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[pointerpixl]

Player Information

Name: Qu-ko
Personal Journal: prisma
Age: 21
Contact Info: AIM (HighinQusitor), Plurk (quko), email (kaleidobeam [at] gmail.com)
Other Characters Played: N/A

Character Information

Character Name: Tippi (formerly Lady Timpani)
Character Series: Super Paper Mario
Character Age: Who even knows? A two-dimensional butterfly doesn't really make for a good judge of age. Going by her dialogue... anywhere from late teens to mid twenties, I suppose.
Character Gender: Female
Original Canon
Canon Point: Between chapters 7-4 and 8-1
Background Link: SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY, Paper Mario style

Personality: For a character who is unable to physically express most emotions in the game, Tippi conveys a pretty clear personality nonetheless. In the beginning stages of the game, her interactions with Mario and others are, although perfectly polite, distant and a little impersonal. She doesn't seem to be emotionally invested in anyone despite trusting Merlon enough to follow his recommendation to serve as Mario's guide. Her base of knowledge is vast, and she tries to help out wherever she can, but her manner of speaking is very subdued for a while to the point where she trails off at the end of almost every sentence. Eventually, she realizes the bond that starts forming between her and the heroes of the Light Prognosticus when they go to retrieve her from a really gross butterfly-collecting nerd, and her true nature starts to shine through more often -- the very first time she expresses her gratitude to them, it's even strong enough to unlock the Pure Heart of Francis' castle, supposedly able to be revealed with a very strong pulse of love and trust.

Although completely omnibenevolent and as sincere as can be when it comes to helping others, Tippi isn't infallible, and can occasionally be clumsy and make silly slip-ups -- she fumbles for a moment when the heroes first drop into outer space and can't breathe, and eventually winds up pulling them back in her panic (despite not being certain of how she did it). On the other hand, she proves in multiple instances throughout the game that her polite demeanor can give way to a much sharper tongue when she gets impatient with someone, complete with indignant, pretentious-sounding big words that just barely slide above a blatant insult. Along with a mild temper here and there, Tippi is usually unafraid to tell it like it is when necessary, and doesn't take well to having her chain yanked, so to speak.

Even if it can be said of many people that they're cautious among strangers, but warm up substantially with people they trust, it's especially true in Tippi's case. She's withdrawn to a certain extent with people she doesn't know and won't freely offer all her opinions and feelings, even though she's warmed up a lot to others in general after growing close to the Light Prognosticus heroes. But once she takes to someone, it's virtually irreversible -- she'll do anything and everything to help them, and will become a devoted ally with a big enough heart to even forgive people who had previously wronged her. In large part due to her heritage, once she comes to care about someone, it becomes a sincere, passionate enthusiasm like the kind usually only found in fairy tales.

Abilities: Not all that many. Even when she was human, it's doubtful Tippi had all that much in the way of superhuman abilities. The Tribe of Ancients were described as rather weak people who preferred to use their ingenuity to overcome problems, because most were not all that physically capable. As a Pixl, it's safe to say she has excellent sensory ability, if nothing else -- aside from being the resident Tattle-wielding infodump and primary Mario mouthpiece of the game, she can see and make visible hidden objects, and is fairly intelligent. Although not really a power, she seems to have decent medical knowledge and bedside manner, too.

Sample Entry: The breeze slipped by a butterfly perched on the back of a bench; she slumped curiously, as if about to doze off. A boy-shaped block -- or a block-shaped boy? was there a difference? -- clambered around on the ground below, trying to be as stealthy as he could.

"He said it was here!" he said, in a fervent whisper. It floated up to touch the butterfly's hearing.

Tippi perked back up. "I... beg your pardon?" she said politely, her wings shivering a little in another slight breeze.

The boy stared at her for several long seconds, and then leapt to his feet abruptly. "Ah! Um, that is, I wasn't--" He scrambled in his pockets for a moment, surfacing with the earpiece of a phone. "I was just talking to a friend, haha, she was supposed to meet me here, hello, are you still there--"

A better glance revealed a loose line of wire to be hanging from it. Tippi paused. "Normally, you can't use those if the cable is cut... And there's nothing to dial a number with, either." She looked down at the ground skeptically, but could see nothing through the flowerbed the boy was standing in the middle of. "Have you, um... lost something?"

"Oh, would you look at that, the batteries have died! Funny thing," the boy continued, unconvincingly. "Have I lost-- No, I was just-- I didn't mean to, er..."

"You weren't digging up the plants, were you?" she asked, sharper this time.

"No! No way! Don't even joke about that!!" was the frantic reply. Tippi concluded there was nothing even remotely suspicious on the ground, and turned her attention instead to a curious study of him. He was young, and he seemed easily distractible, his gaze darting left and right and back to her with nervous uncertainty.

She said, still patient, "Then you were... curious about me?"

An ordinary person would've reacted exactly as the boy did: "What do you mean?" Then the telling pause...

"If you want to know something, it's not wrong to ask."

Finally, the boy hung his head in defeat. "...Y-Yeah, you got me. Everybody was talking about a Pixl in Flipside, even though there haven't been any Pixls in years! And it was a smart Pixl that could talk and everything... that's what they said. So I really, really, really wanted to know!"

Seeming immensely relieved, he moved around to sit next to Tippi on the bench. She amiably shifted aside to make room, although from her place on the backrest, it was more a force of habit against an unconscious perception than a necessary gesture.

"I mean, you must be--"

"I... actually... don't know how I got here," she confessed, sounding a little anxious now that the subject was veering onto herself. "I don't think it's so bad, though... it's just a little..."

He paused, gazing out at the wide stretch of two-dimensional street before him, and then back to Tippi. Without warning, he hopped up from the bench onto his straw-like semblances of appendages, taking a few slow paces backward as he did.

"Um, I just wanted to know if butterflies could really talk, that's all. Whoops, look at the time, gotta go! Bye!" He whirled around, stumbled, almost went back down on his hands and knees the way he'd started this whole thing, took off sprinting, and practically repeated the process over a stack of boxes by the side of the path in a series of jerky, but somehow fluid movements. Tippi watched him go, and was quick to witness Saffron, the nice lady she remembered from the restaurant the other day, chasing him down in a determined half-run. When her footsteps slowed, she saw her bending down to pick something up that he'd dropped in his hurry to flee the scene.

...It was a pasta strainer, Tippi noted, in a shape far too reminiscent of a net to be comfortable with.

Come to think of it, she remembered not just Merlon, but Merluvlee and Howzit complaining lately about things disappearing all of a sudden, and not all in the most clean of getaway attempts. Nothing important or irreplaceable, but things they didn't notice were missing until a day or two later.

Well... perhaps that interesting bit of information she'd just obtained would be a good place to start in making herself a little more useful around here.