tanner, gatsby oscar

[gatsby oscar tanner]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, width: 400px; height: 380px; background-image:URL(http://i800.photobucket.com/albums/yy284/brooklynlolli/x0r3w0.png); border-left: 10px solid #1e1e1e; border-right: 10px solid #1e1e1e;] GATSBY O. TANNER HEY THERE, THEY CALL ME GATSBY AND I'M CURRENTLY TWENTY YEARS OLD. I'M PART OF THE BAND AND I'M A DRUMMER FOR FALLEN ANGELS. ------------------------------------------------- PERSONALITY The first things that you notice about Gatsby Tanner are that he is charming, funny, friendly and confident. He is charming towards nearly everyone he meets, completely confident in the fact that if he lays on the charm thick enough he can convince the person in question to do something for him in the future. He is funny, humorous, often at the expense of others but it is just the nature of his sarcastic sense of humour. Gatsby could be described as friendly as he is the type of guy who can start a conversation with basically anyone he might want to – the thing is, Gatsby sometimes does not want to be friendly towards you, and then you need to adopt a thick skin because his words and manner can quickly become harsh. Gatsby appears to be very confident in himself but the truth of the matter is that he constantly needs to be validated by other people through praise, admiration or obedience. He isn’t enough for himself. This stems out of the abandonment issues that he has from the fact his mother was an unsteady part of his life and the fact that his father and brother both took dark paths in life. If Gatsby isn’t being followed by people who respect him then he feels simply lost and completely anxious – like he was a child again. Gatsby’s projected confidence is something that he has been perfecting since he first went to elementary school and first felt the need to be more than himself to impress. After your initial conversation with Gatsby Tanner, you would know for certain that he is a musician. You can tell perhaps, from his outlook on life or the fact that he is probably drumming his fingers on the table as he speaks to you or nodding his head to background music that you can scarcely hear. He is a musician – through and through. Music is everything he loves in life and it means the world to him. Without music, Gatsby doesn’t feel like he exists. He is the drummer for his band Fallen Angels who got famous in Brighton by gigging in pubs. Gatsby is never as true to himself as he is when he is on stage, performing, doing what he loves: doing what he is born to do. After knowing Gatsby for a short time, it becomes very apparent that he is short tempered often getting angry and aggressive at the littlest thing and shouting at people for being annoying. He is quite controlling of his surroundings in that he is quick to tell people off for things that annoys him. His short temper is often hypocritical: he would more quickly tell people off for doing something that he would do than he would for doing something that he wouldn’t do. Gatsby is a passionate and obsessive person who quickly goes through phases of being consumed with a thought or an idea and then, not long after, completely disregarding it because it means nothing to him. His obsessions are usually activities, musical influences, women and drugs – each getting their own portion of time with his full attention at different intervals for very different lengths of time. He is not the type to compartmentalise: all of his passion can only be focused on one thing at a time and that is how he chooses to delegate his feelings. Something that is usually apparent from the get go with Gatsby is that he is an intense, hard core partier who is not interested in taking a break from anything if he thinks it might be fun. He definitely does not know when to call it quits and he definitely has an admirable amount of stamina for partying, drinking and taking drugs. Gatsby has been smoking cigarettes since he was fourteen years old and since then he has involved himself with various drugs including cannabis, LSD and cocaine along with a dangerous medley of legal highs and drugs that were so many different acronyms that he finds it difficult to recall what they were. Gatsby goes through phases with drugs, like he does with most things in his life, and he has never found a drug that has tied him up with the shackles of addiction except for nicotine. When Gatsby is partying or just drunk or high it is often observed that he is extremely rude. He says whatever comes to mind without any interest in the consequences or concern for the feelings of others. His rudeness is a shield to protect him from saying things that are too personal or too honest for him to feel comfortable saying but it alienates most people who he meets. He is very outspoken at all times but it is magnified when he is under the influence because every little thing that he has an opinion on has to be verbalised and he is very quick to start a fight. He is prone to violence and aggression when he is under the influence and it isn’t that often that you meet him – during one of his obsessions, anyway – when he is not under the influence of something or other. Gatsby is a very