herms wintringham. (![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} hermsies) wrote,@ 2008-03-22 12:57:00 |
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"To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else."
--Emily Dickinson
I HATE CELEBRITIES. I REALLY HATE THEM.
Billie Joe Armstrong
--Emily Dickinson
I HATE CELEBRITIES. I REALLY HATE THEM.
Billie Joe Armstrong
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| general | |||||
| FULL NAME: Herman Theodore Wintringham MEANING: Herman: derived from the germanic meaning 'army man'. Herms/Hermes: phonetically similar to the greek god hermes, the god of trade, commerce, theives, wit, cunning, boundaries and those who cross them. invented the lyre. 'herms' is also the name of a greek structure used as boundary markers or good luck totems, usually depicting a bust of hermes' head on a stone pillar with a carving of male genitalia at the base. Theodore: derived from the greek 'theodoros' meaning gift of the gods/gift of god. Wintringham: meaning and unknown, likely of english origin. NICKNAME: Hermes/Herms. GENDER: Male. DATE OF BIRTH: April 22nd, 1969. AGE: 27 CURRENT RESIDENCE: Technically lives in a studio flat in London but usually spends his time at other people's flats, on their porches or in hotels. SEXUALITY: Herms knows that he's homosexual, but the general public is a bit baffled by Herms' sexuality. He publicly claims heterosexuality but has no problems being identified as bisexual and occasionally refers to himself as such, when he's not thinking -- not to mention the fact that he pays no attention to personal boundaries and is constantly... affectionate with other members of the band. It's a bit of a mess, actually. Herms is reluctant to out and say he's queer in any exact terms, preferring to let people believe as they believe. BLOODLINE: Mostly Pureish. The Wintringham family stumbled a bit down the line, but not enough to be notable or under suspicion. PET: An abnormal white bird of indistinct origin named Faing and a pet tarantula named Colin. | |||||
| physical | |||||
| EYES: Wide, dark brown eyes, fringed with girlish lashes. HAIR: Black and slightly curly.Usually looks like it's been hacked at, washed and slept on. COMPLEXION: Freckled but fair. HEIGHT: 5'11". WEIGHT: 139 lbs BUILD: Herms is thin to the point of looking sickly, and his pale skin tone doesn't help the appearance. He has strong if wiry legs, but the rest of him is mostly just the amount of mass he needs to function as a human being. Herms puts on weight easily, not that that's a problem; though he has the money to, Herms still doesn't eat regularly. POSTURE: On and off. Usually off. His neck is quite long and his shoulders suffer for it. HERITAGE: A bit of a mutt. Mostly Scottish, but with a bit of Welsh and English somewhere in his family history. SENSE OF STYLE: Herms is, in fact, a rock star, and therefore entitled to wear whatever the fuck he wants to -- not that he didn't before he joined the Weird Sisters. What Herms wants to wear is usually tight trousers and ill-fitting shirts; much of the clothes he wears are not actually his, and his accessories range from ribbons criss-crossing up his arms to scarves to top hats to bandanas and, once or twice in known history, fishnets. Herms dresses a bit like a vagabond, but, being famous, it's usually referred to as hobo chic. Herms wears robes infrequently, as they tend to inhibit his motion. TYPE OF SPEECH: Herms was born and raised in Glasgow, and thus has the distinctive Glasgow patter; one that didn't fade during Hogwarts nor after he had left his hometown. It's just as strong though he hasn't been to Glasgow since the last time the Weird Sisters toured. Herms has a soft voice and a tendency to slur his words together when he speaks. OVERUSED PHRASES: "Pure dead brilliant", "Oh, well." NOTABLE POSESSIONS: Several signature scarves, a very nice if effeminate diamond ring on his left middle finger, a woven shell bracelet and his lute, usually shrunk and in his pocket or otherwise on his person. PHYSICAL HEALTH: A bit failing; Herms has a weak immune system and doesn't eat very well, but he hasn't got any conditions or anything like that. He's broken bones several times before. | |||||
| personal | |||||
ZODIAC: Taurus • In some ways, this seems almost a contradiction. A head-in-the-clouds, theoretically-oriented Ravenclaw, born under the pragmatic, materialistic sign of Taurus? However, a surprising number of philosophers (including Socrates) have been Taureans. The intellectual Taurus is gifted not only with prodigious mental capacity, but also the sensible logic, determination, and assurance to see a theorem through from start to finish. Ravenclaws born under this sign make excellent magical researchers and are gifted with the unusual capacity to write sensibly and fluently about their results and interpretations of experiments. Because Taurus is a patient sign, and good at communication, many Ravenclaw Taureans eventually end up teaching at Hogwarts. PERSONALITY: Herms is one of few people who can honestly say that they've never grown up -- not all that surprising for a rock star, really. Unlike most, however, Herms ' lack of maturity doesn't stem from the selfishness and destructive nature of children but from the lighter qualities they have; innocence, naiveté, curiosity and a queer sort of unreal quality. It's been described as "a peculiar softness", "childlike wonder" and "enigmatic quirkiness" (all quotes courtesy of Witch Weekly); mostly it's a combination of cowardice, gillyweed, and the fact that Herms has been living in his own little bubble for the past 27 years and doesn't plan on changing that anytime soon. Herms is absentminded