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Character Information
Character Name: Galen Howard
Canon: Original Character
Canon Point: During TCC's hiatus.
History: Galen was born in Yonkers, New York on February 3rd, 1987 to Patricia Howard, a high school drama teacher, and Nathan Howard, a funeral director. He was an energetic kid, growing up; spirited, creative, and bright (though also noisy, precocious, and bossy), with parents that were devoted and undeniably happy together.
However, when Galen was four years old, his mother passed away due to complications with the medication she was taking to manage her schizophrenia, which had been triggered by her pregnancy. Galen was still very young, and the full weight of what had happened didn't really sink in for a few years, but it did end up having a major impact on his life, growing up. He had to be independent, due to the unpredictable nature of his dad's working hours and the unreliable schedules of his extended family, and it gave him a perspective on life that a lot of kids don't have. Mostly, though, he grew up missing his mom and wondering what he, or she, or his dad had done to deserve what had happened. This would resurface as anger later, in his teenage years, and never quite go away.
His father never remarried, although over the years, he saw a couple of women. These relationships never worked out, though, and when Galen got older, he wondered if it was his fault; he wasn't extremely receptive towards his dad's new friends since, deep down, he felt they were trying to replace his mom. Thankfully, when he got older, he realized that that was not the case at all, and that his dad, who still loved his mom very much, deserved to be happy. Still, even though Nathan insisted that they just hadn't been good matches, Galen internalized the feeling that he'd ruined those chances.
Nathan Howard's job was also a big player in Galen's life. When Galen was in his early teens, Nathan let him help out around the funeral home, during and after services; essentially, he was preparing Galen to eventually take over the job, when he was older. They were sure to talk about it, of course; putting a young teenager around grieving families isn't something to be done lightly. The process of observing these people in pain and mourning, combined with the bittersweet celebration of life and happy gratitude at the work his father had done, gave Galen an interesting and well-rounded outlook on life and death, and how they're both perceived. These things stuck with him, and as he got older, Galen felt an urge to find a way to express these collected feelings and ideas from his younger years. Most of the time, it came out in writing: snippets of stories, sometimes, but most often poetry, which he kept to himself for years.
Although Galen had somewhat of an interest in his father's job - the inner workings, the philosophy - he was adamant from an early age that he didn't want to end up in - or anywhere near - a morgue. He'd seemed to inherit a love of theatrics and performance from his mother, and was always an extroverted little bugger; trying to make people laugh, to make them react, anything to get their attention. As he got older, it occurred to him that pursuing that love was something he could do with his life, and once he was locked on that target, not even his dad - who understood, as a former guitarist in a college band, but worried for Galen's future security - could divert him.
Galen went into piano lessons at the age of nine, but wasn't much for the technical, theoretical side of playing the instrument. It stopped being fun very quickly, but even after he quit, he didn't give up on music; Galen continued to sing and exercise his musical side at any chance he got, and by the time middle school rolled around, he was well-liked by a handful of kids, and no surprise, was thought of as obnoxious and weird by most others. And as middle school goes, that earned him some teasing from his peers.
With middle school came the surfacing of the anger Galen felt over losing his mom so early in his life, lured out by changes in his life and friends; the nickname 'Gaylord'; his father needing to work more often; and a serious lack of knowing where the hell his life was going. Basically: typical teenage stuff. His grades were okay, despite skipped classes and bullshitted assignments here and there, but going somewhere with music or writing or acting or anything he actually liked sounded less and less feasible.
On Galen's sixteenth birthday, his dad gave him his old 80's Les Paul (practice amp lovingly donated by his aunt), and that was when things started changing. He used the knowledge he'd gleaned from piano lessons combined with his own natural affinity for music to start teaching himself how to play, and promised himself he wouldn't give up on the instrument, because as he saw it, his future was either music or dead people. He learned quickly, and though he wasn't especially exceptional at it, he got good enough to start writing his own songs and pestering his musically inclined friends at school to start a band with him (which were all varying degrees of terrible, of course).
