násti boy johnny rob [alex] (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
plasticpunk) wrote2022-12-19 04:00 pm
plasticpunk) wrote2022-12-19 04:00 pm
hopestillmods
basics
full name: Johnny Waylon Rob
nickname(s): Call him what you want, he's all first names anyway.
gender | pronouns: male | he/him
date of birth | age: June 30 | 20
place of birth | hometown: (born) Forest Hill, Toronto, ON | (raised) La Jolla, CA
arcana: The Magician
concept: Privileged punk tries to stand out by blending in.
appearance
Johnny looks like he’s been lost in the woods for three weeks. He’s scruffy and scrawny, his hair is six weeks overdue for a haircut, and his clothes are covered in rips and tears, pins and patches and ballpoint pen graffiti. It’s an intentionally curated look; Johnny has enough money coming from his parents to buy some decent clothes, and there’s nothing stopping him from brushing his goddamn hair, but that’s not punk rock, Mom. It's not so much the comfort; Johnny really likes looking the part of the starving artist, the down-on-his-luck busker on the street just trying to pay the rent. That’s why he wraps himself up in secondhand shirts and leather jackets that still smell like beer and stale cigarettes from the 80s, it’s why he walks around with headphones ripped straight from an old Walkman around his neck and a guitar or some other instrument strapped to his back.
pb: Reid Ewing
pb: Reid Ewing
personality
Johnny Rob has a surprising number of fucks to give. And he hates it. It's annoying, his emotions get in the way when he's trying to look cool and aloof and super, extremely confident. But no matter how much he tries to embody the role of a true punk, an individual with no regard for current trends and others' opinions, Johnny is plagued with insecurities. He's acutely aware of others' opinions, he cares too much about what they're saying or thinking about him, he can just imagine whispers about how he can never live up to the legacies of his parents. They drag him down so much, it's easier to just shut it all down. Don't try and you can't fail, don't care and you can't get hurt.
So that's what Johnny does. Feigned indifference is his go-to defense mechanism, followed by intentional incompetence. A true dynamic duo. Every time the little voice in his head tells him he grew up in affluent suburbs and has no business calling himself a punk, that he'll never know if he could have been a great athlete because he refused to try and open himself up to the possibility of failure, Johnny throws up a brick wall. He drowns the voices out with loud music and pretends he doesn't care if he succeeds, because these emotions are hard to handle. They leave him vulnerable to hurt feelings, they give people the chance to exploit him. And fuck that.
What Johnny really craves is an identity. Preferably one that comes with a community. He feels isolated in his own family, an obstacle and an outsider, and he wants to belong to something. Sometimes he plays at the idea of being exceptional in something, he wonders what it felt like for his parents when they went to the Olympics and knew they were the pinnacle in their fields, but more than anything he just wants to be good. While Johnny might tell himself he wants to stand out, what he really needs is the safety and security of being part of a crowd.
So that's what Johnny does. Feigned indifference is his go-to defense mechanism, followed by intentional incompetence. A true dynamic duo. Every time the little voice in his head tells him he grew up in affluent suburbs and has no business calling himself a punk, that he'll never know if he could have been a great athlete because he refused to try and open himself up to the possibility of failure, Johnny throws up a brick wall. He drowns the voices out with loud music and pretends he doesn't care if he succeeds, because these emotions are hard to handle. They leave him vulnerable to hurt feelings, they give people the chance to exploit him. And fuck that.
What Johnny really craves is an identity. Preferably one that comes with a community. He feels isolated in his own family, an obstacle and an outsider, and he wants to belong to something. Sometimes he plays at the idea of being exceptional in something, he wonders what it felt like for his parents when they went to the Olympics and knew they were the pinnacle in their fields, but more than anything he just wants to be good. While Johnny might tell himself he wants to stand out, what he really needs is the safety and security of being part of a crowd.
school life
grade: Junior.
major: Performing Arts (Music)
minor: --
classes: 4
core class: Arts (Performing)
activities: College Radio. Johnny just subjects listeners to his eclectic music collection for an hour at a time, and sometimes that means listening to the entirety of Delìrium Còrdia front to back.
major: Performing Arts (Music)
minor: --
classes: 4
core class: Arts (Performing)
activities: College Radio. Johnny just subjects listeners to his eclectic music collection for an hour at a time, and sometimes that means listening to the entirety of Delìrium Còrdia front to back.
