Lara 'Spuds' Bullock

[Slam]

Name: Lara ‘Spuds’ Bullock
Gender: Female
Age: 17
Grade: 12th
School: John Endecott Memorial Academy
Hobbies and Interests: Agriculture, biology, nature, lacrosse, weightlifting

Appearance: Spuds is exceptionally well built, standing at 6’0” and weighing 220 lbs, which is mostly muscle. She is of Anglo-Saxon descent.

Spuds has dirty blonde hair that hangs down to just above her shoulders, which she keeps tied back into a loose bun. She has a square shaped face, with a strong brow, small blue eyes and a broad nose. She has a small scar just above her narrow mouth from a farming accident when she was a kid, and a strong jawline.

She favours practical clothing, typically chequered flannel shirts or plain t-shirts, work trousers and work boots. She wears these types of simple, practical outfits as it saves on her trying to find more fashionable outfits that suit her strong build, and because they can be worn during farm work taking place after school without having to double the laundry.

Biography: Lara was born on May 10th, 2004, and raised since birth on a small potato farm on the west end of Salem. The farm owns three acres of land. Also on the land is a small selection of livestock, kept for products for the family’s own use. She is an only child, as her parents have been unable to conceive any additional children besides her. Her father, Brian Bullock, and mother, Lana Bullock née Brady, both work full time on the farm. Her uncle, George Bullock, also lives on the land in his own small building and pitches in occasionally when extra hands are needed, often going off travelling the rest of the time.

Lara has been involved in farm work from a young age, starting with simple odd jobs helping her mother like feeding the chickens, before moving to heavier duty tasks as she got older. Her parents wanted her to be involved as they saw it as an obligation to keep the household afloat, and due to wanting to pass down the family trade.

Working on a farm her whole life gave Lara an appreciation for both nature and exercise. When not tending the farm together, family outings included traversing local hikes and camping trips. Uncle George would usually join for the hikes and tend to the animals during the camping trips, which never lasted more than a night. Other times, Uncle George would take Lara on longer journies while her parents stayed behind.

Her family members enjoyed the atmosphere on these trips, and Lara enjoyed discovering new types of plants and wildlife. When her relations couldn’t answer her questions, Lara took up keeping detailed notes of the things that hadn’t been answered so that she could look them up online later.

This was the first indicator of Lara’s high level of intelligence, which became apparent as she progressed through school. Often scoring around the top of her class, Lara had a great talent for retaining things she’d heard and read, and a focused work ethic from the sense of responsibility working on the farm had instilled in her. Although neither of her parents were particularly focused on academics, they were happy for Lara’s success.

Unfortunately, Lara’s above-average intelligence made it difficult for her to relate to her peers. She would often spend recess reading books from the school library, as her classmates found her weird to talk to. When kids started making fun of her for bookish nature, she was at first confused, but on repeat instances she followed the advice her parents gave her and ignored them. Eventually she was given her space, but she was still lonely.

In middle school, she continued to excel academically and started to develop her niche in biology. She was fascinated by how nature worked, and studied the topic diligently. She won her middle school science fair every year with her reports on soil contamination, hydroponic farming, and genetically modified crops, and started to gain a reputation for her skills in the topic.

While this might have labelled her as a nerd, she also hit her growth spurt in this time and started bulking up. She also took up weightlifting around this time, making use of her father’s old set of weights as a way to blow off steam. Even after all the exercise of farm work, she still enjoyed focusing on particular muscle groups with specific motions. Her dad advised her on proper motions and how much protein she needed to get the best results, which was easy to accommodate with the family being avid meat eaters.

As a result of all this exercise, Lara became very strong for her age. Instead of being labelled a nerd for her academics, she was branded a mini-hulk by her peers. Some of her classmates used the term affectionately, others just threw it around as it was the reputation she had. A few others used it spitefully. Lara found the label upsetting, but wasn’t sure how to respond to it. She tried to make an effort to be civil to her classmates, and for the most part this was reciprocated, but she was unsure how to deal with people who acted negatively towards her beyond just ignoring them.

In an effort to combat this, she joined the lacrosse team in her second year to try to make new friends. She didn’t have much experience with the sport, or sports in general, but gave it a go and managed to get accepted on to the team based on her natural fitness. She played as a defender, an easy fit for the role with her strong build, and continues to play that role to this day. Although her ball skills were poor at first, she has slowly improved through dedicated practice and over time has become a strong player.

