CASTEL, benoit von schönau

[Ben Castel]

idon'tcareaboutclever,idon'tcareaboutfunny



BENOIT VON SCHÖNAU CASTEL

bonjour, my name is Sara. i've got seventeen
tracks spinning on my record. i've got serious skill 'cause i've been roleplaying for six and i live in the Pacific timezone. to contact me try AIM – massa sharkk

[/color]
[/font][/size][/center]

iwantloadsofclothesandfuckloadsofdiamonds

name , Benoit Von Schönau Castel
nicknames , Ben, Benny
age & date of birth , Twenty-four, May 14th
gender , Male
sexual orientation , Straight
occupation , Session drummer
played by , Ryan Seaman
[/size]

ihearpeoplediewhiletryingtofindthem

height , 6 feet
weight , Never over 160 pounds
basic appearance , At six feet tall on the dot, Ben is the tallest person in his family and he rather likes it that way. He shot up in eighth grade and didn't stop growing until his junior year of high school, and while this early growth made him look quite awkward and twiggy for the first few years of his adolescence, he has since grown into it. Well, somewhat. Ben's shoulders and chest are fairly broad, and years of drumming like a beast have made his arms, especially the biceps, very firm and well muscled. Alas, most people don't notice this at first glance because his height and long, skinny legs give him a very slight appearance. While his arms are muscular, they taper down to oddly skinny wrists from which protrude large but very deft hands. This gives his upper half a very slightly odd appearance that most people cannot discern the cause of.

Fortunately for Ben, the flaws in his build are rarely the first thing to catch your eye; that would be the smile that is usually on his oval, angular face. His nose is downturned and a little too large for a thin face you would expect to be sporting a thin hawk nose. Benny's brown eyes are small for his face, and his long “lady lashes” and large eyebrows don't help matters in that department. His mouth is the only feature on the average side – his lips aren't thin, pale, and chewed on as many guys' are, nor are they full, womanly lips – but his teeth are quite straight and white. His family was always able to afford proper dental and orthodontic care, and even as a child he was very fastidious about oral hygiene. His pearly whites are sometimes on display in a broad, easy grin, but Ben's standby smile is a close-lipped but still friendly smile. It's a good thing that he is generally smiling, as this helps to slightly disguise the fact that his other features are disproportionate to the size of his face.

Despite the ribbing he gets about it from his friends, Benny thinks it is important to keep his hair healthy and looking good. He shampoos and conditions it every other day using products recommended to him by a stylist friend of his sister's who has cut his hair for the past few years. Ben keeps it in the “semi-long-with-bangs” cut that is common among guys in bands, but never lets it get too angular, too long, or otherwise crazy; the boy considers those kinds of cuts sloppy and ridiculous. He is the same about his clothes too, preferring casual but well-fitting clothes. His pants and jeans all sit right at the hip but aren't baggy, sagging, or so tight it takes ten minutes to get them on, and all the shirts in his closet are not too tight or loose.
physical flaws, Skinny build past the shoulders
Eyes small for his face
Small wrists and big hands
[/size]

life'saboutfilmstarsandlessaboutmothers

likes , Music
Drumming
Family and friends
Concerts
Sleeping
Eating
Baseball
Animals
Skateboarding
Being close to people
Kids

dislikes , Underweight/surgically “enhanced”/generally fake girls
Stereotypes
Enclosed spaces
Swiss cheese
Vodka
Sloppily fitting clothes
Piercings on body parts aside from ears

overall personality , Benny is an innately kind person. Even as a child he was always willing to share his things with others and concerned for those who had nothing while he had so much. Barney's messages of manners, friendship, kindness, and generosity seemed to come pre-installed; the big purple dinosaur was always preaching to the choir when Ben sat in front of the tv. He loved his family immensely, making room in his heart for each new sibling that came along. From a young age Ben was very candid, unwilling to lie or generally be dishonest, but also entirely unafraid to make his feelings and opinions known to everybody. When he discovered that his first new sibling was to be a girl, he stated that little sisters sounded very boring and he would like a little brother instead, please. Intentionally or unintentionally, Ben is pretty good at providing comic relief.