skills
music: Johnny is very skilled in musical pursuits, and he has a talent for picking up an instrument and plinking out some kind of melody, even if he's not formally trained on it. While guitar and other stringed instruments are his favorites, he can hop on the drums, keyboard, harmonica, even the accordion if you really need it — though most things you'd find in the school band kind of passed him by. One year of the clarinet was enough for him to realize it wasn't his jam. He hates reading music (though he's had to learn at least a base level for his degree), and his singing is best suited for punk music (because he kind of fucking sucks at it), but luckily he's fine behind the scenes.
german: ★☆☆☆☆ You would never know he spent a year living in Germany. His version of speaking German is mostly putting on a ridiculous accent and going "ooh, ja, look at ze size of zat strudel in your pants zere Heinrich." It's probably offensive to any actual Germans.
sewing: ★★★☆☆ He learned just enough sewing to stitch patches on his clothes in super cool ways. Check out that sweet whip stitch.
cooking: ★★★☆☆ Johnny's such a picky eater, he had to learn how to make his own meals so he wasn't just surviving on Top Ramen without the flavor packs. The food he makes is pretty bland because that's what he likes, but it's technically not terribly made.
- guitar: ★★★★★
- bass: ★★★★☆
- ukulele: ★★★★☆
- piano/keyboard: ★★★☆☆
- drums/percussion: ★★★☆☆
- clarinet: ★★☆☆☆
german: ★☆☆☆☆ You would never know he spent a year living in Germany. His version of speaking German is mostly putting on a ridiculous accent and going "ooh, ja, look at ze size of zat strudel in your pants zere Heinrich." It's probably offensive to any actual Germans.
sewing: ★★★☆☆ He learned just enough sewing to stitch patches on his clothes in super cool ways. Check out that sweet whip stitch.
cooking: ★★★☆☆ Johnny's such a picky eater, he had to learn how to make his own meals so he wasn't just surviving on Top Ramen without the flavor packs. The food he makes is pretty bland because that's what he likes, but it's technically not terribly made.
history
history
x. Exactly forty weeks after the closing ceremonies for the 2000 Summer Olympic Games, Johnny Rob was born to a pair of Olympic athletes. They didn't know each other before the Games, and they sure as hell didn't intend to keep knowing each other afterward, but, well, that's the Olympic Village for you. Just a hornet's nest of fit folks and bad decisions.
x. Johnny's younger years were marked with a sort of restlessness and instability. His parents didn't live in the same timezone, or even the same country, and they had no interest in rearranging their entire lives just because they were responsible for the existence of another one. It was Johnny whose life had to fit around theirs, living in guest rooms at his grandparents' or a family friend's when their schedules were inconvenient, or making too much noise on cross-country flights and in midwestern airports when it was convenient to see him.
x. Settled life came at Johnny fast. His dad retired from competitive rowing and got married, and his mom followed suit almost a year later. While his dad hit the road with his next venture in life, Johanna took a job at UC San Diego, bought a house, her wife brought a daughter and a dog and suddenly expected them to be a settled family.
Johnny fucking hated it. He couldn't pinpoint why, but after years of not feeling like a priority, he recoiled at the idea of his mom swooping in to play happy family. He lashed out and pulled away from every attempt she made to connect with him, whether it was refusing to eat dinner with the family or breaking his leg in three places when she tried to get him to play sports.
Okay, that wasn't intentional, but it made an impression nonetheless.
Johnny retreated to his comfort zone: not being a priority for his family. The goal, he told himself, was to keep their expectations low and the reality even lower, so they wouldn't pay attention to him. But when it worked, when his mom and stepmom would go to his stepsister's soccer games and leave him home alone, headphones clamped over his ears to destroy his hearing, he still felt... bad??? Which didn't really make sense, but whatever.
x. But at least music made sense. Johnny can't really remember a time when he wasn't fascinated by some kind of music, playing drums on plastic airport seats or listening to the same song over and over until he could perfectly sing the guitar solo. You see why he was too much for those flyover airports.
