Application for Ruby City

[rosyview]

PLAYER
Name: Moo
Age: Over 18
Personal Journal: gumdrops
E-mail: Available on request.
AIM/MSN/etc: Mooberry

CHARACTER
Name: Nia Teppelin
Canon: Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
Age: 14
Timeline: After defeating Guame, but before defeating Adiane.
If playing another character from the same canon, how will you deal with this?: N/A

Personality: Nia is everything a perfect princess should be; she is sweet and kind, compassionate and honest, optimistic and enthusiastic. She is good at everything she attempts and loved by all who meet her. In fact, if Disney animals existed in the world of Gurren Lagann, you can bet your frilly dress that Nia would be surrounded by them constantly. Her cheerful and genuinely good disposition might even be grating if she didn't approach life in such a truly... unique fashion. The princess has literally spent her life locked away in her castle, never experiencing the outside world until she is literally thrown out into it. Because of her sheltered life, Nia is naive to a perhaps comical degree; when she is first introduced in the series, she does not even know that humans look different from other humans. This lack of knowledge about the world, as well as her own healthy sense of curiosity, results in a girl who takes things very literally and has questions about absolutely everything. Nia loves the world and everything in it, but she is so disconnected from it that it is quite difficult for her to understand and be understood by others. When coupled with her personality, others cannot help but find her charming.

But for all of Nia's innocence and naivete, that isn't to say that she doesn't have a decent understanding of right and wrong. She does, and she believes very firmly in fairness and treating others well. She is always polite in her own quirky way, and she does not shy away from throwing herself into danger for a cause she believes to be just. Nia's moral compass is so strong that she willingly joins the resistance against her own father, determined to learn why he would treat humans the way he has and unwavering in her belief that he must be stopped if he cannot be reasoned with. Determination and faith are two things Nia has in seemingly inexhaustible supply; she shows great strength of will and a refusal to bend or break even in the face of death and torture. Her belief that others will do the right thing or can always be depended upon is such that she does not flinch, even in the instances where a gun has been literally aimed at her face. The concept of giving up is quite simply not something Nia can grasp. This stubborn streak may even cause her to seem reckless at times, but in truth she has never been proven wrong.

This isn't to say that Nia is a ball of sunshine all the time. She can get angry like everyone else does, though she is not typically a creature of violence. (There was that one time she whacked an armadillo.) She can feel betrayed, as she does when she learns that her father threw her away for her own curiosity, and she can feel great sadness. Nia is also no stranger to fear and terror; she simply has a surprisingly good poker face. While Nia is capable of all of these negative emotions, they tend to show only briefly before they are buried in her heart. Learning of all her father had done deeply upset Nia, but not being the sort of girl who can let herself mope, she deals with such emotions by being productive instead. It is her nature to fix what is wrong with the world and appreciate all the things that are right about it rather than let the bad things keep her down. This attitude sometimes makes her seem inconsiderate of the feelings of others, such as when she told Simon he should move on after Kamina's death, but Nia does not mean to be insensitive. She honestly means well and her optimistic outlook is her own way of embracing what life throws her way.

In the end, Nia is a very calm, patient, and accepting individual. She appreciates all that she has and doesn't have it within herself to be greedy for more. While she won't simply sit there and allow injustices to happen before her, she always looks for the silver lining and lives her life without regrets.

The bit about her being good at everything may have been a little white lie, though; she only thinks she's good at cooking. And if you're looking for a weapon that can take down an entire army, then hey, she's your chef.

Background: Her wikia article.

Abilities: Nia has been taught all of the skills her father deemed it necessary for a princess to have. She is a master at such princessly pursuits as sports, performance arts, good manners, always looking adorable and well-groomed without apparent effort, and so on. While she's never been shown to pilot her own gunmen in the series proper, she's given one during the second movie, and is shown throughout the series to know how to at least pilot Gurren while it is detached from other mecha. Her skills in cooking are so awful that they could instead be considered a fantastic skill for (unintentionally) poisoning others. She's also a fantastic motivational speaker.

While on the topic of what Nia can do, I feel I should note what she can't; as of the canon point I'm using in this application, Nia cannot read and write as learning to do these things is forbidden in Teppelin. And, as mentioned in her personality section, while she isn't exactly stupid, she doesn't often understand concepts that other people would consider basic knowledge.

First Person:

[The feed blinks on, then off, then on again, showing the image of a smiling girl who tilts her head this way and that as she learns what the buttons do. Eventually she sighs as if pleased with something and nods, setting the object down so that she can wave at it.]

Well met, everyone! My name is Nia and I think I may be lost because I don't know where I am.

[The girl, who really doesn't look that concerned or upset about her predicament, pauses as if to consider her own words.]

Actually I don't think that is exactly right. I know that I am in your village after a long journey on the strange gunmen without a face. But I do not know where your village is, and therefore I do not know where I am. But it is very important that I return to Dai-Gurren because Simon needs me. If you could show me how to leave, I would be very grateful.

[Nia gives another nod, pressing her hands together as she waits for a response.]

Third Person: It was like nothing Nia had ever seen before, or anything that she could have imagined, or heard of, or considered or pondered. Bigger than a village, but not so big as Teppelin, it was a gathering of human dwellings above the surface where people could live without the tyranny of the spiral King. Nia roamed the streets in glee, sometimes humming to herself, other times darting here and there as something new caught her eye. And who would blame her? It was a fascinating place, with pretty things and ugly things and things she couldn't fathom the purpose of!

But it was also a strange place; the buildings looked unfriendly with their lack of faces, and it did not take Nia long to discover that this giant village seemed terribly empty and lonely. It was like something she'd heard of called a "ghost town", though of course it could not be because there were not even ghosts, for if such things existed, they did not well in this place. She'd begun her wanderings optimistic that Simon would find her and they would return to Dai-Gurren together, but as the hours passed Nia wondered if perhaps he would be late and she would need to find food for herself. Finding food wasn't so difficult, of course, but there was a question that Nia could not answer-- if bread is left out, but no sir or madame is there to sell it, would taking it be stealing?

Hunger won out, and Nia left a small trinket in the loaf's place. Nibbling on her potentially ill-gotten dinner and contemplating a dwelling to spend the night in was how the stranger found her, alone and curled up on a sidewalk. Nia blinked at the strange creature, tilting her head this way and that before offering up half of her bread with a smile. "Well met, friend! Are you hungry as well?"

Nia's new companion accepted her offering with a bark, wagging its tail and causing her to giggle as it licked her hand-- no doubt a sign of friendship in the language of its people.