╭───────────────────── 人 •͈ ─────────────────────╮
name → Rowan Castellanos
nicknames → Ro / Woodsmoke
age → 26
birthdate → xxxx/03/15
gender → Non-binary (they/them)
height/weight → 5'8" (173 cm) / 165 lbs (75 kg)
sexual orientation → Pansexual
occupation → Travel documentary photographer / Freelance journalist (former Stringer)
╰───────────────────── 人 •͈ ─────────────────────╯
PERSONALITY TRAITS
. Gentle Observer . Perpetually Exhausted™ . Collector of Stories (and Peace) . Running From the Past .
. Soft-Spoken Wanderer .
BACKGROUND
Rowan's childhood was a constant cycle of packing boxes and saying goodbye. As a military brat, they never lived anywhere longer than three years. New schools meant being the outsider again. New friends meant people they'd eventually have to leave behind. Their father was a Marine through and through—discipline, duty, and a firm belief that complaining about it was weakness. Their mother tried her best to make each new base feel like home, hanging the same curtains in different windows, but even as a kid, Rowan could see the exhaustion in her smile.
Instead of fighting all the moving around, Rowan learned to document it. Polaroids of every bedroom they ever slept in. Hand-drawn maps showing the route to each new school. Ticket stubs from movie theaters they'd never return to. If they could hold onto physical proof of a place, maybe it wouldn't feel like it disappeared the moment they left.
High school is when photography became more than just collecting memories. An art teacher—Mrs. Chen, at their school in North Carolina, or maybe it was Virginia—noticed how Rowan's photos always captured the loneliest things. Empty swings. Half-drunk coffee cups on park benches. The last bit of sunset through chain-link fences. She gave Rowan her old Canon AE-1, and suddenly all that moving had purpose: they could show people the beauty in things left behind.
When Rowan's parents divorced during their first year of college, it felt inevitable. Everything ends. Everyone leaves. But instead of falling apart, Rowan made a choice. Their father's career had created conflict all over the world—maybe Rowan could document the human cost of it. The stories that got buried under politics and military strategy. The people who became statistics.
At nineteen, Rowan dropped out, bought camera equipment with what was left of their college fund, and flew to Istanbul. From there, they talked their way into working with a small independent news agency covering the Syrian refugee crisis. They were young and stupid and had no idea what they were walking into.
The next three years broke something fundamental in them.
Rowan embedded with refugee families fleeing Aleppo. They documented hospitals running out of supplies, schools that had been bombed, children who'd stopped crying because what was the point. They moved through Syria, then Yemen, then Ukraine, always chasing the next story, the next truth that needed telling. Their work won a Human Rights Press Award when they were twenty-one. They didn't go to the ceremony. Couldn't stomach the idea of people in fancy clothes praising them for photographing someone else's worst day.
The work mattered. They believed that then and still believe it now. But the work also destroyed them piece by piece.
Rowan stopped sleeping more than a few hours at a time. Started living on coffee and adrenaline and the desperate belief that if they could just capture one more story, show the world one more truth, maybe it would change something. They watched colleagues die. They photographed bodies—so many bodies. They interviewed mothers who'd lost children and children who'd lost everything. They learned what burning buildings smell like, what grief sounds like in seven different languages, what it feels like to be completely helpless behind a camera lens.
The breaking point happened in Aleppo. Rowan was in a field hospital when it got hit by an airstrike. They spent six hours trapped in the basement with three doctors and a handful of patients, listening to people scream in the rubble above them, waiting to find out if they'd be dug out alive or just become another casualty count. When rescue workers finally reached them, Rowan's first instinct was to raise their camera. Document the scene. But their hands were shaking so badly they dropped it, and in that moment—covered in dust, ears ringing, watching a doctor try to save a child with no equipment and no hope—something inside them shattered.
They'd been doing this for three years, believing it mattered. But they'd photographed hundreds of scenes exactly like this one. Published them. And none of it had stopped this from happening again.
