the pocket otter (![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} pocketotter) wrote,@ 2009-06-03 18:58:00 |
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benjy fenwick for ~lollygaggers
the player
name: Kei
age: 24
contact: thepocketotter (AIM)
timezone: GMT+12
experience: http://pocketotter.insanejournal.com/27
the character
full name: Benjamin Nathaniel Fenwick
d.o.b./age: 18/12/59, 17
sexuality: Heterosexual
house/year Ravenclaw, seventh
bloodline: Halfblood; Muggleborn mother, Muggle father
location: The village of Appletreewick, in the Yorkshire Dales of North Yorkshire.
personality:
Benjy lives in a world of theory and facts and science, which might seem rather strange for a wizard. Growing up, though, he was used to his parents rationalising magic as its own kind of science with rules and limits, and this concept got him interested in exploring what those rules and limits are. He's very much a visual learner, the sort of person that likes to draw charts and diagrams and idea-maps, and while these often go off on such wild theoretical tangents that other people don't quite comprehend what he's trying to convey, he's also pretty well practiced at boiling a concept down to its essential parts and explaining it to people not on his wavelength. Well practiced, at least, but not necessarily always successful, depending on the listener. He is also a hands-speaker, gesticulating increasingly enthusiastically as his involvement in a conversation grows; this quirk is a result of the way he thinks, something that will later be known as number-form synesthesia with a dash of grapheme-colour.
When you manage to get him away from his charts and graphs, Benjy is a rather easygoing person, with a sense of humour that tends to bubble up out of him at odd moments. It's not even a universal sense of humour, rather one that he indulges in solely for his own amusement, so quite often when he makes jokes they're met with blank stares and confused looks. And while he understands his own behaviours perfectly, it's not uncommon for him to completely overlook the social cues of others and inadvertently rub people the wrong way through some breach of tact, casual comment taken the wrong way, or implication that he didn't pick up on.
To his friends, Benjy is earnest and generous of spirit, sincerely caring about their well-being. He has a faith in humanity and general optimism that makes it hard for him to hold a grudge, particularly against his chosen posse, and he's willing to overlook all kinds of character flaws in his search for the good in people. This cheerfulness has a tendency to rub off on those around him, as any annoyance or anger directed his way is often met with genuine bafflement at what exactly he might have done to earn it, or else is resisted like water off a duck's back. (He has been hexed or hit three times for meeting irritation with good humour and only further frustrating people.) He never really means to upset anyone, it's simply that sometimes their feelings get a bit trodden on while he's got his head in the clouds somewhere.
Being a Ravenclaw, Benjy's most obvious strength is his intelligence. It's not just that he's smart, but that he's able to visualise a concept or situation and see the links between events, as though reality is a web that spreads outwards around him. It may be an overly-analytical way of looking at things, but it works for him, and he can easily convert it to be used in different ways - for example, imagining numbers placed in front of and around himself, and changing the length of the rows so he can work in systems other than base ten.
His lack of finesse in social situations, and the fact that he's unaware of his lack of finesse, can do plenty to balance this out, however. He can't factor everything in if he can't pick up on subtle interpersonal ploys, and when he inevitably overlooks something and comes to the wrong conclusion he's left scrambling to sift through his assumptions and figure out where he went wrong. He seems to always be a step behind on the gossip and where everyone stands with each other, and as he's aware that he tends to forgive everyone their faults, he's often forced to rely on his friends to keep an eye on those who can't be trusted and steer him clear of them.
history:
Despite her magic, Rachel Velasco still had strong ties to the Muggle world, ties that she didn't want to entirely give up on. After she finished school she remained living with her family in Yorkshire and occasionally doing a shift in the pub that her parents owned together; it was the pride of the family since the couple had moved to the UK from Spain and scraped together the money to buy it. During most of the week she worked as an apprentice Healer at St Mungo's Hospital. One evening when she was sitting in the pub with her sister she ran into Geoffrey Fenwick, a local excavator who she'd seen around a few times but never really talked to. The two hit it off, and their relationship progressed quickly along the most predictable of lines.
He proposed much sooner than she expected, before she'd had the time to fill him in on exactly what it was about her that wasn't quite like other girls, and the question forced her to play her hand a bit earlier than planned. Without putting much forethought into the explanation it came across a bit mixed up, and at first Geoff thought she wasn't being serious - she always did have a bit of a strange sense of humour - but when he realised she was sincere, it took a while for him to get used to the idea.
