Name: Ryan
Age: 19
Birthday: April 1 1996
Gender: male
Category: Student
Class: College: major in fine arts; concentration in sculpture
Appearance Description: Ryan is tall, and skinny enough that he would look gawky if he ever stayed still. As it is, most of the time either he's hard to see exactly, or else most of what can be seen is constant, often noisy fidgeting. He even makes drawing noisy somehow.
His sense of fashion is also rather distracting; if he's not wearing some eye-searingly bright color with black or white, he's probably wearing two eye-searing colors together, or else has somehow managed to make his entire outfit shiny. He's done it at least once by covering the entire thing in tiny metal scales, and having discovered magic, is determinedly searching for someone who can make said scales glow. Ryan's a bit of a walking eye injury, really, even if he's mostly given up trying to combine fluorescent pink and green in a way that won't make anyone cringe. It's not that his choices look bad, exactly, they just require sunglasses to look at at all.
On top of the bright colors are, essentially, whatever little bits of flourish Ryan can get his hands on; since he likes sculpture this means a lot of various little art pieces pinned on, but flared pants and sleeves, unnecessary extra layers, and jewelry of all styles at once are also common. Random objects tucked into his hair, various button holes, or attached anywhere and in whatever way he can make them stay are also common, ranging from "oh, that's sweet that you let your girlfriend put flowers in your hair" to "why exactly do you have a row of clips from chip bags attached to one sleeve, and coupons pinned to the other?"
The answer is usually "because I can."
Ryan's hair is a mess. Not in the sense that he doesn't brush it--he does, though between the fidgeting and random objects he sticks in it it doesn't stay neat for long--but in the color. It ends right above his shoulders, and looks raggedly cut; in reality, it hasn't been cut in about a year, as he wants to grow it out long enough to use it to hold pencils and sculpture tools in. And then he dyes it. A lot. Usually only a few streaks at a time, and always in a different color. Somewhere beneath the dye his natural hair color is a light brown, and you might occasionally catch a glimpse of it at the roots, but mostly his hair is a hectic mess of every color dye he can find, in every state of fading. He thinks it looks cool.
Of course, all that is assuming you can see Ryan--the bright colors are much less eye-injuring and more useful for spotting him when he's halfway faded out of sight, and shadow has a tendency to cling to him in odd ways, further toning down the colors... or replacing them with another source of headaches, due to the odd combination of shifting darkness and conflict between what is seen and what most peoples' brains know humans are supposed to look like. Ryan tends to spend a lot of time slightly faded as a result in an attempt to not bother people quite so much, though that comes with the unfortunate tendency to gradually fade out more, and not notice it until he starts sinking through something.
Overall, there's not much consistency to Ryan's appearance, at least in its details. The one thing that is always true is that he always has a ring on his right middle finger, and it always incorporates black in some way. Once in a while, it will even actually be plain, solid black--in which case it's usually thoroughly hidden by shadow anyway. He hasn't yet gotten ahold of a ring that glows with blacklight, but he is most certainly trying, and will probably perform his best maniacal cackle on the spot should he ever get one.
Personality Description: Ryan is energetic. Very energetic. He's constantly fidgeting, and happy to run after things, climb other things, or really do anything that involves moving. Or attempt to do anything, at least; he's active, but he's not an athlete, and anything that requires extra skill is likely to end in dramatic failure.
Ryan also likes drama--not of the sort where people are upset, but he likes to overact things in the most melodramatic way possible. Usually this involves some form of falling over, as he's most likely to overact his response to insults, deaths or losses in various games, and so on. If what he's overacting isn't that, it's probably exaggerated adoration of someone, which may or may not involve a marriage proposal. So far, every proposal has been followed by falling over dead of misery at the ensuing refusal. Occasionally, if Ryan wants to overact something but can't for whatever reason, he'll say what he would otherwise but without actually acting it out, and end up seeming sarcastic.
Ryan can be (intentionally) sarcastic occasionally, but he usually isn't; he tends to prefer straightforward comments and humor most of the time, and usually avoids mocking people. There are always exceptions, of course; when Ryan is angry especially he can become extremely sarcastic and vicious. He's unlikely to attack people physically--he knows perfectly well he'd probably lose--but he'll say just about anything, and he'll probably hold a grudge so he can keep insisting it was perfectly justified, even if he knows he'd think it was horrific if anyone else said it. He might also toss shadow at someone's eyes or blow a cloud of it at their face to blind them for a while, but that tends to either not be something he thinks of or he thinks it wouldn't be very effective, so that's rarer.