Nothing stuck until the next school year, when Galen met Bradley Keaton. Brad was tall and gawky and kind of a nerd, but he was allowed to bring his guitar to school to practice with his friends during his off period, and to Galen, that was so cool. Brad was amazing, too -- he had the dedication to fingerwork of a lead guitarist and the enthusiasm of a true musician, and he and Galen became fast friends. They stayed close right through to college - Galen later moved in with him and a couple other friends, for the first two years of college -, playing in each other's bands, trying to find something that would stick, but never quite getting there.
In college, Galen set his sights on music business, his back-up plan in case the band thing really was fated to not work out. He also took classes in radio arts, and put many hours into the campus radio station, outside of his other classes and his Kinkos job; he eventually had his own time slot, in which he'd play his and his friends' demos and interview fellow musicians, trying to get the rest of the school involved in the rich music scene they seemed to be cultivating.
Daphne, a good friend turned girlfriend turned good friend again, soon joined Galen and Brad's semi-band as their bassist, and not long after, they convinced a mutual friend, Lottie Matheson, to cheat on her current band and join theirs as their drummer. Soon, The Counter Curse was born, and it was the beginning of a tough but exhilarating ride; they were booking shows, cashing in favours with the recording arts students, playing in different cities, getting noticed.
It took a lot of hard work and a lot of sacrifice (Galen was forced to drop out of college, quit his job, and temporarily live on Brad's couch because so much of his focus was on being in the band and being the band's manager), but the band eventually got signed to an indie label: Hangman Records.
A year later, after their first cross-country tour, the recurring dreams started. Harmless, mostly, but always the same: a dark, shadowy figure, a sense of being held uncomfortably tight, and someone whispering his name. Sometimes, he'd wake up and not be able to remember the voice, and sometimes it was familiar: one that felt safe, but at the same time, terrified him. Into the recording of their second album, this started affecting Galen's ability to sleep, and he was often working himself into exhaustion and denying that anything was wrong. The dreams weren't constant, and they weren't worsening, but they put him on edge, and the result was a grittier, more chaotic tour than their first had been, leaving them exhausted and raw and unsure of where to go next.
What they eventually agreed on was a break. Daphne pushed Galen to see a doctor about his insomnia and apparent anxiety about sleeping, and the rest of the band, though they stayed close in New York, broke off for a breather and to work on other projects.
Galen, living in Brooklyn, now, and unimpressed by his doctor's suggestion to simply 'reduce stress' as a way to manage the dreams, put his focus on writing about them, instead, in the form of a fictional narrative written as blog posts, in an attempt to distance the dreams from reality. That has become his main outlet, for now, aside from DJing a few nights a week for a friend's small radio station and gradually getting back into songwriting. But lately, it seems like the more he writes about these recurring dreams, the clearer they get when they happen again.
It's during this downtime, when things are beginning to get stranger, that he arrives.
Personality: Galen is a real Type A: talkative, sociable, and able to make friends fairly easily. His close friends are few, but his interest in people has earned him many acquaintances. He's also a hard worker who takes his ideas and projects very seriously, to the point where he can occasionally become consumed by them -- which can make keeping up with those friends and acquaintances a little difficult, sometimes.
Emotionally, Galen can be slightly immature; his means of dealing with anger is the one thing from his teenage years that he didn't quite grow out of. He can be harsh, biting, and underhanded to people who set him off or people he perceives as a threat, and if he doesn't walk away, he'll have a lot to apologize for later. Galen tries to use this to fuel his work, but sometimes it just can't be helped -- and sometimes, he'll end up briefly digging himself into a hole of angry self-pity.
Due to the open nature with which Galen was presented ideals of life and death, as a kid, Galen can get a little frustrated with people who strictly adhere to one belief. He can be a little hypocritical in this; it's not to the point of intolerance, but he has some difficulty understanding these types of people, which technically goes against his 'be understanding of all perspectives' perspective.