They may not have gotten married as quickly as Geoffrey had originally hoped, but when they did it was with a better appreciation of their differences and similarities, and both of them were thrilled when Rachel fell pregnant a few months after the wedding, even when Rachel explained that the baby was exceptionally likely to carry the gene for wizardry and would have to go away for school to the mysterious castle in Scotland that people like Geoff could never find or see. In fact, the revelation launched a long tradition of discussions of the rules and limitations of magic that was to be a great influence on the mind of the baby that Rachel carried.
The baby was a boy, named Benjamin Nathaniel, but no one ever called him anything except Benjy. He was full of imagination and good spirited, but didn't always have many close friends as a child because of his tendency to want to play intricate games of make believe with rules that none of the other children really understood, and his parents often worried about the fact that he seemed to be happier sitting at home reading or talking to them than with children his own age.
Shortly before his sixth birthday, Rachel fell pregnant again, this time with a girl. Despite their worry about bringing a second baby into the life of an only child who was old enough to be aware of it, Benjy only had the occasional jealous fit. Most of the time he was rather fascinated by the soft pink thing, and he quite liked to play with her - a few times one or the other of his parents would walk into the room to find Alana's toys floating in the air above her head while she giggled with joy at the show her brother was putting on for her, albeit half-unmeaning to.
As his eleventh birthday passed and the day his Hogwarts letter came drew closer, Benjy started to become more withdrawn and anxious. The truth was he was a bit scared to go all the way to Scotland, where he wouldn't be able to play with his sister or talk to his parents and would be surrounded by other kids who didn't understand him and thought he was weird. He was almost in tears when the day finally came, and he spent much of the train ride hunched up in a corner of a compartment with his nose in a book to hide his upset.
It was hard to sulk when he actually saw Hogwarts, though, and his mother had done much to try to play up the wonder of the place, soothe his fears about the Sorting, and raise his expectations for the wonderful Feast that would be given on the first night. He was rather pleased to be put into Ravenclaw house, and as he became more engaged in paying attention to his surroundings he forgot to be afraid. As it turned out, many of his fears were unwarranted - yes, he didn't have his parents or sister, but he did make friends, particularly the bright, accomplished and all around brilliant (or so it seemed to Benjy) Fabian Prewett and his brother Gideon.
School became something of an adventure as he tried his hand at a few different activities and tried to pick his favourite classes, most of which tended to be those steeped in theory. Theory was something he could understand, having grown up with people who rather enjoyed discussing and analysing it, and Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, Astronomy and even Potions, which required an actual knowledge of what you were doing and why, became subjects in which Benjy excelled in his OWL year. He had to make some tough decisions about his classes coming into sixth year, though, as the two careers he was considering - Healing research or the Department of Mysteries - had quite different requirements, and didn't leave much room for extra classes, but in the end he settled for the bare minimum requirements for each career - Arithmancy, Divination, Charms, Transfiguration, Potions, Herbology and Defense - a timetable more practical than indulgent to his tastes.
relatives
Mother - Rachel Fenwick, nee Velasco, Muggleborn
Father - Geoffrey Fenwick, Muggle
Sister - Alana Fenwick, b 1966 (Hufflepuff first year)
The makeup of the Fenwick family is such that it's a bridge between the magical and Muggle worlds, and this has always been a great comfort to Benjy. He can talk to them about his schooling and the status of the Wizarding world, and while his father might not understand everything perfectly, they at least all have a grasp on it. At the same time they're all quite well-versed in Muggle matters as well. Benjy feels that all of him is equally loved and welcome when he's with his family, with no part of himself being dismissed as unimportant or ignored.
Depending on his winsomeness, Benjy may also claim:
Brothers - Fabian and Gideon Prewett
played by: luke pasqualino
writing sample #1: third person, roleplay. please write a sample of how you think your character would act when they're in love/when they've lost someone/when they've graduated or any other big event you can think of.
The letter arrived over breakfast, as letters at Hogwarts were wont to do, and Benjy scrambled to save it from his porridge before the corner of it suffered a milky death. He had lost more than one letter this way, and while the majority of them were still readable, the affect on the ink on the doused edge was decidedly disconcerting and something he tried to avoid, particularly in case the letter was actually something he wanted to keep. Hurriedly attempting to finish his Divs homework before class, he put the letter aside without looking at it until Fabian peered at him across the table and asked, "Why's the Ministry owling you?"
