Post by Gray Cortese on May 3, 2009 1:32:01 GMT -6
VALKYRIE,
CALIFORNIA
[/color]CALIFORNIA
the ocean breathes salty, won't you carry it in?
oh, shut -up, let the photo talk,
flash goes the camera called "life's mistakes",[/font][/center]
WHEN THE OCEAN MET THE SKY ,[/color]
CHARACTER BASICS ,
you missed when time and life shook hands and said goodbye[/color]
FULL NAME: gray dominic cortese.[/font]
NICKNAMES: gray, cortese.
GENDER: male.
AGE: twenty-two.
UNIVERSITY YEAR: second, sophomore.
MAJOR: photography.
MINOR: web design.
JOB: bank teller, freeland photographer.
PLAYBY: matt dallas.
YOUR BODY MAY BE GONE ,[/color]
CHARACTER APPEARANCE ,
i'm gonna carry you in my head, in my heart, in my soul[/color]
ETHNICITY: caucasian, french.[/font]
HAIR COLOR: dark brown/black.
EYE COLOR: pretty, pretty green.
HEIGHT: an even six feet.
WEIGHT: would i ask you that?
BODY TYPE: long and lean, awkward all over.
DISTINGUISHED FEATURES: he likes his sex!hair. apart from that, a few silver rings in his left ear; as well a tattoo of a roll of film on the inside of his right wrist.
PERSONAL STYLE: Real life is the one thing that seems to get in the way of Gray Cortese - in everything. He can't say what he wants to because of reality; he can't do the things he wants to do because of something called "responsibility"; he can't even dress the way he would like to. Looking at him on an everyday basis, you'd think he was just another broke college student working a 9-5 like everybody. Well, you'd be right. See, there's this thing called tuition that has gone up sunstantially in recent years, leaving any self-sufficiant human being with about fifty cents to their name. Those two quarters are snatched up by your landlord for that late rent, too. So, yeah, you'd be right - college student without a single penny to his name. Rermember that thing about real life? It still applies. In the real world, you have to go to school, graduate, work a 9-5 you know you hate, marry a pretty girl, have two and a half kids, and live in a safe, suburban community, yes? Then you die and we all live happily ever after. Well, if that ever happens, sign me up for course called 'waste of my damn life'. If you're lucky and work a 9-6 job that you only semi-hate, you earn more money. Get to pay off those endless college loans after your thirty-fifth birthday. But that's only if you really, really like the real world. You're comfortable in your meaningless surroundings. You continue to live your life like it actually matters. Whatever gets you through the night.
However, individuals like Gray Cortese do not like the real world. There's too many rules, too many restrictions. He didn't want to go to college, but he had to. He didn't want to get a boring-ass 9-5 to pay for the college he didn't really want. But hey, that's the way the water rolls, right? Survivial instinct. Because of such, there was very little freedom in his life. On the days he had class and work, there was no freedom. He was just another mindless worker who had dark circles under his eyes and a dazed expression. Seeing him riding the train to work, you'd think he was a budding YUPPIE with something of a bright future. He wore a suit everyday. That had to count for something. Know why he did? Because he had to, that's why. He was a bank teller at the central bank in Valkyrie, California - which means money. Lots of it. You wouldn't trust someone handling your money unless they looked more like a bank manager than a bored teller. That was the golden rule. So, everyday, it was the same thing: black suit, white shirt, grey tie, trenchcoat. Sometimes he mixed it up a bit and wore a blue tie. More often than not, unfortunately, his shifts began the second the bell rang, ending whatever class he hadn't listened in. Made him late almost everyday. As a result, no time to run home to the rundown box called an apartment to change. By now, his classmates had gotten used to seeing him show up in almost the same thing every single fucking day - that boring suit he described as a uniform. Throw on the tie, do the up the shirt over his t-shirt, pull on his blazer...same thing everyday. The fact that he held a Bluetooth device on his ear and constantly had a Starbucks coffee cup in his hand couldn't help his image much. One minute he was the penniless college student, the next he was the budding young YUPPIE.