When under pressure, Galen has a tendency to keep it to himself and try to deal with it alone. It's not as bad as it used to be, thanks to the band, but it's still something he just unconsciously does. This is probably because he had to be independent at such an early age, with his mom being gone and his dad working at such unpredictable times. This shows particularly clearly in the last few years, especially since Galen moved out. He loves his dad very much, there's no denying that, but he moved away from home (and into an apartment with some friends) with abandon. It had been just Galen and his dad his whole life, after all, and he was excited to finally put that independence into practice. Unfortunately, that means Galen and Nathan don't see each other extremely often; Galen gets busy, and so does his dad. He's not so much pushing his father away as acting on some kind of twenty-five-year-old unconscious bitterness about dad being in and out so often, and still being the only authority figure in his life until Galen was old enough to make his own decisions. Sometimes he just forgets that he's putting his dad by the wayside, and doesn't realize that he's partially doing it on purpose.
Despite living a musician's life, Galen has managed to stay grounded and resist the things that cause a lot of bands to fall apart. Mostly, this is because the idea of losing control of his higher thinking scares him, and because he knows that schizophrenia - what his mother suffered from - is both hereditary and more likely to develop from alcohol and drug use (Galen does enjoy the occasional social drink, but never enough to be more than a little buzzed). Developing schizophrenia is a low-burning fear of his, even though it is treatable, so he'd prefer not to risk it. He already worries, sometimes, that some of the things he sees and hears aren't real.
Galen is a leaderly type, but he doesn't really have problems taking directions, unless they're from someone he doesn't particularly like or trust. He's one to act, to find out what's going on; he doesn't like sitting around when something can be done about a situation, but even though he tries, he sometimes doesn't think things through before acting.
He is very much an optimist, and is always looking for the brighter side of things -- mainly for other people's sakes, to try and lift their spirits, because their mood tends to affect him, after a while, too. He's hard pressed to give up on anything he believes in, which is why he works himself so hard; he doesn't like losing his momentum, and he doesn't like walking away from anything until it's done. He's sort of obsessive, that way.
Galen likes to learn, and he likes to listen. Growing up around stories of other people's lives has given him an appreciation for them, and so he makes a good conversational partner, and a good friend; he's a good listener. The stories he hears inspire him, and sometimes inspire his work. This has made him pretty observant, too.
He cares a lot about the people he's close to, and would gladly inconvenience himself for the sake of someone he cares about. He can be sweet and sympathetic, and likes to make people laugh. He likes getting a response from people in general; that's part of why he enjoys being a performer.
Beyond that self-assured, personable outside, though, Galen is just as vulnerable as anyone else. He doesn't often get into relationships - romantic or sexual - because he's afraid of being hurt, and there's a part of him that overanalyzes his thoughts and feelings and makes trivial things seem bigger than they are. He craves companionship, though, and doesn't like being left alone for too long.
Items on your character at canon point: His clothes, keys, phone, glasses, wallet.
Abilities:
► Galen sometimes picks up on 'vibes', like a low-level psychic thing. This just means he's usually the kid in the horror movie going "guys, I've got a bad feeling about this". He's intuitive, though he doesn't always listen to that intuition.
► That intuition combined with an ear for music have made him a fairly skilled musician. He's an experienced performer and can play a few different instruments with varying degrees of skill. He also has a high level of stamina, thanks to his job.
► He can speak conversational Spanish and a bit of French, though he's picked up bits of other languages due to being addicted to Duolingo.
► He's knowledgeable about the mortuary sciences due to his dad -- though, of course, not to the degree of someone who actually went to school for it. He can probably tell you how many days a person has been dead, and knows how much heat you need to burn a body. That kind of thing.
► He's worked as a radio DJ for years, both in and after college, so he's skilled at the kind of quick thinking that entails.