"Hmmngh?" he replied, then realised what Fabian had actually said and looked up quite quickly. "Wait what?" Indeed, the letter bore the wax seal of the Ministry of Magic, and he broke it quickly, tugging the paper out with only a modicum of care to make sure it didn't tear. The Department of Mysteries. No one even knew exactly what they did there, except that they were highly selective about job applicants, requiring both high marks and some kind of peculiar result on the four page questionnaire that was part of the application process. Benjy wasn't entirely sure exactly what result they wanted, as the questions had been a somewhat bizarre mixture of logic, general knowledge, creative theory and philosophy (he had been particularly confused by "What is your favourite type of biscuit?" and "Is this a rhetorical question?"), many of which didn't seem to have a correct response.
Homework forgotten, he carefully unfolded the parchment, smoothing out the creases in the paper before turning them over to skim the looped handwriting of whoever it was who dealt with potential applicants (the deputy head, it turned out). Unlike most responses, in which one could generally tell what the result would be in the first sentence, he had to get to the middle of the second paragraph before finding the words he was looking for. "I've got an interview!" he announced even as he continued reading, flicking to the second page in search of any other relevant information. Someone was going to come and meet him on Sunday, apparently-- and as it was currently Friday morning, that meant he had to suffer an agony of waiting and likely an entire day of wasted classes. He couldn't force himself to care, however. Not when his oatmeal and raisins had actually seen him through.
writing sample #2: first person, journal. please write a sample of how you think your character would respond to the news that a relative has died/has been born.
I have received the tragic news via owl (who regarded me with a great deal of solemnity, but as he always regards me with a great deal of solemnity I am unconvinced that he was aware of the contents of said letter) that my Gramps' brother has passed. I think this is the first time he's left the pub in three years, and I would have to ask whether or not he's actually managed not to tell them how to plan the funeral. Last time I saw him he told me that I shouldn't pull my trunk along behind me, especially when I'm getting onto the train, because the doors might close behind me and trap it. I'm not sure either whether or not he was aware that I had successfully made the trip to school six times previously. (Well, possibly excepting that one time in fourth year, but I blame Gideon for that.)
He'll probably be sorely missed among the other octogenarians of Aptrick, who outside of the family are probably the only people who ever understood what he was saying. Despite the fact that I'm pretty certain he never paid for a drink in his life, he did tell some damn good stories. Makes me wonder how many of them were wasted on people who just heard, "allus a bad un ee dunst be faffin eeh by gum gi over ye mardy rum'n."
the player
name: Kei
age: 24
contact: thepocketotter (AIM)
timezone: GMT+12
experience: http://pocketotter.insanejournal.com/27
runbenjyrun specificallythe character
full name: Benjamin Nathaniel Fenwick
d.o.b./age: 18/12/59, 17
sexuality: Heterosexual
house/year Ravenclaw, seventh
bloodline: Halfblood; Muggleborn mother, Muggle father
location: The village of Appletreewick, in the Yorkshire Dales of North Yorkshire.
personality:
Benjy lives in a world of theory and facts and science, which might seem rather strange for a wizard. Growing up, though, he was used to his parents rationalising magic as its own kind of science with rules and limits, and this concept got him interested in exploring what those rules and limits are. He's very much a visual learner, the sort of person that likes to draw charts and diagrams and idea-maps, and while these often go off on such wild theoretical tangents that other people don't quite comprehend what he's trying to convey, he's also pretty well practiced at boiling a concept down to its essential parts and explaining it to people not on his wavelength. Well practiced, at least, but not necessarily always successful, depending on the listener. He is also a hands-speaker, gesticulating increasingly enthusiastically as his involvement in a conversation grows; this quirk is a result of the way he thinks, something that will later be known as number-form synesthesia with a dash of grapheme-colour.
When you manage to get him away from his charts and graphs, Benjy is a rather easygoing person, with a sense of humour that tends to bubble up out of him at odd moments. It's not even a universal sense of humour, rather one that he indulges in solely for his own amusement, so quite often when he makes jokes they're met with blank stares and confused looks. And while he understands his own behaviours perfectly, it's not uncommon for him to completely overlook the social cues of others and inadvertently rub people the wrong way through some breach of tact, casual comment taken the wrong way, or implication that he didn't pick up on.
To his friends, Benjy is earnest and generous of spirit, sincerely caring about their well-being. He has a faith in humanity and general optimism that makes it hard for him to hold a grudge, particularly against his chosen posse, and he's willing to overlook all kinds of character flaws in his search for the good in people. This cheerfulness has a tendency to rub off on those around him, as any annoyance or anger directed his way is often met with genuine bafflement at what exactly he might have done to earn it, or else is resisted like water off a duck's back. (He has been hexed or hit three times for meeting irritation with good humour and only further frustrating people.) He never really means to upset anyone, it's simply that sometimes their feelings get a bit trodden on while he's got his head in the clouds somewhere.