He likes to think he's whimsical, but actually is more impulsive. He also really adores art--as evidenced by being an art major. Sculpture takes a very narrow first place to other forms of visual art, mostly because it tends to involve more media. He also adores fashion, but for some strange reason, no one thought he'd be much good at it. That really wouldn't have deterred him too much, but learning to sew took more patience than he had. Ryan also adores curiosity, or at least, messing with stuff and seeing what happens. It's all very scientific, you know, and he's entirely capable of looking innocent while he claims that.
For the most part, Ryan's confidence is entirely genuine; he really does think that he is, in fact, pretty awesome. The exception is when it comes to other people; he is subconsciously but deeply certain that any relationships he has outside of his family will not last, regardless of all reason. This certainty has a better explanation when applied to romantic relationships, but it's actually stronger with friendships; after all, he's never had a friendship last longer than a year or two before, so why would one ever? And if it's not going to end because Ryan moves away, and Ryan has no interest in being friends with someone who would mess a friendship up that badly, then it must be that he'll mess it up somehow, but he doesn't know how, so anything he does might be what does it. This never really makes it out of his subconscious, which makes it harder to deal with; instead it tends to manifest as excessive worry about whether and how anything Ryan does might offend anyone he's been friends with for more than a year or so. This is one of the very rare reasons Ryan might tone down his appearance or behavior.
Ryan also tends to cling to things he does deem stable--again, subconsciously, and due to all the moving he did as he grew up, though this particular effect is less disruptive. People and places can vanish, so instead he clings to ideas and bits of himself; he'll happily admit to all his embarrassing childhood favorites because he doesn't want to forget part of himself, and considers scars to be permanently recorded pieces of his history. He therefore gets very annoyed when one stops being visible, even if he knows most people dislike scars, and his mostly record the parts of his history that run along the lines of "fell out of a tree. Again."
Powers:
Fading Out:
Ryan's most useful, if not most noticeable, ability is to fade out of both visibility and tangibility. The two go together; to the degree that Ryan is visible, he will be tangible--though at the end the tangibility is something along the lines of 'a bit of warm air,' so he can pretend to be a ghost fairly easily, so long as no one has any ghost-detecting abilities. He'd show up as perfectly living, if not necessarily normal human, to those.
Unfortunately, he can't control what he's tangible or intangible to--as a result, when he's (mostly or completely) intangible, while he can go through solid objects such as walls and the ground, he has to swim through them (and everything else), and tends to sink through them if he doesn't. This makes being more than slightly intangible a bit tiring, since he can't just sit or stand anywhere, and has to at least be "treading water," not to mention somewhat absurd looking. It also makes becoming tangible again a bit complicated; Ryan has to either become more tangible in small degrees at a time, pulling himself out of the ground with each one, or swim up to where he's in the air and not in anything solid, then switch back and hopefully not injure anything when he falls. He usually doesn't, but it's still a bit jarring.
The "degrees" of tangibility aren't too complicated, though they can be very weird; when Ryan first starts shifting, the tiny amount of intangibility doesn't actually make much noticeable difference if you ignore the bit of invisibility; it's just something he's spending some focus on, and maybe an unnoticeably faster switch to full intangibility should he decide to shift as quickly as he can. After a bit is the most disturbing stage; he can be felt, but also can be gone through with some resistance; a bit like some sort of gel. He really prefers that people not do that; it doesn't hurt him, but he can feel it, and it's very disturbing to see regardless. The resistance then decreases until he feels more like air than anything, before vanishing entirely. Whatever Ryan feels like to others is essentially how solid objects will feel to him at the same point.
Degrees of invisibility follow a similar pattern, though without such a disturbing middle stage; Ryan starts out just looking a bit paler, then distinctly faded, then more and more see through until he vanishes. He may appear to fade out more quickly in some parts than others, but that's not what actually happens; it's just that if his hand is covered in shadow, or his sleeve happens to be dark blue, and he's standing in a shadow when he fades out, those parts of him will blend in and vanish while a bright green shoe is still noticeable.