STRENGTHS:
physical
✔︎ can be active for extended periods of time before giving in to tiredness (thanks to being in shape and pure stubbornness)
✔︎ quick to notice patterns; musical, aural, visual, or otherwise
✔︎ knows, like, five karate moves, because one of his bandmates is a blackbelt, but that's about it.
mental/emotional
✔︎ always set on seeing things through to completion
✔︎ almost always optimistic, sometimes to the point of being annoying
✔︎ tries to make friends - or at least get on good terms - with everyone he meets
✔︎ almost always tries to consider all sides of a story (with some exceptions)
✔︎ passionate and driven once he finds a cause
WEAKNESSES:
physical
✘ needs glasses to see; without them things are pretty fuzzy
✘ he can and will work himself into exhaustion
✘ his knee, which he bashed onstage once, aches sometimes
✘ he smoked for a few years, so sometimes cravings and being a little wheezy are a problem
✘ because of the nightmares, he doesn't always sleep well
✘ he's only human, so he's susceptible to most bad things
mental/emotional
✘ tends to respond in an emotionally immature way when upset
✘ once he's decided that he doesn't like someone, or that they're untrustworthy, it's really hard to get him to change his mind
✘ overthinks things if he's left alone to stew
✘ afraid of losing control of himself/his grip on reality
✘ still kind of sensitive about his mother and can lash out if pushed the wrong way
Samples
Network/Action Spam Sample: A sample! And an older texting sample!
Prose Log Sample: Galen dropped his bag into the patchy broadcaster’s seat, reached up to rub at his eyes. The dream had been on his mind the entire ride over, and even the regular dose of coffee couldn’t seem to wake him up properly. He felt like he’d left half of himself back in that dream - cold, dim, suffocating -, and no matter what he tried, it was as if he couldn’t quite get himself back up to full capacity. Maybe if he wrote about it, he thought, it would finally get out of his head — or maybe if he could work it into some music…
Galen realized that he’d been spacing out when his phone trilled loudly in his pocket, nearly making him jump. He set down his coffee, careful not to put it on the switchboard, and pawed at his pocket, mentally telling the thing to shut up as it relentlessly flittered out an ungodly high pitched noise. Galen had given up on setting music as his ringtone ages ago; he found that if he got enough calls in one day, he'd end up resenting the song for it.
Finally, Galen freed his phone, and he immediately slid his thumb across the screen, not catching the caller before he brought the device to his ear.
“Hello?”
“Hey — Galen?” The caller’s voice skipped - the perils of poor reception - but Galen knew who it was. His dad.
“Hey, dad,” Galen said, pulling the chair out to sit. Shifting his phone to pinch between his shoulder and ear, he reached across the switchboard to start turning things on. “What’s up?”
“About this weekend —“ Ugh, he must have been in the morgue. The reception was awful in there. “— I’m actually coming a little early.”
Galen paused in flipping switches, blinking up at the happy, decorative paper jack o' lanterns on the wall. Oh, right, Halloween had been a week ago. “Early? Like how early?”
“Just a day. Friday. I had a client call me about urns, and, well, instead of having them drive all the way here, I thought I’d just go see them, since I’m already City bound this weekend, but I know you’re busy, so —“
“No, no, that’s fine,” Galen said, waving his hand and almost knocking over his coffee. Shit. Shit. “Fu — uh, yeah, I don’t have anything planned for Friday, so come on over. I work until like… five, though, so —“
“That’s alright, I’ll be meeting the client around two, and then I’ll just wander Brooklyn after that. Do the tourist thing. You know I don’t get into the city much.”
Galen smiled to himself, an exasperated little thing. Yeah, he knew; dad only told him that pretty much every time they spoke. Most times, it sounded like an excuse, but right now, it sounded more like an apology.
“Hey, listen — you can even come by the studio, if you want. I’ll just be doing administrative crap anyway.”
He could almost hear dad smile. “Oh — well, sure! That sounds wonderful, I’d love to see what you’ve got going in there.”
Galen grinned and took a sip of coffee, feeling a strange sense of pride blossom in his chest. For years, he'd been the one taking little supervised field trips to his dad's work. It was kind of cool that he could be the one to show off, now. “It’s a pretty cool spot. I’ll give you the directions.”
Galen relayed the address of the studio to his father, told him to come right in once he got there, but call him; Galen would come meet him at the door. He felt himself getting strangely excited about the idea. These days, Galen didn’t see his dad much, and he thought that maybe dad had resigned himself to it. It didn’t occur to him until times like this that he fucking missed the guy.
