Profile
Kipinä is a singer and a stage actress; an ex-delinquent scouted from the streets when she was still an adolescent. Nobody really knows how exactly she was found and how she ended up becoming a singer though, and even Kipinä herself is very confused and doesn't remember all details - the memories of her life on streets are hazy at best. Despite her less than favorable past, however, Kipinä is working hard in her new career, and tries to continue helping other children from difficult life situations by frequently donating to charities and raising awareness to their issues.
She is considered very mysterious, mature and cool by many, and for a unicorn Kipinä does indeed have an extraordinarily good control over her emotions. Despite this, she is still a unicorn, and once you get to know her better she might come across as endearingly simple and even foolish at times, but it's hardly an issue and more like a funny quirk off-stage. She still takes her job seriously and loves doing it, and although she does sometimes struggle keeping her emotional balance, Kipinä can't be blamed for not trying her hardest. Kipinä also doesn't shy away when it comes to her admiration for others, and is very vocal about her love and support for her fellow musicians and actors, often going as far as to complimenting them in her own interviews. She's also very involved with her fans and the fan club formed around her, and tries her best at being present but not too emotionally involved - something she often finds difficult, as her sentimental nature of a unicorn can still kick in at times regardless of her self control.
She has a core of fire and can do moderate fire-based magic, as well as to use flames to heal simple wounds. Although not magically very adept, she likes to use her skills to her best abilities, and sometimes likes to put on a small light show with her fire abilities. Kipinä delights in entertaining and exciting others, and seeing the smiles on people's faces is the greatest treasure to her.
Close friends with a fellow singer Etien, and rivals/friends with Laverne. She also frequently mingles with fellow musicians and artists, and likes to get herself involved with such communities during her free time as well. Friendly with Dr. Herman as well, and feels indebted to him for always looking after her and her gang when she was still out on the streets.
Appearance
Kipinä is a tall woman, standing 182cm tall, and has noticeably androgynous appearance with shoulders visibly wider than her hips. As someone who frequently trains to keep up with her stage performing fitness, Kipinä has a strong and sporty body with a small chest. Her face shape is relatively round but with a strong jaw and cheekbones giving off a masculine impression. She has scales on her shoulders, outer sides of her calves and at the root of her long, dark purple tail.
Her hair is purple with lighter purple streaks, and her tail similarly has the same smooth, wavy texture and colours as her hair. Her eyes are relatively narrow and green in colour, her right eye usually hidden under her hair that is longer on the left side. She also has a purple, crooked horn growing from her forehead with a blunt end, and a pair of equine ears that are dark purple in color, aside from the slightly lighter ear insides. Kipinä’s hair and mane both sparkle a little regardless of the light she's in. Her hooves are usually trimmed straight right below her knees, but grow long and curly fur near her ankles, a result of her arctic unicorn genes. The colour of her feet’s fur is purple with very darker shade near the ends of her hooves, which in turn are cloven in shape and bright purple in color.
Kipinä is usually seen with makeup on, making her eyes look particularly intense and her eyelashes long and dark, with red on her cheeks. Her clothes are usually unisex or masculine in coding, making people sometimes mistake her for a man - which is also where her appeal as a singer and actor seem to lie. Her body language is usually controlled and graceful, but she does have a more energetic side to her as well, making her movements more relaxed and expressive when she's off-stage and with friends or close colleagues.
Personality
Kipinä is best known for her cool appearance and way of acting, earning her a lot of loving fans regardless of gender. She is rather sure of herself and her abilities in performing, and this usually shows as a charming confidence especially on-stage. She is dedicated for her fans, although has to watch after herself with humans, considering just what kind of almost intoxicating effect they tend to have on unicorns. As a result, she has to keep some distance, which others tend to read as Kipinä just being slow to warm up to others. Likewise her status as a something of a celebrity is fast to intimidate others, especially combined with her tall height and generally confident aura.
Underneath her cool and mysterious exterior, however, lies a very gentle and kind-hearted young woman ready to help just about anyone who needs it. She is extremely supportive of others and likes to show her love and encouragement for others very openly and vocally, making her very honest statements about her admiration and respect for other fellow singers and actors a very typical thing to see and hear in her interviews. Others often feel like Kipinä’s entire life mission is, in fact, to support others with her whole being, and that spreading love and encouragement are what make her the happiest - and this is very much true! Kipinä has a firm belief that if you love something, you should share that feeling with others as well - one of the reasons that undoubtedly make her a very talented performer.
Much like it often is with unicorns, Kipinä can also be very emotional and prone to panicking and crying when things don’t go quite as planned. However, as a result of her upbringing and hard practice to become an actress, she is usually able to control herself enough to let out her feelings once she is alone and not in front of an audience. She actually uses the emotional nature of a unicorn for her advantage at times when performing, emulating the feelings of her role character so much she herself starts feeling them too. This makes her acting very believable and authentic, but it might sometimes take a while until she calms down and returns back to the stage with a smile.
Despite her masculine way of presenting herself, she isn’t insecure or ashamed of her love for things perceived feminine, and tends to be very open about them. She finds it important not to pretend like feminine things are somehow inferior to masculine things, despite the way she personally presents herself and is comfortable with. In general Kipinä is very honest with the thing she loves and enjoys, and the concept of shame towards those things is very alien to her. As a result, she might not always realize things aren’t like this for everyone, and might out someone’s secret hobby to others if she gets too excited or caught up in the moment. She is easily excited, and tends to go head first into new things when she is off duty.
