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gonnabefamous
GENERAL
NAME: Cameron Cassidy Carney
NICKNAMES: Cam, Cammy, he readily accepts nicknames without taking offense
AGE/DOB: 18; March 25, 1997
BLOOD STATUS: Half-blood
GENDER/PRONOUNS: Male, he/him
SEXUALITY: So heterosexual. If you don’t believe it, just ask his boyfriend.
HOMETOWN: Olympus, Tennessee
CONCEPT: Parties in public, studies in secret, and struggles to find himself in-between.
PHYSICAL
APPEARANCE: Look at this ridiculously tall string bean. If he twirled Sound of Music style, he would smack everyone in the room upside the head. He is tall, thin, loud, exuberant, and impossible to miss.
He generally wears his uniform like it’s supposed to be worn, except his shirt is always rumpled and untucked because he moves around too much. Sometimes, he spices his uniform up a little - a shiny pin here, purple silk shoelaces there. It's not technically out of dress code.
Outside of uniform, he generally sticks to casual attire (t-shirts, jeans, and tennis shoes) in bold colors, prints, and textures. Everything he wears fits well because it all has to be tailored to even come close to fitting him.
He has an overall love of bright colors, sequins, and glitter, and isn’t afraid to wear it.
HEIGHT: 6’6” because, wow, even his growth spurt had to be the center of attention.
PB: Bo Burnham.
PERSONALITY
LIKES: MUSIC, positive attention, singing, most music genres, being the center of attention, theater, performing, hanging with his ebonboys, ATTENTION, pineapple flavor, big southern style breakfasts
DISLIKES: People talking crap about his mama, people thinking he’s a nerd, people singing off key, people who don’t shower (ew), bland clothes, bland anything
PERSONALITY:
There are some people who fade into the wallpaper, and then there are those that tend to take up an entire room no matter how big it is. It just seems to come naturally to Cameron, like he was meant for the limelight.
To the casual observer, Cameron seems to focus on breadth rather than depth when it comes to friendships. He talks to everyone as if they’re old friends (even if he can’t remember their names). No matter who he’s with, Cameron is typically upbeat, often spontaneous, and downright fun. He’s the type of person who may break into a musical number at any point for any reason. He will drag you on an adventure if you look sad. It can either be very endearing or very annoying, with little in between.
Cameron is, in a word, flamboyant. He is ostentatious! Bold! Audacious! He is loud, he is very animated, and he never shuts up. He demands attention - sometimes literally, if that’s what it takes. He couldn’t be harder to ignore if he walked around in blinking lights (but don’t worry, he doesn’t – he’s been told that’s too distracting for an educational setting). If Cameron is talking, you had better listen (and in fact, you’ll have very little choice) because it is very important, whatever it is. If it is something bad, then it is the end of life as we know it. If it is something good, then it is the best thing to ever happen to anyone ever. It’s hard to tell if he really believes it or if he’s only doing it for the attention. His personality makes it easy for him to get the attention he craves.
People tend to assume that Cameron wears his whole heart on his sleeve, that all his emotions bubble readily to the surface. That’s about half true, anyway. Cameron isn’t stingy with positive emotions. When he’s happy, he readily shares it. He’s openly and physically affectionate with people he cares about (why would you hide that?). However, he plays negative emotions (real ones, anyway) much closer to the chest. In part, it’s because he doesn’t want to be a burden to his loved ones or darken their days, but it’s also because all the world’s a stage, and Cameron has decided that it’s up to him to craft his role or other people will.
It’s easy to look at him and think that Cameron is an idiot. He wants people to think that he’s an idiot, a loud and shallow buffoon, a friendly southern dolt. It’s part of a carefully practiced persona, a performance he rarely ever lets up on. Because people love idiots, he thinks. They love to feel superior. It seems like a valid trade to him, because he would much rather be loved than respected.
In truth, Cameron is very smart and very hardworking. Once Cameron sets his mind to something, he is tenacious in its pursuit. He becomes hyperfocused on his goals, and cannot accept failure without becoming despondent. Of course, he still wants to be seen as fun! So he keeps up the idiot pretense, pretending that he isn’t working hard and playing down (academic) successes, and hides the stress that failures cause him. Only his closest friends know better.
SKILLS
LANGUAGES SPOKEN: English. Loud English.
PATRONUS: Black bear
SKILLS:
·Music: Though he has the most experience and most general preference for guitar and keyboard, Cameron dabbles in a wide variety of instruments.
·Songwriter: Though it’s not as well known as his general love of performing, Cameron is also fond of writing original songs. The silly ones are public, the personal ones stay private.
·Showman: Cameron can turn anything into a performance. With enough theatrical zeal, something as mundane as eating breakfast can become a show.
·Studying: Cameron is intelligent, but he’s also diligent. Though he tries to hide it, he puts a lot of effort into school, and it pays off. Don’t let the technicolor highlighters and rainbow sparkling gel pens distract you; when it comes to taking organized and thorough notes, Cameron is on top of his game.