Problem? Yes.
Gray Cortese was not a budding young YUPPIE in any known universe. Quite on the contrary, he was the exact opposite. Freelance photographer. Artistic soul. Arrogant alcoholic. None of those things apply to the image he sustained every Monday through Friday. There's something called downtime, you know. Surprisingly, he found it the odd month. Maybe he even had a day off. As such, he liked to portray that to the world. Kid of a fashion designer, what was he supposed to do? He had been raised around clothing and knowing what to wear when. More often than not, he wore was he shouldn't have been. Typically a band t-shirt. Typically Converse sneakers. Typically jeans of some sort. Whatever you picture the starving artist who loves old music to wear, he wore it. Probably owned the manual on that particular style. Polished in a decontructed sort of way, his appearance was not something he put a whole lot of effort into apart from work hours - even then. He liked to toe the fine like, he did.
OTHER: bugger off.
IN YOUR MOUTH, IN YOUR SOUL ,[/color]
CHARACTER PERSONALITY ,
the more we move ahead the more we're stuck in rewind[/color]
STRENGTHS: his naturally artistic eye,, things coming easily to him,, photography,, easy-going nature,, bilingual,, tough-skin,, very knowledgeable,, an "old soul",, a real individual,, not ashamed,, comfortable with himself,,[/font]
WEAKNESSES: commitment,, shuts down when directly insulted,, alcohol,, an enticing stare,, green-eyed girls,, people who test his patience,, people who don't know who his photography,,
LIKES: photography,, SLR cameras,, expensive lenses,, traveling all over the world,, hard liquor,, alcohol in general,, artistic lifestyles,, knowing things,, giving advice,, trenchcoats,, watching people,, staring,, high levels of intelligence,, being ignored,, california,, freedom,, banana splits,, his family,, albino animals,, old coins,, collectible stamps,, lighting filters,, zoom lenses,, high-fashion photography,, scoffing,, staring out the window,, bugging people,, rainy days,, coffee,, bland cigarettes,, chewing on pen caps,, the color red,, adobe photoshop,, editing,, the little umbrellas put in tropical drinks,, getting his way,, surprising people,, classic cars,, ray charles,, blues music,, chewing on icecubes,, urban legends,, saxophones,,
DISLIKES: cientific minds,, medical journals,, uptight people,, people who stalk his flickr page,, brown-eyed girls,, the spotlight,, getting attention,, growing up in paris,, staying in one place for too long,, harsh criticism,, snobs,, arguments,, being forced to do something,, talking too much,, sympathy,, spicy foods, wearing a suit everyday,, reality,, the color yellow,, flavored alcohol,, mainstream clubs,, dancing,, overly-exposed music,, electric guitar,, flavored gum,, softness,, physical affection,, miley cyrus,, dancing around the subject,, emotions getting in the way,, attachment,, brash sarcasm,, insults,, acting like more than you are,,
FLAWS: career oriented,, quite the drinker,, much too blunt,, careless,, puts on an image,, a jerk,, arrogant,, rather miserable,, lives for photography,, moronic social skills,, hypocrite,,
HABITS: cleaning his camera lenses,, wearing the same thing everyday,, slouching,, saying inappropriate things at the wrong time,, staring at people,, chewing on things,, quotes dead people to get his point across,, sounding like Google,,
SECRETS: when people typically look at a guy like gray cortese, what comes to mind? cliched artsy kid who needs a reality check. starving student. guy who needs to get his shit together. now, we won't deny any of that. for his entire life, gray had been living in the hazy cloud that many wanna-be artists live in - until the real world settles in. people tell you that living in a loft at thirty, single, going from paycheck to paycheck, is absolutely no way to live. he would agree with you. he just wouldn't care. see, he had long decided that the struggling life was the one for him. you would get that all just by watching him meander his way down the street. apart from the wanna-be artist thing, he does have his shit together. a steady job, attending classes regularly, well-furnished apartment...for a young guy, he isn't doing too bad for himself. it's just the fact that his shit often hits the fan. at the moment, absolutely no one knows of the demons hiding out in his closet. plenty of obvious skeletons, yes. scary yellow-eyed demons, no. the very fact that he cannot live a day without messing it up for himself. he can't properly function unless there is a healthy amount of vodka or tequila flowing its way through his veins. the shit really hits the fan if he pretends to be healthy. the fact that gray cortese is so damn self-destructive in order to lead a normal life. do you really want to know about that?
