Charles Foster Offdensen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ninjamanager) wrote2012-07-18 10:54 pm
ninjamanager) wrote2012-07-18 10:54 pm
Headcanon Notes
((DISCLAIMER: I've tried to let what we see of CFO in canon inform it as heavily as possible. Since he's a close-lipped kind of guy, it will very rarely come up in conversation unless close CR is built: this is just the stuff I've come up with to flesh him out a little.))
Charles was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Camilla and Horace Offdensen. The family was old money, but the money was on his father's side of the family - and Horace was decidedly the black sheep, ignored and disowned for years. His older brother, Jackson, is a heroin junkie. He has two younger siblings: Alice, who ran away from home when she was fifteen, and Denny, who got sentenced to do time for carjacking when he was nineteen. Charles hasn't seen him since. As for dear old Ma and Pa, Camilla spent most of the kids' formative years in and out of jail for possession - hence Jackson's habit - and Horace, better known as Harry, was just a complete degenerate and deadbeat.
This, of course, left Charles to fend for them all, being the only sensible one. He learned fast how the law worked, since he was constantly working on getting his mother out of jail on technicalities. Sure, selling weed wasn't legal, but it pulled in a hell of a lot more money than Harry's couch-pressing and face-punching skills. Whenever he wasn't able to keep Camilla out of jail (and no, he hasn't called his parents "Mom and Dad" since he was eight), Charles was trying to find other ways to put food on the table and clothes on his siblings' backs. Once he hit junior high, he started fighting on school grounds and in abandoned buildings in competitions, for money. When he was caught and suspended after one of the fights on grounds, the school gym teacher saw his potential and signed him up for karate lessons. It didn't completely keep him out of the rings, but it gave him one hell of an edge, and he earned a name for himself, enough so that he could make enough money on weekend fights to stay in school and keep the house running.
Charles' first real experiences in studying law and business came when Jackson was first arrested in his sophomore year of high school, and he had to hit the books hard to keep him out of jail, since the Offdensens couldn't afford legal counsel... and from experience, Charles knew not to trust the court-appointed lawyer as far as he could throw him. The more he learned about law, the more he realized that that was where the structure lay (particularly in the loopholes), and that the concepts of family, brotherhood, and community support that society touted were absolute bullshit. Charles began putting most of his stock in money and law, and slanted his studies heavily in that direction, slowly leaving the fighting rings behind. When he pulled good enough grades to attract a scholarship or two, Charles caught the attention of his father's relatives, and a rich old aunt helped float him the rest of the money necessary for four years of undergrad at UMass. There, alongside graduating at the top of his class, he dabbled in fencing and was an avid member of the Medieval Society. (Why? Well. Back then everyone just fought until they decided who was right. Simpler, more brutal times.) After UMass, he went on to Georgetown University in Washington, DC ... and then Seattle, Washington - "the other pretentious Washington city" - to try and get a foothold as a band manager.
By that time it was the early 90s, and grunge was all the rage. Charles managed a few small-time bands, but nothing that really made it big... until he accompanied one band, Moldy Striped Sweater, to a gig at their bassist's family reunion in Florida. Deciding the whole thing was pathetic, Charles bailed on his band - and wound up sitting in a dive bar listening to some black-haired kid growling into the microphone.
The black-haired kid was Nathan Explosion, founding member and lead singer of Dethklok. After the set, Charles stopped some drunken patron from taking a shot at the back of Nathan's head while he was cashing in beer tickets, and the rest is history.
Other random notes:
- He created the design for (and is the voice of) Facebones. Nathan knows he drew the original concept on the back of a diner menu in the early days, but none of the band know that he's actually the voice of their screechy, irreverent mascot.
- Charles knows his way around cars. He doesn't collect them, but he likes knowing how they work, and fixing his own.
- He likes mysteries and fantasy novels, though he's picky about them, and they have to have at least some element of plausibility to them.
- Thanks to his stellar upbringing, he's no stranger to recreational drugs. He doesn't do them often, himself, but when he does need to take an edge off, his drug of choice is decidedly weed.
- He's secretly pretty fucking ace at Guitar Hero.
- Favorite bands besides Dethklok include Huey Lewis & the News (mostly for the nostalgia factor), Disturbed, and Tool. Tool, particularly, is his designated paperwork/end-of-day/ occasional stoner music.
- He helped Nathan pen the lyrics for The Gears.