to a fault and easily distracted. He is quite possibly the worst person to ask if one wants a reminder to do something important; Herms has a memory to put goldfish to shame, only remembering where his stash is and how to tie his shoes (and even that last one is a bit shaky). He isn't stupid, though; being from a family of intellectuals, Herms was raised in a household where large and impressive vocabulary words were flung around carelessly, and happens to speak like someone who knows what he's talking about. He also pursues fleeting obsessions regularly, which are, occasionally, academic in nature, giving him the kind of knowledge on useless items that well-learned people have and leading people to think he's well-learned. And he's a former Ravenclaw, of course. Which helps. Living in his own world, Herms lives by his own rules; he has his own peculiar vocabulary that is, at times, only vaguely recognizable as English (though that may be the fault of his ridiculously strong Glaswegian accent), full of portmanteaus, colloquialisms and filler words. He pays little to no attention to social conventions, prone to asking inappropriate questions and invading the personal space of others. Though he certainly has the money to live in a proper place, Herms prefers to sleep wherever he gets tired -- usually at someone's house or on the street, though he's lately started to stay in hotels due to the urging of others that he not sleep on stranger's porches. Though his strange behavior has often led to him being berated by his parents, classmates, teachers, bandmates and press, Herms is a generally passive person, and doesn't react very strongly to external stimuli. H isn't easily shaken or bothered, due entirely to his nature and not to any active attempt to exercise control over his emotions. HABITS: • Doesn't look at people directly when carrying a full conversation with them; he'll usually look behind them or to his side and address them that way, only looking directly at his conversation partner if they're doing something or he's trying to make a point. • Eats everything with his hands. • Knots up his scarf or sleeve when he doesn't have anything to do with his hands. • Sits in contortionist-like positions when forced to sit for longer than five minutes. INTROVERT/EXTROVERT: A bit of both; though Herms has no problems talking to people and often noses where he doesn't belong, he still seems very much detached from the relationships he forms, as if he's constantly thinking about something else or is holding an internal conversation with himself. PHOBIAS: Cleithrophobia, claustrophobia, aichmophobia, merinthophobia -- none to any unhealthy extremes, but they're what he has nightmares about. SELF-ESTEEM: Good enough. Herms rarely lets things clearly effect him, but in the past the insecurities caused by his family have bottled up and pushed him to nervous breakdowns. It's hard to say if his self-esteem is good or if he just ranks himself by a different scale. Either way, he's confident enough to do things outside of convention. BOGGART: Himself, tied to a chair and stuck with a thousand pins and needles. MIRROR OF ERISED: Himself, drinking absinthe and smoking a long cigarette with someone wonderful and lovely and not necessarily 'his' in any distinction of the word, just not someone else's. Or, rather, himself in love. PATRONUS: A somewhat smaller than natural leopard. ANIMAGUS: Hypothetically, a ram. POSITIVE TRAITS: Independent, creative, unique, calm, innocent, intelligent, affectionate. NEGATIVE TRAITS: Petulant, lazy, selfish, cowardly, unconventional. biographical | MOTHER: Kirstie Wintringham (née MacAuley) -- A charming Scots-Irish woman who perhaps frets more than she ought to and, over the years, has become a bit pinched. She babied Herms as a child but, with the birth of Gavin, Grant and Edeen, slowly stopped spending as much time with her oldest son. She was also more vocal than his father about his strange fancies as a child. Their relationship is one of mutual tolerance. 47, aged remarkably well. | FATHER: Isaiah "Izzy" Wintringham -- Friendly but a bit pompous, Izzy Wintringham at the very least was tolerant of his son's childhood oddities. He supported Herms financially for a few months against Kirstie's wishes when he was violently removed from a flat he'd been squatting in and suffered injuries he couldn't afford to have healed. 49 and looking every day of it. BROTHERS: Gavin Fearchar and Grant Fergus Wintringham -- As children, they didn't interact much beyond what was required, but Gavin grew up admiring Herms nonetheless, perhaps for his striking independence in contrast with Gavin and Grant's matching outfits and hairstyles. As an adult, Gavin is still fond of his older brother, and easily the most supportive of Herms in the entire family. Grant likes his brother well enough, but the two don't have much of a relationship. 25; Gavin is baby-faced and young-looking, but Grant's general demeanor makes him seem older. SISTER: Edeen Wintringham -- The youngest of the Wintringham children, Edeen and Herms only ever bothered with each other when Herms stole her clothes, makeup, ribbons or books. Edeen hated Herms as a child, though Herms saw Edeen as a close friend. She now grudgingly puts up with Herms, unwilling to completely put away their former one-sided rivalry. 