Ryan's ability is actually remarkably convenient: he can still see while invisible and intangible, and can both hear and be heard. He can feel most things, though it's a bit hard to determine textures when his hand goes right through them. However, it does have distinct "resting" states at both fully tangibility and full intangibility; if he wants to be just a little bit intangible or only partly faded out of sight, he can hold himself there with deliberate focus, but what his magic really wants to do is fade him out all the way. Similarly, if he was faded out and starts to fade back in, his magic will tend to want to make him more visible and tangible until he's back to normal, though he's less likely to resist that one.
If left alone, by default Ryan's magic would fade him out fully over two or three minutes. He can fully shift himself over a few seconds, though, or slow the process down significantly. Usually he just ends up trying to hold himself at various degrees of fading, and unintentionally fading further out of sight and tangibility over time as he gets distracted by something or other.
Shadow Affinity:
Shadow likes Ryan. Which doesn't actually let him do too much--mostly it means that shadow tends to cling to his skin, and to grow denser on him, so it looks like he's covered in an odd black film. It also tends to flow and stick together, so rather than being somewhat covered everywhere, there will be dark pools of shadow where the (normal) shadows are darkest on Ryan. He also will breath it in if he's not specifically concentrating on not doing so, but only breaths shadow out if he does so deliberately. As a result, whatever area he's in tends to become gradually lighter as long as he's there, and only return to normal over time after he leaves. Essentially, shadow clings to the inside of his lungs too, and won't get off unless he makes it.
If he does, it comes out as a dark cloud; darker the longer it's been since Ryan breathed shadow out. Since he usually doesn't bother, it usually comes out solidly black, only becoming less than opaque around the edges, where it's a bit blurry. Once out, the cloud will stay mostly in place, but sink slowly; air movement won't move it. It will cling to solid surfaces, so walking through it is a good way to blind yourself, if temporarily; the shadow will dissipate over time, usually around half an hour.
The shadow that clings to Ryan's skin behaves more like a thick liquid, though like the cloud, it can't actually be felt. Ryan can brush or flick it off, and once enough has built up it will sometimes drip off on its own, but unless Ryan is deliberately concentrating on removing it all he can't actually get it all off. Since it just starts clinging again anyway, he rarely bothers. On the occasion he does, it's usually because the shadow also tends to smear on anything solid that he touches, which gets really annoying when he's drawing. It will also dissipate with no harm done, but Ryan doesn't like the delay (and some people can become rather unhappy with the sourceless, pure black marks on them or their things that they can't figure out how to remove).
Apart from getting the shadow off, Ryan can't actually control it; it clings to him, and he can make it detach for a bit, or flick it around like anyone could syrup that was clinging to their hand, and if he gets the timing right throw it a bit further by willing it off at the same time as he flicks it, but that's all. He can't control any shadow that isn't clinging to him, and can't do anything more with the shadow that does.
Intersection & Commonalities:
Ryan can't actually breath while fully intangible, since oxygen is matter. He's unaware of this--and hasn't died yet--because while fully intangible, the shadow that usually coats his lungs substitutes for oxygen, and allows him to breath normally as far as he's aware. He hasn't figured this out yet, but he does tend to spend a moment coughing and getting his breath back when he becomes tangible again as his body tries to catch up on the oxygen it's missing. He doesn't know why that happens, and has mostly dismissed it as "it's magic."
Both of these powers, of course, take energy; not huge amounts, but fading in and out in particular can leave Ryan feeling tired if he does a lot--somewhat like walking. Walking for two minutes isn't hard, but walking for three hours will tire most people. This also leads to Ryan needing to eat more than he otherwise would, but since he ate a lot anyway before he gained magic, he hasn't made the connection. Or really thought about it at all beyond "food tastes good and I'm hungry."
Biography: Ryan was the first child of his father’s second and mother’s first marriage. He had a half sister who was twelve years older than him and not always around, and a brother who was three years younger; his father taught music, and his mother was an engineer. The family, while a bit chaotic at times, was happy, and managed to balance everything surprisingly well, though none of the kids ever learned how to bother with schedules or planning anything in advance.