The first instrument he played was his grandpa's ukulele. Which is a little weird, but his hands were too small for the guitar at the time. As his hands grew, he learned to curl them into chords, and how to use just a few chords to fake it through dozens of songs. Johnny hated reading sheet music, but he loved finding the song in any instrument he picked up, even if he'd never touched the thing before.
x. But still, Johnny felt misplaced in his family. Sports were a way of life for them in the way music had taken over his, and he had to claim his independence and make his rebellion clear whenever and however he could. When Sylvia made All-State for soccer, Johnny decided he was spending the next year in Germany. His stepmom said to call him if he needed a ride home from one of his shows with his band, but he refused, walked home, and got mugged. Johanna told him that if he didn't want to go to college, he could stay with her as long as he wanted — as long as he paid rent, and Johnny applied to as many colleges as he could find with decent music programs. As long as they were out of state, and he could pay some kid to write his personal statements for him.
x. College hasn't exactly been a dream. Johnny, never the academic, found himself facing math classes and reading books and needing to write actual music notes, but he clung to the freedom he had there. The bonus, of course, was that he got to surround himself with his passion, that he could find any instrument he wanted at his fingertips and just fuck around with it and fall into whatever groove he found there. And that's reason enough to stay for now.
x. Exactly forty weeks after the closing ceremonies for the 2000 Summer Olympic Games, Johnny Rob was born to a pair of Olympic athletes. They didn't know each other before the Games, and they sure as hell didn't intend to keep knowing each other afterward, but, well, that's the Olympic Village for you. Just a hornet's nest of fit folks and bad decisions.
x. Johnny's younger years were marked with a sort of restlessness and instability. His parents didn't live in the same timezone, or even the same country, and they had no interest in rearranging their entire lives just because they were responsible for the existence of another one. It was Johnny whose life had to fit around theirs, living in guest rooms at his grandparents' or a family friend's when their schedules were inconvenient, or making too much noise on cross-country flights and in midwestern airports when it was convenient to see him.
x. Settled life came at Johnny fast. His dad retired from competitive rowing and got married, and his mom followed suit almost a year later. While his dad hit the road with his next venture in life, Johanna took a job at UC San Diego, bought a house, her wife brought a daughter and a dog and suddenly expected them to be a settled family.
Johnny fucking hated it. He couldn't pinpoint why, but after years of not feeling like a priority, he recoiled at the idea of his mom swooping in to play happy family. He lashed out and pulled away from every attempt she made to connect with him, whether it was refusing to eat dinner with the family or breaking his leg in three places when she tried to get him to play sports.
Okay, that wasn't intentional, but it made an impression nonetheless.
Johnny retreated to his comfort zone: not being a priority for his family. The goal, he told himself, was to keep their expectations low and the reality even lower, so they wouldn't pay attention to him. But when it worked, when his mom and stepmom would go to his stepsister's soccer games and leave him home alone, headphones clamped over his ears to destroy his hearing, he still felt... bad??? Which didn't really make sense, but whatever.
x. But at least music made sense. Johnny can't really remember a time when he wasn't fascinated by some kind of music, playing drums on plastic airport seats or listening to the same song over and over until he could perfectly sing the guitar solo. You see why he was too much for those flyover airports.
The first instrument he played was his grandpa's ukulele. Which is a little weird, but his hands were too small for the guitar at the time. As his hands grew, he learned to curl them into chords, and how to use just a few chords to fake it through dozens of songs. Johnny hated reading sheet music, but he loved finding the song in any instrument he picked up, even if he'd never touched the thing before.
x. But still, Johnny felt misplaced in his family. Sports were a way of life for them in the way music had taken over his, and he had to claim his independence and make his rebellion clear whenever and however he could. When Sylvia made All-State for soccer, Johnny decided he was spending the next year in Germany. His stepmom said to call him if he needed a ride home from one of his shows with his band, but he refused, walked home, and got mugged. Johanna told him that if he didn't want to go to college, he could stay with her as long as he wanted — as long as he paid rent, and Johnny applied to as many colleges as he could find with decent music programs. As long as they were out of state, and he could pay some kid to write his personal statements for him.
x. College hasn't exactly been a dream. Johnny, never the academic, found himself facing math classes and reading books and needing to write actual music notes, but he clung to the freedom he had there. The bonus, of course, was that he got to surround himself with his passion, that he could find any instrument he wanted at his fingertips and just fuck around with it and fall into whatever groove he found there. And that's reason enough to stay for now.
ooc
PLAYER: alex . TIMEZONE: Pacific . CONTACT: heydudeshutup at gmail, dropbox