[Application]
PLAYER
Name: Cricket
Age: 22
Journal: girl pls
Contact (MESSENGER/E-MAIL/ETC): limey_cricket
Former RP experience: France here on HB, various others
CHARACTER
Name: Søren [middle name classified] Nielsen, Kongeriget Danmark
Date of Birth: June 5th, 1985 (and he’s so obviously a Gemini that it’s saddening, really)
Age: 27
Family: His mother (Nadja) lives Copenhagen, quite the career woman. Her motto is that “You earn what you use or it bites you in the ass, and like hell I’m cleaning up after someone else again”. She and Søren get along well enough (usually), but don’t really like to spend too much time together due to having similar personalities. Estranged father (Niels). Younger cousin with the stupidly long name (Claus Kai Elias Søndergård…though he just goes by Kai). Other various and sundry cousins that are notably mostly of the female persuasion.
History:
Born and raised in Århus, Danmark and patriotic to a fault.
Søren spent the majority of his formative years growing up in Århus and being a highly rambunctious and problematic child. He was often left to look after himself as a child because his mother was constantly working to make ends meet after his father Niels left. He had a difficult time connecting with other children his age because his energy level was a thing to behold and because his brain seemed to be functioning on a different plane of reality altogether. So quite lonely (and angry because of it) and not precisely understanding the situation that his family was now in, Søren acted out rather fiercely in primary school and was held back a year at one point after becoming violent with another student.
In an attempt to have Søren’s life become more socialised, his mother enrolled him in an after-school program for gifted students (though Søren’s grades were anything but exemplary), hoping that being around children that other people didn’t quite “get”, like him, might help him find some common ground on which to make friends.
What it did was get him very interested in chemistry and its accompanying explosions.
When Søren was seven years old, his aunt gave birth to a tiny bundle of screaming Danish joy named Claus Kai Elias Søndergård...Kai for short. Although he was highly disinterested in his cousin for a long time, Kai was immediately fascinated with Søren...and his hair. After many intense screaming matches over pulled hair, the two grew inseparable and Kai became Søren’s shadow. Finally, someone who “got” him.
Both fortunately and unfortunately for Søren, the end of compulsory schooling (folkeskole) proved to be a mixed blessing in the form of a crash course in socialising. It soon became apparent (once, y’know, the adolescent break-outs and everything cleared up) to the female population of his school that Søren Nielsen was quite the opposite of unattractive, despite his bad temper and proclivity for delinquent behaviour out of boredom. And Søren had to quickly learn what worked, what didn’t, and how to make nice with some of these girls’ boyfriends so that he wouldn’t get punched in the face over a misunderstanding. In the end, it was probably a better life lesson than any of the crap he learned in the education labs.
The summer that he turned seventeen was also the summer that mandatory schooling for Søren ended and Søren wanted to work to help supplement the family income. His mother Nadja very kindly told him exactly where he could shove it and told him to get his ass back to school come autumn.
He’d always spent his summers in Gråsten picking apples for a former acquaintance of his father’s that had an orchard there. This being his final summer before he was stuck in Århus to complete university, he became interested in one of the old mills that still ran by windmill power to crush grain (and it had very little to do with the fact that the miller’s daughter was exceedingly pretty). The mill had had a bad year because its production level couldn’t compete with the modern mills. It had Søren thinking of ways to increase the mill’s level of output (and please the miller’s daughter) and lead to a very poorly-made combustion engine to speed up the windmill.
...needless to say, that didn’t go very well and Søren was forbidden to show his face around the mill (and the miller’s daughter) again.
But Søren went home at the end of the summer with a renewed interest in chemistry and a better idea of what to pursue in his university education.
Two years into his education, it could be argued that he was perhaps a little overzealous. His grades were better than they had ever been in folkeskole, his professors liked him, and he was very popular with the other students for being smart, nice guy and for his ability to drink even the most seasoned boozers under the table.
But Søren in the lab was an absolute menace.
He pushed the boundaries of any experiment oftentimes too far on a mere whim, sometimes to disastrous (and explosive) results. Sometimes the mishaps were entertaining. Sometimes they were dangerous.
Sometimes they landed Søren in the hospital with second-degree burns and a scheduled meeting with the dean to “discuss his future outside the university”.
