American Gods PBs
I recently started playing a character from Neil Gaiman's American Gods, and somehow that led to lots of pondering over how I'd cast the rest of the book's characters. I thought I'd throw it up here in case anybody's interested. ;)
Baldur "Shadow" Moon Shadow is thirty-two, though it's implied that he appears to be of somewhat indeterminate age. A prison guard tells him, "you wait like the old guys, but you're what? Twenty-five? Twenty-eight?" Another prison officer observes that he looks younger than his thirty-two years. He has "cream-and-coffee" coloured skin and a multiracial look about him. The aforementioned prison guard asks him whether he is a "spic" or a "gypsy", before musing that Shadow might have some "[African American] blood in [him]". Sam Black Crow asks him if he is Native American. He has "dark hair". There are two conflicting descriptions of his eyes - he's said at various times to have "light grey eyes" and "dark eyes". He's a big guy, very tall and muscular, and looks "don't-fuck-with-me enough" that he was never troubled in prison. He's empty inside. Marguerite describes him as "melancholy"; Laura calls him a "big, solid, man-shaped hole in the world".
Laura Moon She has "long dark hair", "chestnut"-coloured, and "eyes so blue" that when they first met "Shadow mistakenly thought she was wearing tinted contact lenses". There is a "crooked hopefulness" to her smile. Her age is given as twenty-seven.
Mr. Wednesday / Odin Wednesday has "reddish grey" hair and a "greyish red" beard which is "little more than stubble". He has a "craggy, square face with pale grey eyes"; one is a "darker grey than the other", that being his glass eye. He wears expensive suits, silk ties, silver tie pins and a "black Rolex". When he smiles, it reminds Shadow of a documentary on chimpanzees, in which he learnt that chimps only grin as a show of aggression. He is "almost Shadow's height", and Shadow is a big man.
Low Key Lyesmith / Loki Low Key "[keeps] his orange-blond hair pretty much shaved. You [can] see the lines of his skull." When he smiles, his lips "crease into a network of rough scars". His eyes glimmer "like the orange embers of a dying fire".
Mr. Nancy / Anansi Anansi is an "elderly black man" with a "pencil moustache"; "a small man, the kind of little old man who [looks] as if the passing of the years have shrunk him". He is seen wearing a "bright checked suit and canary-yellow gloves", and smoking a "black cigarillo". He has a "dazzling smile" and speaks with a faint twang, "a hint of a patois that might have been West Indian". His eyes are "the colour of mahogany".
Mr. Ibis Mr. Ibis is a "crane-like man with gold-rimmed spectacles". He speaks in explanations, "a gentle, earnest lecturing that put Shadow in mind of a collage professor ... who could not talk, could only discourse, expound, explain." He wears a "sober brown hat" that matches his "sober brown blazer and his sober brown face". He is "well over six feet in height, with a crane-like stoop". Shadow observes that he has seen "black guys who looked like Mr. Ibis" and "white guys with tan who looked like Mr. Ibis".
Bast She has "brown hair and brown skin" and her eyes are "the deep golden-amber of good honey". Her pupils are "vertical slits". Her mannerisms are perfectly feline.
Czernobog Czernobog is a short man; he has a "grey face" with "craggy features" and "iron-grey hair". His voice is "old and cigarette-roughened" and his teeth are "yellow". He has "square-tipped" fingers, their tips "as yellow as if they had been dipped in iodine". His hands are "rough and callused". Shadow observes a "hunger" in his face "for something, for pain, or death, or retribution". His "grey eyes" are "like points of steel".
The Zorya Zorya Verchernyaya is a "gaunt old woman" with a "thick, Eastern European" accent. Zorya Utrennyaya is "smaller and frailer than [Verchernyaya]", but her hair is "long and still golden". Zorya Polunochnaya has "pale and colourless" hair which falls "to her waist". Shadow can't tell her age; her skin is "unlined", her eyes "dark" and her lashes "long". She is "taller than either of her sisters" and has a "soft, Eastern European accent".
Easter / Eostre She is "not fat, no, far from fat," she is "curvaceous". Her hair is "so fair that it [is] white, the kind of platinum-blonde tresses that should have belonged to a long-dead movie starlet". Her lips are "crimson" and her eyes "the exact colour of a leaf in spring with the sun shining through it". She could be anywhere "between twenty-five and fifty". Her laugh is "deep and throaty, full-bodied and joyous".
Mad Sweeney He has a "short ginger beard". He is seen wearing "a denim jacket covered with bright sew-on patches, and under the jacket a stained white T-shirt". Despite being a leprechaun, he doesn't have an Irish accent, having "been over here too fucken long". He's an "impossibly tall man" - Shadow estimates that he is "almost seven feet tall".
Hinzelmann An "old man" with "blue eyes" and a "fluff of white hair". He has a "cheerful face" and a "goblin grin". His hands are "red-knuckled" and "as hard and callused as an oak branch". He is about "half [Shadow's] height". When Shadow confronts him, he seems "more like a gargoyle than an imp"; without his smile he seems "waxen and corpselike".
Whiskey Jack / Wisakedjak A "middle-aged" Native American man with "sharp eyes and a mouth like a knife slash". His hair is "grey, and long". His skin is "the colour of red clay".
Media She is "perfectly made-up, perfectly coiffed". She reminds Shadow of "every newscaster he'd ever seen on a morning television sitting in a studio that didn't really resemble a living room."
The Fat Kid This unnamed technological god is a "fat young man" who looks "barely out of his teens: a spattering of acne glistened on one cheek". He wears a "long black coat, made of some silky material".
Samantha Black Crow She has "a tangle of short dark hair and a face that [is] both attractive and ... faintly mannish: Her features might have been chiselled out of rock." She has "dark eyes". Her father is Native American and her mother's family is European Jewish.