Thomas Buckley

[Catche Jagger]

Name: Thomas Buckley
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Grade: Senior
School: George Hunter High School
Hobbies and Interests: Acting, video games (primarily RPGs, puzzle games and strategy games), science fiction films and literature

Appearance: Standing at 6'2 and weighing 191 pounds, Thomas is quite tall if not a bit average in figure. Despite his height, few would call the boy imposing, being quite lanky and walking with a sight slouch. Thomas is of primarily Irish-American descent, resulting in a fairly pale and pinkish complexion. His regularly clean-shaven face is long and angular with a similarly long, aquiline nose. The boy's head is topped by a mess of dark brown curls that doesn't go much below his ears.

Thomas generally sticks to a very simple style which he feels is practical and which consists of blue jeans, graphic t-shirts, white socks, and slip-on gray Converse sneakers. This style may be altered to meet the temperature, with jeans being traded off for shorts when it gets too warm, wearing an undershirt in the winter, etc. Due to his nearsightedness, Thomas needs to wear a pair of thick black framed glasses, which sit slightly askew upon his face.

Biography: Thomas' parents, Jerry and Margaret Buckley, were both born and raised in southeastern Massachusetts, the same area where they would go on to raise Thomas and his younger brother Liam. Jerry grew up within a very poor Irish Catholic household, a past which he would develop an inferiority complex about over the years. Margaret suffered from abuse from her father during her childhood, which caused trauma that would haunt her for much of her life, struggling within both school and in her relationships. The two of them met and began to date in college, and after a fairly long courtship, the two decided to take things a step further and got married. Thomas was born a couple of years later and Liam followed a couple of years after that. Despite their limited income due to Jerry's position as a nursing home handyman and Margaret only taking on part-time work to ensure that someone would be around to take care of the kids, the two were determined that they would have a better life than their own and would succeed where they had failed.

In the case of Thomas, complications began early, as he began to show signs of autism by the time he was entering preschool such as his repetitive speech and struggles with social interaction among peers. Worried, Margaret brought the boy to a psychologist who, after a few sessions, confirmed that Thomas likely had Asperger's Syndrome. Margaret quickly sought out coping methods through various books on autism, as she didn't want to put Thomas through a formal special education or treatment program due to her poor personal experiences with formalized mental health care in years past. Jerry, having only a limited understanding of such matters and knowing that seeking out treatment would certainly put a financial strain on the family, agreed to Margaret's methods. Her research was extensive and she put a great deal of effort over the next few years into reinforcing an understanding of social cues, norms, and a greater sense of impulse control within her son. Her core belief through all this was that with enough effort she could get Thomas to a level where he might be just like any other kid, if a bit eccentric in some aspects. Margaret's efforts would, over time, help Thomas to compensate for some of his condition's more limiting effects, but both it and his mother's focus on limiting it's effects through self-consciousness and force of habit would come to shape many aspects of his life.

Throughout his early years in school, Thomas was mostly friendless. This stemmed from both his ignorance of the social norms of his peers and, being an early developer and a fair bit larger than his peers at the time, his clumsiness and lack of coordination sometimes accidentally leading to other students getting injured either at recess or in in gym class. During this period, Thomas was also singled out for disciplinary attention by his teachers due to his occasional misunderstandings of classroom etiquette. He did well above the average on standardized tests, however, and ended up being put in many "gifted" classes as a result.

As Thomas approached middle school, age, continued disciplinary action at school, his mother's persistence, and his parents revealing to him that he had Asperger's Syndrome and what that meant, had all begun effect on Thomas as he grew rather self-conscious of how others viewed him. This led to a greater sense of classroom expectations as well as him coming to fully understand his outsider status among his peers. This greater degree of self-consciousness led to Thomas becoming a model student, doing extremely well in classes as well as earning admiration from many of his teachers. However, it also instilled a deep anxiety alongside a deep mistrust of himself, which was not helped by pressure at home to keep performing at a high level academically. Thomas developed anxious habits like chewing his fingernails down to the skin, occasionally to the point of bleeding, and pulling at his hair. These habits either went unnoticed due to Thomas' effort to hide them, not wanting to draw more attention to himself, or were simply dismissed as odd quirks.

Outside of school, Thomas had begun to take an intense interest in the science fiction films and books that his parents had introduced him to (Margaret tried to have as much control over what media her boys consumed as possible in order to ensure that they develop in the "healthiest" manner possible), with Star Wars in particular becoming somewhat of an obsession for him. He also began to play more video games as his parents scraped together the money  got Thomas and his brother a PS3. Thomas started off playing Star Wars games, but slowly ended up gravitating towards JRPGs like the Final Fantasy series
.
It was in middle school that Thomas finally found a few friends that stuck. Deciding to hang out with some of the self-proclaimed "otaku" kids, Thomas found a weird niche among peers seemed about as "weird" as himself and who he didn't feel might just be hanging out with him just out of a sense of pity. It didn't hurt that most of them also enjoyed the same JRPGs as Thomas. Being able to spend a lot of time casually hanging out with peers helped to ease some of his anxious tendencies, as he had proved that he could make friends if he tried, just like a "normal" kid. It didn't last too long.