Her teammates appreciated her for her focused playing style and her level headed nature, which led to her becoming a sounding board for their own problems. This eventually evolved into her default way of engaging with other people her age, by acting as a sympathetic, grounded ear. Although she doesn’t consider herself much for giving advice, people usually appreciated having someone non-judgemental or drama-prone to talk to. While this allowed her to branch out socially to an extent, she ultimately maintained a reserved disposition around her peers and avoided opening up too much, due to her lack of experience with earlier relationships.

Going into high school, Lara continued to be a high achiever in both sports and academics. She earned another defender spot on the high school lacrosse team, and continued achieving success in science subjects. She also achieved a finalist spot in the Massachusetts state science fair in her sophomore year for her project on growing nutrient-dense foods in deprived and sterile conditions, or ‘super-potatoes’ as she dubbed them. In other subjects, Lara continues to maintain a high GPA through her intellect and strict study habits. Her least favourite subjects tend to be language oriented subjects, as she has a hard time keeping track of the vocabulary and grammar.

She earned the nickname ‘Spuds’ from the high school lacrosse team, due to her habit of eating a jacket potato from her parents' farm for lunch every day. She took this with enthusiasm, feeling a sense of affection from peers that she’d missed out on previously. While still not close with most of her classmates, her lacrosse teammates became her closest peers.

Lara continues working diligently on the farm, and has been researching more modern techniques to improve the farms profitability. Although the family has always managed to break even, they have never had much wealth and gotten by on the bare essentials most of the time. While Lara doesn’t expect to turn the farm into a gold mine, she does hope she can at least make things more comfortable for her parents when she goes off to college.

A consequence of her success in her hobbies and farming is that Lara has developed workaholic tendencies. Her habit of scheduling all hours of her day with something productive can often lead to her holding on to more stress than she should be, and she has difficulty relaxing in situations where it would be warranted.

Lara's workaholic nature leaves her very little in the way of free time. Between delicately balancing her farming obligations with lacrosse and studying, she has almost nothing left over in the way of free time. She doesn't even have any room in her schedule to fit in other clubs she'd be interested in participating in, like the 4H club, and Uncle George often has to pitch in to help cover her shifts in the Fall when lacrosse is in season.

Choosing working over socialising has also made her ineffective at small-talk, and she generally struggles to keep a conversation going with her classmates unless it has a specific purpose. That said, she can be very much blunt and to the point when she's involved in a purposeful conversation, and has no qualms about speaking her mind, in a carefully worded but without hesitation manner, when she thinks a problem is present.

Lara's relationship with her family is in comparatively good shape. She respects her parents for their hard work in keeping the farm running, and enjoys their company. However, at times she wishes they would be more ambitious in how they managed the farm, and has gotten into more than one argument over what she thinks would be the best move for the business. Despite her rural upbringing, Lara is much more progressively minded when it comes to running the place, and this stands in contrast to her parents' preference to do things how they've always been done.

Uncle George, in comparison, acts as Lara's connection to the world beyond the farm. Though his trips away never leave the country, his road trips to other locales and long hikes in the mountains almost always end up with a souvenir for Lara when he comes back. She joined him more often when she was younger, but these days is unable to make time in her schedule to go travelling with him like she used to. This disappoints Uncle George, and he has tried to get her to reconsider, but Lara is too stubborn about keeping to her workload to relent, as much as she'd like to.

While Lara is a generally confident person, she does feel insecure when it comes to her femininity. She often feels lost when it comes to topics like make-up and dresses, and has avoided every well-dressed school function as a result. She doesn't consider such things important or necessary in the modern age, but she still often privately wishes she could be more conventionally feminine. She hasn't had any previous relationships with any boys, either. Although she has a soft spot for the idea of being in a relationship, she doesn't consider herself to have the time or the personal appeal to find a boyfriend, with no real idea of when this might change.

Lara’s response to the coronavirus pandemic was fairly typical. Apart from the inability to play lacrosse as part of the high school team, she was able to keep up her hobbies without too much difficulty. As a fairly introverted woman, and with the company of her parents, she was able to get through the ordeal without any exceptional difficulties.

