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elfgrove — Earth Kingdom: Enlai

Published: 2008-02-04 08:15:05 +0000 UTC; Views: 5969; Favourites: 55; Downloads: 0
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Description Character Profile for one of my "Avatar The Last Airbender" OCs.
Karu | Enlai | Nunataq | Sinaaq


Top pose based on this [link] stock photo by ~ImagersStock .
Middle pose based on this [link] stock photo by *Katanaz-Stock .

"Avatar: The Last Airbender" is © Michael DiMartino, Bryan Konietzko, and Nickelodeon.

Enlai has been accepted at *Avatar-OC-club : [link]


Character Profile
Name: Enlai (Chinese meaning "favor coming")
Age: 26
Gender: Male
Height: 6'1"
Hair Color: Black
Eye Color: Green
Scars/Distinctions: None.
Appearance: Tall and muscled with a consistent layer of stubble on his chin, Enlai could be terribly intimidating guy. However, his near-constant face-splitting and lopsided grins make him approachable and friendly. While his sheer size causes him to naturally stand out among the other residents of Ba Sing Se, it also makes it near impossible for anyone to guess at his actual occupation. Logically, big guys like that don't make good thieves. And with the sheer number of residents and refugees in Ba Sing Se, his size isn't strange enough to draw THAT much attention.
Clothing: Enlai's clothing is pretty stereotypical of the Earth Kingdom, and doesn't stand out among the residents of the middle or lower rungs of Ba Sing Se. However, in the upper rung of the city, he is obviously out of place being both too big and not richly dressed. His favorite item of clothing his his hat, which is almost always with him, even if it's not on his head. Enlai uses the cloth of his outer-tunic arranged across his shoulders and face combined with his hat to make himself unidentifiable on the off chance he is seen while working. The way the cloth flows in this arrangement also makes it harder to judge his size from a distance.
Personality: Charismatic, intelligent and calculating, Enlai exudes a happy-go-lucky exterior. He flirts with nearly any girl that will give him the time of day, and truly does live life for the pleasures of it. He is likely to drop something as soon as he stops finding it entertaining or getting something he wants from it. Words like "responsibility" and "duty" might as well be curse words to Enlai.

Other character development deviations:
01. [link] <- Initial Sketches
02. [link] <- Rough Intro
03. [link] <- Meet in Ba Sing Se (Rough Outline)
04. [link] <- Of Cabbages (*uvnote kiriban)
05. [link] <- Meet in Ba Sing Se (Final pg. 1)
06. [link] <- Character set interaction sketches 01
07. [link] <- Character set interaction sketches 02
08. [link] <- Sketches from ~secondlina (LiveJournal.com)

Character Skills
Profession: Thief
Arts: Surprisingly, Enlai is actually a skilled artist. In fact, its a large part of how he earns his money. Painting, carving, and sculpting are skills he has intentionally developed. Primarily an art thief, Enlai is intelligent enough to know that turning around and immediately selling the actual art piece is a fast track to getting caught. So he creates extremely accurate reproductions of the stolen pieces and sells those in the regular markets through a few vendors he is on good terms with. The buyers never meet the artist, and the sellers have no clue how he can so accurately reproduce the works (they have no clue he actually has the original at his Ba Sing Se apartment). But everyone's happy since demand for the replicas increase right after the original goes missing, and Enlai's are nearly always the most accurate. He gets rid of the original by either slipping it in among the reproductions or selling it on the Black Market that usually takes the art piece outside of the city.
Fighting Skills: Enlai isn't much of a fighter. In fact, he tries to avoid it. He's strong and big, so he can handle himself decently in a street brawl, but he can't take a trained fighter in a genuine fight. He's all about using his head.
Weapons: None.
Bending Skills: Earthbender, but not particularly powerful. Just a few basics... like chucking rocks and using earthbending to scale stone/clay walls.
Other Skills: Enlai is actually an educated man. How else would he be smart enough to come up with his art racket? He often snuck into classrooms as a child, and thusly knows how to read and write, knows some reasonably advanced math, and has the sort of logic and reasoning skills gained from secretly sitting in on the occasional Ba Sing Se University class that interests him.