As cool and mature as she can be, Kipinä also has a much more lighthearted, energetic and simple side to her that tends to surface when among people she's close with. Life on streets has given her good street smarts, but she still sometimes lets the impulsive nature of a unicorn get the better of her, discarding all common sense in favor of something she would consider fun or exciting. She's easily influenced by her friends, and fast to join their shenanigans, as long as it doesn't have a direct, negative influence on her career or image in public. Regardless, she's a very loving and supportive friend, and does have a very responsible and mature side to her, often looking out for others without even realizing it herself.
History
Kipinä was born to unicorn parents, her father an arctic unicorn and mother the kirin subtype. Kipinä ended up being the kirin subtype herself, but with longer fur on her hooves as a reminiscent of her father. She had a peaceful and good childhood living with her parents in a small, friendly town, and she had plenty of friends and acquaintances growing up. However, a tragedy would occur when Kipinä was 7, when her parents died in a tragic train accident while returning from their holiday.
With no relatives who could take care of her, Kipinä was placed into a foster home. However, she had difficulties settling down with the demons who initially took her in: her overly emotional nature and the grief of losing her parents ended up manifesting as her rebelling, causing everyone and herself a great deal of trouble with her antics - something very uncharacteristic of a unicorn. She'd stay out late and get involved with questionable crowds, spending her free time causing havoc and doing petty crimes of property damage and trespassing.
Going from one foster home to another because they just simply couldn’t deal with her, Kipinä was finally placed to a human family where the presence of humans calmed her down considerably. However, by then she had already become familiar with street gangs and the more delinquent sort of lifestyle, and this would follow her even to her new home city. She soon formed a street gang of her own, often taking in young non-human creatures and looking after them. Although acting as their leader who was usually the first one to answer to violence with violence, she made sure to get her members treated by a unicorn doctor Kipinä had become familiar with, and she would occasionally try to heal small wounds by herself as well.
Her scouting was a series of strange events even Kipinä herself is confused of. However, she thinks it was probably because of the time she ended up singing for one of the younger members of her gang to calm the kid down when he was treated in the hospital.
She was scouted at the age of 17 and took in the offer as she enjoyed performing for others, and finally found a way to convey her emotions in a less destructive way. Likewise, vain as unicorns are, the attention flattered Kipinä greatly. She has then proceeded to change her habits and become a more respectable person and a proper citizen, and so the details of her past are not much discussed in the media - and when they are, they're usually tied to her talking about social issues.
Kipinä was initially placed into a group of three girls to perform as a unit, but they all went to their separate ways after only two years. Nowadays she works solo, juggling between acting and singing. Although she started out as a singer, she's slowly leaning more towards acting, and usually finds musicals to be the perfect compromise between her two career identities.
Skills & Abilites
- Kipinä is known for her low, androgynous singing voice. Although she was trained properly only in her late adolescence, she had a natural talent for it and was fast to learn in the hands of experienced music teachers. Likewise, even her speaking voice is considered very low for a woman.
- A skilled actor capable of using her own emotional nature for her advantage on stage. As a downside, she often needs to calm herself down due to being fast to get overwhelmed by the emotions she must mimic, but it doesn’t usually interfere with her work all too much - as long as she pays conscious attention to it.
- Her magical core is compatible with fire, and as a result she can use moderate fire magic. Mostly she can control the shape and size of a fire source (such as candles or fireplaces), and within limitations also create it. She is fond of creating purple flames, and in some of her performances tends to use extra ingredients to change the colour of the fire she creates.
- Low healing skills. She is able to use healing flames to burn shut wounds and nerve ends, as well as to tend frostbites and injuries that require keeping one's body warm. However, as her skills are low and she isn't naturally attuned for healing, she mostly deals with very small cuts and wounds she encountered often when still a delinquent.
- Due to her job, Kipinä exercises regularly and has a strong body and good fitness. She can most definitely look after herself, and her hard hooves and horn aren't just for the show either - if it came down to it, she could easily cause a fair deal of damage to whoever were to attack her. However, as she has sworn herself to correct her behavior, she avoids physical confrontations at all cost.
- Unicorn tears have a healing ability. Tears can heal any wound when applied to someone else, but a unicorn can't heal themselves with their own tears as their bodies are resistant (but one unicorns tears can heal another unicorn's wounds). Her horn can also detect poison.
Trivia
- Kipinä's real personality is surprisingly close to her stage personality, to the point it confuses a lot of people who expect her stage personality to be something her company imposed on her to boost up the sales and brand her better.
- Her name is Finnish and means "glimmer" or "a spark". She doesn’t exist in our worldsetting, but I really strongly imagine her as Finnish-Japanese (Finnish father and Japanese mother), as nordic unicorns are considered to come from northern areas and kirin subtypes from eastern parts of the world.
- Loves trashy romance novels and fluffy shoujo, and isn't even sure if she enjoys them ironically or not. She also loves everything with lady knights, and would absolutely adore Rose of Versailles if she lived in our setting. She has canonically read something similar in her childhood though, which has undoubtedly influenced her personality a great deal.
- Her bed is covered in stuffed animals, most of which she has gotten from fans. She has named all of them, and can usually tell who gave each of them and when. The first plushie in her collection was a pink, worn down unicorn she received from a little girl she helped as younger, and it's perhaps her greatest treasure.
- Although her subtype of a unicorn is kirin, she isn’t actual a real kirin: rather, her kind is more related to unicorns than the actual kirins, and are considered to be some sort of crossbreed that became its own unicorn subtype.
- She was super inspired by Takarazuka actresses (otokoyaku in particular, for those who are familiar with the terminology) and the bifauxnen trope.
Comments