Post by DAN KAPLAN on May 28, 2012 22:40:07 GMT -5
...daniel wyatt kaplan*
*If this line were any longer Anderson Cooper would be turned on. #homoeroticism #fucktheDMV*
[/size]*If this line were any longer Anderson Cooper would be turned on. #homoeroticism #fucktheDMV*
*THESE PICTURES MUST NOT STRETCH THE BOARD
...basics*
name Dan Kaplan
nickname Danny by his father, and only his father, damnit.
age 15
gender Male
grade 10th
hometown Robert, Louisiana and Baton Rouge, Louisiana
sexuality Straight
personification Toto
status Dormant
face claim Liam Payne
...appearance*
hair color Brown
eye color Brown
build Scrawny at first glance, though surprisingly muscular when his clothing is removed.
height 5’ 10”
clothing style Casual but put-together. Plaid shirts, polos, button-downs, sweatshirts from Abercrombie, that sort of thing, generally coupled with jeans and converse or Nikes.
distinctive traits Often has headphones when alone in public places, not to listen to music, obviously, but to keep other people from attempting to talk to him, or from expecting a response to any external noise.
...personal*
personality
Dan is a very quiet person, not due to shyness or any sort of antisociality, but because he’s completely deaf in both ears. His entire life, Dan has wallowed behind a barrier of silence that separates him from the rest of society. Incapable of auditory communication, Dan expresses himself through American Sign Language. Though he has technically been taught to read lips, he usually only manages to make out a few words here and there, and has had various traumatizing instances of conversation misjudgment due to incorrect lipreading in the past. And though he’s tried conversations by writing on paper before, his handwriting is atrocious, his hand cramps after a time, and he’s found it be too limiting. So he uses ASL almost exclusively, and having grown up speaking it at home, is as proficient in the language as his friends are in English. He relies almost exclusively on his friend Jackson (who luckily is knows enough to be of some help), his parents and siblings who have all learned the language, and on his aid, Mirna, who accompanies him throughout the school day, to translate for him. It’s a frustrating lifestyle, but better than being completely mute.
But Dan’s real personality is far from the aura of silence he extends. Dan’s head is constantly flowing with ideas, concepts, words, and abstractions. The real Dan Kaplan is wickedly cynical, and bitingly sarcastic, and the sardonic comments that fly silently through his head throughout the day are often not able to be expressed through ASL. What they are expressed through is text, namely, Twitter. Dan’s parents pay for his iPhone, which he can use neither to make calls nor to listen to music, but which is used hundreds of times a day for Tweets. Dan tweets his frustrations, his angers, his fears, his triumphs, the words he can’t articulate. Dan is known for his clever, snarky tweets, and has gathered quite an internet following. His account, @dantheman22, has thousands of subscribers, and Dan considers the Internet his true outlet.
When not in school or hanging out with his best friends Jackson, Ozzie, Mikey, and Jay, Dan can almost always be found in front of a computer, fingers flying. It’s a habit that his parents have tried unsuccessfully many times to stop, but Dan simply feels most comfortable when he’s on the Internet. He’s developed a knack for hacking and for successfully manipulating computers to do whatever he desires, and though he’s not much for gaming, he’ll even do that if it means he gets to interact with other people. The Internet is the one place in the world where Dan is normal, not secluded behind a wall of communication he can never break. And while others who are familiar with both often think of Dan Kaplan and @dantheman22 as two completely separate personas, Dan likes to think that @dantheman22 is always trapped inside Dan Kaplan, and can finally burst free once his browser is open.
past
Dan was born in Louisiana, in a small suburb of Baton Rouge, to parents Alden and Felicity Kaplan, a 4-year-old sister named Chloe and a 3-year-old brother named Seth. The first few months of Daniel’s life were rather uneventful, with the expected developments, the first opening of eyes, the rolling over, and the hours upon hours of crying. What was not expected was that four-month-old Daniel would wake up one morning with a fever of 104, that his lymph nodes would swell to red bulbs, and that a red rash would split across his face. The baby was taken to Louisiana Hospital and diagnosed with German Measles, a disease that, luckily for the Kaplans, dissipated relatively quickly on its own. The rash soon disappeared, and Dan resumed normal life. But as the months elongated into years, Dan’s parents were quick to realize that there was something wrong.
