S059 - Thorne, Taylor "Tay" [DECEASED]

#1

Name: Taylor “Tay” Emilie Thorne
Gender: Non-binary (assigned female)
Age: 17
Grade: 12
School: John Endecott Memorial Academy
Hobbies and Interests: Video games, partying, social media, radio, lucid dreaming

Appearance: Taylor is 5’4” tall and underweight at 107 pounds, giving them a thin and bony figure. They are flat-chested and usually forego wearing a bra, not seeing the need. They are Caucasian and pale-skinned from spending most of their time indoors, and they often have shadows under their eyes from staying up late. Taylor has a narrow, oval-shaped face with a long nose, large green eyes, and a somewhat wide mouth. Their hair is wavy and styled in a pixie cut with their bangs parted on one side and swept to the right; it is naturally black but has been bleached and is currently dyed lime green.

Not particularly fashionable nor interested in developing a personal style, Taylor wears clothes in mostly black and gray in order to get by with minimum effort put into matching pieces. A typical outfit consists of a t-shirt, a jacket, shorts or cropped pants, and slip-on shoes. They do enjoy wearing jewelry, but their choices in accessories are also fairly simple and usually in black. Their ears are pierced once in the lobe, though whether they wear earrings depends on their mood. They occasionally wear makeup, but usually forget.

On the day of the abduction, Taylor was wearing a light gray three-quarter sleeve shirt with the words “Party, Sleep, Repeat” on the front in black letters, a black button-up cardigan with white buttons, dark skinny jeans, dark gray socks, and black and white slip-on Vans shoes. They were also wearing a black band choker and black spike pendant earrings, as well as a black and white checkered scarf.

Biography: Taylor was born on April 21, 2004. They are the middle child of three, born to Jana and Kerry Thorne, a post office worker and DJ for a local radio station in Salem, respectively. The three Thorne siblings are all far apart in age; Taylor’s brother Bryce is a full ten years older than them and was born while their parents were still high school students, while their sister Deanna is five years younger. While Jana and Kerry’s respective parents were very active in the children’s lives during Bryce’s childhood and Taylor’s early years, advanced age made them less able to provide care for the three children when their parents were at work. Jana’s parents had both passed away by the time Taylor entered high school, and Kerry’s parents still allow Taylor and Deanna to spend time at their home with a small amount of supervision, but they are no longer really caretakers.

Taylor got most of the attention when they were the baby of the family while Bryce was left more to his own devices, a pattern that would repeat once Deanna was born. None of the Thorne children are very close with each other thanks to the large age difference, and Bryce was always especially distant thanks to his belief that Taylor and then Deanna got disproportionate care and attention compared to what he had gotten when he was a young child, due to Jana and Kerry being unprepared teenagers when he was born. This distance slowly grew into resentment towards his younger siblings, as he felt that they both had things significantly easier than he had, benefitting from their parents’ more established careers and experience with children by the time the younger two were born.

Tay was always easily entertained by the TV and video games on consoles or the computer and was often left with these devices by their parents and babysitters. They spent much of their free time during childhood playing games on their dad’s old PlayStation and seeking out games online. As they grew older, Taylor’s preferences solidified into a taste for exploration games, especially those heavy on style and lighter on story, as they enjoyed the experience of simply finding their way through different environments without the pressure of concrete goals or time limits. Their favorite games are Yume Nikki and other open-world games in its style.

Once they entered school, Taylor proved to be an average student whose grades mainly suffered because they were easily distracted and often ended up daydreaming or talking to classmates instead of paying attention and doing their work. These problems were mitigated when they had active guidance from their teachers and parents, but Tay never really managed to develop strong time management skills or ways to keep themselves from getting distracted while trying to do homework. They were also generally excitable and prone to overreact when confronted with problems, which made working through obstacles more difficult for them. Tay was tested for ADD/ADHD and anxiety disorders during elementary school thanks to teachers’ and their parents’ concerns, but the official ruling was that while they displayed some traits in line with learning disabilities or an anxiety disorder, there simply wasn’t enough there for a diagnosis, and they were more likely just a disorganized and excitable personality.

