PRISMATICA app

[goodweather]

▶ PLAYER
HANDLE: wwwayfarer
CONTACT: discord @ dongpuncher#7741
OVER 18? yes
CHARACTERS IN-GAME: None

▶ CHARACTER
NAME: Phil Connors
CANON: Groundhog Day (the Musical)
CANON POINT: A few years post-loop
AGE: Not specified in canon beyond being middle-aged, but I'll pin it at 45 as it’s the age of the actor

BACKGROUND: Phil Connors is a veteran weatherman for the Good Weather segment of Channel 5 News. We're not given much in the way of his past in terms of canon; GHD is extremely self-contained and reveals little about the characters' pasts and leaves few hints about their futures. However, it’s presumed that no one at Channel 5 likes him pre-show; Rita says, “They all told me he would be an asshole.”

 

In Groundhog Day he gets trapped in a time loop, forced to relive the same day over and over and over. He's on an assignment he hates in one of the places he despises the most: covering Groundhog Day, an annual ceremony where a legendary groundhog predicts the coming or delay of spring, in Punxsutawney, PA, a small rural town. He spends years in the loop. Estimates range from 10-12 years, to 30-40, to entire lifetimes' worth. He begins as a shallow petulant jackass and comes out the other side as a changed man who's learned not to take life for granted.

 

A full summary of what happens in his canon is here on its wiki page: (x)

PERSONALITY: 

Phil is empathetic and kind, or at least does his best to be. He has learned to live life beyond himself; he recognizes himself as part of a community, one of so many people whose lives are all deeply fascinating and worthy, and places his sense of fulfillment entirely within other people and in happily pursuing his hobbies and interests. In Groundhog Day, he is forced to let go of his previous selfish values when they no longer bring him happiness; Rita inspires him to try and find an alternative way of living when she spends the day with him and explores all the ways she'd use his situation to do things like make friends, bring joy to people's lives, learn piano, and do all sorts of things ("If I Had My Time Again"). He takes her advice: the next loop, he begins to try being exceedingly kind. He learns piano, he learns how to deliver babies, ice sculpt, speak French, and practices doing good deeds all around Punxsutawney until he achieves the perfect day ("Philanthropy"). 

 

He knows he can't take life for granted and to spend every day wisely. Phil spends a good chunk of his later loops trying everything he can to save an old homeless man from dying that day, but nothing works. No matter what he does, he dies; his time comes, and death can't be evaded, even in his impossible situation. Phil's old friend Ned Ryerson tells him in the song "Night Will Come," "The night will come. [...] You gotta love life." He's learned not to just wait for the perfect day or the perfect time to do something, to be present instead of constantly trying to plan ("Seeing You"): "I thought the only way to better days was through tomorrow, but I know now [...] that I'm here, and I'm fine, and I'm seeing you for the first time."

 

All the same, he can't help but worry. Though he's changed a lot since he first ended up at Punxsutawney, he's still Phil, and some habits stay the same. He gets annoyed. He gets crass. He gets bitter and sarcastic and on bad days, downright mean, and he constantly worries about the idea that he's not truly all that changed—that he's not really a better person, that everything he thinks he is now is some kind of lie. He fears falling back into old habits and hurting people like he used to, and fears that there's still some fundamental thing about genuine human connection that he's missing.

 

The above is mostly conjecture (considering the sheer scale of the character arc he takes and the common anxieties of people who are trying to change), but the whole "being annoyed and sarcastic and cracking bad jokes" is pretty much half of his shallow personality throughout the first act. He displays plenty of cynical jackassery in his first day in Punxsutawney alone ("Day One"): "And I've no qualm at all with your small-town people, I admire their balls getting out of bed at all to face another day in a shit-hole this small, all haystacks and horses where there should be golf courses [...] I have been forecasting too many years to be talking to hicks about magical beavers!" It stands to reason that after having lived this way for the first forty or so years of his life, old habits die hard.

 

It also stands to reason that although the loops made him a better person, his experience irrevocably scarred him. It's difficult to imagine that hitting rock bottom of depression after repeatedly killing himself ("If you knew the endless nights that I have wasted getting wasted contemplating different ways to suicide [...]") wouldn't leave a mark on him, and considering this, he would understandably be fearful of any hint of being trapped in a loop again. Deja-vu is real bad, folks.

 

He's certainly much more emotionally available than he used to be; comparing his comically shallow selfish jerk-ness in Act I to his tenderness and sincerity in Act II speaks to that. 

 

He also wonders a lot about the loops: why him, what caused it, was it chance or was it chosen? Still, he knows he'll probably never get an answer. Maybe it's better that way.

 

The people of Punxsutawney have become something of a second family to him. He knows so much about all of its residents, not just names but all sorts of facts and flaws and aspirations; there's a scene in which he lists off things he knows about every resident in a diner because he's spent so long in the loops that he's learned all of these things from talking to them over and over; they're all he had for the decades or lifetimes he spent trapped, and as his cynicism fades, his love for them grows. By "Philanthropy", he's grown to love and appreciate all of them, and as friendly small town people are wont to do after he spent February 2nd running around doing nice things for them, they appreciate him. (And with how long he spent there, he may as well be called as much of a local as the rest of them.)

 

His only notable (canon) relationship post-show, besides Ned, is with Rita Hanson. He's hopelessly in love with her. He sees that she's extremely kind but it doesn't make her weak; she's idealistic without being naïve. She's practical. She's down-to-earth. He knows so much about her, from stories about her childhood to the literature she likes, and every single thing forms a woman that he just falls more and more in love with. She's the one who saved him. If she hadn't been there in Punxsutawney--if she hadn't talked to him on that one hopeless day, hadn't forcefully dragged him around just to re-experience a Groundhog Day he knew like the back of his hand in a new light, he doesn't know where he'd be. He's so lucky that she loves him too. And if someone like her does, then he must be doing something right.

POWERS/ABILITIES:
Phil is a normal man and possesses no magical abilities. He does, however, have a slew of miscellaneous mundane skills that he's mastered to a decent or high level from the many years spent in the time loop, including but not limited to: ice sculpting, piano, piano tuning, replacing tires, delivering babies, fixing old coffee machines, the Heimlich maneuver, fluency in French (with a horrible accent), and vocal coaching. He also possesses the meteorological and presentational skills that his career as a weatherman entails.

INVENTORY:
Mostly things typical of the pockets of a middle aged man who spends most of his day working in an office/news station. His watch, his phone, his wallet, his keys. A pack of anti-anxiety meds. Reading glasses. Lint balls and a paperclip.

MOONBLESSING: Cordis

▶ SAMPLES

link #1