Profile

BASICS

Name: Benjamin
Age: 27 (gonna be 28 by when I play him prolly)
Birthdate: Dec. 8, 601 (Sagittarius)
Class: Civilian
Weapons: None
Country: Dentoria
Family: Father (Theodore // 63), Mother (Gladys // 59), Brothers (Caden // 36, Rhett // 34), Sister (Ema // 25)
Languages: Trade (fluent), Dentorian (fluent), High Dentorian (fluent), Old Dentorian (average), Old High Dentorian (average)
Blood Type: B


HISTORY

Ben was the third child in his family. Behind his brothers by eight and six years, he was a spoiled youngest child until his baby sister was born, when he promptly began to baby her mercilessly. His family was a simple, lower class working one in Temair, his father serving as a locksmith, and his mother occasionally doing mending work for richer women.

When Ben was eight, and his brothers nearly grown, there was a theft at the home of one of Temair's best legal aides. There was some commotion, and Ben, as a result of being in the exact wrong place at the exact wrong time, ended up under suspicion. Ben hadn't done it, and pleaded with everyone he could to try and convince them of that fact.

The first ear he obtained was actually that of the legal aide's son, Dominic. He was named for his father, so Ben took to calling him Nick -- both to tell him apart from his father and because Nick was just easier to say. Nick believed him when he told his side of the story, and the two became friends despite the situation. Nick spoke to his father, and thanks to Dominic the elder's efforts in Temair's legal jungle, Ben was released. And, to the surprise of nearly no one, he latched onto Nick at once.

He kept up his close friendship with Nick for the next few years. Ben had never had any truly close friends in town, especially not after the burglary, even if he hadn't done it. Ben was friendly to everyone in an awkward childish way, but it never seemed to stick -- except with Nick, who quickly became Ben's adventure companion. In return, Ben became Nick's listening ear. The two of them were different as night and day in several ways, and Ben's parents were at a loss as to how they got along, but it was there, and they didn't argue with it. At least Ben had someone to run around with. They got older, and the wild adventures of boys soon enough turned to the more subdued ones of teenagers facing the facts that their lives didn't really mesh as well as they had when they had been younger, before expectations and rules had started to roll in.

When Ben was fifteen, Nick's father was murdered.

The culprit was never found, and it was an astonishingly messy case. Nick, traumatized by the loss of his only remaining family as well as his mentor, was locked up so tight in the legal tangle of settling his father's affairs that Ben couldn't find a way to see him. The talk of the town was that there had been foul play, that Dominic the elder had been targeted by someone he'd wronged in the past -- some vengeful criminal, some man put into debt by fees to the crown or to Temair; there were as many explanations as there were tongues wagging about them. But even as time passed, no culprit was found, and the trail quickly became cold.

The last time Ben saw Nick, he was leaving Temair with a new mentor -- a man Ben had never met and didn't recognize. Nick was subdued and the life seemed to have gone out of him; he bid Ben a distant farewell. Ben made poor jokes, teased him about girls, anything to make Nick smile -- but no smile came. Defeated, Ben promised to write every week, instead. Nick had no response to that, and the next day he was gone.

Ben kept his promise, writing at least once a week even though he wasn't very good with his letters. The letters never received a response, and eventually they slowed to one a month, and then one a season, though Ben, even as he got older, refused to write any less than that. He wouldn't let Nick think he had been forgotten. He discovered girls, he discovered work, and he informed Nick of every last one of these things, but never so much as a word came in reply.

It was during his teenage years that Ben was introduced to the theater. Temair was hardly a city for it, but there was a small performance at a local theater which Ben snuck into with another friend. The play was one of the classics by William the Bard -- Much Ado About Nothing, to be specific. Ben was entranced at once, and spent the next years reading whatever works of the Bard's he could get his hands on. The fascination only grew, and by the time Ben turned eighteen, he had decided that he was going to be an actor. Of course, Nick got every detail of the decision in one of Ben's seasonal letters.

There was still no reply from Nick, and while somewhat disappointed by the continued silence, Ben knew he could not dwell on it forever. He left home at twenty, leaving his sister Ema with very specific instructions on what to do if any of his letters ever received a response. He took as little of his family's money as he could, determined to chase his dream on his own, and left for Eblar, where he had a much better chance of making it as an actor. Ema wrote him every month, and he responded in kind, happy to have someone to talk to even though he was fairly alone in Eblar.

