Victor Grail

[decoy73]

Name: Victor Steven Grail
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Grade: 12th
School: John Endecott Memorial Academy
Hobbies and Interests: Basketball, lacrosse, Body Improvement, fighting video games

Appearance: Victor Grail has a very imposing figure, standing at 6’ 3”, and weighing 220 pounds, with a wide, muscular frame that is the result of his various athletic pursuits and weightlifting. The strongest parts of his body are his arms and legs - his biceps, triceps, and quadriceps are all clearly defined, even when relaxed. His pectoral muscles and abdominal muscles are not quite as defined as his limbs, but they are still noticeably muscular. His square, freckled face is framed by close cropped red hair, a firm, angular nose, and intense blue eyes, the first and last of which highlight his Irish heritage. Victor has three main facial expressions - a scowl, when talking to someone he doesn’t like, a sneer when associating with someone he is trying to take advantage of, or a smirk for when he is trying to impress somebody.

His main wardrobe consists of jeans or athletic shorts, sports jerseys, and jet black sneakers. When he is jogging or working out, he wears a stopwatch around his left arm, to time his sessions. Notably, on his right hand are two rings - one on his index finger and one his ring finger - the championship rings for the Duke Blue Devils in 2010 and 2015. On the day he was abducted, Victor was wearing a green L.L. Bean hooded sweatshirt over a black long-sleeved T-shirt and a Syracuse University lacrosse jersey, and a pair of Wrangler jeans and black Adidas sneakers over white crew socks.

Biography: Victor Grail was born on December 24, 2002, in Durham, North Carolina to Jillian and Eugene Grail. Jillian is an English teacher currently working at Boston Latin School, where she has worked since Victor was ten. Eugene was an assistant coach for the Duke Blue Devils, a point of pride for Victor. Eugene didn’t have much involvement in raising Victor, as he spent most of his time assisting in recruitment of up and coming players from the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, which caused him to spend much of his time researching players of interest from those areas for when the time came for him to observe and make contact with them to join the Duke team. From a young age, Victor always wanted to be center of attention (for example, if they were playing “fight the aliens”, he would be the one saving everyone). This, on top of watching professional wrestling and UFC, led to a very macho-man personality and an interest in contact sports.

As a result of Eugene’s almost constant non-presence, Jillian and Eugene divorced when Victor was twelve. While the divorce was relatively tame, with assets being divided in an equitable manner and a fair allocation of child support and custody rights, it did take a toll on the family. With Jillian, this took the form of mild depression. With Eugene, the effects manifested in his smoking habit intensifying. Victor was hit the hardest and did not react well to his mother receiving primary custody and his time with his father (whom he felt much closer to) being relegated to the summer months. For about a year and a half following the finalization of the divorce, Victor’s slightly rowdy behavior was exacerbated due to the fact that Victor had genuinely enjoyed being with his father, even if it wasn’t for much time and the downgrade in lifestyle, given that Jillian’s job only provided a modest income compared to when she combined her income with Eugene’s. Furthermore, Jillian had started dating Cleavant Hughes shortly afterwards. While Victor was able to understand academically that Jillian was no longer married to Eugene, it still felt to Victor like Jillian was having an affair with Cleavant. This made him rowdier and angrier for a time, which was ameliorated via weekly family therapy.

Eugene came down with lung cancer when Victor was fourteen due to his smoking, and was affected for two years before suddenly passing away in March of 2019. While this was a very trying time for Victor, it was much less trying than the divorce. This was due to the previous counseling, the fact that there was some warning that a recurrence could be lethal for Eugene, and the fact that Victor received his father’s championship rings. These rings are Victor's most prized possessions, which he presently only takes off when playing sports or while in the shower. As such, while Victor did go to grief counseling, it was only for a period of three months.

In June of 2019, Jillian and Cleavant married and had a daughter, Susie, in November of 2020. Victor was able to come to terms with this in that the wedding had been planned for quite a bit of time prior, and because Eugene had been invited to the wedding. While there are still some issues between Victor and Cleavant, this comes from Victor’s general attitude as opposed to any sort of marriage or parental issues. Likewise, Victor isn’t very attached to Susie, although it is simply due to the large age difference leading to a lack of connection as opposed to any apathy or hatred.