enthusiastic person, he gives anything that he is interested in one hundred and ten per cent effort and he works tirelessly However, Gatsby is extraordinarily difficult to motivate. He does not like working for other people’s agendas and he has no interest in doing things for other people. He motivates himself with ease: if he wants to do something you can bet your life that he will do everything in his power to achieve it. However, when it comes to someone else attempting to motivate this young man to do something, you may as well be asking the rain not to be wet. He will only do things for his own reasons and there is no amount of begging or reasoning that will change his mind. Because of this, Gatsby is often described as self-absorbed and this is not really a title that he relishes. He does try to do things for other people occasionally but usually his efforts have some level of personal gain behind them. He always tries to disappoint people from the beginning so that they never rely on him for anything. FAMILY Father; Angus William Tanner, thirty eight, alcoholic, gambling problem. Mother; Daisy Lynne Brown, thirty seven, unknown. Brother: Pizarro Collin Tanner, twenty two, cocaine addict, bar man. Daughter: Rosie Elizabeth Valentine, fourteen months. Paternal Grandmother: Jenny Tanner, sixty two, retired. HISTORY Daisy Brown and Angus Tanner couldn’t believe it. Pregnant. Again. The teenagers had looked at each other in disbelief. They had been so careful since the last slip up. At only fifteen and sixteen, these pair had brought a baby boy into the world by the name of Pizarro. He was named Pizarro because that was the name of the protagonist in the play that Daisy had been studying for her GCSE’s when she had been pregnant. Now Daisy was half way through her A Level’s and she was pregnant again! The pregnancy caused strife and sparks in Daisy and Angus’ relationship that almost broke them up several times. The stress of a baby and the looming stress of another was almost too much for the new couple. Gatsby Oscar Tanner was born on the second of June 1992, the day that Daisy was supposed to sit her A Level English Literature exam on ‘The Great Gatsby’. The healthy baby was met with joy from his parents who were concerned because he had been two weeks premature and puzzlement from his older brother. They took their baby home a week later and so the arguments commenced once more. Gatsby’s first few months were filled with shouting, slamming doors and crying. His next few months were filled with frosty silences, slamming doors and crying. His first year ended with one door slamming and lots of crying. Daisy left Angus in late May of 1993. She had had enough. Angus strived to be a good father and to cope with the loss of the girl he had loved. Although he was only eighteen when she left him, he had loved her for a full five years before that. The breakdown of their relationship pushed him towards heavy drinking. He was fundamentally a good father, he worked long hours on various construction jobs while his mother, Jenny, watched his two boys. Jenny adored the boys, slightly favouring Gatsby over Pizarro because Pizarro reminded her of all the original strife with Daisy. Gatsby grew up thinking of Jenny as his mother, despite the fact that he knew she wasn’t. When Gatsby went to nursery school he began to show musical promise. Aged 4, he would run into the classroom every morning and stake his claim over the toy drum kit. He would play it for hours and hours every day until the nursery school attendants would chastise him for monopolising the toy and he would move on to the Play-Doh table and make pretend pancakes and pizzas. The teachers told Jenny about his aptitude for the drums when she went to pick him up one afternoon and Jenny welcomed the notion of his talent. She created a drum kit for him out of pots and pans and barrels and every afternoon after nursery, Gatsby would play until dinner and then play until bed time. The racket was mostly unbearable but occasionally Jenny could hear the promise of his talent trickle through. Gatsby met his mother for the first time when he was five years old. The beautiful dark haired women re-entered the lives of the boys she abandoned with promises of getting close to them and buying them things and taking them places. Pizarro met her with suspicion and uncertainty but Gatsby’s heart was completely open to her. He couldn’t understand the pain she had put his father through. Angus didn’t often see the boys interact with his ex-girlfriend because he was always working when she came around, Jenny however watched the woman like a hawk. Jenny couldn’t bear the idea of these little boys having their hearts broken like her son and she did her best to turn the boys against their mother. Soon enough, Pizarro had no interest in his mother, the defiant seven year old would regularly call his mother ‘Daisy’ instead of ‘mum’ and when she asked him why he would answer, ‘because I hate you.’ Gatsby, however, couldn’t see past the sunshine of his mother’s smile and the chimes of her voice. She was simply magical to him. She came across as kind, generous, and loving and Gatsby could not see what the problem was. For the first six months that Daisy was back in Brighton, she would appear once or twice a week bearing gifts or offering to take the boys somewhere, but after that her visits became fewer and further between. By the time she had been in the boy’s lives for nine months, she visited once every six weeks and took them to the local park. Gatsby couldn’t understand why his mother didn’t come round as often anymore but he looked forward to her visits. After she would leave, he would look out the window and sob inconsolably for hours. Pizarro regularly said, “Don’t be stupid Gatsby, she doesn’t love you.” When Gatsby would ask why their mother wasn’t coming around. Gatsby would defiantly reply, “Mum does love me!” And Pizarro would shake his head and sadly say, “She only loves herself.” And Gatsby would continue to argue with his brother until Pizarro hit him, told him to shut up, or left the room. Gatsby’s primary school experience was normal. He worked as hard as he could, got into very little trouble and had a group of friends. His best friend was a boy who he sat beside named Nick Barker – Angus had laughed for quite some time when he found out Gatsby’s best friend was called Nick. Daisy’s visits became fewer and fewer to the point that she would simply show up out of the blue every five or six months. The family found out she had a new boyfriend and she spent her time partying with him. Angus took the news of Daisy’s new boyfriend pretty hard and descended further into his despair. His drinking worsened and his involvement in the boy’s lives lessened. The boys lived at Jenny’s house and had their own separate rooms which they loved. For Gatsby’s ninth birthday, his mother bought him a keyboard, remembering on some level that he had expressed an interest in music. Gatsby was thrilled to receive such an amazing gift. He loved music and he love pianos. The boy would sit for hours and play chop-sticks over and over until Jenny eventually decided he needed some piano lessons. With the proper instruction, Gatsby excelled at the piano. He played for hours every day and looked forward to his lessons. He regularly sat piano exams and when he was twelve he had already attained grade 5. His sight-reading always let him down but his technical skill and the fluidity of his playing regularly earned him distinctions. Gatsby entered secondary school with his best friend Nick and he spent every day thinking about his piano playing and every night playing piano. Understandably, his school work suffered as he scarcely paid attention and consequently, could not do his homework. Jenny had to threaten to take away his keyboard if he didn’t do his homework and for two weeks in November of his first year of secondary school, Gatsby found himself keyboard-less and studying for exams. His results were satisfactory, he passed every class and this was simply because he was motivated by the concept of getting his keyboard back. In second year of secondary school, aged thirteen, Gatsby was given the opportunity to learn another musical instrument. His school ran a programme that allowed a student who attained a grade 5 music exam at merit level the opportunity to hire a musical instrument for free for one year. Gatsby, remembering his old passion for the toy drum kit at nursery and the pot/pan drum kit at home, immediately opted for drums and was given a free pass to play the drums kept in a music room in the school at any time. Gatsby went into the classroom at break time and lunch time every day and played the drums. For two hours after school, he would practise his drumming while Nick sat on the floor, doing his homework and making notes on Gatsby’s to help him. Gatsby got his first girlfriend when he was fourteen. Her name was Chelsea Sloane and she was a short, dark haired girl who had a thick fringe and long hair. Chelsea and Gatsby quickly fell in love and suddenly she was everything to him. Gatsby could not imagine anyone more perfect. Suddenly she was the one who watched him drum and helped him with homework; Nick was left by the way-side. It was around this time that Daisy disappeared off the grid without warning. Her visits stopped as did her phone calls and occasional postcard. Daisy had been a part of Gatsby’s life, sporadically for almost nine years and although Gatsby loved her so infinitely that he couldn’t describe, he also felt a certain animosity towards her for leaving him. Gatsby lost his virginity to Chelsea when he was fifteen years old. The couple spoke of marriage, children, a life together and as naïve as it was; Gatsby looks back on his first encounter with fondness. It was special, romantic – it was her first time too. Awkward overly polite. Everything he expected and yet nothing like it. He had a free house because Jenny was at bingo, his dad was at the pub and his brother was at a friend’s house. It happened quite naturally, sure they’d talked about it before but nothing was said that evening. It just happened, in all its awkwardness and all its perfection. Chelsea encouraged Gatsby to look for other people to play music with. She encouraged him to audition for bands and make an effort to do something with his talent. After a couple of months, Gatsby auditioned for a band