Rancid Creature is an American hard rock and heavy metal band from Texas that formed in 1976 in Los Angeles, California. The band's current lineup consists of vocalist and lead guitarist Izzy Jones, rhythm guitarist Anita Huerta, bassist Sammy Laurel, and drummer Donnie Watts. Watts and Laurel also share the broad majority of credit for the band’s lyrics. All four members have also provided backing and lead vocals throughout the band's discography.
Rancid Creature are best known for their bold, distinctive sound and their wide range of album concepts. In typical fashion for metal bands of the time, the group are also known for their wild partying and heavy drug use. Three of four of the band’s members have been through rehab on more than one occasion, all three of those members are now advocates and regular donors to several charities supporting what they describe as ‘the homeless, the abused, the vulnerable. and the lost.’ Their albums, while all belonging firmly to the metal genre, stray away from the stereotypical notions of what a metal group should write about. Several of their songs are about political and humanitarian issues, and since the forced outing of Donnie Watts in 1980, the band have several songs dedicated to the queer experience and LGBTQ+ rights.
To date, Rancid Creature have released five studio albums, two compilation albums, and have sold out numerous world tours. They have been nominated often for Grammys but have never managed to collect the award. They stopped attending ceremonies for the event in 1992. They have been named in both Rolling Stone and Loudwire as one of the most influential bands of their generation. In recent years, the band has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity and have released an EP of unheard demos entitled ‘Crystal Bitch.’
pictured : isaiah "izzy" jones ( left ) , anita "annie" huerta ( right. )
Graveyards ( 1977. )
GRAVEYARDS ………………………. MISS MISTY
THE ROAD ………………………. HITCHHIKER
LONESOME ………………………. DREAD END
PLAYTIME’S OVER ………………………. RADROCK
SCREECHING SONG ………………………. K.I.A ( KILLED IN ACTION )
Fear and Longing ( 1979. )
POISON JUNIPER ………………………. PANIC
CLAW MARKS ………………………. MINER’S MISERY
KILL ME ALREADY! ………………………. STORMBITTEN
SHOTGUN SUMMER ………………………. LOVER’S LANGUISH
MIDNIGHT DREARY ………………………. WHISKY
Bloody Fortune ( 1982. )
MERIDIAN ………………………. BLOODY FORTUNE
LOVESICK ………………………. DOWN AND OUT
A FREAK’S ANTHEM ………………………. CRIMSON HAZE
LADY MACBETH ………………………. SAMSA
SINNER’S SONATA ………………………. OUR FATHER
AMERICANA ………………………. PENNILESS
Kettle Black ( 1984. )
FIEND ………………………. NESTING DOLL
HINDSIGHT ………………………. PATROCLUS
PREACHERMAN ………………………. ORWELLIAN
KETTLE BLACK ………………………. MADAM DUBOIS
HUCKLEBERRY ………………………. LIAR LIAR
ANTITHESIS ………………………. THE END ( OF ALL THINGS )
NICKNAMES & TITLES : Donnie, Don, D, Pretty Boy, Oathbreaker, Son of the Tearfall, The First Mask of Many, The Dragon of the Wood, The Wild One.
AGE : 247.
GENDER : Male.
PRONOUNS : He / Him.
ORIENTATION : Bisexual / Biromantic.
SPECIES : Wood Elf.
MORAL ALIGNMENT : Neutral Good.
CLASS/SUBCLASS : Paladin, Oath of Vengeance (formerly), Oathbreaker.
CURRENT HOME : Wherever he happens to lay his head is Donovan's home. He's something of a nomad and prefers to stray away from overcrowded spaces if he can help it. Though it's not unusual to find him staying in local Taverns or Inns looking for work as a lone bounty hunter.
HEIGHT : 6'2" (188cm)
WEIGHT : 190-200lbs.
HAIR : Strawberry blond. Donovan's hair is wild and curly, and is his pride. He can and will bite someone if they so much as suggest that he cut it. In terms of style, it's often drawn back in a half up, half down style with a fringe that falls over his forehead.
EYES : Sage green, almond-shaped, crinkle in the corners whenever he smiles or laughs. They’re often half-closed in a lazy kinda way, like he couldn’t give a damn about the world around him. Donovan's eyes reflect in dark spaces much the same way a cat's might, this is due to the tapetum lucidum tissue present in his eyes, and indeed, all the eyes of his fellow Wood Elves.
