About You Name: DCJ Email: barbedwirekitty@gmail.com AIM name: n/a RP Experience: Did you read the rules and the FAQ?
About The Character QUICK ANSWERS Name: Merwyn "Fin" Finwick Journal: narcolept- House & Graduation Year: Ravenclaw '94 Occupation: Unemployed, former Keeper for the Tutshill Tornados until 1996 Allegiance: Light Blood Status: Halfblood Birthday & Other Important Dates: 23rd June PB: David Lindwall Image Link:http://www.insanejournal.com/allpics.bml?user=narcolept_
LONG ANSWERS Appearance: Merwyn has baby-fine dark blond hair that he lets grow long and eyes that are a strange, pale, gray. He's around 5'8" but he's lost a lot of weight since his narcolepsy started up, both through an inability to cook anymore, laziness or shame stopping him ordering out all the time, and a sort of vague self-destruction. He's all knees and elbows and pokey bits. He dresses like a homeless punk rocker and never wears anything related to Quidditch. He keeps the alert bracelet on a chain around his neck like dog tags as they also give information about his illness to anyone who might find him passed out, and he's often got some injury or another under his clothes from impact with the ground.
Likes & Dislikes: Likes | Dancing, clubs, parties, back rubs, cats, cheeky eyeliner, bad mohawks and rock mullets, flying. Dislikes | Narcolepsy, carrots, disco music, practical jokes, fame, Quidditch
Personality: People who meet Merwyn for the first time are likely to do so at a party, or in a bar. First sight gives the impression that he's flashy and without substance, some washed up Pro-Quidditch player who still thinks he's King of the field. That grin and that flashy smile along with the way he's usually hanging off someone or other and normally with a drink in hand rounds out that idea, but it's a false one, although he can usually be found with a drink in his hands. He shouldn't be drinking but he figures that if he's going to fall asleep willy-nilly that it might as well be through his choice as something he can't help. He'll also occasionally partake of drugs as long as they have an upper effect - he doesn't want anything that'll make him anymore relaxed than he is when he has catplexy anyway, he just doesn't see the point. He isn't, however, addicted to these substances. When he's drunk, or out and partying, he can be smooth and social; he'll smile at everyone and chat and he likes to stay in the thick of things, however, the amount of parties he's invited to are dropping and this is often because having someone fall collapse asleep in the middle of it when they were formerly the party's life and soul is a pretty clean cut way to stop said party. He's tiring of them anyway, he can't count the number of times he's woken up after an episode to find that someone has drawn things on his face, although these incidents rapidly stopped after a friend designed a charm for him that protected him (to some extent) while he's unconscious. It's very rudimentary and can be easily countered by someone determined enough but it's better than nothing.
Behind the party guy is a different story. Merwyn has been in an angry and depressive funk since losing his job, but he won't admit to it. He's stopped going to see his parents because he can't take their concern or that look in their eyes after he has an episode, how sad they've become on his behalf. He feels it's easier on them - and easier on him - if he just stays away and sends them the odd owl or two here and there, just letting them know he's alive. This last one is important because of the accidents he gets into with his narcolepsy and a few 'accidents' that he'd caused himself in the months just after he lost his job. He took too many potions on both occassions but blamed his microsleep episodes on the incidents rather than an attempt to take his own life. That plus the frequent falls he makes falling asleep midair despite the fact that he's eseentially been banned from riding a broomstick makes it unsurprising that his parents are so keen for him to keep checking in with them.
Merwyn's narcolepsy has taken over his life. Since his diagnosis he's spent most of his time either in denial or battling with it; he's far from having accepted it as part of him yet. He's had symptoms from an early age - all that sleeping in class and his inability to sleep during the night - but they grew more severe in a short period of time following his very public first attack. His doctors at St Mungo's aren't surprised at this as a lot of the symptoms can be triggered by intense emotions and he was certainly cycling through them following his first cataplexy attack, which is what he's learned the incident during that match stareted off as.
He'll lose all muscle control and collapse and sometimes become paralysed after doing so - this is the cataplexy. He falls asleep suddenly at unusual times and can wake up having dreamt, or sometimes wake up to confused hallucinations. He often can't sleep at night and feels jittery and alert when all he wants is to sleep properly and then, maybe most discomfiting of all after the cataplexy and the sleeping, are the microsleeps, short periods of time where he sleepwalks, for lack of a better word, and then wakes with no knowledge of what he's been doing. He's often woken up mid conversation with someone and not known what they were talking about, or more worryingly, in the middle of the street with no idea where he is or how he got there.
He's been given an alert bracelet that sends a warning and his location to a trusted friend if he does have these episodes while out and about but he's been too ashamed to give it to anyone yet, not that there's anyone he'd trust to give it to anyway. It's hard to have a relationship with someone after you collapse on them and fall asleep halfway through making out, or worse. Even then, there are the people who don't take him seriously, don't believe he has a condition and leave him where he lies out of irritation (he still receives death threats and Howlers now and again from people who lost money betting on him at his final match) or worse, the people who think it's funny. He'll wake up in compromising positions, once with a traffic cone on his head, and just have to grin and bear it. He can't remember things very well and he finds it difficult to concentrate (something that only makes him come off as more of a flake to people in general) sometimes drifting away into another thought mid-speech. He's been warned that he can't drive in the Muggle world, can't be left alone with young children, can't even cook on his own and shouldn't be living alone either, but the worst thing of all - he can't fly.
