hi there folks ! i’m quinn and honestly my brain isn’t fully with us tonight bc i’m so tired but we’re going to try our best with an intro! thankfully nolan is a revival of an old oc with a few things swapped around so we’ve got a place to start. beneath the cut are some notes about him, and if you’d like to plot please give this a like and i’ll find my way into your ims ! !
raised in equal parts by a mother who deserved better and an older brother who knew better, nolan’s father was conveniently absent —— all he had was the last name. sometimes nolan claims to be the secret son of one of the kennedy’s, but that’s probably bullshit. he could have asked to see the birth certificate at eighteen but never did ( please circle the answer that most closely applies: a. out of respect for your mother, b. the paperwork would be too much of a hassle, c. isn’t it better to believe he is ? you can’t do that if you know the truth )
people from his home town were sure he was going places. in school things came naturally to him, though he studied hard, and his talent with music was the perfect addition to his application to earn him a scholarship to a university that will remain nameless ( please, don’t talk about it in front of him ). however, when he got there things were different. suddenly nolan wasn’t the exceptional among the many, but was surrounded by so many talented people. he panicked. everyone had always told him he was special, so he didn’t know what to do when he wasn’t anymore.
barely two years later and he’s giving various excuses for dropping out ( flunking out ? being asked to leave. ) so what [ ‘ i dropped out, smoked a lot of dope . . . not because of tahlia, but because i’m unmotivated, or whatever ’ ]. excuses that, while built on grains of truth, were there to cover up what he couldn’t say, because letting people down by choice? well somehow that was easier than not being able to live up to what they thought you were: blame it on weed, on girls, on yourself —— just don’t let them think it was their fault, that they could have somehow done you better. get a job at a bar, pay the bills, play the guitar when you can, it calms you.
however, nolan was given a second chance. his brother sent in a video of him playing guitar at a local open mic to a popular reality singing competition show. suddenly nolan found himself being watched by thousands, millions .... but the pressure was different this time. he felt special again, confident again. america seemed to love him and soon he had a title, season four champion, and a record deal.
for those who watched the show carefully, they might have noticed that something had changed about nolan after he won. while during the run of the show he seemed personable and thankful for the chance he was being given, the nolan that appeared after the show seemed distant, stressed, distrusting of others and could almost be called skittish. many speculated he hadn’t anticipated what real fame would be like, and when his debut album did so well he was faced with what his new reality would be like.
the pressure had been getting to nolan, it was true, but running away from this was a little more difficult, so he sought out new coping mechanisms. they got him through almost to the release of his sophomore album, but when he was supposed to preform one of the singles of the upcoming album on a national morning news program, he arrived visibly intoxicated and caused quite the scene. management quickly moved him into the den, hoping they would be able to save face and allow record sales to remain unaffected.