot schemes you get in the mail every so often, the ones that get sent out to millions of people, the ones that keep the postal system well above water. Those ones. Then, Isaac was in on it, and what did he mean by sending these letters? Who came up with this idea of some ludicrous magical school, and what was he trying to imply? He didn't want to leave Hollington, surely.
The letters kept coming for Isaac. Only for Isaac. Whoever was sending them seemed to think that if they got enough of them, they'd finally start taking them seriously. Personally, he couldn't have cared less. He'd just have kept throwing them out in the rubbish. Magic school? Please. What did they take him for, an eleven year old? It made no sense, and even then, sense was everything to a boy like Isaac. Things needed to make sense. Reasonable, right?
The problem was, the rest of the kids his age weren't so inclined to leave it alone. They 'd all heard it from their mothers, who had heard it from Isaac's mother, and they'd decided something so priceless really shouldn't be wasted. They started to bother Isaac about it. They started to bother his brothers over it.
Now, I won't tell you about the fight on the rock ledge between Thomas and Isaac. I won't bore you with those details, and you probably don't need to know it was the same rock ledge Jacob had fallen over five years previously. But on the off chance you're interested, that's what's known as Dickensian. It's probably not all that interesting, what happened next, when Isaac tripped over the edge and went bouncing on the jagged rocks running to the bottom of the hill.
What's interesting is that when he got up to brush himself off, he didn't have a single mark on him. And it might be relevant to note that Thomas still sees a therapist every other Tuesday.
That was how Isaac got to Hogwarts.
HOW ISAAC MANAGED TO SCRAPE BY: Isaac was sorted into Hufflepuff, which isn’t much of a surprise, when you consider the sort of person he was. That is to say, not intrinsically motivated to excel in anything at all. Not that Hufflepuffs never succeed mind you, not at all. And in fact, Isaac himself would go on to excel in a number of things. It’s just that he’d never actually been much of a one for recognition or high-ambition. Nevertheless, he put his time at Hogwarts to good use, learning about all the things which interested him.
Which was precisely the problem. He seemed to be of the impression that the little things, things like homework and classes, were detrimental to creative thought and the logical processes. He tended not to worry too much about things like that. Instead, he studied alone, only spending time on those things that really interested him.
Fortunately for him, the amount of reading he did allowed him to scrape by in classes and on exams, simply from sheer collected knowledge.
That was how Isaac managed to scrape by.
HOW ISAAC GOT TO LEE'S: In the process of all his general learning and slacking off, Isaac managed to make one close friend. Just one. It had been totally random. The number of students in their classes had worked out at an odd number so that he and Lee Franklin (a kid from Gryffindor in the same year,) became partners in a potions class. Just one of those crazy things that happens when you least expect it.
But however it happened, it was a good thing it did. A little before the end of term, early May, Isaac received a letter. In fact it was the first letter he'd gotten all year. Generally speaking, it told Isaac that his mother and the rest of his siblings had picked up and moved while he was away, after so many incidents at Hollington. There was no return address. Isaac would go home with Lee for the summer, just as he would every summer after that, up until graduation.
That was how Isaac got to Lee's.
HOW ISAAC NEARLY BECAME AN AUROR:
Isaac managed to score an E.E. on no less than five of his N.E.W.T.S. Because his scores made him eligible, he put himself up for Auror training just after graduation.
He failed out almost immediately. It wasn't his fault, really. And I mean who could have blamed the kid? People fail out of the program all the time. The problem was that the first set of tests were designed to see how subjects reacted under varying degrees of stress and pressure. Isaac didn't react well. But you don't need to hear about that.
That was how Isaac nearly became an auror.
HOW ISAAC RAN AWAY:
For the next ten years, Isaac spent his time travelling the world trying to reconcile with the fact that up until that point, his life had been a complete and total waste of time. Failure. Don't get me wrong, he wasn't trying to 'find himself' or anything, none of that cosmic crap. He was looking for something to interest him. Something that would be meaningful to him.
