Michael Froese

[Kermit]

Name: Michael Froese
Gender: Male
Age: 17
Grade: Senior
School: George Hunter High School
Hobbies and Interests: Marine biology, paleontology, marine paleontology, video games, choir, reading Wikipedia, playing with his dogs.

Appearance: Weighing 110 lbs and standing at 5'10'', Michael has a worryingly skinny appearance, though on most days it's only noticeable in his legs as he tends to wear long-sleeved shirts. He is pale-skinned, due to spending most of his time indoors. Other than the two preceding traits, Michael styles his appearance after whatever the popular teen style trends are, as to avoid attracting unwanted attention to himself. Michael has medium-short length golden-blond hair, which is usually in a gelled taper cut parted to the left. His hair is naturally wavy when ungelled. He has very Nordic-looking facial features, with high, pronounced cheekbones, a strong jaw, and pale blue eyes. His nose has a small bump on its bridge, and it is very slightly bent to the right due to genetics. His eyebrows are well-defined, and are a somewhat darker colour than his hair. He usually wears long-sleeved henley shirts with a hoodie overtop skinny jeans or chinos, and a worn pair of hiking boots. While he can see competently without them, Michael wears a pair of prescription bifocals. He wears an insulin pump (OmniPod brand) on either of his upper arms or hips.

Biography: Michael was born on August 7th, 2000 to Caroline Wilde and Robert Froese, a married couple living in San Francisco (Caroline didn't take her husband's surname.). Robert worked in the city's urban forestry department, and earned a wage high enough for Caroline to be able to be a stay-at-home mother for Michael until he entered elementary school, at which point she began as the communications coordinator at a local leisure center. Michael was and still is their only child.

Michael's early years went by fairly normally, being enrolled in preschool and pre-kindergarten. When Michael was three, his dad showed him an old biology textbook, and while he didn't understand most of it, Michael found himself intrigued by illustrations and photographs of microscopic organisms such as diatoms and vorticella. Michael was particularly fascinated by parameciums, reaching a level where he yelled out that he was a paramecium during a doctor's appointment.

While his obsession with protists eventually faded, it was replaced when, during a trip to visit family in the Canadian province of Alberta, Michael visited the Royal Tyrrell Museum, where he saw the museum's Burgess Shale exhibit. Fascinated by the alien appearance of the creatures shown, he gained an interest in early marine life and modern-day marine invertebrates that persists to present-day.

Elementary school went by mostly uneventfully, though initially Michael had a hard time adjusting to the change between kindergarten and elementary. Middle school went the same way until the summer before grade 8, when his dad got a job offer from the city of Chattanooga's parks department. As the job paid substantially higher, the offer was accepted, and the family moved to Tennessee. Michael, as an introvert, managed to make a few friends, a few of whom were of at least acceptable social standing in the school, though most of those he did befriend were gamers.

When he entered high school, Michael began to grow closer to his more popular friends, and started neglecting his less socially desirable ones. While still on friendly terms with a some of them, he tries to avoid his former friends in order to avoid any unwanted association. When not in class, he tries to blend into the background, usually sitting at a table in the school foyer or library, reading on his phone. Academically, Michael is an average student, getting 80s% and mid-70s in most classes except biology and chemistry, in which he gets higher than average marks, and in physics and math, in which he gets lower than average marks. Michael is in the biology club, because of his fondness for marine biology, and the school choir, because he's a surprisingly good singer, and he hopes showing it off will make people like him. After high school, he plans on studying marine biology, hoping to either specialize in invertebrates or use it as a gateway to marine paleontology.

Throughout his life, Michael has had many medical problems. He's always been quite skinny, partially due to genetics, and partially to being a stubborn, picky eater with a small appetite. At 13, he was diagnosed with depression and type one diabetes, ADHD at 14, and recently has been diagnosed with level one autism spectrum disorder. He has a family history of each malady, and as such, underwent testing for each and ended up diagnosed. When he was 16, he qualified for an insulin pump and has used one ever since. Michael often uses these to his advantage, using his mental illnesses as excuses to get extensions on school projects or to go home early, and he often fakes low blood sugar to get out of things he doesn't want to do. Both Michael's parents and his diabetes specialist have expressed concern over his weight, and have recommended him to add 300 daily calories to his diet, which he obtains with meal-replacement drinks.