Though he seemed perfectly happy, the baby was completely unresponsive to auditory stimulus: alarms, calls of his name, sudden thumps and music, all went completely unnoticed. Though his development seemed completely normal in every other way (he played with blocks, giggled when tickled, and took his first few steps about a year after his birth), one, two, three, four years passed, and Dan hadn’t said a word. Though the parents had learned through their previous parenting experiences that a child would talk when he or she was ready, they knew that since Dan was registered to begin Kindergarten the following year, his muteness needed to be dealt with. After extensive testing, it was concluded that Dan was completely deaf, and though the family attempted to fit him with multiple cochlear implants, it was soon revealed that the German Measles had rendered all of the nerves surrounding his ears completely useless, making even artificial hearing impossible. Dan, his parents, and his siblings soon signed up for American Sign Language classes together, and Dan’s parents soon took care to sign as frequently as they spoke.
When September came, Dan was sent to live with his Aunt Alyssa and Uncle Clifford in Baton Rouge, to attend the Louisiana School for the Deaf. He attended LSD from Kindergarten to ninth grade, where he became exceedingly fluent in both American Sign Language and written English. But though he didn’t mind living in Baton Rouge or in Robert on weekends and vacations, he decided at the end of his freshman year that he wanted a change. A school for the deaf was nice, he thought, but Dan wanted to learn to survive in the real world, a world where he wouldn’t be spoon-fed for his disability. He wanted to know that he could make friends and hold his own in a world where everyone around him could hear. Trying to get as far away from anyone he was comfortable around as possible, he convinced his parents to let him attend a boarding school up north. After applying to and visiting several, Dan fell in love with New York City, and decided to attend Baum Academy.
Only for a year, he promised. He was just going to see if he could do this for a year.
present
Dan’s first few weeks at Baum were rough: he was shepherded around the scary, unfamiliar school by an aid whose sign language was absolutely terrible. His phone was confiscated during second class of his first day, and Dan spent the rest of the day rocking back and forth, drumming his fingers on his desk, and trying not to collapse into hysteria over the sudden inability to tweet. He spent his days miserable and alone, frustration building every day as his attempts to communicate were stifled with bemused raised eyebrows and pitying expressions. He was seriously considering dropping out of Baum and returning to Louisiana when, in his detested English class, he met Jackson Hirsch.
Jackson’s sign language was only the result of a year of freshman ASL classes at Baum, but it was enough to make Dan feel like he’d just met another survivor of a zombie apocalypse after living alone for years. As Dan helped Jackson improve his signing and Jackson gave Dan a light to see by in the dark cloud that was Baum academy, Dan was soon sucked into Jackson’s group of comrades with Chandler Antrim, Ozzie Wagers, and Mikey (insert name here), who, with Jackson’s translations, soon became his best friends. Life at Baum has improved greatly since. Though the language barrier is no less present, Dan has become more comfortable around Chandler, Ozzie, Mikey, and Jackson than he ever was around his deaf friends in Louisiana.
family
Alden Kaplan (father), age 47, air traffic controller at the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport
Felicity Kaplan (mother), age 40, quality assurance manager at Guico Industries
Chloe Kaplan (sister), age 19, sophomore at Oliver Finley Academy of Cosmetology
Seth Kaplan (brother), age 18, freshman at University of California-Davis
Anderson "Andy" Kaplan (brother), age 14, freshman at Hammond High Magnet School
Heaven "Harley" Kaplan (sister), age 5, in Kindergarten at Hammond Eastside Primary School
Alyssa Carney (aunt, Alden's sister), age 58, management accountant
Clifford Carney (uncle), age 71, retired
likes
American Sign Language
His Twitter followers
His iPhone
Writing Poetry (but tell the bros and he'll fucking beat your ass)
Hacking
dislikes People who treat him like he's stupid
Places where there's no cell phone service
When there's a conversation happening and he can't figure out what's going on
Being referred to as a "special ed kid"
Being surrounded by people who don't know any sign language
other notes TEXT HERE
...literature*
book title The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
backstory Toto is the pet dog of Dorothy Gale. In the first book he is mute, but in Tik-Tok of Oz it is revealed that he has been able to speak the entire time, but has chosen not to. His breed is never specifically stated, though many have theorized that he is a breed of terrier.
...roleplayer*
name Monica
age Bro
gender Bro
rp experienceBro
how you found ouac Bro
rp sample Bro