It took quite a while for him to get his first role. For nearly two years, he served as nothing more than a stagehand, hauling props and helping with sets, none of the directors trusting him enough to put him onstage. It was through a complete fluke that he ended up onstage at all. One of the actors in a production of The Twelfth Night fell ill, and there was no one else who could take the role. Ben volunteered for it, and besides that, he had memorized the script long before the show had even gone into rehearsals. The role was secondary, at that, so the director figured that Ben could do very little harm, and let him try -- but only for one night, until the actor recovered or a proper understudy could be found.

To say that Ben was stunning would be a vast overstatement. He was not amazing, but neither was he average. The director saw in him a great amount of untapped potential -- but potential that would need years of refining. The director recommended Ben for bit parts to another director, who took the advice he had been given. For another five years, Ben played what people unused to the theatre would dub "small parts" -- minor and secondary characters. Through more strokes of luck, he would sometimes understudy for a more major role and perhaps, if his luck held out, perform the role when the usual actors could not. His reputation built, and, little by little over those five years, the importance of the roles Ben was assigned increased.

As he told Nick in yet another letter when he was 27, he was just about to make it big. It seemed that he was right -- he was given a role as Demetrius in the next production of A Midsummer Night's Dream that he auditioned for, and was eying the role of Horatio in a production of Hamlet that would be held months later. There had been murmurings about patronage, and Ben's longtime dream was finally in reach.

It was one of his sister's letters that brought Ben back down to earth when he was nearly 28 and about to audition for Horatio. Dominic, the one Ben had known as a child, had come back to Temair and was working as a legal aide. But something had changed, Ema's letter said, and maybe Ben should come home for a little while. It was too hard to explain in a letter.

It didn't take Ben long at all to decide that Ema wouldn't tell him something like that if she wasn't sure, and he packed up and left Eblar again. He was somewhat richer than he had been when he'd arrived there barely out of his teenage years, and wiser, and leaving behind what might have been the best opportunity of his life, but none of that seemed to matter when he read Ema's letter. He said goodbye to the actors he knew at the theatre, and tried his best not to look back.


PERSONALITY

Ben has a long history of wearing his heart on his sleeve as well as his face. If he's thinking something, it's hard not to tell he's thinking it, or at least thinking about it. His emotions are frightfully easy to read, and as a result, he's a very bad liar and not particularly good at keeping secrets. This is one thing that gave him some trouble as an actor at first; though he has since learned control over his emotions and expressions while performing, he still has trouble keeping his feelings hidden (or even subdued) in his personal, non-work affairs, and other people can read his face like a book.

He tends to plow headfirst into everything, whether it's a serious physical endeavor, an audition for a part, or just sorting out his own thoughts and emotions. He often makes the mistake of speaking before he thinks.

Ben's awkward, clumsy, and overzealous attempts at friendliness as a child have grown into something more mature and focused. Ben has a penchant for helping people and making them happy. He's eager and usually cheerful, and tends to be very likeable to all but the most stubborn. He's also unwaveringly loyal and tends to be quite stubborn himself, even if the cause he's fighting for is long-since lost. He feels all of his emotions with an intense level of passion, which inevitably leads to stupidity, or at least recklessness.

With a life that has been, on the whole, fairly good to him, Ben has grown up as an unfailing optimist who sees the best in other people and works to help them bring it out.

Ben makes a tremendous distinction between "work" and "personal" matters. As an actor, Ben's perfected the ability to control and manipulate his emotions. He has an uncanny memory for lines and stories, and half entertains the idea of writing his own someday, even though he knows as well as everyone around him that he's a terrible writer, and should stick to acting. Ben's learned to restrain his own personality while in front of an audience. He's hardly a genius, but he's certainly better than most, and was only improving with time.


APPEARANCE

Ben is tall and gangly to the point where it's more awkward than attractive. He has blond hair that he wears long, warm brown eyes, and an almost pudgy, young face. He almost always has a grin on his face, and said grin has proven itself on many an occasion to be infectious. He speaks loudly without even realizing it. He dresses very casually, overly so even for a currently-unemployed actor, and tends to look slightly out of place no matter where he is.

Ben is very articulate and has a problem with sitting still -- he seems to always need to be in some sort of motion, no matter the situation or the place he's in. Even if it's something as little as drumming his fingers or fiddling with a pen, he always has to have something to keep him occupied. He has little concept of personal space.

Thanks to his time spent in Eblar marinating among the higher classes, he tends to have a bit more formal speech than his family and those of his own social standing in Temair. He has a pair of reading glasses he only uses when absolutely necessary, which is admittedly not very often.

pb is Francisco from Romeo x Juliet