Rowan left. Got to the Turkish border, caught the first flight to Berlin, and didn't stop moving until they were as far from conflict zones as they could get.
Berlin was supposed to be a break. A few weeks to catch their breath and figure out what came next. It turned into six months of barely leaving a sublet apartment, alternating between insomnia and sleeping sixteen hours straight, trying to figure out how to be a person again. The external hard drive with all their wartime photography sat at the bottom of their bag, password-protected. They couldn't look at it. Still can't. But they can't delete it either—those photos are proof that those moments happened, that those people existed, that their stories mattered.
Eventually, slowly, Rowan started photographing again. But this time they pointed their camera at different things. Street musicians in quiet squares. Market vendors arranging produce. Couples holding hands. Morning light through old windows. They started traveling again—Portugal, Thailand, Mongolia—but to peaceful places. Places where they could document everyday beauty instead of everyday horror.
For the past four years, Rowan has been trying to prove to themselves that the world has more gentleness than violence. That there are stories worth telling that don't require anyone to suffer. They collect ticket stubs from peaceful train rides and photos of sunrises and strangers' small happy moments like they're building evidence for a case they're not sure they believe in yet.
But they're still running. Still can't stay anywhere longer than a few months. Still wake up from nightmares they won't talk about. Still flinch at loud noises—car backfires, fireworks, doors slamming. Still carry all of it with them: the weight of what they witnessed, the guilt of walking away, the question of whether any of it mattered at all.
Their work now is quieter. Gentler. It doesn't win awards or change foreign policy or stop wars. But it keeps them alive, and some days that has to be enough.
LIST OF SKILLS
→ Conflict Zone Photography → Rowan knows how to work in dangerous, high-pressure situations. They can read a dangerous situation quickly and have instincts for self-preservation that were learned the hard way. They don't practice this anymore, but the skills are still there, muscle memory they can't forget.
→ Documentary Photography → They have an eye for honest, raw moments—the kind that tell a whole story in a single frame. These days they focus on street photography, cultural documentation, and human interest stories about ordinary life. The quiet stuff. The peaceful stuff.
→ Interview Techniques → Rowan learned how to make traumatized people comfortable enough to share their stories. They know how to ask difficult questions gently, how to listen without judgment, and when to just sit in silence and let someone process. Those skills translate to talking with anyone, really. People open up to them.
→ Languages → Spanish (fluent—their mom's first language), Arabic (conversational—learned in Syria), Kurdish (enough to get by), German (conversational—improved during their Berlin breakdown), Thai (conversational—from six months in Chiang Mai), French (basic—high school classes actually stuck). They pick up new phrases everywhere they go, collecting languages like souvenirs.
→ Crisis Management → Rowan knows basic field first aid, how to navigate military checkpoints, how to read when a situation is about to go bad, how to talk their way out of trouble. They hope they never have to use these skills again, but they're still there.
→ Navigation → They can read physical maps, navigate any public transit system, and have a weird sixth sense for direction. They prefer paper maps to GPS—something about digital navigation feels too sterile, too military. There's poetry in getting a little bit lost.
→ Active Listening → People tell Rowan things. Strangers on trains, cafe owners, other travelers. They have this quiet, non-judgmental presence that makes people feel safe sharing their stories. Maybe it's because Rowan has heard so many stories already. Maybe it's because they actually care. Probably both.
→ Cultural Adaptability → Years of moving as a kid plus years of traveling as an adult means Rowan can blend into new places quickly. They pick up on social customs, show respect for local traditions, and generally know how to not be That Tourist.
TRIVIA
→ Always carries at least three pens (two black, one colored) and a pocket-sized Moleskine notebook. Old habit from field journalism where you never knew when you'd need to take notes and couldn't rely on phone batteries.
→ Drinks coffee constantly. Hot, cold, instant, espresso, gas station sludge—doesn't matter. Started in war zones where staying alert could save your life. Now it's just how they function. They forget about cups constantly and end up drinking cold coffee, which doesn't bother them at all.
