Cassander Tuireann

[Cassander Tuireann]

Cassander Rowan Tuireann



"With one look, I can break your heart
With one look, I play every part.
I can make your sad heart sing.
With one look you'll know all you need to know. "

-- Andrew Lloyd Webber, Sunset Boulevard

NICKNAME(S): Cassie, Cass
AGE: 22
GENDER: male
MAJOR: musical theater major, minor is music composition/songwriting
YEAR IN SCHOOL: senior
SEXUAL ORIENTATION: openly bisexual
SPECIES: demigod
POWER(S): Like his father, Apollo, Cassander inherited intuitive, natural talent when it comes to music. He has an incredible voice, he can play the piano like nobody's business and he can compose beautiful music.
ALIGNMENT: chaotic neutral
ETHNICITY: caucasian
BIRTHPLACE: Endinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
DATE OF BIRTH: October 1st, 1990
LANGUAGES SPOKEN: British/American English and Greek
ACCENT: Scottish
MARITAL STATUS: currently single
SOCIAL-ECONOMIC CLASS: lower-upper
OCCUPATION: student
RELIGION: Atheist
PLAY-BY: Chris Colfer

HISTORY:
One day, outside a castle in Endinburgh, Scotland, a mortal man married a mortal woman, even as her three-year-old son, who was apparently the product of a one-night stand, stood by her side throughout the ceremony. He didn't know it then, but he was the son of Apollo.

Cassander grew up in a life of privilege. His stepfather, a British heart surgeon, his mother, a computer scientist. Blood relations aside, he was the middle child and he was, as the stereotype demanded, ignored. And so, it was during his early years that he learned to fight for attention. His family, being very well off, made sure he had a fine education and cultured him from a young age, teaching him to fence, box, foxhunt as well as exposing him to literature and the performing arts.

Cassander saw his first play at five and couldn't care less. His parents continued to take their three children to the theater and when Cassander was nine, to the opera. It was then that it hit him full on the face. He caught the magic of performance. He announced to his parents that he was going to be an opera star. His stepfather nodded sweetly, (just the other day, he had announced that he was going to be the king of an island he was going to create in the middle of the ocean, and the day before that, he had said that he wanted to be a garbage collector) but his mother stopped in her tracks, thinking back to the "man" she had slept with all those years ago.

Cassander started doing local children's theater and sang in his school choir and was in school plays. Although it took him a year or so to grasp what acting was, he shone as brightly as his father
as Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. When his stepfather saw it, he was deeply impressed and when his mother laid eyes on him, she knew that the "man's" claim as to who he was, was true beyond a shadow of a doubt. At his parents' nod of approval, Cassander began taking the best singing lessons that money could buy.

Through secondary school, he was the star of the stage. His voice was developing and powerful, high and pure. Girls were all over him and he always either had someone pretty on his arm or clamoring his attention. He learned to not only love the attention, but to thrive on it, to need it. It was his life force. He even had a steady girlfriend for a few months, but he irritated her and she bored him. And then, in his last year of high school, as he was applying to universities across the UK and even some foreign ones, he came across another young man, two years younger than he was and just as good-looking and talented. At first, Cassander was thoroughly confused, but then he realized he really, really liked this guy -- as in liked him. After wondering if he was gay, he started experimenting with his eyes: simply looking at people, until he discovered that lo and behold, he was attracted to both sexes. This didn't bother him in the slightest and being the confident attention whore that he was, he went right up to his male crush and asked him out on what was clearly a date of romantic intentions.

Well...the guy was straight. And homophobic. And gave him two black eyes. Cassander blinked, shocked. Then his shock turned to rage and indignation at being rejected and humiliated in front of everyone and he gave him a little more than two black eyes.

Of course, his school informed the parents and Cassander had no choice, but to confess his bisexuality. His mother didn't appear to be phased (after all, he came from Greek mythology: it was a wonder he wasn't gay). His stepfather was furious and spent the next few months telling his son how sick he was and offering him straight porn and Playboy magazine. Cassander was hurt, for the first time in his life, he wasn't supported by the man he thought was his father.

Cassander's mother was famous for her poor timing and it was then, in the middle of the feuding, that she had a quiet talk with Cassander in his room, telling him who his real father was and that Cassander was, in fact, a demigod. At first, Cassander didn't believe her, but it gave him all the more reason to fuel his anger at his stepfather. But then he started doing research and little by the little, he began to believe. The final straw came when he sent off an application to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Academy and they responded. They gave him an audition and tested his blood and he was admitted to the school officially as a demigod.

At seventeen, he packed his bags for New York and began his life at Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Academy, studying musical theater. It was there that his world was tripled in size and scope many times over. He no longer wore the crown of social kingship in the talent pool -- he had to earn it. He continued to be an attention whore, but he learned what it was like to compete, to have close friends, to trust someone, to fall in and out of love and to get so drunk you're still tipsy the next morning. He learned that there were others, just like him, and of, course, he learned how to be even more impressed with himself than he already was.