Character Name: Galen Howard
Canon: Original Character
Canon Point: During TCC's hiatus.
History: Galen was born in Yonkers, New York on February 3rd, 1987 to Patricia Howard, a high school drama teacher, and Nathan Howard, a funeral director. He was an energetic kid, growing up; spirited, creative, and bright (though also noisy, precocious, and bossy), with parents that were devoted and undeniably happy together.
However, when Galen was four years old, his mother passed away due to complications with the medication she was taking to manage her schizophrenia, which had been triggered by her pregnancy. Galen was still very young, and the full weight of what had happened didn't really sink in for a few years, but it did end up having a major impact on his life, growing up. He had to be independent, due to the unpredictable nature of his dad's working hours and the unreliable schedules of his extended family, and it gave him a perspective on life that a lot of kids don't have. Mostly, though, he grew up missing his mom and wondering what he, or she, or his dad had done to deserve what had happened. This would resurface as anger later, in his teenage years, and never quite go away.
His father never remarried, although over the years, he saw a couple of women. These relationships never worked out, though, and when Galen got older, he wondered if it was his fault; he wasn't extremely receptive towards his dad's new friends since, deep down, he felt they were trying to replace his mom. Thankfully, when he got older, he realized that that was not the case at all, and that his dad, who still loved his mom very much, deserved to be happy. Still, even though Nathan insisted that they just hadn't been good matches, Galen internalized the feeling that he'd ruined those chances.
Nathan Howard's job was also a big player in Galen's life. When Galen was in his early teens, Nathan let him help out around the funeral home, during and after services; essentially, he was preparing Galen to eventually take over the job, when he was older. They were sure to talk about it, of course; putting a young teenager around grieving families isn't something to be done lightly. The process of observing these people in pain and mourning, combined with the bittersweet celebration of life and happy gratitude at the work his father had done, gave Galen an interesting and well-rounded outlook on life and death, and how they're both perceived. These things stuck with him, and as he got older, Galen felt an urge to find a way to express these collected feelings and ideas from his younger years. Most of the time, it came out in writing: snippets of stories, sometimes, but most often poetry, which he kept to himself for years.
Although Galen had somewhat of an interest in his father's job - the inner workings, the philosophy - he was adamant from an early age that he didn't want to end up in - or anywhere near - a morgue. He'd seemed to inherit a love of theatrics and performance from his mother, and was always an extroverted little bugger; trying to make people laugh, to make them react, anything to get their attention. As he got older, it occurred to him that pursuing that love was something he could do with his life, and once he was locked on that target, not even his dad - who understood, as a former guitarist in a college band, but worried for Galen's future security - could divert him.
Galen went into piano lessons at the age of nine, but wasn't much for the technical, theoretical side of playing the instrument. It stopped being fun very quickly, but even after he quit, he didn't give up on music; Galen continued to sing and exercise his musical side at any chance he got, and by the time middle school rolled around, he was well-liked by a handful of kids, and no surprise, was thought of as obnoxious and weird by most others. And as middle school goes, that earned him some teasing from his peers.
With middle school came the surfacing of the anger Galen felt over losing his mom so early in his life, lured out by changes in his life and friends; the nickname 'Gaylord'; his father needing to work more often; and a serious lack of knowing where the hell his life was going. Basically: typical teenage stuff. His grades were okay, despite skipped classes and bullshitted assignments here and there, but going somewhere with music or writing or acting or anything he actually liked sounded less and less feasible.
On Galen's sixteenth birthday, his dad gave him his old 80's Les Paul (practice amp lovingly donated by his aunt), and that was when things started changing. He used the knowledge he'd gleaned from piano lessons combined with his own natural affinity for music to start teaching himself how to play, and promised himself he wouldn't give up on the instrument, because as he saw it, his future was either music or dead people. He learned quickly, and though he wasn't especially exceptional at it, he got good enough to start writing his own songs and pestering his musically inclined friends at school to start a band with him (which were all varying degrees of terrible, of course).