And so at the ripe age of nineteen (and a half), Søren was expelled from his university and very wholly pissed off at the entire educational institution for being so narrow-minded and intentionally (in his mind) limiting. But he didn’t apply for a different university; he came to the conclusion that if a university would throw him out over something so minor (in his mind), then he didn’t want to have anything to do with them anyway. After that, he spent many years working odd jobs and doing labour for money.
And even though his mother was furious, she had to agree that in some way, this did suit him much better than working in a sterile lab did.
Personality:
In true Danish fashion (or at least we’ll call it that), Søren has zero sensitivity to what may or may not be offensive to some. He doesn’t mean anything bad by it, but the thought that it could be insulting just fails to cross his mind. After all, there are more interesting things to think about. He’s not an idiot. No, really. It comes as a shock to many, but he can be pretty shrewd...and then he’s presented with something distracting, and it all just goes out the window. And he’ll remember about two hours later and get pissed with himself. And then he’ll decide it wasn’t worth getting irritated about anyway and pull out the booze.
As far as hedonistic tendencies go, he probably couldn’t define hedonism for you (let alone pronounce it), but Søren is a guy who enjoys a good time. Or at least he used to; he’s calmed down a bit and his evenings have gone from booze, smokes,
and sex to...the same amount of booze and slim jims. This is a perfectly acceptable alternative. Besides, slim jims don’t try and call you up the next morning to set up date number two. But he knows quite well that he is a slave to his vices; sometimes that does him no harm but sometimes it does a great deal of harm, in more ways than one.
He will happily be anyone’s best and most friendly drinking buddy...until you cross him. He’s the type to smile when he likes you, smile when he hates you, smile when you piss him off, and smile when he decks you. But he doesn’t hold grudges; at least not when they’re personal. But fucking with “family” get you a ticket on the expressway straight to Hell. But after he beats the shit out of you, he’ll give you a hand up and ask if you want to hit up the local pub to celebrate the glorious occasion of getting your ass beat by Søren Nielsen.
He has a tendency for hypocritical double-standards. For example, he's got a bit of a hate-on with cars and motorized self-transport; Denmark is hugely bicycle-friendly, so he never saw the point of needing a car in a place like Hartsbridge when he could walk, or bike, or shell out the few bucks for the bus or the train. He's always viewed those with cars that don't have a direct necessity for them (AKA a load of kids) as stuck-up and self-important. Then again, he never really minded the physicality involved with biking or walking (sports teams in school kept him fit back then, and the habit never really dropped), and his sense of time is pretty relative, so he never feels rushed to get anywhere.
The irony: he works in Hartsbridge as a mechanic.
He can be very childish at times about certain things. For instance, there is a room in his apartment dedicated solely to legos. Yes, it’s cliché. Yes, it’s asinine. Yes, it’s a metric shitton of awesome collected into one tiny-ass room. From the outside, it looks like a rainbow assortment of plastic nightmare-fuel, but to Søren? It’s more “home” than the rest of the apartment. And yes. He does line up for the new releases. First editions are worth more when you've run out of booze money and you have to pawn something. It comes from being an only child with no father and a working mother and being too...something to relate other kids well. When you fail at being social, you win at finding ways to entertain yourself. Legos were cheap, easy to clean up, and (supposedly) helped stimulate brain growth, so Nadja had no problem encouraging this particular hobby into something that stays with Søren even today.
But sometimes the childishness can be a little less innocent. Most who know him would say that he lacks both shame and a conscience, but it’s more that he hates admitting that he’s wrong and hates apologising even more. He’s inclined to believe that he’s always right and that his way is the best and only way. He likes to think he takes the lead in being "the infallible big brother" (to those it applies to, and THEY KNOW WHO THEY ARE), even if it's completely unnecessary. He's a bit delusional in that regard. But it keeps him happy to think he gets a little respect for being the "big bro", no matter how untrue it may be.
Appearance:
Søren stands at a respectable 185 centimeters (6’1) and 83 kilograms (182 pounds). Like any good Danish boy, he’s as pale as the driven snow with a predilection for going alarmingly ruddy with long exposure to strong sunlight. (Though the burn eventually fades out to a pleasant shade of fair tawny.)
