Post by Bei Rivers on Nov 11, 2009 8:21:35 GMT -5
Bei Rivers
PICTURE HERE
[/size]PICTURE HERE
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&&--You, who shall pull the strings
[/size][/center]Name: We’ve been here before
Age: 9,000
Roleplaying Experience: Long time
How you found the site: Been here before, too
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&&--The character cheat sheet
[/size][/center]Name: Beriah Jareth Rivers
Gender: Male
Age: 17
Hair Color: White, not platinum blonde, white.
Eye Color: Wine red
Skin Tone: White (Albino)
Height: 5 ft, 9 in
Weight: 155 lbs
Wealth: Well-off
Sexual Orientation: Gay
Why they are in La Campana:
Social experiment. Bei was not so much forced to come to La Campana but he showed an interest in observing the school’s environment firsthand; to see just how a reform school for gays would be run. He learned about the school from his adoptive father, who had come to Barcelona on a business trip and had heard about the school during his time in the city. Bei’s father, however, was quite shocked to hear that his boy was interested in going to the school, even if it was for observational purposes. Mr. Rivers was fully aware and understanding of his son’s preferences, so the request came as a surprise. Nevertheless, he agreed and got Bei enrolled, with promises to visit every so often to see how the boy was faring. [/size]
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&&--What makes the clock tick
[/size][/center]Likes:
• Red bean jam buns
• Hockey
• Reading, reading, reading
• Candy canes
• Social experiments
• Psychology and studying human interactions
• The show “Lost”
• The Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, A Beautiful Mind, The Matrix(1), Fight Club, V for Vendetta, Watership Down
• Most noodle dishes
• Spicy, tangy foods
• Oranges and citrus fruits
• Evening and nighttime
• Snow and cold, bone-dry weather
• Mountains and forests
• Sharks, octopi, cuttlefish (He’s fascinated with the behaviors of the latter two, has a secret hypothesis that octopi are much smarter than humans think)
• Water, swimming
• Honest answers, appropriate encouragement and congratulations
• Hot cocoa spiced with cinnamon and/or cayenne pepper
Dislikes:
• Older women
• Ignorant people
• Round-robin arguments
• Tapioca pudding
• Calamari
• Jaws movies
• Having weak eyes
• Strong sunlight
• Stupid questions or comments regarding his genetic condition
• Over the top violence and aggression
• Loudmouths
• Black licorice
• Sweet pickles
• Overplayed music
• Aquaman
• Whiney people
• Insomnia
Turn Ons:
• An intriguing mind/intelligence
• Gentle demeanors
• Good sense of self-worth
• Dry humor
• Creativity
Turn Offs:
• Obnoxious and loud behavior
• Overly aggressive people, instigators
• Dullness and dead conversations
• Most women
• Fake cheerfulness, overly giggly people
Nervous Habits:
• Chewing on his lower lip
• Pushing at or fiddling with his glasses (If he’s wearing them)
• Rubbing the back of his neck when he’s agitated, nervous, stressed, or thinking deeply
Fears:
• Either being abused or inadvertently becoming an abuser
• Failure
• Worms, specifically parasitic ones
Goals/Aspirations:
• Get into Yale or Harvard at some point
• Become a spokesperson or otherwise make changes towards social justice and child safety and education
• Become someone his father will be proud to call his son
• If all else fails, become a veterinarian
Appearance:
Standing at 5 feet and 9 inches tall, Bei is average in the height aspect. He’s got a moderately muscled build- by no means a weakling, but not quite a fighter. He’s trim in the middle with very little fat distributed throughout his form; there’s just enough there to keep him from being too tough to hug. Bei’s limbs are neither gangly nor short and he stands with good posture. His fingers are long- he has a musician’s hands, and he takes meticulously good care of his nails. His very white hair is cut short and is sometimes spiked with gel, but otherwise he leaves it alone.