Nothing stuck until the next school year, when Galen met Bradley Keaton. Brad was tall and gawky and kind of a nerd, but he was allowed to bring his guitar to school to practice with his friends during his off period, and to Galen, that was so cool. Brad was amazing, too -- he had the dedication to fingerwork of a lead guitarist and the enthusiasm of a true musician, and he and Galen became fast friends. They stayed close right through to college - Galen later moved in with him and a couple other friends, for the first two years of college -, playing in each other's bands, trying to find something that would stick, but never quite getting there.
In college, Galen set his sights on music business, his back-up plan in case the band thing really was fated to not work out. He also took classes in radio arts, and put many hours into the campus radio station, outside of his other classes and his Kinkos job; he eventually had his own time slot, in which he'd play his and his friends' demos and interview fellow musicians, trying to get the rest of the school involved in the rich music scene they seemed to be cultivating.
Daphne, a good friend turned girlfriend turned good friend again, soon joined Galen and Brad's semi-band as their bassist, and not long after, they convinced a mutual friend, Lottie Matheson, to cheat on her current band and join theirs as their drummer. Soon, The Counter Curse was born, and it was the beginning of a tough but exhilarating ride; they were booking shows, cashing in favours with the recording arts students, playing in different cities, getting noticed.
It took a lot of hard work and a lot of sacrifice (Galen was forced to drop out of college, quit his job, and temporarily live on Brad's couch because so much of his focus was on being in the band and being the band's manager), but the band eventually got signed to an indie label: Hangman Records.
A year later, after their first cross-country tour, the recurring dreams started. Harmless, mostly, but always the same: a dark, shadowy figure, a sense of being held uncomfortably tight, and someone whispering his name. Sometimes, he'd wake up and not be able to remember the voice, and sometimes it was familiar: one that felt safe, but at the same time, terrified him. Into the recording of their second album, this started affecting Galen's ability to sleep, and he was often working himself into exhaustion and denying that anything was wrong. The dreams weren't constant, and they weren't worsening, but they put him on edge, and the result was a grittier, more chaotic tour than their first had been, leaving them exhausted and raw and unsure of where to go next.
What they eventually agreed on was a break. Daphne pushed Galen to see a doctor about his insomnia and apparent anxiety about sleeping, and the rest of the band, though they stayed close in New York, broke off for a breather and to work on other projects.
Galen, living in Brooklyn, now, and unimpressed by his doctor's suggestion to simply 'reduce stress' as a way to manage the dreams, put his focus on writing about them, instead, in the form of a fictional narrative written as blog posts, in an attempt to distance the dreams from reality. That has become his main outlet, for now, aside from DJing a few nights a week for a friend's small radio station and gradually getting back into songwriting. But lately, it seems like the more he writes about these recurring dreams, the clearer they get when they happen again.
It's during this downtime, when things are beginning to get stranger, that he arrives.
Personality: Galen is a real Type A: talkative, sociable, and able to make friends fairly easily. His close friends are few, but his interest in people has earned him many acquaintances. He's also a hard worker who takes his ideas and projects very seriously, to the point where he can occasionally become consumed by them -- which can make keeping up with those friends and acquaintances a little difficult, sometimes.
Emotionally, Galen can be slightly immature; his means of dealing with anger is the one thing from his teenage years that he didn't quite grow out of. He can be harsh, biting, and underhanded to people who set him off or people he perceives as a threat, and if he doesn't walk away, he'll have a lot to apologize for later. Galen tries to use this to fuel his work, but sometimes it just can't be helped -- and sometimes, he'll end up briefly digging himself into a hole of angry self-pity.
Due to the open nature with which Galen was presented ideals of life and death, as a kid, Galen can get a little frustrated with people who strictly adhere to one belief. He can be a little hypocritical in this; it's not to the point of intolerance, but he has some difficulty understanding these types of people, which technically goes against his 'be understanding of all perspectives' perspective.
