timeline
1994 —
personal: born on december 1 at 12:01 am outside of köln, germany, to german father and actor of note, henry sommer, and belgian mother and iconic pop diva, lina sofia. born in the farmhouse, not in the barn.
1998 —
personal: thanks to the philanthropy of his mother, roy meets rebel dubrow.
1999 —
personal: born in the latter half of the year, roy was put into school a little early, making him younger than most of his classmates. leroy was 4 years old when he started grundschule, the majority of his classmates 5 to 6 when they started.
how is this possible? connections and a show of aptitude made it possible for henry and lina to get roy into school and off their hands a year earlier than considered "usual".
2003 —
personal: in the spring of 2003 at eight years old, he headbutted a goat. this marks a significant personality shift and beginning of a new era for roy.
education: this was also the year roy started to take university preparation very seriously, and began studying to get into gymnasium.
2004 — 2012
education: at 9 years old, roy began attending gymnasium (college prep) for his secondary education. continuing to be younger than the majority of his classmates,.
personal: roy befriends three girls: lena müller, mia webley, and hannelore hofmann. these relationships prove to be extremely significant over the years.
2010 —
personal: at 15 years old, roy gets a part-time job at lena's dad's (filip's) record store (name pending). this is where his extensive knowledge of 80s film & music comes from. roy keeps this job until he graduates in 2012.
2011 —
personal: experiences his first major growth spurt and goes from 5'4" to 5'10" seemingly overnight. he is, in fact, a stretched out bag of bones.
personal: roy meets and dates his first boyfriend, aj javid.
2012 —
education: graduates gymnasium (after focusing in humanities, specifically music) in 2011 at 17 years old with the abitur diploma, and heads straight for universität zu köln.
2012 — 2015
education: begins his higher education at universität zu köln, focusing on music and music theory. with college prep and strong ambition backing him, roy manages to complete his bachelor of fine arts in three years.
personal: december 1 2012, roy gets his first tattoo - a matching lock and key with his then boyfriend, aj.
2013 —
personal: aj and roy break up in september.
2014 —
career: on a whim, roy spends his break in the states and through happenstance, connections, and being marginally charming and handsome, lands the male lead in parker best's blank space.
personal: previous to the premiere of blank space, roy meets henrietta preobrazhensky (aka rainie) on february 7 in berlin at a parker best show.
2015 (post graduation) —
career: a long time collaboration in the making, roy and his brothers record an ep as part of a univeristy project. it's sommersöhne's first release, and is an overnight sensation in germany.
career: following minor success in the blank space video, roy auditions for the role of steve harrington.
personal: after a few months of dating, roy breaks up with henri.
education: at some point during 2015 - 2016, roy slides in a school year's worth of education at die angewandte, a design school in vienna.
2016 —
career: sommersöhne releases their first album alles nix konkretes in february.
career: on april 13, mitski's your best american girl premieres (filmed during stranger things) and roy is labeled an "indie music it boy" by a very niche audience.
career: stranger things premieres july 15, 2016, and roy is quickly offered a recurring role for season 2.
personal: his los angeles party boy phase begins, but otherwise he spends the remainder of the year touring.
personal: at the beginning of his party boy phase (in the latter half of 2016, roy meets a-list pop star. a-list pop star is not out, does not want to be out, and so a low key flirtation begins.
2017 —
career: spends the early half of the year filming stranger things season 2.
career: featured in the video boys by charli xcx (released july 26), considers this to be one of the highlights of his career.
personal: following filming and the release of boys, roy's los angeles party boy phase is in full effect.
career: between the end of filming and before promoting season 2 of stranger things, roy spends most of his time in germany touring with sommersöhne.
personal: roy and a-list pop star have been on and off or around a year now.
career: stranger things 2 premieres october 27 and steve harrington fever is at an all time high. roy's follower count on instagram jumps from 500k to 3.4m almost overnight.
2018 —
career: roy spends a lot of 2018 in and out of the states, filming stranger things 3.
career: around march, roy founds abfall, a sustainable fashion brand focused on using 100% recycled materials. the brand employs himself and three others, they debut their aw 2018 collection.
career: in april, sommersöhne takes one month to isolate and record their second album in a secluded village in spain. aside from their sommersöhne und freund festivals, sommersöhne does not tour.
career: selena gomez's back to you premieres may 17.
personal: roy meets naz esfahani in june, they date for two months, and break up in august after she cheats on him with his doorman. the relationship is brief, and spawns a close friendship in its wake.
career: abfall launches its SS 2019 collection in october.
personal: roy and a-list pop star are on... then off, officially (though not "officially") forever.
career: in december, sommersöhne releases their sophomore album schlagschatten, which tops the german charts (yet again).
