(no subject)
Your name: Rachelle
Your personal LJ: http://prosopopeya.livejournal.com
Do you certify that you are over the age of 16 at the time of this application: Yes
Your desired unique login for the wiki: Already have one; I just recently dropped my only character at TR. The voice just dried up on me, unfortunately, but I don’t want to leave the game.
Your character's name: Scotty Wandell
Your character's canon: Brothers & Sisters
What type of canon is it (Book series, film, etc.): TV show
Your character's LJ: http://scottysous.livejournal.com
Is your character living or dead at their time of entry?: Living
Does your character have any pre-existing disabilities of a medical, physical, or psychiatric nature?: No.
Tell us about your character's background:
Scotty was born in Oxford, Mississippi to Bertha and Wally Wandell, who were at the very least well-meaning parents. When Scotty turned out to be “so gay, so quickly,” (his own description) they continued to love their son, though they didn’t accept his lifestyle. He tried to impress his parents as he was growing up, wanting to be a good son for them, though that doesn’t necessarily mean that he put his own wants and desires second. Once Scotty was old enough he moved away, first to New York, then to the warmer climates of LA where he worked as a receptionist.
His job allowed him to be privy to some shady information, which landed him as a witness in Kevin Walker’s lawyer office. He and Kevin hit it off right away - for better or for worse. They dated for a while but in between the good moments there were fights; Kevin never could stop belittling Scotty’s financial status. Scotty worked at that time as a cater waiter, fulfilling his penchant for upscale food by working for the people who made it; he was often in and out of financial troubles. Finally Kevin jabbed one too many times and Scotty broke things off with him.
Scotty couldn’t forget Kevin, though, and it seemed the universe didn’t want him to either. When Kevin started secretly dating a closeted soap opera star who had a fake girlfriend (who didn’t quite realize she was all that fake), she set Kevin up with some guy she thought would just be perfect for him - Scotty. Scotty and Kevin had a one night stand, but Scotty didn’t delude himself into believing anything else was going on.
He went on with his life, but he still couldn’t quite get Kevin out of his mind, and as he put himself through culinary school and landed an internship as apprentice sous chef at an upscale restaurant, he wanted to show off his success to the man who’d sort of inspired Scotty to go after it. He invited Kevin to his restaurant and leaned in for a kiss only to find out Kevin had another steady boyfriend. This one was a priest and he was currently on a missionary trip to Malaysia, leaving Kevin physically alone even if he had sworn his heart to his missionary.
They decided to try being friends instead of boyfriends, since they’d always skipped that step. When Kevin found out that Scotty was homeless due to his school bills this time, Kevin offered his apartment. Scotty moved in, for better or for worse… and inevitably they wound up having sex. Scotty arrives at Tabula Rasa when he wakes up the next morning.
Your character's personality:
While Scotty doesn’t go around in drag or wear rainbows on every item of clothing he has, he isn’t exactly all that incognito either. He’s known to let his wild side out from time to time and don a Queen T-shirt with some pink short shorts, but for the most part he sticks to flattering polos or zip-up hoodies. He’s not shy, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t value his privacy either. He’s outgoing and friendly and a little over the top but it’s all, in some ways, an act; the more personal things he only shares to a select few, and he expects them to maintain their silence as well.
He has been known, from time to time, to be bitchy, catty, sarcastic, and judgmental. He slips one-liners out to cops and he swears up and down that Regina George stole his “Oh my God, I love your bracelet, where’d you get it?” look. He likes to sum up what people are about in a glance, or just from one conversation, even though more often than not he isn’t all that correct. He should know better; it takes more than one meeting with Scotty to know that he’s actually rather domestic, underneath it all.
One of his biggest flaws is jealousy, though his understanding nature and his patience do allow him to forgive somewhat easily - as long as the person he’s forgiving has done enough to deserve his trust. He sabotages Kevin’s dinner with his ex-boyfriend by “getting off work early” and showing up with food to make it into a threesome sort of dinner, and he has a hard time accepting Kevin being around his ex-boyfriend in general.
Beyond the cattiness and the jealousy, Scotty really is conscientious and caring; he exercises and worries about the environment. He really can be as sweet as his smile is, and he isn’t afraid to wear his heart on his sleeve or put himself out there. Once he finally settled himself down to it, he proved to be a hard worker, graduating top of his class at culinary school.
He’s been in a few troublesome situations in his life, finding himself homeless or struggling for money, but Scotty doesn’t ask for help. He doesn’t turn help down when it’s offered because in general he isn’t too proud for that; there have been some instances where his pride stood in the way, but either he’s lived to regret that or he’s attempted to regain what he turned down. Mainly Scotty takes his hardships in stride and doesn’t place blame on anyone, or retain much bitterness; if he has to sleep in his car, he’ll sleep in his car, and that’s just what he has to do that day. Above all, Scotty can adapt.
It’s taken him a while to find direction but he’s finally arrived at a place where he knows what he wants and where he’d like to go in life. That may not seem like quite the big accomplishment but for Scotty, who’s spent his life hovering in between accepted but unwelcomed by his family and bouncing between jobs and homes, finding the ability to stop, breathe, and maybe start to set some roots down is pretty life-changing.
Why do you want to play this character?: What I’m really hoping to get out of playing Scotty is the chance to connect. Scotty loves to cook (and is good at it, a winning combination) and would be willing to offer his services up to the kitchen team, as well as working at whatever dining establishment on the island would like his services, like the Winchester. Once he gets more firmly settled he might set himself up a small you-catch-it-I’ll-cook-it type of service, running on a very small scale until he could get other people involved. With his previous background as a carpenter’s assistant during the summers he was in high school, he might even go out for the building crew.
I’m hoping that an outgoing, skilled guy like Scotty will prove easier for me to plug into life at TR, which can be large and overwhelming. He’s also generally adorable and loves to make friends; plus he doesn’t even need to drink the water. Pulling him out of his canon where I am will be jarring for him, as he was only just starting to settle down and really actually be successful at something. I chose not to take him from the end of season three, where he’s currently married to Kevin and the head chef of San Estephe, because I wanted to be a little mean and knock him down from his stability as quickly as he had started to reestablish it. Also being left without his husband would make for a sadder, more subdued Scotty than I want to bring to the island; I love him for his vivaciousness and his vibrancy, which would be dulled if he were suddenly husbandless.
Your character's initial personal inventory:
-- light blue boxers
-- long black shorts
-- blue T-shirt
-- white socks
-- tennis shoes
-- cell phone, 75% charged
-- Third generation 8 GB iPod nano in blue, half charged, with earphones
-- keychain with keys to his Ranchero, Kevin’s apartment, and San Estephe’s employee’s entrance; a 2 and ¼ inch chipped red Swiss army knife (which contains a blade, a nail file/screwdriver, scissors, mini flash light, and a retractable ball point pen)
-- wallet containing his driver’s license, $23.78, a bank card, a VISA credit card, his student ID, a gym membership card, and a couple of receipts
Your character's entrance post: (This may be altered once you actually post your pup in, but our primary goal here is to ensure you have put a modicum of thought into how you will go about portraying your pup.)
It’s a Friday night, it’s pushing midnight, and Scotty’s feet feel like he’s been doing high kicks in stilettos on a cobblestone street for the past five hours. He smells like veal sautéed in a light bordelaise sauce, and he’s pretty sure he’s nearly given his nails an all-natural and organic manicure from the hour he spent deboning chicken. As he peels his chef coat off, he knows he’s going to smell quail and chicken and wine whenever he wears it no matter how many times he washes it.
And even though Scotty feels tired down to his bones, he can’t stop smiling.
The truth of everything is that for the first time in his life, Scotty really feels like he’s doing something with himself. He isn’t temping at some random company he doesn’t care about; he isn’t just delivering delicious food. He’s making it, and he’s actually pretty damn good at making it. People who aren’t his friends think he’s good at making it; complete and total strangers - diva bitches with an attitude to rival Naomi Campbell stroll into the restaurant and sit their designer-clad butts in a chair and they like his food. He’s still poor, he’s still struggling, but Scotty really feels like he’s made it, whatever that means.
Sore as he is, as he changes out of his uniform and into his regular clothes, he jingles the keys to his car in his hand and maybe even hums a little as he strolls out to his car, waving goodbye to the other interns and lowly staff members still lingering at this hour. He slides behind the wheel of his Ranchero and gives it a gentle pet of greeting, smiling to himself as he starts on his way back to Kevin’s apartment.
That’s another thing he isn’t quite sure about - whatever it is he and Kevin are attempting to rebuild - but it contributes to that feeling of contentedness that’s been steadily building inside Scotty - temporary homeless catastrophe aside. He still has feelings for Kevin, somehow, maddeningly, and even though he’s been trying to sit down and figure out why he can’t get the generally uptight, occasionally oblivious, often annoying lawyer out of his mind ever since Scotty broke up with him, he’s never been able to figure it out.
Kevin made him feel like shit, it’s true; he stripped Scotty of his feelings of self-worth and left him feeling insignificant and worthless… but hadn’t that been the motivation for Scotty to finally start putting the pieces together? Walking out of Kevin’s apartment after the one night stand after they had broken up, when Kevin had been using Scotty to get back at his tragically closeted boyfriend, it had been simultaneously the most liberating and the most humiliating moment of his life. It’s also when Scotty knew he was done being the inferior little cater waiter chasing after everyone’s scraps.
And now he and Kevin are back together, are living together, even, and Scotty feels strangely… domestic about all of it. He knows he shouldn’t count his chickens before they hatch - Kevin Walker is and forever will be stubborn and stupid some of the time - but coming home to him at night, sometimes cooking a meal for him, finding him waiting up for Scotty on the couch… Yeah, it was all rather domestic and it warmed Scotty, in a familiar sort of way.
He managed to snag a fairly decent parking spot for the Ranchero and he slid out from behind the wheel, keeping his keys in hand as he went up to the entrance of the building, slipping inside and entering the elevator. He starts humming again, quietly, jingling his keys in his hand as he waits for the doors to open. At the soft ding that signals his arrival at Kevin’s floor - at his and Kevin’s floor - the doors slide open and Scotty steps out.
For a second, he’s too disoriented to really understand what’s going on. The hallway outside the elevator looks strikingly less like a hallway and more like a kitchen; there’s even the smell of food lingering, of fruits and things having been cooked recently, a smell that’s all too familiar to him by now.
Beyond that, though, he immediately notices the sound of insects. There’s something about the way humid night air captures the sound of bugs; it pushes it in at the windows, between the cracks in the door, and it amplifies the noises somehow, putting you in the center of an insect symphony. Growing up in Mississippi, he learned that early on in life and he’d sometimes resent it, lying in his bed at night and praying that God would make crickets be quieter at night, but living in New York and then California, he missed that sound. There was something more vibrant to it than the sounds of traffic, of sirens, of people shouting outside.
Now, though, the insects were little comfort. He turns around where he stands, but there’s no elevator behind him, no sign at all of Kevin’s building, and when he faces forward again, the kitchen is still there. The insects are still there.
Dizzily, dazedly, Scotty takes a few steps into the kitchen and sets his fingertips against the table, as if testing to see if it really was, actually, there. It is. And apparently, so is he.
Wherever “there” is.