→ Has terrible timing. Misses trains and buses regularly. Sometimes it's because they lose track of time talking to someone or taking photos. Sometimes it's dissociation—they'll zone out and suddenly twenty minutes have passed. Sometimes it's subconscious avoidance—not wanting to arrive at the next temporary place.
→ Keeps a shoebox at their friend Marcus's place in Seattle (different Marcus, not the one who died) full of mementos from peaceful travels. Ticket stubs, pressed flowers, business cards with strangers' stories written on the back, handwritten notes in languages they don't speak, receipts from good meals. Nothing from war zones makes it into the box.
→ Texts in all lowercase with minimal punctuation. Writes long, thoughtful letters by hand but rarely sends them. Writing helps them process things they can't say out loud. Their journal is sacred—no one gets to read it.
→ Has a recurring dream about a house with blue shutters. They've never seen it in real life, but in the dream it's theirs, and they're allowed to stay as long as they want. They wake up from that dream feeling sad in a way they can't quite explain.
→ Can't keep plants alive. Every single one they've tried to care for has died within a month. They've given up trying. (You can't save everything, learned that lesson already.)
→ Prefers trains to planes by a huge margin. Trains feel gentle, grounded, like travel can be peaceful. You can watch the landscape change gradually. Planes remind them of emergency evacuations, of leaving places in a hurry, of journalists scrambling to get out before borders closed.
→ Flinches at sudden loud noises. Car backfires sound like gunfire. Fireworks sound like mortars. Doors slamming make their heart race. They play it off as being startled, and most people buy it.
→ Sleeps with white noise or rain sounds playing. Silence is too heavy, too much like waiting for something bad to happen. The noise helps, sort of. They still don't sleep well.
→ Has an external hard drive with 3TB of photos and videos from their stringer days. Password-protected. Haven't opened it in four years. Can't bring themselves to delete it—those photos are evidence, proof those moments happened, that those people's stories mattered. But they can't look at them either. The drive sits at the bottom of their camera bag wrapped in a blood stained t-shirt, a constant weight they carry everywhere.
→ Gets occasional messages from their old news agency, former colleagues, editors—people asking if they want to come back, if they're ready for another assignment, if they'll cover the next crisis. Rowan reads every message. Never responds. The requests used to come weekly. Now it's every few months. The industry is moving on without them.
→ Their old fixer from Syria, Ahmed, sends updates sometimes. Just small stuff: "The family from your photograph made it to Jordan." "The doctor you photographed is still working." "Remember that orange cat? Had kittens." Ahmed never asks Rowan to come back or why they left. Just sends proof that life continues, that the people in Rowan's photos are still people, still living. Those messages get saved. Rowan doesn't respond, but they read them over and over.
→ Won a Human Rights Press Award at 21 for a photo they took in Aleppo. Never attended the ceremony. Never told anyone about it. The physical award is in a storage unit in Istanbul with other things they left behind. They can't look at it without feeling sick.
→ Knows seven different ways to say "I'm sorry for your loss" but has never found a language where it feels like enough.
LIKES/DISLIKES
+ train journeys + handwritten postcards + coffee shops with character and history + people-watching from corner tables + peaceful moments + sunrise photography (feels like proof of new beginnings) + physical maps + collecting stories that don't hurt + worn leather jackets + the smell of old books + jazz playing quietly in bars + small proof that beauty exists + strangers who want to talk + places where nobody knows what they used to do +
- video calls (voice or in-person is better) - putting down roots anywhere - being asked "where are you from?" (don't have a good answer) - airports (too chaotic, too many bad memories) - sudden loud noises - fireworks (sound too much like mortars) - news coverage of current conflict zones (can't watch it anymore) - people who romanticize war photography - the question "why did you stop?" (because they broke, that's why) - pressure to go back (never going back) - well-meaning people who say "you could make such a difference" (tried that, it didn't work) - their own reflection on bad days -
