scamander.

therainenator@gmail.com — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 17:56:34 GMT

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BASICS
NAME Salamander 'Sal' Oberon Scamander.
AGE & BIRTHDAY Sixteen, 13 February 2005.
HOUSE & YEAR Sixth, Gryffindor.
SEXUAL ORIENTATION Heterosexual, though it is not uncommon for him to tell people otherwise to see what their reaction will be.
BIRTHPLACE Inverness, Scotland. Currently resides on the Isle of Drear, though that is bound to change within the next few months.

FAMILY
PARENTS Rolf Scamander & Luna Lovegood.
SIBLINGS Lotus Scamander (15).
BLOODLINE Pureblood, but definitely not the sort that travels in the most elite social circles.
SOCIAL STATUS Upper class, but all of their money is put into traveling and adventures, so Sal really has no idea how rich they actually are and he certainly isn't one of those pampered and spoiled rich children.
FAMILY SITUATION Rolf and Luna's shared love for all things unusual was what originally attracted them to each other after they had met on that fateful plimpy hunt. For two people with so much in common, the next obvious step was marriage. The two now travel the world during holidays with their children and move all over the country during the year, because variety is truly the spice of the Scamander life.

LOOKS
PHYSICAL It is often easy for Sal to pretend he isn't related to his family, at least while at school, because he resembles his father more than his mother. His hair is a very rusty sort of blond, and his eyes, while still blue, are smaller and greener. However, he has inherited his mother's build - Sal is lithe and flexible, and he would probably look rather effeminate if it weren't for the way he carried himself. He's also not very tall - he is shorter than his younger sister by two inches and is always claiming that he just hasn't his his growth spurt yet. What Sal lacks in height and build he makes up for in confidence, and it could even be said that he struts when he walks - and it's a rather forced strut, too, though Sal would love for everyone to think that it's natural.
DRESS Sal generally wears whatever he wants, but it always has to fit into some sort of genre. One day he might wear outrageous neon colours, the next he might choose to dress in all black and walk around with a sombre look on his face. It all depends on what is cool at the moment, because you can bet that if wearing soft pretzels on one's face suddenly becomes cool, then Sal won't even think about wearing soft pretzels. He'll wear lemons instead!
PB: Hunter Parrish.

THE BOY
Rebel, rebel? Not so much. Whenever Sal meets someone new, he knows what's coming. As soon as he mentions his parents, he knows that they're immediately going to start searching for some quirk, some oddity, something that's distinctly off about him. Sal is proud to say that they won't find it - he prides himself in being normal, though he's actually a lot more like his parents than he would care to admit. From a very early age, he dedicated his life to being a Rebel Without A Cause. He purposely does the opposite of what he is asked and the opposite of what's expected of him. While there are some who don't conform because they are strongly convicted to do so, Sal does it because he gets a kick out of doing the unexpected. He suffers detentions day in and day out because he refuses to follow any rules set forth - and not only that, but his parents' odd parenting methods have given him a complete disregard for authority figures in general. He has trouble listening to people in charge and he often thinks that most rules are a joke, and that one doesn't actually have to follow them.

However, Sal isn't the leather-clad, motorbike-riding badass that he claims to be. In fact, Sal is 75% talk and 25% action - no, he can't actually chug an entire bottle of Firewhisky and no, he does not shave with a blunt knife every morning at the crack of dawn. As a rule he is relatively nonviolent and will only get into a physical altercation with someone if it's absolutely necessary. He talks the talk in an effort to further distance himself from his parents, and to prove to everyone around him that he is most definitely a normal teenage boy. All of his talk gets him into trouble, leading him into plenty of moral dilemmas in which he must decide: fight or flight? Unfortunately, Sal generally chooses the 'flight' option - tough and masculine Sal is not, and he's likely to ditch if he finds that he can't handle something.

Due to his haphazard style of living, Sal never properly learned how to deal with anything organized, and today he has a passionate hate for anything that even remotely looks like it might be organized. Religion, sports (all right, so he actually loves Quidditch but he tries to keep this love under wraps because it wouldn't do for people to see him hypocritically loving something so obviously organized), crime - everything must be spontaneous or Sal doesn't feel comfortable with it. The way Sal lives is generally unorganized and spontaneous as well - he rarely thinks before speaking, and he often charges headfirst into situations. Tact is something of a foreign concept to him - since he was raised to speak his mind, Sal has never learned how to phrase his words to take the edge off them.

Because he tries so hard to retain a semblance of normalcy while at the same time defying expectations, people might often find that Sal is a different person around different people. If he's around quiet people, he'll become loud; if he's around loud people, he'll tone it down a bit. While at home, Sal is a relatively normal person - he puts up with his parents' antics with an exasperated sigh, and he makes it a point to not-so-subtly hint that maybe the family should try being normal for a change. His parents have made it rather difficult for him to live his 'I do what I want!' lifestyle while at home because they pretty much already let him do whatever he wants. However, when Sal is with anyone else, he feels perfectly fine with being just a little bit weird even though he'd never classify anything he does as strange - he would classify it as being rebellious, which automatically makes it cooler.

