Unicorn Staccato di Maestro [READY]

[Inkwell]

Roleplay Type: World of Equestria

Name: Staccato di Maestro

Gender: Male

Age: Young stallion

Species: Unicorn

Eye colour: Teal

Coat: Wood Brown. Staccato is almost always seen wearing a coat, usually a tweed jacket coloured in earth tones with an ascot.

Mane/Tail: Dark gray with thin white stripes. Staccato keeps his mane just short of shoulder length and carefully brushes his mane and tail to be wavy, light, and full of body.

Physique: Staccato has a slight, slender physique exemplifying a life of comfort and decadence, as well as an abundance of pretty boy good looks.

Residence: Trottingham

Occupation: Composer and musician

Cutie Mark: A glowing golden treble clef with a yellow sunburst pattern behind it.

Cutie Mark Story: Staccato received it as a result of performing his first violin recital when he was young. Prior to that, he had always loved playing and writing music, but he’d never actually shown the fruits of his labor to anypony outside his immediate family. He approached the event with trepidation, the typical stage fright settling in over him. But once he started playing, he felt himself flowing along with the music and drank up the attention of the crowd. By the time he was done, he knew he was a born performer, and stage fright never troubled him again. He interprets his cutie mark to represent his musical talent shining across Equestria.

History: Staccato was born in Trottingham to the illustrious Maestro family, one of the most prominent old money families in the city. The Maestros claim descent from a long line of talented artists in many fields, stretching back to the original Maestro, a prodigal composer whose tunes are well-remembered to this day.

His parents and grandparents were overjoyed to have him, taking him through the normal family path of exposing him to all the art they could until they discovered that young Staccato gravitated towards music in general and playing the violin specifically. For much of his youth, Staccato rested safely in the realm of the family’s philosophy of superiority and pretension.

Then, when he started growing up and becoming a stallion, he started noticing that his family’s view of the world wasn’t exactly in line with reality. Though members of the Maestro family had taken popular culture and the critical world by storm in the past, the living members of the family were content to rest on their laurels, becoming mere socialites as opposed to artists. As such, the family name was much less relevant than they thought it was.

On top of that, Staccato was starting to be influenced by populist opinion from outside the family, as well as the newer, more radical forms of art and music that the Maestro family had ignored, to their detriment. Staccato started studying modern commercial and underground music as well as the classical music he was already versed in, and started getting ideas. However, his family didn’t approve of those new decisions, and so he kept working on them in secret, hoping to create a project that would only reach their ears after it got popular with the rest of the country.

He still lives one of the most comfortable lives a pony can live, hobnobbing with the upper crust of Equestria, but he’s also networking with a purpose, finding new and upcoming artists he can learn from, bounce ideas off of, and collaborate with. Two of these artists are Inkwell and Rose Madder, cousins of his who lived outside Ponyville with no connection to the family. Their mother, Meadowsweet, was cut off from the family fortune because her special talent ended up being in herbalism, not any form of artistic media, and because she married a roofer instead of a high society stallion. As it turned out though, Inkwell and Rose Madder turned out to be a talented illustrator and writer, respectively, and Staccato has taken it upon himself to write letters and get acquainted with them.

Character Summary: First and foremost, Staccato is a pony of class. He keeps himself immaculately groomed and wears clothes constantly, getting immensely shy whenever another pony sees him nude. Though his clothes aren’t particularly flashy, they are respectable and they don’t look cheap, either. He carries himself with a gentlecoltly air and speaks with utmost formality and politeness.

His words are also lofty, fancy, and occasionally complex. Staccato rarely bothers to use one word when he feels he can get away with using five, and he often slips into talking like a character from an old-fashioned romantic play. “Romantic” would also be a good word to describe his personality at the height of his most passionate moments, though this passion relates to conversations in music and not to actual, literal romance.

And yet, despite the way he speaks, he seldom comes across as a snob or an elitist. He’ll patiently converse with just about anyone, no matter how common or without class they seem to him. Ponies who talk to him will find him pleasant and encouraging, with an enthusiastic lust for life, though he’ll also seem effete and foppish, with an above-average concern for staying clean. The only time he really ever seems hostile is when a pony persists in downplaying or otherwise insisting that music is unimportant and trivial, at which point he’ll load up a grandiose speech to disprove the boorish pony he’s talking to.

As far as he could remember, Staccato’s life revolved around music. He spent most of his life studying music, became proficient (though not exactly excellent) at every instrument his wealthy family could provide him with, and developed a good singing voice. Thanks to this habit of universal proficiency, he’s grown entitled to expect himself to succeed at any musical task he puts himself up to, and thus gets into dark moods whenever he has to struggle for musical success, or when he come to the rare genre that completely eludes him. In addition, the changes he went to with his personality during his teenage years, including his distinct attitude to music and being introduced to the more forbidden parts of the medium, have left him with a distinct fear that he hasn’t entirely found his own identity.

Someday he hopes to bring glory and fame to the Maestro family name, as well as become the talk of the musical world, a full-blown superstar whose talent and works will be talked about, referenced, and imitated for decades. He seldom loses confidence in his ability to do so, exemplifying the Maestro family pride that characterizes most members of the family, even rebels like him and Rose Madder. But sometimes, particularly when he hits a stumbling block, he gets into a funk, worrying that his genius will never be recognized by the public.

So strong is love for music and art that he rarely ever indulges in any hobbies beyond them. Much of his time is spent experimenting with melody and writing or polishing songs, this being what he considers “work time.” His free time is spent simply listening to music as a regular consumer, reading, attending musicals and opera, or even watching the occasional movie. However, he will change these habits when he makes an effort to bond with a friend, going along with whatever activity said friend enjoys while asking countless questions about how it works and why they enjoy it so much.

[Corsair]

Hmm, where have I seen this character before? He seems so familiar... (FYI: Inkwell used a version of this character in a Fallout: Equestria RP)

[RarityDash]

Very nice app. Everything checks out... so: