Ellis Wheaton

[Laurels]

Name: Ellis Wheaton
Gender: Male
Age: 17
Grade: 12
School: John Endecott Memorial Academy
Hobbies and Interests: Ventriloquism, comedy, performing, card and roleplaying games, drama club

Appearance: Ellis is only about 5'6" tall and weighs 127 pounds, making him quite skinny and lean. He has pale skin and his face is covered in freckles, particularly across the bridge of his nose and his forehead. He has red-orange hair he generally only keeps about 1 ½-2 inches long, as well as dark brown eyes, a small nose and a small mouth. He has slightly hunched shoulders and poor posture.

Ellis tends to wear casual clothing without much care put into his appearance, preferring t-shirts and shorts in warmer weather and flannel and jeans in colder weather. Most items he wears are logo shirts or shirts with images from media he enjoys, although the majority of his clothing is a bit worn out, with some small holes in the seams and hems and outstretched collars.

Biography: Ellis Wheaton was born on March 28th, 2004 as the third and youngest son of Bradford and Helen Wheaton. His older brothers are Jason (three years older) and Darren (one year older). Bradford works as a police officer while Helen works at a retirement home as a nurse. Jason is currently attending business school in Vermont while Darren is studying at Boston University.

The Wheaton household was one where the men had to be tough growing up, mostly at Bradford’s insistence and Helen’s reluctant and passive agreement. This meant that Ellis and his brothers were often raised somewhat harshly and with minimal emotional support from their father. While Jason and Darren could easily go along, Ellis was always a bit of a shy child prone to crying. This often led to teasing from his father and brothers, causing Ellis to become a bit more withdrawn growing up.

Ellis was always a bit imaginative, preferring to watch TV and movies and play make believe with his toys. WHile this earned him some derision from his dad and brothers, his mom encouraged him to be creative, leading Ellis to spend a lot of time trying to come up with characters and stories as he played.

When Ellis was 9, he saw a ventriloquist on television, and he instantly was fascinated by it. He pleaded with his parents to let him try an art that would let him come up with characters and voices. While Bradford wasn’t that interested or supportive, Helen bought Ellis his first dummy for his 10th birthday, a small squirrel hand puppet that Ellis would name Armand Nutter. Ellis also began to take ventriloquism lessons from a local teacher.

As Ellis got older, he started to try and perform ventriloquism whenever he could. However, while Ellis’ lessons did help him learn how to speak and breathe without his lips moving, Ellis struggled to perform live and to come up with material. This led to some awkward performances at church events and school talent shows. While his dad and brothers would at times mock him for his failures, Ellis was persistent that he could get better and would prove them wrong. While he continued with his lessons, Ellis still struggled to get better at performing.

By the time Ellis reached middle school, he had only made a small group of friends. He mostly found himself drifting towards boys who were into nerdy interests. It was in this time he also began to find an interest in card and roleplaying games. He liked to play these with his friends, especially the roleplaying games that let him create characters and voices to play along with. Ellis is always looking for more games to play.

Once he reached high school, Ellis had settled into having a small, nerdy group of friends and struggled to fit in. He had spent most of his school years being mocked and bullied for being weak and for being interested in nerdy hobbies. However, Ellis, in protest of these haters, threw himself into his interests more. By this time, he had saved up money from birthdays and holidays to buy more puppets so he could create more characters and develop his skills beyond Armand. His puppet collection includes four other puppets: Dandy Handlebars (a greaser type), Sugar Rush (a hyper little girl), President Chunks (a sophisticated gorilla), and Lil’ Mudpie (a crude pig).

In order to develop himself more as a performer, Ellis has also joined the drama club at Endecott. He hoped the lessons would help him with his stage fright and other issues. While he has improved somewhat, Ellis still has trouble memorizing lines or going beyond a single note, so he’s stuck in minor and background roles. He’s still refusing to drop out and continues to audition, continuing to read about acting and comedy so he can get better. At the start of senior year, Ellis has decided to fully tackle this issue by reading more resources to help with stage fright and anxiety, and hopes to apply them to upcoming shows.