Life always felt a little bit unstable for Ryan, if not in a particularly bad way. His mother had a good job, but its location shifted between various manufacturing plants that her company owned; as a result, the family moved often. The longest Ryan ever lived in the same place was three and a half years, and that wasn't until high school--and only because he was in high school; his mother's bosses, in an attempt to be kind, delayed sending her to a new place to work from the summer before Ryan's senior year to just after he graduated. He hasn't quite decided if he appreciates it or not yet; having people he knew around in senior year was fun, but it wasn't like he knew them that well, and new places are fun to explore too.
As a result of all the moving, Ryan is very close to his family, but not especially connected to anyone else. There are plenty of people he knows, but he doesn't really know any of them that well--he doesn't have any lifelong friends; not even any current friends who remember how ridiculous it was when his voice would crack every time he tried to sing. And he's terrible at keeping in contact--by the time he was old enough to stay friends with anyone he couldn't meet at a playground in real life, he'd gotten used to the idea that friendships ended when he moved, and focused all his energy on making new friends instead.
In a way, that's served him well; when his family moved to a new place after he graduated high school no one questioned his disappearance, and when he withdrew from the college he'd been planning to attend, no one knew him to wonder about it. All that, of course, was because of the shadows that had started clinging to him; Ryan's ability to fade in and out wasn't discovered until a bit later, but the shadows were more than disturbing enough on their own with no explanation. Ryan still doesn't truly have an explanation--his abilities are the result of a magical event that took place prior to his family's last move, but no one's made the connection yet. Still, "it's magic, and there are a lot of other magic people out there" was enough to at least end the fear of the unknown, so neither he nor his family are still worried that the shadows are the first sign he'll be consumed by a Lovecraftian horror of some sort. (His brother was going through a somewhat inconveniently timed phase of interest when the shadows began.)
Manta Carlos and Starlight Academy are of course magic, but they're also just a new town to live in and school to go to, and Ryan has plenty of experience with those. So nothing can go that badly, he's sure. And even if something does, well, it doesn't matter; he'll just be moving again and never see these people again in a few years, after all. Once he gets these shadows sorted out so he can be seen by nonmagical people; maybe even after he graduates. That would be novel; a full four years in one place.
Additional Information: to be added
Age: 19
Birthday: April 1 1996
Gender: male
Category: Student
Class: College: major in fine arts; concentration in sculpture
Appearance Description: Ryan is tall, and skinny enough that he would look gawky if he ever stayed still. As it is, most of the time either he's hard to see exactly, or else most of what can be seen is constant, often noisy fidgeting. He even makes drawing noisy somehow.
His sense of fashion is also rather distracting; if he's not wearing some eye-searingly bright color with black or white, he's probably wearing two eye-searing colors together, or else has somehow managed to make his entire outfit shiny. He's done it at least once by covering the entire thing in tiny metal scales, and having discovered magic, is determinedly searching for someone who can make said scales glow. Ryan's a bit of a walking eye injury, really, even if he's mostly given up trying to combine fluorescent pink and green in a way that won't make anyone cringe. It's not that his choices look bad, exactly, they just require sunglasses to look at at all.
On top of the bright colors are, essentially, whatever little bits of flourish Ryan can get his hands on; since he likes sculpture this means a lot of various little art pieces pinned on, but flared pants and sleeves, unnecessary extra layers, and jewelry of all styles at once are also common. Random objects tucked into his hair, various button holes, or attached anywhere and in whatever way he can make them stay are also common, ranging from "oh, that's sweet that you let your girlfriend put flowers in your hair" to "why exactly do you have a row of clips from chip bags attached to one sleeve, and coupons pinned to the other?"
The answer is usually "because I can."
Ryan's hair is a mess. Not in the sense that he doesn't brush it--he does, though between the fidgeting and random objects he sticks in it it doesn't stay neat for long--but in the color. It ends right above his shoulders, and looks raggedly cut; in reality, it hasn't been cut in about a year, as he wants to grow it out long enough to use it to hold pencils and sculpture tools in. And then he dyes it. A lot. Usually only a few streaks at a time, and always in a different color. Somewhere beneath the dye his natural hair color is a light brown, and you might occasionally catch a glimpse of it at the roots, but mostly his hair is a hectic mess of every color dye he can find, in every state of fading. He thinks it looks cool.
