Alexander Hawthorne

[Salic]

Name: Alexander Hawthorne
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Grade: Senior
School: John Endecott Memorial Academy
Hobbies and Interests: Flight, engineering, taking things apart to see how they work, reading books about math and science

Appearance: Alexander is tall and lanky with a wiry frame. He stands at 6’2” and weighs 137 pounds. He has a very pale complexion, owing to his English heritage. His hair is light brown and always parted to the right. He keeps it cut short, with his bangs never being longer than an inch and his hair never being longer than half an inch. He has no facial hair.

Alexander has an average-sized head and face with high, prominent cheekbones, slim cheeks, and a slim jaw. His chin is neither prominent nor recessive and is rounded. He has a straight nose that extends an inch from his face. His mouth is small, as are his lips.

He has large, almond-shaped eyes, which are brown in coloration. His prominent brow makes it so he appears to have sunken-in eyes. His eyebrows are thin and are the same color as his hair. His ears are large with attached lobes.

His torso is slim with little muscle definition but capable of taut strength when pushed. It is possible to see his ribs without any kind of manipulation to his body. His arms are slightly longer than average for someone of his height and frame, and he has long, spindly fingers due to arachnodactyly. His legs are of average size for someone of his height and build. His shoulders, torso, and hips all line up, giving him a very linear and symmetrical body shape and appearance.

Alexander has a tendency to wear formal clothing, even when more casual attire is preferred. His clothing color includes any color except for pink, orange, and yellow, and he refuses to wear any brightly colored or garish clothing. He has a black and gold Casio watch, which is a gift from his father. Alexander refuses to take it off, unless he is taking a shower. On the day of his abduction, Alexander was wearing a black greatcoat, a dark green button-up shirt, gray dress pants, a black leather belt with a shiny silver buckle, black dress shoes, white ankle socks, and his watch.

Biography: Alexander was born in Salem, Massachusetts on January 13. He is the eldest of four children of Landon and Katrina Hawthorne (née Smith). He has two sisters: Marissa, 16, and Lena, 14. He has one brother, Nathan, 16. Landon Hawthorne, a business executive for an automotive company, and Katrina Hawthrorne, a registered nurse, provided an exorbitant amount of money for their family, and they would often take out-of-country vacations over the summer months. Alexander’s earliest memory is in the airport of one of these family vacations, where he saw his first airplane. Alexander was instantly mystified by the machine and wanted to discover how something so large and heavy could still be capable of flight. When his father said he didn’t know, Alexander suggested that they take it apart to find out. His parents were pleasantly surprised at his early interest in engineering, and bought him models of planes and LEGOs to take apart and rebuild. This fascination would develop over his childhood, leading to his current interests of flight, and engineering and deconstructing and reconstructing mechanical things. His dream is to build his own airplane and to take it around on joyrides, as he finds the thought of freedom and solitude in the air to be his utopia.

Alexander had an enjoyable childhood, where his every need was taken care of and his wants could be fulfilled at a whim. His father was away on business trips often, but Alexander was closest to him emotionally. He loved playing around with his father, who encouraged his passion for engineering and often bought him LEGO sets to challenge him with building the most structurally stable building he could. Alexander excelled, and Landon Hawthorne’s praise filled him with pride and a desire to make engineering his life’s career. After he was done, he would always deconstruct his building and repurpose the LEGOs to make an airplane.

He was far less close to his mother and siblings. He would speak to them and discuss his day with them, of course, but he rarely went in-depth with his experiences and emotions with them. As such, his siblings often played with each other rather than with him, marking the beginning of a distant relationship with his siblings. His mother tried to coax him out of his emotional shell, but all of her attempts to do so were met with harsh rebuttals from Alexander. His mother eventually stopped trying, and was forced to accept that she could never be close to her eldest child. This caused a great rift between the two, and they rarely talked to each other.