Victor started playing sports, namely football and basketball, at age six. The former was due to his macho-man attitude, while the latter was out of pride for his father. At school, he would make his own social groups, designating his group “the cool group,” and making everyone else outsiders. If he considered a person worthy of his friendship, he would pressure those people into joining his group. Any person who was indecisive would be given one or two days to make a definitive decision. Anyone who said no was considered unworthy, while anybody who answered in the affirmative or still could not decide was considered to be a member of his group. Furthermore, Victor was quite intelligent and athletic, which he knew, making him self-assured to the point of arrogance. This, on top of his desire to be the center of attention, often gave him issues with authority, which got him in trouble with the faculty.

At 14, he joined John Endecott Memorial, by virtue of John Endecott being the closest public school in the area, and immediately joined the basketball and lacrosse teams. On the basketball team, he became a center due to his height and the fact that he was legitimately the best player for that position. In lacrosse, he became a midfielder due to midfielders utilizing body checking in defense and being involved in scoring goals on offense. During freshman year, he also joined the Body Improvement club as a way of retaining his fitness level in the off-season. He started on JV in both teams in freshman year as one of the lead players, and ended up making the varsity teams in his sophomore year. He is very skilled at these sports and highly driven to help the team improve and win, although people note that he is not very good at accepting failure or misfortune, nor is he very good at accepting advice. This attitude is exacerbated by the fact that basketball is his favorite sport and the John Endecott basketball team has had a losing record for several years, making Victor see the team as an ill fit for a genuinely skilled player such as himself. Coaches have noted that it is possible to give him constructive criticism by advising him how to improve what he is good at along with those areas that he is less skilled at to help him be more rounded. As a result of this, there is grudging respect for his skill, but very little respect otherwise. When it comes to lacrosse, he is somewhat happier. While his skill is less pronounced, the team’s record reflects that of an improving team, which Victor can more easily accept.

The COVID pandemic did affect Victor, given that his main activities were done in person, and thus had been shut down for the entirety of 2020. As such, for several months, he was unable to participate on the basketball and lacrosse teams. While he was able to go jogging outside to an extent and work out with free weights and resistance bands at home, he had a large void of time. Since he had few friends, with those friends he did have more often than not unable to leave their homes for quite a bit, he took to playing fighting video games, such as Mortal Kombat, Tekken, and Street Fighter. This did take his mind off the relative isolation and boredom that came from the fact that he couldn’t leave the house or participate in any team based physical activity.

As of the Fall 2021 semester, Victor’s life has stabilized. He has gotten used to Cleavant as a second father, and is cordial, if distant, towards him. He is able to enjoy himself by participating in physical exercises around other people, and can personally meet with his friends. Academically, he does well, though he prefers concrete courses such as math and science. His future career goal is information technology, due to the necessity and high demand of people working in the field, as well as the high salary paid to those in the field. Currently, he is waiting on applications to UMass Boston, Syracuse University, and Boston College.

Advantages: Victor is exceptionally athletic from his years on sports teams and the body improvement club. In particular, he is very strong, with exceptional grip strength, and he is very hardy. Furthermore, he is a team player who values the success and contributions of the individuals to the whole.
Disadvantages: Victor is very abrasive to others, which has alienated those around him. While part of this is his general nature, he also only gives respect to those that he considers worthy of such. His arrogance has made it very hard time for him to accept failure or misfortune, and he has a need to be right in any debate.

[Buko]

Hey Decoy! This is Buko/Chad, but you already know that and considering at this point you’re a wily ol’ veteran (in more ways than one)—you already know that the profile process is just that, a process. I always like stating at the beginning that anything said here is done with the goal and mission of getting Victor up to a suitable quality for pre-game! If you require any explanation or elaboration on what is being asked here—don’t be afraid to hit me up via Discord or PM!

Now to get to the critique at hand!

Victor is unfortunately temporarily DENIED pending a few edits! Let us go top to bottom and get into the weeds here. I think you’ll find that a lot of my issues echo and are in the same vein and so while there may be a lot expected and asked here—it is all sorta cumulative and building upon itself.

The first part of the profile leading up to the appearance all appears to be in order. I do think that some of the issues in the biography prevent me from commenting one way or the other on the Hobbies & Interests…but we’ll get there when we get there.

