Astral Parsons
Theodore Whiteside Parsons (a.k.a. Astral)
One of the four major characters in the worlds and stories of the Connection.
archetype
The Astral archetype is a powerful alien magician who leads a cult. Alien origin stories vary from abductions, visitations, and psychic reincarnation, but no matter the cause he has been gifted extraordinary powers. Even in worlds where magic isn't part of the accepted reality, he can conjure balls of flame in his palms and heal his injuries with waves of his hand. Quasi-divinity makes manipulating vulnerable people a piece of cake.basics
Astral projects a laid-back persona, just some hedonistic hippie guy into New Age spirituality, free love, and sex magic. He is into all of those things, but he's also a mega control freak, excitable to the point of emotionally volatile, and vain. He wants very badly to be important and one of the ways he hopes to achieve that is to help sow the foundational seeds of endearing the entire planet Earth to the side of his alien species. On Earth or in space, Astral meets his wife, another alien soul like him. Where he projects flexibility, Teresa projects energy. Their energy is out of this world. Among the humans Astral knows, he likes Mac a lot. Mac is a good boy, a good dog, and one day he'd be a good man. "Love" doesn't come to Astral very often, but when Georgie winds up in his life, he falls for her hard. He's obsessed with her and desperate to hide it, sometimes even punishing her for it.fun fact
he's infertile. for now.Physical Description
General Physical Condition
Balancing rigorous amounts of sexual activity and an acute physical dependency on narcotics, Astral has endurance, strength, flexibility, and fitness where it counts.
Body Features
He has very thick body hair that covers a lot of his body. His hair before it grayed was blond, and his body hair is very light.
Facial Features
His hairline is receding. He still looks handsome, but it's a feature of his body that he is intensely insecure about.
Physical quirks
Astral has Tourette syndrome. His tics are mostly motor, concentrated in his face and neck. Neck twisting, shoulder shrugging, and blinking hard could sometimes be massaged into appearing like the agitations of an empassioned genius.
Special abilities
Which of his abilities aren't special?
As an alien, he has the knowledge and species memory to use the increased energy on earth to use the reactive molecules. There is magic, and it exists in the space between objects. Sounds, energy, shapes the molecules according to his intent.
A single incident of molecular polykinesis convinced Astral that he was special. The limits of his magic were discovered only when he ran into them. He could light candles across the room, quiet a roaring fireplace, and hold balls of flame in his palm. Healing injuries and fire magic became staples of his general daily life. Despite being able to conjure fire, it is still fire and it is still hot. He learned how to heal burns quickly, and now it's his staple intimidation tactic: lighting himself on fire while his flesh bubbles with burns. It hurts like a motherfucker, but the other person certainly undderstands.
Apparel & Accessories
There are important parts of his body that he wants to show off. He loves his shoulders and the thick patch of light blond chest hair sticking out over some undone buttons or a robe.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
The youngest of several sisters, Astral appeared a prodigy. Hyperlexia and good social skills easily made him stand out amongst other kids his age, who he manipulated. The overconfident ambition carried him into a Philosophy graduate program. Unable to help himself, he plagiarized. It thrilled him to get away with it, except he didn't. When the consequences approach, Astral attempts suicide by driving off a bridge, only he misses. While in the space between life and death, he visited a different plane of existence where his alienness is revealed to him. He returns with a mission to gather a group of people to advance the introduction of the alien species to humans on Earth.
Gender Identity
He considers himself to be a man first and foremost, but if pressed he could be pushed into identifying as nonbinary.
Sexuality
Omnisexual
Education
His parents moved around frequently while he was growing up, but he routinely was singled out for individualized plans to accomodate how good he was at school. By the time he hit college, though, his peers had all caught up. He chases after niche and intellectually interesting topics and ends up a philosophy major. He breezes through everything and plagiarizes on his Master's thesis. It's only a few weeks into his new stint in a Doctoral program when he's caught and expelled.
In other worlds where places like Dartmouth don't exist, Astral is always well educated and very literate. The inevitable pang to chase after religious studies is either rebuked or satisfied. Sometimes a philosophy major, sometimes a priest-to-be.