Alexander entered kindergarten at age 5 and promptly fell in love with school. It tapped into his curiosity and his inquisitive nature encouraged him to seek new knowledge from different sources. He asked his parents for a library card, and they were more than happy to oblige. On his days off, his father would take Alexander to the library, where he would sit and read every book about airplanes he could find. However, he ran into an unexpected obstacle: he did not understand some of the words. So, he set out to expand his vocabulary as much as possible and did so with gusto. When Alexander entered second grade, he was reading at a 6th-grade reading level.

His overachievements in academics became the stuff of praise his praise to his teachers and of ridicule to his classmates. The taunts of his peers did little to discourage him from his intellectual pursuits. Whenever the class has to answer difficult questions, he would always be the first to answer, and he would always solve it with ease. He always came home with spotless report cards, much to the delight of his parents and teachers. Alexander basked in the praise, and he quickly developed an ego to match his intellect. Since schoolwork was such a breeze for him, he failed to develop good studying habits and never got a proper work ethic. He also loathed being academically challenged and became jealous when another student grasped a concept more quickly than he did.

At the age of 12, Alexander’s father had been diagnosed with Stage 3 lung cancer due to a lifetime of smoking. His family was devastated, but Alexander was the most affected. Alexander was exceptionally idealistic about his chances. He still played with his father as much as he could, built LEGO buildings for him, and adopted a bright and cheery attitude to try and help his father emotionally during treatment. After two years of struggle, however, Landon Hawthorne perished from his illness.

Alexander grieved for years. He tried the impossible task of rationalizing his grief away and eventually came to the conclusion that if he had coldly analyzed his father’s chances for survival rather than naively hoping, he would have been spared from the pain he felt. Thus, an irrevocable change in personality had occurred in Alexander, and he had changed from a cheery but reserved boy to a cold, emotionally withdrawn person who over-analyzed everything with pure logic. He became convinced that idealism was an unfortunate mistake at best, and fodder for madness at worst, and disdained anything better. He also had a revelation that letting emotions influence his decisions was harmful, and that he had to carefully consider the objective pros and cons of decisions before he would take action. While this slowed his decision-making process, he took decisive action when it was done, and it was nearly impossible to convince him to switch his course, as he had already considered that course of action to be the best one objectively. A large part of this personality change, which he refuses to admit to himself, is because he is afraid of being inflicted with the pain from failed hope and idealism, and his personality change was almost an unconscious coping mechanism for his grief.

Landon's death also had the effect of desensitizing his son to death. The concept had been planted firmly into Alexander's mind, and his rationalization of death led him to accept that death was a natural part of life that would occur for everyone. He realized that no one, not even himself, was immune to its effects, and considered that every death, even ones caused by unnatural causes, was simply a fact of life that could not be changed and was inevitable.

A significant portion of the family’s money had been spent attempting to treat Landon’s illness, and so Alexander’s teenage years were somewhat less luxurious than his youth. He was cut off from his engineering hobby due to monetary constraints, and became even more cold and hostile as a result. He eventually took some solace in reading, and found himself becoming lost in books about science and mathematics for hours. He also discovered that he loved watching documentaries and shows about science, with his unquestioned favorite being MythBusters.

Alexander had a rocky start with middle school. Coursework became far more difficult, and he had yet to do any studying at all. In English, his worst subject, he barely put in the minimum amount of effort needed to pass and got a low C. This would end up becoming a trend throughout the rest of his academic career. In classes he liked or was passionate about, he would pass easily, while the rest of his classes he would scrape by in with low C’s. His 8th grade year was the worst academic year of his life, as by that point Alexander had fallen out of love with learning. He barely passed the classes he enjoyed, and for the first time, he had a report card with no A’s. His mother was horrified, and during the summer between 8th and 9th grade, she enrolled him into John Endecott Memorial Academy to try and revive her son’s passion for knowledge. Alexander, by that point filled with apathy, did not protest.

Alexander entered JEM in 9th grade and quickly learned to loathe everything about the place except for the workshop. He realized too late that none of his friends were coming with him, and he was overtaken by a crippling sense of loneliness. His caustic personality hardly helped; with great but unintentional haste, he alienated his classmates with angry outbursts and long stretches of cold silence. His academic performance placed him in the lower-middle of the pack, which was far below both his mother’s and his expectations.

