"I am Stroud, rider of Strouth, bonded of Stroud!"
BASICS
NAME: Stroud, born Texanin
GENDER: Male
PRONOUNS: He/him/his
ORIENTATION: Pansexual but they have to be a good cook, so he doesn't end up like his aunt
BIRTHDATE: Early Fall 2755
AGE: 20 as of 2775
LOCATION: High Reaches Weyr
OCCUPATION: Strouthrider, leader and sole member of the Strouth Fan Club, failed cook
WING: Starfall
APPEARANCE
EYES: Brown
HAIR: Brown
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 5'11, slender
PLAY-BY: Apollo Justice (Phoenix Wright)
EXPY SOURCE: Texans/Strouds (If the NFL was Scripted by Tom Grossi)
FULL APPEARANCE: Stroud is a fairly average looking young man, with brown eyes and brown hair that always sticks up a bit in the front. His eyes are frequently intense and he is a master of the intimidating glare. His clothes are usually neat and well put-together. He is Strouth's rider and wants to make a good first impression on his behalf, after all! He always wears blue when allowed, always navy, accented with a lighter color, in as close shades as he can find to his dragon's hide and markings. His wingknots are very, very well-tended and Stroud will scrub away any hint of dirt and replace the strands the second they start to fray.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY: Stroud is extremely obsessed with his dragon. He thinks the most important and interesting thing about him is being Strouth's rider and that's just fine by him- because isn't Strouth simply the most perfect dragon and wonderful blue on all of Pern? He is extremely offended if anyone says anything less than glowing about Strouth or if his dragon is faced with the most minor of inconveniences. Except when talking about Strouth, Stroud is not the most verbose of riders, although he is a master of the solemn glare and short, ominous-sounding pronouncements.
Stroud is a young man prone to extremes, who does not know moderation. When things don't go his way, or sometimes even when they do, he'll do everything he can to change the course of fate. If he thinks it will get him what he wants, he is entirely willing to threaten people and engage in small acts of destruction like burning a tapestry he thinks defamed blue dragons. He can be a bit rash and doesn't always gather all the information before acting.
Stroud does not like cooks, for reasons that most people find unclear, as he is not willing to explain and doesn't respond well to questions on the subject. Mostly' it's jealousy. He is still bitter he can't cook even though he's a dragonrider now. That said, he still only wants a weyrmate who can cook, because he doesn't want to turn out like Janine.
Deep down, Stroud doesn't have a clear sense of his own identity and tends to take on too many of the goals of those around him. While he is extremely stubborn, he struggles to figure out his own ambitions and what he wants and what his identity is, apart from those around him, whether it's his dragon or his family. Stroud has a tense relationship with most of his family, except for Bentim and Janine, but does still love them and want to make them proud. He does not think much of Edraven, the no-good, not-a-cook husband who was never good enough for Janine.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
Mother: Nina, Cook
Father: Tenex, Cook
Aunt: Janine, Cook
Older Brother, Cook
Cousin: Bentim, Healer
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: N/A
BIRTHPLACE: Igen Weyr
HISTORY:
Texanin was born the second and youngest son of a cook, who was married another cook, from a family of cooks who had long toiled in the kitchens of Igen Weyr, with the exception of his aunt, who had moved to High Reaches and married someone who was not a cook. Texanin's family all hated Janine's husband, Edraven, and always thought she could do better, in part because her husband could not cook and in part because he was at High Reaches and their marriage prevented her from moving back to Igen, as they had all always expected she would do. Texanin hated him too, solely because the rest of his family did.
Growing up, Texanin always felt overshadowed by his older brother, who was much better at cooking than he was. Texanin was not a very good cook and struggled to follow a recipe, no matter how hard he tried. His family constantly told him stories about how much more talented and accomplished his brother had been at the same age, misguidedly hoping Texanin might be encouraged by his brother's example. Texanin largely kept to himself, not having much in interest in the other weyrkids, who wanted to become dragonriders or wherhandlers or do other things besides from cooking or worse- who DID want to be cooks, but were better at it than Texanin was. Texanin spent most of his free time alone in the kitchen, practicing and not getting much of anywhere. Texanin was often lonely and dissatisfied, without enough self-awareness to know why or how he might change it.
One day, Texanin's aunt, Janine, returned to Igen Weyr, having finally left her no-good, not-a-cook ex-husband. The family embraced her with open arms. Unlike the rest of Texanin's family, she talked to Texanin about things other than cooking and his failures at cook, namely said ex-husband, Edraven, and their son, Bentim, who was about Texanin's age. Edraven kept sending Janine letters, which she didn't respond to hoping he'd get the hint. She let Texanin read Edraven's messages, which he found both entertaining and a bit pathetic. Her son, Bentim, followed her to Igen soon after. Unlike the rest of Texanin's family, he was not a cook. He was a healer, to the great disappointment of his father. The two cousins bonded over their failures to meet their respective parental expectations and became fast friends.
Texanin remained a disaster in the kitchen. There was no dish he couldn't burn or over-salt or somehow otherwise ruin. His answer for how to make a dish better was always to add "more," to often disastrous results. His family despaired of him and he generally found himself relegated to cleaning dishes or changing glows or other menial tasks. The newly-arrived Bentim made the obvious suggestion and encouraged Texanin to be like him and chase his own dream, not realizing that cooking was Texanin's dream. After ruining a batch of bubbly pies intended for the Hatching Feast- and being overshadowed by his older brother who had prepared a perfect centerpiece roast (again)- Texanin finally gave in. He considered becoming a healer like Bentim, but the weyr's healers gently informed him that if he struggled to follow a recipe, an art like healing that required great precision and care probably wasn't for him. After talking to some of the weyr's other crafters, none of whom were convinced he had great potential aptitude for their craft, Texanin decided just to become a candidate, which you needed no qualifications for beyond having been born at the weyr and being at least fifteen, a milestone had just reached that turn. Mostly, he just wanted his family to be sorry to see him go and beg him to come back to the kitchens with a new appreciation for his style of cooking. But his family, unlike Bentim's father, seemed delighted to hear about Texanin's new plan for the future and promised to be watching and cheering from the stands come Hatching Day. Feeling too embarrassed to back out after gathering them all for the grand announcement, Texanin moved into the candidate barracks and started preparing for his first hatching.
At his first hatching, Texanin Impressed a blue called Strouth and all of a sudden, everything in his life seemed to get better. He had friends, in Strouth and in Bentim. Texanin didn't get yelled at as much and people seemed to be nicer to him, in part because he was now a dragonrider and dragonriders were respected, but also in part because he was no longer ruining meals. Best of all- he only occasionally heard stories about his perfect older brother and his perfectly delicious cooking, because his new classmates and eventually wingmates didn't care very much about kitchen gossip and his family assumed a dragonrider wouldn't care about such things.
Grateful for the dramatic turn his life had taken, Texanin made Strouth his whole personality, to the point of changing his own name and renaming his firelizard after himself/his dragon, styling the three of them "the Strouds." Strouth made everything in Stroud's life better and Stroud was going to honor that in everything he did.
A few turns after he Impressed, Stroud decided to move to High Reaches. He claimed it was because he'd heard all dragons were equal there regardless of color and Strouth deserved to be respected as much as any bronze or gold, even though Strouth had never expressed any distress over Igen's more traditional structure and none of the Strouds had every had any issues with bronzeriders before. Really- Stroud wanted to get away from his brother, who was continuing to move up the kitchen hierarchy and fulfill all his parents' expectations. Even though Stroud didn't have to constantly hear about him anymore, every meal still reminded him of how he would never live up to his older brother.