While Tay would never be more than a somewhat competent student, they made friends easily with other children. They were friendly and imaginative, and their friends were often willing to help them out with schoolwork by reminding them to focus and walking them through material that they had trouble with, or sometimes allowing Tay to copy their own work when Tay had forgotten to do the assignment. Taylor’s social life was generally well-balanced between spending time with friends both in and out of school and spending time on their own, usually playing video games. As they got older and more active on the internet, they began keeping up with established friends and meeting new people through social media and online communities dedicated to their hobbies. Taylor has had an online social presence for as long as they have been able, maintaining accounts on several social media and gaming sites. They also have a YouTube channel, to which they uploaded a few videos of video games and other random activities for a short while before losing interest.

Aside from their short-lived YouTube channel, Taylor is active on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and they follow several video game streamers that they like on Twitch. On occasion, they've branched out to alternative platforms like Mastodon, but their posting rate on these other platforms is sporadic, as they usually return to the more established sites. Taylor doesn't post with a particular focus, rather making general comments about their hobbies and uploading random pictures throughout a typical day. Social media is their preferred method of meeting new people, since their social circle in real life is already fairly large. Taylor is often glued to their phone, and it has been confiscated by their parents or teachers on multiple occasions since it tends to draw their attention more than their schoolwork does.

Online communities were the first place that Taylor encountered discussions of gender and sexuality; they slowly grew more interested when introduced to the concepts of being transgender and gender non-conforming. Tay had always been considered a tomboy, and with the added anonymity of the internet and their neutral name, it wasn’t uncommon for strangers to assume that they were male. During adolescence, they realized that they were more comfortable when people did not refer to them as a girl. In spaces where it would not be seen by people who knew them offline, Taylor began testing the waters of presenting themselves as more gender-neutral, using they/them pronouns and stating that they preferred to not be called a girl. Several of their online friends were supportive of this, and Tay has taken to identifying as non-binary online.

In reality, they feel that they are still discovering their full identity and have considered the possibilities that they are a transgender man or that they identify with a term that they are not yet aware of. They have begun testing the waters of asking friends outside of the internet to use neutral pronouns for them; while they have felt happy and comfortable with the results, they are still hesitant to openly identify as non-binary, feeling that they would be obligated to come out to everyone they know if they did. Their stance is that it is okay to take time figuring themselves out, and they do not want to rush into making major changes in their life. However, they do sometimes worry that they are being dishonest by not committing firmly to an identity, and they experience continuing discomfort with their family and acquaintances referring to them as a girl.

Aside from their conflicted feelings about gender, Taylor remains a generally happy and social person. Their grades are still on the lower end of average, more due to their scatterbrained nature than a lack of ability. They have a lot of friends, both close and casual, and they are often invited to parties and get-togethers. They enjoy house parties with loud music and lots of people, and they are willing to experiment with alcohol and sometimes other substances when they have the chance. These forays into illicit substances have had mixed results, as some worsen their anxious and high-energy tendencies, leaving them feeling stressed out and uncomfortable afterwards, but they enjoy being known as a free-spirited partier who is willing to try new things. More reserved peers may find their abundance of energy and disorganization annoying, but Tay often doesn’t realize this unless directly confronted with it. Tay has had a few relationships in high school, all fairly short and casual. They are attracted to girls, of which their parents are aware and accepting, but don’t feel fully comfortable identifying as a lesbian due to their questioning of their own gender.

Tay’s core hobbies have rarely changed, but they do have more secondary interests which come and go, usually ideas that they come across on the internet and indulge for a while before losing interest. Their latest fascination is the concept of lucid dreaming, a state where a person is aware that they are dreaming and may have control over how the narrative of the dream progresses. They came across the idea while browsing internet forums and have enjoyed reading testimonials from people who claim to practice lucid dreaming, finding it reminiscent of their favorite video games. They have attempted it themselves, but their irregular sleep schedule and lack of discipline to train themselves out of their habits has resulted in them not yet consistently having lucid dream experiences.