·Transfiguration: Though it’s a difficult type of magic, Cameron has a natural inclination for Transfiguration. His spells tend to have a dramatic flair and he tends to use it frivolously
·Party planning: Cameron can’t remember anyone’s birthday unless he’s reminded, but he does love a good party! His Carney Parties are well known, but it’s less well known that he creates the decorations himself and supervises the menu (which is catered, because no one wants to eat his cooking).
·Reaching things in high places: No shelf is a match for Cameron Carney.
·Personal Hygiene: Haha, did you think that mirror and sink in the Ebonhide boys' bathroom was shared? Not with the time Cameron spends in front of it.
·
HISTORY
FAMILY MEMBERS:
· Mother: Cassandra “Casey” Carney, Professional Performer and Humanitarian.
·
· Siblings: N/A
HISTORY:
The opening act
Cassandra “Casey” Carney grew up in Old Hooker’s Hollow (Hooker’s Holler to residents), a small wizarding community about forty miles outside of Olympus, Tennessee, where nearly all the residents fall below the poverty line. Many could fairly be dirt poor - the Carneys, for example, payed the doctor who delivered Casey in chickens. And haggled about how many chickens was appropriate.
It was surprising, then, just how easy the family adapted to a life of wealth when Casey made it big as a teen pop star. As the lead singer of the girl group, Casey and the Carneys, a country pop band made up of Casey and a few of her sisters, she was the girl next door with a pretty face and a southern twang. Her mother, Susette, readily traded in her life as a housewife for the stage-mom-and-manager role. It was the dream life - at least from the outside. In reality, Casey’s family (parents, ten siblings, and relatives she didn’t even know) were spending every last penny as fast as it rolled in and she was suffocating under her mom’s overbearing direction.
She was sixteen when she started to party. Her girl next door reputation really imploded when she drunkenly punched out a paparazzo outside of a Nashville club. When she got pregnant at seventeen with a roadie? Things got really vicious, and the media turned on her like a rabid dog.
If anything, though, having a baby mellowed Casey out. Eighteen by the time she had him, she cut ties with her parents, freeing herself of her mother’s emotionally abusive influence. Though Cameron’s father put up a bit of a fuss over custody, it was only to see his name in the papers. Once the media frenzy died down, he vanished, and it was just Casey and Cameron against the world.
Cameron demanded attention from the beginning. Initially, Casey tried to keep the photographers and reporters far away from her child, but they were frustratingly diligent. In the end, she gave up, figuring that this was always going to be their life, so he may as well get used to it from the start. Even as a baby, Cameron seemed okay with it. At a year old, he found ways to show off for the cameras, gleefully screaming and flailing his arms whenever he was photographed.
At five years old, Cameron mooned the cameras at a charity event that Casey was attending and made the headlines the next morning with descriptions ranging from “appalling child” to “an adorable little rascal”. Though Casey has never much liked it, it suited him just fine.
The whining schoolboy
When Cameron started at Swan Academy, he was the annoying kindegartener who spent the first week crying in a corner. In all honesty, his mom may have been at home crying in a corner, too. They had never been separated for any length of time. His classmates (and even his teacher) called him “the velcro kid” because of the way he clung to his mom when she dropped him off and the way he had to be physically pried off of her to let her leave.
Of course, they both adjusted, and Cameron transitioned from being the velcro kid to the kid that soaks up all the attention in the room. He needed to be the center of his classmates’ and the teacher’s attention. He’d have probably been hated, but he was charismatic in that child-like way, cute and precocious, and most people found him endearing. It wasn’t the national news, but school proved an adequate stage.
Things were going fine until middle school. It is universally known that middle school is the worst, but for Cameron it really was the worst. Casey decided to send him to the Lookout Thaumatergical Academy, located in Lookout Mountain, Georgia under roadside attractions like Ruby Falls and Rock City, primarily because it was the closest school (Ilvermorny was so far away!).
Cameron, by this point, was in the first battles with puberty. He was too tall and gangly, like a leggy animal that’s past cute but not grown up yet, awkward and unsure of his limbs. He had rampant acne and a voice that cracked for ages. He didn’t have the precocious childhood charm he’d had in elementary school, and his attention seeking antics drew scorn from teachers and classmates.
There was just no place for Cameron at LTA, the equivalent of a muggle STEM school that primarily focused on the practical, scientific application of magic. Their arts program was barely existent and underfunded. Cameron was in the gifted track, but the subjects bored him, and the program made him a target for further bullying. It took a long time before something really got to him. He was unhappy, but still, being called pizza face, crybaby, faggot, nerd couldn’t rouse a response from him. It was only when they made fun of his mom that his tormentors found out how to get a rise out of Cameron. He wished he could say “yeah, but you should see the other guy” or even just that he got into a fight, but truth be told, he started a fight he had no hopes of winning, and didn’t manage to land a single punch.