Employment
A free spirit such as him could hardly be expected to be bound to business decorum. Astral is always his own authority, so "employment" would be beneath him. Instead, he lets his older sister pay for everything while he runs the Connection's compound.
Accomplishments & Achievements
School was a game. He excelled at all of his classes, especially ones involving language skills. He always felt strangely faster than everyone else, and it showed. The only reason he didn't get valedictorian was because he didn't want to. He was still nominated for prom king (and lost) and ends up finishing with a graduate degree with some amount of honesty.
As an adult, his accomplishments and achievements are in the magical and astral realms. He teaches himself several instruments at a middling level, same with a rudimentary reading and speaking level of several languages (Mandarin, Arabic, and Esperanto).
Sometimes he writes books. He can be an accomplished forum moderator and prolific blog and spiritual self-help books.
Failures & Embarrassments
embarrassments
known that he was put on this earth to create a self-aware human-alien hybrid child who would then go on to lead the way toward a joined future. but, a stumbling block is his own infertility. it embarasses him that this obstacle has been placed before him, and it is up to him to fix it immediately.
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failures
In the prototypical version, he plagiarized his master's thesis on metaphysics heavily. Once he was discovered part of the way through the early parts of his doctoral program, he felt that the world doesn't deserve his genius and attempts suicide by driving his truck into a river. Luckily, the world changed its mind, and instead of death he was greeted with the realization that he was an alien creature from another planet and needed him. an attempt at enforcing the rule of destiny ended up going awry. georgie's destiny became clear when astral, after georgie risked the future of the world and disobeyed astral, locked georgie in a stable with nut the horse. georgie ended up killing and reviving the horse but ran away only to be picked up by pasadena police, who took her back to her abusive father. things had just gone so wrong. it's the only thing he'd come close to saying is a real failure.Taboos
He's somewhat of a rulebreaker. When he was growing up, rules were just for lesser people. As an adult, he now thinks rules as playthings fit for humans, but that he himself is outside of them.
Personality Characteristics
Motivation
Power and sex. The two are intertwined, thankfully, and often one path led to toward both.
Savvies & Ineptitudes
savvies
Astral's always been good at "catching on" and "picking up" things. He's aware of the intellectual holes in his own knowledge and can fill in the gaps when necessary. As such, he's been a jack of all trades since he was a kid. He played baseball briefly, acted in the school productions briefly, in the marching band briefly, and in the student council... briefly. If asked what his most honed skill was, he'd say writing. Given his propensity toward niche topics, he can run circles around someone rhetorically. A shameless liar, he is an adept storyteller. In some iterations it's just a thing he does to disseminate some stock information about how to get involved with the Connection, and in some his predominant profession is a writer. He writes about the accounts of other people's experiences with things like UFOs, alien abductions, demonic possession, warlock magic, and the power of energy healing. Some accounts are more metaphorical than others. But people buy them and some become very passionate and dedicated fans of his work.
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ineptitudes
Undoubtedly, Astral's The normal ebb and flow of conversation is outside of her reach. She's prone to wandering away or interrupting others. Whether she's able to make eye contact with her conversation partner is unpredictable. This ineptitude is never treated as such by the other characters. It can be a learning curve to figure out the best way to communicate with her, but it's always rewarding.Likes & Dislikes
likes
- romance
- loony tunes
- plain spaghetti
- tripping
dislikes
- velvet
- touches on the elbow
- horses
- waiting
Relationships
Relationship Reasoning
Georgie idolizes Astral for his magical powers and feels indebted to him for any number of reasons. There's an undercurrent of jealousy between them as they contend for Teresa, not helped when Astral is messily and possessively in love with Georgie herself.
Age
20s-30s
Date of Birth
January 21st
Spouses
Siblings
Children
Pronouns
he/him
Gender
Male
Eyes
Gray, faintly blue
Hair
Straight gray hair, shoulder-blade-length, receding hairline
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Tanned skin with freckles all over
Height
6'3"
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