Tongue Twister [Ready]

[NiktoBarada]

Character Application:
Roleplay Type: World of Equestria
Name: Tongue Twister
Sex: Female    
Age: Mare    
Species:  Pegasus
Eye colour: pale blue, wears glasses
Coat:  dark storm cloud grey, with white socks (bottom third of legs are white)
Mane/Tail:  cyan, with white tips.  Kept short but carefully styled.
Physique: rather athletic, despite being an academic ('sound mind in a sound body', or 'Mens sana in corpore sano')
Residence:  Manehatten
Occupation:  Translator of artifacts at the Manehatten Museum of Natural History, roving equinologist (one who studies pony cultures).
Cutie Mark:  Scroll, with two arrows forming a circle, letter/symbol at each gap between arrows.  Earned when she managed to calm down some customers at her dad's shop (one stallion's grasp of Prench was nowhere near as good as he thought it was, while the mare he was talking AT refused to deal with him until he spoke properly.  He, of course, 'knew' he was speaking correctly, and just made things worse).

Unique Traits:  cloud sculpting for a hobby, building scale models of ancient buildings/ruins for work at the museum.  Almost always has her saddlebags with her at all times.  Left side has items she uses (like her mother's 'lucky' deck of cards, and a fair deck of cards), the other side is for Ace and Deuces.

Has two pet domestic rats (Ace and Deuces) - Ace is almost a chocolate bareback (white on belly, legs, sides; chocolate brown head, neck, and shoulders.  Ring of color on wrists disqualifies him from class), Deuces is a cocoa Down Under (cocoa colored on top, belly white, with streaks of cocoa).  Know a few tricks : 'hands up !', 'Bang ! (play dead, twitchy back leg is them hamming it up), 'Trade Ya !' (shows them snack, then points to a shiny object), 'Home' (taps left front hoof twice - they return).  Rats do much better when have at least one other cagemate; these two are brothers.

Tongue Twister does NOT care for cats one little bit !

History:  family was from Las Pegasus, but they moved to Manehatten when she was young.  Shady Dealer - her mother - worked as a dealer in the Las Pegasus casinos who sometimes supplemented her income with some Three Card Monty with the rubes, er, tourists; her dad was a businessman that spent a lot of time there.  Moved to Manehatten so less traveling, steadier income when Shady got pregnant - felt her foal deserved a better life.

T-Twister lives and works in Manehatten (where most of the museums are), with ocassional trips to the Crystal Empire (it was away for a thousand years, so is good for historical research), Fet Loch (where a new language may be emerging), or anywhere an extinct language may be found.  Spent a few years trekking through Tenochtitlan jungles to catalogue the various dialects still in use. More than willing to do field work (enjoys it greatly in fact - will listen to anyone use a language she doesn't know to record the nature and essence of it.  Plus most ponies use gestures and body language, which have no written records).

Is NOT into tomb raiding like the rest of those 'adrenaline addicted adventurers' - she'd rather talk to the natives to better understanding of the local languages and culture and ASK them politely if she can try to read the glyphs inside than try to break in.

Parents work at import/export shop (dad works import/export, mom is a shipping agent - arranges methods of transport), so was exposed to many different languages and things (learned early that one item can be referred to by many different words - almost as if those foreigners had a different word for everything !)  Managed to figure out a foreign language by listening to it and noticing the regularities and patterns and rhythms of it, which is how she earned her mark.   Learned new languages just for the fun of it all through high school.

Visiting a museum as a senior in high school, noted all the artifacts with unknown symbols on them - they were in languages no pony spoke anymore (and few could read).  Such an idea intrigued her to no end - she felt a burning desire to KNOW what ponies (or whatever) from so long ago found important enough to commemorate by carving messages into stone.

She spent years in college, taking every language class she could as a linguistics major, and eventually learned enough to read those stones that had fascinated her so long ago.
(her hero is Jean-Francois Champonyion, who deciphered ancient Saddle Arabian hieroglyphics from the Vale of the Pharaohs over a century ago).

 

Currently works as a translator (for either the museum, or her parent's company), or as a technical writer (translating complicated jargon and techno-babble into Equestrian so others can use inventions, and students can actually UNDERSTAND newer concepts takes up most of her time) 'You think a seventeen page instruction manual is hard to follow ?  It was fifty three pages of obscure, dense script and scattered notes when I started working on it !'

Character Personality: Extremely outgoing and adventurous; from studying long gone civilizations, she feels that EVERYTHING is temporary, so tends to enjoy life as much as she can, while she has it (a lesson she learned from her pet rats over the years - even with the best care, they only live two or three years at most.  So she gives them the most joy she can in the time they've got).  Knows a little about everything, and is (for good or for ill) not shy about sharing what she knows.

Character Summary:  A roving linguistic equinologist, hoping to find either the next Big Discovery (or at least a new exhibit for the museum).  More interested in cultures and languages than treasures.

[RainbowFoxxy]

Howdy! How's this app coming along? Would you like some more time to finish it up?  

[NiktoBarada]

Application finished - finally !  Had quite a few projects dropped on me at work.

[RainbowFoxxy]