Why, yes. I am just that awesome.
Name: Taavetti Vanhanen (Taavi for short)
Age: 28
Gender: Male
Job: Baker (also a hedgewitch although he does not really realize it)
Residence: Palisade
Appearance: damn boy u pretty
Taavi's got a lot going for him, appearance-wise. A good strong jaw and a bright smile that ought to go 'ting' in the sunlight have both done a lot for him. He's taken to growing his hair out. He likes his long black hair to brush his shoulders. (Small bit of rebellion from the conman, or is it that he believes he can pull off the roguish look? Could be both). He believes it makes him roguishly handsome. Others feel it makes him look like he's too damn lazy to get to the barber and get it cut like any other man.
At 5'10'', he's neither short nor tall. Just average. It's all in how he holds himself. Confidence sees him through well enough, or at least he hopes it keeps people from noticing his merely average height. He keeps himself in good shape though. While he's never been able to amass a large amount of muscle, he keeps a sleek swimmer's build. He's damn proud of it too. It's not unknown for the man to occasionally declare a war on shirts, just so he has an excuse to walk around shirtless until someone yells at him to put more clothes on.
If asked for his best feature, he'd just smirk and ask if he ought to turn around, 'cos my a** is pretty amazing'. In reality, that award probably goes to his eyes. They're of a particularly light shade of green not often found among the natives of Usana. This is because he's mixed-race: his mother was an Usana native. His father is from Wardwood's equivalent of Finland.
He keeps himself clean-shaven. This is not because he wants to, exactly, but rather because any of his experiments in facial hair tended to result in people laughing at him and dragging their friends to see the train wreck.
Personality: All of life is a game to Taavi and he's in it to win it. He's rather self-serving with his drive to win, honestly, and occasionally misses that other people might get trampled under his feet. He doesn't mean to be mean, though, and often tries to make it up to them later. That is, if he notices that he's hurt someone. He's very much a big picture man and will often miss small details like that. Someone else has to point them out for him. This 'small detail blindness' leads to some problems with his long-term plans, though. Really, the man is much better at short-term, at least for now.
In fact, most of his schemes fall flat due to his difficulty with planning anything out for a long time. The guy just gets bored and moves onto something else.
He's extremely confident and not at all ashamed of much. Trying to shame him will result in him just laughing in your face and attempting to turn the insult---or shaming attempt---on you. The only ones that can get through this are his closest friends. With other people, he likes to keep his distance; the thing is, it can be difficult to realize he is keeping his distance simply because he is so friendly and open, or at least seems as much. He talks. A lot. Like he chatters incessantly, constantly cracking jokes and generally making himself into the life of the party. He's a charmer, or at least he tries to be.
Honestly, the man's extremely attention-hungry; he just can't get enough of it and will act like a fool to get it. If he makes someone smile, it's all the better; he loves doing that and will go out of his way to try and make a sad person grin. He likes making people feel like they're the most valuable person ever. In his own way, he's a people-pleaser, trying to get along with most everyone.
He's also manipulative as hell. He's spent most of his life learning where the levers are with people and simply can't seem to stop himself from pulling on them. He wants to be liked. If acting contrite can do that, he'll do it. If producing some sob story will help, he will absolutely tell a story fit to make a statue cry. He has no problem with faking vulnerability and conning people into it. Basically, he will lie through his damn teeth, if he thinks it will suit him and his.
He's painfully aware that he's a leech who absolutely cannot survive without social interaction. He needs people the same way he needs food.
History:
-Shikoba - Mother - MIA
-Voitto - Father - 46
-----Works as a jewel grader.
-Tyyne - Sister (twin to Virva) (20)
-----Works as a nurse. She's the sweet one. Is in a relationship with another woman, Annika.
-Virva - Sister (twin to Tyyne) (20)
------Currently is a guard and dreams of becoming a Chosen.
-Alatoma - Sister (19)
-------Undecided about work. Wants to be a musician but is horrible at music. Much sadness. :C
Shikoba and Voitto were convinced that they were the stars of a love story. After all, they were seventeen years old! That was totally old enough and mature enough to recognize ~*true love*~. Spoiler alert: they really weren't. They made the classic hormonal teenage mistake of thinking lust and pantsfeelings were the same as true love. And then Taavetti was born, which only stressed the young couple further.
They did their best. Honestly, Shikoba and Voitto really did try. They were determined to stay together because 'it's just a rough patch' and 'all couples have rough patches'. They had more children because, hey, no problem can't be solved by throwing enough babies at it, right?
[spoiler alert: it turns out that, if there's already a deep problem in a family, more babies absolutely will not help.]
Again, the family fractured further. Taavi had no idea what the hell was going on; he just knew his parents fought. A lot. It took him a long time to understand that constantly fighting parents wasn't even the norm. When he did realize this, he did his best to try and protect his sisters by taking them out of the house and into the woods when things sounded really bad.
Finally, just after the birth of Alatoma, Shikoba left the family. She realized that being a mother wasn't really something she wanted at all or even ever.
Times were difficult then. On the bright side, the family was more peaceful. On the downside, Voitto now had four mouths to feed and a fairly small salary as a miner.
When he was ten, Taavi apprenticed himself to a baker. And by 'apprenticed himself', I mean Taavi basically just sat down on the old woman's lawn until she agreed to teach him how to cook. To a young boy, it sounded like a really good way to keep his family fed. Food! That would keep them fed!
It... didn't work out quite so well. It was a lot more complicated than FOOD APPEARS. He learned that he also had to pay for supplies, which took a big chunk out of profits. So he started to hunt as well. Trade prime cuts of meat for supplies and that worked out well. His sisters frequently helped, as Virva was much better with weaponry than Taavi and Tyyne was a pro at identifying plants.
At 24, Taavi met Vit. Something magical happened. Insults were slung. Snark was snarked. Vit was stuffed into a cupboard because he happens to be just perfectly cupboard sized. Absolutely magical.
At some point, it turned into love.
More recently, Taavi's master is retiring from baking. Taavi and Vit pooled their resources to buy the bakery from her.
Other stuff: Taavi does not realize he's a hedge witch. Mostly, his magic manifests itself as charms. He's very lucky and typically comes off as rather charming.
