S002 - Avanesian, Alex [DECEASED]

[Deamon]

Name: Alex Harutyun Avanesian
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Grade: 12th
School: John Endecott Memorial Academy
Hobbies and Interests: SOTF conspiracies, electrical engineering, taking care of his pet rabbit, true crime, reading

Appearance: Standing at 5’8 and weighing roughly 135 lbs, Alex is at an average height and weight. Due to a lack of physical exercise and being a light eater, his body is rather scrawny and thin, with prominent arm bones; however, he isn’t underweight. This isn’t much of a concern for him, although his father has been pushing him to eat a little more. He is Caucasian, with fair skin that has pink undertones, doesn’t tan easily and is mostly unblemished, apart from some dry skin around his nose that he uses moisturiser to get rid of. Alex is of Armenian-American descent, taking more after his mother than his father.

Alex has a rather rectangular face, with a long nose that he’s somewhat self-conscious about and thin, angular eyebrows over big, deep-set brown eyes. Underneath his eyes are faint dark circles from staying up late reading about SOTF, and he wears glasses to correct mild myopia. He has two pairs with wayfarer-style frames; one has a tortoiseshell pattern, and one has mint green legs and a black frame. His hair, a dark brown colour, is cut short but is still rather messy, mostly due to his lack of attention towards it. He has a strong jawline and chin, inherited from his father, but his cheekbones are rather low. He uses an electric razor to shave off any facial hair he may grow; this leaves him with a little underlying stubble, but he doesn’t mind that as much.

In terms of clothing, Alex doesn’t have any particular style; he gravitates to more muted colours, not wanting anything too colourful or eye catching that would make him stand out. As a result, most of the shirts he wears either have generic logos or none at all, although he does have a couple with logos for his favourite true crime podcasts or games that he likes. In colder weather he wears mostly hoodies or jackets, including a branded It’s Canon hoodie, although due to political events he doesn’t wear that one as much nowadays. The rest of his wardrobe mostly consists of sneakers, cargo pants and joggers. On the day of the abduction, Alex was wearing a black beanie, his tortoiseshell glasses, his It’s Canon hoodie, a black t-shirt with ‘Does This Unit Have A Soul?’ printed on the front in white underneath it, a pair of baggy jeans, white sneakers with a blue Nike stripe on the side and black socks.

He tends to speak rather quickly, often having to repeat what he said due to speaking too quickly, although he has been working on speaking slower. Alex doesn’t swear much, finding the act distasteful, but in moments of irritation he can let loose a curse. He’s also rather animated while he speaks, fidgeting with his hands or making movements and gestures with them to further emphasise his point. Alex is bilingual, speaking both English and Armenian.

Biography: Alex Harutyun Avanesian was born in Glendale, California on the 20th of October 2003 to Aram Avanesian and Gloria Avanesian née Simonian; his father was a first generation immigrant from Yerevan who immigrated for work and met his mother, a third-generation Armenian-American, at a local bar, marrying her a year later. His father works as a civil engineer at a local construction firm, while his mother works at an office building as a janitor. He has a sister, Mary, born on the 4th of June 2007.

When Alex was four months old, his father received a better job offer from a construction firm in Boston, Massachusetts. He opted to move to Salem instead, as the rent was cheaper and they still had good access to the city with their car or by train. The Avanesians live in a spacious house near to a train station, from where Aram commutes to Boston.

As a young child, Alex was very quiet and introverted, preferring to play by himself rather than engage with his mother or father. Whenever he was ushered outside to play with other kids, he typically ended up coming back home after tripping and hurting himself. As soon as he learned to read, he was a voracious reader, as it gave him an excuse to stay inside and be by himself instead of going outside.

His parents hoped that kindergarten would help him with social skills, and break him out of his shell. At first, this initially didn’t happen; Alex played by himself, and if anyone came near him or tried to play with him he would normally refuse to engage with them, sometimes taking his toys and moving away or just telling them no. This worried his parents, who talked to his kindergarten teacher about it.

However, with time, and some gentle encouragement, Alex eventually opened up. He was still shy and preferred to play on his own, but he was much more open to sharing and playing with other kids now. Some of his new friends lived on his street, and Alex would now go out and play with them, instead of just being cooped up at home all day.