- In place of a gear branded at the base of his skull like the rest of the Klokateers, Charles has a spiral the size of a hand's span branded on his chest, over his heart: the symbol of the Mainspring. When they created the code and the symbolism of the Klokateers, Charles had Nathan do his branding personally.
Charles was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Camilla and Horace Offdensen. The family was old money, but the money was on his father's side of the family - and Horace was decidedly the black sheep, ignored and disowned for years. His older brother, Jackson, is a heroin junkie. He has two younger siblings: Alice, who ran away from home when she was fifteen, and Denny, who got sentenced to do time for carjacking when he was nineteen. Charles hasn't seen him since. As for dear old Ma and Pa, Camilla spent most of the kids' formative years in and out of jail for possession - hence Jackson's habit - and Horace, better known as Harry, was just a complete degenerate and deadbeat.
This, of course, left Charles to fend for them all, being the only sensible one. He learned fast how the law worked, since he was constantly working on getting his mother out of jail on technicalities. Sure, selling weed wasn't legal, but it pulled in a hell of a lot more money than Harry's couch-pressing and face-punching skills. Whenever he wasn't able to keep Camilla out of jail (and no, he hasn't called his parents "Mom and Dad" since he was eight), Charles was trying to find other ways to put food on the table and clothes on his siblings' backs. Once he hit junior high, he started fighting on school grounds and in abandoned buildings in competitions, for money. When he was caught and suspended after one of the fights on grounds, the school gym teacher saw his potential and signed him up for karate lessons. It didn't completely keep him out of the rings, but it gave him one hell of an edge, and he earned a name for himself, enough so that he could make enough money on weekend fights to stay in school and keep the house running.
Charles' first real experiences in studying law and business came when Jackson was first arrested in his sophomore year of high school, and he had to hit the books hard to keep him out of jail, since the Offdensens couldn't afford legal counsel... and from experience, Charles knew not to trust the court-appointed lawyer as far as he could throw him. The more he learned about law, the more he realized that that was where the structure lay (particularly in the loopholes), and that the concepts of family, brotherhood, and community support that society touted were absolute bullshit. Charles began putting most of his stock in money and law, and slanted his studies heavily in that direction, slowly leaving the fighting rings behind. When he pulled good enough grades to attract a scholarship or two, Charles caught the attention of his father's relatives, and a rich old aunt helped float him the rest of the money necessary for four years of undergrad at UMass. There, alongside graduating at the top of his class, he dabbled in fencing and was an avid member of the Medieval Society. (Why? Well. Back then everyone just fought until they decided who was right. Simpler, more brutal times.) After UMass, he went on to Georgetown University in Washington, DC ... and then Seattle, Washington - "the other pretentious Washington city" - to try and get a foothold as a band manager.
By that time it was the early 90s, and grunge was all the rage. Charles managed a few small-time bands, but nothing that really made it big... until he accompanied one band, Moldy Striped Sweater, to a gig at their bassist's family reunion in Florida. Deciding the whole thing was pathetic, Charles bailed on his band - and wound up sitting in a dive bar listening to some black-haired kid growling into the microphone.
The black-haired kid was Nathan Explosion, founding member and lead singer of Dethklok. After the set, Charles stopped some drunken patron from taking a shot at the back of Nathan's head while he was cashing in beer tickets, and the rest is history.
Other random notes:
- He created the design for (and is the voice of) Facebones. Nathan knows he drew the original concept on the back of a diner menu in the early days, but none of the band know that he's actually the voice of their screechy, irreverent mascot.
- Charles knows his way around cars. He doesn't collect them, but he likes knowing how they work, and fixing his own.
- He likes mysteries and fantasy novels, though he's picky about them, and they have to have at least some element of plausibility to them.
- Thanks to his stellar upbringing, he's no stranger to recreational drugs. He doesn't do them often, himself, but when he does need to take an edge off, his drug of choice is decidedly weed.
- He's secretly pretty fucking ace at Guitar Hero.
- Favorite bands besides Dethklok include Huey Lewis & the News (mostly for the nostalgia factor), Disturbed, and Tool. Tool, particularly, is his designated paperwork/end-of-day/ occasional stoner music.
- He helped Nathan pen the lyrics for The Gears.
- In place of a gear branded at the base of his skull like the rest of the Klokateers, Charles has a spiral the size of a hand's span branded on his chest, over his heart: the symbol of the Mainspring. When they created the code and the symbolism of the Klokateers, Charles had Nathan do his branding personally.