Socially, Ellis sticks to his core group of friends. He does try his hardest to make people like him, since he’s still afraid of being mocked and bullied. This has led to him being a bit of a tryhard in social situations, where he tries to bring levity or wit to moments where he isn’t able to properly contribute or where he comes off awkward instead. Ellis also has trouble talking and being around girls due to nerves, so he sticks around boys most of the time.

Ellis also tends to try and be assertive and can be extremely defensive about his abilities and interests. He usually crumbles under pressure from others and usually submits. He’s tried to be more assertive as time goes on, but with minimal results. Because of this, Ellis tries to keep his head down and avoid people who could have conflict with him. This has led to him also developing grudges towards people for various slights and issues, some more major than others. He tries to keep his resentments to himself, but sometimes they can leak, causing him to work to do damage control.

Academically, Ellis is doing decently in school. He manages to keep a high B or low A in all of his core classes. His favorite subject is math, as he usually manages to do the best in those classes. Ellis’ family is requiring him to go to college. While he wants to be a professional ventriloquist, he accepts he needs to get into school and get a degree as a fallback. He is considering taking accounting courses or a math degree. He is currently looking at schools further out west, preferably around Las Vegas.

Ellis’ home life hasn’t really improved much over time. While his brothers eased up on more of their overt bullying due to focusing on school, their relationships never really progressed past mild tolerance. Jason pretty much ignores Ellis since he’s in another state, while Darren continues to openly mock Ellis and his failures. Bradford is still a bit cold and controlling, often diminishing Ellis’ minor accomplishments or decrying his son’s weak nature and nerdy interests. Helen is the person Ellis is closest to, and he prefers to spend time with her alone. While he does love her, he does have a bit of resentment towards her for being passive towards the way his family treats him.

Now that he’s in his senior year, Ellis is determined to accomplish several goals. He’s hoping to get a major role in a school play, have a successful ventriloquist performance, and get into the college of his choice. Ellis has also decided to begin minimizing contact with his family except for his mom, with hopes that he can cut his dad and brothers out entirely when he graduates college. He's aware he can't do much now since he's still financially dependent on them for school, so he hopes to just keep his head down and tolerate them until he can go to college, then gradually reduce communication with them. He’s looking forward to being free of their toxic influence and focus on his future career as a performer.

Advantages: Ellis is good at ventriloquism and can do a variety of voices and sounds without moving his lips. Ellis has been recently working to learn to deal with anxiety, and may be able to apply some of his learnings in dangerous situations.
Disadvantages: Ellis has little backbone and can crumble under pressure, while also being quite avoidant of others and has trouble standing up for himself. Ellis can also be known to hold grudges against people and may have trouble keeping them to himself in stressful situations.

[Latin For Dragula]

Howdy Laurels! Ellis is off to a good start but I have a few clarifying questions that leave him temporarily DENIED.

Mainly I'm curious about the arc of Ellis deciding that his father and brothers are a toxic influence. How does this come about? You note that his primary coping mechanism with classmates that mock him is pure avoidance because he has a tendency to break down under pressure and go along with whatever he's told. How then is he going to minimize contact when Bradford and Darren both seem to be active, negative influences in his life with no intention of decoupling from him any time soon? Cutting contact here seems like something that would require direct effort on Ellis's part when you describe his father as cold and controlling, and I see no indication before now that Ellis is comfortable stepping up in that regard or would even consider it an option.

Similarly while Ellis has goals to take up a major role in the school play I question how realistic this goal is given that he's shown no development with his stage fright and overall acting abilities in these last few sections. I'd like more detail on how Ellis is working towards these more assertive goals and more of a build up across his profile towards where the motivation to attain them comes from in the first place since he is otherwise described as largely subject to the whims of whoever is pressuring him at the time.

Is Ellis exceptionally good at math? It's his best subject and he is an A student, but I don't see anything in his profile indicating he is especially gifted or interested in mathematics. If so, how will this assist him in a survival situation?

Ellis's first and second disadvantage are essentially the same; I would like to see them combined in to a singular disadvantage and see at least one other disadvantage added that is not related to his tendency to crumble under pressure. Bear in mind that if Ellis is making serious progress throughout his profile arc to overcome his tendency to crumble it may be flimsier as a disadvantage on the next pass.

That's all I have this time around! Post when you've made these edits and I'll give him another look.

[Laurels]

Ok, sorry for the delay, that should be it.

[Latin For Dragula]

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