Welcome to Gaia! ::

Name: Blare Prows ( aka Browser Pal)
Faction: Malware
Class: Adware

Personality:

Blare is quite social and will attempt to buddy up to anyone she meets, she prefers to make the first move heading straight towards her intended target and introducing herself right away. She's not all that bothered by shy or cold responses and will keep talking to anyone who stays still in an attempt to get to know them. Be it other A.I programs or flesh and blood humans Blare is going to do her damnedest to befriend you. Heck she'd much rather be playful rivals with an anti-virus then actually fight them truth be told.

Though she is a bit of an attention whore and a chatter box Blare genuinely likes to have friends and tries to be good to them. She can share the spotlight as long as she's getting some attention and she doesn't always have to be in charge of whatever her social group is doing. She likes to steer a conversation when she can but it isn't a necessity. Blare does have a bad habit of interrupting others though.

Despite not actually being alive and thus not having any physical needs Blare acts like she needs attention to survive. She loathes being alone and has been known to talk through the speakers to James's cat to get attention if she has no other options. There is a strange sort of dependency at work here wherein Blare will go out of her way to be extra nice and accommodating if it means she doesn't have to be alone. She wants to talk with you, share her day with you and hear about yours, no topic is too vague or boring to Blare if the only alternative is to be silent or ignored.

Being ignored of shunned makes Blare sulky and woe be it to the program or person who makes Blare feel like an outcast. While not a particularly aggressive program she can get might wrathful when she feels she's being unfairly excluded. On the other hand her A.I leaves her actually feeling guilty when she genuinely upsets someone by accident. Blare is happiest when around others and when those others are as happy as she is.

Confidence is something Blare has in spades. She's pretty sure she's always right and has no problems shooting her mouth off regardless of the topic or situation at hand. While she's not quite up to the level of used car-salseman she does use this sense of self assurance to push sales. It's hard , though by no means impossible, to argue with a program specially designed to shop according to your preferences when she tells you you must have something. " This bag is your colour, large enough to hold the kitchen sink but still stylish and it matches the shoes you bought last week" can be a convincing argument especially when accompanied by a little avatar stalking about the screen nodding approvingly at the item in question she has brought up in a tiny window.

A lover of all sorts of games Blare goes into them all with the attitude that everything is winnable if she just tries hard enough, something reinforced by James's somewhat similar belief. Even if Blare is defeated she's positive the outcome will be different next time. She might have a bad day or a string of bad luck but that's not going to bring her down or stop her from trying again because she knows she can be victorious if she just finds the right approach.

It is her confidence that allows Blare to march ( err float) up to anyone and strike up a conversation. She doesn't think she's the most special thing ever but she does believe she's worth getting to know. Though Blare is still a young and Naive program she has faith in her ability to be awesome someday no matter how much work it takes and how much of her destiny is still in her creator's hands.

Juvenile is a pretty good descriptor for Blare once you get to know her. She thinks pretty much all of life is a game and often treats it as such. She keeps a mentally tally on how many sales she can coerce out of person in a day, how often she can pull up advertisements while someone is working before they get annoyed enough to ask her to stop, etc. Whether it's wins in online chess, or speed sorting a set amount of email Blare gets a kick out of surpassing her old records. Even the coming war is just a game to Blare and she would cheerfully engage an anti-virus in a game of lets see who can fix or break stuff faster, then demand a rematch at the same time the next week. Tactics are just tools you use to win to her and the high stakes of deletion is the price you pay to play in the big leagues.

While Blare genuinely takes her job seriously in that she does hunt for good deals matching a clients specifications it's still a game to her. She sees how fast she can find a good deal, what kind of promo codes she can dig up to lower the cost and how cheap she can make shipping.

Still her refusal to take other things seriously is a very real problem Blare will have to deal with as she grows. From Antagonizing other Malware who she doesn't get along with to not taking into account most Anti- Virus who don't see her antics as a game Blare could find herself in some very dangerous situations in the future. She'll need to learn how to test the limits of what she can get away with safely or face the consequences.

For all that she is Malware Blare is decidedly not that bad of an A.I program. Besides, as she would say, while paraphrasing an old gaming icon, "Bricking your computer and giving you good shopping advice aren't mutually exclusive."

Virtues: Confident, friendly, does a good job
Flaws: Juvenile, needy.

Name: James Cooper
Age: 32
Gender: Male
Nationality: Canadian
Current Residence & Occupation: James lives in a reasonably large apartment in downtown Toronto, Canada. He works as a university professor teaching software engineering.
Physical Appearance: James stands a tall but not towering 6'3 and has a thick frame to support his body. In addition to broad shoulders he has well fleshed out arms and sturdy looking legs. The muscle behind James's dusky skin however is closer in size to that of a professional swimmer than a serious bodybuilder. His hazel eyes sit above a small snub nose and thin lips. James has wavy black hair that is kept in whatever current style is fashionable for men with hair that doesn't go past their ears to wear.

Clothing wise James wears clothing that conforms to the faculty dress code to work, track pants and a t-shirt around the apartment and casual but respectable looking clothes at pretty much all other times.