Benoit is jovial and personable, always willing to meet new people and good at making connections. This is very beneficial to someone who works in the music industry, where connections are everything. Generally very happy go lucky and almost always keeping a positive outlook, some might say that Ben is irritatingly upbeat. It's honestly rather surprising and somewhat baffling that he manages to stay so optimistic all the time. His parents divorced when he was fifteen and while the poor kid was devastated that the family he'd thought was so perfect was now broken, he bounced back quickly. As much as it hurt, the boy kept moving and took it upon himself to help his little siblings through the rough patch as best he could. He is definitely a good person to have around to help you focus on the good in your life. Honestly, Ben doesn't see the point in pessimism, thinking of it as a hindrance. If things are so bad already, why make it worse with a depressing, defeatist mindset? Take what you have, do the best you can with it, and maybe slap on a smile. Things will get better, and if they don't, eventually there will be nowhere to go but up.

He is also a very loyal and protective friend and brother. If you have a problem, call Ben and he'll do everything in his power to help you out. Flat tire? If he can't go out and help you in person, he'll spend a good twenty minutes on the phone walking you through the process of replacing it. Being harassed by someone? He'll take care of them one way or another. He goes to all this trouble partly because of his devotion to his friends and partly because he finds great satisfaction in making sure that all is right in his world. Additionally, Benny is not one of those guys who have issues with their feelings or using the word “love” with his friends. He thinks men that are uncomfortable with expressing emotions are immature and need to grow the hell up.

As much as he loves his friends, he can be very opinionated when it comes to what he thinks is best for them. He will not lie to friends to make them feel better or feed them false hope. In his mind that is doing a person a huge disservice, and friends don't do that. A friend once called him to come bail him out after being arrested for being drunk in public. Ben refused, saying that it would do him some good to spend the night in jail.

Sometimes spastic and somewhat dorky, Benny seems to have an endless supply of energy. He likes to keep active either mentally or physically at all times, so his activities range from drumming or skateboarding to reading or doing crossword puzzles. When he was young his parents had actually wondered if their child had ADHD, but since his grades were usually quite good that definitely didn't seem to be the case. As much as he loves to goof around, he knows when it's time to buckle down and work. He may not enjoy it, but he does what he has to do to get by. Fortunately for Ben, who enjoys the luxury of doing something he loves, every day feels like a Friday to him and he is usually happy to get down to work. He is very devoted to his job; while music may seem like fun and games and often is, he takes all of his commitments very seriously, always operating with at least a small semblance of professionalism.

As readily as his friends will testify to his fundamentally kind nature, they can also readily tell you that he's certainly not perfect, not by any stretch of the imagination. Rather volatile, Ben is quick to anger but just as quick to calm down. It's not so much that he becomes overly violent, but more that his mood can change in an instant. He is something of an emotional roller coaster who doesn't seem to venture into emotional gray areas; either he's happy and you know it or he's not and you definitely know it. This can be prompted by a joke or prank that he feels went too far, an attack on his personal beliefs, or anything else along those lines. At that point, that usual good-natured attitude flies straight out the window.

If the swing is prompted by a friend or family member he will never get physical, sticking with a serious, scolding tone, perhaps some yelling and a few choice words. On bad days, this leads to arguments that last for days or weeks before Benny gets tired of it and either realizes that he was in the wrong or gets over the initial offense. Usually, though, Ben ends up apologizing profusely before the day is done. Most of his close friends are so used to this that they just accept the “hair trigger,” so to speak, as a part of who he is. The people who couldn't handle it have pretty much all left the picture. If the issue is with a stranger, someone he doesn't know very well, or someone he doesn't like, things can get nasty. Here he has no problems with copious amounts of curse words, yelling, and even physical violence. In the worst cases, he can become physically violent to the point where it seriously harms the other party and frightens anyone else involved.

[/size]

it'sallaboutfastcarsandcussingeachother

hometown , Chicago, Illinois
family , Guillame Stephane “Will” Castel, father
Marina Fiore Von Schönau, mother
Lenore Ophelia Castel, sister
Maximilian Christophe “Max” Castel, brother
Jacqueline Fiore “Jackie” Castel, sister
Kelly Gaffney Casel, stepmother
Olivia Marie Castel, half sister
pets , Meeko, Welsh Corgi/Lab mix
Sonja, some kind of cat
history , The first child born to Will and Marina Castel and the first grandchild for both sets of grandparents, Benoit Castel brought joy into the world from day one. He was a quiet baby with a sweet smile and a burbling laugh that was quite easy to coax out of him. The first grandchild for both sets of grandparents, he was doted on excessively. Life was simple and sweet, as it is for all children born to wealthy families. Benoit was given the best of everything you can think of. He wasn't an only child for very long, as his little sister Lenore was born when he was three years old, but another child in the house didn't mean Benny was spoiled any less, only that more spoiling was going on.