Appearance

Victor Grail has a very imposing figure, standing at 6’ 3”, and weighing 220 lbs, with a wide, muscular frame that is the result of his various athletic pursuits and weightlifting.

Minor typo here. 220lbs is fine, no need for the space.

Overall, with this appearance section (and this will be a theme for Victor), I am requiring simply more. You do a good job in sorta illustrating his facial features and you hit all the checkmarks, but in the mission of trying to get a clear and distinct picture of him—it is not here yet. I think a good starting point here would be describing his physique in some specificity (how big are his arms, his chest, does he skip leg day—stuff like that). Perhaps including an abduction outfit to fully illustrate the physical aspect of his appearance. Nothing stand out here as egregious but also nothing sorta stands out. That could be by design—we just need to see more that it is conscious and clear by design.

Biography

So, I think this is a good foundational start for a biography and there are some good things in here but also some eyebrow raising ones. Much like the appearance—we just need to get more out of it and more out of Victor. One of the main issues, just visually and in terms of conveying the information at hand is the decision to just distill everything to those 3 blocky paragraphs. Let us try to split them up into more digestible ones and sorta give the proper weight to such things like the divorce and death of Victor’s father. I think, in regard to that dynamic with Eugene is the most important. I need more detail on his job with the Golden State Warriors. What kind of assistant was he? Was he a shooting assistant? A scout? Did he work in the film or the weight room? Was he involved in game planning with the coach? This is such a prominent position and with a professional basketball team no less that it requires corresponding explanation.

One of the good things that you do in the biography is discussing how the demanding schedule of a professional basketball assistant leads to divorce and how the stress from divorce leads to Eugene’s death—but we need more on these two factors. Enough to dignify two separate paragraphs. Not on Eugene and his health woes and mental health struggles corresponding with divorce but instead on how this all-effected Victor. We get pretty ho-hum and yadda-yadda explanations or no explanations at all. The death of a parent before the getting of a license. The pressures of divorce and the struggle of having a life split between coasts. All these things are big deals, and I would like to see more detail and explanation on that end.

Another issue we have is this portrayal of his athletic prowess. Basketball and Lacrosse are fine—but John Endecott is not good at basketball. They’re actually hilariously bad at basketball. John Endecott in general is not a school built for athletics although the lacrosse team is on the up and up. Why would Victor decide to attend a school with patently bad athletics when he himself has a modicum of athletic talent. At 6’3” he would be very, very undersized as a center and would be on a losing team. How does someone with Victor’s competitive spirit deal with this? Since all these athletic interests are given lines in the Hobby & Interest sections—I think they each merit a paragraph on their own as opposed to being grouped together. You need more detail here as is the case throughout the profile. What sport does he like more? Which one is he the most talented at? Do they match and if not how does he deal with that? What you have here is good on a skeletal basis--we need more meat.

Grammatically there are a few repeated words here and there and I think you would benefit from placing this whole thing through a word processor and giving it a read through. As opposed to the appearance where it was just that one minor thing, these repeated words are throughout and your need for added detail is such that I do not think we’d gain much from pointing out each individual case. Just keep that in mind for the rewrite because that will be something I look for in the second draft.

Victor’s other interest in fighting video games needs more detail as well as his general response to the pandemic. Although not as harsh as in our world, the effects of distance learning and the canceling of sports still did happen. How did Victor respond to both of these things? I would like more detail about Victor’s general relationship with his mother and Cleavant and the type of attitude you seem to intimate Victor has towards his stepfather. I think a lot of the relationship between Victor and his mother as well as his sister is handwaved here. If he is not close with his family—how did he react to or deal with being forced to quarantine with them?

There’s a theme here—just expansion and explanation. You have a lot of good and strong threads here that I think can lead to a deep and nuanced character. We need to put this quilt together in a bit clearer sorta way.

The short answer is that we just need more.

Advantages & Disadvantages

Think these are clear and good advantages and disadvantages. We’re all golden here.



And that’s that for the first time around! My main advice when it comes to the biography and the appearance is to lean more towards over-explanation than under-explanation when it comes to the general trial and tribulations you place upon Victor and his reactions towards it. You have a lot here: the loss of a father with a connection to professional basketball, the trauma of divorce, a cross country move and a remarriage and introduction of a younger sibling. You need more than 3 paragraphs to cover it.

