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Name: Yang Shen-Li
Age: 18
Sex: Male
Team [GM's team]
Role: Earthbender
Appearance: A consummately average looking man, Yang is characterized with a mop of short black hair, a friendly face and an analytical gaze. He is of a normal weight, lacking the muscles usually characterizing other professional earthbenders. He has pale skin, and though not a particularly well-groomed man Yang is no slob - he dresses nicely, and takes care to not make a poor first impression.

Personality: Yang values creativity, ingenuity, and accuracy of belief. He is curious to a fault, always looking for new knowledge to improve his understanding of the world. Yang dislikes dogmatic belief, and ardently opposes regressive thinking. He loves the brave new world this new technology provides, and has a very optimistic view on the capabilities of humanity to use it for good. Yang attempts to be affable, his optimism spreading to interpersonal relationships, though he is by no means an enthusiastic socialite. He is easily distracted when engaged in non-critical activities, always looking to learn new things about the world, but shows impressive determination when dealing with matters of import. Yang's moral philosophy is consequentialist, and Yang is prone to manipulation and unsavory work to achieve net gains of happiness in the world. He hates mushrooms, and has always wanted to own a blimp.

Background: Yang was raised in Ba Sing Se, born to loving parents as an only child. His father was a cobbler, and his mother a chef at a local restaurant. From a young age, Yang was curious: he learned to read early, and after school would spend time reading about all manner of things, from philosophy [which he rarely understood, at least at first] to history to art and literature. As he grew up, he found two passions in life: Natural Philosophy, and Earthbending. He grew up in a period of extraordinary industrialization, and remembers vividly all the technological marvels coming into his life one at a time. He remembers when their house got electric lights, he remembers the hot-water heater being installed, and he still has fond memories of his family clustered around their large, wood-paneled radio set. He wanted to contribute to this technological golden age, and found his interests buried in prosaic tomes on physics, about the movement of things, about heat and electricity. At around the same time, Yang pressured his parents into signing him up for earthbending training, and found it to be enthralling. It was strategic, fast, exciting, and there were always new things to be learned. He learned to incorporate one interest into another, and now has set out to be a pro-bender, not only for the money, fame, women and prestige, but also to try and refine his earthbending theories, and add something to the understanding of earthbending as a fighting style.
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