22 and a pretty little nit. Izzy and Kirstie welcomed Herman Theodore Wintringham a bit grudgingly, seeing as Kirstie going into labor had caused them to miss the last Portkey back to Glasgow from Cambridge where they were visiting Izzy's great-aunt. They warmed up to the boy quickly, however, and it was a wonderful and loving marriage and family and what-have-you until Gavin and Grant were born and they forgot about their first play-thing entirely. Well, perhaps that's not exactly as it went, but it might as well have been. As the years went on, Herms learned that because he was not a twin like Gavin and Grant nor a girl like Edeen he was no longer interesting in his family of six, which gave him the time he needed to chase childish past-times and fantasies. Unfortunately, these never really went away, and at the age of 14 Herms was still experimenting with wearing ribbons in his hair and had an ever-growing collection of polished Knuts stacked on his bedroom floor making a fair mountain around his bed. The only of these obsessions to pay off was the lute, and lucky it did, as Herms was really only good at Charms, Care of Magical Creatures and Divination as a student, none of which led to the Prestigious and Wonderful careers his father had hoped he might have. It didn't seem all that beneficial at the time, actually, which led to massive amounts of discouragement from his family to pursue it and eventually created a rift between Herms and his parents -- one that hasn't ever quite healed -- and prompted Herms to "take off for a bit." Or, rather, wander a bit aimlessly around Europe for a year and a half and return with a broken arm and absolutely no money. Gavin, the only family member that really paid Herms any mind, offered to let Herms crash at his flat for a bit but eventually kicked him out after Herms failed to get a job. Grant, who had been guilted regularly by Gavin for not helping their older brother out, offered Herms a place to stay, but that fell out after a few months. Herms played lute on the street to make enough money for food and was picked up by an old school-mate two weeks after Grant decided to stop putting up with him, and Herms' habit of living in other people's clothes became a full-blown hobby, taking him from Glasgow to Edinburgh to some god-awful village in Fife and, eventually, London. It was a bit hellish, of course, but Herms wasn't really ever bothered by that sort of thing; as long as he had something to eat, no matter how old, and somewhere to sleep, no matter how hard, he was fine with the way things were going. After picking up and being fired from/quitting/not showing up to several jobs over the next few years, Herms' weird lute-fancying finally paid off. Having been kicked out of his latest place to stay, Herms started busking again, waiting patiently for his pockets to go completely empty or someone else to take pity or interest in him and offer him a place to stay. And, as unfailingly as always, that's exactly what happened, this time in the form of some odd bloke who heard him playing lute and asked him to meet some of his mates. The lute had fallen out of fashion sometime around 1901, and Herms thought that the bloke was at the very least a bit of a radge, but he was in no position to protest. He liked the sound they were making and could use the new social circle, expecting he might get a few months of entertainment, free booze and a place to stay. What he didn't expect was to suddenly have more money than he knew what to do with and the kind of fame and recognition that even he'd never dreamed of, fantastical as his imagination was. His family reacted with outright disbelief, including Gavin, the only of them who thought that Herms might ever make something of himself. The Weird Sisters were household names, and Herms Wintringham by association. It was... mostly brilliant. It wasn't the media that bothered him in any specific terms; he liked talking to them, actually, even when they were being invasive and rude, as Herms was often invasive and rude and almost felt a bit at home when asked about the particulars of his relationship with the band or the lives he and the rest of the octet led. The only real problem was the fact that there were suddenly people hitting on him, buying him drinks, accosting him on the streets, telling him what they thought of his music, flipping him the bird, asking him for Kirley's address. It wasn't fun to nap on the comfortable couches in downtown cafés anymore, since he could hardly get any sleep, was constantly given coffee and had any given number of people taking pictures to send in to Witch Weekly or the Daily Prophet or what-have-you. Busking was entirely out of the question. He had a steady place to stay and a steady income, groupies out the ears and enough gilly to last him the rest of his life, but against all reason Herms felt bored. At one point during the peak of the Weird Sister's fame, Herms dropped off the face of the earth for a bit, causing not only a media panic but panic in his friends and bandmates, as no one had been informed beforehand that he would be checking out. He returned three weeks later as if nothing had changed, stoutly refusing to say anything about the disappearance aside from the fact that he had been under a Glamour Charm and had enjoyed himself thoroughly. Things have arguably calmed down since (to the point that Witch Weekly has stopped spewing rumours that Herms has been threatening to run off again), and Herms figures things are going well enough for him now. At the very least he's not constantly bothered in public. educational | SCHOOL: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry | HOUSE: Ravenclaw YEARS: 1980-1987. O.W.L. RESULTS: Six OWLs of nine. Astronomy: EE Care of Magical Creatures: O Charms: EE Divination: EE Defense Against the Dark Arts: P Herbology: P History of Magic: D Potions: A Transfiguration: A N.E.W.T. RESULTS: Four NEWTs of five. Astronomy: EE Care of Magical Creatures: O Charms: O Divination: EE Potions: P WAND: 11", Willow, unicorn hair core, very bendy. WAND HAND: Right. |