Gloria was often working late shifts at her job, so in his younger years most of the time it was just Alex and Aram at home. He often read Alex traditional Armenian bedtime stories to lull him to sleep, mostly in English but sometimes swapping to the Armenian-language versions of the story. Gloria eventually got better hours so she could spend more time with Alex after kindergarten, but the time he spent with his father helped establish a close bond between them.

When he started elementary school, Alex defaulted back to his shy manner; he didn’t know anyone in his class, and so he shrunk back into himself. He had a few friends from his kindergarten in his street that he played with, but there wasn’t anyone in his class he was familiar with. Thus, he mostly read or played by himself out in the playground, much to the concern of his teachers. They reached out to Aram and Gloria, concerned about his lack of engagement with his classmates, who tried to gently pressure him into talking with other people; this effort failed to bear fruit.

The silver lining was that he tended to focus more on his work than his peers, not having many friends to distract him. As a result, he consistently scored high grades, much to the praise of his parents, and with the encouragement of his teacher, he reached out and managed to make friends with a couple of people who were similarly good students. Outside of that little friend group, however, he was still quite shy.

Over the course of first and second grade, Alex slowly started to open up to classmates outside of his small friend group. This was due to a combination of things; his parents gently encouraging him to socialise with more people, his friends including him in more stuff out of school like movies and outings, and his own maturity gently cracking his shell. By the time third grade rolled around, his friend group had expanded; although he was still generally shy, he was much more relaxed around his class and thusly, found it easier to just be himself, excitedly rambling about books that he had read or movies that he had seen with his friends.

When his younger sister was born, Alex didn’t really find himself caring that much; he was honestly glad that he had some time for himself, with his mom and dad preoccupied with their new child. He didn’t find himself bonding with his baby sister at first, either; however, as she started to grow older, walk and talk, Alex found himself suddenly protective of her, which was a new emotion for him.

Aram started to tell his son more about Armenia; its culture, what it was like growing up there, as he grew older, and floated around the idea of trying to teach him Armenian. Alex liked this idea, so Aram decided to try and teach him on Saturdays. It was very slow at first, Alex struggling with the basics of the language, until eventually Alex had a breakthrough. It was still quite slow, but gradually he began getting better at it.

The rest of elementary school passed by with relative ease, and Alex soon entered middle school. At this point, he was starting to move on to more complicated Armenian lessons, taking pride in the few complex words and sentences that he could speak. The influx of new people that he didn’t know into his middle school threatened to bring his shyness back, so he mostly just stuck with people from his old elementary, focusing on his work.

When he was eleven, the sixth instance of SOTF happened. His family had managed to keep him away from the other instances, and he had generally been too preoccupied with classes or was too young to really care about them, but the idea of high school kids just like him being abducted by terrorists and forced to kill each other was to Alex, morbidly interesting rather than frightening. Without his parents’ knowledge, he started to read up on the events of past instances and the people who survived them. Soon, he found himself listening to podcasts about SOTF and the events while he did his homework.

From there, he joined a few boards dedicated to discussions about it, and quickly fell in with the conspiracy theory crowd; people rambling about whatever enemy of America was behind it, whether it be China, Iran or North Korea, or even if it was the United States itself behind the abductions. He ate up any content about it, no matter how unlikely or ridiculous it seemed. In particular, Alex enjoys the sense of comradery about the site; even if they have some disagreements from time to time about the specifics of SOTF and who’s behind it, the small community is very supportive and tight-knit.

Some of the more dedicated members, including Alex, have a small Discord server set up where they talk about more mundane things, like their pets, home life, and other stuff that wouldn’t really have a place on the conspiracy forum.

Through his interest in SOTF he also got involved in the general true crime community, finding several podcasts like The Last Podcast on the Left, Casefile and Serial. While most of the crimes and serial killers they talk about are not as recent as SOTF, Alex still enjoys putting them on while he works, as learning about the murders that the serial killers have committed always interests him; the motive and methods also interest him as well, as he often wonders what would make these people kill in such brutal ways. He uses Reddit to talk about true crime with other people, as the forums he frequents don’t permit talk about any crime apart from SOTF.

