Your name: Bianca/Binky
Your DW: glazedmacguffin
Your email: glazedmacguffin @ ruyijingubang dot com
Your AIM, MSN, or Yahoo handle: AIM: PositronicCache
Invited by: Beth / Emma

Character's name: Data
Character's DW: empirical_data
Character's canon: Star Trek: The Next Generation

Brief (around 300 words) personality outline of your character:

Data has always felt that that perfection was unattainable. His daughter asked him why he strove to be more human when he couldn't achieve his goal, but he said that the point was the journey and not the conclusion. He also told a young boy who was emulating him that because he possessed certain skills that could be considered superior to humans, this wasn't necessarily anything that would make him 'better'. Even after he was given his emotion chip, he told the Borg Queen that perfection was the product of a delusional mind. No matter what his mistakes were, he would admit them.

He never was very good at socialization. Even after grasping the concept of emotion, his efforts were at best excessive because he still had little frame of reference to understand other people's emotions. It's difficult to put himself in someone else's perspective. However, his intentions are good (with the help of handy dandy moral protocols) and he's developed the ability to joke slightly, though he still has his moments of ineptitude. He has difficulty grasping the emotions/taking social cues of others and because of that is sometimes accidentally annoying or hurtful. Without the emotion chip, he never uses contractions. When more at ease and with the chip activated, he continues to use them only on seldom occasions. When he becomes emotionally distressed, he uses them more frequently.

The friendships he does form he's excessively dependent on, as it's how he develops his own personality he takes the loss of a friend especially hard. They linger on in his mind, and he'll frequently keep keepsakes or reminders of them so that they won't truly be lost to him, such as Tasha's final recording after her death, the book Picard gave him (though that was simply a gesture of fondness rather than a symbol of loss), or passing on his father's dinosaur models to children aboard the Enterprise. Even when he can't "feel" he still senses the disruptions in his programming brought about by their loss. His crew is kind of like his family, as well and even having not known his family it's still a very important concept to him He dutifully carries his daughter, Lal, around in his net in the form of her memories. He felt especially betrayed by his brother (as much as he could feel anything at the time) whenever he harmed anyone close to him. And he remained in contact and protected his mother about the truth of here existence up until her death. He also claimed and protected both the bodies of his mother and brother from being dismantled after their respective deaths ala The Immortal Coil.

Outwardly he would seem to have a very mild personality and is eager to please. He would prefer always to find peaceful resolutions to situations. Before taking any hostile action against anyone, he would try to debate them into a position of abdication. He would usually choose the quickest and most effective way to disable an opponent rather than the flashiest.

Despite this he has a passively commanding attitude; if he disagrees with something he'll take action against it and do so without allowing anyone to question him. Being an android his judgment has been called into question many times, as has his right to choose. When he feels that he's not being taken seriously for one of the previous reasons, he'll do things like turn off transporter systems and conduct scans on his own. For instance when they were going to transport the exocomps after disabling their ability to choose to rescue Geordi and Picard, Data deactivated the transporter without telling anyone. When he was in command of the Sutherland when he wasn't trusted by his first officer, he gave orders without explanation. If he feels he is in the right, he will do whatever he can to accomplish a means to an end.

Modeling some of his behaviors off of Sherlock Holmes, he tries to base his decisions off of empirical evidence and the balance of risk. He liked Sherlock Holmes because Holmes proved to him that someone could function respectably in society and even play an important role without being ruled by emotion. Because Jean-Luc Picard was such an influence in his life, Data often tries to emulate him as well.
Brief (around 500 words) history and background of your character OR link to a really good wiki page with their history. In either case, explain where they cut off from the timeline: http://empirical-data.dreamwidth.org/23374.html The timeline I'd be using is the first one, cutting off at his death in Nemesis.

Sample post (just a general, everyday, puttering-around-the-ship post; please include a snippet of dialogue): http://amadlife.dreamwidth.org/1301.html Test thread with Jamie player.

If the character has magic, mutant, or otherwise metahuman abilities, please explain what they are and outline EXACTLY how they function, as their powers may not work due to the nature of the ship or may need to be limited somehow: The only problem I can think of would be his strength.

Non-superhuman special abilities of note (Is your character a master ventriloquist? A naturally-occurring super-genius? The best martial artist in the world? Say so here): I have a run down of his android abilities http://empirical-data.dreamwidth.org/26183.html here