Of course, all that is assuming you can see Ryan--the bright colors are much less eye-injuring and more useful for spotting him when he's halfway faded out of sight, and shadow has a tendency to cling to him in odd ways, further toning down the colors... or replacing them with another source of headaches, due to the odd combination of shifting darkness and conflict between what is seen and what most peoples' brains know humans are supposed to look like. Ryan tends to spend a lot of time slightly faded as a result in an attempt to not bother people quite so much, though that comes with the unfortunate tendency to gradually fade out more, and not notice it until he starts sinking through something.
Overall, there's not much consistency to Ryan's appearance, at least in its details. The one thing that is always true is that he always has a ring on his right middle finger, and it always incorporates black in some way. Once in a while, it will even actually be plain, solid black--in which case it's usually thoroughly hidden by shadow anyway. He hasn't yet gotten ahold of a ring that glows with blacklight, but he is most certainly trying, and will probably perform his best maniacal cackle on the spot should he ever get one.
Personality Description: Ryan is energetic. Very energetic. He's constantly fidgeting, and happy to run after things, climb other things, or really do anything that involves moving. Or attempt to do anything, at least; he's active, but he's not an athlete, and anything that requires extra skill is likely to end in dramatic failure.
Ryan also likes drama--not of the sort where people are upset, but he likes to overact things in the most melodramatic way possible. Usually this involves some form of falling over, as he's most likely to overact his response to insults, deaths or losses in various games, and so on. If what he's overacting isn't that, it's probably exaggerated adoration of someone, which may or may not involve a marriage proposal. So far, every proposal has been followed by falling over dead of misery at the ensuing refusal. Occasionally, if Ryan wants to overact something but can't for whatever reason, he'll say what he would otherwise but without actually acting it out, and end up seeming sarcastic.
Ryan can be (intentionally) sarcastic occasionally, but he usually isn't; he tends to prefer straightforward comments and humor most of the time, and usually avoids mocking people. There are always exceptions, of course; when Ryan is angry especially he can become extremely sarcastic and vicious. He's unlikely to attack people physically--he knows perfectly well he'd probably lose--but he'll say just about anything, and he'll probably hold a grudge so he can keep insisting it was perfectly justified, even if he knows he'd think it was horrific if anyone else said it. He might also toss shadow at someone's eyes or blow a cloud of it at their face to blind them for a while, but that tends to either not be something he thinks of or he thinks it wouldn't be very effective, so that's rarer.
He likes to think he's whimsical, but actually is more impulsive. He also really adores art--as evidenced by being an art major. Sculpture takes a very narrow first place to other forms of visual art, mostly because it tends to involve more media. He also adores fashion, but for some strange reason, no one thought he'd be much good at it. That really wouldn't have deterred him too much, but learning to sew took more patience than he had. Ryan also adores curiosity, or at least, messing with stuff and seeing what happens. It's all very scientific, you know, and he's entirely capable of looking innocent while he claims that.
For the most part, Ryan's confidence is entirely genuine; he really does think that he is, in fact, pretty awesome. The exception is when it comes to other people; he is subconsciously but deeply certain that any relationships he has outside of his family will not last, regardless of all reason. This certainty has a better explanation when applied to romantic relationships, but it's actually stronger with friendships; after all, he's never had a friendship last longer than a year or two before, so why would one ever? And if it's not going to end because Ryan moves away, and Ryan has no interest in being friends with someone who would mess a friendship up that badly, then it must be that he'll mess it up somehow, but he doesn't know how, so anything he does might be what does it. This never really makes it out of his subconscious, which makes it harder to deal with; instead it tends to manifest as excessive worry about whether and how anything Ryan does might offend anyone he's been friends with for more than a year or so. This is one of the very rare reasons Ryan might tone down his appearance or behavior.
Ryan also tends to cling to things he does deem stable--again, subconsciously, and due to all the moving he did as he grew up, though this particular effect is less disruptive. People and places can vanish, so instead he clings to ideas and bits of himself; he'll happily admit to all his embarrassing childhood favorites because he doesn't want to forget part of himself, and considers scars to be permanently recorded pieces of his history. He therefore gets very annoyed when one stops being visible, even if he knows most people dislike scars, and his mostly record the parts of his history that run along the lines of "fell out of a tree. Again."