Her plan after high school is to study agriculture, to develop her passion for biology and her farming career. She has applied to study at Harvard on the recommendation of her careers advisor, but has a number of fall-backs in place too. Her parents are hesitant about encouraging her to move away for four years, both because they value her company and because she is an important element of keeping the farm running. They know she is talented and don’t want to stop her, but they wouldn’t try to talk her out of it either if she decided to stay. Lara’s mind is made up however, as it usually is. Uncle George is more supportive, hoping it will finally give her more downtime for herself. She has been applying for scholarships to fund her studies, with the intention to take up work as necessary to make up for any shortages in cash.

Advantages: Lara is very intelligent, very strong, and very focused. Her level headed disposition will help her stay cool under stressful situations, and her experience on the lacrosse team gives her experience in team situations.
Disadvantages: Lara is a fairly withdrawn person, and outside the lacrosse team she may struggle to find allies. Lara's very large build has a higher calorie requirement than the average student, and she has a starch heavy diet from all the potatoes she eats. The standard assignment of rations will be a drop in sustenance compared to her usual diet that may cause her difficulty. Lara has a habit of pushing herself beyond the point of good health, feeling a need to stay busy at all times. It is quite likely she'll exhaust herself during SOTF, due to the additional stress on top of an already overworked woman.

[MK Kilmarnock]

Hey Slam. Spuds is currently denied pending some fairly minor changes that I overexplain myself on and therefore make them seem longer than they actually are. So let's get right down to business:

Lara grew up on a small potato farm on the west end of Salem > Did she live in Salem her entire life? If so, specify and if not, tell me where she lived before that. Also, when was she born? Just a bit more detail here if you please.

Lana Bullock née Brady > If Lana is even distantly related to Lucas I am going to brainbuster you.

Instead of being labelled a nerd, she was branded a mini-hulk > By whom?

Can you tell me about how Lara balances her schoolwork, extra-curricular activities like the lacrosse team, and her farmwork? She's very dedicated to farmwork but farmwork is very, VERY time consuming (I wonder why I was the staffer to grab Lara?), which can cause conflict with seasonal activities like lacrosse (potatoes, as a hardy crop, can be harvested in basically any New England season besides winter so lacrosse's status as a fall sport does nothing to alleviate this). Also, with all the great work she's investing into farming, is she involved in 4H at all (which isn't just livestock but other aspects of agriculture and even crafts)? ANOTHER thing, how does the family manage to take camping trips when they have livestock to take care of? Does anybody else help out?

What is Lara's relationship with her parents like?

To some extent, I get how the pandemic didn't affect Lara's weightlifting since you say she uses her father's weight set, so she must have a setup on the farm somewhere. That being said, to bulk up in the way she has (Lara is very, very big) I assume she had a trainer of some sort, a spotter, somebody. Even if this was just her father, add a little bit of information here to discuss her training regimen in detail. This ties into my last point, which is that she has a disadvantage staring us in the face you could stand to include: Lara is big enough to the point she must intake a lot of calories -- in particular, she has a starch-heavy diet (potato farmer and all). So denied of this diet (if she runs out of bread or crackers), she runs out of energy must faster than less bulky kids.

I lied, one more point: You have an advantage and disadvantage that seem to contradict each other: She's good at staying cool under stressful situations, but can't calm down/has poor stress management? The supporting passage in the profile gives me a much better idea of what's going on, that she pushes herself to a breaking point long past where it's healthy without somebody to tell her to take a break, so I think it can stand to be reworded.

And that's just about everything! Pretty minor changes so Spuds should be eating those potatoes (please tell me she eats them raw) before games pretty quickly.

[Slam]

Edited.

• West Salem is where Lara was born and raised, working on the farm since the 10th of May.
• Lara is not related to Lucas but there can be more than one Brady family in the world. Did not actually remember that coincidence when I picked the name though.
• She was branded a mini-hulk by her peers. Added a little detail on how various students responded to it.
• Lara just barely balanaces her schoolwork, lacrosse and farming. She would like to join 4H, but just doesn't have the time.
• Uncle George is also a new character who helped cover her shifts when she was unavailable. There used to be an Uncle Lennie, but, well...
• Expanded Lara's relationship with her parents and with Uncle George.
• Added a bit more detail on the weightlifting and the suggested disadvantage.
• Reworded stress management to make it clear she's more just going to exhaust herself trying to work so hard.

[MK Kilmarnock]

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