SCARS : A bite scar on his left forearm from a fight with a devilish entity, that he was forced into participating in by his mother, when he was in his teens. A scar through his left eyebrow where he was hit by an older boy when he was ten. A curved scar on the underside of his chin that he never talks about (his mother inflicted this when he was about fourteen or so.) There are other scars littered across his torso, his arms and his back from all his years of fighting.
SKIN : Pale, almost resembling porcelain for the most part. One may, if they're paying close enough attention, notice that Donovan's skin takes on a greenish hue near his hairline, across his knuckles, at his elbows, on his knees, and on the tips of his ears. It’s quick to burn under the sun and is prone to blushing whenever enraged or embarrassed. The bridge of his nose is home to a heavy dusting of freckles, as are his cheeks, shoulders, arms, back and thighs. His freckles look brown from afar, but are actually an extremely dark shade of green. His skin is smooth in places and calloused in others because of all the years he’s spent farming and fighting.
OTHER APPEARANCE NOTES : Donovan has a soft, square shaped face with prominent, dark eyebrows. He has an almost feminine quality to his face, with full lips and a rounded chin. One might also notice several silver earrings in both ears, and two full sleeves of tattoos (I will make a post about how these differ from his modern tattoos at some point, though some are exactly the same as their modern counterparts.) The most prominent tattoo is of a gorgon woman on the front of his neck. His ears also twitch and droop depending on his mood. His ears also tend to flatten against his head when angry or scared, in fact, paying close enough attention to his ears is the best way to tell how he's feeling, as he's certainly not going to voice such things aloud. Which is another reason why he hides them under all of his hair. One might also notice that his canines are slightly sharper than the average human's canines. As a wood elf, he is more attuned to the wilds of the world, and is a shade more animalistic than his High Elf brethren. He tends to bare his teeth whenever he's angry or threatened.
CHARACTER NOTES : Donovan carries with him a blood curse, a draconic madness that renders him hypnotised by precious metals, gemstones, magical artefacts, and the mere promise of power. Think along a similar line to the Gold Sickness Thorin Oakenshield showcases in 'The Hobbit.' This curse was wrought upon the Tearfall family in the wake of an ancient war with Dragons. His ancestors took the side of those Dragons against their own kin in hopes of one day taming them in the same way they tamed the beasts of the forests they called home. Ultimately, the Dragons lost and were forced to retreat into the mountains to lick their wounds. Angry with Donovan's ancestors for not fulfilling their promises of victory against their kin, they evoked their deities' wrath upon the family. And so the Tearfall clan were exiled from the world of Elves and Dragon alike.
As a result of this curse, Donovan is rendered rigid with fear when faced with the promise of command, which all links back to his days as The First Mask. He believes that the curse is why he took to it so well, though in reality, he was just manipulated by his mother to the point of literal brainwashing. I should also note here that due to the blood curse and his broken oath, those same draconic deities have visited him in dreams, attempting to lure him to their side by appealing to his deepest desires. Unbeknownst to him, his father tried to protect him from the draconic deities' schemes by planting a lullaby in his head. Don hums this lullaby subconsciously, especially when he's scared, and when asked about it, will claim to not know where the song comes from. All he knows is that it brings him comfort.
ACCENT/VOICE : Donovan's voice is raspy and low, and has a charming, boyish quality to it. Despite lacking the Texan flavouring, and instead speaking with a rumbling Lancastrian accent, Donovan still drawls and speaks a shade slower than others around him. Many mistake this for him actually being slow or stupid, which pisses him off, but works to his advantage. When he's talking in Elvish, his voice becomes deeper still, and sounds almost like he's singing in the Baritone rage. (This is basically how i imagine Donnie's voice sounding in his fantasy verses!)
BACKGROUND : Donovan was born knowing what it was to have the world pity him. In eons gone by, his ancestors had taken the side of the Dragons against their own kin. When the war fell in favour of the Elves, those Dragons evoked the punishment of their many draconic deities. Those deities cursed the Tearfall line with Draconic madness. This madness would manifest in the form of fanaticism, and an obsession with valuable things, such as gemstones, precious metals, or magical artefacts. Most of all, this madness would manifest in an obsession with power. They would covet it above all else, which would make them ferocious warriors, but awful rulers and leaders. Over the millennia that passed, Donovan’s ancestors splintered into the wilds of the world, and few kept the Tearfall name. The madness waned as the generations passed, but the memory of Elves is as long as their lifespans, and the elders of their kin refused forgiveness at every turn. Despite such dogged hatred, Donovan's grandfather decided that he would keep the name. He longed to build a new reputation for his bloodline, where they might teach the world how to handle animals, and how to better cultivate the lands around them.