It's this more than anything else that has really broken Merwyn's spirit, as flying was the one thing that he loved, that he knew he could do. He misses it as though he lost one of his senses, like he's gone blind or deaf or dumb, like he's lost a limb. He still tries now and again, when he's very drunk and there's no one around to stop him, but he's fallen unconscious in mid air and has crashed every single time.
He'd like a boyfriend but can't stay awake long enough to develop a relationship. He'd like a job but he can't even stay awake through the interviews. He wants his old life back but it's not coming back anytime soon - he'll still cling onto as much independence as he can get, even if it does mean waking up surrounded by glass bottles and covered in shaving foam.
Relationships: Merwyn used to be close to his parents, who are lovely people who care a lot about their only child, but he's distanced himself from them since his diagnosis. He knows that this hurts them but, apart from his pride, he can't live with them and see the pain in their eyes when they have to pick him up and clean him off from yet another episode. He can't handle it and so, like a coward, he stays away. He does write to them all the time though, and makes sure that they know that he's safe, even if he does have to omit certain details from time to time. His parents, in return, try not to pressure him to come home and allow him to keep his distance, knowing that losing all that control over himself has made the little he does have and the decisions he can make even more important. They still worry relentlessly though, always afraid that the next owl will be one telling them that their son has broken his neck from a fall or worse.
Merwyn's lost a lot of so-called friends since his fall (literal and figurative) from grace and his bitterness has driven most everyone else away. He has a revolving door of people who smile and claim to be his friends, but he knows it's only because he has money and because he used to 'be somebody'. That and the entertainment factor from knowing someone who falls asleep at odd times.
The less said about a boyfriend, the better.*See below The last one or two people who were a) male and b) interested in him and who he was enough to stick around to see past the grinning mask and the myths and legends couldn't handle the narcolepsy. None of these guys wanted to be a father and looking after their boyfriend like that seemed like too much work to keep a relationship afloat. Merwyn doesn't even have casual sex anymore, not when it's an almost guarantee that he'll pass out halfway through.
His wand is 9" pear with a griffin feather core. His patronus is a parrot and his boggart is of being paralysed and aware but never waking up.
Background: Merwyn was born to Halfblood parents and had an average childhood - his dad made and sold Quidditch equipment so he grew up testing it out and helping his dad lie to his mum about where the occasional bruise came from. She normally let it slide apart from one incident where an accident with a wonky Bludger broke his collarbone and had his dad tip toeing around the house for months, buying her flowers and trying to be allowed to sleep off the couch.
He was sorted into Ravenclaw at Hogwarts, which almost made a full deck with his dad's Gryffndor and his mother's Hufflepuff. He was a good student, although he had a tendency to fall asleep during more classes than just History of Magic, and, of course, signed up for and joined Ravenclaws Quidditch team. He played Chaser for a while but found that his niche was as Keeper. He played because he loved it rather than because he was good at it - although he was good at it - and as a result he was picked straight out of Hogwarts by the Tutshill Tornados to play on their squad. He took over after their former Keeper retired in 1995 and helped the Tornados shoot to the top of the league. They hung around up there for ages until one unfortunate game against the Ballycastle Bats.
Merwyn had been getting sleepier throughout the day for months, something that he blamed on a mild kind of insomnia that only let him sleep a few unrestful hours a night. He'd been handling it though, drinking Pepper Up like it was going out of style; he wasn't to know that his first bout of cataplexy would happen mid-match in mid-air, and in fact, he didn't know until he'd woken from the sleep that followed to find himself in St Mungo's. He'd had to hear from the papers that he was being blamed for the loss of that match, and by his own captain Brevis Birch at that. He hadn't been able to believe that Brevis would say something like that until he spoke to the man and found out that it was true - what's more they weren't going to renew his contract and once the season ended, all of which he spent on the so-called bench, he was out of the game and for good. Despite how good he'd been, no one wanted a newly diagnosed narcoleptic on their team.
His 'condition', and it's publicisation in the papers, meant that he failed job interview after job interview - he was basically unemployable, but he found the fact that he wasn't able to fly even harder to take. He was hospitalised on four separate occasions for blacking out mid-air and crashing to the ground, usually while inebriated, and on another two occasions for 'accidents' that were suspiciously self-injurous in nature but which he swore were only narcolepsy-caused accidents.
He's been living on his own since he lost his job as Keeper, using what he had left of his ridiculous wages - he's dug a hole into them, mostly by spending it on alcohol and uppers, but he's running out slowly. He doesn't know what he'll do after he runs out of money, but it's fair to say that he's not really thinking about his future at the moment, too caught up in brooding on his past.
Plot Intentions:
- having it out with Brevis (if we get one) - someone to shake him into being less bitter - parties! - he can be used in any situation that requires a helpless body - Class of 94! - Maybe something to do with making peace with Quidditch?
!SHOULD WE GET A BREVIS WHO IS AMENABLE TO THE IDEA OF MERWYN BEING AN EX-BOYFRIEND!
* - Merwyn's last relationship was with Brevis himself, the same team captain who pinned the lost match on his shoulders. It had started because he'd been so young (foolish) and had stars in his eyes for the captain, but he'd be lying if he'd said there hadn't been genuine affection there, from both sides. Of course, it all ended after his fall and he pretty much hates the guy now (and he certainly doesn't have pictures of the man in his chest of drawers at home)