Character History
Hailed From: Ba Sing Se
Current Residence: An apartment in the middle rung of Ba Sing Se.
Family: Unknown

Other History: Enlai lives his entire life, from birth, in the lower and middle rungs of Ba Sing Se. He is still living in the city when it falls to the Fire Nation's Princess Azula aided by the Dai Li. He decides to leave Ba Sing Se after the city falls to the Fire Nation (before he has to do something responsible... like join a resistance group). His recently developed "friendship" (of sorts) with the socially inept and unfriendly Karu (He probably just likes bugging the hell out of her after their initial meeting) causes him to decide it would be entertaining to follow her travels for a little while (since he's leaving Ba Sing Se anyways).
Related content
Comments: 23

XxRayne178xX [2012-08-07 19:29:09 +0000 UTC]

how you do this stuff!

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ImagersStock [2008-06-17 16:13:17 +0000 UTC]

Beautiful work!! Thanks so much for using my stock!!

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elfgrove In reply to ImagersStock [2008-06-18 23:05:11 +0000 UTC]

Thanks for sharing it.

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sylvacoer [2008-02-05 18:19:55 +0000 UTC]

ah HA!! forgery! hmmm...

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elfgrove In reply to sylvacoer [2008-02-05 18:24:52 +0000 UTC]

Yup, he's a clever lil' guy.

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Akogare [2008-02-05 01:18:43 +0000 UTC]

Definitely cool! I love the gruffiness. He certainly looks like a bit of a scoundrel. xD

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elfgrove In reply to Akogare [2008-02-05 02:07:49 +0000 UTC]

And thanks. He's fun. As you can see, I'm letting the character do some replies to comments.

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Akogare In reply to elfgrove [2008-02-05 22:14:03 +0000 UTC]

He sounds like a rather interesting character to work with. Must give you loads of smiles just thinking about the things he'd say/do in situations.

Usually I'm not a fan of when people have their characters comment/reply because they're usually done....well how would it be best put? Dreadfully cheesy maybe? That sums it up pretty good actually. But your character comments are helpful and more human-like. It gives me an idea on how they talk, what their personality is like, and provides a general idea of how they act and react. So you've got some skills there woman. Very impressive indeed.

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elfgrove In reply to Akogare [2008-02-05 22:57:38 +0000 UTC]

Thanks. He is fun. But difficult to write. I don't know exactly how far ATLA-verse is art, education, or technology-wise... Since he's defineately versed in the first two, and the third affects his knowledge and tools base... Well, it's tricky.

Haha. Sorry about that. I'd never really seen it done until Sylva's Tales of the Spirit World, and I thought it'd be fun to try out. I can not do it in the future if it's annoying (just let me know). I wouldn't try it with characters that aren't vocal in my imagination to begin with. But my ATLA OCs and Guardians are very "noisy" right now. I try not to have my characters too perfect or over-the-top. I like them to be somewhat... believable. I imagine anything otherwise would be teribly irritating. I thought it would help with Enlai in particular becuse he looks like the typical big dumb village idiot, but is actually rather sly and uses big(ger) words for his universe (given his background especially). And I wanted that intelligence to come across from the get-go.

Thanks. I try.

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Akogare In reply to elfgrove [2008-02-06 03:31:28 +0000 UTC]

Ah I see. Complications arise, but they seem to in all things, don't they? Can never get a break from them.

No no! Don't worry about it. All I was saying was that you're a master at doing it. I know only a very small portion of people who can pull off the character(s) talking deal and you're now one of them. So with that, you can keep on going if you like.

But it's because of that knowledge that you're characters are so awesome. I'm so envious of you for your bravery of making believable characters ('cause god forbid you do! *rolls eyes*) and for your courage of sharing your OC's in general. You're a good role model m'dear.

And you do swell at it

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elfgrove In reply to Akogare [2008-02-06 18:50:44 +0000 UTC]

Unfortuneately so. Of course, it gives me a lot of freedom too. For instance, I'm going to run on the assumption that in addition to sculptures, statues, and painted pottery, the Ba Sing Se art scene includes silk, canvas, and rice-paper paintings. It won't be a big deal except in backgrounds, and something for the end of the story.

Oh good. :relieved: Actually, can't think of anyting else boy-o would say right now.