Donovan's father, Cardan, was especially proficient in the art of animal handling, and was an adventuring bard in his youth. His mother, Melanwyn, was a cleric, as her mother was before her, and so on. Her lineage lay with the golden Elves of the coast, who worshipped both the water and the land in equal measure. His older brother, Brodwyn, sought to follow in their father’s footsteps as an adventurer, but was always willing to entertain Donovan’s mischief wherever he could. For eight, bright years, Donovan knew nothing but peace and the endless greenery of wild woodlands.
Family legacy was of the utmost importance in the Tearfall household, as were appearances. Nobody was to know that Melanwyn was prone to fits of rage and despair in the name of her gods. Nobody was to know that Cardan would stare into the green pastures of their land and see nothing but bloody battlefields, muttering to the ghosts of old friends in his transfixed stupor. Sometime after Brodwyn departed to make a life for himself in the world beyond the woodland, those same ghosts called Cardan to a self-imposed death, thus sending Melanwyn into a long, frenzied grief. She would throw herself entirely into her faith, and dragged Donovan along with her as she scrambled for anything that might bring her husband back to her. She turned to everything she could think of, even necromancy. It seemed that, because she had bore children in a cursed bloodline, she too was cursed with their draconic madness. Power consumed her, body and soul.
Her obsession with bringing Cardan back from the dead was quickly forgotten when her gods, in a misguided attempt to soothe her heartache, offered a Paladin's Oath for her youngest child to take when he came of age. To protect her, to care for her. Not even they, in all their divine wisdom, could reverse such a tragedy. Necromancy flew in the face of all that the Wood Elves coveted most, nature and the cycles it followed. So, in following with their own teaching, they promised Melanwyn her legacy in her son. Donovan was her future. With startling immediacy, Melanwyn began to set things in motion for the day of Donovan's passage into manhood. She began to preach wherever she might be heard, creating a faction known as The Sun's Masks. Over the decades that crawled by, she managed to climb up into a position of influence in Elven society. Though her influence was far from altruistic in nature. All the while, she trained Donovan in the art of the sword, dagger, longbow, crossbow, and whip. Her regime was hard, perhaps too hard on a boy his age. Her harshness would often bring the boy to tears, and those tears would bring punishment down upon him.
By the age of fifteen, Donovan couldn't find it in him to cry even if he wanted to. His tears were spent. Especially not after his mother had locked him alone in a room with a devilish entity conjured from the very depths of the hells themselves until he killed the fiend. Donovan would come to the very brink of death, and each time he did, Melanwyn would heal his wounds and demanded that he keep fighting. Many of the scars he carries to this day came from this very incident, the most prominent of which being the ugly bite scar on his left arm. He believed himself broken, emotionless, thoughtless. His mother's goals were his own. On the day he passed into manhood, he took the oath his mother had been offered years before, an Oath of Vengeance in his father's name, little realising that his blood curse would bind him to both Elven and Draconic forces.
Melanwyn swiftly gained the loyalty of the more senior fanatics in the world of Elven politics, who believed that all Elvenkin should take their place as the ruling people of all known lands, as they had at the dawning of the world. Melanwyn led this new crusade with a harsh and calculating hand. They would mould the world in the teachings of their gods, twisting the rules and gospels to their own whims. The Sun's Masks would indoctrinate their fellow elves against their will, preparing to take back the forests and the mountains and the rivers and the seas and all the caverns that sprawled into the depths of the earth.
As he grew older, Donovan became detached and rageful. He bore his oath with a cruelty that kept his mother's abusive hand turned against anybody but himself, and it kept up the appearance of the stoic commander in such a way where none of his men were brave enough to try and know him. Donovan was his mother's terrible, bloody, right hand for nearly a century and a half. Her First Mask. The First Mask of Many they called him, believing that even in death he would rise and serve their leader in her brutal conquest. That was until they began imprisoning those they deemed lesser than them. Half-Elves, Gnomes, Dwarves, Tieflings, Dragonborns, Humans. It was his mother's intention to use them as examples to stir fear in her name, to make false martyrs of them and parade them about the world as a warning. It didn't take much to see that these prisoners and so-called 'criminals' were innocent of any crime she was accusing them of.
