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rudistroebel-blog · 5 years ago

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◊ ♫ ◊— look what the cat dragged in! that’s RUDOLF ‘RUDI’ STROEBEL and HE/HIM are an around 24-year-old CASUAL VISITOR to the store, but they’ve been in the neighborhood for A YEAR AND A HALF. I think they are an APP DEVELOPER and I overheard them listening to DON’T WANNA FIGHT by ALABAMA SHAKES, and, I dunno man, it seemed pretty fitting. Like, call me shallow but I look at them and think of BEN ROSENFIELD and MESSY CURLS, FREQUENT PHONE CALLS HOME, AN EASY GOING SMILE THAT NEVER FADES. (ooc info: bean, she/her, EST, 24)

Name: Rudolf Stroebel

Nicknames: Rudi

DOB: Feb 22, a Pisces.

Age: 24

Gender/Pronouns: Cismale and he/his.

Occupation: App Developer at an unnamed startup, side hustles include working on his own app and odd jobs here and there

Hometown: Milton, Delaware

Jakob and Clara Stroebel (Americanized from the original Ströbel) settled in Delaware in their twenties, leaving behind their birthplace of Hamburg Germany, determined to make their own fortunes. They struggled with the language, the culture, and fought for years to gain respect from the locals in the suburb they chose to inhabit. Jakob built up a reputation as a naturopathic doctor, and Clara taught German after school, and they both strived to raise their young son into someone that mirrored them both internally as well as externally.

While they may have preached the value of hard work, it’s a lesson that Rudi only half heard. He excels in little beyond disappointment. His grades were always lacking, he wasn’t gifted athletically, he had no interest in his father’s work and even though it’s the language spoken at home, his German is clumsy and imperfect. He managed to get through his teen years by sliding by, relying on a quick quip and some natural charisma to ensure he could at least graduate high school on time. People tend to like Rudi, which only enables him further.

He did a year at a local community college before dropping out— he taught himself coding through YouTube videos and computer science classes taught on Windows95 felt like a massive waste of time. The truth is, he told his mother he dropped out by choice, bad attendance and incomplete assignments had him flunking out shortly after the first semester.

Rudi’s success came as a surprise, an idea he’d jokingly come up with while drinking with some friends at a bar was thrown around, and like many things, he never expected anyone to take it seriously at all. As he passed out comfortably in his bed, tucked under the hand made quilt his mother lovingly crafted, he never could’ve seen what the next week would bring.

He put the app together based on the simple idea on a Monday, and was launching the beta by the Saturday, churning it out into an overnight success. The whole thing turned out to be profitable, with thousands of downloads lining their pockets with cash. Within the next few months, he’d accidentally become a whiz kid entropnenur with enough money to move out of his family home and avoid seeking a real career for the foreseeable future.

Flush with cash, the next reasonable move was to move to the big city. He sold the app to a tech giant and got himself an apartment in Manhattan. For the first few months, everything was gravy. He had an interview with Google lined up that he assumed he’d ace, and from there he’d be living the good life until the end of time! Unfortunately, the interview didn’t pan out the way he’d hoped and now without a Plan B and without the skills to live like an adult, Rudi blew through the cash within 6 months of his initial move.

He’s too embarrassed to go back home— his parents have finally started to believe in him and disappointing them again would be killer. Priced out of Manhattan he made several moves over the last year deeper and deeper into Brooklyn. Now he shares a basement apartment with a guy named Jonathon who air dries his socks on the radiator.

Rudi’s making changes! He got a job with a startup, so the pay isn’t great but most of his work can be done at home, leaving him with tons of time to occupy coffee shops and take long walks through the city he loves. He’s also working on actually getting a college degree. He’s secretly studying to retake the SAT so he can get into a decent school. Steve Jobbing it through life apparently works best if you’re actually Steve Jobs.

Used to an easy life, Rudi’s incapable of looking after himself properly, and his new found independence is being treated like an endless kegger. He likes a good time with great friends, and he doesn’t see anything wrong with that. He’s sweet, with his heart in the right place, but with his new found fortune he’s just been granted another faucet to allow him to live a Peter Pan existence. It’s this sort of youthful optimism that keeps him charming. Perhaps it’s not untrue that children become funny when they have nothing else to market themselves as, as his wry words and surprisingly observational comments often remind people around that there is more to Rudi than just being a party animal, even if he himself doesn’t see it.

In general, he’s a good kid. He’s a good friend and helpful— kinda has a Mid-West attitude without being from the Mid-West. Easily taken advantage of and oblivious to a lot of what’s going on around him, but he’s! Good!

H E A D C A N O N S

I. His vision has never been anywhere close to stellar. From his very early days, Rudi’s been the kid with glasses– something that swapped over to contacts as soon as he was old enough to be trusted putting plastic in his eye. He refuses to wear glasses, though towards the end of long nights he’s almost always seen cranky and irritated in smoky and crowded spaces, rubbing his slowly reddening eyes.

II. He’s been blessed with a wild mess of thick curly hair, of which no one is quite sure whom he got it from, or what to do with. His parents were flaxen haired beauties without a follicle out of place and every family picture features their son with enough wax on his head to look like a shoe shine commercial. These days he’s found it just easier to slap a beanie over his head than to try to tame his wild locks, considering it his signature look.

III. He’s been the victim of several pyramid schemes, some that he still doesn’t know about.

IV. Rudi suffers from what he refers to as ‘the tricky A’s.’ Asthma, allergies, anxiety and a touch of anemia.

#fr.intro #this is so so so late pls forgive me??

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