BEST MEMORY: well, getting the hell out of paris is a good start.
WORST MEMORY: memories. looking in the mirror every morning, sober as day. it's the worst feeling in the world. knowing that you have to go through the same bullshit again in order to appear normal, average.
OVERALL PERSONALITY: Back in the day, being different was considered a good thing. Remember that? No? Well, I don't either. Why? Because being so-called different was never a good thing. Ask Gray Cortese, and he could tell you that. People don't like others who are little off the wall, walk to the beat of their own drum. It's charming, most will say. It's amusing. Funny. But, after awhile, we all know that it becomes tiresome, frustrating. Annoying, even. Off-the-wall individuals are a good time at first; but once you realize that they're never going to change? Yeah, you go and find yourself some normal friends. However, there are sometimes the people lucky enough to find others who are similar to them. Eccentric, cut from a different kind of pie. You learn to stick together, you do. It's what people have been doing for decades. Makes them blend-in more easily - you can ignore them easier that way, yes you can. In the past, those who tried to march to their own beat ended up dead, beaten-up or shot and left to die. Probably had to listen to Madonna - gag. And then, sometimes, you find the people who just don't care. They'll act how they want, when they want. They don't care if you shoot them; they'll just crawl over to the hospital, get treated, and continue living their own way. Hippies in California. Pot-heads in New York. Homeless artists around the world. For his entire life, Gray had been met with resistance against his natural quirkiness. It was never that cool, eccentric quirkiness. No, he was just...weird. Unique, if you wanted to speak respectfully like his parents. Bless them. But, alas, it was true. Gray Cortese was of the population who was different and didn't give a damn who knew it. He never was very popular in school because of it, like most other people like him. Did he care? No, not really.
Because, you see, he's a difficult individual. Some people are different and met with ridicule. Okay, they all are. But, the point is, he was different. A lot of people are born different and quirky. Okay, that's fine. Welcomed, even. He liked unique people more anyway. However, half of these people are just that - different and quirky. They were weird and off-beat. Everyone thought it was darling until it quickly became annoying. And then these people would start to bother you about it. You're different, that's awesome. But there's no reason for you to be so loud and "out there" all the friggin time, right? Good. So, try and cut back, okay? Oh, trust me - he had gone through the same conversation countless times. Teachers, parents of friends, babysitters...the whole ten yards. And, like many others, he didn't really give a damn what people thought of him. Although, unlike many others, he never ended up changing. People have the natural want to please others, you know. And if you annoy them, there's no way they're going to give you any sort of praise. That is, unless you have something else to offer. If you're an asset to something, someone important enough, no one can really control what you do, now can they? Given that, if you're going to be different, have something to back that up. Actually be good at something, hm? Don't just go around being a moron for no reason. He hated people like that. Seeing as Gray had never changed for anyone, he must fit into that "good at something" bit, right? Exactly. Photography. His passion, his talent, the one thing in the world that he could do better than most other people. Everytime he had ever been met with that "well, you're charmingly quirky and all, but..." quip, it had quickly gone away because of his love for photography. Namely, fashion photography. Few other people could capture a model's dead expression on film and make it come alive. Very few others could transfer the magic of a photoshoot onto the glossy magazines of a fashion magazines. If you can deliver, most people don't even care what you do, nor say. Finding out how to make it work? That's just the skill people like Gray Cortese have.
