Character Profile: Penguin

Name: Antagonized Penguin

Aliases/AKAs: Peacock, Penguin, Pen, Pingüino, @HBtUaSPenguin, Penguin#7103

Title(s): Instructor of Religious Studies

Hair Colour: Blonde

Eye Colour: Brown

Height: 160 cm

Weight: 58 kg

Build: Skinny

Distinguishing Marks: Small birthmark on his left ankle

Dick Size: Average

Relationships (Romantic and/or Sexual): Pyke (partner)

Family Relationships: Parents, nine siblings, two nieces, four cousins, various extended penguin flock, HighQueue (beta reader), Juniper (friend/in-universe operative), Dante (cat), Theo and Leon (cats, deceased)

Sexuality: Gay

Preferred Positions: Typing on the couch

Kinks: Secrecy, grand reveals, having too many characters, long titles

Orgies Attended: Classified

Orgies Written: Dozens

Bio: The oldest son of a family of ten, Penguin was born in a small city in central Canada. His family moved east when he was very young and he grew up on the east coast. He started writing as soon as he was old enough to write and kept doing that his whole life. Homeschooled for most of his life, Penguin eventually went to university, where he vastly overstayed his welcome and is currently finishing his PhD in religious studies, a field he also teaches in. In his spare time, Penguin moonlights as a porn writer and author of How Best to Use a Sword, the web’s most popular gay erotic fantasy serial. 

Notes: 

• There was never a time in Penguin’s life when he didn’t know he was gay. He planned to marry a boy even as a young child
• Penguin wrote stories his whole life growing up, but didn’t start working on his first novel until he was sixteen. He finished it when he was twenty-one, though it remains unpublished
• Penguin’s moniker comes from an inside joke he used to have with his longtime partner; it was his safeword for getting out of boring conversations
• Penguin is visually impaired; he has very low peripheral vision and no depth perception
• Prior to his current career, Penguin worked as a fundraising co-ordinator for a local charity, and then as a medical transcriptionist, where he briefly managed the transcription of medical records for a hospital
• There is a twenty-one-year gap between Penguin and his youngest sibling. He has a great deal of experience with childcare
• Penguin is legitimately afraid of Scott
• Penguin plans How Best to Use a Sword with a hybrid planning/freestyle approach where he knows the overall strokes of the plot, but often comes up with the content of individual chapters as he writes them and if those change the plan going forward, he adapts to that
• As an instructor of religion, Penguin primarily teaches about religion and sexuality, as well as religion and disability, with a specific focus on the Bible
• Penguin’s decision to insert himself into How Best to Use a Sword was made only after a long discussion with himself about shark jumping, privacy and of course his own personal safety from centipede demons
• Penguin works on How Best to Use a Sword every night, usually writing a whole chapter in one go
• Though Penguin is an autocrat and a megalomaniac, he is also genuinely grateful to all of the people who have helped him with the world of the story including producing extra content for or with him. He is also profoundly grateful to his audience for sticking with him for this long

Quotes:

• “Look, I’ll narrate, you just sit there and wait until it’s time for you to fall out of the tree, okay?”
• “Next chapter you’re going to get high at an orgy and fuck someone you don’t know.”
• “What, I’m helping!”
• “Speaking of, do you want to make the joke about him being a pain in the ass, or should I?”
• “If I mention right now that it exists, that counts as foreshadowing.”
• “I told you, knowing his parents’ names might have been important.”
• “Hold on, have to get the dick quota in…okay there it is.” 
• “I’m just appealing to the various kinks out there.”
• “The fact that it doubles as a pun was a consideration, yes.”
• “It’s not about literary convention. It’s about all our safety.”
• “I picked you, Juniper. I picked you because I know you can do it.”
• “I can only take you somewhere where you already exist. A version of you has lived in this world for his whole life.”
• “You know me, I love a reveal.”

Trivia:

• Despite his moniker (and nation of residence), Penguin has no cold tolerance and is uncomfortable in even mildly cool temperatures
• Penguin’s literary output exists in an interconnected polyverse. Characters from Penguin’s other works have made occasional cameos in How Best to Use a Sword, and vice versa
• Most of Penguin’s earliest sexual experiences were with his neighbours, starting when he was about seven years old
• Penguin is profoundly uncomfortable around birds and is afraid of snakes to the point where he can’t look at photographs of them
• Both mushrooms and tomatoes make Penguin gag as soon as they’re in his mouth
• Many years prior to How Best to Use a Sword, Penguin used to write Dragonball Z fanfiction
• Penguin generally has to be forced to watch TV shows or movies; most of the things he reviews were watched at his partner’s behest, and most of the video games were played by his partner
• Penguin and his partner met in graduate school. They went on to doctoral studies together and now teach at the same university
• Penguin doesn’t drink coffee or tea, but does drink a can of Coke every day
• Penguin never does anything without being extremely ambitious about it. This usually works for him

In-Story: Penguin operates in the story as the narrator of How Best to Use a Sword, though most of the time he steps back and lets the characters’ thoughts speak for the narrative. He does not and can not take a direct hand in guiding the characters’ actions, though he tries on occasion to nudge them in certain directions, generally to no avail. Those few characters he is able to communicate with benefit from such narrative-bending abilities as foreknowledge of events, the ability to interact with the audience, and in extreme circumstances the ability to transport part or all of a character through time and space to a different location. Penguin is in an ongoing conflict with a cosmic horror named Scott, but is also fighting a number of other battles, mostly indirectly, in an effort to save the universe that he claims not to have created.