PERSONALITY:
Cassander is an intense, energetic person who is way too smart for his own good with a deep-seated loyalty to sarcasm. He has a rapid, white-hot temper and a dark, swift wit. He's funny and he knows it and has even fallen into the habit of laughing at his own jokes before his audience has figured out the punchline. His ego is enormous, but he's not an asshole. He may be have a bitchy edge to him, but that doesn't mean he's an asshole. He may be his own biggest fan, an attention whore, so proud that he can't see straight and he's still not an asshole. I repeat, Cassander Tuireann is NOT an asshole.

That being said, he's not an easy person to hang around. Cassander is a proud person and he's not only social, but competitive. He likes to dominate, to be the leader of the group and most importantly, to be in control. Here's what he has going in his favor:

1.) He's so talented that to be his friend might just advance your career one day; the kid's going somewhere, and fast (and by somewhere, we mean the Broadway stage).
2.) He's nice to look at, especially in the case of straight girls and gay guys. Cassander's not an ancient Greek god with rippling muscles, but a pretty boy of enchanting beauty...and he knows it.
3.) He can turn the charm on and off like a light switch, and when it's on, Prince Charming himself has been put to shame.
4.) As snobby and impressed with himself as he is, Cassander does not hold other people as inferior to himself. Okay, well he sort of sees himself as the best, but he...okay, well, he does think he's the best.
5.) If you're truly his friend, he'll stop at nothing to protect and help you.

Cassander has two levels to his personality. The outside layer, the Cassander that most people think they know, is loud, egocentric, confident, competitive and composed. But the Cassander under that is insecure, ruled by his emotions, fretful and, at times, very sweet.

He's energetic. He doesn't need much sleep and he's hyper most of the time. Seriously, the kid needs prozac, or something.


LIKES, DISLIKES, FEARS, PASTIMES, SECRETS:
Likes

• attention
  
• performing
  
• flirting/wooing people
  
• being classy and a little snobby
  
• writing
  
• people
  
• attractive young men and women
  
• compliments
  
• dancing
  
• music
  
• theater
  
• getting cast
  
• New York
  
• show tunes
  
• watching live theater
  
• fashion
  
• himself

Dislikes

• getting ignored
  
• homophobes
  
• un-classy, gross people, whom he disdainfully refers to as "peasants"
  
• when he appears to be ignorant or unprepared or otherwise incompetent, even more a minute
  
• really, really dimwitted people
  
• girls who think ditzy is attractive
  
• his stepfather's homophobic views

Fears

• fears
  
• losing his talent, voice or good looks
  
• getting old
  
• being ignored
  
• spiders
  
• the dark
  
• suffocation
  
• public humiliation
  
• getting hurt, both emotionally and physically
  
• never being able to work professionally on Broadway
  NOT getting cast
  
• moderate gem-o-phobe

Secrets

• exaggerated on his application to R&G Academy
  
• he's something of a recreational cross-dresser
  
• he's STILL a virgin

STRENGTHS/SPECIAL SKILLS:
Strengths

• smart
  
• talented
  
• good-looking
  
• talented writer and musician
  
• charming
  
• exceedingly well-educated
  
• well-dressed

Special Skills

• fencing/stage combat
  
• horseback riding
  
• juggling
  
• piano
  
• modeling skills

Voice High tenor and countertenor

FLAWS:

• Insecure, hungry for the approval of others.
  
• Egocentric, arrogant, bitchy, snob and generally an attention whore.
  
• He's not bi-polar, but he acts like he has something like it. Most of the time, he's so hyper he has trouble sitting still and then, on occasion, he's calm and in a depressed, dark place.
  
• A slave to his emotions. And he's moody.
  
• Proud and stubborn about his pride. His need to save face will often take precedence over "doing the right thing".

CLOTHING: Cassander is a god of fashion, or at least, he thinks he is. He rather enjoys shopping and wearing the gayest clothes he can find in the gayest combinations possible. But seriously, the guy knows how to dress himself and he dresses well. He models tries to compete with the other student models (not that they have that much to learn) in his spare time.

HEIGHT: 5'10"
WEIGHT: 160 pounds
EYE COLOR: bright, intense blue
HAIR COLOR: brown
SKIN TONE: pale
SCARS, TATTOOS, PIERCINGS, MARKINGS: scar across the back of his hand after a fall from foxhunting when he was a young teenager.
OTHER: Yes, he's aware that he looks young for his age.

FAMILY:
Son of the Greek god Apollo and a mortal Scottish woman named Rowan. He has two half-siblings from his mother's side and of course, many half-siblings from his father's side. He currently has a healthy relationship with his mother, sister and brother and a strained relationship with his stepfather, with whom he hasn't spoken with in months.

POTENTIAL PLOTTING:
I'd like him to have a mentor ghost and at least ghost who haunts him. Friends and even more enemies, girlfriend or boyfriend and of course, fighting over who gets the lead in the musical. He's applying for graduate studies for next year! Yay!

ANYTHING ELSE?:

OUT OF CHARACTER:

NAME/ALIAS: Peregrine/Pippin/Pip
GENDER: male
AGE: clearly in an embryonic stage of mental development
RANDOM FACT ABOUT YOU: I'm a chronic irritator. I like to irritate people chronically.

[Cassander Tuireann]

ACCEPTED !