Truthfully, though it felt like almost everyone in the school hated him, it was really just a small handful in his grade that picked on him. The rest didn’t even know who he was, which, in some ways, was worse. He didn’t have to tell his mom that anything was wrong; when she talked to him, she knew. Casey started doing research, looking for a new school where her son could be happy.
Cameron spent all summer looking forward to going to Gooseberry High. He threw out every article of clothing that he owned, and he and his mom went on a huge shopping trip to reinvent his image, picking out clothes that said, “I’m unique, I’m fabulous, I’m cool. Look at me!”
And so he plays his part
Unlike most of the other first years at Gooseberry, Cameron was fearless (… okay, only mostly fearless). Standing in front of large crowds of people was something he was used to, and he didn’t have a preference on which house chose him. When his name was called, he strolled right up to the cave with a grin. He took a surprisingly long time, nearly requiring an intervention, and when he finally came out, it turned out that he was a brand new Ebonhide, not Azurcrest.
The way he tells it, Ebonhide needed to loosen up and have some fun, so the Bluejay acquiesced to give him to the bears as a gift. In reality? Cameron tries very hard to accomplish the things he sets his mind to. He just doesn’t want to seem like he’s trying. He’s the kid who gets good grades on a test and swears he just filled in bubbles randomly. He studies in secret and parties in public. He would have fit in Azurcrest, but he chose Ebonhide, and wouldn’t have changed it for anything.
From the start, Cameron was determined recreate his image, to be popular, to make sure middleschool Cameron was a buried secret. He wanted everyone in the school to know him on sight, not just the other freshmen. He considered ways to get attention. Sports were always a good way, but he just wasn’t made for it. He knew one bludger to the stomach would leave him crying, and that was no good. Instead, he joined cheer, which was as visible as quidditch, but with more rhyming and less running laps, just his speed. He also signed up for drama and choir, both excellent ways to end up on stage.
There was something different about his junior year. There had always been something a little strange about Gooseberry, lurking at the edges. Not everyone believed there was anything odd, and for his part, Cameron didn’t care. Not until something came knocking at their door, speaking to them with their own voices. That unnerved him. Then, Ulysses was taken. He had never really felt that kind of worry before, sick and useless. Later, Casper and others were trapped in a loop in the woods, but this time their cabin wasn’t going to listen and sit idly by - they joined the search parties in the woods. Maybe, if they’d had any sense, they would have all gone home. No one has ever accused Cameron of being reasonable, though, and despite his fear of the things in the woods, he stayed. And they came for him. Cameron was amongst the kidnapped students, placed in the woods in a hell version of Gooseberry for their friends to find in the world’s darkest game of hide and seek. While he slept, they fought horrors to find him.
That probably should have convinced them all to leave the school and never come back. For Cameron’s part, he’s never been accused of having an abundance of good sense. Hearing everything his friends went through made him feel afraid and guilty, but so much more than that, it made him feel gratitude and love. If he ever doubted, he didn’t anymore: they were a family. Where they went, he was going too. Gooseberry was his home, and if that meant learning to fight ghosts, well, bless their undead hearts, he’d learn.
SCHOOL
YEAR: Senior (Grade 12)
HOUSE: Ebonhide.
SORTING: When Cameron entered the cave, they all made their pitch. Ribbonfin claimed that learning diplomacy and compromise would help him achieve his goals; Coppertale appealed to his boldness; Ebonhide appealed to his perfectionist streak; Azurcrest appealed to his expressive and fun-loving nature. He was clearly leaning heavily towards Azurcrest - it was the fun house, and it suited the image he had of his new persona - when Ebonhide said, “Don’t let them typecast you!”
Record scratch, freeze, everyone hold up. Suddenly, Ebonhide had his undivided attention. “You’ll still be a fun person no matter which house you’re in, but you’re passionate and determined. In Ebonhide, people will take things seriously and you’ll get things done.”
Azurcrest tried to regain ground, but ultimately, Cameron’s goal-oriented, passionate, perfectionist side won out over his much more shallow, flighty surface personality.
WAND: Spruce, merrow sinew, 14”, has some give
FAMILIAR: Ragdoll cat named Elvis
CLASSES:
· Charms
· History of Magic
· Transfiguration
· Herbology
· MUSIC!!
· Magizoology
· Wizard Literature.
ADVANCED STUDY: ~*MUSIC*~
Music is Cameron's passion. It's not his only talent, but it's the only one he publicly owns - or flaunts, depending on how you look at it. He loves to perform and he strives to be just like his Mama, a famous musician.
SENIOR PROJECT: Though he has spent the year telling almost everyone that he is writing a flamboyant and self indulgent musical show, staring himself, he has in fact spent the year working on an musical album in the hopes that it will launch his music career.
ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE: He whines about how boring school is, how hard all their assignments are, and haha he’s not doing so great, but he’s actually got all A’s going into his senior year. He just doesn’t tell most people that.
EXTRACURRICULARS:
· Drama
· Choir
· Cheer
· Event Committee
· Duelling and Fencing
