Neil is a teenager who's picked the wrong front to put on: the Funny Guy. He's always there with a joke, but often times they don't land. This probably stems from his limited grasp (or concern) for how other people work. However, he's decided this is the path to gaining public approval and love, and it'll probably take a few more years of maturing before he learns that he doesn't have to try so hard. In the meantime, everyone is stuck with his dorky, clumsy, sometimes even accidentally rude sense of humor.

Which is a shame, because beneath that, Neil's most prominent trait is his courageousness. Neil is lion-hearted, always willing and ready to put himself on the line for something. This is not to say he's fearless (one review of some of his ghost hunting videos—available on YouTube—and that goes right out the window), but he will always persevere, even if he's terrified. On a good day it's in defense of someone in need, but often times it just leads him straight into trouble. He is 0% scared of the forest, 0% scared that he's annoying you by talking too much about EMF meters, and 0% scared of putting himself in unfortunate social situations.

Despite this surprising confidence, Neil's still horribly awkward in aforementioned social situations. He'll insist he can do it, and then will proceed to stumble through the social niceties with an excessive helping of "tension relieving" jokes. This is in contrast with how he behaves on camera during investigations, or in class when he's talking about a project or strange little detail in history class. Neil is passionate, and takes the things he loves very seriously. When he's into something, he's all in, to the point where his performance on camera as the serious host of a paranormal investigation show might be a bit ridiculous. Neil can't shake the feeling that whether he's being the clown or being himself, he's laughable. He feels perpetually out of place, which is partially just teenage angst, but also partially being genuinely a bit off-beat even at this hippie liberal camping school. It holds him back from pursuing any crushes he might develop, and limits his circle of friends. His grasp on social cues is weak, and his skin is thin when he thinks people are making fun of him. Neil wishes so badly that he could just stop caring about what people think of him, but no luck so far.

To people who are close to him, though, Neil is deeply affectionate and attentive, and pretty fun if you don't mind the bad jokes. Neil's playful, and loves to tease and be teased by the people he trusts. He's loyal and loving to the end, although eternally a bit embarrassing. Accept that you'll be stuck groaning and rolling your eyes a lot and he'll always be in your corner. Neil loves very intensely, though, and can end up a little on the clingy side. The people he manages to click with are few and far between, so he holds onto them very tightly.

Neil is very passionate, and will go on for hours and hours about the things he loves. His hobbies and interests are everything to him, and he loves sharing them with people. Unfortunately he's also pretty self-involved, and gets bored easily. In fact, Neil finds most other people boring. He's much more interested in talking about himself than you. Unless you meet certain criteria or are a certified close friend, he's likely to be very obviously disinterested in your passions, even when he tries to hide it. For instance, he may listen to Leo or Anuhea talk about Quidditch (at least for a little while), but if someone who wasn't a friend tried that, Neil's thought process would be something along the lines of "Oh god no, how do I steer the conversation back to something I care about?"

Although he loves the people close to him and can get overly attached, Neil doesn't really need anyone on a day to say basis. He's exceptionally independent, which may be another reason he's not that upset about never dating. He doesn't consult others for input on his ideas, and works through his problems and/or makes decisions alone. This makes him a low maintenance friend, but also pretty stubborn once he's made his choice. He's very hard to dissuade once he's come to a conclusion, and doesn't accept unsolicited advice readily. You can tell him a million times not to mess around with the forest, but he's still going to do it.

Niel is not always the most thoughtful or sensitive individual when it comes to the needs of others. He takes people seriously if they sit down and make him think about someone besides himself for half a second, but it doesn't come naturally to him. He has a big heart, but a very narrow field of vision. You have to directly point out the problem to him to get his attention. On the other hand, he's very sensitive himself. His feelings are easily hurt by people being judgemental or overly harsh. It makes him a bit of a hypocrite, as he struggles to treat people gently when he really requires they do so for him.

He's easily exasperated by people when they're not on the same wavelength as him, or when they're not as stupidly brave as he is, which is... almost everyone. It's only because he's frustrated or confused, but it's really not charming. The ultimate root of his awkwardness is that Neil doesn't really "get" people. He's so focused on his own thoughts and ideas that he misses a lot of vital clues. This means he's often in a situation where he knows someone's upset, but he has no idea what caused it.