2019 —
career: abfall launches its AW 2019 collection around march.
career: at some point gucci: of course a horse is filmed for 2020!
career: roy meets sunmi after seeing her in one of abfall's commercial pieces and a friendship is formed! with mutual respect for one another's art, sunmi asks abfall to create specific looks for her upcoming single.
career: stranger things 3 premieres july 4 and roy's follower count shoots up (once again), this time to 6.5m.
personal: roy begins dating sam toomey in july.
career: despite the busy schedule from stranger things, roy and his brothers tour for the majority of the summer, hitting up almost every music festival germany has to offer. they also play their biggest show yet for sommersöhne und freund.
career: abfall launches its SS 2020 collection around october.
career: sunmi's lalalay premieres august 27, the video features one of a kind looks by roy and she wears a dress by abfall for the single cover. he has an existential crisis.
personal: his birthday party is an iconic shitshow!
2020 —
career: gucci's of course a horse premieres in january.
personal: roy spends january in japan, soul searching.
personal: oma passes away on february 9, roy misses saying goodbye because he's late to fly in due to attending the oscars.
career: abfall launches its AW 2020 collection around march.
personal: covid hits and tour (which started in february) is cut short in march. he breaks up with his boyfriend. roy spends the next few months in los angeles.
personal: becomes very obsessed with dom nazzari.
career: abfall designs five unique looks for sunmi's video pporappippam, which premieres august 27.
career: roy films stranger things 4 in atlanta, georgia from september to november.
career: abfall launches its SS 2021 collection around october.
career: recorded between quarantine in los angeles (march to may) and in germany (july), sommersöhne releases its third full length lp, 12, on november 17.
career: in june 2020, roy and his siblings opened their nonprofit, orchard house.
career: november 22, roy is featured in episode 7 of guccifest.
personal: december 1 (his birthday) marks a very important trip to iceland with naz and henri.
personal: henri stuff...
career: on december 8 veronica ritter's video for savior complex premieres, featuring roy. he once again has the niche indie it boy label forced upon him! his follower count jumps up by 3.
2021 —
career: so far, he's filming stranger things 4 from january to february!
personal: henri stuff...
memories
DAS HINTERLAND —
CHILDHOOD — the age varies and it's likely he did this both before he was 2 and after he was 5, but opa (heinz, henry's father) would take roy for horse rides through the orchards on his farm. roy would sit in front, and opa (who stands at 6'5") would reach up into the trees and pick apples for them. this is where roy learned to eat the entire apple- even the core.
CHILDHOOD — the drive from das hinterland to opa and oma's orchard, which is about 45 minutes. along the way there's a horse ranch and the horses run side by side as they drive by, and roy always liked to pretend the horses were running with them.
CHILDHOOD — oma (rosie) would play guitar out in the sheep pasture of das hinterland. she never wore her shoes, and roy has a lot of precious memories of wandering out into the fields and finding his grandmother playing music by herself. he'd sit with her and sing, and eventually she started teaching him guitar.
CHILDHOOD — this also encompasses young adulthood, but the sommers never owned a television (they had a projector for movie nights) and so the siblings and their parents would often have jam sessions/entertainment nights where they were forced to be creative with their entertainment (board games, puzzles, putting on shows, dramatic readings, listening to records, etc).
1999 (4) — a wild child, roy is running up the stairs after leon when his foot catches and he face plants. what follows is a bloody nose, and a front tooth stuck in a wooden stair. the mark is still there.
2000 (5) — whilst annoying one of his older brothers, malte, by constantly jumping up, grabbing his hair, and yanking him backwards, roy is acciddentally pushed off the barn roof and onto a soft pile of hay. he recounts this story with varying accuracy. though it does attribute to his fear of heights.
2000 (5) — one of roy's chores was feeding the chickens, which was a daunting task considering how many chickens they had and how small he was at the time. once during the summer, roy accidentally dropped the bag of feed and was consequently pecked by a flock of chickens. his shins bled. this eventually lead to a minor fear of chickens.
2001 (6) — after following leon and jonas into the woods surrounding das hinterland, roy loses the trail of a woodland creature and finds himself somewhere alone amongst the trees. he is missing for six hours total and is found by his father, who hugs him when he finds him. this is the only time roy can remember seeing his father cry (or show any genuine emotion).