I won't tell you about all the crazy adventures he had on the way. I won't tell you about the three Veela in a bar in Austria, or the crack-medicine man who nearly transfigured Isaac into a rubber duck. I won't bore you with an account of the time Isaac was stuck hanging out the ledge of a ten-story building for nearly half an hour in America, or the circumstances under which he met the tallest giant in history somewhere in Peru. None of that is very important.
All the same, that's how Isaac ran away.
HOW ISAAC CAME BACK AGAIN:
When he came back ten years later, it was at the behest of Hogwarts, his old school. A position had opened, and they wondered if he might like to teach there.
The truth was, Isaac had done his share of exploring, and he was tired of having to work odd jobs to get from place to place. He accepted, said goodbye to a very nice group of dragon trainers he'd been staying with in Bulgaria, and headed straight back for the school, where he has taught ever since.
That was how Isaac came back again.
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ABOUT YOU
AGE: Is an issue of mind over matter, according to Mark Twain.
GENDER: Male.
TIMEZONE: Eastern (GMT-5.)
CONTACT INFO: AIM.
HOW DID YOU FIND US: Advert on a different forum.
EXPERIENCE: A month or so.
CODEWORD: admin is hot
QUESTIONS: Would it be possible for Isaac to be the chair or co-chair of the Dueling club, considering the interest and certain level of proficiency he's got in the area?
RP SAMPLE: “Good morning! The time is six o’ clock in the morning, CPT; temperature estimated to the nearest hundredth of a degree at 70.00 degrees F; the weather is sunny, clear, with a slight breeze coming in from the West, humidity at twenty percent. “
Of course it was. The entire planet was climate controlled. It had been clear and 70 for the past two months.
“Good morning! The time is six-“
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Six o’ clock in the morning. John didn’t need the alarm to wake him. He’d been up all night, too anxious to sleep. For the past hour he’d lain in bed (which was perfectly made,) fully dressed and with a tie to match.
He sighed and rolled out of bed. “Off.”
“-humidity at twent-“
“Off.”
“Good morning!-“
“Shut the hell up!”
The loud speaker let out a soft, tired, purring sound as it powered down and reset itself for the next time it'd be needed.
“Television. On.”
The screen on the wall flickered to life, and the only broadcasting system that had been made available to the general public- the UIMP’s newscast- began to flow smoothly from the speakers mounted on the glass shelving. “Plans for the Home Medical Office to meet with retired army surgeon-“
Ah, great. His picture was up on the news again, and not a very nice one either. It practically looked like a mug shot, and it had been one of the first pictures of him taken of him after the sickness. Figured they would use that damn picture. For a moment, he imagined Mary scolding him gently for talking like that and then kissing him and pushing him out the screen door on his way to work.
Headlines were running at the top and the bottom of the screen, and some shaky footage was shown of John himself shaking hands with the director at the HMO.
Cut! To a close-up again, and a bit of the director’s fuzzy gray hair in the right of the frame, there, and they replayed the same bite they’d been playing for the past week, the two of them walking next to one another, John’s limp noticeable, even with the rocking of the camera .
“Doctor!” The reporter coughed, huffing and puffing, badly out of shape for his chosen occupation. “Excuse me, Doctor Watson… do you care to make any comment or statement at this time?”
He smiled into the camera and nodded, still walking with the director along side, “Well. Ah, we’re all very excited about this… we think it’s a great opportunity for everyone, and uh… yeah. We’re all just really thankful and really excited to see this finally happening.”
The news anchor and her funeral-proof smile appeared again, and she waited a moment, before drawing a breath, and then clearly reading off of the tele-prompter, she began: “Doctor Jonathan Watson makes his first visit today to the Home Medical Office, with the official title of Chief Surgeon. Once there, he will remain in a quarantine-like state with the rest of his hand-picked team of surgeons and scientists for a total of two years, during which time they hope to complete their operations for the firm.”
John sighed again and looked around him for his shoes.
Then, cane in hand, he chewed his lip for a moment, muttered, “Television. Off,” then louder, “Television! Off!” He grabbed his taxi fare and left an empty house behind him.
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