User Profile

IC Friending by fellow players of The Sky Tides ONLY please - thank you...

PLAYER INFORMATION
Name/Nickname: Dragon or DD5150
LJ: http://dragondancer515.livejournal.com/
RP-Comm: The Sky Tides, http://community.livejournal.com/theskytides/

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Canon Character and Series: Arlecchino, Pinocchio: le avventure di un burattino (the original book by Carlo Collodi, NOT the Disney bastardized sanitized version; well-translated copy available here: http://ercoleguidi.altervista.org/pinocchio/pinocchio.htm ; see chp’s 10 & 11 for Harlequin et al.)
In-Game Name: Harlequin
Age: Physically about two or three years old but, mentally/emotionally, the equivalent of a (naïve and sheltered) teenager
Gender: Effectively male
Position & Ship: Passenger, The Winding Way

Appearance: Harlequin is a two-foot-tall Living Marionette, a wooden “doll,” essentially. His facial features are carved and painted, and yet he can blink his eyes, open his mouth, and is capable of a full range of expressions just the same as a person made of flesh. A black, painted-on domino covers the upper half of his face from his cheekbones, and his “short,” black hair is also painted on. He’s well constructed of solid oak, with dexterous joints that allow for a full range of motion – he is an actor and acrobat, after all. XD Even his hands and feet are jointed, with his feet in two pieces hinged across the ball for flexible “toes,” and his hands include a hinged thumb and an index finger separate from the wide piece that equates to the rest of his fingers. (He’s taught himself to type – the “hunt and peck” method.) He wears pants and a long-sleeved tunic both covered in a “harlequinade” pattern of blue, green, red, and yellow, and a bicorn hat of mint green. A belt with a wooden sword and painted-on black shoes complete his attire. For what it’s worth, his eyes are brown. In the time since he was forced from his home, he’s managed to salvage for himself a smallish difference engine and something he’s modified into a backpack to carry it in, which he’s often seen wearing.

Personality: Harlequin is generally a very happy and adventuresome Marionette, true to the stock dramatic persona from which he was modeled. He’s always ready to lend a hand, as service was also built into his nature. He can be a bit of a leader – well, he was among his siblings anyway. Under other circumstances, he likely might have turned out much as his brother Pinocchio had started out – unruly and miscreant – but his master, Fire-eater, saw to any such tendencies. Harlequin was terrified of his master and would generally obey him on reflex. This fear tends to manifest in the face of any authority figure, which he abhors in himself, but it’s a trait as deeply ingrained in him as the literal grain of the oak he’s carved from. Still, he tries not to think about that overmuch and to approach everyone with a smile and a good word.

He doesn’t anger easily – partly because he knows there’s almost no use to it. He’s two feet tall and looks like a child’s toy – what could he do? Even still, anger and the like really aren’t in his nature. Nor were things like sadness or regret, but that was before The Fire…

History: Once upon a time, there was an ancient oak a little ways outside of Melior that grew above a small, undiscovered vein of mana crystals. Or anyway, that was the theory of the great ogre of a man who found the tree full of laughing children’s voices coming from the very boughs of the oak itself. This man, one Fire-eater by name, cut a number of the limbs from the tree and was both startled and delighted when they called and laughed and bucked in his arms. It meant that his plan would work – to carve puppets of them that could move by themselves, Living Marionettes to work for him in the puppet theater he intended to build. As chance would have it, one of the logs got away from him. This one would eventually make its merry, ornery way into the hands of a poor carpenter by the name of Geppetto . . . but that is another story.

Harlequin and his brothers and sisters worked and lived in their master’s Great Marionette Theater, and they were a marvel of Melior, being something rare and different even in a city filled with theaters and other wonders. Harlequin loved his work – the various parts that he played in many stories, the music and songs, the laughter and applause of the audience, and the fellowship with his siblings. Life was not without its price, however. The Marionettes lived in terror of their master’s fierce wrath and obeyed him without question, making sure to learn scripts or improv outlines flawlessly, keep up on chores, and do whatever else he demanded of them.

All was well until sometime their first winter. They were in the middle of a play, and it was Harlequin and his brother Punchinello on stage. Harlequin looked out across the audience during one of his lines and, lo and behold, who should he spy but his long-lost brother Pinocchio, the puppet carved from the very log they had lost so long ago! Harlequin was so overjoyed that he forgot the play entirely, calling to his brother to come up and join his siblings. The rest of the troupe, hearing Harlequin’s cries, rushed out on stage and joined the calling. Pinocchio leaped up to them and the whole crowd danced around in joy, carrying their brother backstage, completely oblivious of the audience’s outcry.