strange, though. for having been raised in an environment run by skinny, cranky people, his parents had always kept a surprising level head. that waste of air, karl lagerfield could openly call quinton cortese designs roadkill, and quinton cortese himself wouldn't do anything. 'what can you do, anyway?' he would say. if the boss doesn't like you, that's okay. he can't fire you, because he's from a different department. the head of your department thinks you're doing a fine job, and that is all that matters. right-o, then. just imagine hearing that all day, everyday. it sinks in. from a young age, both of his happily-married parents told him to be happy with what he had. all without any of that 'because god gave it to you' bullshit. religion is long gone in this household, thank you. they never made excuses, yet never went out looking for someone's blood. although, between you and me, gray strongly doubted anyone in the french fashion industry had anything other than poison running through their veins. maybe some coffee. and diet pills. and heroine. champagne, too, perhaps. but, nonetheless, gray cortese was raised in one hell of a stable environment. to this day, he'd never gotten grounded. save the time indiana confined him to their shared apartment for drinking too much. she was never around, anyway. as a result, he soon became perfectly happy with what he had. he learned to never wish too hard for something that he would probably never get. he could try, sure. but if you don't get it? no use crying over spilled milk.
as soon as he was old enough to take non-shitty photographs, the old humble cortese gene rose to the surface. criticism rolled off him like water off a duck. some people loved his growing collection of pictures, some found it pathetic. well, that's fine. don't look at them. actually, that humble gene found itself going into overdrive as he entered teenage-hood. the moment that photography became the most important thing. you know when you're an artsy teenager, you want to get more involved in the local artsy teenager scene. that's when the wolves come out the den. more than anyone, gray knew that artistic people could be just as cruel, if not more, than the fashion people that he dealt with on a daily basis. now, that's lovely for them. he wouldn't stop them. he could just stay away from all of that. while his parents accepted any and all criticism with those gummy-faced smiles, it didn't always work quite that way for him. no matter how long you are around a certain kind of person, you will never emulate them perfectly. trust me, he'd tried. it didn't work that way. he thought he could take everything with a happy little smile. he could take a lot of shit, don't get me wrong. more than the average person. just not like his parents could. sometimes, it got personal. people found ways to poke the sharp little stick in just the right place. so, he began to avoid getting poked. smart, right? if you look at it another way, his father had done the same thing, simply going to open a nice little boutique in downtown paris. "he was happy with what he had." great. unlike his younger sister, gray can respect that. he's happy to have what he has now, after all. it's just, that damn weakness...gray cortese is not an individual who can take personal criticism. insult his work all you want. i'm sure you're a nice person deep down, after you've fucked your wife. when things get too 'down and dirty', the genius formerly known as no one shuts down completely. shut-up. you do, too.
without ever taking the time to build up his own self-confidence, gray continued on his happy little quest of life. fun. by the time he turned seventeen, he had become one serious photographer. he also happened to become one serious background dweller. with his sister beginning to emerge as the obvious pride of the family, he slowly shrunk into oblivion. his parents made efforts. that was nice of them. it just never mattered. he soon realized that he had always been happiest on his own, secluded in a dark room developing photos and knocking back vodka. he had joined that happy little website, flickr.com, not too long ago. someone might as well see his photographs. it's not like he was ever going to show anyone by himself. photo stream...y'know. he just didn't anticipate his stream becoming one of the highest viewed within a matter of months. apparently people liked his style, his muses. what's that technique? who's that model? i need her. never thought of that! it was a bit annoying, to be honest. but what can you do? see, gray had turned into what you could call a private person. he didn't like being out in the light when there was the option of straying in the background; perhaps quietly mocking people. he understood he was looking at photography as an actual profession. and to do that, you might, y'know, have to show people things. have them pay attention to you. best way to do that would be over the internet, safe behind his sticker-covered laptop. best of both worlds. even to this day, almost two years later, people were still avid about his stream. maybe he should make a blog. photograph enthusiasts and amateur fashion people know his work, they just don't know him. that's okay.
