Survival Of The Fittest

Name: Salem Fox
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Grade: 12
School: John Endecott Memorial Academy
Hobbies and Interests: Parties, socializing, cheerleading, meme culture, anime, webcomics, pool, journalism, watching competitive sports, politics and public policy.

Appearance: Salem stands at 5’8” and weighs 130 lb. on average. He is fully Caucasian, with a fair skin tone and a tendency to flush easily. His body is slim as he does not easily hold onto fat. He has a low waist-hip ratio due to having a narrow waist, a naturally large and muscular rear, and proportionally long legs. He has hands that are small for a boy his age and BMI.

He has a triangular face with a small jawline and pointed chin, and has a generally smaller looking head when he wears bangs. His eyes are a warm brown and naturally expressive. His eyebrows are naturally strong in shape and lush. The bridge of his nose is slender and the bulb likewise small. His lips are full. His platinum blond hair is naturally heavily curly without maintenance, and he keeps it this way, wearing it in a bob down to his collarbone. His hair is loosely curly, which only begins to show at the ends of his current hairdo. With some effort he could look fairly similar to his sister California in face, minus the scar and ear injury. He speaks with a voice that is light in timbre and low in pitch.

He is unafraid of bold, fashionable colors. He is notably feminine in his fashion, being willing to wear skirts and dresses in daily settings, and he is skilled with the application of makeup, though he rarely elects to use it. On the day of the abduction Salem was wearing a navy blue long-sleeve crop top, with a plain white tee beneath. He was wearing black thermal leggings under a ruby-red, ankle-length high-waisted skirt - the skirt having pockets - with a faux-silver chain decorating the right pocket. On top of this outfit he additionally wore a thick pea jacket in a tan color, along with a thermal turtleneck undershirt in black. He was wearing black Converse with white sole trim and white laces.

Biography: Salem was the second child born to Orion and Virginia Fox, born August 19 approximately two years after his older sister California. He has lived in Salem, Massachusetts from birth, as both his parents were natives, professional artists who had clout within the local scene. He was quiet and studious and early on had a naturally standoffish relationship with his peers.

His parents were not inclined to notice this tendency, as he was at least more outgoing relative to his elder sister, and her own socialization issues would take the bulk of their energy and attention. In general Orion and Virginia were lax and hands off parents, with personalities poorly suited to the responsibility of the role. They wanted to be their kids’ friend and hesitated with discipline and enforcement, even in later years when California needed the additional guidance. As a result they often would skip over the more formal work demands of a parent like attending conferences with teachers and monitoring homework, even when problems began to arise.

His motivation in the early phases of his schooling career was deriving satisfaction from working hard. He was diligent with attendance, turn-ins, and regularly won praise from teachers. He was seen by all his teachers and other authority figures as more obviously motivated and more likely to succeed than California was.

He thought little of it personally and rarely considered comparisons to his sister, extending into a more general tendency in his life to rarely compare himself to others. He was rarely interested in others’ opinions and interests, and for a long time he was not particularly aware of his sister’s development as an artist. The siblings’ mother would take them out on regular trips into the music scene of Salem the city, but Salem never developed the same sort of affinity for music that his sister did and he often was found reading ahead for class backstage instead of taking in the atmosphere.

While he never absorbed the praise of his teachers, he did take their opinions of his future into mind, and his teachers in elementary school often served as mentors instead of his more lackadaisical and carefree parents. He would ask for their advice regarding pursuing extracurricular activities.

Starting in the second grade he began to regularly contribute to a school journal, a formal monthly publication circulated internally in his elementary school where students would express themselves artistically, usually students years his senior. Unlike his peers generally he forwent poems and short stories and wrote brief articles inspired by the newspapers and online blogs he had limited exposure to but was fascinated by. He wrote proficiently for his age. His primary content was interviewing staff and local adults like business owners, who were less tedious for him to relate to than people his own age, with fairly basic questions about money making and how to do well in school, but already forward-looking compared to his peers.