Alexander’s friendless existence ceased unexpectedly with the arrival of Valentin Shulgin. Valentin Shulgin was a transfer student from Novosibirsk, Russia, and looked for someone who looked lonely to make friends with. He saw Alexander eating lunch alone, building a bridge out of toothpicks and marshmallows, and decided that he would befriend him. Alexander was naturally harsh and cold to Valentin, and tried to drive him away with harsh words. Valentin refused to give up, however, and started by complimenting Alexander’s bridge. This immediately lowered Alexander’s guard, and he talked at length about his love for engineering. Alexander noticed the fascination on Valentin’s face and realized that he held a striking resemblance to his father. Some of the ice that surrounded Alexander’s heart melted, and he let Valentin into a part of his heart that had felt hollow for so long. Since then, the two have been inseparable, and they frequently spend all of their free time with each other. Alexander had even picked up a respect and admiration for Valentin’s interests of literature, drama, and poetry, though he does not have an interest in doing those things himself.

With Valentin’s encouragement, Alexander gradually regained his zeal for education and began to develop proper studying habits. By the end of 11th grade, Alexander had straight A’s and was in the top percentiles of his class. Valentin’s natural charisma and affinity for socializing helped Alexander build and rebuild bridges with his classmates. While he still wasn’t close to being universally beloved, he had shed his reputation as an outcast, though whether or not any random student has a positive opinion of him or not is a toss-up.

Alexander spends much of his free time in the JEM workshop, taking things apart and rebuilding them, building something completely new out of scraps from the trash heap, and constructing structures that are structurally stable out of random materials. He even began building a drone in Endecott’s workshop with the permission of the staff. He is attempting to create this drone with nothing but spare parts and junk he finds from various places. He often gets lost in his work, and it takes significant effort to pull him out until he is satisfied with what he has accomplished.

Alexander is a very cold and distant person to most people other than Valentin. Thus, he has had no time or desire to begin a relationship with anyone. He is rather harsh to his peers, but he intends no malice towards any of them. This attitude has naturally pushed most of his classmates away from him, however, and he cannot count on anyone but Valentin to support him in any way. Alexander trusts no one but Valentin, and if a decision he’s made had the consequences of hurting someone else, he would feel no guilt.

His familial relations are strained, and he tries to interact with his siblings and mother as little as possible. He regards his feelings of familial love as an obligation rather than something to be celebrated, and plans to have as little interaction with them as possible when he is out of the house. The feeling is mutual with the rest of his family. When Alexander is out of the house, he plans to attend MIT and get a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering. Later in life, he plans to use his disposable income to attend flight school and become a registered pilot, and use his training to fly plane that he plans to construct in his spare time.

Advantages: Alexander’s analytical nature has allowed him to gain a considerable handle on his emotions, and can keep his cool under most circumstances. His desensitized attitude towards death will also help preserve his mental state. His ability to jury-rig tools out of junk and scraps could assist him surviving on an island with few materials.
Disadvantages: His rudeness and bluntness with others has alienated him from them, and will have difficulty finding any allies outside of Valentin. His neglect of physical activities has lowered his strength, so will be at a disadvantage in head-to-head combat.

[Salic]

Just did a fairly major edit of Alexander’s bio, so if any staff member read it before, it has been amended with much more detail than before.

[backslash]

Howdy Salic, please don't post in your profile threads unless you're responding to a critique to confirm that you made requested edits. If someone is looking over the queue at a glance to see which profile needs to be picked up next, yours could be overlooked if it looks like someone has been posting in there. When a staff member looks over your profile in an official capacity, they'll post their critique to notify you.

[Ruggahissy]

Hello and welcome welcome! I am Ruggahissy and I will be your moderator for this profile. Let's take a look.

analyzing situations with logic

- This seems more like a personality trait rather than a hobby. You would use logic to analyze situations, which could be a part of different hobbies. But as is, I think it's to broad to be a hobby or an interest.