Like I said before, don’t be afraid to hit me up via Discord or PM for explanation or elaboration and I will try to be timely in my response. Good luck on your edits and rewrites and post in here when you’re done!

[decoy73]

Added edits:

• Added to the appearance section
• Added details on Eugene and how his divorce and death affected Victor
• Added details on how Cleavant's joining the family affected Victor
• Elaborated on his athletic pursuits
• Added a section on his hobby of fighting games and his activities during the pandemic

End of the semester was a bad time for profiles

[Buko]

Alright Decoy! Victor Grail—round two! I think you’ll be glad to know that there are a lot of improvements here and I think this version of Victor is pretty close to getting through. I am hung up on one thing and it involves Victor’s father and the Golden State Warriors. I have given this a lot of thought and conferred with a few fellow staffers. I think that having Victor’s father be a three-time NBA champion is a bit much and needs to be toned down. Furthermore, I think there is a bit of a misconception on the idea of what an NBA scout or assistant does. The NBA has a draft process that determines where players go and what not—there isn’t active recruiting done by organizations except during mandated free agency periods. It is sorta a big thing. Magic Johnson was famously fined money in regard to the leagues anti-tampering rules in the recruitment of Giannis and Paul George. Recruitment of players and scouting doesn’t work in the way that you’re sort of portraying it in the biography. College players don’t really have a lot of choice when it comes to which NBA team they play for.

We also get into some timeline issues as you have Victor’s father winning championships while battling lung cancer. I think this backstory and story hook regarding Eugene is causing more harm than good for Victor’s profile. It invites more questions and requires more elaboration and takes away focus from what the profile should be about—Victor. I think there is a lot of good here that you get from the story hook and I understand why you have it in there. Especially in regard to themes of divorce and the physical symbolism of paternal loss and grief within the rings. Those things are core to Victor, and I don’t want you to lose them. There does have to be a sorta meeting in the middle for it to pass the smell test in regard to realism.

I think a good compromise would be limiting Eugene to just the 2015 championship if we’re dedicated to the NBA angle. I think you’re sorta overestimating the amount of wealth he would accrue just in being a video or scouting guy. This article discusses how only the top tier and top of the line assistants make seven figures. Just by having Eugene be involved in the NBA and in the video and scouting element would require him to travel 44 games out of the season and it is more than a 24-hour job. I think you'd get the parental abandonment stuff by reducing and making his role smaller and clearer with the Warriors if we're dedicated to that route. You will still have a father that is pretty much working 24/7 and never home if he's just a video guy/scout.

If it isn’t so much the Golden State Warriors that is the meaningful thing but instead the championship ring element—I do know that you are a Husky. UConn has a very, very successful women’s basketball team and a multiple time champion men’s basketball team. They’re also much closer to Salem than San Fran is. There are over a hundred college basketball teams as opposed to only thirty NBA ones. And the recruitment of high school players can be a year-long and nation-wide search which would require a bunch of travel. I think you get what you want and with less obstacles in the way by having Eugene be a college scout/assistant. I also think for the purposes of your timeline and stuff you need to be careful with him battling lung cancer and how active he is with his job and his family. The main questions I had arose when I did the math of his lung cancer battle and the 2019 championship.

You have Eugene juggling too much and being spread too thin and casting too large of a shadow throughout the biography. I would suggest some reduction here for the purpose of letting Victor shine. This is one of those things that I don’t mind hashing out a bit over Discord and trying to get to a place where we both feel comfortable, and your vision remains strong. I know this is a big and integral point that will require some thinking and some reworking—but let’s move on to the other nuts and bolts of the profile!

Appearance

I think this would read easier and clearer if we divide up the paragraphs into ideas. I think a good point for a second paragraph is when you get into Victor’s wardrobe. In that respect, the only mistake I could find from a grammar perspective (and I ain’t the best in this department) was a small descriptor in the outfit:

On the day he was abducted, Victor was wearing a green L.L. Bean hooded sweatshirt over a black long sleeved T-shirt and a Syracuse University lacrosse jersey, and a pair of Wrangler jeans and black Adidas sneakers over white crew socks.

There’s a hyphen that should be in long-sleeved!

