Character of the Week #6: Perspective

[OmniChaos]

Just a few things before starting:

• Those of you who submitted a character, if you do vote, please vote for a character other than your own.
• Those of you who submitted a character, please do not tell other people to vote for your character. The submissions are anonymous for a reason.
• Anyone can vote, so please, feel free to do so.
• This thread will stay open for a week, at which point it will close and the week's winner chosen.

Spoiler Show

My name is Trace Felix Everson.

I am an ordinary man like the rest of you. My story is one that will both shock and utterly appall some of the onlookers. When I was born, i was conditioned and healthy as an infant. I had no existing problems, no damage, or even diseases. My parents from memory, were joyous as to my birth and named "Trace Felix Everson"

A was an average child, mostly condoning my youth to participating in sports and practicing the arts. As I grew, i felt a dependency on my capabilities yet that dependency shifted my attention away from it. For those that wonder or don't take "our senses" seriously, you don't realize what is often recognized as an involuntary action. Well, I came to learn this harshness at a young age.

I was about nineteen, and a college student when my incident occurred. From my neck down my body's ability to feel sensation, just...vanished. I could only describe it as a overall sense of numbness, but I could clearly move my limbs. Well you may be wondering, "Trace, if you can move your limbs, why do you feel numb?" A good question, i didn't know the answer to that at first. I was confused, I could only register what I was feeling mentally and emotionally, there was no sensation of "pressure" "pain" or even "hot or cold" below my neck.

This wasn't some kind of paralysis mind you, I could move my arms, but my ability to coordinate just up and vanished. When I attempted to walk, i would almost immediately stumble to my feet. My hands were useless at catching myself, for some time as I had been taken to more than just physical doctors, I'd visited neurologist to better assess what my issue was. They gave me a better sense of what I'd been conditioned too, it turns out my parietal lobes were damaged.

My parietal lobes are responsible for receiving the signals sent by my brain that affect touch and body positioning. They're responsible for us, to unconsciously move and walk without much thought. As the doctors explained, my brain fires the commands, but they never receive the returning neurons to tell me the movement was accomplished or established. At first, my initial reaction was I thought I could never fix this, and currently as it stood at the time I would never walk as I could. The doctors assured me that with time I could walk as I could, that I would have to rely on other senses to actively coordinate my movement.

Through vigorous training, they suggested I implement using my eyes as tools to signal my body's movements. The information received from the eyes established my movements and coordinated. This isn't as easy as it is to explain it, I had to practice and fall time and time again before I could even stand up briefly or even sit down without looking at where my feet where.

With time, I began to develop the ability to walk on my own, this was about nine months after I had first been told of my true diagnosis. I had to shift my perception to the ground and monitor that my feet were taking one step in front of the other so my brain could be aware of my feet and overall body's positioning by the information it was getting from my eyes. Same for simply moving my arms or even sitting straight up without falling over. I walk staring at the ground, and I sit on benches looking at my thighs to sure I don't fall backward or forward.

I understand that I have a difficult life, but back then I was young and stressed attempting to readjust. I am currently thirty-nine years of age with this diagnosis. It's taken me time, but I can walk with the same tricks and methods. My condition isn't something that I've allowed to hold me back, but it isn't something I can risk passing to offspring of any kind.

Artist often talk to me about how my perspective is the key to controlling my body's position. That I have to focus on where I am in order to enable myself to even move. They tell me, I possess a will that inspires many, but I tell them that they're wrong, that I am just like them. And like them, I share a different perspective, because we're all different.

I'm Trace, and this is my story.

Spoiler Show

The Stage stood firm, without a mere creak of its well-furnished and varnished boards; the Theatre was newly built, the paint and props and curtains all of the best craft. Braziers burned near the front of the Stage, giving the only light in the darkened room.

"That dogs bark at me as I halt by them,—" one of the Actors spoke, as he performed his part, standing upon the Stage; the Play was being rehearsed. On one of the seats in the Theatre, the Lord raised himself from his once-sitting position, nearly raising his fist towards the Playwright, who sat a few rows below him.

"VOICE! YOU HAVE NO VOICE!" the Lord raged upon the Playwright, his blue eyes piercing through the lesser man's very soul. "My-my lord, I-I"

"The Stage is whereupon the masses can be transformed, their dull minds made lucid by the most transfixing of painstaking emotion! Do you not understand?" The Playwright only shivered, though winter's discontent had yet a long time to return to the land. "Do you not understand?"

"The Stage is a portal to the minds of humanity, where all can be made a mockery and jest of, a floating island of wood and paint and props in which the very words from the Actor's mouth can fuel an entire city's bottled up anger and dissatisfaction, or send it running rivers of weeping peoples whom cry out for the only touch of the sun's warmth! It is the ultimate form of human expression, and it cannot be portrayed so lightly! Now play the scene again!" The Lord sat back down, and the Actors reset to the beginning of the scene.

The world is grown so bad, that wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch. I will not have those pathetic, mongrel writers out-do this Play. The Lord continued to watch, as the Actor once again repeated his soliloquy, much to the Lord's pleasing - it was better.

My enemies' weak inventions shall not overturn this masterpiece. O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!​

The Stage gave a single creak as the Actors moved on with the next scene, changing props and the sole Actor exiting, while others came forth, versing their lines straight and true. The Lord kept thought in his musings of their performances, fiddling with the seat's armrests as he gazed upon the Stage in all its glory.

This artistic invention has more societal potential than the substance of ten thousand soldiers can ever hold. How many realms of thought can the mob be elevated to with this arcane device? The Stage is a conscience with several thousand tongues; every tongue brings in several tales - some tales condemns men of my station for villains, while others bound brows with victorious wreaths for such lords!

Such is the Stage's revolutionary perspective. It is both human and inhuman, terrestrial and alien, loving and despicable. Such is its nature in revealing both what we wish to see, and the horrifying dark realm of humanity's abhorred designs.

But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks, nor made to court an amorous looking-glass. . .

That dogs bark at me as I halt by them. . .​

​

 

[King Sora X]

I think both are very-well written. Each have something that drew me in. Like with "Trace", I felt the concept was was interesting. Where, with "The Stage", it had a dynamic that I can't quite explain, but it drew me in with that.

I think both executed the very difficult theme well, but The Stage really wooed me more. So, I'm voting for that one. :3