OOC: Character Sheet
Aug. 15th, 2007 05:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
more_spirit_than_twentyName: Hubert McCann (![[insanejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/ij-userinfo.gif)
morespiritthn20)
Canon, if any: Secondhand Lions
Age: 64
Role: High School gym teacher
Brief physical description: Hub is average height (5'10") and strongly-built, with blue-gray eyes and dark, graying hair that's gone completely bald up top, and a grizzled mustache. He generally wears a knit hat on his head, and very casual, rugged clothing. Robert Duvall played him in the movie, and that's the PB I'm using for him here. He has no unusual powers but he's astonishingly fit and athletic for an old guy.
Brief personality description: Hub is gruff and abrasive at times, and doesn't like to talk about his past (unlike his garrulous brother Garth, who loves to tell stories about their adventures in Africa). He believes that a lot of kids today are "given everything except discipline." He's still very tough and strong and can probably physically outmatch most of his students even now, although he talks about how it won't be long before he's useless in a fight and a junior high-schooler can whup him. He's a demanding teacher, but the way to earn his approval is simply to make a genuine effort. Once he gets a sense of where a student's limits are, he bases his grades on how much of an effort they make to reach them.
Brief bio: Hub McCann was restless from the time he was a child in Texas. When he was a young man, in 1914, he talked his parents into letting him and his brother Garth take a trip to Europe so he could get some of the wanderlust out of his system. They arrived just in time for WWI to break out, and got shanghai'd into the French Foreign Legion and sent to the Middle East. They remained in Northern Africa for another forty years, having a variety of spectacular and fairly unbelievable adventures and amassing a small fortune. Hub fell in love and married, only to lose his wife and son during childbirth, and returned to the Foreign Legion. He only finally left it, and he and his brother returned to Texas, when the Legion tried to promote him into a desk job, something he couldn't stand.
He and Garth returned to Texas massively wealthy and extremely reclusive, and set up housekeeping in a dilapidated farmhouse. Their estranged family immediately began attempting to prey on them and find out where their money was, one neice going so far as to dump her pubescent son off with them for a summer. Improbably, the two old men ended up loving young Walt, and after his mother did something extraordinarily stupid, they took custody of the boy from her and raised him as their own quasi-son.
(This is where things depart from canon.) Hub's fondness for adventure and excitement hadn't let up any, even if he was getting old, and when the McCann brothers were approached about testing an experimental aircraft, he jumped at the chance. Because he'd promised Walt that he'd be around for the rest of the boy's adolescence and young adulthood, he only did so because (a) the plane, although experimental, was not considered dangerous and (b) Garth and Walt could accompany him on the flight. The plane was supposed to simply test whether or not time-dilation occurred at high speeds, and record any difference in the time-streams within and without its frame. Its designers had build it too well, and the result was that it achieved light-speed for a few minutes. When Hub landed the aircraft and the trio stepped, out, they were no longer in 1962; they were in 2002.
Their fortune had never been found by their relatives while they were missing, so they used it, along with some help from an embarrassed Federal government, to relocate to Vinalhaven, Maine. Hub decided that he needed something to do to keep him out of trouble, and was supplied with teaching credentials that qualify him to teach PE at the high school level. At this point, the only thing that keeps him from completely blending in with the locals is his Texas accent.
RP Sample: After a lifetime in deserts, both American and African, the move to Maine was kind of a strange choice for a man like Hub, but he liked it. Other men might have complained about the cold and the wet. Most men his age were heading for Florida, from what he heard. But there was something about Vinalhaven that made Hub feel right at home. He still couldn't figure out what it was.
Maybe it was the kids. Not that he'd ever admit it where they could hear him, if he could help it. Wouldn't do for them to get swollen heads or nothin'. Most of them were good kids, though. Teaching them how to be more than just mall-bunnies and hotrodders was kind of inspiring. The truth was that, in spite of all of his talk about getting old and frail, Hub McCann was feeling younger than ever. Sometimes he was genuinely shocked when he'd pass a mirror and see the old guy in it, because he felt like it was still 1920, and the world was still at his feet.