The main eyebrow raising thing here is in regard to the three championship rings which hits to a lot of the issues I have with the Eugene Element I stated earlier on in the critique! That is going to need some work and discussion to get to an acceptable place!

Biography

Night and day product compared to the first time around and I really appreciated the dedication to detail and expanding. I enjoy a lot of the thematic stuff we have going here, and I think we have some depth and added perspective to Vic. You should be commended for that. I already went into my issues with Eugene and so I am going to go more into little bits of pieces and stuff that needs smoothing out without touching on the NBA stuff so much.

Victor was hit the hardest, as he was much more his father’s son, and did not react well with Jillian receiving primary custody of Victor over the school year, with Eugene taking him in over the summer months.

This is indicative of what I mean—I would suggest going with a simpler sentence structure and being less reliant on the commas. It creates lot of odd flows and sorta weird unfinished ideas in the writing. With this sentence in particular it’d be better to trim the fat…something like this for example:

Victor was hit the hardest and did not react well to his mother receiving primary custody and his time with his father (whom he felt much closer to) being relegated to the summer months.

You did a very good job in expanding and adding detail in the profile. In this next wave of edits try to focus on the delivery and making it more easily digestible and easy to parse through. This is a consistent problem in the biography and I think the solution is in making smaller sentences and smaller paragraphs. There are certain things like Eugene’s death that is paired with Jillian’s marriage and his athletic pursuits that read clunky and in big need of being split up.

At 14, he joined John Endecott Memorial, by virtue of being the closest public school in the area, and immediately joined the basketball and lacrosse teams, as a center in basketball due to his height and the fact that he was legitimately the best player for that position, and as a midfielder in lacrosse due to midfielders utilizing body checking in defense and being involved in scoring goals on offense.

You can make this whole sentence into three or four. I think you should focus on this one tenet: every sentence should have a ‘main idea’ and once you hit that main point—start a new sentence. If you find yourself having multiple main points in a sentence? Divide that thing up! Your content is for the most part very solid and clear and I don’t think out of pocket at all—it is the messaging and the way that it is conveyed that causes some issue.

There’s timeline issues involved in the wedding of Jillian-Cleavant, the death of Eugene and the birth of Susie all occurring at the same time and during the pandemic. I think you need to link those things together and compound the effect they had on Victor OR move your timeline back a bit. I think this is a big reason to change Eugene to not having won a championship in 2019 as it causes a whole bunch of wrinkles that I see you trying to retroactively fit and make work. Less is more in this regard. Be very careful with the calendar that you’re setting up for yourself.

I actually like a lot of the details and expansion here and I think Victor is very close to being acceptable. We need to iron out some of the details and oddities surrounding his father and also make his delivery more easily digestible and clearer in its execution. Just as I suggested last time—read the profile aloud and place it through a word processor. You’ll gain an appreciation of how it reads/flows and you’ll pick up on the most basic of grammar mistakes.

That’s all I’m going to leave you with this round as I know it’s a lot! It was Finals week for me as well and so it took me a bit longer than I would’ve liked to get to this critique but I promise I’ll be quicker on the draw in round 3! We’re almost there! If you have any questions or require any direction or want any advice—feel free to hit me up on Discord or via PM!

[decoy73]

Edits made:

• Changed the number of championships won to two (2015 and 2017, the latter being around the start of his cancer).
• Changed the scope of Eugene's job.
• Made some grammatical fixes
• Clarified the timeline between the wedding, Eugene's death, and Susie - the wedding happened before the pandemic hit, while Susie was born in November of 2020 (I just realized - you could just as easily call the virus COVID-20, it was discovered in December 2019, and ramped up in 2020)

[Buko]

Alright! Victor Grail—round three! Like the last time there is a noticeable improvement in versions—but we’re still stuck on a large amount of the same hang ups in concerns to how this is put together. The main hang up is as it has always been: the explanation and research needed to justify the NBA championship rings are simply not there. I would be much more comfortable, at this point, with Eugene being a scout or recruiter for a college team as I think that goes into what you want to get out of him being a coach (the absentee father element and the multiple championship rings) without getting into the nitty gritty and specificity of having Victor’s father be an NBA assistant. It stretches and suspends belief far too much.

I’ll elaborate further as we go on with the critique.