Uncle Drew was Jerry Buckley's best friend from high school who had moved out to Chattanooga a couple years after graduation though the two had stayed in touch and as Thomas' time in middle school drew to a close, he would enter Jerry's life once again. Drew informed Jerry of a business venture surrounding some new water pump design that Drew was going to patent. He said that Jerry was a trustworthy guy and wanted him and his family to move to get  to Chattanooga in order to get in on the ground floor of things. After much deliberation, Jerry and Margaret decided that they would take the chance, since the possible return would help to guarantee their children a quality college education. Of course, Jerry's faith in Drew turned out to be misplaced, as his friend revealed himself to be a rather poor businessman and the venture folded about a year into the Buckley's stay in Chattanooga.

In addition to the financial strain placed upon the family, Thomas had begun to suffer from depression. Struggling to adapt to this new setting and having difficulties with the prospect of having to maintain friendships from over a thousand miles away, Thomas suffered from self-hating tendencies despite his high marks and successful participation in academic clubs. In spite of his troubled emotional state, Thomas never quite reached the point of self-harm or suicide, mostly out of fear of being discovered and the guilt of possible further harm that might do to his family. Still, Thomas' depression began to affect other aspects of his life, including his academic performance.

As Thomas' grades plummeted, he withdrew into himself, pulling out of academic clubs and devoting more and more time to gaming. He had transitioned to a focus on PC gaming, and began to into more classic CRPGs alongside puzzle and strategy games, which he found to be cathartic experiences. Though Thomas and his brother had been fairly close all their lives, Liam began to grow resentful of his perceived position as "2nd best" child (a view that he held due to Thomas' easy early academic success) and started to grow away from his brother. Thomas was perhaps the most alone he'd been.

After their financial struggles, his father stopped going to church, though he still considers himself a Catholic. His mother still went, bringing Thomas and Liam along, but only irregularly as she feels the preaching style down south is too "fire and brimstone." Thomas' relationship to his faith is a complicated one as he is thoroughly unsure whether he truly believes the teachings of Christianity, but does not consider himself an agnostic.

After going to see a school play on a whim and finding something within himself stirred by this sort of theatrical live performance, Thomas decided that he might give Drama Club a shot and joined up. The boy still struggled to make friends there but, wanting to commit himself thoroughly to this new activity, Thomas decided that he needed a change and through no small effort on his part, Thomas returned in junior year with a new persona. Though he was still quite an introverted nerd, he began to joke a lot more, picking up a rather wry sense of humor, learned to be a bit more casual in his day-to-day interactions,, and became much more outgoing among his friends. This did not resolve his issues with depression or his poor performance in school, however, simply providing a way for him to hide it a bit as to not be a burden.

Thomas has made sure that none of his peers might know that he has either Asperger's or depression, as he fears that this would result in a situation where his peer relationships would be shaped by pity, rather than with him being seen as an equal. However, his lack of disclosure extends further than that. His parents have noticed that Thomas has entered a slump of sorts, but with continued financial difficulties alongside the emotional distress stemming from his brother beginning to question his sexuality and bulling incidents that came with that, they have found themselves too preoccupied to pry to deeply. Thomas is also sure to withhold all information about his emotional state from his family, fearing that it will just add to the laundry list of problems that they are already dealing with. Thomas knows deep sown that he should at least approach a guidance counselor about the topic, but worries that the information given there will make it back to his family. He feels like he has to and can deal with the depression on his own by just putting in enough effort to trick himself into feeling better. Though he has become pretty good at managing emotional outbursts over the years, he usually will remove himself to somewhere private or wait until he is alone in order to let the feelings out if he feels one coming on.

At school, Thomas usually limits his interactions to those he knows from a club and a few others that he shares common interests with because he often becomes uncomfortable having extended conversations whose social rhythms he is not familiar. Thomas has very few people who might be called enemies, but his limited social circle can make him seem aloof and distant to some, while others might just see him as being too weird or "out-there."

Advantages: Thomas has a knack for problem and puzzle solving, which serves him extremely well when given some time and space. He is generally quite empathetic and kind to those around him, allowing him to avoid too many tense relationships. Though not near as strong as an athlete who exercises regularly, Thomas' size alongside the work he puts in helping his father on side jobs make him a decent physical threat to the average joe.
Disadvantages: Thomas is often rigid and unadaptable, be it in his planned course of action or the the personal standards that he feels that he must meet. He is also prone to cowardice, often not willing to put himself in harm's way for some greater goal, whether physically or emotionally. His social skills still need some work and he becomes anxious when interacting with people that he is not familiar with.