【N】【O】【D】
First Mate of the Jolly Roger / Third Oldest Human / Fiddle Player / Ex-Lost Boy / Ex-Twin / Mass Murderer, Domestic Terrorist & Extinction Artist.
NEVER. SKELETON. PINTEREST. FOG. (WIP)
introductory headcanons below the cut.
TW: grief, psychosis, sibling death, animal(?) death, flagrant fairy genocide apologetics.
lost name : Noland Donald Galloway nicknames : Nod age : oh honey, gender identity : cis man, he/him pronouns sexual identity : presumed heterosexual but that doesn't explain the bedroom eyes he gives marlowe. family : Foley Owen Galloway / "Fog" ( twin brother, deceased ), Jamie "Hook" ( older brother figure ), Charlie ( younger brother figure ) personality traits : loyal, swashbuckling, reliable, playful, boyish, charismatic, evasive, cocky, nonchalant, cool-headed, flirtatious, sarcastic, seemingly optimistic, internally pessimistic, romantic, chivalrous, valiant, gossip queen, humanitarian, candid, nosey curious, patient, steadfast. Which is all fine and good, except that he's been losing sleep and possibly losing his mind and will progressively become more undone, sloppy, and testy until he addresses the problems he keeps suppressing. weapon of choice : Dual daggers (second one originally belonged to Fog), but most prefers to lay traps with fishnets, rope, and loose planks or shallow holes around the Pirates Camp to keep Lost Boys at bay in nonviolent ways. likes : sea shanties and folk songs, card games, darts, redheads, fruit, grog rum, friendly competition, lifting heavy things and generally showing off muscles he's been honing for an ungodly amount of years he's spent on this hell island, getting a smile out of Victor or Isadora, lightheartedly messing with Lost Boys (riling up Rufio or Davie and then leading them into a trap to get them off the battlefield, annoying Bones and Curly in the boneyard, 100% used to teasingly flirt with Fiona when she was rolling with them), dancing, fishing, haggling for goods with other ships (he's a class act schmoozer), collecting postcards and maps of places he'll never get to visit. dislikes : looking Small Folk in the eye.
✖ Despite growing into a steadfast right hand to the only good and honest leader in Neverland, his demeanor is still that of a boyish rogue. He’s prone to wandering into his own adventures or dragging one of his mates with him on his escapades when they’re docked at shore, wont to tempt fate and heckle Lost Boys just before the point of provoking serious retaliation, or mingle with merfolk on nights he knows the moon isn’t too full. He’ll drink and play poker until sunrise with his crewmates if he knows the pirates are in a good, civil place with their adversaries and shouldn’t expect any emergencies that night. (Though sometimes he slips up when walking the tightrope of being the responsible yet cool older brother figure to his crewmates, usually around the times that he starts seeing his twin and reverts back to a less mature level of self-control, finding himself drinking a little too hard to dull his perception of the long-lost Lost Boy haunting his periphery. More on that later~ <3) After aging up, he's developed a flirtatious cockiness, particularly around women. He is prone to holding up the departure of other pirate crews that the Jolly Roger is in negotiations with because he and one of the visiting ship’s female crewmates scurried off into the first mate’s quarters and walked back out giggling. It may put him at odds with Isadora, but he’s responsible enough not to flirt with his own crewmates in a way they would take seriously. Hook probably wouldn’t approve of any inter-ship relationships anyway. And Nod may just be throwing affection at anyone to see if anything sticks. If he can fall in love with anyone who isn’t allied with Peter or Ianthe, maybe he can forget about the bloodthirsty, heartless, evil, siren-eyed, lovely, comforting, warm, kind mermaid he's dreamed about since he was a child.
✖ Kind of extrapolating this interpretation of him from the line in his bio about how the merfolk are uncommonly fond of him, especially for a human: He has natural charisma. I think he’s always radiated personality and confidence, and still maintains most of that, even after everything he's been through--- or at least, he’s very adept at faking it, especially on the ship, where he feels most comfortable. It’s easy for him to be laid-back and reassuring to others when he isn’t the one burdened with the full responsibilities of the captain of the ship, and when he has more experience in Neverland than all but two humans. He makes for a good diplomat with the merfolk when Hook isn’t available to talk to Ianthe, and he knows the mind of a Lost Boy well enough to navigate encounters with them pretty smoothly when he has to. I can see him as the welcome wagon on the ship, as someone crewmates sees as extremely dependable and friendly. He values and cares for every pirate on the ship, in an almost active effort to foster a better community than Peter did with his disposable little strays. If Hook is the strong father figure to the pirates, Nod is perhaps the mother hen, albeit in his own rowdy way, as a lifelong ruffian. In the leadership on the Jolly Roger, I want him to be a foil to Hook’s short temper. I’m going to say Nod grew into a very mature, level-headed, trustworthy man with a good sense of humor. If a crewmate has bad news to share or need to confide any kind of problem on the ship, I could see them coming to Nod with the information first, because he’s least likely to snap at them, and everyone knows that Hook will receive the news better if it's passed on to him through his faithful best friend. They’ve known each other for so long, I imagine Nod knows the best ways to navigate Hook’s temper and keep him zen. I also need to ask Ashleigh how Hook would receive it if Nod still called him Jamie, if he should call him that at all times and even in front of other crewmates, if I should save it for more intimate moments between them, or if he wouldn't like it at all and I should just make it something that slips out accidentally.
