Post by cooper on Jul 12, 2009 1:15:55 GMT -6
[/color]VALKYRIE,
CALIFORNIA
the ocean breathes salty, won't you carry it in?
i tell my love to wreck it all, cut
out all the ropes & let me fall[/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: cooper mathias bell[/font]
NICKNAMES: none that he'll share with you
GENDER: male
AGE: eighteen
UNIVERSITY YEAR: will be entering freshmen in the fall
MAJOR: visual arts
MINOR: classics & classical studies
JOB: none
PLAYBY: hayden christensen
YOUR BODY MAY BE GONE ,[/color]
CHARACTER APPEARANCE ,
i'm gonna carry you in my head, in my heart, in my soul[/color]
ETHNICITY: american, british, irish[/font]
HAIR COLOR: sandy/dirty dark blonde
EYE COLOR: grayish bluish greenish
HEIGHT: 6'1"
WEIGHT: 155 pounds
BODY TYPE: slim but not very toned
DISTINGUISHED FEATURES: prominent adams apple
PERSONAL STYLE: cooper hasn't ever been one to care much about his clothes. he likes to keep it simple because, frankly, he doesn't understand how anyone can work up the energy to fuss over what they wear. he prefers simple stuff; jeans, t shirts, hoodies... casual things, though from time to time he'll switch things up with a fancier garment (his sister likes to give him more formal clothing on holidays and on his birthday). seeing as he's color blind, cooper prefers to wear more neutral colors and almost never goes shopping alone, so that he doesn't accidentally buy a pair of bright red pants instead of a pair of muted blue ones.
OTHER: nope
IN YOUR MOUTH, IN YOUR SOUL ,[/color]
CHARACTER PERSONALITY ,
the more we move ahead the more we're stuck in rewind[/color]
STRENGTHS: drawing, keeping secrets, being polite, remembering details, being alone for long amounts of time,[/font]
WEAKNESSES: colorblind, melanie, cooking, singing, talking about how he's feeling, quick temper, gets violent, self critical,
LIKES: graphic novels, new york city, stormy weather, cloudy weather, rain, drawing, being left alone, melanie, smart girls, sad movies, not spending too much time with others, being polite, classic rock, reading, chocolate milkshakes, nighttime, early morning, cheeseburgers, the simpsons, video games, alternative music, italian food, tragic movies, tragic books,
DISLIKES: people who are too cheerful, california, sunny weather, green beans, having to surround himself with too many people for long amounts of time, early afternoons, cheesy romance movies, rude people, ignorant people, girls who shop too much, snobs, chicken, people who have it good and complain all the time, people who think the world revolves around them, most mainstream music,
FLAWS: self critical, gets violent, doesn't communicate his feelings well, broods, isolates himself, often judgmental,
HABITS: sketching on any available piece of paper when there's a writing utensil around, isolating himself when he's upset, staying up late and getting up early, comparing people to characters in books,
SECRETS: feels responsible for the death of a friend in a car accident
BEST MEMORY: the fourth of july the year he turned nine, his family went out of town to see some fireworks from a pier, his father bought him and melanie two of the best ice cream cones he had ever tasted and when they got back home, he went outside and stared at the stars until he fell asleep
WORST MEMORY: waking up in a hospital, disoriented and freaked out, and being told that one of his closest friends was dead
OVERALL PERSONALITY: first things first, cooper has never been a very open person. he's not comfortable talking about his feelings or sharing them in any way. most of what goes on inside his head stays inside his head, though sometimes some things make their way onto a page in the particular graphic novel he happens to be attempting to put together at the time. he's not emotionally void by any means, but his emotions very rarely make it to his surface, which leaves some people arriving at the wrong conclusion. and why are his emotions rarely visible? because he doesn't feel the need to share or display them. and eighteen years of keeping what he's feeling bottled up beneath the surface has pretty much cemented the practice. usually, the only time you'll really be able to tell what's going on inside his head is when he gets pissed off. because with cooper, he usually doesn't bother with petty anger or small amounts of rage, so either he's okay or he's just plain furious. and when he's furious, his temper more often gets the better of him and punches often fly. coop gets violent quite quickly, more so than you would expect of someone who comes off as perfectly even tempered most of the time.
because when cooper isn't spitting mad, he can be quite pleasant to be around, though a lot of the time during social situations he's not completely present mentally. he believes in manners and politeness and behaves like a perfect gentleman pretty much constantly (when he's not throwing the occaisonally punch). he'll hold the door open for you, help you pick up the books you dropped, say please and thank you, let you take the last item of a particular kind from the shelf at the super market, watches his language and lets you cut in front of him in line. it's not really necessarily because he's very concerned about the welfare of society or your feelings - sometimes it's the reason, but only to a certain degree - , but often it's simply because it's a nice thing to do and he's been taught to be nice; a lot of the time he's simply going through the motions of it, completely lost somewhere in his mind at the same time, not really caring.