Being a Ravenclaw, Benjy's most obvious strength is his intelligence. It's not just that he's smart, but that he's able to visualise a concept or situation and see the links between events, as though reality is a web that spreads outwards around him. It may be an overly-analytical way of looking at things, but it works for him, and he can easily convert it to be used in different ways - for example, imagining numbers placed in front of and around himself, and changing the length of the rows so he can work in systems other than base ten.
His lack of finesse in social situations, and the fact that he's unaware of his lack of finesse, can do plenty to balance this out, however. He can't factor everything in if he can't pick up on subtle interpersonal ploys, and when he inevitably overlooks something and comes to the wrong conclusion he's left scrambling to sift through his assumptions and figure out where he went wrong. He seems to always be a step behind on the gossip and where everyone stands with each other, and as he's aware that he tends to forgive everyone their faults, he's often forced to rely on his friends to keep an eye on those who can't be trusted and steer him clear of them.
history:
Despite her magic, Rachel Velasco still had strong ties to the Muggle world, ties that she didn't want to entirely give up on. After she finished school she remained living with her family in Yorkshire and occasionally doing a shift in the pub that her parents owned together; it was the pride of the family since the couple had moved to the UK from Spain and scraped together the money to buy it. During most of the week she worked as an apprentice Healer at St Mungo's Hospital. One evening when she was sitting in the pub with her sister she ran into Geoffrey Fenwick, a local excavator who she'd seen around a few times but never really talked to. The two hit it off, and their relationship progressed quickly along the most predictable of lines.
He proposed much sooner than she expected, before she'd had the time to fill him in on exactly what it was about her that wasn't quite like other girls, and the question forced her to play her hand a bit earlier than planned. Without putting much forethought into the explanation it came across a bit mixed up, and at first Geoff thought she wasn't being serious - she always did have a bit of a strange sense of humour - but when he realised she was sincere, it took a while for him to get used to the idea.
They may not have gotten married as quickly as Geoffrey had originally hoped, but when they did it was with a better appreciation of their differences and similarities, and both of them were thrilled when Rachel fell pregnant a few months after the wedding, even when Rachel explained that the baby was exceptionally likely to carry the gene for wizardry and would have to go away for school to the mysterious castle in Scotland that people like Geoff could never find or see. In fact, the revelation launched a long tradition of discussions of the rules and limitations of magic that was to be a great influence on the mind of the baby that Rachel carried.
The baby was a boy, named Benjamin Nathaniel, but no one ever called him anything except Benjy. He was full of imagination and good spirited, but didn't always have many close friends as a child because of his tendency to want to play intricate games of make believe with rules that none of the other children really understood, and his parents often worried about the fact that he seemed to be happier sitting at home reading or talking to them than with children his own age.
Shortly before his sixth birthday, Rachel fell pregnant again, this time with a girl. Despite their worry about bringing a second baby into the life of an only child who was old enough to be aware of it, Benjy only had the occasional jealous fit. Most of the time he was rather fascinated by the soft pink thing, and he quite liked to play with her - a few times one or the other of his parents would walk into the room to find Alana's toys floating in the air above her head while she giggled with joy at the show her brother was putting on for her, albeit half-unmeaning to.
As his eleventh birthday passed and the day his Hogwarts letter came drew closer, Benjy started to become more withdrawn and anxious. The truth was he was a bit scared to go all the way to Scotland, where he wouldn't be able to play with his sister or talk to his parents and would be surrounded by other kids who didn't understand him and thought he was weird. He was almost in tears when the day finally came, and he spent much of the train ride hunched up in a corner of a compartment with his nose in a book to hide his upset.
It was hard to sulk when he actually saw Hogwarts, though, and his mother had done much to try to play up the wonder of the place, soothe his fears about the Sorting, and raise his expectations for the wonderful Feast that would be given on the first night. He was rather pleased to be put into Ravenclaw house, and as he became more engaged in paying attention to his surroundings he forgot to be afraid. As it turned out, many of his fears were unwarranted - yes, he didn't have his parents or sister, but he did make friends, particularly the bright, accomplished and all around brilliant (or so it seemed to Benjy) Fabian Prewett and his brother Gideon.