✖ Nod has never made physical contact with Alana before. He worries that he cherishes their friendship much more than he should, in the interest of being careful. Alana is the person he smiles with more than anyone else, but he knows that the loyalty of the merfolk will always skew towards Peter, and Nod can’t risk Peter using a vulnerable moment of trust against a pirate. He has a recurring nightmare where, the second his fingers graze her, she yanks him under the water and down to the darkest, deepest floor of the ocean and rip him to shreds. And yet, he can’t help but fantasize about finally running his hands through her red hair, even in the moments where he makes her laugh enough for her to reveal her sharp teeth. Against his better judgment, those are the moments he wants to touch her most.
✖ He looks forward to new moons, because that’s become his usual time to find Alana and talk for longer than a few passing friendly words. This has less to do with a fear of Alana being more dangerous or temperamental when the moon is full, and more to do with her fellow merfolk minding their own business and not giving either of them any trouble for fraternizing when they aren't in a lunar frenzy. He always arrives with a coy excuse as to why he’s in the area, never admitting out loud that he came to the lagoon to see her. but they both know the truth. At this point, even he smiles incredulously at himself as he’s explaining that he’s just innocuously scavenging for food on a barren shoreline.
✖ Once upon a time, before coming to Neverland, Nod and Fog were little musicians who performed in the street for money. Nod played the fiddle while Fog played the mandolin. They brought their instruments with them and used to play them around the bonfire while the other Lost Boys danced and chanted, and sometimes Nod would walk down by the lagoon with his fiddle and play for the merfolk. Nod still plays to this day, and keeps Fog's mandolin hidden in a chest underneath his bed (he went through a hell of a heist mission to retrieve it from the Lost Boys' tree in the week after his pirate heel turn. He finally tuned the old mandolin and has been learning it in the past few years, but he would never play it for anyone but Alana. He isn't as confident with it as he is with his trusty fiddle, which he loves to use to supplement sea shanties and boost crew morale.
✖ Since becoming a pirate, Nod has taken to wearing the color blue much more, in a subconscious tribute to Fog’s favorite color to wear. In truth, though, his favorite color, and the one he always loved to wear, is red.
✖ As a rambunctious Lost Boy with a reputation to uphold, he used to wait until nobody could see him to try to feed, help, or otherwise befriend other living creatures on the island. During Neverland’s prosperous times, when the boys had so much food that they would throw away perfectly good excess, Nod would wait until dark to sneak away with their leftovers and leave it where animals could scavenge for it. During games where the boys were hunting and recklessly knocked down a birds’ nest, Nod would suggest that they split up to find their prey, and circle back alone to try to put the birds nest back on the branch it fell from without anyone knowing. And after a long time of watching merfolk from a distance and always being able to pick Alana out of a pack by her vibrant red tail, he thought of her when he found a beautiful red-speckled seashell along the area where the beach sand meets the forest floor. The first time he snuck away from Fog to visit the lagoon, he left the shell on the rock that he noticed Alana always seemed to rest on.
It was silly, of course, to leave a seashell for a mermaid, as if the ocean-dwellers weren’t more than capable of finding their own. He realized that after the fact, and started to look for other things to leave the nice, playful mermaid. Any time he saw a red knick-knack anywhere on land, he would ever-so-discreetly leave it near the boulder he has dubbed “The Red Rock.” Even to this day, he never directly hands his rare little red trinkets to her: marbles, rhinestones, flowers, exotic feathers, painted pebbles, a teacup with roses painted on it. Even as a pirate, bartering away his favorite boots to other ships in exchange for a red pendant necklace to leave on a rock, he doesn’t like to draw any attention to it; he just casually leaves it in his wake after they finish chatting, lest he address out loud how devoted he is to her. Alana has always known that he was the little boy leaving these gifts behind though, from the very first time he thought he was being very sneaky, placing his red-speckled seashell at her rest stop without any eyes watching him from deep underneath the surface of the water.
