Van Matthews
OOC
| Game | Journal | Portrayed By | Fairy Tale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fairly Tales | sleeper_van | Dane Cook | Rip Van Winkle |
Basic Stats
Full Name: Van Matthews
Nickname(s): None
Gender: Male
Age: 34
Date of Birth: November 25, 1972
Zodiac: Sagittarius
Sexuality: Straight
Relationship Status: Single
Hometown: New Jersey
Occupation: Stand-up compedian
Fairy Tale: Rip Van Winkle
Pet: None
History
Sleep. Everyone does it. You need to sleep to survive. When you sleep, your body and mind repair themselves. Or, at least, that's what's supposed to happen. For some people, sleep isn't quite so refreshing. They could sleep for hours, days even, and be as tired as if they'd never gone to sleep at all.
Van was fourteen when he was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). This was after a year and a half of constant fatigue, memory problems (mostly recall of seemingly trivial things; he might forget the word "toaster" or "watch" or something, or spend hours studying for a test and not remember any of the information), muscle and joint pain, headaches, sore throats. Tests upon tests upon tests. Ruling out nearly every possible condition to test for that any of his symptoms could possibly be symptoms for. Even conditions that shared none of his symptoms. Like many others who are diagnosed with CFS, his diagnosis was a process of elimination, rather than a straight diagnosis, since there are no diagnostic tests for CFS.
A rare night shortly after his diagnosis when Van was actually able to dream — dreams are uncommon for those suffering from CFS — he had a dream in which he had a wife, and she was nagging him. He got away by wandering up into the mountains, where he came across some strangely-dressed men who were playing nine-pin. They let him drink some of their liquor, and then he fell asleep. When dream!Van woke up again, twenty years had passed, and that was when Van woke up. It had been so long since he'd had any dreams, and this one was just weird.
To make things even weirder, he was approached at school a few days later — one of the last few days he actually attended a real school — by someone from somewhere called the Pentamerone. He was told that he was a reincarnation of a fairy tale, of Rip Van Winkle. He was the first incarnation of Rip, and there were others out there like him. He was given a journal and told it could connect him to the others. Of course, writing in diaries was for girls, so Van didn't really pay much attention to it for a while.
The years since his diagnosis and realization of his Tale nature have been a blur of various attempted treatments for his CFS. Some have worked better than others, but none for very long. He never went to a real high school, his CFS made it impossible for him to maintain any kind of reasonable attendance, so instead he was tutored and earned his GED when he was 20 (even with a tutor he couldn't keep up with his former classmates because both physical and mental exertion worsened his symptoms). After that, he left his parents' New Jersey home and moved into the Pentamerone — hey, a guy can't live with mom and pop forever, after all. Of course, he's still tied to his mom's apron strings and is home every Sunday for dinner, but for the most part he's a New Yorker now.
At the age of twenty-two, he went out to a comedy club with some friends and it just happened to be open mike night, so he took the stage and was a hit. Twelve years later, he's moved beyond living at the Pentamerone and hitting open mike nights: he has a penthouse, an agent, and actually has people paying to see his act. Of course, he sleeps for nearly twelve hours nightly thanks to the latest sleeping pills his doctor has him on and takes a fistful of memory enhancing and immune system boosting pills every morning, pops advil like candy for the headaches, and occasionally loses his voice to his still-frequent sore throats, but you gotta play with the hand you're dealt.