Donovan was taught by Melanwyn, moulded in her supposedly perfect image. As such, he was taught to strike so hard and so fast that nobody would ever have the opportunity to recover and strike back in return. So that's exactly what he did. He freed the prisoners and set the headquarters of The Sun’s Masks ablaze with a searing smite born of his newfound 'darkness.' It was then that Donovan learned the fickle nature of gods and their warped sense of morality. He was an Oathbreaker. A piece of him was ripped away as the flames ate the very place that had imprisoned him. He decided then and there that he’d rather embrace a darkness that knew the difference between right and wrong than a god who picked when right and wrong suited them.
He did not wait for thanks from the people he freed, nor to see if any of The Masks survived. He burned anything he owned that bore the sigil of The Sun’s Masks and ran into the night. From then on, Donovan made a living through bounty hunting, monster hunting, and bodyguard work. He never offered his full name. People would only ever know him as Donovan, The Dragon of the Wood. Named as such for his ferocity and his use of fire magic. He used his hair to hide his ears, for fear of being recognised as The First Mask. He also covered himself in tattoos to further distance himself from his mother’s rancid beliefs. It was during this time that he began to research his family's blood curse, looking for a way to break it. In doing this, he discovered that his oath was tainted from the very beginning.
One might look to find him in the dark corners of Taverns, or sleeping under the stars in the woods, with nobody but his horse, Lady, for company. He has not yet recovered his penchant for mischief, and often comes across as stoic, but rest assured, under his hard exterior is someone waiting with gentle hands.
MAIN. There are three strands to Donnie's main verse that take place between 1975 and 1989. One: Donnie is a reckless 20-something who travels the West Coast and Southern states of America with his band, Rancid Creature. Two: He's in his late 20s and has parted ways with Rancid Creature while he attempts to get as clean as possible. He drifts from place to place, picking up manual labour jobs and sleeping wherever he can afford to. Three: He's in his early-mid thirties and is raising his daughter, Emma. This is also while he's in the process of purchasing land in Montana, so he can start his own ranch and train his own horses.
THE TEEN YEARS. Donnie’s living with his older brother’s family and the many farm hands that work on Dogwood Ranch in Longing, Texas, miles away from the nearest city. He’s a poorly reformed delinquent metalhead looking for something to do in the boring town of Longing, Texas. He learns of loss, and of corruption, and of hell during his teen years. This verse is open to teenage muses, older muses looking to mentor Donnie or to those looking to be involved in Donnie’s life before he goes missing. This verse can also be used as a springboard into my other AU’s, and will probably always be involved in some way or another.
MODERN. Everything is the same but the dates! This is for the ease of interaction with more modern-centric verses, but you’ll have to tell me if you want to use this verse or I’ll default to my main.
ROCKSTAR. Everything is the same, but instead of remaining as an underground metal band, Rancid Creature finds success when they manage to book a show in California. The band is comprised of Izzy Jones as the lead vocalist and guirarist, Sammy Laurel as the bassist, Anita Huerta as the rhythm guitarist, and Donnie Watts as the drummer and lyricist. Donnie very much becomes a victim of the heavy music scene in the eighties, your muses are likely to encounter him while he’s out partying and causing mayhem on the streets of LA with his bandmates, or while he’s trying to lay low and stay away from the prying eyes of the paparazzi.
Your muse will also know that the media do not have a positive view of Donnie for varying reasons: Satanic Panic, he’s not straight, he doesn’t like the police, he encourages ‘unruly’ behaviour, he’s outspoken, he’s opinionated, he’s rude to nosy tabloid reporters, so on and so forth. Conservative America cannot stand Rancid Creature, and that's just the way they like it.
VAMPIRE. This is an offshoot of Donnie's rockstar AU. The story remains the same, only Donnie doesn’t find himself addicted to drugs. At a party in Hollywood, Donnie is swept into the arms of a vampire who sires him. This vampire, an elder, doesn’t stick around long enough to form an attachment to Donnie. So he’s left without a guide into the bloody world of vampirism. Donnie’s cautious to begin with, and tries to abstain from drinking blood from humans whenever he can. He only kills people he deems to be bad; the asshole who he catches spiking a girl’s drink, the mother who grips her child’s wrist a little too tightly, the teenager that leads a gang of bullying bastards. But that soon spirals out of control the minute he starts to enjoy it. Soon enough, he starts killing and hunting for the fun of it.