Since an early age, Michael has spent most of his free time at home, playing video games. Aware of the social stigma against this, he is ashamed by it, and gives vague answers whenever asked about his hobbies. Due to many of the games he plays involving characters with randomized names, he has gone through the yearbook and created lists of names (one for males, one for females, and one for surnames), and if possible, adding the lists to the resources the games use to generate names. In the past year, he's started a few Wikipedia reading projects, first attempting to read the Wikipedia page of every year, starting at 1 A.D., and the pages of people who died in that year. Michael has since gotten bored with that project, and has begun reading about the disasters, crimes, and deaths that have happened in a country, figuring the best way to learn about a place is to know about all the bad stuff that has happened to it. Michael has a very good memory and ability to recall facts, having gotten the highest possible score in a trivia test used as part of his autism diagnosis. His father jokes that if marine biology doesn't work out, he could always make it big as a Jeopardy champion.

Michael deeply values the opinions people have of him, and has grown quite insecure about it. As a result, he's become very judgmental to those who he dislikes or those lower on the social ladder than him, either smack talking them mentally or with friends. He is aware of his insecurity problem, but believes that it's fine as it makes him feel better about himself and doesn't actually hurt anybody as long as they don't find out about it. Michael makes sure that anybody he gossips about is a social outcast or don't have any friends privy to the conversation. He has a very self-deprecating sense of humour, making himself out as dumber than he actually is; he doesn't care if people actually think he's stupid, he just wants to make people happy; he knows that he's intelligent, and that people will like him if he makes them laugh.

While he has a bitter and mean-spirited side, Michael is also a very empathetic person. He is aware that he's just mean to people so that he feels better about himself, and believes that those he looks down upon aren't actually doing anything wrong, as they're not actively hurting anyone and are just doing what they find fun. Michael makes a point of reading the names of every victim of each major terrorist attack (9/11, the Survival of the Fittest mass kidnappings/murders, etc.) on the anniversaries of the respective attack.

Michael's empathy manifests itself in another way, too: His love for animals. He's been a vegetarian by choice since the age of three, which has contributed significantly to his low body weight, and volunteers at the local humane society. In the past few years, he's tried to eat meat and meat replacements like hamburger patties made of soya, but has found that he vomits whenever eating anything that tastes like meat. Michael has a particular fondness of cephalopods, believing them to be smarter than most vertebrates classically considered intelligent (e.g. dogs, cats, or rats). He's had pets all throughout his life, in San Francisco having owned two border collies (one named Wren, the other Roswell), three frogs (who remained unnamed), a variety of pufferfish (also unnamed), two frilled lizards (Boy Frilly and Girl Frilly), a panther chameleon (unnamed), a Jackson's chameleon (Pincer), two crested geckos (Gecky and Bart), a group of pygmy chameleons, a colony of hermit crabs, and a Great Pyrenees named Jerry, all of whom either died from natural causes or were put up for adoption when the family moved to Tennessee. Currently, he has a Pomeranian named Waffles—full name Waffles Z. Vünderhünd—and a tri-coloured Corgi named Karen—full name Karen Ellen Daffodil Bwlchgwyn, both who he loves dearly.

Advantages: Michael isn't likely to have many enemies on the island, as he's tried his best to ensure everyone has at worst a neutral opinion on him, though there are some exceptions in former friends and people who've found out that he was talking about them behind their backs. His excellent memory and ability to quickly make judgement calls could be an asset in situations where he has to make a quick decision. Additionally, his empathetic nature may help him create goodwill with other students on the island.
Disadvantages: Michael has little muscle mass, and thus is likely at a large disadvantage in any close-range combat situation and may grow malnourished or fatigued faster than others. If left unmedicated, Michael's ADHD, while not severe, could leave him unable to fully concentrate, and his depression, in combination with his self-loathing issues, may lead him down the path to suicide if left untreated. Anybody he has alienated in the past may hold a grudge against him, and may act upon it given the chance. Finally, his diabetes presents a large problem; If untreated, it will lead to ketoacidosis, which will cause Michael's body to rapidly use water, causing dehydration. If his ketoacidosis remains untreated, he will also go through severe fatigue and nausea. Michael's insulin pump makes a beeping noise whenever it begins/stops delivering insulin, when it needs to be replaced (every three days), and during the replacement process, meaning that he may be detected by other students when it beeps. Michael will be vulnerable while he's changing his pod, and if his blood tester/insulin dose manager is destroyed, stolen, otherwise inaccessible, he will be unable to treat his diabetes at all. If he gives an insulin dose too large or doesn't eat enough carbohydrates, he will become hypoglycemic, which if left untreated will cause him confusion, fatigue, and potentially give him a seizure and/or send him into a diabetic coma.