Neil's dorky, shallow exterior hides a pretentious, poetic Ebonhide soul. He's truly enchanted by the unknown, and perpetually dissatisfied with the ordinary. Neil wants everything to be mysterious, strange, and unexplainable. When it's not, he feels deep, melancholic disappointment. Not even being a literal wizard is enough for him, and magic alone is never a good enough explanation. This is why he attached himself to Muggle hauntings, because they're so much more difficult to explain. They don't fit into the established rules of either world, and therefore they're a true mystery, which gives him something worth thinking about. Neil is ultimately someone who needs reality to be weirder than fiction.

tl;dr
+ courageous
+ passionate
+ loving
+ independent
= dorky
= sensitive
= wants everything to be a mystery
= dissatisfied with the mundane
= no love life
- self-involved
- clumsy sense of humor
- poor people skills
- self-conscious
- clingy

John Rosenkrans, father, filing clerk for local wizarding government. Pureblood. John is a hard working single father from a poor pureblood family who fears that Neil is throwing away his gifts on Muggle psuedoscience. He wants the best for Neil, and dreams of his son growing up to have a better life than he did. They fight a lot about Neil's hobbies, how he spends his time, why he never dates, or that one of these days Neil's going to be arrested for trespassing. Although Neil loves his father, there's a lot of tension and he's going through a extended resentful teenager phase.

Mariella Anderson, mom, train conductor. Half-blood. Mariella had Neil when she was only sixteen, and she divorced his father when they were about 20 and 21. She sees Neil about once a week when he's on break and she's in town, but she travels a great deal. She's a conductor for the Magical Railroad Passenger Corporation, the railway system that wizards use when travelling cross-country. It's a bit of an antique, with more and more wizards opting to take Muggle planes when they can't use a portkey or Apparate. Mariella sometimes takes Neil on trips with her during the summer, but insists he can't live with her. She travels too much to raise a teenager, and his father kind of has a point about ghost hunting being silly.

Linda French. Half-blood. John's most recent girlfriend. A bright woman who works in his office. She gets along with Neil fairly well, but Neil suspects the relationship will be short-lived. He may or may not be correct.

Mark Hansen, just a dude, not actually family. Half-blood. Mark is a friend of Neil's from back home who reluctantly helps Neil with his most embarrassing hobby: buying haunted items off eBay. Mark likes Neil a lot. He has to, otherwise there's no way he'd be owling haunted dolls and print outs of cool ghost stories to Utah. He does demand a finder's fee from Neil, though.

Mariella got pregnant at sixteen and dropped out of school. The father, John, stayed in school, but the two planned on marrying as soon as he graduated. They did, but the marriage only lasted two more years before the young couple split. Mariella was unable to financially support a toddler, but John's parents were willing to help him with his young son until he found good work.

Good work came, but great work never did. John and Neil eked out a very simple living on his local government salary. Because of this, it was exciting when John realized that Neil was smart. Not just smart, but very smart. John began to have fantasies about his son growing up to become something great, and fostered every intellectual whim Neil had. When Neil went off to a local day school, John's suspicions were confirmed. Teachers wanted to talk to him about how promising Neil was, and suggested putting him in advanced programs. John's knowledge of muggle technology was limited, but when Neil developed an interest in it from friends he met at school, John scraped and saved to get him a computer. He would listen to his son talk for hours, trying to explain to him the ins and outs of his latest project.

But Neil started developing rather peculiar interests. Soon those talks about coding started to include ghosts and the way that muggles saw them. Neil was fascinated. John was tolerant... for a time. But over the years, this passing interest became an obsession. John thought that Neil's acceptance to Gooseberry would be just the thing to refocus him, but instead Neil found more peers willing to entertain what John saw as fantasies and silly stories. They were wizards, everyone knows exactly what ghosts really are, and muggles are foolish and deluded. One loud noise and they're all screaming ghosts and demons! As Neil began to grow more independent, John started to worry more and more. Concern became frustration. Frustration became arguments.

This wasn't at all helped when Neil, posing as a muggle, got involved in a local paranormal society. He was praised for his ability to cobble together his own investigative tools, as well as his courageous willingness to do some really stupid things. A lot of it involved urban exploration and sneaking onto private property to conduct investigations. When an older, more responsible member of the group finally decided it wasn't right for a seventeen year old to be doing this, he contacted Neil's father with concerns that Neil was going to one day be caught for trespassing. John was furious with Neil.

Neil felt like his passions were being cut down and undervalued. John feared that his brilliant only child was going to end up wasting everything on muggle psuedoscience, living in a shitty two bedroom apartment all alone like he had. Worries about Neil's future career became worries about his future in general. Why did Neil never date? Is he gay? He'll still love you if you're gay, Neil. (But you're not, right?) What about that girl you're always talking about? Do you have any friends? Normal friends, Neil.

With graduation fast approaching, Neil and his father do nothing but fight. After a tense winter break, Neil refused to go home for winter break. Any and all questions about his future remain unanswered. Privately, even Neil knows he has to grow up soon, but he's realizing he really doesn't want to.