remember that part about being private? well, it's true. he just wasn't supposed to be like that. i guess you could say he brought it upon himself. see, gray had always chosen to be in the background, alone. lovely to see someone so comfortable with themselves. it just didn't help that he should have been preoccupied learning valuable social skills, not looking out the window, playing hangman with the little yellow bird. gray was not a social being; he has the skills to prove as such. while an expert at putting on some sort of image - people actually think he's a semi-decent human being. gaps ! - there is a certain awkwardness to him. in everything he does. even how he walks, or how he'll stutter a little and fumble his camera when meeting strangers. it's cute until he opens him mouth. without social skills, he never learned tact, either. just sort of says what he wants, that one...bit annoying, really.
annoying or not, his mind wasn't dull. he knew he didn't grow up as someone to be overly proud of. that was his shining star little sister. whenever conversation arose, he taunted people with the actual sharpness of his mind. he quoted what they said minutes earlier. multiple times. or dead people. he especially liked flashing philosophical quotes uttered by dead guys with bushy white beards. movies are good, too. intellectual films. not 'napoleon dynamite'. okay well. none of that really matters. he has his little quirks, we all understand that. the point of this paragraph? well, it's his biggest secret! something very few people actually know about gray dominic cortese. remember him not being stupid? well, apart from not being stupid, he was also normal. not eccentric in any real ways, not destined to be brilliant and alone for his entire life. like any other human being, his mind was starved for some sort of interaction. he just denied it for himself. but it was fucking there. i guess you can't ignore it forever. he had never been a big drinker as a teenager. just a few intermitten sips of wine at family functions and fashion parties. he didn't even get drunk on his eighteenth birthday. no. the first time he got drunk, he was twenty, almost twenty-one. and he did it in his little apartment in paris, alone, in the dark, watching some stupid medical drama. he didn't even know what caused him to avoid going home right after work, drop by the local liquor store and purchase a two-six of the finest vodka avaliable - polar ice. okay, it's crap. but it was the best crap he could afford. he drank it from a water bottle. woke up with no hangover. went to work with the same water bottle, filled to the brim with straight, bitter vodka. that transitioned when his family moved to valkyrie.
to this day, it is an uncommon site to see one gray cortese as sober. you can rarely tell. he acts perfectly normal when he should be falling over. a little happier, maybe. once the sobriety hits him - and it does quickly - the smirk disappears, and is replaced with the pain and vulnerability he's been denying since that night shortly before his twenty-first birthday. you just never see him like that. as every good weird loner does, he ditches as soon as that self-destructive wave hits. best wreck yourself when you're, you know, by yourself. it's been working for over a year now. not reason to stop now.
AND WE'LL BOTH GROW OLD ,[/color]
CHARACTER HISTORY ,
well i don't know, i don't know, i don't know, i hope so[/color]
HOMETOWN: paris, france.[/size][/font]
PARENTS: quinton cortese, FATHER. fifty-five. fashion designer.
naomi cortese, MOTHER. forty-nine. fashion model.
SIBLINGS: indiana cortese, SISTER. nineteen. VU student/fashion intern.
OTHER: blair cortese, COUSIN. twenty. VU student.
LIVING SITUATION: valk-based apartment with indiana.
HISTORY: As much as I wish I could say that Gray Cortese had a unique upbringing, I would be lying. You see, Quinton and Naomi Cortese were anything but extraordinary. No travelling road show of a home. No fighting and arguments. No abuse. No insane work schedules. No nannies. No curfews. No limited credit cards. Nothing. They had, by Valkyrie standards, a beautiful home with perfectly raised children in a perfectly balanced household - some boundaries, but not too many; punishments as long as the crime was deserving; freedom to a certain extent; groundings, social lives, everything went with the Cortese family. The aging fashion model and fashion designer were, what they liked to consider themselves as, good parents. And with good parenting came true understanding of your offspring, did it not? See, when they moved to California some eighteen months ago, in mid-2005, they did their research on how the other Valk-residing parents were raising their children. Some had too short of a leash on their children, others didn’t have any leashes. What was that? If you were either one, you could be called unique, out of the norm. Deviant, even.