✖ If Hook’s bond with Charlie is described as paternal in this found family, then I want to lean into Nod’s role as an older brother to him. I think it’s especially interesting given the nature of their relationships with their respective absentee brothers. Nod would commit atrocities without a second thought to keep Charlie safe from harm and never lose a brother again. He loves having this boy he quite literally grew up with in his life after all this time, and he’s at his absolute most lively with him. He can almost relive the way he felt with Fog when he’s around Charlie; he loves him the same way. He’ll tease him like a brother and laugh with him about juvenile inside jokes that they beat into the ground. He might get caught up in a playful moment and go too far, though. At the end of the day, Charlie will always be very different from Fog. When Nod gets carried away and starts wrestling or roughhousing with Charlie the way he could with his unruly twin brother, Charlie might get flashbacks to his biological older brother, whose out-of-control horseplay sealed his fate. I could see this being the reason Charlie will probably never be as close to Nod as he is to Hook, but I also want to maintain that their relationship is still a significantly tender one. Nod is very quick to drop everything in the interest of lifting Charlie's spirits if he realizes he's been too quiet lately. He wants to keep his confidence high and do whatever he can to keep him from feeling too hopeless on this terrifying island. Nod also may end up at odds with Hook when he thinks Hook is being a little too overprotective of Charlie. He may let him get away with exploring a little more than Hook thinks is safe for him, because he wants to see Charlie stop filling the role of the baby of the ship and start growing up and branching out. If he catches Charlie’s eyes linger on a crewmate of a passing ship, Nod may try to talk him up to the crewmate or even “accidentally” knock them into Charlie with a large barrel he’s carrying during a trade.
✖ Fog usually “visits” Nod more often in his periods of distress. The harder Nod has to work to suppress any feelings of guilt, fear, and despair in the interest of keeping morale high on the Jolly Roger, the more Nod appears in his dreams to haunt him about allies he isn’t sure he should trust, or remind him of the atrocities he’s committed after Nod keeps trying to brush off as a necessary evil or downplay by waving the Many-Eyed off as unfeeling monsters, and make sure Nod never escapes the very first hardship he’s still never confronted after all these years: his survivor’s guilt. He remembers Fog as being much more saintly than the little asshole probably was, back when they were such feral, snot-nosed, callous troublemakers that Nod felt he needed to sneak around to have polite conversation with the merfolk, lest his brother find out he wasn’t trying to pelt every living creature on the island with rolled-up balls of animal dung in a slingshot. He looks back on the unwavering trust and loyalty he felt with his twin, and sees it as the ultimate virtue after a lifetime of seeing constant tricks, traps, and betrayals on this God-forsaken island. For example, the Fog who exists in his head seems to haunt him by making him hear the unforgettable sound of Fog’s death rattle any time Nod tries to abandon a Lost Boy in peril, but as a brutal kid, he would probably call a Lost Boy who couldn't find his way out of quicksand "dead weight." Maybe Nod assumes Fog would have turned out to be even more mature and compassionate than Nod is now if he had the chance to grow up, because when they were boys, Fog was the older, louder twin who seemed to be better at everything and commanded more respect, and Nod assumes he would have been better at being a good man, too.
✖ I think Nod would get along with Canary Robb on the grounds of their love of local fauna. I don’t want to steal that character’s stride as the resident nature lover, but I love the mention in Alana’s bio that one of Nod’s best qualities to her was his respect for wildlife, and I want to keep that as a major trait of his. Especially because it highlights how much he’s willing to sacrifice when it comes to keeping Charlie safe. A lifetime of stepping around ant hills and leaving seeds for critters when Peter and Hook weren’t looking can be put aside if the extinction of an entire species is what it takes to save his little brother. He’s sorry it had to end the way he did, but he doesn’t regret it. If the choice is the life of one pirate over the lives of countless Neverlanders, he’ll choose his crewmate every time. Really, he doesn’t even lose sleep over it. Nod isn’t haunted by the guilt of the massacre of two species or anything. Honest. ..... ..............Fog still seems pretty hung up on it, though.
✖ I want to encourage all OC applicants to feel free to throw Nod into their Connections! He’s a personable jackass, so he's bound to leave impressions (good or bad) with anyone he meets, and been around for so long, I assume he has some history with almost everyone, and would be widely known. I want to make sure to plot with every single character. I also want to fill literally every wanted connection I have ever seen on anybody's introductions, but I'll try to hold myself back. I'm going to say he's sociable enough (especially compared to other pirates who may be more closed-off) that he would directly ask Cecco about his history and warm-heartedly encourage him to open up about his history, so I'll leave the Secretly-Snooping-Through-The-Quartermasters'-Quarters connection open for somebody else and request that Nod fill his "Confidante" connection. I DEFINITELY think he would dance with Anna if she doesn't mind him getting too into it. He misses dancing from his time frolicking around bonfires as a Lost Boy, but she would definitely need to slap him upside the head when he sarcastically(?) praises her for being such a proper, enchanting lady. I think he's definitely up to the challenge of trying to win Tinkerbell over from Peter, even if he has a few "I-Killed-Your-Entire-Colony" penalty points working against his favor with her. I think that same chivalrous streak of his would prompt him to fill Wendy's "Cynicism-vs-Optimism" connection. As a former Lost Boy who used to idolize Peter, I think his heart would break seeing this girl be so naively taken by him. I also imagine him being very close with Bill Jukes on the grounds of him being a real pirates' pirate; I think Nod would've picked up a lot of the culture from him and really ran with it over the years.