It was his teacher’s influence that developed his sense of ambition towards a focused goal, as they insisted he had potential and he took them at their word. Teachers recommended he skip a grade almost every grade that he was in elementary school, but he found the idea awkward as he didn’t want to unnecessarily stand out. From a young age he was quietly stubborn about doing things his own way, and began to learn to politely put aside advice that conflicted with his own vision.

He nursed a vision of himself starting an influential company or getting into politics. He didn’t understand at that age that he was lacking in the sort of social affinity he would need to reach his lofty ambitions. He got good grades and was clearly motivated in a precocious way, but was too reclusive otherwise.

In the second grade his older sister got held back a grade. His parents hired tutors, but were at a loss for how to emotionally connect to their reticent daughter. They eventually asked Salem to help with watching over her, thinking his being her age would help them reach a common understanding. Salem did so reluctantly, not too keen on applying himself to help someone he didn’t feel much connection with, and unsure himself of how to connect with California at first. He observed her withdrawn, artistic nature and got along with her by at first feigning interest in art so that he could be in her good graces and help her organize her study schedules and remember assignments.

As he continued to spend his extra time with her however he found that he began to understand things more from her viewpoint. Despite having functionally taken on the responsibilities of elder sibling, Salem found California influenced him more than he did her. Since she was herself not very talkative, Salem found it easier to develop an appreciation for her hobbies in mutual silence, as opposed to how he tended to have to politely ignore and tune out his more talkative peers to maintain his mental energy. He developed an admiration for her skill and demeanor, and started to understand what companionship could offer him.

For Salem, friends became an understood means of having fun, and he didn’t develop a deeper interest in others than getting to explore others and how they could entertain him. He made a good cadre of friends from the third grade onward. Where there were social conflicts he was quick to try and take both sides and to be placatory without actually trying for conflict resolution. He still lacked the developed empathy in depth to feel that his friends’ issues were his own and was simply interested in friends for the sake of entertainment. That would lose him individual friends often enough that he was used to bouncing around between friends groups to avoid drama, and he never stuck to one group long enough to develop a lasting connection with the hobby that united the group.

He started to interview peers more for his continued articles in the school journal, now consciously using it as an excuse to talk to others and took the actual job less seriously. His primary interest was flattering others to get on their good side and learning about what they did for the sake of knowledge, even if he’d never get involved in whatever was being written about.

He would go to music shows with his older sister primarily to keep an eye on her, as he personally was only mildly interested in California’s scene. The responsibility he felt for her did not extend far outside of his personal comfort zone of academics and making sure she didn’t clam up around others. For example, he was disinclined to say anything when California began to pick up smoking despite his personal leeriness of the hobby on her health. He ended up leaving the intervention up to his parents and casting it from mind when they failed to force her to quit.

At shows he picked up on pool, and enjoyed it alongside his sister as the two made for a skilled duo when coordinating and the irritation of friends she would hustle entertained Salem. He was not as good as her and would only rarely play the game without her in the future, especially as her reputation for being too good at the game preceded her and clung to him which caused other pool players to be leery of him in turn. He still finds the pursuit calming, and often the most opportune time while playing to do his usual checkups on California’s school performance.

He rarely ratted her out to their parents for slipping grades or other poor performance, merely offering his advice and assistance while preferring to not make a big deal out of his responsibilities. He was disinclined to judge California, and Salem indeed held her in high regard for being one of the only people he felt he actually understood without it being too annoying and difficult to get close to them.

Friends introduced him to anime in the sixth grade and he developed a natural affinity for the medium that led to him freely consuming it even without the input of friends. The exaggerated personalities of the characterizations in anime appealed to him by being less tiresome to sort out than the nuances of real life and he was the sort starting from his tween years to more fondly regard characters in anime than real life. He had a particular affinity for lightweight harem anime like Nisekoi and comedy series like Nichijou and The Devil is a Part-Timer!.

He became a regular of the school’s anime club and attended conventions, along with a large collection of posters and figurines he is proud of showing off as a semi-ironic gesture. His interest in pursuing ambitious self-improvement was not a factor in his enjoyment of the anime medium.