- The trip will be taking place in winter in Massachusetts, so I think his abduction day outfit needs to be a bit warmer. Perhaps a nice coat or something since he likes to be dapper?

- What kind of company is his father a business executive at?

leading to his current interests of flight, engineering, and taking things apart.

- I can see how this would lead to a fascination in flight and engineering but I think I need more information on how this leads to "taking things apart."

Alexander entered kindergarten at age 5, and promptly fell in love with school. It tapped into his curiosity, and his inquisitive nature encouraged him to seek new knowledge from different sources.

- A very quick note here. You don't need a comma before a conjunction unless it's joining two independent clauses. Since "Promptly fell in love with school" is a dependent clause, you can take out the comma. Same for "his inquisitive nature..." Just something to keep in mind generally.

His overachievements in academics became the stuff of legends to his peers, who compared him to Albert Einstein regularly.

- This seems a little excessive and/or I'm not sure second graders may know who Albert Einstein is. Also children may tease or make fun of children who are seen as overly studious.

Not something to change: just a note here that I like the reasoning for Alexander's change in disposition. It is very interesting how grief at such a young age could change someone's thinking and I think its inclusion here makes for a nice element of depth.

Most of the family’s money had been spent attempting to treat Landon’s illness, and so Alexander’s teenage years were far more austere than his youth.

- I think that his illness probably wouldn't deplete their money to that extent, especially if he has health insurance, but I can see them cutting back still with a five-person family on one income now even with hefty amounts in reserve.

While he still wasn’t close to being universally beloved, he was gradually reaccepted by his peers, and shed his reputation as an outcast.

- This is also a bit close to dictating the actions of others. If you come across another character, I'll have to be up to them if he's accepted by them. But you can say that he no longer has as much of a reputation as an outkast.

He even began building the fuselage of an airplane out of scrap metal and duct tape, and wanted to make a working prototype by the end of the school year. He considered the plane to be his magnum opus for high school, and was utterly devoted to its completion.

- How big is this? A model? Where is he keeping it? Is it under the supervision of someone? It seems dangerous as a project for a high school student.

]His ability to analyze every situation he’s in will prove invaluable to be able to detect threatening individuals and life-threatening situations.

- This may need some rewording. I don't think anyone can analyze every situation they are in, especially a very hectic one like SOTF. Maybe that his analytical nature and experience in relying on that may mean he won't get overwhelmed emotionally?

- In a related note: it seems like his analytical nature is a push back on his hope and optimism which was crushed as a kid when his dad died. Has trying to remove things like optimism affected him in any way in his life? Does he find himself trying to push down such emotions because he's afraid of hoping like he did before?

- I'd like more information on his hobby of taking things apart and putting them together. When did that start? Did he have small items to take apart like maybe clocks bought from second-hand stores no one would care about or other such simple items? What does he take apart and put together now? I think the only thing I saw mentioned was building of LEGO which does scan with engineering.

- What are his plans for the future?

- Might his past traumatic experience with death have an affect on him come time for the island?

I think that's it! Please let me know what the edits are made, and I'll be here to take another look. If you have any questions at all I'm available on the board and on Discord. Just let me know.

[Salic]

Edited!

[Ruggahissy]

Hello, I'm back and apologize for the wait. Speedy times from here on out.

I have one additional question on this which is that dad works for General Motors. It doesn't have to be as specific as naming the company, I was just curious what kind of business he was in. But General Motors brings a wrinkle since it doesn't look like they have much business in Mass -- their website lists only 13 employees in the state and an exec would be more likely to live in Detroit where the HQ is.

You can make this more vague or you can maybe take a look at what businesses might be available in Salem or nearby Boston that would allow for an exec level position.

AND THAT'S IT. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE

[Salic]

EDITED

I AWAIT YOUR JUDGEMENT

[Ruggahissy]

All right, GET OUTTA HEA

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