There is a modern verse for this, where he’s been through his killing phase without being caught and is trying to atone for his actions. Officially, Donnie Watts mysteriously vanished in 1989, never to be seen or heard from again.
WESTERN/RDR. Donovan Watts is the second heir to a ranching legacy that’s famous throughout the west. The Watts are renowned for their care and quality of horses. Customers come from all over the nation to view or buy from Dogwood Ranch. Donovan is a reckless boy who’s often mixed up in some kind of trouble or other. It’s a badly kept secret that his relationship with his mother is tenuous at best, many think that’s why he acted out so much when he was a child. As a young man, Donovan’s labeled as being ‘ungodly’ because he openly voices his personal disdain for churches and priests (this is due to their lack of support for his grief-ridden father, his mother’s abusive nature and the general power play that goes on in the Christian faith.)
Despite his unsavoury reputation, Donovan becomes a respectable farrier, who can often be found tending to his family’s horses. He becomes a recluse. Then tragedy strikes. Brody Watts and his wife, Cassidy Watts, are brutally murdered in their sleep. The family fortune is stolen and the homestead destroyed. The crime is pinned on Donovan, who wastes no time in gathering what’s left of his earthly possessions and leaving town on horseback. Donnie Watts spends several years building a new reputation as a ruthless outlaw with a strict moral code and no gang affiliations. He’s wanted for grand larceny, several counts of first degree murder, destruction of government property, arson and theft. (More details to come and are dependent on plotting.)
GHOST RIDER. Instead of running off to join a band at nineteen, Donnie simply runs off to be on his own. Aggrieved by the losses of his teen years, he sells his truck in exchange for a motorbike. He wants to live the nomad lifestyle and get as far away from the horrors of his past as he can. Donnie rides his bike from place to place, never staying anywhere for more than a week. During this time, Donnie becomes wrapped up in a partying lifestyle that sends him down the dark path of addiction. That’s how he finds himself half-dead in a ditch just shy of the El Paso border. He had been completely off his face on a lethal cocktail of heroin, booze and cocaine and lost control of his bike. Laying there in that ditch, Donnie realises two things. One: he is dying. Two: he doesn’t want to die.
Then Donnie is visited by a shadowy figure, stinking of fire and brimstone.
This figure claims that he’s the devil, and that he can make all of Donnie’s problems go away. Despite the agonising pain he’s in, Donnie laughs and calls him an asshole before telling him to call the goddamn ambulance already. The figure doesn’t laugh. He crouches down over Donnie and repeats himself. His voice crackles like fire and Donnie’s mouth snaps shut. The figure goes on to present Donnie with a deal. His soul in exchange for his life to start changing for the better. He’ll forget his troubled past, he’ll never touch another drug, he’ll never feel pain, physical or mental, ever again.
Donnie only hesitates for a second, but he extends his hand towards the figure, who grins and pulls him upright. Donnie expects to feel pain, but feels none. The figure squeezes Donnie’s hand, and nicks Donnie’s palm with his rings. Just enough to draw blood, blood that he will make Donnie use to sign his soul away. The blood lands on the cracked parchment, and then the world goes black.
Donnie wakes up alone in a motel he’d been staying in. His bike is parked outside, and he feels lighter than he’s ever been. Though there’s a sense of longing for something, or someone, that he can’t quite put his finger on. He eventually settles in a small town in California, where he picks up work as a mechanic. That sense of longing persists. He’s missing something. Whenever someone asks about his childhood, his high school experience, his life, he cannot recall the details. Only the fuzzy outline of the pain he’s been through.
One night, six months to the day of his crash, Donnie wakes with his skin on fire and he’s brought to his knees with the pain of it. He’s hyper aware of all the evil in his vicinity. The leering husband two doors down, the kid who likes to set fires across the street. He stumbles into his garage in time to watch as his bike transforms too. He’s no longer Donnie Watts, he’s The Ghost Rider. . .
NATIONALITY : American (has Irish, Danish, English, and French heritage.)