Sal also finds it incredibly difficult to settle down. Because he's never lived in the same place for more than a year at a time, he has trouble with things that are constant. He has friends far and wide, because he would never want to be stuck hanging out with the same person - or people - for a really long time. He changes everything from his hairstyle, to his style of dress, to his opinions rapidly, causing many to think that Sal is nothing more than a waffler. While it's true that Sal sometimes has trouble sticking to his guns, if an important decisions needs to be made, he's going to make it. He just doesn't particularly want to.

LIKES Motorbikes, having lots of friends, detentions, China, tattoos, cigarettes, setting things on fire, loud music, foreign languages, drums, parties, beer (it's so manly!), ancient weaponry, spaghetti westerns, leather jackets, spikes, funky hats.
DISLIKES His name, organized religion, animals, caramel flavoured anything, Scotland, secrets, relationship drama, sand flies, flowers, Shakespeare, conformity, rainforests, big cities.

THE PAST
HISTORY [BLAH BLAH BLAH NEEDS TO BE EDITED FOR SRS.]
It was when Luna and Rolf were watching for the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland that their first child, Salamander Oberon Scamander, was born. One year later, the family was in western Russia to welcome the birth of a daughter, Lotus Titania, and shortly after that they were traveling through the jungles of India. This is the lfie that the Scamanders led - one of picking up and moving on to the next great adventure every year or so, one where the only constant thing in Sal's life was his family. During his childhood, he loved them. His younger sister often annoyed him, but she was pretty much the only constant friend that he had through the deserts of Africa and the jungles of South America.

Rolf and Luna's parenting style was as strange as the environment in which Sal grew up. There were never any punishments or spankings; fights were resolved by having each party perform the mating dance of the Crumple-Horned Snorcack. Sal and Lotus were allowed to set their own rules for themselves and each other, and it was generally a very relaxed environment. Sal was a rebel from the start, however, often disregarding even his parents' very relaxed rules so that he could go off and explore on his own. His parents were thrilled with this development, marveling at their little boy who felt so free to do whatever he wished.

It was only when Sal arrived at Hogwarts that he heard tales of 'normal' families, ones who didn't move every year and ones who actually had set punishments. After someone laughed at him for describing his recent trip to Japan in great detail, Sal began to realize that maybe something was wrong. This realization was cemented when he was sorted into Gryffindor, and after spending a year living at Hogwarts, Sal returned home (to a completely different location than the one he'd left) thoroughly embarrassed by his family. He found himself trying to impose normalcy at every turn, from turning down foreign dishes at dinner to refusing to join in the hunt for some fantastic beast. He took even greater steps to separate himself from his family the next year at Hogwarts, because that was the year that Lotus was to arrive. He attempted to pretend that they weren't related, but how many people are there with a last name like Scamander? The strange thing is that Sal was only embarrassed about weirdness in relation to his family - everything else was perfectly fine, and Sal continued to ignore rules and do whatever he felt like.

Sal's resent for his family has only grown during his past five years at Hogwarts. He often dreads the summer holidays, knowing that it's three full months he has to spend with his crazy family in some remote location. He has a plan upon entering his sixth year - to convince one of his friends to take him in during all of the school holidays, because he's quite sure that his family would be better off if they didn't have him complaining and wondering why they can't just do things the normal way all the time.

INSIGHT
WHAT IS YOUR CHARACTER'S GREATEST FEAR? Being alone. It's an unfortunate side effect of being constantly surrounded by family at home, and then by friends at school. Sal is absolutely terrified at the thought of not having anyone, in a physical as well as emotional sense. This fear rarely manifests itself in a romantic way - Sal doesn't have time for girls - but in a way that he always needs to be where people are, even if he isn't interacting with them.

WHAT IS HIS OR HER MOST DEFINING CHARACTERISTIC? Sal has the unfortunate pleasure of being one of those people who love nonconformity because it gives them an excuse to do whatever they want. In a serious contradiction to the way he feels about his aunt and uncle, Sal is always consciously trying to go against the grain, and he makes sure that everyone knows it.

TO THIS DAY, WHAT STANDS AS HIS OR HER BIGGEST SECRET OR REGRET? In all honesty, Sal doesn't have many secrets - he hates keeping things from other people, and he's pretty much an open book. But he would really rather not anyone know about how his uncle sometimes makes him dress like a woman when accompanying his sister into various foreign villages because he has the build for it. That, and Lotus has a fierce enough glare to be able to scare off any attackers whereas the male version of Sal is about as intimidating as a daisy.

IN A PERFECT WORLD, WHAT DOES YOUR CHARACTER ENVISION FOR HIS OR HER FUTURE SELF? As much as Sal claims to resent his family, he can't imagine a life for himself that doesn't consist of traveling all over the world and experiencing different cultures. He would actually love to do that with his life, only with an ever-changing band of friends instead of his family.

salamander

scamander.