Excited to explain the theories that he had read about online, Alex came to find that many people weren’t willing to listen to them. In fact, once he expounded his theories, a lot of people made excuses to leave and then stopped talking to him. Eventually, the teachers learned about how he was spouting SOTF conspiracies to his friends and contacted his parents to talk about it. Alex tried to explain himself, but his parents acted by putting an internet blocker on their computer that prevented him from going onto any of the sites that had sparked his penchant for discussing SOTF conspiracy theories with his classmates. He managed to circumvent this blocker by using library computers, but he couldn’t get on the sites as much or spend as much time on them as he had been able to.

Still, the damage had been done to his social status, and many of his old friends no longer wanted to talk to him, not wanting to chance being associated with his conspiracy theories and general weirdness. This led Alex to regressing further into his books, confused and hurt as to why all of his friends were abandoning him. There were still a few of them who didn’t mind talking to him, but a far cry from the amount of friends he had previously.

Aram tried talking to him about it, worried that talk of conspiracies might affect his son’s social life even more. Alex agreed with his ideas and said that he would stop using the website. Satisfied with this answer, his father dropped the topic, assuming that it was just a phase brought on by V6 that would soon go away.

As a result, Alex became unwilling to talk about anything in school apart from school work or the bare minimum. He returned to reading by himself in the playground, now with true crime books and books about SOTF instead of the children’s books that he had read, instead of engaging with other kids or finishing up homework. His grades dropped a little in subjects involving group work, as he didn’t put much effort into it now that he didn’t have many friends to work with.

During one of his sessions of listening to podcasts and talk shows while he did his homework, Alex discovered It’s Canon. Canon’s powerful voice and heated debating with those he brought on his show intrigued Alex, and his opinions about how to deal with SOTF appealed to Alex, especially in the wake of V6. He saw McAllister as ineffective, largely due to Alex’s only real political exposure thus far being Canon’s talk show, and so Alex supported Canon when he ran for president, mostly because of his anti-SOTF viewpoints but partially due to a desire to be contrary to his classmates, most of whom supported Massey and whom Alex felt had abandoned him just for having differing views.

He spent a lot more time on the internet as a result of his newfound political views, and in an attempt to get him off the internet and back into the outside world, his dad took him hunting with him, hoping that Alex would show a skill that he could focus on to stop him spending so much time online. However, Alex proved to be terrible at everything, whether it be stepping without crunching leaves and alerting animals, setting traps, or actually shooting the animals himself. Alex picked some tips up from his father even still, but his father persisted in trying to find something apart from Armenian culture they could bond about. They were still doing the Armenian lessons, but Aram wanted to bond with his son over something other than that.

Eventually, he decided on signing Alex up for Armenian classes in Boston and finding something else. By chance, he passed by a pet shop selling rabbits, and on a whim he bought one, a Mini Lop, for Alex, who didn’t expect that he’d fall in love with his rabbit so quickly. He named her Daisy, and she currently lives in a hutch inside his father’s hunting shed. After school, he tends to spend some time with her, taking care of her, letting her out to do exercise or just stroke her. Now that he was attending professional classes instead of his father attempting to teach him, Alex’s Armenian improved much quicker, and being able to practice it with his dad when not in classes helped a lot.

Soon Alex moved into the freshman year of high school, with tentative hopes that his reputation would be reset and he could start to make friends again. However, some people from his middle school had followed him into John Endecott Memorial and with them, his reputation as a weird kid who’s into SOTF. He did manage to make some friends who didn’t care about his morbid interests and were happy to be friends with him for who he was, but the majority of his year was either ambivalent towards him or thought he was weird.

One of the people he became friends with was a girl called Gale Bailey, who drew his attention when she set off a fire alarm during the first field trip of freshman year, causing an evacuation and delaying the trip by several minutes, and then during a presentation at the next assembly rambling about SOTF before being hurried off the stage. Sensing a kindred spirit – one who was also interested in SOTF – he sought her out, and the two soon became friends. He wasn’t the only one who had done so, and a friend group formed.