called Fragments and he was taken on as their drummer. Fragments did well on the local scene, playing numerous gigs and winning a Battle of the Bands held at a youth hall. The boys were all friends before Gatsby came around and the four of them never really gelled as a group because Gatsby always was the outsider. He would drink and smoke with them, occasionally smoke weed and chat The band played together until Gatsby was seventeen when he was kicked out for being too controlling and too demanding. Chelsea and Gatsby broke up when he was seventeen, Gatsby was hurting from being kicked out of the band and he took it out on Chelsea and after three years of taking his bad temper and his mood swings, Chelsea finally said “It’s over.” And in one month Gatsby had lost everything. It was at this point that Gatsby’s drinking and smoking began to increase and he began dabbling in different drugs. Friends he made while he was in Fragments could easily ascertain anything that he could desire and he partied every night relentlessly. What else did he have? He didn’t have much money but his friends were generous and he drank things that were cheap. Gatsby managed to attain a decent set of GCSEs and went on to study at tech. He did a course in music where he was part of a band who worked on covers and performed once every two months to be assessed. He enjoyed his course but he didn’t like his band very much, who weren’t very talented and didn’t have much interest in working hard at what they were doing. Things at home were getting difficult as Angus had to move in with his mother after losing his house due to gambling debts and his drinking was getting worse and worse. To top it off, Pizarro was hospitalised after an overdose on Ecstasy tablets leading to a lock down on the boys drinking habits. At a party at some strange location with some strangers, Gatsby met a girl named Sally Valentine. The pair hit it off from the moment they met and became fast friends. After the party, Gatsby made an effort to contact her and they began meeting up to go for drinks or to wonder around the city and eat fast food. Gatsby found himself infatuated with her, which was strange to him since he thought Chelsea was everything to him. He asked her out and she readily accepted. The pair became inseparable. On Gatsby’s eighteenth birthday he marked the occasion by washing down two lines of cocaine that he snorted in the bathroom with a litre of Jack Daniels that he drank in the kitchen. Needless to say, he was so sick that he was nearly hospitalised. Sally was frantic, uncertain as to what had happened and completely at a loss as to what she should do. On the eve of his birthday, Gatsby had realised that it had been approximately four years since he had heard from or heard of his mother and this revelation sent him into a spiral of depression. He acted recklessly and without thought and he woke up the next morning with more regrets than he had memories. Pizarro got a job as a barman in a local pub and Gatsby and his friends basically took up residence in this pub from then on. They found it a safe haven from the boredom of summer. The gang spent their time awaiting their results and pondering their futures. Gatsby had no plans – he wanted to be a musician, he knew that it would all work out if he gave it time and he trusted that it would happen. Sure enough, in the middle of August Gatsby auditioned for Fallen Angels and was accepted as their drummer. The band played bars, often Pizarro’s bar, and created quite a stir on the local scene. They had plentiful fans within a few months and the band put out an EP after three months of being together. One month later, the band was signed to a small local label. A week after that, Sally told Gatsby that she was 8 weeks pregnant. The teenagers moved out of their parental home into a crappy, one bedroom flat above a craft shop and attempted to make a life together. Meanwhile, Gatsby’s partying began to get more intense. After a particularly good gig, Gatsby attended a huge party, he knew he should go home and look after his girlfriend who at this time was six months pregnant, but he decided to go anyway. He took a lot more cocaine than he could handle and drank more than his fair share of alcohol. He woke up in hospital with Sally sitting beside his bed with bloodshot eyes and her lips pressed together. “What the fuck happened?” He mumbled, rubbing his face and peering at his girlfriend. “I can’t do this, Gatsby.” She told him, shaking her head. “Do what?” He asked, sitting up in his hospital bed and feeling dizzy. “You’re too irresponsible. You can’t be a father. You can barely be a person!” She got to her feet and shook her head. “What are you saying?” Gatsby asked her, already knowing the answer. “You can collect your things on Monday.” She told him, leaving him alone in the hospital bed. Gatsby was devastated; he was shocked into wising up. He tried his hardest to win Sally back. He would show up at the flat in the morning before she went to work with his hair brushed and his clothes clean and a decaffeinated latté for her. He would ask her for forgiveness, for her sympathy and she would refuse him. He spent most of his time with his band mates, trying