despite his gentlemnaly attributes, cooper is really quite an antisocial guy. being around large groups of people for long periods of time is a huge energy drain for him, so school was often a bit of an issue for him. he had always been a smart kid and all, but spending eight hours a day, five days a week in a building filled with people got to be a quite trying experience for him. he spends most of his free time alone because he just can't see the appeal in hanging around people all the time. it's just... blech. time is just more enjoyable for him when spent alone, though this sometimes gets out of hand. cooper tends to isolate himself, especially when he's upset, and his step sister suspects that if it weren't for her to drag him out into the outside world every once in a while, he would stay cooped up inside his room forever. and no one can find fault with that suspicion, based on the evidence. coop can handle being on his own for tremendous amounts of time and is really good at working on his own and producing quality results; he works best alone, working in groups tends to stress him to no end, much more than working solo does, which is why he was never particularly fond of a lot of the science courses he took throughout high school, seeing as they often involved lab partners and group work.
cooper has always been quite perceptive and realistic, and he's always been fairly cynical by nature. so, when he looks at the world, he often gets depressed. i mean, look at everything. not much is going right. things in life get him down and depressed pretty quickly, and when cooper gets depressed; he broods. he barricades himself in his room and just mopes around for hours on end. it's been his solution since he was about nine or ten, when it first dawned on him what a shitty world he was living in.
given his cynical nature, it's probably a very good thing that cooper's an artistic guy. his knack for sketching emerged when he was in his early preteen years and a small gift for writing made itself evident soon enough after that, as well. cooper puts these talents into designing graphics novels. so far he's finished two but never done anything with them... for two reasons. 1) he didn't think they were all that great 2) just because. these talents give cooper some small sense of purpose, without which he'd probably feel a lot more desolate most of the time. and writing is often a vent for him. sometimes, when he's really upset and mad at the world, he just writes down what's in his head until his feelings are less extreme.
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: valkyrie[/size][/font]
PARENTS:
carson bell, father, corporate mastermind, 45
angelina mcnamara-bell, mother, deceased
luciana bell, step mother, socialite, 41
SIBLINGS:
melanie bell, step sister, 17
OTHER: no
LIVING SITUATION: valks
HISTORY: cooper mathias bell was born on the first of november in the year 1988 at 12:04 a.m. his mother, angelina mcnamara-bell, had rather been hoping he would arrive on halloween, but he had been five minutes too late for that. cooper was born into wealth, because his father, carson bell, had a real head for business and put this skill to use. he spent his very early days being pampered, but no spoiled, in a lovely valk mansion, existing happily with his mother and father, even if he was a bit too young to appreciate this.
of course this couldn't last, because that would be a bit boring, wouldn't it? a couple weeks before cooper's first birthday, his mother angelina was driving home from the bridal shower of a close friend of hers. you can probably guess where this is heading; she got distracted, took her concentration off the road, and got into an accident. all the officials told carson that she hadn't suffered at all; she had died on impact, but it was a small comfort to him. angelina was still gone. he was left without a wife; the woman he had loved most in the world, and cooper, his son and only child, was left without a mother. cooper registered the absensce but didn't understand it, of course. and how did you go about explaining the concept of death to a one year old?
everything was fairly grim for a while. carson was trying to cope with the death of his wife and raise cooper but wound up having to hire a nanny or two so that he could keep up with juggling life. there's that saying; 'time heals all wounds', right? sometimes, to a person who has just been wounded devastatingly, that saying sometimes seems resoundingly untrue, almost laughable. but, often, as time progresses, it proves itself true, at least to a small degree. time went on for the now smaller bell family and the wounds did begin to heal. carson met luciana brody about a year after the death of angelina and, to his surprise, fell in love with her only about three months later. it astounded him how he could still miss angelina so fervently and love luciana equally as forcefully at the same time. the two were married a few months later, which brought melanie into the family. she and cooper were both essentially infants when they met, so niether of them remeber the first time they saw each other. but they matured into toddlers and small children with the other having always been there, and a bond formed through that simple fact. they hardly ever fought and were each other's main companion throughout their childhoods. even at that young age, they genuinely understood each other.
school for cooper was pretty uneventful, except for a few of his teachers voicing concern to his parents about his antisocial tendancies and his refusals to communicate. he stuck to himself during the designated play times and during recesses and often refused to talk to teachers, seeming unimpressed at their attempts to engage him in communication. he was smart, though, they could see that, and as time went on he managed to gain a couple of chums that he seemed to enjoy hanging around with.