School became something of an adventure as he tried his hand at a few different activities and tried to pick his favourite classes, most of which tended to be those steeped in theory. Theory was something he could understand, having grown up with people who rather enjoyed discussing and analysing it, and Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, Astronomy and even Potions, which required an actual knowledge of what you were doing and why, became subjects in which Benjy excelled in his OWL year. He had to make some tough decisions about his classes coming into sixth year, though, as the two careers he was considering - Healing research or the Department of Mysteries - had quite different requirements, and didn't leave much room for extra classes, but in the end he settled for the bare minimum requirements for each career - Arithmancy, Divination, Charms, Transfiguration, Potions, Herbology and Defense - a timetable more practical than indulgent to his tastes.
relatives
Mother - Rachel Fenwick, nee Velasco, Muggleborn
Father - Geoffrey Fenwick, Muggle
Sister - Alana Fenwick, b 1966 (Hufflepuff first year)
The makeup of the Fenwick family is such that it's a bridge between the magical and Muggle worlds, and this has always been a great comfort to Benjy. He can talk to them about his schooling and the status of the Wizarding world, and while his father might not understand everything perfectly, they at least all have a grasp on it. At the same time they're all quite well-versed in Muggle matters as well. Benjy feels that all of him is equally loved and welcome when he's with his family, with no part of himself being dismissed as unimportant or ignored.
Depending on his winsomeness, Benjy may also claim:
Brothers - Fabian and Gideon Prewett
played by: luke pasqualino
writing sample #1: third person, roleplay. please write a sample of how you think your character would act when they're in love/when they've lost someone/when they've graduated or any other big event you can think of.
The letter arrived over breakfast, as letters at Hogwarts were wont to do, and Benjy scrambled to save it from his porridge before the corner of it suffered a milky death. He had lost more than one letter this way, and while the majority of them were still readable, the affect on the ink on the doused edge was decidedly disconcerting and something he tried to avoid, particularly in case the letter was actually something he wanted to keep. Hurriedly attempting to finish his Divs homework before class, he put the letter aside without looking at it until Fabian peered at him across the table and asked, "Why's the Ministry owling you?"
"Hmmngh?" he replied, then realised what Fabian had actually said and looked up quite quickly. "Wait what?" Indeed, the letter bore the wax seal of the Ministry of Magic, and he broke it quickly, tugging the paper out with only a modicum of care to make sure it didn't tear. The Department of Mysteries. No one even knew exactly what they did there, except that they were highly selective about job applicants, requiring both high marks and some kind of peculiar result on the four page questionnaire that was part of the application process. Benjy wasn't entirely sure exactly what result they wanted, as the questions had been a somewhat bizarre mixture of logic, general knowledge, creative theory and philosophy (he had been particularly confused by "What is your favourite type of biscuit?" and "Is this a rhetorical question?"), many of which didn't seem to have a correct response.
Homework forgotten, he carefully unfolded the parchment, smoothing out the creases in the paper before turning them over to skim the looped handwriting of whoever it was who dealt with potential applicants (the deputy head, it turned out). Unlike most responses, in which one could generally tell what the result would be in the first sentence, he had to get to the middle of the second paragraph before finding the words he was looking for. "I've got an interview!" he announced even as he continued reading, flicking to the second page in search of any other relevant information. Someone was going to come and meet him on Sunday, apparently-- and as it was currently Friday morning, that meant he had to suffer an agony of waiting and likely an entire day of wasted classes. He couldn't force himself to care, however. Not when his oatmeal and raisins had actually seen him through.
writing sample #2: first person, journal. please write a sample of how you think your character would respond to the news that a relative has died/has been born.
I have received the tragic news via owl (who regarded me with a great deal of solemnity, but as he always regards me with a great deal of solemnity I am unconvinced that he was aware of the contents of said letter) that my Gramps' brother has passed. I think this is the first time he's left the pub in three years, and I would have to ask whether or not he's actually managed not to tell them how to plan the funeral. Last time I saw him he told me that I shouldn't pull my trunk along behind me, especially when I'm getting onto the train, because the doors might close behind me and trap it. I'm not sure either whether or not he was aware that I had successfully made the trip to school six times previously. (Well, possibly excepting that one time in fourth year, but I blame Gideon for that.)
He'll probably be sorely missed among the other octogenarians of Aptrick, who outside of the family are probably the only people who ever understood what he was saying. Despite the fact that I'm pretty certain he never paid for a drink in his life, he did tell some damn good stories. Makes me wonder how many of them were wasted on people who just heard, "allus a bad un ee dunst be faffin eeh by gum gi over ye mardy rum'n."