When Benny became old enough to attend school, he was sent to the best private academy in the area. He showed talent in most subjects but very little desire sit in a classroom and work for hours on end, so until about sixth grade his grades were generally Bs and Cs. To Ben, reading and writing and science were good, but running around and playing various sports was even better. He got into drumming in third grade during the school's “Big Buddy” program. His Big Buddy, Trevor, was apparently the coolest kid in eighth grade. He also happened to be a drummer, which little Ben thought was the coolest thing in the world. Trevor began to teach him the basics of drumming on a practice pad he brought to school, and the rest is history. Ben became obsessed, begging his parents to let him get lessons. Of course, they caved and got him not only lessons but a set of his own. They soon regretted this, though, as his drumming often made a terrible racket and distracted him from his studies more than any other game or pasttime. Fortunately, as Ben got older he became more and more interested in mental and intellectual pursuits. He got better about buckling down and doing his work before running off to play his drums or to fly around the yard on his skateboard, and consequently his average grades rose somewhat.

When it came to friends, Benny was a bit of a social butterfly. He had a few close friends, two of which he is still very close with, but also knew all the children in his classes pretty well, even the quiet ones. Though he liked to play sports and such with his friends, he didn't like to see people left out or lonely, doing his best to include other people in games of tag and the like. He didn't like to see people picked on, either. This was a serious affront to Ben, who never liked to leave keeping the peace and meting out punishment to teachers and other staff. As a child Ben was often sent to the office for taking matters into his own hands when it came to bullies picking on not just his friends or little siblings, but anyone. He was never dangerously violent, but delivered some pretty serious playground justice for a grade schooler; slapping, shoving, pseudo-tackling, and a nice hard kick here and there. Soon enough, everyone in school learned to leave the Castel kids alone unless they wanted to deal with the oldest one.

By the age of eight, all of Ben's brothers and sisters had been born. Four years after Lenore was born came Max, the little brother Ben had wanted for a long time. He enjoyed spending time with his sister, but she wasn't too interested in running around playing games with her brother all day, and there were so many more things that he could share with his little brother. As Max got older Ben taught him all kinds of games and sports and they would play in the yard for hours. Benny is responsible for turning Max into the hockey freak he is today; the little boy seized on the one sport out of the many he played with his brother and became as obsessed with it as his older brother was with drumming. Just a while over a year after Max came into the world, Jackie was born. Ben loved her just as much as the rest of his siblings but she turned out to be even more of a princess than her older sister, preferring to play pretend or dress up and not at all interested in running around outside.

At age fifteen, Benny's parents got a divorce. This seemed to come out of absolutely nowhere, and Ben was floored. He couldn't remember seeing or hearing anything that had hinted at the ending of their marriage. The split seemed amicable enough; there was no yelling, no crying, none of the theatrics you see in the movies. All four Castel children were upset, of course, but Ben took it upon himself to bounce back as soon as he could to help his siblings as best he could.

Marina was granted custody of the children. Will moved out of the house and into a posh condo about half an hour away where the children visited him on weekends. Ben continued on in high school, earning solid grades and making it onto the high school drumline in his sophomore year. Naturally, he and his brother and sisters soon fell into the rhythm of things, and while they could remember what it was like to have their whole family together, they knew it could have been much worse.

Ben's parents had been divorced for almost three years when his father met Kelly, a successful young lawyer. Both of his parents had dated a few people, but all the relationships were never serious and ended in a few months. This one, though, was different. Will spent tons of time with her, and she was the first woman he actually introduced to his kids, so they should have seen it coming when she eventually she moved into the condo. Benoit didn't really care, probably because he was a senior in high school and was busy with friends and drumline and now playing shows for friends here and there as well. His siblings, though, Lenore in particular, were far from pleased. About two years after they had started dating, when Ben was a freshman in college, Will and Kelly were engaged and, soon enough, married. Benny didn't and still doesn't feel any particular fondness or hate for his stepmother. He rarely saw her before she married his father and saw her even less afterwards, as he was off at school.