his elementary and middle school years were also fairly void of special or particularly memorable events. it was during this time that cooper discovered the wonders of comic books and video games and began to share the addiction with melanie. his talents for drawing and writing also emerged, though his teachers were disappointed that he didn't seem interested in displaying them much during school. life was overall pretty mellow and enjoyable enough, though he was struck by the occaisonal bout of 'disappointed-with-the-world' melancholy depression. then the inevitable high school years rolled around. everyone around him was either stressed, nervous, excited or all three, but not cooper. he felt fairly indifferent about the whole thing. high school would be an adjustment that would take some getting used to, and he was pretty sure he would survive. he sported a very 'meh' attitude about it. and that was what high school proved to be; 'meh'. the upperclassmen behaved like asses sometimes, but it was pretty easy to ignore them. not all that much drama worked its way into his personal life, though it seemed to invest the lives of those around him. he was just... indifferent and aloof about pretty much everything, so nothing life was tossing at him hit him hard. then, one day, in art class, his teacher noticed something peculiar. cooper had always used colors that were a bit... odd for his artwork, but everyone had always assumed it was just his artistic expression. but his art teacher realized that cooper didn't seem to realize that he was using odd colors. she talked to the school nurse, who gave coop a quick vision test, and who highly suspected he was color blind, but sent him over to a professional optometrist to be sure. and, sure enough, he found that cooper bell did indeed have protanomanly color blindness. he informed cooper, and cooper shrugged.
in cooper's sophomore year of high school, his father informed the family that he had received a great job offer in new york city and that they would be relocating there. cooper didn't really mind; he had friends in valkyrie but distance was why email had been invented, right? melanie took the news much worse, as most of you know, and began to act out the moment her feet touched new york soil. cooper settled into his new school and new home fairly well, and so did melanie, but she seemed to be settling into the wrong areas of their new situation. it was scary for cooper, to watch the step sister he loved a lot transform into a girl he didn't know, to watch her start to lose herself. he tried talking to her, everyone did, but to no avail. nothing seemed to work. but then came a party, during which she almost drowned. cooper hadn't been there and didn't receive the news until the next morning, but it still scared the shit out of him. the good news was that it seemed to scare melanie straight and she started to turn back into the sister he loved again.
only a couple months after melanie's near death experience, cooper was driving home from a party with a couple of his close buddies. he wasn't in a very good mood because he hadn't enjoyed the party and had wound up staying much longer than he would have liked because his friends had insisted upon staying "just a little bit longer". cooper was sitting in the back seat of his friend's suv, lost in his own little world while his buddies talked and joked raucously. suddenly, there was some sort of impact and he was thrown forward forcefully and his memory fizzed out on him. the next thing he remembered was waking up in a hospital bed after having been unconscious for several hours. after it was decided that he was in stable enough condition, cooper finally got a nurse to tell him what had become of his three friends. one of them was perfectly fine, with only a couple of bruises. another had a broken wrist and rib. the other was dead.
the whole thing succeeded in tearing him up inside. he missed his friend a lot and for a long time, he struggled with the thought that it could have been him in the passenger seat, he could have been the one to lose his life, not his friend. it could have so easily been him... why hadn't it? what was it that had prevented him from climbing into the front seat that night? what was it that had prevented the friend who had been driver to swerve in a different direction, so that his side of the car was the one that got crushed? everything in his whole fucking world that he counted on to be stable was completely fragile, and it freaked him out.
time went on and managed to ease that wound, as well, though cooper never fully stopped feeling guilty, about everything that hadn't been and that could have been and that should have been. he withdrew even more than usual for a while, isolating himself whenever at all possible, becoming a bit of a zombie for a while, until he managed to clear his head a little. things went on relatively uneventfully until his father announced that he was leaving his job here in new york because of a rather foolish business mistake he had made and the family would be moving back to valkyrie. luciana and melanie left fairly promptly, but it had been decided that it would be best if cooper could just finish up his senior year of high school in new york. and so cooper did and received his diploma from the private high school he attended. he and his father had planned on leaving about a week after graduation, but some some work stuff came up for carson, so the two wound up staying in the large city for about another month until he got it resolved. now cooper is back, in california, in valkyrie, the town in which he was born, ready to attend universtiy in the fall. whatcha got for him, v-side?
COLLECTED MY BELONGINGS ,[/color]
ABOUT YOU AND FOR THE ADMINS ,
and i left the jail, well thanks for the time[/color]
YOUR NAME: clare the bear[/size][/font][/blockquote]
GENDER: girl
AGE: fourteennn
RP EXPERIENCE: two years
OTHER CHARACTERS: artemis, milo, robbie, andie, cat, charlie & melanie
ROLEPLAY EXAMPLE:really?credit: format by lainey, lyrics by modest mouse