Appearance

His main wardrobe consists of jeans or athletic shorts, sports jerseys, jet black sneakers, a stopwatch around his left arm, used to time workout routines and jogs, and, on his right hand, three rings - one on his index finger, and one his ring finger - the championship rings for the Golden State Warriors in 2015 and 2017.

A holdover from the three rings draft. I would definitely suggest and think you’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t read the profile aloud as you edit! You’ll find yourself catching a lot of typos and how things flow in the reading! This was the biggest and best advice I have ever been given by a Creative Writing professor and I give it to you free of charge! Even in writing my critiques or my posts, I find myself reading them aloud and through several times before they go through. I still make mistakes (don’t I know it), but I’ve found it has helped me and I think it will help you!


Biography

Eugene was an assistant coach for the Golden State Warriors, a point of pride for Victor. Eugene wasn’t involved much in raising Victor, as he spent most of his time assisting in recruitment of up and coming players from the state of California, which caused him to spend much of his time researching college players of interest for when the draft came.

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding here of what an NBA scout does or partakes in and how that differs from an assistant coach. This misunderstanding and sort of ho-hum treatment of the position of NBA assistant (of which there is a finite amount and it is relegated by several billionaire owners) hurts what would otherwise be a fairly straight forward and simple profile. You have a lot of good here but it is held down and caught up too much in this NBA stuff. As said before—NBA coaches, cannot recruit up and coming players. They will get fined. That is quite simply not how talent acquisition works in the NBA. If you want Eugene to serve as someone who is traveling state-wide and actively recruiting up and coming players—what you want him to be is to be a college scout/recruiter. There are 30 NBA teams vs 353 Division 1 College Basketball Teams. There are less questions to be had when you’re an assistant among 353 organizations than among 30. The scrutiny needed and required in making Eugene an NBA coach is a major thing holding the profile back.

I think going the college basketball scout route is the best option for Victor at this point in terms of plausibility and playability. If you do want a suggestion for a college team—your own UCONN Huskies won a national title as recently as 2014 and share a proximity to Salem that would allow yourself some wiggle room in terms of traveling and accessibility. I believe this to be the quickest and easiest fix to getting Victor through in regard to the concerns with Eugene!

Eugene came down with lung cancer when Victor was fourteen due to his smoking, and was was affected for two years before suddenly passing away in March of 2019, when Victor was sixteen.

Goes back into what I suggested in the appearance! The repeated word here! Try reading the profile aloud and simplifying the sentence structure as to make things flow easier and to prevent the repeats and the run-ons.

Victor was able to come to terms with Jillian and Cleavant marrying more easily since the wedding had been planned for quite a bit of time prior, and that Eugene had been invited to the wedding.

I think you want to say ‘and because Eugene had been invited to the wedding’ here!

In lacrosse, he became a midfielder to midfielders utilizing body checking in defense and being involved in scoring goals on offense.

Probably want this to be ‘he became a midfielder due to midfielders…’, instead.

His future career goal is information technology, due to the necessity and high demand of people working in the field, as well as the high salary paid to those in the field, and he is waiting on applications to UMass Boston, Syracuse University, and Boston College.

Could probably split this sentence up in regard to why he wants to major in IT and the schools he has applied to. It reads super choppy and long winded. As with all my grammar stuff, I do think the profile itself would benefit from another read through or two (aloud) just to make sure you know the sentence structure reads plain spoken and natural.

That’s all for me this time around! As stated before—don’t be afraid to hit me up via Discord or PM! Every draft has had a modicum of improvement and I think this next one will repeat the pattern!

[decoy73]

Edits:

• Grammar.
• Eugene is now an AC at Duke.

[Buko]

Victor Grail—Round 4! I think this is the closest we’ve gotten thus far and although I do think wearing three NCAA championship rings every day is probably impractical and ill-advised…it turns out that they are regulated to not be worth that much in the first place. I can stomach this much easier than I could the NBA rings. I do still have reservations about three and the three rings that you have decided to give Eugene. I think two would be a good compromise here and it would line up with your timeline in a way that made sense. I feel like the 2001 ring is very much stretching it but I will elaborate more on that in the closing.

Hobbies & Interests

Something I missed in my profile application process and so I am bringing it up now is that Hobbies & Interests are done as a list and only the first interest needs to be capitalized! If this was the only thing left I would fix it myself but you still have some grammar issues in the profile itself that are worth bringing up and correcting.