This group soon transformed into the Anti-SOTF club, where they mostly spent time doing stuff like playing games and just hanging out, mostly in his dad’s hunting shed or someone else’s shed. For the first time, Alex could talk about his theories or his interests without being seen as weird or creepy. He wasn’t the only one interested in SOTF either, so while they were gaming or chatting it was a frequent topic.

2018 brought the abduction of George Hunter High School, and with it, any respect Alex had left for Canon was completely lost. His support had already been wavering with Canon’s many gaffes and political upsets, and now that the promise Canon had made to stop SOTF from ever happening again had been broken, Alex saw no reason to support him. He still kept his branded Canon hoodie though, as it was warm in the cold Massachusetts weather. The latest abduction was a frequent topic of discussion on his forums. As he couldn’t watch the videos, his ability to talk about what was occurring suffered, which only made him more determined to get a new computer.

When he turned 16, his parents suggested that he get a part-time job, which Alex agreed with. He has a job at a local Dunkin’ Donuts; due to an agreement with his fellow employees he tends to work at the back making food and preparing beverages during peak hours, but from time to time he has to work at the till, which has helped his social skills improve a little. He also bought his own laptop with the money he earned, which let him access the conspiracy forums he frequented more regularly and watch any videos.

One day, while idly browsing Youtube, he found a video detailing how the collars used in SOTF might work. Despite the relatively mundane contents of the video, Alex found the simple explanations of the electronics possibly used interesting, and spent the rest of the day reading up about electronics and engineering. Eventually, he decided that was what he wanted to do after school, as he found the topic engaging and interesting.

He continued to watch more videos about electrical engineering; the complexity of it fascinates him, and the idea of working with his hands and doing things like building parts for robots, making sure they’re all wired up correctly and then seeing what he has built working interests him greatly. In turn, this has led him to the idea of building his own PC one day; right now, he doesn’t have much need to do so, but he thinks it would serve as a good test of his prowess to do so one day.

At school, Alex focused on his work, and as a result, his grades were consistently high in his subjects; in particular, science classes and shop interested him; he had started to do a honours class in science, and with his newfound interest in electrical engineering, he was putting even more effort into the subjects. His only struggle was with physical education, as he wasn’t athletic and tended to trip over himself when playing sports or running.

The cycle of hanging out with his club, staying up late reading about SOTF, working at Dunkin’ Donuts and excelling at school stayed consistent for a few years, up until the latter half of his sophomore year, when COVID emerged and put most of his social interaction out of commission in the resulting lockdown.

During the start of the COVID lockdown, not much of note happened in Alex’s life; he diligently did his online work assigned to him, spent more time than usual on his conspiracy forums and got into some video games. In particular, the Mass Effect series, with him playing the whole series in two weeks. His favourite characters are Mordin Solus and Legion; he finds the way Mordin rambles relatable to his own speech patterns, and Legion interested him due to it giving a better look into the Geth and their lore.

He did get back into his old hobby of reading books, which had been abandoned in favour of talking about SOTF. Often, while he let Daisy out in the garden to get some fresh air, he’d pick up one of his old books and read it, keeping an eye on her while she wandered around the garden. Over the course of the lockdown, Alex ordered some more books online, as several of the books he had ended in a cliffhanger or were in a series, and he wanted to see what happened next in the stories. His favourite genres tend to be on the realistic side; non-fiction, stories about crime or serial killers. The works of Agatha Christie are his favourite, although if the blurb is interesting he’ll read books written by any author.

Alex also took more of an interest in Daisy; he had spent time with her pre-pandemic, but now that he wasn’t tired from school or his job, he could pay more attention to her. She was very affectionate, and sometimes his time would be spent reading and cuddling with her whenever she had tired herself out from running around the garden. He began to use Reddit to look up tips for keeping her healthy and happy, and stumbled upon a video showing how to teach your rabbit simple tricks. Curious, he managed to teach Daisy how to target – touch something with her nose – and to sit on command with the help of treats. This deepened their bond, and even after the pandemic, Alex persisted in trying to teach her new tricks. So far this effort has not bore fruit, but they both enjoy it.

In the early months of the pandemic, his maternal grandfather, who even in his older age was still working for the Armenian-American lobby in Washington, contracted COVID and died in hospital. Having never met the man before except for a few visits when he was a little kid, Alex didn’t honestly feel much. However, when the wave of COVID conspiracy theorists hit his forums, he found that he was getting into protracted arguments with them, which was unusual. He realised that now he knew someone who had died, it was suddenly much more personal to him.