Powers:
Fading Out:
Ryan's most useful, if not most noticeable, ability is to fade out of both visibility and tangibility. The two go together; to the degree that Ryan is visible, he will be tangible--though at the end the tangibility is something along the lines of 'a bit of warm air,' so he can pretend to be a ghost fairly easily, so long as no one has any ghost-detecting abilities. He'd show up as perfectly living, if not necessarily normal human, to those.
Unfortunately, he can't control what he's tangible or intangible to--as a result, when he's (mostly or completely) intangible, while he can go through solid objects such as walls and the ground, he has to swim through them (and everything else), and tends to sink through them if he doesn't. This makes being more than slightly intangible a bit tiring, since he can't just sit or stand anywhere, and has to at least be "treading water," not to mention somewhat absurd looking. It also makes becoming tangible again a bit complicated; Ryan has to either become more tangible in small degrees at a time, pulling himself out of the ground with each one, or swim up to where he's in the air and not in anything solid, then switch back and hopefully not injure anything when he falls. He usually doesn't, but it's still a bit jarring.
The "degrees" of tangibility aren't too complicated, though they can be very weird; when Ryan first starts shifting, the tiny amount of intangibility doesn't actually make much noticeable difference if you ignore the bit of invisibility; it's just something he's spending some focus on, and maybe an unnoticeably faster switch to full intangibility should he decide to shift as quickly as he can. After a bit is the most disturbing stage; he can be felt, but also can be gone through with some resistance; a bit like some sort of gel. He really prefers that people not do that; it doesn't hurt him, but he can feel it, and it's very disturbing to see regardless. The resistance then decreases until he feels more like air than anything, before vanishing entirely. Whatever Ryan feels like to others is essentially how solid objects will feel to him at the same point.
Degrees of invisibility follow a similar pattern, though without such a disturbing middle stage; Ryan starts out just looking a bit paler, then distinctly faded, then more and more see through until he vanishes. He may appear to fade out more quickly in some parts than others, but that's not what actually happens; it's just that if his hand is covered in shadow, or his sleeve happens to be dark blue, and he's standing in a shadow when he fades out, those parts of him will blend in and vanish while a bright green shoe is still noticeable.
Ryan's ability is actually remarkably convenient: he can still see while invisible and intangible, and can both hear and be heard. He can feel most things, though it's a bit hard to determine textures when his hand goes right through them. However, it does have distinct "resting" states at both fully tangibility and full intangibility; if he wants to be just a little bit intangible or only partly faded out of sight, he can hold himself there with deliberate focus, but what his magic really wants to do is fade him out all the way. Similarly, if he was faded out and starts to fade back in, his magic will tend to want to make him more visible and tangible until he's back to normal, though he's less likely to resist that one.
If left alone, by default Ryan's magic would fade him out fully over two or three minutes. He can fully shift himself over a few seconds, though, or slow the process down significantly. Usually he just ends up trying to hold himself at various degrees of fading, and unintentionally fading further out of sight and tangibility over time as he gets distracted by something or other.
Shadow Affinity:
Shadow likes Ryan. Which doesn't actually let him do too much--mostly it means that shadow tends to cling to his skin, and to grow denser on him, so it looks like he's covered in an odd black film. It also tends to flow and stick together, so rather than being somewhat covered everywhere, there will be dark pools of shadow where the (normal) shadows are darkest on Ryan. He also will breath it in if he's not specifically concentrating on not doing so, but only breaths shadow out if he does so deliberately. As a result, whatever area he's in tends to become gradually lighter as long as he's there, and only return to normal over time after he leaves. Essentially, shadow clings to the inside of his lungs too, and won't get off unless he makes it.
If he does, it comes out as a dark cloud; darker the longer it's been since Ryan breathed shadow out. Since he usually doesn't bother, it usually comes out solidly black, only becoming less than opaque around the edges, where it's a bit blurry. Once out, the cloud will stay mostly in place, but sink slowly; air movement won't move it. It will cling to solid surfaces, so walking through it is a good way to blind yourself, if temporarily; the shadow will dissipate over time, usually around half an hour.