BIRTHPLACE : Farmers Branch, Texas.
CURRENT HOME : Verse Dependent.
OCCUPATION : Verse Dependent. While Donnie is travelling with Rancid Creature in his twenties, he either picks up work as a Mechanic, a Farmhand, a factory worker, or some other manual labour job. Later in life, Donnie becomes the owner of Longshadow Ranch, a Rodeo Trainer, and an Animal Stunt Coordinator (specifically for horses and dogs.)
EDUCATION : High school graduate, Graduated from technical school for agriculture and business while he was spending time in rehab.
LANGUAGES SPOKEN : English, Spanish (fluent in both.)
FACECLAIM(S) : Ben Hardy (primary), Jordan Huxhold, Connor Storrie (both are secondary.)
HEIGHT : 6’2” (188cm.)
BUILD : Muscular and lean-limbed, with a broad back and thin waist. Donnie also has long, sinewy arms and thick thighs that have both developed over years of handling horses and heavy farming equipment. (Hovers between the 190-200lbs mark.) I should also mention here that at the height of his addiction, Donnie's weight declines to an unhealthy level, and is the first visible sign of his struggle with substance abuse.
HAIR : Strawberry blond, curly, and usually kept in the shoulder length rocker cut typical of the seventies and eighties. He does crop it into a mullet more than once throughout his twenties and thirties. He also has a fringe that falls over his forehead and often gets in his eyes. I should also note that Donnie's hair is his pride, he will threaten to bite someone for suggesting that he ever cut it.
EYES : Sage green, almond-shaped, crinkle in the corners whenever he smiles or laughs. They’re often half-closed in a lazy kinda way, like he couldn’t give a damn about the world around him. Or they’re hidden behind dark shades. One will also notice that he wears smudgy black pencil liner from time to time.
SCARS : Lightning-shaped scar on his right ankle from an incident where he got his foot caught in some barbed wire his father was using to line a fence on the ranch he worked at near Farmers Branch. A bite scar on his left forearm from being attacked by a demonic entity he calls 'The Priest' when he was fourteen. A scar through his left eyebrow where he was hit by an older boy when he was ten. A curved scar on the underside of his chin that he never talks about (his mother inflicted this when he was around eight or nine in an attempt to cut his hair when he didn't want her to.)
ACCENT : Donnie has a thick East Texan accent. Donnie's voice is melodious, scratchy, and deep. Most would describe it as husky or velvety. He drops his 'g's from the ends of words, he's heavy on the 'r' sounds, there's a gentle whistling sound on the 's's in words, and there's an unmistakable smoker's rasp behind everything he says. There's also a very slight Cajun twang from all his years spent living in Longing, which is in close proximity to the Louisiana border. His heavy Texan accent is one of the first things your muse is going to notice about him. It's the reason everyone around him tends to call him Tex or Cowboy, though it's usually the latter. Donnie is often blunt and crass, which most people like to misconstrue as him being stupid. Which he absolutely is not, he (and I) detest the idea that having a southern accent makes a person uneducated or stupid. Along with the heaviness of the accent, Donnie also tends to drawl and speak on the quieter register, like he's mumbling everything he says. A good reference for how is voice sounds can be found here (especially the line 'people out here… s'like they don't even know the outside world exists. might as well be livin' on the fuckin' moon.')
SKIN : Pale, almost resembling porcelain with a near permanent red flush spread over his cheeks, nose, shoulders and knuckles. It’s quick to burn under a sun and is prone to becoming pink whenever enraged or embarrassed. The bridge of his nose is home to a heavy dusting of freckles, as are his shoulders, arms, back and thighs. His skin is smooth in places and calloused in others because of all the years he’s spent ranching and drumming. It should also be noted that Donnie runs hotter than a furnace all the time.
SCENT : Donnie often smells like sweat and horses due to the nature of his work. Your muse will also be able to smell the cigarettes he's been smoking, which are usually Marlboro Reds (which can smell earthy and sweet, according to some research I've done.) Depending on your muses' opinions on cigarette smoke, they'll either love the way the smell clings to his jackets, or they'll hate it.