But while they could ignore their audience, they could not ignore their enraged master. Fire-eater demanded to know why the play had stopped, focusing on the new puppet. With the winter having been as harsh as it was, Harlequin and the others had not been able to keep enough stock of dry firewood, and now more than ever they feared the consequences of that failure as their master ordered Harlequin and Punchinello to seize hold of Pinocchio and throw him on the fire to finish roasting their master’s mutton for dinner. The last thing Harlequin wanted to do was put someone to death like that, and such a horrific one to boot! Let alone to do so to his newly-recovered brother! He gave one attempt to plead with his master for mercy – as did Punchinello – but a sharp command and a dreadful glower had him gripping Pinocchio’s arm before he knew what he was doing. Pinocchio wept and cried out so bitterly that Fire-eater was actually moved to . . . well, not tears. Sneezing, actually. But be that as it may, Fire-eater pitied Pinocchio and pardoned him . . . only to turn his sights on Harlequin as the replacement sacrifice!

Harlequin’s knees went weak with terror as the two officer Marionettes flanked him, but he knew better than to try to plead for mercy from his cruel master. It was with astonishment that he heard Pinocchio renew his own cries for mercy, this time in defense of “his dear friend Harlequin,” and even more startled still when, finally, Fire-eater pardoned for the second time, contenting himself with a dinner only half-cooked, though woe to them the next time! Among themselves, they swore there would not be a next time, at least not that the firewood would be allowed to run too low! But in the meantime, the whole puppet company rejoiced the reunion and the pardons, dancing and making merry until the next dawn, wherein Fire-eater spoke to Pinocchio a little more before sending him on his way with a little money to take back to his “father,” Geppetto. Whether or not he ever actually made it, Harlequin could not tell.

Harlequin and his siblings never did see their brother again, though tales of a miscreant Marionette circulated back to them now and then by various means. Time passed and many plays were performed for many audiences . . . and winter would once again prove a time of trials. Once again fire was involved, but this time to far more devastating consequence. Harlequin would never know what had gone wrong – too much wood on the fire, maybe a candle or lantern knocked over, or perhaps it was something electrical – but he had been away from the theater on an errand for Master when he came back to the most sickening, nightmarish sight he could have ever feared to witness. The Great Marionette Theater was engulfed in flames! He stood transfixed, the view of the flames dancing before his eyes beautiful in a horrific sort of way. His home, his family! Then one dark, hulking figure made its lumbering way out of the smoke and flames. It was Master Fire-eater, and he was furious. Fire-eater spotted Harlequin, eyes locking on him. The paralysis of shock and horror broke. Harlequin dropped what he’d been carrying . . . and fled.

A Day in the Life (pre-game):
Harlequin skittered around a corner, one hand gripping a shoulder strap of his oversized backpack, the other keeping his precious hat jammed on his head. He prayed he would find some refuge, if not from the threatening storm than at least from the small pack of strays that had decided he might make entertaining sport.

Oh, what beautiful luck! A fire escape ladder, and it was extended. He scrambled up onto a trashcan and jumped the rest of the way to the bottom rung. The backpack weighted him awkwardly, not to mention slowing him down, but he was loathe to shed it even as the quickest of the dogs snapped at his heels when he leapt. Thankfully, not a one managed to catch his pant legs – or his feet! – before he could start climbing up, and he reached the first landing safely, continuing to the roof in the hopes of finding some meager shelter.

Fortune continued to smile on him this cool, dreary afternoon as he managed to stuff himself under some industrial debris that promised to be rainproof just as the clouds above unleashed their deluge. Desiring companionship, even if it were merely the sound of his own voice, he pulled out his difference engine, found the voice post he wanted . . . and spent some time listening to recordings of songs from “Bostonian Autumn.”



(This is a fictional journal by dragondancer515 for the character Harlequin from "Pinocchio: The Adventures of a Marionette" by C. Collodi, with images from the 1972 Italian animation, Un burattino di nome Pinocchio. Unless you've read the original book, no you're not familiar with him. Disney totally changed the sequence he and the other Living Marionettes were in...>,>#)

IC Friending by fellow players of The Sky Tides ONLY please - thank you...

Friends (181):

Mutual Friends (139):