When he'd had to apply to colleges, Benny applied to about seven different schools, some devoted specifically to music and some not. Five of them accepted him and the boy toured them all before settling on a music school in Hollywood, California, the epicenter of the music business. Ben blasted through his college education with vigor, making good grades and useful connections. Financial support from his parents made it unnecessary to work and therefore possible for him to balance schoolwork as well as playing gigs here and there. In his junior year, his half sister Olivia was born. Again, this was really no big deal to Benny, far more concerned with starting up a life of his own with his longterm girlfriend Sophia.

Ben and Sophia Chadwick had been dating for nearly five years; five fun-filled, very happy years. Sophie was a Music Production major with a bleeding heart and big plans for her life. She and Ben met in an Introduction to Music Education course in the second quarter of their freshman year of college and immediately hit it off. It wasn't just the fact that she was five-nine with skin like fresh cream, wavy hair the exact color of Ghiradelli chocolate and big doe eyes to match, and the kind of curves that would make models badmouth her even as they stuck their fingers down their throats and puked out one last pound. Ben could see beyond the killer rack and into the quick, able mind, the eyes that clearly spoke of the desire to do something big with her life. He liked everything about her. He liked her even more when she boldly asked him out on a coffee date.

Ben and Sophie quickly became a couple, and a seemingly perfect one at that. She was loud and outgoing, Ben was laid back; near polar opposites had obviously attracted, but their differences didn't make their relationship difficult. If you saw them together you could easily see how comfortable they were with each other. They were not shy about affection, either; when they went out Ben's arm was draped around his girl's shoulder, or Sophie's arm was wrapped around his back, her hand shoved into his pocket. They studied together, went out together, spent time with friends together, yet still found time to devote to their families and themselves. Their relationship was healthy and always growing.

Sophie was the first girl Ben ever had sex with, and she taught him a lot in that regard. She also taught him about literature and poetry he had never taken the time to appreciate, and Ben introduced her to all kinds of music beyond the crap she'd always heard on the radio. In their junior year, they moved in together, and everything in their lives, not just their relationship, seemed to be getting better and better as time went on. They graduated together, started looking for jobs together, talked about marriage.

At a little over four years into their relationship, things began to crumble. Sophia became distant and often cranky, and Ben was very busy drumming for six different artists. They didn't see much of each other, and when they did they were usually having sex or sleeping. Ben noticed this and made an honest effort to return things to the way they had been; it was somewhat successful, but a good deal of the initial wonder and ease had been lost. Just three months before their five year anniversary, Sophia announced that things just weren't the same; she wasn't in love with Ben anymore and wanted out. She moved out the next week and the two never spoke to each other again.

For the next few months, Ben was despondent, depressed and utterly...heartbroken. He still gave everything he had to his work, but his attitude had been noticeably dulled and he rarely went out and had fun. Eventually he just had to make the decision to let go of her and work on accepting that the relationship was over. He moved out of the Los Angeles apartment they had shared and back home to Chicago. At that point, he resolved to stay away from serious relationships, unwilling to go through that kind of pain again. He eventually became the old Ben again, happy and smiling and focusing on the joy in life.

Even though the romantic element of his life had been destroyed, Benoit got his big break as a session drummer when a friend referred him to a friend who referred him to another friend who just happened to be the brother of the bassist for The Eighth Brigade, a Chicago band who had just begun to find fame. Their drummer left the band just over a month before they were set to begin a nationwide tour. They were ready to postpone the tour until they could find a permanent replacement, which could have taken months, but fortunately Ben managed to save the day. He not only drummed for them their whole nationwide tour but tracked for them when they recorded their next album. His career took off from there.

As of now, Ben lives in a nice little apartment in Chicago. His line of work means he travels a good deal through the greater Chicago area to practice, record albums, and play shows. He is also thinking about finding a band to stick with and become a permanent member of, but that may not happen for quite some time.
[/size]

itdoesn'tmatter'cuzi'mpackingplastic

[/size]



other , admin changed.[/size]

andthat'swhatmakesmylifesofuckingfantastic

mmkay. so this application hurr was made by AMANDA IN WONDERLAND !? of caution. steal it or take off this credit, and i shall hunt you down and eat your insides! lyrics credit to lily allen.

[/size][/center][/blockquote][/blockquote]