His love of anime immersed him in internet culture, where he started on Reddit to keep up with new series and rapidly expanded. He gathered memes and humor from any source he could find on the internet and honed his own ability to create memes that he’d start to share on Vine and later TikTok. In particular, he enjoyed webcomics quite a bit, semi-ironically indulging himself in the tail end of the Homestuck fandom during its waning years when he was in middle school. He was the one who introduced California to the idea of developing an online presence with her own webcomic. He was an early fan and content creator and remains a moderator in his sister’s Discord to this day.

In middle and high school he formally joined the school paper, taking naturally to the role given his writing interests in elementary school. His style was disengaged and technical, but with his knowledge of how to work well with adults and project maturity so they’d trust him he usually produced good stories by asking the right questions, and earned praise for his investigations and insights into student life.

Puberty did not especially masculinize Salem as he graduated into high school, which drew bullying and teasing, but he found the disrespect more entertaining than anything. He leaned into rumors that he was gay and began to take on the internet aesthetic of being feminine as a man. If he lost any long-term friends for being increasingly liberal with his self-image, he found it bothered him little. He became a large consumer of controversial humor, including on 4Chan, and so on, and was well-read enough to come up with his own brand of caustic, generationally appropriate humor. He wasn’t particularly witty and his general quietness remained even as he was socially active; he reused others’ jokes, and played off his own clumsiness as part of his charm.

He remained educated enough to have strong political opinions, using a burner account on Twitter to follow election pundits as well as being subscribed to and supporting multiple reputable and not-so reputable publications, Foreign Policy, Brookings, Jacobin, and New Left Review among them. These publications in particular are the basis of his future career aspirations, as he is inspired by them to do his own work. He considers himself a cynical leftist, and his opinion of most of his generation would be considered condescending. He is aware of the people he can talk politics with and is unafraid of being controversial in his disdain for modern leftist media and politics, along with his own plans for the future that involve playing within the system as a reformist. These people aside, most who don’t look too deeply past his party boy persona see only his leftist in-jokes on social media. He particularly enjoys this online aesthetic and does not see the hypocrisy in speaking out in both ways.

He began to seriously think about his future once more, now that he was confident in his social standing and had plenty of friends to organize hang-outs with or ghost at his leisure. By his junior year in John Endecott’s school paper he was mostly writing for the sports column to not keep his workload low as he shifted focus to more ambitious goals: writing online opinion blogs under a pseudonym, once more deep diving into his old passion for politics and history when he had alone time. This is another aspect of his interests that he only brings up if asked, not particularly interested in showboating to gather attention.

He became rather proud of his feminine aesthetic, finding it a natural fit with his mind opened to the many possibilities of queer expression, much as he was ultimately sure he was a straight, cis male at a fundamental level. He joined the cheerleading team in his freshman year, laughing off disrespect from his peers and owning it to an extent that the confidence largely cemented his reputation in a positive way. His friendly demeanor and accessible, never confrontational, and relevant, fresh sense of humor earned him invites to parties, even from upperclassmen. Salem found he enjoyed parties as the main medium for his more outgoing shenanigans, as he could be spontaneous and meet many people without too many expectations of his precious time. He became a regular guest on party lists, especially as he was open-minded enough to personally blur the lines between different social groups.

His reputation in school was well-defined early on. He had a reputation for flirting and subsequently being flaky as he rarely followed through, his personal goal being merely to get to know people and enjoy their reactions. Some knew him to accidentally lead others on, even other men, as he was a bit too eager to enjoy the attention. He tried to be kind enough to not let things get too far, but he remained self-centered and he often vanished and ghosted when he ran into complications. Even when he was forgiven, he was rarely forgotten, and he cultivated a reputation for being unreliable and dumb in most matters that weren’t being a good buddy and going along with anything for the hell of it. His academic performance was strong but he kept his head down and made no mention of it.

He was more conservative with actually dating girls, as even when there was mutual attraction and chemistry he would find the process of compromising himself to make things work taxing and tiresome. As of his sophomore year he has engaged in two long term relationships, with the latter extending to present day. His relationship with Ashlyn Graves is a positive one for him that he feels little need to leave, as she has earned his respect with her intelligence, their shared interests, and her own confidence that allows them to not lean too heavily on one another.

