Post by anythingelse on Aug 6, 2010 0:34:23 GMT -5
Character Name: Niels Meijer
Gender: Male
Country: The Kingdom of the Netherlands [Rotterdam, South Holland]
Age: 16
Student or Teacher?: Student
Grade: Sophmore
Status: Punk [Delinquent-style]
Character Information (likes, dislikes, personality):
Likes - quiet, solitude, painting, flowers, certain often illegal chemical pastimes, lying (not to intentionally hurt, though sometimes it does - just for the amusement of it), bright colours, rabbits, alcohol, spending money
Dislikes - too many people, relationships, a semblance of family, spending money, sleeping, passive-aggression
Past of the character (Hows life outside school?):
They say that from broken homes come great artists, men and women of strength and fortitude that breeds great leaders, people of inspiration.
It's an easy lie.
The few who make it out unscathed enough to make a tale of of it, to make a dollar or to try to change a life (an attempt at inspiration that fails before it reaches intended ears, instead earning the tears and love of the rich and unaffected) are exalted. The many who fail and fall, who barely scrape into the next year are ignored. Statistics: another body drugged in the alley, dead on the street. Rotterdamn was a big enough city to have plenty of cracked streets and boys too young to be the men they played slipping in and out of shadows, making clandestine handoffs overlooked by the policemen who found the brighter sidewalks a welcome alternative to darkness that was more of the mind than the weather. There were no heroes here.
Niels as a child was always too tall, too thin, barely making it out of fights (that is to say he narrowly escaped with bones intact - everything else was fair game). As an adolescent he spent more time on the streets that at home (unbelievable as it was, the streets were a better alternative than what wait behind that cracked wooden door), learning to earn enough money to get what he wanted or needed working the drug trade in a manner too small to be bothered by the higher ups but too standardized to be harrassed by those who thought they were big time. He was an underling of sorts, not needing the attention to draw attention, only wanting the money, the thrill, and-- well, the perks weren't so bad either. He went to school when it suited him, when his mind was bored. He painted, though if you'd ask he'd flatly tell you half his "work" he didn't even remember doing. It was enough to earn him a scholarship to a school he didn't remember applying to, but it was a ticket out of this terrible life. It might have been a train straight to another bad place, but it was a chance. He left as soon as the worn bag could be packed, not even throwing a goodbye to his father and siblings - they wouldn't have heard through the screaming and what would follow anyway.
At the school he keeps to himself - Niels is the guy smoking behind the buildings, full of long sleeves even in the summer and a different answer for each question about the scar cut down his forehead. He doesn't smile often, and has had to prove that he's not the sort of guy that you want to mess with, though he is the sort of guy to go to if you want certain needs fulfilled.
Roleplay Sample (Show us how you play):
Midday. The classes here were long enough that after the first, students who had sat through them were blearily wandering about, to get food or rest or life in the hour before afternoon classes would start. They'd made it past midterms. They were zombies, bodies moving on their own. They were supposed to be artists! And yet they'd succumbed to the system that told them they should paint like this, that the colour wasn't good if it wasn't mixed like this, that hue and shade were more important than emotion and heart. It was stupid. Pieter only felt that he was here still to prove that he could make it through, that the extremely high drop-out rate that bore absolutely no place in the equation of the school's much touted placement rate was wouldn't beat him.
Even if he skipped classes sometimes (more often than he should). Even if he smoked more than he did when he came here. Even if he was always tired, or spaced out during his part-time job, and even if sometimes red and blue had to become purple instead of just squeezing out the colour itself from a small tube. It was a life, somehow.
Second cigarette of the break and he watched people mindlessly leave campus for lunch, or make their way to the lab to use this break to catch up on the mad amount of work they'd had assigned. Midterms may be over, but there was no rest. The only thing that felt better in his hand than a paintbrush was the cylinder of nicotine, the smoke rising from his mouth and nose colouring the world slightly grey - not that the students who passed before him looked any different than each other despite that. Inhale. Zombies, the lot of them. Exhale.
OOC Information
Name/Nickname: Quinn
Timezone: PST / GMT - 7 or 8 depending
Msn/IM: Ask?