When under pressure, Galen has a tendency to keep it to himself and try to deal with it alone. It's not as bad as it used to be, thanks to the band, but it's still something he just unconsciously does. This is probably because he had to be independent at such an early age, with his mom being gone and his dad working at such unpredictable times. This shows particularly clearly in the last few years, especially since Galen moved out. He loves his dad very much, there's no denying that, but he moved away from home (and into an apartment with some friends) with abandon. It had been just Galen and his dad his whole life, after all, and he was excited to finally put that independence into practice. Unfortunately, that means Galen and Nathan don't see each other extremely often; Galen gets busy, and so does his dad. He's not so much pushing his father away as acting on some kind of twenty-five-year-old unconscious bitterness about dad being in and out so often, and still being the only authority figure in his life until Galen was old enough to make his own decisions. Sometimes he just forgets that he's putting his dad by the wayside, and doesn't realize that he's partially doing it on purpose.
Despite living a musician's life, Galen has managed to stay grounded and resist the things that cause a lot of bands to fall apart. Mostly, this is because the idea of losing control of his higher thinking scares him, and because he knows that schizophrenia - what his mother suffered from - is both hereditary and more likely to develop from alcohol and drug use (Galen does enjoy the occasional social drink, but never enough to be more than a little buzzed). Developing schizophrenia is a low-burning fear of his, even though it is treatable, so he'd prefer not to risk it. He already worries, sometimes, that some of the things he sees and hears aren't real.
Galen is a leaderly type, but he doesn't really have problems taking directions, unless they're from someone he doesn't particularly like or trust. He's one to act, to find out what's going on; he doesn't like sitting around when something can be done about a situation, but even though he tries, he sometimes doesn't think things through before acting.
He is very much an optimist, and is always looking for the brighter side of things -- mainly for other people's sakes, to try and lift their spirits, because their mood tends to affect him, after a while, too. He's hard pressed to give up on anything he believes in, which is why he works himself so hard; he doesn't like losing his momentum, and he doesn't like walking away from anything until it's done. He's sort of obsessive, that way.
Galen likes to learn, and he likes to listen. Growing up around stories of other people's lives has given him an appreciation for them, and so he makes a good conversational partner, and a good friend; he's a good listener. The stories he hears inspire him, and sometimes inspire his work. This has made him pretty observant, too.
He cares a lot about the people he's close to, and would gladly inconvenience himself for the sake of someone he cares about. He can be sweet and sympathetic, and likes to make people laugh. He likes getting a response from people in general; that's part of why he enjoys being a performer.
Beyond that self-assured, personable outside, though, Galen is just as vulnerable as anyone else. He doesn't often get into relationships - romantic or sexual - because he's afraid of being hurt, and there's a part of him that overanalyzes his thoughts and feelings and makes trivial things seem bigger than they are. He craves companionship, though, and doesn't like being left alone for too long.
Items on your character at canon point: His clothes, keys, phone, glasses, wallet.
Abilities:
► Galen sometimes picks up on 'vibes', like a low-level psychic thing. This just means he's usually the kid in the horror movie going "guys, I've got a bad feeling about this". He's intuitive, though he doesn't always listen to that intuition.
► That intuition combined with an ear for music have made him a fairly skilled musician. He's an experienced performer and can play a few different instruments with varying degrees of skill. He also has a high level of stamina, thanks to his job.
► He can speak conversational Spanish and a bit of French, though he's picked up bits of other languages due to being addicted to Duolingo.
► He's knowledgeable about the mortuary sciences due to his dad -- though, of course, not to the degree of someone who actually went to school for it. He can probably tell you how many days a person has been dead, and knows how much heat you need to burn a body. That kind of thing.
► He's worked as a radio DJ for years, both in and after college, so he's skilled at the kind of quick thinking that entails.