The most striking thing about this boy is his coloring. While athletic and well-groomed, the boy never can quite escape the almost sickly look that his albinism gives him, especially with the dark circles that rim his wine-red eyes. Bei gets little sleep, mainly thanks to acute insomnia, and the bruises under his eyes make that very apparent despite his attempts to hide them behind his glasses. He also wears contacts, but tends to wear his glasses in the evenings or after class. He makes sure to dress himself well. Perhaps he doesn’t own many designer clothes, but the stuff he has is simple and tasteful. Dress shirts, heavy knit sweaters, and jeans are his staple wear, though for comfort he’ll slip on a hoodie and occasionally a humorous t-shirt. Hiding underneath his clothes, however, are remnants of his early childhood- scars that he really would prefer not to discuss. The worst of those scars sits over his right shoulder blade, thankfully low enough that a wide collared shirt won’t expose it. Branded into his flesh are the coils from a gas stovetop. The scar has faded some, but it’s still a rather disturbing thing to see.
If he didn’t dress in masculine clothing or keep his appearance quite so typically male, Bei would be hard to distinguish as a man. He’s got a rather androgynous look to him- a pretty one, but it’s just a little disconcerting to see this boy out knocking people around on the ice.
Personality:
Bei is a rather quiet young man, content to spend his free time studying or reading. At first meeting, he doesn’t set off any alerts, but as a person gets to know him, a more interesting individual surfaces. While he has never outright stalked a person, Bei is interested in the human condition and spends some of his time simply people-watching. There’s something about watching his fellow humans that whets his appetite to learn more about the ways and whys of how people do things- he has in mind to go either into psychology or social justice when he gets older.
While he is quiet, Bei is by no means antisocial. He gets along just fine in social settings, talking easily and laughing along with his peers. For a stretch of almost eight years, he’s been involved with playing hockey. While he enjoys running as well, and probably would have liked soccer, he stuck with an indoor sport because of his dislike for having to slather himself with sunscreen when he goes outside.
Residing underneath the calm and fairly smooth exterior that Bei puts on, however, sits the remnants of a troubled child. He hides it fairly well, but Bei has a deeply-rooted wariness of women, mostly thanks to the example his mother provided. He tends to work his already skinny ass off in order to complete a project and rarely ever settles for anything less than perfection in his academics. Failure is his personal horror, and while he’s learned to take his losses mostly in stride, he tends to beat himself up over assignments that got less than an A grade.
Relationships have never really been his strong suit, as he’s never actually been in one. With the pressure of being on a team sport and all of his other activities, Bei never saw the time or the benefit of getting involved with a romantic interest. It didn’t exactly help that he wasn’t attracted to females, but his homosexual preferences never surfaced. He was teased by his teammates, yes, but no one ever had any evidence that he truly was gay and Bei saw no reason to verify anyone’s speculations. Being accused of being gay came with the locker room territory, but since Bei never showed any interest in his teammates, no one questioned him.
Depending on his current environment, though, Bei may possibly be more willing to open up to another. [/font]
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&&--A glimpse of the past
[/size][/center]Father:
Derek Rivers, 45
[Adoptive Father]
Lillian Shieldes (Formerly Lillian Rivers)
[Ex-adoptive mother]
Mother:
Sydney Dillovitz, 36
[Biological mother, currently in prison on terms of child abuse, neglect, and attempted murder]
Sibling/s:
None
Other important relatives:
None
Pets:
The Dread Pirate Roberts, gray tailless tabby, 5 yrs
12 lbs of solid muscle on this kitty
History:
Bei had a rough start in life.
As the unplanned and unwanted product of a 19-year-old girl and an unknown man, Bei is lucky to be alive. To keep a very sad story very short, Bei was born to a young lady who already had some undiagnosed psychological problems and didn’t have enough money to get them checked out. Heck, the woman barely had enough money to pay rent. By the time Bei popped out and added to her stress level, she was already sick of him. Apparently the aspect of adoption never crossed her mind, which was unfortunate for her little boy. For almost four years he lived under his mother’s painful “care”, if you could call it that. She hated him; she hated what he had done to her life, she hated that he reminded her of the man who fathered him and skipped out of town without even leaving a last name to trace. She wanted no one to learn about her shameful white mouse of a child, so she kept him indoors.