He would retire from the cheerleading team in his junior year to maintain his extracurricular ambitions as they got more intensive, though cheerleading remains a favorite sport of his due to his personal involvement and ability to understand what is going on at a deeper level beyond his usual technical comprehension. However his physical activity levels have dropped, he does enough exercise to maintain his preferred physique in tandem with his metabolism, but he is no longer at the peak of physical fitness he was when he was an active cheerleader.

His writing style as a journalist remains brusque and focused on accuracy and explanation over embellishment, and he has had the opportunity to interview political figures of local import, along with being more active in Democratic political groups. He is neutral to the emotive activism common to the modern party, skeptical of the modern structure of many activist groups, and advises other ambitious friends on how to avoid sketchy figures he has met in positions of authority.

When Salem entered his junior year, California suffered a car accident that forced her to miss months of school. He helped her extensively during this period, but she was ultimately forced to repeat another grade. Salem found that he was less concerned this time by her once again dealing with social withdrawal. To the extent that he trusted her as his older sister and one of the few people he felt comfortable not having to try hard to be charming around, he trusted her to take care of herself as an adult despite that clearly not being likely. In this regard, his lack of conflict resolution skills let him down as he was unable to make tough choices on her behalf or bring himself to even recognize her being so worse off. To him, everything has already gone back to normal, though on some level he does feel guilt for being incapable of emotionally doing more, much as he's virtually her only source of scheduling and responsibility.

He is strict with his schedule given his well-organized nature, inclusive of his social life and partying. His presence in John Endecott remains generally well-liked, but often not too deep into any one social group. The general pleasant shallowness of his relationships leaves plenty of time for his few close friends and their interests. This select group is essentially just his sister and girlfriend. He avoids peer drama by walking away from it rather than looking for resolutions. In his mind, the school is large enough that losing some friends is no big deal.

It also leaves the time for his own personal interests, and he is almost mechanical in watching and finishing new season anime and webcomics recommended by California, though his personal enjoyment of the medium remains strictly in consuming with no interest in applying his talents as any sort of content creator. On the other hand, with social media as prolific as his are, he spends increasing amounts of time producing his own memes, mostly on Reddit and TikTok. Like many humor content creators most of his work receives little traffic but he is proud of it. At this point, the benefit of trying things out with his friends before he uses them is secondary, as humor is its own reward for him when he gets to engage positively with others without being burdened by their neediness and demands on his attention.

He is now increasingly into sports statistics, an offshoot of his extensive following of political pundits who perform elections analytics such as the writers of FiveThirtyEight. It gives him something more stimulating to consume sports events for besides his job with the school newspaper, and now he finds himself increasingly tuning into bigger televised events such as the Super Bowl and Major Leagues so he can crunch numbers. This has produced a newfound appreciation in him for sports overall, as he now has learned to appreciate sports from a birds-eye perspective of team management as opposed to his lesser interest in individual player skill.

He is positive to his parents, grateful for the opportunities they’ve provided him and disinterested in contemplating how their lack of authority in their children’s lives led to California’s issues while growing up. He was accepted to Georgetown on an early track admission, but declined, instead opting into Tufts University to stay in a school relatively close to family, and is already making friends and vocally intending to run for a seat on the student government senate. He intends to focus on a career in journalism. He managed to exchange contact information with a regular sports correspondent for the Huffington Post and the two have developed a mentor relationship, with Salem working on honing his writing to a dispassionate, professional level.

Advantages: Salem will typically be underestimated by the majority of his peers, as his deceptive reputation as a shallow and airheaded party boy precedes him with most. He is naturally disciplined and studious and will be able to approach anything he intends with good planning and organization.
Disadvantages: Salem has low patience for most in conflict situations and is naturally avoidant, so group tension will be something he will struggle to navigate and resolve. He looks down on others and will likely underestimate others capability and motives in dangerous situations. His reputation is a double-edged sword, and he will likely lack authority and trust in most situations and the ability to easily acquire it.

Designated Number: Student No. 079

---

Designated Weapon: Mauser C96

Conclusion: So many ties and none that really bind. What are they to you, really? A shackle? A motive? Use the tools at your disposal. - Tracen Danya