Personality:

One of the first things readily evident about James is that he is a proud man. He views his profession as one severely under appreciated, any simpleton can be taught to handle a weapon and sent off to fight, especially with the weapons of the day. It takes an educated man or woman to come up with battle tactics, to organize backup strategies on the fly and to negotiate peace later. Anyone can be taught how to use robotic aids to cook, clean or drive for them, it takes an educated person to actually design such robots and program them. Anyone can play piano with enough lessons, only those truly invested in understanding music will learn to pen their own songs. Those who lay the foundations of understanding and then help one to broaden their understanding of a subject are invaluable, at least as far as James is concerned

He also believes a flesh and blood teacher is irreplaceable, that the human connection when it comes to learning is of utmost importance and improves a student's comprehension. There are online campuses as there have been since the late second millennium and tutor droids and even schools one could attend via virtual reality. James understands the need for there to be many ways to access an education but has personally found students of his who's primary schooling involved close contact with a real human teacher to adapt to his teaching style easiest. James himself has taken refresher courses online using VR but he only signed up for classes where the teacher is an actual person and not simply an elaborate program meant to look human in cyberspace.

James believes in hard work and that if one puts their mind to it they can, within reasonable limits, accomplish anything. He doesn't half-a** anything and tends to think less of those who don't put a full effort forth regardless of the task or goal in question. Friends, colleagues and students alike have called him a workaholic due to this attitude. James sees it as being efficient, if he does things the best he can the first time then it is far less likely he will need to redo whatever it was he was working on.

For all that he is opinionated and fairly disciplined James is not a hard man. He has compassion for others but tends to show it by trying to push them forward and encouraging them to believe they can overcome their problems. A gentle reassuring squeeze on a shoulder for a particularly favored student is likely the most visibly affectionate display you will see from him in his working environment.

With actual friends and family James is still bossy and he remains awkward around them when trying to be supportive and loving. He's got feelings, they just don't get expressed well. When enjoying downtime with others James is happiest curled into a chair from which he can keep track of everyone else in the room. He enjoys chatting and can be quite the animated talker though he's got a habit of over-thinking things and babbling. It's easy for James to express himself when it's more about opinion than emotion.

The only women in Jame's life currently are his cat Sin and Blare, still he seems fairly happy as a bachelor and has no particular desire to settle down any time soon.

All in all James is a fairly average man, he works hard, plays hard and tries to maintain a semblance of a proper social life. He dabbles in the illegal and despite his own convictions about the matter he could not be called a truly good person. At the same time he does not shirk from his duties or what life throws at him and he has improved the futures of others with his teachings. James to put it simply is human, he has his virtues and his failings and will be judged by them both in time.

Virtues: Intelligent, dedicated, resourceful, friendly
Flaws: Opinionated, pushy, emotionally awkward, proud.

History: James has lead a very normal life thus far. He was born and raised in the suburbs of the GTA by both his parents, Tim and Margarette until age 7 when they divorced messily. Neither of his parents remarried and thus James remained an only child. He was shuttled back and forth between them for holidays and the like. Childhood was not wonderful but he is not overly scarred from it receiving love from both his parents even if their affection came with poisoned words about their former spouse. During those formative years James made friends, made enemies and spent his free time as most children did. Though he did discover how much he enjoyed learning at this age, knowledge was a constant for him and demanded nothing more than that he seek it.

His teenage years were filled with the awkward onslaught of hormones, the realization that it is indeed possible to be smarter than your parents and that a lot of his peers were just plain weird. He experimented in many avenues at this time some with better results than others. Maturity for James was a slow process that started during this phase of his life as he started to get a vague idea of what he'd like his personal future to be like. It was around 16 that he started messing around with programming as part of an extra circular club. having grown up surrounded by technology James had been taking it for granted and started to wonder what was actually behind the things that he deemed so necessary for his daily life. With computer code being so complex it was the perfect thing for the teen to focus his burgeoning intensity on.

For James high school was followed immediately by college where he picked up an interest in getting his body into the kind of shape he felt his mind was. Gone were the early teen years of partying and messing around as James approached the brink of adulthood. His time was split between classes, homework and a new physical regime that mostly consisted of swimming in the campus pool. He did work study and summer internships to give himself both more hands on experience in his chosen field of software engineering as well as money of his own to spend on luxury items.

James got his bachelors degree by age 22 and moved straight into the work force where contacts made during internships proved to be invaluable in landing him a steady job. Six years later, feeling unfulfilled as well as jaded about the industry and many of his fellow workers James decided to try and do something about it other than complain on his blog. He spent the next year getting his teaching degree as well as taking small freelance programming jobs to keep himself financially stable.

James then found work at a small tech university in Toronto and has been there the last three years. Blare was recently created as a side project to help him rake in some extra money now that he doesn't have nearly as much time to take on extra work. He's made a few deals to optimize some of her search results in the favour of those paying him enough.

Binary Code >> Activation
Journal Setup
Introductory Journal Entry
1.
Secondary Journal Entry
1.
Roleplays:
1.
2.
3.
Staff Approval