And maybe it was.
morespiritthn20)Canon, if any: Secondhand Lions
Age: 64
Role: High School gym teacher
Brief physical description: Hub is average height (5'10") and strongly-built, with blue-gray eyes and dark, graying hair that's gone completely bald up top, and a grizzled mustache. He generally wears a knit hat on his head, and very casual, rugged clothing. Robert Duvall played him in the movie, and that's the PB I'm using for him here. He has no unusual powers but he's astonishingly fit and athletic for an old guy.
Brief personality description: Hub is gruff and abrasive at times, and doesn't like to talk about his past (unlike his garrulous brother Garth, who loves to tell stories about their adventures in Africa). He believes that a lot of kids today are "given everything except discipline." He's still very tough and strong and can probably physically outmatch most of his students even now, although he talks about how it won't be long before he's useless in a fight and a junior high-schooler can whup him. He's a demanding teacher, but the way to earn his approval is simply to make a genuine effort. Once he gets a sense of where a student's limits are, he bases his grades on how much of an effort they make to reach them.
Brief bio: Hub McCann was restless from the time he was a child in Texas. When he was a young man, in 1914, he talked his parents into letting him and his brother Garth take a trip to Europe so he could get some of the wanderlust out of his system. They arrived just in time for WWI to break out, and got shanghai'd into the French Foreign Legion and sent to the Middle East. They remained in Northern Africa for another forty years, having a variety of spectacular and fairly unbelievable adventures and amassing a small fortune. Hub fell in love and married, only to lose his wife and son during childbirth, and returned to the Foreign Legion. He only finally left it, and he and his brother returned to Texas, when the Legion tried to promote him into a desk job, something he couldn't stand.
He and Garth returned to Texas massively wealthy and extremely reclusive, and set up housekeeping in a dilapidated farmhouse. Their estranged family immediately began attempting to prey on them and find out where their money was, one neice going so far as to dump her pubescent son off with them for a summer. Improbably, the two old men ended up loving young Walt, and after his mother did something extraordinarily stupid, they took custody of the boy from her and raised him as their own quasi-son.
(This is where things depart from canon.) Hub's fondness for adventure and excitement hadn't let up any, even if he was getting old, and when the McCann brothers were approached about testing an experimental aircraft, he jumped at the chance. Because he'd promised Walt that he'd be around for the rest of the boy's adolescence and young adulthood, he only did so because (a) the plane, although experimental, was not considered dangerous and (b) Garth and Walt could accompany him on the flight. The plane was supposed to simply test whether or not time-dilation occurred at high speeds, and record any difference in the time-streams within and without its frame. Its designers had build it too well, and the result was that it achieved light-speed for a few minutes. When Hub landed the aircraft and the trio stepped, out, they were no longer in 1962; they were in 2002.
Their fortune had never been found by their relatives while they were missing, so they used it, along with some help from an embarrassed Federal government, to relocate to Vinalhaven, Maine. Hub decided that he needed something to do to keep him out of trouble, and was supplied with teaching credentials that qualify him to teach PE at the high school level. At this point, the only thing that keeps him from completely blending in with the locals is his Texas accent.
RP Sample: After a lifetime in deserts, both American and African, the move to Maine was kind of a strange choice for a man like Hub, but he liked it. Other men might have complained about the cold and the wet. Most men his age were heading for Florida, from what he heard. But there was something about Vinalhaven that made Hub feel right at home. He still couldn't figure out what it was.
Maybe it was the kids. Not that he'd ever admit it where they could hear him, if he could help it. Wouldn't do for them to get swollen heads or nothin'. Most of them were good kids, though. Teaching them how to be more than just mall-bunnies and hotrodders was kind of inspiring. The truth was that, in spite of all of his talk about getting old and frail, Hub McCann was feeling younger than ever. Sometimes he was genuinely shocked when he'd pass a mirror and see the old guy in it, because he felt like it was still 1920, and the world was still at his feet.
And maybe it was.