It wasn’t until he was four years old that things changed. The reasons behind what made Sydney snap are still unclear, but she made the horrible decision to beat her child to death and throw him out with the trash. Luckily for Bei, a neighbor heard the child’s screams and called the cops. When help arrived, they found the little boy limp and stuffed in a trash bag. His mother had fled the scene. The story should have ended there, with a sad story in the paper and a manhunt on for his killer, but fate spared him the usual ending.
Bei was successfully resuscitated and taken into protective custody. His mother was eventually caught and charged with child abuse, neglect, and attempted murder. She remains in prison still. Bei ended up in foster care for a time, but was adopted by Derek Rivers and his wife Lillian at the age of eight. In only a few visits to the shy little albino boy, Derek had fallen in love with the dry-witted and astonishingly intelligent child. No one expected Bei to ever be normal, that with the abuse he went through in his main developmental years. But again, the boy surprised everyone by adjusting fairly well to his new life and catching up on his education without too much difficulty. Derek’s wife readily agreed to adopt the boy, and within a few months of meeting Bei, they were an official family. A few happy years went by, but good things apparently cannot last. By the time Bei was 13, Lillian and Derek had grown apart, and Lillian decided to call it quits. She left her husband and adopted child without a glance back, never to be heard from again. Derek struggled to provide for his son at first, but eventually life settled down again and handed them some much-deserved opportunities. He moved up in his job, earning travel benefits as he was now in charge of visiting various clubs his company sponsored, for purposes of financial handling and possible improvements the establishments could make. He was occasionally able to bring his son along on these trips, and one memorable occasion landed them in Barcelona.
Bei was more interested in the surrounding city than the clubs they visited, though he admittedly did enjoy the shows and food some of them provided. He caught wind of a reform school in the city that was specifically for gay students, and that was what piqued his curiosity. Once back home in America, Bei studied up on the school and eventually decided that it was too much of a temptation to resist checking out. He applied first, told Derek second, and was greeted with a stupefied expression. His father couldn’t quite believe that Bei wanted to traipse off to a reform school in the name of social experimentation, but he eventually relented and agreed to let Bei go. He had known for a while that his son was gay, and it never was an issue to him. His worry now, however, was that Bei would end up in an adverse situation and come back hurt by restrictive views and a harsh anti-gay viewpoint.
In the end, Derek and Bei settled on the agreement that Bei could go if he called every week, and that Derek would come visit at semester to make sure his son was still alright. If anything was suspected otherwise, he’d take Bei home. It was an agreement Bei could live with. Come time to go, Bei packed his things and wrangled up his fat tabby cat, then headed off to Spain for his immersive experiment.
Roleplaying Sample:
It was two o’clock in the morning and he had yet to fall asleep, despite detached feeling that exhaustion lent him. He currently sat in his rolling chair, absently rocking it back and forth with little nudges of his feet while he looked around the shadowed contents of his room. For once, maybe because he sensed that tonight was their last night at home, Robert had cozily tucked himself into a ball on Bei’s lap and was napping, allowing the boy to absently stroke his back and scratch the cat behind his ears. As highly unusual as it was for Roberts to allow his human to cuddle him, this occurrence suited the both of them just fine for now.