He’s liberally covered in old scars that speak of both and active lifestyle and sticking his nose in where it doesn’t belong. They’re mainly concentrated on his torso (because tricks like dodging in a fight seems dishonest or Søren’s never been very accomplished at avoiding blows. We’ll probably never know the truth.) with the most noticeable one being a very prominent and long mark on the left side of his chest.
Søren has blond hair and blue eyes, which are certainly no rarity among his countrymen. But his hair seems to have a mind of its own and a tendency to be wild (to put it mildly). But given the almost permanent smile and his own unruly disposition, the hair seems to suit.
Søren has very little in the way of “cosmetic” muscle; his body type consists of lean muscle from hard work and heavy lifting. So given his height, it sometimes makes him seem a little unbalanced and smaller than he actually is.
WRITING SAMPLES:
Writing Sample One:
The day dawned sunny in Århus, temperature settling out at a pleasant 22° (Celsius, for the morons still on the American customary system). A breeze rolled in from the coast, siphoning away the smog of the city commuters, leaving behind the faint scent of springtime and sea salt. It was perfect weather for…well, anything.
Despite the near-miraculous weather, two Danes were crowded into a tiny bedroom, staring intently at the fuzzy screen of an old relic that claimed to be a TV as colourful polygons moved frantically across the monitor. The two tensed in unison and then sighed in relief as a familiar victory theme blared over the speakers with the tinny ring of age and neglect to it.
“I can’t believe you never fucking get sick of this game,” Søren muttered amidst the tangle of linens and bed clothes on the mattress where he was seated above Kai, “S’like…how many fuckin’ times can you watch Tifa’s pixelated tits bounce all unrealistic and pointy-like? Seriously gets boring.”
He retaliated against Kai’s nasty expression with one of his own, pulling on his cousin’s freshly-bleached locks tauntingly.
He was called several foul names (in jest) and a few sweet endearments when his grip didn’t abate. The game’s music finally fell into the quieter overworld theme and Søren’s grasp on Kai’s hair loosened as he retreated into a more upright position, staring out the window to the “near-miraculous” weather he was missing outside.
Still…
“I was thinking,” he said slowly, not looking at Kai, “I was thinking that, y’know…”
He shifted uncomfortably, the long lounge pants and wifebeater somehow suddenly too hot in the dimmed room.
“I was thinking that I’d head back to the States again.”
He had expected an immediate denial or some long and uncomfortable silence while his cousin stared at him with a rather effective kicked-puppy expression.
Instead, Kai peered at him from over one narrow and bony shoulder, eyebrows knitted together in thought.
“And what would you do?” he asked. “You didn’t have much of an easy run of it last time, you know.”
“I dunno,” he responded easily, folding his arms behind his head and letting himself fall into the mattress with a wide grin.
That was half the fun of it.
Writing Sample Two:
So in retrospect, as pissed as I was paying out what feels like every fucking krone I have on some stupid wifi phone plan or whatever (og du kender, a phone to match the shiny new plan and may God have mercy on my fucking wallet), it is kind of proving useful in the most stupid of ways.
So somehow I am in the fantastic situation of being stuck at the German border with a rented car that’s broken down and I have no mobile service but I miraculously have wifi because Germans have some messed up priorities. So that means I can type this up and pray somebody reads it before the border police get on my ass for obstructing non-existent traffic or something and God I hate cars.
“But Søren,” you’ll say, “you work on goddamned cars for a living. Just fix the car!”
Hae hae. Jeg ville hvis jeg kunne, men GARANTIER.
Because Germans equate to messed up priorities, and don’t let any of them tell you otherwise.
The upside to this is that there...is no further downside, so I kinda think nothing can get worse. The downside is that I am very sober and that offends me in ways I cannot even describe because there is too much blood in my alcohol level.
But there is something kind of cool at being at some weird unmarked crossroads in Germany in the middle of the night. There’s an apple tree here. I haven’t seen one this big since I was seventeen.
Huh. That makes me miss Gråsten a bit. Maybe I should go see how it’s changed before I pull a bunk off to the US. Throw rocks at the Royal Family’s summer palace for being richer bastards than me. That kind of thing. I’ll make a tradition of it.
First the Royal Family’s summer palace. Next? The White House.
This is going to be awesome.