When he’s not working, he smells of something fresh and bitter, think something along the lines of juniper, mint, or apple. In his teens donnie's favoured cologne was Drakkar Noir, so he'd smell of that quite a bit back then. I do think donnie would pick up whatever cologne smells the cleanest after leaving high school, he doesn't care what's trendy to wear, just so long as it's clean and fresh. He also tends to smell of whisky or bourbon, which can be quite sweet and woodsy. Other notable smells to associate with Donnie are: leather, cedarwood, grass, dirt, coffee, something distinctly metallic, and engine oil.
FASHION : His wardrobe depends on the time of year and the event. In terms of style, he tends to lean heavily on both the seventies rock n'roll look and eighties metalhead look. You'll find lots of button-ups with funky prints, bell bottom jeans, belts, tight-fitting t-shirts that are always tucked in, leather waistcoats and so on. You'll also notice lots of denim and lots of t-shirts with the sleeves cut off. During the spring/summer months, Donnie tends to lean on wearing billowy button-up shirts, plaid shirts, muscle tanks, band tees, crop tops, wife beaters and light denim jeans. You'll rarely find him wearing jackets or heavy materials this time of year. During the autumn/winter months, Donnie adds layers to his outfits. So you'll find him wearing open plaid shirts over band/graphic tees with a heavy leather jacket and a scarf. He'll also be wearing his battle vest over his jackets. Donnie also tends to accessorise with heavy rings on his fingers, metal bracelets, leather bracelets with spikes or studs in them, multiple necklaces and pendants, a dangly earring in his right ear, sunglasses, or, on occasion, cowboy-style hats. You'll always find him in some kind of cowboy or combat boots. Very rarely will you catch him wearing trainers of any sort. When he does wear trainers, it's usually when he's planning on spending the day drumming or walking around. Your muse will also notice his nipple piercings if he's wearing a particularly tight shirt that day. (visuals found here.)
A SHORT CHARACTER PLAYLIST : The Hellion by Judas Priest, Before I Forget by Slipknot, Dancing on Glass by Motley Crue, Primal Concrete Sledge by Pantera, Caught in a Mosh by Anthrax, DArkSide by Bring Me The Horizon, Psycho by System of a Down, The Sharpest Lives by My Chemical Romance.
MENTAL ILLNESSES : Depression, PTSD, Survivor's Guilt, C-PTSD, ADHD (all are undiagnosed and some have briefly been treated during his time in rehab, but for the most part they are unmedicated issues that he’s been dealing with alone most of his life. This might differ in other verses, such as his modern AU.)
SYMPTOMS : Persistent feelings of hopelessness, helplessness and irritability plague Donnie, which make it difficult for him to sleep at night. As a teenager, Donnie would seek out dangerous or harmful pastimes on purpose, things like driving recklessly or setting off firecrackers in wheat fields or drinking excessively in public. This energy has since been channelled into his career. Loss of appetite is also something Donnie experiences often. Most of his depressive episodes tend to manifest in angry moods that linger for hours and hours at a time. He’s difficult to approach during these moments, but after he’s tired himself out trying to occupy himself with anything other than his thoughts, he tends to mope. He also has an addictive personality and is addicted to nicotine, weed and can be prone to drinking in excess when times are tough. He has also suffered with addiction to cocaine and heroin. He’s been to rehab twice for these addictions and has overdosed twice. Other symptoms Donnie expresses are: Hypervigilance, night terrors, survivor’s guilt, flashbacks, difficulty concentrating and frequent stomach aches and pains.
DIRECT FAMILY : Colton Watts (father, deceased.) Melissa Watts née Rose (mother, alive, estranged.) Brody Watts (older brother, alive.)
EXTENDED FAMILY : Georgina “Gina” Watts (niece, alive.) Jonah Watts (nephew, alive.) Cassidy Watts neé Jonas (sister in law, alive.) Esmeralda “Esme” Huerta (mother-in-law, Emma’s maternal grandmother, alive.) Javier “Javi” Huerta (father-in-law, Emma’s maternal grandfather, alive.)
SIGNIFICANT OTHER : Verse Dependent. Anita “Annie” Huerta (Ex-lover and partner, Emma’s mother, and former bandmate in Rancid Creature. Donnie's still in regular contact with Anita, and their relationship is massively positive, alive.)
CHILDREN : Emma Elena Watts (daughter, alive.)
PETS : Buster (border collie.) Wiley (orange tabby cat, belongs to Emma but has imprinted on Donnie.)
theartofmadeline
amandla
turnnoffyourmind
titsay
yousharknotpass