to write music for their debut album and partying with them. Sally gave birth to a baby girl by the name of Rosie Elizabeth Valentine in mid-June 2011. Her labour was relatively easy but rather long. Gatsby was there the whole time, holding her hand, offering encouragement, bringing her ice and telling her how strong she was. When he was holding his daughter for the first time he never felt so complete. She was so perfect, so tiny, so pink. She was everything pure and innocent and wonderful about this world and he was quite simply overwhelmed by her. Gatsby turned to Sally and said, “I want to be a family. I want to make this legit.” Sally nodded her head, tearful. “Sally, will you marry me?” He whispered, at that moment his daughter fixed her dark eyes on him for the first time. “Yes.” Sally began to cry as she nodded and then reached out her arms for her perfect baby. The ideal lasted for three months. Gatsby’s parenting was less than perfect, he continued to party heavily and he would stay out late and come home useless. Sally theorised that she would be better off a single parent because at least she wouldn’t have to worry about Gatsby coming home at four in the morning and waking the baby so that he could cuddle her. She sat him down one afternoon and said, plain and simple, “I want you to leave and I don’t want you to argue.” To which Gatsby replied, “Why?” He was quickly told why and after some very angry words were exchanged, he left her alone and moved out of their flat for a second time. Meanwhile Fallen Angels were getting bigger and bigger, they began touring the UK and the parties were getting wilder and wilder. Gatsby quickly found himself partying harder than seemingly everyone else, getting more drunk, doing more drugs, staying up later, eating less but somehow this seemed to fuel his creativity and he had new ideas every other day to share with his band mates. Once a fortnight Gatsby was permitted to visit his daughter. He would have a down day where he sat and played with the epitome of innocence while stinking of cigarettes, alcohol, drugs and shame. Sally was less than impressed with his antics but resented the idea of depriving her daughter of her father. Gatsby enjoyed his days with Rosie almost as much as he enjoyed his days on tour. He loved being able to hold her, and play with her and care for her and feed her and as much as it pained him to admit it, he loved being able to hand her back at the end of the day when she was tired and weepy. He got the best of his daughter without all the messy nitty-gritty. Gatsby left the family home for a third time after the tension became too much to handle. There was tension between Jenny and Gatsby because of his partying, his lack of commitment to his daughter and her mother and the fact that he was nearly always intoxicated. There was also tension between Jenny and Angus who’s gambling had gotten even worse and the massive amounts of gambling debt that he was accumulating became almost too much for anyone to handle. Pizarro had moved out to a small flat above the bar that he was now assistant manager of. Gatsby celebrated his daughter’s first birthday in hospital after a bad case of alcohol poisoning after the Fallen Angel album launch. He had never been that ill, not even when he had been hospitalised with cocaine and alcohol. His alcohol poisoning coupled with his malnutrition had completely destroyed his body. He was so ill that everyone at the party had thought he was going to die. Gatsby was ordered to stay in hospital while they detoxed his body and fed him nutrients that he was lacking through an IV. Sally showed up at his bedside on the second day of his detox with their daughter and expressed feelings of despair, anger, sadness and sympathy to him. Although she brought Rosie with her, she threatened to make Gatsby’s time with his daughter even more infrequent if he didn’t clean up his act. When Gatsby got out of hospital he tried to reform his life. He ate healthier and although he partied almost equally as hard as he had before his detox, he didn’t party for two days if he knew he was going to have his daughter for the day. He never smoked in front of his beautiful princess and he showered her with gifts as album sales allowed him to be generous. Sally was pleased with his apparent progress and although she was beginning to feel more sympathetic towards him, and some of her old feelings were flooding back, she also felt wary that he had promised her things in the past and none of it had worked out. Fallen Angels were offered a spot on a tour in America which they readily agreed to as it was a huge chance for exposure. Gatsby found himself in a new country with new excitements, new temptations and no daughter to consider.

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THE PERSON BEHIND THIS WONDERFUL CHARACTER IS GENERALLY CALLED RATRATCATHY AND SITS AT NINETEEN. SHE LIVES IN THE UK TIMEZONE. ALSO, THIS CHARACTER LOOKS PRETTY SIMILAR TO RONNIE RADKE, DON'T YOU THINK?

[ps]the 'sally' character is going to join the board, she's one of my friends, so name is subject to change![/ps]

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made by brooklyn at caution[/center]