Oh good gods. A role model? Poor world. But yeah, I've gotten to the point where OCs that are written up in design such that they should be flawed but never actually fall into the character flaw, or designed without any flaws in the first place... really annoy me. I don't care if a character is based on the author; I have no issue with self-insertion. What bugs me is perfect characters. No one, short of a god, should never screw up, and I'm of the opinion that gods will do that too. (i.e. reading a fanfic character recently that is supposed to ask too many questions and have a temper when it comes to his sister has, at 8 chapters in, never asked a question at an inappropriate time when it might upset the other characters, and the only time they've done something that be construed as foolish regarding the sister was to allow for a central plot point, and even then they paused to weigh it and decided the sister was more important. Gah! It makes me want to scream. Sometimes people just do things without thinking it through. If the character is supposed to do foolish things because of a character flaw, they should just do them. I should want to sit there yelling at them for making a bad decision. Watching them do it is what gets you involved in caring about their welfare. Perfect characters don't need your invested emotions, because nothing can or will touch them long term. [/rant] Oops.)

Thankees.

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Akogare In reply to elfgrove [2008-02-06 21:28:33 +0000 UTC]

Ah, I see, but it's always good to know these things anyways.

I don't think he'd have anything else to say considering he "left", no?

Ah~~~~the sweet sound of someone who understands!

D'aww you're welcome!

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elfgrove In reply to Akogare [2008-02-05 01:53:11 +0000 UTC]

Enlai: A scoundrel? Why beautiful lady, you wound me! I am simply attempting to appear more friendly and approachable. I assure my character is of the highe--OOMPH!

*brandishes rolled up newspaper* seriously, stop hitting on every female that looks at you twice!

Enlai: Now Lady EG, that did rather hurt. Think of my delicate--MRFPH!

Now, see, you just look silly with a newspaper shoved in your mouth, but you really gave me no choice.

Enlai: MRFPH!

Delicate my arse.

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Akogare In reply to elfgrove [2008-02-05 22:35:23 +0000 UTC]

*tongue-in-cheek* My my, that's quite the brand of tongue you've got there "sir" Enlai. Honestly it's such a shame that you'd prefer to enlighten it on newspapers than conversing with those around you.

I'm terribly sorry you have to deal with a man such as he, Miss Elfgrove. It must be terribly upsetting at times.

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elfgrove In reply to Akogare [2008-02-05 23:16:09 +0000 UTC]

Enlai: It is indeed a sad world where the ladies of it are quite so... ah-hem, jaded. I can see where-as you and Miss EG get along. Well, I certainly have more lucrative things to take care of, so, as I'm not appreciated here, I'll bid you both a farewell.

It's alright. He's entertaining at the very least.

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Akogare In reply to elfgrove [2008-02-06 03:26:48 +0000 UTC]

Oh, don't let the door hit you on the way out "gentleman", especially since you're so delicate and fragile.

Indeed!

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sylvacoer [2008-02-04 13:37:13 +0000 UTC]

mmm, i like green eyes. and a creative use of earthbending (if a little illegal)

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elfgrove In reply to sylvacoer [2008-02-04 17:03:51 +0000 UTC]

Enlai: Illegal? Hahaha. Really, with a war going on outside the city walls, its really ridiculous that they even try to uphold such archaic sections of the law.

Archaic? Not stealing is archaic?

Enlai: Well, you'd think the city guard could be doing something more productive with thier time at the very least. I am providing a useful service.

Hey you, shush! No one knows what kind of thief you are yet!

Enlai: Right, right. See that? I'm the honest sort; she's just making me out to be horrible. So I hear you like green eyes? Would you be interested indiscussing that... over tea perhaps?

*brandishes newspaper*

Enlai: [undeterred] I've been hearing good things about a little tea shop in mid-city, the Jasmine Dragon I believe?

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sylvacoer In reply to elfgrove [2008-02-05 06:57:32 +0000 UTC]

Tea would be fantastic. Oh, and I was wondering, are you an independent contractor? Because there's this book I need from the spirit Library...

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elfgrove In reply to sylvacoer [2008-02-05 18:12:05 +0000 UTC]

Ah, I've got Enlai's character description up now. So you can see just what sort of thief he is.

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elfgrove In reply to sylvacoer [2008-02-05 16:51:43 +0000 UTC]

Enlai: Mmm? Sometimes. But I primarily deal in-- *newspaper!WHAP* Argh. Well, it very much depends on what the book is, and just what this "Spirit Library is. I've been all over Ba Sing Se, but I'm afraid I've never heard of it before.

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sylvacoer In reply to elfgrove [2008-02-05 18:17:09 +0000 UTC]

Oh dear, that's right - we'd need to get through a half mile of sand first. phooey/

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elfgrove In reply to sylvacoer [2008-02-05 18:24:24 +0000 UTC]

Enlai: Hahaha. I don't think that's quite my style Miss. I tend to stick to items within the city walls.

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