#c!tommy is in fact the result of an experiment to create the perfect but he's actually just the only surviving specimen

[sing-me-under]

I just updated my character boards for some of the DSMP characters, and I feel like I should share c!Tommy's updated physical descriptions:

Blond, Blue-Eyed British

Tommy's base appearance is pretty normal-looking for the most part, but looking at him in peripheral reveals just how off-putting he truly is.

His curly blond hair is very light, resembling something like spun sunlight. He's very easy to spot from a distance because of it, especially in the dark.

He has piercing blue eyes, the kind of pure blue that unnerves the recipient of his intense stares. In the right lighting, the blue reflects light so much that it looks like his eyes are glowing white. There's also a strange pop of red in his pupils that hints at something artificial in his veins.

Despite being an adolescent, Tommy is on the taller side, just under two meters tall. He carries himself as if he’s much smaller though. This leads to hijinks where he gets stuck after fitting himself in places he really shouldn’t be in.

Sympathetic Shapeshifter

For the most part, Tommy has a basic human appearance. However, he is clearly inhuman in origin by virtue of his ever changing hybrid traits. Tommy‘s shapeshifting is usually restricted to his ears and a tail, if applicable, but certain hallmarks of the relevant species can manifest across his body.

His shapeshifting is usually influenced by the people around him, hence sympathetic. He doesn’t seem to have much control over it.

When there’s no primary influence over his shifting, his default appearance manifests intangible horns and a demon tail, possibly due to his childhood with Eryn and Eryn’s mother, a full-blooded nether demon. The only times he doesn’t manifest anything, being completely human in appearance, are when he’s in isolation with Dream.

Resurrection Scars

When Dream uses the resurrection book, he is essentially forcefully repairing the body of the deceased and dragging the soul back into its vessel. There is nowhere near enough ambient magic in the prison cell to repair Tommy’s body the natural way, so Dream instead pulls directly from the obsidian and lava and uses the unrefined magic particles.

Tommy reawakens in his body. There are deep purple cracks where his skull was fractured and in the crevices of old scars. There is a faint orange glow emitting from just beneath his skin. He can't tell if he's overbearingly hot or if everything is so cold. He won't know it yet, but he bleeds molten gold.

[itsworn]

The Rebel Rouser—Dwayne Rader’s Tribute to His Father’s Drag Racing Days

Legacy. Just when you thought the phrase “barn find” was becoming cliché and losing some of its wow factor, a truly astonishing car comes out of hiding and gets restored to its former glory. The fact that most people leave barn finds in the “as found” condition is cool, but we also like seeing these hidden treasures restored to perfection.

Such is the case with the Rebel Rouser, a wild, altered-wheelbase ’32 Plymouth coupe powered by an all-out Ford FE big-block. It’s a crazy combination, and the car has a tremendous amount of history, but the most significant piece of this car’s history is its current ownership. Dwayne Rader, from Winchester, Kentucky, is the proud owner of this historic drag car, which was originally built in the early ’60s by the man who shaped him to be a hot rodder and a Ford guy, his father, Denzil Rader.

Although Dwayne wasn’t born until 1976, which was nine years after Denzil sold the car and got out of racing altogether, he always heard great stories about the car. He never thought it would be realistic to consider that this car might still exist somewhere locally, or that he’d ever have the opportunity to bring it back home. Even though he didn’t know all of its history, he knew enough to understand that this car was a significant part of his father’s life, and to find it would be a significant part of his life. In an unbelievable series of events, this car made its way home in 2012, where it underwent a three-year restoration. During Dwayne’s tireless efforts to restore the car, he also documented it, and found dozens of old pictures of the car from various Kentucky dragstrips in the 1960s.

If we rewind the clock to the early ’60s, Dwayne’s father, always a diehard Ford man, was on the hunt for a ’32 Ford to build into a drag car. He had the drag racing fever in a bad way, and the lack of suitable Fords led him to purchase a ’32 Plymouth PA three-window coupe. He tossed the fenders, channeled the body over the original chassis, and found some much needed horsepower. He originally installed a 361ci Edsel powerplant with a factory Ford dual-quad setup on it, but that engine would soon be replaced with a 390ci mill from a ’62 Thunderbird. This engine cranked out more than 400 hp, and stayed in the car for a couple seasons, helping Denzil win in the B/Altered division at many local tracks.

In the fall of 1963, Denzil and his brother Shirley were getting serious about drag racing, and in the off-season the Rebel Rouser got a lot more interesting for its 1964 season. The Rader boys built a brand-new chassis from round tubing, and they set it up to accommodate a 14-inch engine setback, while the rear tires were moved forward in an effort to attain a dragster-like weight balance. When it was all said and done, the car had a 120-inch wheelbase, and it was absolutely wild looking, with elaborate zoomie headers poking out of the cowl and a nose-high stance. With the new chassis came a new engine: a Holman & Moody 427ci FE high-riser. This combination would make for a successful record during the 1964 season, including a B/A class win at the new Bluegrass Dragway in Lexington, Kentucky, which resulted in a mention in National Dragster magazine—certainly a proud moment for the Rader brothers, along with good friend Logan “Pig” Paynter, who was heavily involved in their racing program.

