Post by sand on Apr 9, 2010 12:27:57 GMT -5
...Nathaniel ‘Neil’ Sanderson*
*I understand
You’ve been runnin’ from the man
Who goes by the name of
The Sandman*
[/size]*I understand
You’ve been runnin’ from the man
Who goes by the name of
The Sandman*
...basics*
name Nathaniel Gaiman Sanderson
nickname Neil (Nathaniel’s a name for ignorant, sado-masochistic social workers who want a hard time from him.)
age 17
gender Male
grade Sophomore
hometown Little Falls Township, New Jersey
sexuality Heterosexual
personification The Sandman
...appearance*
hair color Sandy blonde, of course.
eye color Dark brown
build Willowy tall, and fragile-looking
height 1.78
clothing style Long sleeves, long pants, and jackets that are way too large for him. He also has an extensive collection of corporate t-shirts with the logos of all the Boy’s Homes and orphanages that he’s stayed at.
distinctive traits Neil looks eternally drowsy – and might probably be the only person you know who can sleep with his eyes open. He's near-sighted and has a prescription for glasses, which he refuses to wear in public.
...personal*
personality Everyone’s first impression of Neil is how quiet he is – it’s as if he was always sleepy. However, he can (and will) rattle on animatedly once you get him talking on the right topics; namely storytelling, sculpting and his umbrella collection.
According to his Social Services psych evaluation, his quietness might be due to his quote-and-unquote ‘troubled past with uncommitted parents’ but, really, Neil’ll tell you he’s just having trouble adjusting to just how big New York is. He’s been staying at nothing but small-town orphanages since he entered the System and the Big Apple’s a whole new world to him.
He's a townie at heart - a townie nerd who needs glasses but doesn't want them, likes to read more than what's deemed necessary, collects umbrellas in his spare time, and feed abandoned chicks.
Thanks to his time in backward orphanage after backward orphanage with no entertainment other than 60’s movies, Neil has a love for the classics unrivalled by most teenage boys and an imagination that could stretch to the moon and back. You’d be surprised by the stories he could make up on a whim – just give him a rough idea of what you think should happen, sit back, and prepare to be entertained until bedtime.
_______
As President of the Art Club, Neil is a bumbling excuse for a leader. He has a policy of treating just about every last member like a younger sibling - which might explain why the Art Club's usually a chaotic mishmash of uncommitted and un-productive members and doesn't get funded as much as the *cough* band *cough*.
past Most classic children’s stories have the kid orphaned early – all the better for people to feel for their innocent, helpless lives. Neil, unfortunately lost his father when he was fourteen, which is the age Social Services begins warning orphans that they won’t ever be adopted.
His father was buried alive under a full sixteen tonnes of sand in a freak accident at the Houdaille Quarry. According to the crime scene technicians, he’d wandered into the area drunk at night, just as a small landslide hit a new shipment of unpacked sand nearby. The Sand and Consolidated Stone Quarry Co. refused to take responsibility for the accident, and refused to pay the family any form of legal compensation – so began Neil’s slow spiral into the arms of the Social Services System.
Without any financial compensation, his (alcoholic and unemployed) dear mother was forced to put him up for adoption. Nothing personal, Neil, he was just cramping her cash (‘cramping her cash’ being her own expression, of course) with his habit for reading too much.
He hated social workers – every last one of them and their usual ‘Don’t get your adoption hopes up’ sermon – but, strangely enough began to like living in the Boy’s Home he was sent to. Being one of the oldest orphans gave him a sort of gravity over the other boys, and they all wanted him to tell them bedtime stories. When he was moved to the next orphanage, and the one after that, he kept his role as designated bedtime-storyteller to the younger children.
During his stint at a South Carolina orphanage, egged on by the younger kids, he joined the Myrtle Beach Sand Sculpture competition on a whim. He had no formal training and no idea why he signed up, and yet, somehow, he managed to place fifth in the entire competition. With that win came a sealed little envelope in the mail from one very interested Baum Academy – would he be interested in a Creative Arts scholarship?
He jumped on the chance, and was quickly packed off to New York, where he now currently resides. Save for the compulsory bi-monthly visit from his social worker, he’s more-or-less free from the System – and, boy, is he glad.
present Neil’s now trying to adjust to his new life in New York. Which, really, isn’t as easy as it sounds. The place has just too many malls, too many cars, too many people – too much of excitement for his brain to process. This is, after all, The City That Never Sleeps (and for some strange reason, he finds that phrase very disconcerting).
And recently, he found a fallen nest with three little abandoned baby birds inside. They don’t have names yet, but he keeps them in his room and feeds them table scraps on a regular basis.
He’s due to get a Baum Academy dorm soon (with a certain Ugly Duckling), which means he’ll be permanently shipping out of orphanages. And as part of his scholarship, he has a job attachment (read: slave contract) with Wynken & Nod’s downtown, which he’s been fulfilling for about a month now.
Even more recently, he's been elected President of the Art Club - and while he's a softie to his members, he'll fight tooth-and-nail to claw funding for them. Even if that means bitching Becky Carlson and her overly-funded band upside-down.
family
Nathaniel Sanderson Sr. (father, deceased)
Moira Sanderson (very, very estranged mother)
likes
- Playing in the sandbox
- Telling stories
- Mary Poppins
- Reading
- Capitalizing Important Words
- Collecting umbrellas
- Opening said umbrella collection indoors to spook out the superstitious kids
dislikes
- Social Services
- Being called ‘Nathaniel’
- Sunlight
- People who don’t go to sleep
- The phrase: “Pretty Eyes” (he can’t really explain why)
other notes Yes, his name’s a Neil Gaiman reference. If you could spot it, go kiss yourself. If you couldn’t, I’ll tell you that Neil Gaiman is a very successful comic writer – and he got that way with a certain comic series we call ‘The Sandman’.
...literature*
book title The Sandman
backstory The Sandman’s a magical fellow who sprinkles sand into the eyes of sleepers to let them dream – the rheum you find in your eyes the next day is supposedly what’s left of last night’s sand.
Of course, he’s been adapted into several classic characters over the years; the most notorious being E.T.A Hoffman’s Der Sandman (below, in the 1992 stop-motion by Paul Berry) who’s sand supposedly bleeds the eyes out of children’s little heads. He does this both as punishment to naughty children for not sleeping early, as well as to get a means of nourishment (eyes) to his own offspring who live on the moon. (Really, don’t ask.) His kids have sharp little beaks to peck and hold onto the eyes of children.
Hans C. Andersen wrote a fairytale about a Danish variant of The Sandman, Ole-Lukøie (‘Eye-Closer’). Ole-Lukøie allows children to dream by opening up one of two umbrellas he carries with him over their heads – a black one filled with nightmares for naughty children, and a colourful one filled with dreams for the good ones. In the fairytale, Ole-Lukøie visits one specific boy every day for a week, taking him on seven dream adventures. Eventually, the boy finally realises that, at the end of the week, Ole-Lukøie’s brother, Death, has come to claim his soul. The dreams were a message for the boy not to be afraid of what lay ahead for him, as death isn’t supposed to be a scary experience.
There’s quote by Andersen about Ole-Lukøie that I just had to put in here:“No one knows more stories than the Lord of Dreams himself.”
(That quote also opens up the 1957 Snow Queen Soviet cartoon, too. C: Go, Kay!)
...roleplayer*
name Rose
age Almost Seventeen
gender femme
rp experience Fours years on assorted forums and, oh, yes… Neopets.
how you found ouac Neoboards advertisement.
rp sample I'll write one (because I want to). Eventually. In the meantime, go check with Kay and Philippe. PnQ.