The shadow that clings to Ryan's skin behaves more like a thick liquid, though like the cloud, it can't actually be felt. Ryan can brush or flick it off, and once enough has built up it will sometimes drip off on its own, but unless Ryan is deliberately concentrating on removing it all he can't actually get it all off. Since it just starts clinging again anyway, he rarely bothers. On the occasion he does, it's usually because the shadow also tends to smear on anything solid that he touches, which gets really annoying when he's drawing. It will also dissipate with no harm done, but Ryan doesn't like the delay (and some people can become rather unhappy with the sourceless, pure black marks on them or their things that they can't figure out how to remove).
Apart from getting the shadow off, Ryan can't actually control it; it clings to him, and he can make it detach for a bit, or flick it around like anyone could syrup that was clinging to their hand, and if he gets the timing right throw it a bit further by willing it off at the same time as he flicks it, but that's all. He can't control any shadow that isn't clinging to him, and can't do anything more with the shadow that does.
Intersection & Commonalities:
Ryan can't actually breath while fully intangible, since oxygen is matter. He's unaware of this--and hasn't died yet--because while fully intangible, the shadow that usually coats his lungs substitutes for oxygen, and allows him to breath normally as far as he's aware. He hasn't figured this out yet, but he does tend to spend a moment coughing and getting his breath back when he becomes tangible again as his body tries to catch up on the oxygen it's missing. He doesn't know why that happens, and has mostly dismissed it as "it's magic."
Both of these powers, of course, take energy; not huge amounts, but fading in and out in particular can leave Ryan feeling tired if he does a lot--somewhat like walking. Walking for two minutes isn't hard, but walking for three hours will tire most people. This also leads to Ryan needing to eat more than he otherwise would, but since he ate a lot anyway before he gained magic, he hasn't made the connection. Or really thought about it at all beyond "food tastes good and I'm hungry."
Biography: Ryan was the first child of his father’s second and mother’s first marriage. He had a half sister who was twelve years older than him and not always around, and a brother who was three years younger; his father taught music, and his mother was an engineer. The family, while a bit chaotic at times, was happy, and managed to balance everything surprisingly well, though none of the kids ever learned how to bother with schedules or planning anything in advance.
Life always felt a little bit unstable for Ryan, if not in a particularly bad way. His mother had a good job, but its location shifted between various manufacturing plants that her company owned; as a result, the family moved often. The longest Ryan ever lived in the same place was three and a half years, and that wasn't until high school--and only because he was in high school; his mother's bosses, in an attempt to be kind, delayed sending her to a new place to work from the summer before Ryan's senior year to just after he graduated. He hasn't quite decided if he appreciates it or not yet; having people he knew around in senior year was fun, but it wasn't like he knew them that well, and new places are fun to explore too.
As a result of all the moving, Ryan is very close to his family, but not especially connected to anyone else. There are plenty of people he knows, but he doesn't really know any of them that well--he doesn't have any lifelong friends; not even any current friends who remember how ridiculous it was when his voice would crack every time he tried to sing. And he's terrible at keeping in contact--by the time he was old enough to stay friends with anyone he couldn't meet at a playground in real life, he'd gotten used to the idea that friendships ended when he moved, and focused all his energy on making new friends instead.
In a way, that's served him well; when his family moved to a new place after he graduated high school no one questioned his disappearance, and when he withdrew from the college he'd been planning to attend, no one knew him to wonder about it. All that, of course, was because of the shadows that had started clinging to him; Ryan's ability to fade in and out wasn't discovered until a bit later, but the shadows were more than disturbing enough on their own with no explanation. Ryan still doesn't truly have an explanation--his abilities are the result of a magical event that took place prior to his family's last move, but no one's made the connection yet. Still, "it's magic, and there are a lot of other magic people out there" was enough to at least end the fear of the unknown, so neither he nor his family are still worried that the shadows are the first sign he'll be consumed by a Lovecraftian horror of some sort. (His brother was going through a somewhat inconveniently timed phase of interest when the shadows began.)
Manta Carlos and Starlight Academy are of course magic, but they're also just a new town to live in and school to go to, and Ryan has plenty of experience with those. So nothing can go that badly, he's sure. And even if something does, well, it doesn't matter; he'll just be moving again and never see these people again in a few years, after all. Once he gets these shadows sorted out so he can be seen by nonmagical people; maybe even after he graduates. That would be novel; a full four years in one place.
Additional Information: to be added
