Welcome to Gaia! ::

Name: Ichabod Crane Sommers (his mom was in love with Johnny Depp's character in "Sleepy Hollow")

Nickname: Icky (the negative connotation has never registered with him)

Gender/Pronoun: male/nonbinary, he/they

Age: 19

Birthday: 13 December 2004

Sign: Sagittarius Sun, Capricorn Moon, Sagittarius Rising

Gemstone: Gold topaz

Fav. Food: Pizza – by all that is holy, he loves pizza more than life itself.

Hated Food: Nothing. He'll eat anything.

School/Occupation: Waitstaff at "A Taste of Seoul" Korean Cafe. Graduated top of his class from HITS in 2022, but it can be hard to find work as an engineer when you're still technically a teenager, and needs must and all….

Hobbies:
Dumpster Diving: It thoroughly amazes Ichabod the things people consider junk or trash. Computers, electronics, car parts, construction supplies… The list is seemingly endless, what people throw away. Perfectly salvageable pieces and parts! Icky will happily scavenge these things, adding them to the growing pile of junk in his backyard awaiting projects. Sometimes he will go out to the city dump to scrounge for things, but most of the time he preemptively dumpster-dives. He knows where all the good dumpsters in town are too, the ones that get the best trash. As well as dumpster diving, he will go down to the reservoir with a metal detector and play mudlark; he's found some really great stuff that way. It doesn't matter to him that he usually comes out smelling like garbage after a dumpster-diving adventure, but he doesn't care – that's what frequent showers are for.

Bodgery: Basically building something useful and functional out of junk; an offshoot of his love of dumpster diving. Icky is an inveterate tinkerer and mad DIYer. He loves taking things apart to see how they work, then putting them back together again or (more typically) rebuilding them altogether into something completely different. It's not just fun, it's educational, too, in that he invariably learns something that he can use as inspiration to create something else. He considers himself an engineer, not an artist, and the things he builds reflect this, with virtually no deliberate attempts at decoration beyond polishing the metal they're made of. However, as form follows function, his creations are aesthetically pleasing to the eye; elegantly constructed to do precisely what they are intended to do, they are beautiful in that way that only well-designed machines can be.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION

Eyes: Deep-set warm brown eyes with heavy dark brows and a slightly demented gleam. He uses small half-round glasses when he's reading or doing close, intricate work.

Hair: Light ginger-blond hair, mostly straight and collar-length; he lets it do what it will do, which is sorta part itself on the left and fall long and floppy in front, though he usually keeps it out of his face with the goggles he wears while working on projects. (Like this)

Face: Slightly spade-shaped, equipped with a slightly longish nose and a wide childlike grin. His typical expression varies between "deep in thought," "completely befuddled," and "WHEE THIS IS FUN."

Skin Tone: Generally fair but tanned from his tromps around the reservoir; something like #e4b981.

Body Type: A gangly geek. Standing at about 6' or close to it, he's built like a professional cyclist, lanky, loose-limbed and wiry, with long nimble fingers and long feet that he may eventually grow into.

Clothes: When he's left to his own devices, Ichabod dresses… like he doesn't know how to dress himself. Long-sleeved henley shirts dominate his wardrobe, the sleeves usually pushed up to his elbows, along with board shorts or loose khakis rolled up to his knees. Crocs of various colors complete the picture. Usually when he's working in his shed, he'll add a white lab coat, the pocket stuffed with pens and scraps of paper and goodness knows what else. In the wintertime he wears a fleece-lined duster overcoat, old combat boots, wool socks, and a thick scarf, along with fingerless knit gloves. He rarely wears t-shirts unless it's quite warm – they're mostly gifts from people like his family. At work at the Korean cafe, he'll wear the waitstaff uniform of white dress shirt, black pants, and black Crocs. It all looks a bit rumpled regardless of what he's wearing, like he's a walking unmade bed.

Father: Rich Sommers, city planner
Mother: Angela Sommers, aspiring novelist
Sister: Annabelle Lee Sommers (mom liked Poe too), student at Meadowview High

Born and raised in Destiny City, Ichabod is a natural born bodger. Even as a toddler, he hacked his toys, taking them apart to see how they worked and putting them back together again with a surprising degree of accuracy and functionality. This caught the attention of his Grandpa Sommers, who was an engineer with the city. He saw the potential engineer in young Ichabod and did everything in his power to encourage him. To this end, he took his grandson out on projects, showed him the machines and construction sites, and little Icky was hooked. The boy fell in love with big equipment and building things, and started designing and building his own machines with the Legos and Technics toys he was given.

At school, 'precocious' doesn't begin to describe Ichabod. He practically lived at the Knightside school library, learning the things they didn't teach; he also became a regular at the Destiny City Public Library in order to learn the things they didn't cover through the school library. Bored with conventional school, with his parents' blessing he essentially bodged his way into Horizon Institute for Technology and Science at age 11. Now THIS was proper school! He quickly became a star pupil studying engineering and robotics, excelling at nearly every challenge put to him. His creative solutions to problems befuddled and impressed his teachers, and he graduated with high honors at age 16.

The night of his graduation, Icky discovered an amazing new activity: dumpster diving. Some friends decided to rummage in the dumpsters behind HITS to see what they could find, and it was eye-opening for him. He took up dumpster diving on the regular for parts for his inventions and projects, genuinely surprised at the stuff he'd find that people had just thrown away. (This is how he met Casper, a mechanic who would eventually help Ichabod modify the hell out of a car.)

Even though he was up to his eyes in creating mechanical wonders out of spare parts, Ichabod knew he needed to get a proper job. He tried to get work as an engineer with the city, but even dad's pulled strings couldn't get him in – mainly because he was still a kid. Disheartened, he yielded to the inevitable food services work and took a job as waitstaff at "A Taste of Seoul", a Korean cafe, on the recommendation of a friend in order to keep himself in supplies. Icky doesn't mind the work, really, and enjoys the company of his coworkers Holland and Daisy (and the free Korean food). He still dumpster dives, though, and since getting (and bodging) an old beat-up car, he also haunts the city dump and mudlarks at the reservoir. Yes, he still lives at home, but his parents don't mind. He at least keeps out of trouble…

07/12/24: bought Ichabod's MYO civ form
07/12/24: Ichabod's civ quest approved!
07/13/24: set up civ journal
07/16/24: Ichabod's civ art approved!