Biography

As a result of Eugene’s almost constant non-presence, Jillian and Eugene divorced at when Victor was twelve.

Going to want to remove ‘at’ here.

For about a year and a half following the finalization of the divorce, Victor’s slightly rowdy behavior was exacerbated due to the fact that Victor had genuinely enjoyed being with his father, even if it wasn’t for much time, the downgrade in lifestyle, given that Jillian’s job only provided a modest income than when she combined with Eugene’s, and that Jillian had started dating Cleavant Hughes shortly afterwards.

Very long sentence. Best to split this up so it reads better.

This was due to the previous counseling and the facts that there was some warning that a recurrence could be lethal for Eugene, the fact that besides a large amount of money, which was placed into a trust fund and a 529 plan, Victor also received his father’s championship rings, which Victor presently only takes off when playing sports or while in the shower.

Another long sentence and due to this being the response to the death of a parent—probably merits splitting up in ways that give both the personal and economic ramifications equal weight. Keep in mind that the average NCAA Division 1 coach makes roughly 57,000 dollars anually. It's just not a large amount of money.I think you need to do more research and rethink the economic angle as a whole in regard to the inheritance or the lifestyle difference that Victor would experience.

While there are still some issues between Victor and Cleavant, this comes from Victor’s general attitude as opposed to any sort of marriage or parental issues, and Victor isn’t very attached to Susie, although it is due to simply the large age difference leading to a lack of connection as opposed to any apathy or hatred.

Best to split this sentence up and give equal weight to Victor’s opinions on his step father and to his half-sister. A good rule, especially in this format where things are supposed to be clinical and to the point, is to just limit each sentence to one core idea. Once that idea is stated? End the sentence! I also would suggest (again) to read this profile aloud and with a measure of measuredness (meaning take your time)! I think you would benefit a lot from it and Victor would read clearer and more cohesively as a result.

The former was due to his macho-man attitude, while the latter was also out of pride for his father.

Don’t need the ‘also’ here.

This attitude is exacerbated by the fact that basketball is his favorite sport and the John Endecott basketball team has had a losing record for several years, making Victor see the team what as an ill fit for a genuinely skilled player such as himself.

No need for the ‘what ‘here.


Overall my main advice with this next draft is to simplify! Simplify! Simplify! I would also do more research into the economics of an assistant coach at the NCAA level—or simply cut out that lifestyle element completely. An NCAA assistant wouldn’t be anything beyond a middle class earner in all but the most extreme and talented exceptions (talking specialists who may be former head coaches themselves). The more focus we give upon Eugene—the less Victor is the main character of his own profile. Therein lies the risk of the multiple championship rings and the required discernment and attention they bring. Even in this instance I feel like we gain more believability out of Victor having the rings from 2010 and 2015 and not the one from 2001. Why did Eugene stay an assistant with Duke for so long without moving up and trying to coach at a smaller school? Is the needed explanation for that worth the attention we take away from Victor himself? To be honest since this next go around would be our fifth, I think the quickest way to the finish line is just to have the two rings from 2010 and 2015.

In short: lose the 2001 championship ring, work on simplifying the sentences and limiting the economic impact and value attributed to Eugene (that isn’t backed by research) and fix those grammar notes! When you're done, I’ll give this another look!

[decoy73]

Made edits - I have removed the monetary part (I was going to make it more modest but figured that it wasn't that important anyway). As for the Hobbies and Interests, I have followed your advice with the exception of Body Improvement, which is due to the fact that it is the name of the club.

[Buko]

This was due to the previous counseling, the fact that there was some warning that a recurrence could be lethal for Eugene, and the fact that Victor received his father’s championship rings.

This line is kind of strange and you may want to think about ways to phrase it better or clearer within final apps. With that being said? I feel like gaining a stronger grip and perspective on Victor and how he has dealt with his father's demise to be something worthy of exploring and developing in the RP. Just a little nugget for you to think about if/when it comes to submit him for island (and it'll be something I'll be looking out for as I read him in RP)!

But enough nuggets and deliberation! It has been a long road and I am appreciative of your perseverance, patience and receptiveness to critique. Good work and...

APPROVED!