STRENGTHS:
physical
✔︎ can be active for extended periods of time before giving in to tiredness (thanks to being in shape and pure stubbornness)
✔︎ quick to notice patterns; musical, aural, visual, or otherwise
✔︎ knows, like, five karate moves, because one of his bandmates is a blackbelt, but that's about it.
mental/emotional
✔︎ always set on seeing things through to completion
✔︎ almost always optimistic, sometimes to the point of being annoying
✔︎ tries to make friends - or at least get on good terms - with everyone he meets
✔︎ almost always tries to consider all sides of a story (with some exceptions)
✔︎ passionate and driven once he finds a cause
WEAKNESSES:
physical
✘ needs glasses to see; without them things are pretty fuzzy
✘ he can and will work himself into exhaustion
✘ his knee, which he bashed onstage once, aches sometimes
✘ he smoked for a few years, so sometimes cravings and being a little wheezy are a problem
✘ because of the nightmares, he doesn't always sleep well
✘ he's only human, so he's susceptible to most bad things
mental/emotional
✘ tends to respond in an emotionally immature way when upset
✘ once he's decided that he doesn't like someone, or that they're untrustworthy, it's really hard to get him to change his mind
✘ overthinks things if he's left alone to stew
✘ afraid of losing control of himself/his grip on reality
✘ still kind of sensitive about his mother and can lash out if pushed the wrong way
Samples
Network/Action Spam Sample: A sample! And an older texting sample!
Prose Log Sample: Galen dropped his bag into the patchy broadcaster’s seat, reached up to rub at his eyes. The dream had been on his mind the entire ride over, and even the regular dose of coffee couldn’t seem to wake him up properly. He felt like he’d left half of himself back in that dream - cold, dim, suffocating -, and no matter what he tried, it was as if he couldn’t quite get himself back up to full capacity. Maybe if he wrote about it, he thought, it would finally get out of his head — or maybe if he could work it into some music…
Galen realized that he’d been spacing out when his phone trilled loudly in his pocket, nearly making him jump. He set down his coffee, careful not to put it on the switchboard, and pawed at his pocket, mentally telling the thing to shut up as it relentlessly flittered out an ungodly high pitched noise. Galen had given up on setting music as his ringtone ages ago; he found that if he got enough calls in one day, he'd end up resenting the song for it.
Finally, Galen freed his phone, and he immediately slid his thumb across the screen, not catching the caller before he brought the device to his ear.
“Hello?”
“Hey — Galen?” The caller’s voice skipped - the perils of poor reception - but Galen knew who it was. His dad.
“Hey, dad,” Galen said, pulling the chair out to sit. Shifting his phone to pinch between his shoulder and ear, he reached across the switchboard to start turning things on. “What’s up?”
“About this weekend —“ Ugh, he must have been in the morgue. The reception was awful in there. “— I’m actually coming a little early.”
Galen paused in flipping switches, blinking up at the happy, decorative paper jack o' lanterns on the wall. Oh, right, Halloween had been a week ago. “Early? Like how early?”
“Just a day. Friday. I had a client call me about urns, and, well, instead of having them drive all the way here, I thought I’d just go see them, since I’m already City bound this weekend, but I know you’re busy, so —“
“No, no, that’s fine,” Galen said, waving his hand and almost knocking over his coffee. Shit. Shit. “Fu — uh, yeah, I don’t have anything planned for Friday, so come on over. I work until like… five, though, so —“
“That’s alright, I’ll be meeting the client around two, and then I’ll just wander Brooklyn after that. Do the tourist thing. You know I don’t get into the city much.”
Galen smiled to himself, an exasperated little thing. Yeah, he knew; dad only told him that pretty much every time they spoke. Most times, it sounded like an excuse, but right now, it sounded more like an apology.
“Hey, listen — you can even come by the studio, if you want. I’ll just be doing administrative crap anyway.”
He could almost hear dad smile. “Oh — well, sure! That sounds wonderful, I’d love to see what you’ve got going in there.”
Galen grinned and took a sip of coffee, feeling a strange sense of pride blossom in his chest. For years, he'd been the one taking little supervised field trips to his dad's work. It was kind of cool that he could be the one to show off, now. “It’s a pretty cool spot. I’ll give you the directions.”
Galen relayed the address of the studio to his father, told him to come right in once he got there, but call him; Galen would come meet him at the door. He felt himself getting strangely excited about the idea. These days, Galen didn’t see his dad much, and he thought that maybe dad had resigned himself to it. It didn’t occur to him until times like this that he fucking missed the guy.