Bei surveyed his room for a long time, committing the images to his memory and picking over the significance of different items that cluttered his shelves. There was the bookcase stuffed full of various books, including his father’s old college texts and the updated volumes that Bei had purchased. Medical books nestled next to works of fiction, Isaac Asimov shared shelf space with Lewis Carroll’s works, several different psychology books were pushed together in order to make room for a collection of Stephen King novels. More books crammed together, somehow all fitting into the five-foot tall case that also housed his DVD and CD collections, as well as the few pieces of hockey paraphernalia that sat wedged in as placeholders and collected dust. He wouldn’t be taking most of this stuff with him, but had already pulled out a few of his favorites out and packed them away for the trip. In the darkness of his room, punctuated only by the light of his computer’s monitor, Bei couldn’t read the titles on most of the alphabetically arranged books. Not that it mattered; he knew the placement of them mostly by heart.
His gaze drifted across the room tiredly, soaking in every detail. He was already homesick, he would miss this place. He would miss seeing his friends in person and going to hockey practice with Ellis and the rest of his teammates, he would miss making hashbrowns and eggs with his dad at 8:30 on Saturday mornings before they headed out for the day. But, on the other hand, he was excited to go. He would only be there for about a year and would have plenty of time to make some new friends and explore the city. The aspect of being in an environment where the majority of the students shared the same sexual preferences as him was a welcome thought, but he had to keep in mind that it was a reform school that he was attending. It would be interesting to see what sort of methods the school enforced and, more importantly, if anything actually worked. He had fresh notebooks packed away, ready to be filled with observations. His laptop would be the very last thing to go, but it too would end up holding his findings.
His IM program dinged over the Tori Amos song that was currently playing, prompting Bei to swivel back around and push his glasses back up and squint at the small font.
You’re leaving at 8 tomorrow?asked the message. It surprised Bei to see Ellis online so late, the teen was usually asleep by eleven.
Yeah, bright and early at 8 a.m. Dad’s taking me to the airport then, my plane leaves at 9.
What’re you doing up so late, anyways? You’ve got school tomorrow. Bei clicked enter and waited for a moment before his friend responded.
Couldn’t sleep, guess insomnia’s contagious after all. ;P You still packing up?
Bei shook his head a little at the boy’s comment and replied, long fingers flying over the keys. No, I finished packing an hour or two ago. Just sitting here right now, can’t sleep either. But that’s normal. Maybe I’ll get some rest on the flight over there. And before you ask, I get internet over there and I’ll definitely send you a message as soon as I get to the school.
Rob got irritated with the clatter of keys and looked up at his human condescendingly, then leapt off Bei’s lap and curled up on the boy’s bed, yawning dramatically. Bei spared a glance at the cat and smirked, but looked back at the IM window as Ellis’ reply popped up.
Yeah… Well I think I speak for all of us when I say I’m gonna miss you. I hope you’re coming back on break. =( Miss you already, man.
There was silence for a moment while Bei cleaned his glasses, but soon the keys started clicking again. I’ll definitely miss you guys, too. But I’ll be back at the end of the semester, and it’s only for one school year that I’ll be gone. When I get back we’ve got to play some hockey. X< I’m gonna be so rusty. I looked and the school doesn’t have a team.
He looked at the clock and sighed, then checked his friend’s response.
Hell yeah we will. And I’m going to comm. College next year, so if you stick around, then we could prolly be on the same team again… Aw shit! Mom just came in and asked me what I’m doing. Gotta go to bed. I’ll see you sometime, Bei. Miss you! CALL ME, DAMMIT.
Bei chuckled a little before shooting off one last reply before Ellis signed off. That’d be cool. And you need your sleep, unlike me, you’ve got class at 7:30. I’ll call you. Bye!
Ellis sent one last smiley face before he signed off, leaving Bei alone with his cat once more. The teen sighed and closed out of the messenger program, taking off his glasses and rubbing his tired eyes. A sad weight sat in his stomach. He was going to miss his friends very much, especially Ellis. But it wasn’t the end of the world; there was no need to get upset. He had video and voice messaging; he could still see his friends’ faces.
With another heavy breath, Bei leaned back in his chair and turned his laptop off, closing the top and standing up. He would at least try to nap. Tomorrow would be a busy day, and he hoped to get some rest before leaving.
Adventure awaited.