While other aspects of their life are generally good, Tay is not very healthy physically. Mostly unrestricted access to the TV, family computer, and later on their own laptop enabled them to develop the habit of staying up very late from a young age playing games or browsing the internet. They were already inattentive in school, so the additional lack of attentiveness from little sleep was rarely noted by their parents or teachers, leaving it to go uncorrected unless they made noise during the night and were forced by their parents to turn off their devices and go to bed. Moving into their teenage years, Tay began turning to energy drinks to keep themselves more alert and awake during the day. This did not help their generally jumpy and excitable personality, and it had the added effect of leading them to develop a caffeine addiction, making them experience fatigue and headaches when they went without their fix.

Taylor’s eating habits are also poor; they skip meals regularly due to either forgetfulness or lack of appetite brought on by their irregular schedule, high caffeine intake, and anxious feelings. They have been slightly underweight ever since hitting their growth spurt and have had trouble gaining any significant weight to attain a healthier BMI thanks to their habits. The Thorne family physician has brought up concerns about their poor diet during yearly checkups, but neither Taylor nor their parents have put much effort towards making any changes to deal with it. Tay has gotten used to running on little food and little sleep and hasn’t yet suffered any obvious detriments from it, and their parents don’t fully grasp that being underweight can be as much a problem as being overweight. It has even become something of a running joke among their friends that they never sleep or eat and run solely on energy drinks. With nobody in their daily life seeming to take the issue seriously, Tay doesn’t feel much pressure to change.

At home, the Thorne family are largely hands-off with each other. Jana and Kerry spend much of their time working, and the three Thorne children are all at different enough stages of their lives that they have little to relate over. A strain has been introduced in the form of Bryce recently having to move back home after being laid off from his job during the COVID-19 pandemic and being unable to find steady employment in his field again. Now 27, Bryce is very unhappy with his current situation. He works as a sales associate at a local furniture store, which he feels is beneath him, and at home he alternates between isolating himself and taking his frustrations out on his family in arguments and snide comments. He belittles Jana and Kerry for having been teen parents and blames his failures on their parenting, and he is dismissive of Taylor and Deanna. The rest of the family largely avoids him due to this.

While still not close, Taylor’s relationships with the rest of their family are more positive. Deanna is currently in sixth grade, and Jana and Kerry are usually occupied with her extracurriculars when they aren’t busy with work. Tay attends Deanna’s school events when possible and doesn’t mind watching her when their parents are busy, though they usually follow the established pattern of leaving Deanna alone in front of the TV or computer while they do their own thing. They get along well with both their parents and are slightly closer with their father than their mother, as Kerry and Taylor are more similar in personality.

In the last few years, Taylor has developed an interest in Kerry’s work as a radio DJ. They sometimes run errands for him and his coworkers at the station for pocket money and have even made brief appearances on the radio during Kerry’s shift, making short announcements and holding down the fort while he takes a break. They enjoy these experiences and find radio broadcasting to be a profession that feels social without featuring many of the difficulties and stressors in jobs that more directly deal with people. Kerry was able to get them an internship at the radio station for their senior year of high school, and they have tentatively decided that they want to get their associate’s degree in communications at community college with the aim of becoming a professional in the field. If they can’t break into radio, they have considered trying to start a podcast instead, though they are undecided on what topics they would cover on one if they did this.

Advantages: Taylor is friendly, well-liked, and nonthreatening; they are unlikely to be considered hostile, which could make it easier for them to both find safety with others and catch an opponent by surprise if necessary. They are used to operating reasonably functionally in the short term on comparatively less food and sleep than many of their classmates.
Disadvantages: Taylor is underweight and physically weak. Their poor eating habits and light weight make them more susceptible to malnutrition in the long term than others. Additionally, their irregular sleep schedule and dependence on caffeine make them prone to fatigue, and they experience headaches and irritability if they go more than a day without a caffeine fix. Tay has a generally jumpy and anxious personality, which may make them more liable to break down under stress.

Designated Number: Student No. 059

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Designated Weapon: Ball-gag and handcuffs

Conclusion: Of all the hobbies to bring with you to a death island, I think lucid dreaming is the stupidest. Veronica! Veronica come laugh at this with me! - Josie Knight