But they weren’t like that, never had been, and never would be.
It really was a classic fairy tale for the ages. During his twenties and thirties, Quinton Cortese was a small-time European designer who made a comfortable living. He had a small following, but a loyal one. His designs reached to mid-level fashion shows all over Europe and the United Kingdom. His two Paris-based retail boutiques had both quality and quantity; people took notice of his fair amount of talent and good-natured success. He had never been, however, an overly ambitious man. Even during his time at the London School of Design, he had never felt that fiery thirst running through his veins like the great ones did – Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors. Naomi Walker, on the other hand, was on the other side of success. She had been born and raised in Milan before moving to Paris shortly after her nineteenth birthday to pursue her modeling career. During that time, in the 1970s and 1980s, there was a different trend on the catwalks than what is common today. The models were slightly larger, fitting into sizes four and six, not zero and two. They had bright eyes and sweet smiles. Naomi, on the other hand, stood at a solid six feet with bones protruding from her clavicle region. Her angular face and intense stare turned many of the big-name designer off the moment the flipped open her look-book. As a struggling editorial model, she really did have to take what she could get. And what should she get but an interested smile by modestly successful French designer Quinton Cortese. He was known around Paris for his structural designs and unusual models. She happened to be both structural and unusual. After five solid years of struggling for a steady income, Naomi was soon signed to the modeling agency “FI”, which did the majority of its work with Quinton. It was just the beginning of their happy ending, though.
After two solid years of modeling for Quinton, the sparks began to fly between designer and model. It was so common for people in the fashion industry to be catty and promiscuous. It was uncommon for people like Naomi and Quinton to make it in the fashion industry, remember. They were B-list at best, but seemed rather satisfied with the bit of success they had made together. He made a comfortable living with a modest reputation and loyal following. She was the frontline model for a humble little design company. What should happen next in the fairy tale? Sparks turn into a relationship and a relationship turns into a happy, stable marriage. Which is exactly what it did.
On November 13th, 1984, just months after Naomi had turned into Mrs. Quinton Cortese, she gave birth to their first child, Gray Dominic. They raised their child to be exactly as they had been – grateful for what he had, but aware of what needed to be done for succession. Some years later, on February 27th, 1989, the second Cortese child was born into the world. On a sunny afternoon in central Paris, France, Quinton and Naomi Cortese completed the family they had always wanted. With his design work and her mildly halted modeling career bringing in a handsome income, they quickly learned to live with more than they ever had before. For the first time since both of their careers began, they could purchase a larger house – several in fact, three vacation homes plus their California mansion around the world. They could drive foreign sports cars. They could support their children in a stable environment without ever having to seriously consider bankruptcy. And all because of good, honest hard work. See? It does pay off sometimes.
Shortly after Indiana’s sixteenth birthday, another chance of a lifetime knocked on their humble little door. An American clothing chain had taken notice of the talented designer and offered him a position to design a clothing line for a small boutique in a small town just outside of Los Angeles which would, according to them, bring in more tourists and get him noticed. Sounds good. Ecstatic with this news, Quinton quickly hired several more staff members to run his shops in Paris, as well as assist him in his European lines, and moved his wife and son to Valkyrie, California. Not so bad, is it?