Without much to do apart from stay home, Alex delved deeper into the conspiracy boards, getting into arguments with the new wave of COVID conspiracists; his arguing caused him to receive several warnings, but soon the wave of new members promoting COVID conspiracies tapered off, and they were free to discuss SOTF. He still kept in contact with his fellow club members via a Discord server, although they didn’t have much to talk about, with school shut.

Academically, Alex continues to excel. He ranks at the top of his class, his GPA only stunted by his poor physical education results. In particular, his best classes are anything related to science and shop. Socially, he continues to suffer, his only friends being the few people who can look past or tolerate his reputation and his peers in the anti-SOTF club. If anyone not in that group tries to talk to him, he is reserved, not wanting to make any social errors.

He is close with his parents; Aram tends to try and spend time with him, notably taking him to a Boston protest in October against the Nagorno-Karabakh truce. Alex may not have as much of a passion for Armenian culture and history or hunting as his father does, but he still finds it interesting, and appreciates the time he spends with him. Along with his sister Mary, the trio are planning to visit Armenia once the restrictions on international travel are lifted to visit his paternal grandparents and uncle in Yerevan. His mother often chats with him after school, and they have both been supportive of his career prospects. Meanwhile, he is not too close to his sister, who is entering freshman year in John Endecott Memorial; she doesn’t want his reputation as a weird SOTF guy to rub off on her, and their interactions, even at home, are mostly brief. Alex sometimes shows up to watch her play lacrosse, but that’s the only real in-school interaction they have.

Alex is bisexual with a preference for men, and came to that conclusion in sixth grade. He hasn’t come out to his parents or anyone apart from his closest friends, partially out of nerves and a desire to keep putting it off, partially out of fear that his parents will reject him for it. This fear is spurred on by online stories of parents rejecting their children for being LGBT, although Alex’s parents have shown no sign that they would do so, and are indeed quite socially liberal.

When it comes to conspiracies, his only interest is in SOTF; things such as the assassination of JFK and the moon landing don’t interest him, as most of the discussion was done before he was born and nowadays, it’s just people arguing over who killed JFK, or even if he is actually dead. He has a particular disdain for people who engage in COVID conspiracy theories, especially with the death of his grandfather, and has been banned from several forums for getting into heated arguments with people over the subject. When it comes to SOTF, however, he is very well-informed, thanks to research and debate with others on conspiracy forums. He has watched many videos of SOTF, normally while he tries to construct a rebuttal or theory, and has also read a few books about SOTF, as well as other books about true crime.

Politically, Alex is uninformed; his support for Canon stemmed largely from his anti-SOTF points, and as soon as George Hunter High School was abducted, his support for him disappeared. He has hopes that Kirby can do a better job than him, although with how both parties have had SOTF occur under their time in office, he considers it unlikely.

When Alex leaves John Endecott Memorial, he intends to go into electrical engineering; he’s hoping to be able to attend MIT’s electrical engineering courses on a scholarship on account of his good grades, but if that doesn’t play out how he wants it to then he will try and secure an apprenticeship with his father’s firm.

Advantages: Most of Alex’s close friends are, like him, people who are interested in SOTF, and if he can link up with them on the island, he will have good allies who he can trust and who can trust him. His interest in SOTF and true crime has also helped desensitise him to gore and death, so he won’t be disgusted or panic around dead bodies.
Disadvantages: Alex has very few friends that he could rely on outside of the anti-SOTF club due to his reputation as a conspiracy theorist, many of whom would not be going on the school trip anyway and thus limiting his number of allies further. He is also relatively unathletic and clumsy due to a general lack of exercise and finesse. His knowledge of SOTF may also be a disadvantage; having followed the last iteration of SOTF closely, he may be quick to assume bad intentions when interacting with other people.

Designated Number: Student No. 002

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Designated Weapon: Throwing Spear

Conclusion: Guy is obsessed with SOTF but never thought to actually, y'know, workout in case he got grabbed. What a fucking idiot. - Josie Knight