1999 - 2003 (4 - 8) — flora and roy had a several-year-long run of digging holes around the edge of the forest and luring their brothers into the holes. the holes were never more than 3' deep, but they were formidable and effective.
2003 (8) — roy headbutts a goat and it's said to have altered his personality from wild child to teacher's pet.
2005 (10) — in an effort to teach his children to appreciate where their food comes from, henry sommer stipulates that, at some point, each child must kill dinner. at ten years old, it's roy's turn to kill a chicken. the scene turns violent when he fails his attempt and flora is called upon to finish the job. roy is scolded by henry but not forced to do it again.
GYMNASIUM —
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UNIVERSITY —
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SOMMERSÖHNE —
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RECOGNIZE —
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npcs
family —
everythig you ever needed to know about any sommer is in this family directory!
GYMNASIUM —
lena müller: photogapher, october 24, 1993 (27), credits of helene pambrun, she has a very significant portfolio and is well regarded as a fashion photographer both in germany and internationally. currently she's moving over into hosting photography workshops with less of an emphasis on editorial work, but remains sommersöhne's chief tour (and promotional) photographer. her father, filip, has been running a record store for 15 years in cologne. her mother, antoinette, passed away when lena was 18. lena currently lives in cologne but given her work she's a frequent traveler.
lena is practical, logical, a lot like roy in that she likes to identify a clear line from point a to point b. she's very methodical, organized, and an extremely effective photographer. that being said, photography is her passion and though she doesn't speak on it often she can be very eloquent when prompted. in casual conversation, however, she'll speak more to the technical aspects of it than the artistic.
mia webley: videographer, september 21, 1993 (27), dreams of being a documentarian. she runs a moderately popular youtube channel (500k subscribers) that's comprised mostly of short films set backstage at various concerts (the artists featured are overwhelmingly german. among them are sommersöhne, milky chance, and von wegen lisbeth). the most watched video is a featurette of kim petras. mia lives with her life partner, emmerich, in the belgian quarter in cologne, about a five minute walk from roy's apartment. mia doesn't spend as much time with the band as lena, but has directed and recorded all of their music videos - including the recent live show filmed in leon's loft in cologne.
mia is vivacious, tenacious, ambitious, and basically has every quality you would imagine of a director. during conversation, she digs her claws in and pulls out every piece of information she can, trying to paint a full pictue of a person. this translates very well into her work as a lot of her documentaries are based on presenting people as they are with very little prompting or direction.
hannelore hofmann: teacher and grad student, february 13, 1994 (26), hannelore has the ultimate goal of being a humanities professor and is easily the kindest of all of roy's friends. she works a lot with nonprofits and volunteers on the weekends, is married (conrad, 34) and a mother of one (peter, 1). she's the only one of the group that isn't actively involved in sommersöhne but goes to as many shows as she can while the band is touring, and her instagram is essentially a hype account for her friends.
hannelore is, as said, very kind. she's naturally very charming and grounded, which makes it easy to have a conversation with her. she takes a keen and genuine interest in everyone she's talking to, and jokes constantly that she had a kid just so she wouldn't run out of things to talk about. given her involvement in nonprofits and volunteer work, hannelore is very passionate about politics and education.
UNIVERSITY —
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ABFALL —
casja baumann: designer, swiss, 28, a design school friend of roy's that developed the bead technique that abfall is noted for!
evgeny koskov: designer, russian, 29, a design school friend of roy's with plentiful connections and a mind for collaboration.
azure labelle: social media manager, 23, knows the ins and outs of instagram better than anyone else and, yes, that is her real name.
HIS TEAM —
nicola claes: assistant, march 14, 1988 (32), swiss-italian, nicola met roy through a mutual friend at die angewandte. a former office worker with tip top organization skills and a can-do attitude, nicola left his old life behind to seek a career in fashion. nicola's position as roy's assistant is akin to an internship (except, it should be noted, nicola is getting a hefty paycheck to put up with roy). he's an active contributer to abfall along with his work as personal assistant.
dry, practical, though not without his whims. nicola hates and loves roy in equal measure. he is probably the most valuable person in roy's working life and without him roy would fall apart. nicola does not like alessandro michele, but alessandro has an affinity for nicola!
lena müller: photographer, refer to above!
yui jung: band manager, april 22, 1992 (28), last name is pronounced "young". yui is a friend of leon's who took on management responsibilities after another german band (which shall not be named) dumped her (they aren't doing so great at the moment). yui is headstrong and though it might not seem like it, if she could manage sommersöhne forever then she would. there's really no other job she'd rather have.
fiercely loyal...