The car continued to win in B/A and B/C divisions, but it reached “money pit” status in the late ’60s. It was sold to fellow racer Vernon “Tommy” Bradley, who then sold it to Melvin “Snookie” Taylor. It was then that the Rebel Rouser got a little more attitude, as Snookie dropped a 427ci SOHC engine between the framerails. With this setup, the car ran a best e.t. of 9.32 at 144 mph. It didn’t stay in this configuration long and was last on the dragstrip in 1969. The car changed hands a few more times through the years, first going to Larry Cummings and then to Lonnie Dillingham in 1999.

Lonnie had big plans to turn this ancient drag car into a street rod, but those plans never materialized, to the delight of Dwayne, who would eventually tracked down the car and purchased it in November 2012. He knew it was the Rebel Rouser the moment he laid eyes on the wild-looking coupe, and the icing on the cake was the Covico metal-flake steering wheel that his father and uncles had gripped so many years ago. Dwayne would spend the next three years documenting the car and restoring it to the 1964 configuration.

The restoration was a labor of love, and Dwayne had the ultimate source for information, as his father and Uncle Shirley supplied plenty of details about the car. Story after story helped piece together this car’s history, while Dwayne hammered, welded, and massaged the same steel that his father had touched more than 50 years prior. During the rebuild, Dwayne connected with so many old racers and friends who remembered the car and wanted to help keep its history alive. He has a lot of people to thank, most importantly his wife, Tammy, but a long list of folks like Royce Paynter, Bob Rogers, Raymond Borders, Mitch Lewis, Kevin Warner, and others offered help, whether it was bench racing and telling stories or actually getting some hands-on experience with the build. The car is beautifully finished, and it sounds awesome, just like it did so many years ago. Open headers from a big Ford FE engine set the tone for this radical race car, while hundreds of small details help pay tribute to this awesome car that was making noise so many years ago.

As the car was reaching its final stages, Dwayne got the terrible news that his Uncle Shirley had passed away suddenly. Dwayne’s father was struggling with health problems of his own, but he held on just long enough for the car to be finished. The Rebel Rouser made its emotional debut at the NHRA Hot Rod Reunion in Bowling Green, Kentucky, which is held on Father’s Day weekend. The following month, Denzil Rader passed away, leaving the legacy of the Rebel Rouser to Dwayne, who proudly shares the car’s story everywhere it goes.

Nearly 50 years after his father stopped drag racing it, Dwayne Rader was able to track down the Rebel Rouser Plymouth. His painstaking three-year restoration brought the altered-wheelbase, Ford-powered coupe back to fighting trim.

This is the original axle and front suspension from the Rebel Rouser, still wearing the old chrome plating. The car sits super high in the front, thanks to a drilled ’46 Ford axle, a chrome-plated spring pack, and a big lift block.

The Rebel Rouser is powered by a Ford side-oiler FE big-block built by Bob Turley. The engine was originally 427 ci, but now displaces 460, thanks to a 3.980-inch stroke (428 crankshaft) and 4.290-inch bore. Racetech forged pistons create at 12.0:1 compression ratio.

The heads are ported and polished EDC Ford castings with 2.15- and 1.81-inch valves, while the camshaft is a Crane mechanical flat-tappet piece. A Mickey Thompson cross-ram intake manifold is topped with dual Holley 1850-series four-barrel carburetors.

Up front, the Rebel Rouser rolls on a pair of magnesium American Racing spindle-mount wheels wrapped in Pro Trac 5.60-15 tires from Coker.

Out back, reversed steel wheels measuring 15×8 inches are wrapped in piecrust cheater slicks.

It’s all business inside, as a pair of old-style racing buckets is stuffed in the tight confines of the coupe. A three-point rollbar adds to the period-correct interior, while a customized Lokar shifter operates the C6 automatic transmission.

Raymond Borders handled all of the bodywork on the Rebel Rouser, straightening panels that probably weren’t all that straight in the first place. Mitch Lewis applied several coats of Habanero Red paint, while the hand lettering was compliments of Kirby Stafford.

Dwayne finished the tribute to his father and debuted the coupe at the Bowling Green Hot Rod Reunion just a month before Denzil Rader passed away.

Glory Days

The Rebel Rouser in 1964 at Shirley Rader’s house, before it received the altered-wheelbase chassis. Denzil’s brother Shirley was the most prominent driver of the Rebel Rouser. It’s sporting a wild set of headers and some huge leaf springs to give it a nose-high stance.

Dwayne searched high and low for a picture of his father with the car and finally struck gold with this one. Pictured here is Denzil Rader turning wrenches on the Rebel Rouser at the Johnson Shell station, where it was built.

Logan “Pig” Paynter is shown here with the car at Bluegrass Dragway in Lexington, Kentucky. It spent most of its time in Kentucky, racing at tracks such as Clay City, Manchester, Bluegrass, and others.

This photo shows the extreme engine setback and wild chassis setup for the car’s altered-wheelbase configuration. Dwayne used photos such as this to re-create his father’s drag car, and we’d say he knocked it out of the park!

ugh the picture is damaged, you can see the Rebel Rouser with a 427ci SOHC engine stuffed beneath the cowl. This photo was taken at Manchester Drag Strip, when Melvin “Snookie” Taylor owned the car.

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