I think it has been established that the Cortese family is one of the few honest, hard-working families who happen to find a break and make it in the superficial world of health and wealth, money and honey, everyday is Ice Cream Sunday, yes? It a damn good thing, too. Because Naomi and Quinton’s two children definitely weren’t devices to fit into the world of The Valley. Indiana had never experienced much of a high school experience, so she didn’t need to worry about that. Gray, on the other hand, had grown up in the shadows of his family’s honesty and determination. He had never had the ambition his sister had, nor the happy acceptance that both of his good-natured parents did. I guess you could say he fell somewhere in the middle. During elementary school, he was the kid at the very front of the classroom who was just pretending to pay attention to the teacher’s lesson on the ABCs. He would be staring right at her and her horrific polka-dot dress, rearranging her appearance with his mind.
He never stood out from the crowd, see. No extraordinary talents. No troublemaking antics. Not even a bright little smile that would make everything okay. He wasn’t a well-trained puppy dog. Quite on the contrary, Gray was, according to everyone around him, “average.” He never exceeded in anything in his life. Yet, he never seemed to fit into the image of an average kid. Even during middle school, he was normal but not. While he brown-bagged him lunch and read books during class – as opposed to working – there was that little sparkle in his eye that told the world there was more to him than a boyish smile and a wild imagination. And, in all honesty, he liked it like that. He felt no wish to stand out above the rest in any way, shape or form. He didn’t want to break the law, he didn’t want to excel in his work life, he didn’t even want the hottest girlfriend of them all. He didn’t stand out from the crowd, but who was it to say that he wanted to?
There was no interesting story of his life. He grew up in a good family, did good in school, did good work, everything was “good”. That boring, four-letter word that defined his entire life. The one small difference in Gray Cortese? His artistic eye; it was unnaturally strong. He could find the smallest of flaws in anything. Once, when he was seven or eight, and they had been visiting museums, he had managed to find a small smudge on the Mona Lisa. That should have told the world right there and then. By age sixteen, he had accumulated a shockingly large collection of cameras, both digital and film, that rarely left his hands. He spent nearly every waking moment taking photographs of every kind – monochromatic, editorial shots, candid pictures, nature, artistic, bold, urban. You name it, he had done it. While his sister was the natural-born follower, Gray was the natural-born leader. In everything he did, he could easily take charge. People simply looked to him calming gaze for some sort of direction, a bit of advice. Like he was everyone’s slutty little Yoda, or something.
With an unusual mindset, it was no wonder that Gray had a difficult time in high school. No matter where he went, he didn’t fit in quite well enough. His puzzle piece was different from everyone else’s. He wasn’t classy enough for them; wasn’t brash enough for that clique; too loud for the meek loners; too quiet for the actors. That was the thing about this particular Cortese: he just never seemed to fit in anywhere. He wasn’t quiet and submissive, but he wasn’t loud and aggressive, either. He wasn’t creative enough to be an artist, but he wasn’t spineless enough to be a set painter. He was a photographer all and above it. He made his mark with a “flickr” page. A small little photo stream on a worldwide picture supporter, rather like “photobucket”. Here, he posted every photograph he ever took. He had nature shots, scenic shots, even a few collections of city captures. However, his passion was truly tested when he helped his sister when a photographer was needed for this photoshoot or that magazine ad. The name Cortese was trusted enough to know he would do a decent job.
And so it was.
At the age of twenty-two, Gray has been living in Valkyrie for the past eighteen months, just like his parents. Studying photography and photo journalism at Valkyrie University, his photograph collection has just started to get noticed among the citizens of the coastal town. Never one for the spotlight, this Cortese lets his parents take all the credit for the amazing talent that is their artistic son. A rather blank canvas, he just needs to find his place here.
COLLECTED MY BELONGINGS ,[/color]
ABOUT YOU AND FOR THE ADMINS ,
and i left the jail, well thanks for the time[/color]
YOUR NAME: asia the best goalie ever. :][/size][/font]
GENDER: part female, part alien.
AGE: eighteen years until i die.
RP EXPERIENCE: the beginning of time.
OTHER CHARACTERS: them flingers.
ROLEPLAY EXAMPLE: i still can't figure out how.credit: format by lainey, lyrics by modest mouse
