Soumitra Finch

[the finch]

Name: Soumitra Vernon Finch
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Grade: 12th
School: Southwest Red Rock High School
Hobbies and Interests: Cheerleading, journaling, jogging, cooking, clay sculpting

Appearance: Soumitra is 5’10” and weighs a moderate 156 pounds. He is of Dutch and Marathi descent, manifested through his light brown skin. He has a soft, heart-shaped face and upturned brown eyes with long eyelashes. His nose is straight and medium-sized, he has wide lips, and his eyebrows are thick. He has round ears, both of which have a lobe piercing. He maintains a clear complexion due to thorough skincare and soft, wavy mid-length black hair that reaches halfway down his neck due to thorough hair care. He has slight muscle definition in his core due to exercise, but it isn't glaringly noticeable. His stomach and the sides of his torso have faded stretch marks. His voice is an average pitch for a boy his age, although it is naturally quiet.

His daily fashion consists of what he believes to be trendy, although his opinions on fashion are typically dissonant from popular opinion, usually unbeknownst to him. If pointed out to him, he doesn't mind too much as he is mostly impervious to what others think of his fashion taste. He also does not care enough to actively research trends, which is why he only gauges them from his own perception. He nearly always wears layers, even on hotter days where he will simply opt to wear thinner layers. He likes to maintain both fashion and comfort. His wardrobe consists of a lot of muted colors, especially blues and greens. His earrings are typically not too extravagant, as he often opts for simple-shaped stud earrings. He only wears makeup on occasion, usually using it to enhance his eyes through eyeliner, eyeshadow, mascara, or some combination of these three.

On the day of the abduction, Soumitra wore a white undershirt under a thin blue and black flannel. He also wore black jeans and black Converse shoes. In terms of jewelry, he wore a gold chain necklace with a charm that displayed his name in the Devanagari script as well as cobalt heart-shaped stud earrings. As for his makeup, he simply had winged eyeliner and mascara applied.

Biography: Soumitra Finch was born on February 21st, 2007 to Anjali Jain Finch, a wildlife photographer, and Natalie Finch, a geologist. The two met through the University of California, Santa Cruz and got married two years post-graduation. They both decided to relocate to Las Vegas for work purposes before their child’s birth the following year.

In 2009, Natalie came out as transgender. The announcement came with scrutiny from her side of the family, and she cut off contact with them after repeated offensive comments and an inability for them to accept her identity. Thus, Soumitra would never meet anybody from Natalie’s side of the family. However, the announcement also solidified her relationship with Anjali’s side of the family, who were accepting of her identity and welcomed her with open arms.

Natalie began hormone therapy two years before undergoing a series of surgeries to transition, although her birth certificate would not be updated until 2017 as per Nevada’s policies on transgender people. This resulted in a dip in finances as gender-affirming surgery was not covered by insurance under the state’s laws at the time, but they both believed it was the right thing to do. With consistent work and financial support from the extended family they were still in contact with, they were able to get back to a comfortable position financially, and thus could easily support Soumitra. Natalie was steadily earning income researching as a field geologist. Anjali dedicated a lot of time to caring for Soumitra, but also contributed through sporadic work as a freelancer. While the family was not excessively wealthy, they were able to maintain a comfortable income steadily throughout Soumitra’s life. As both parents worked primarily outdoors, they both harbored a love for nature. They passed this onto their son by taking him outside often as a child to get fresh air. Anjali, with a vast knowledge of animals, often showed Soumitra the animals living in their backyard or on hiking trails, and he soon grew to appreciate the outdoors as well.

As Anjali wished to pass down her culture to her son, Soumitra was raised in a moderately Jain household, specifically under the Śvetāmbara branch. His family did not perform daily rituals or prayers, and only went for temple worship during festivals. However, Jain ideologies and ways of living were enforced in the household as a means of keeping Anjali’s family’s traditions, even if they were somewhat finicky with what aspects they did or did not follow, considering many members of her family were more devout Jains, shown through their daily prayers and rituals. Anjali opted to raise her child in a more relaxed environment than the one she grew up in, keeping mostly the aspects that she personally believed in following. This has most directly impacted Soumitra's life through the emphasis on nonviolence towards all living beings, self-restraint, and through the Jain diet. His family follows a lacto-vegetarian diet, excluding the consumption or use of all animal meat and products other than dairy. He also does not eat figs or root vegetables, such as onions, potatoes, or garlic.

Anjali and Natalie parented in a simultaneously strict and gentle fashion. While they were often firm about rules, chores, and eventually grades, they clearly came from a place of love and offered Soumitra enough affection. Thus, Soumitra was a well-behaved, albeit restless, child. The restlessness mostly stemmed from excessive energy, particularly when he was supposed to be inside and quiet. It began to dissolve slightly as he entered his first year of school, enough for him to focus adequately in the classroom. However, it was still evident that he preferred to be outdoors to indoors and enjoyed working with his hands, such as when doing arts and crafts in class.

Since Soumitra never met half of his family, he quickly grew very close to his relatives on Anjali’s side, although they lived about eight hours away in Northern California. Because of this, Soumitra was only able to see his family infrequently, during school breaks and occasionally during religious festivals. Otherwise, they kept in touch often through Skype. Since Natalie and Anjali were both queer, they placed a lot of focus on making sure that Soumitra was raised to be tolerant and accepting of other people. While Natalie was often subjected to discrimination due to her gender identity, she and Anjali typically tried to shield this from him, especially when he was a young child, as they did not want him in the vicinity of such hatred.

By the fifth grade, it had become evident that he had a preference for art-oriented tasks. His parents satiated this creative energy with the purchase of a journal that he used somewhat as a scrapbook, filling it with photos, cutouts, drawings, and random musings and emotions. He took it everywhere with him, and he enjoyed having a physical manifestation of his inner workings. In this same time period, Anjali began teaching Soumitra the basics of cooking, letting him help out with dinner to a small extent. Soumitra savored the quality time he was spending with her, so he was happy to learn and assist.

His creative side continued to develop in the sixth grade, and his parents signed him up for a pottery class since he demonstrated interest in it. By the time the program was over, he wasn't interested in pottery itself as an art, but he did enjoy working with clay. Thus began an interest in sculpting, although the only medium he worked with was clay, barring brief experimentations. With a lot of constant practice, his skill and precision improved and he grew to enjoy the process, finding it therapeutic. His sculptures were typically either animals or miniatures of people he cared about, although he was also open to experimentation. At the same time, he continued to work on journaling. In the seventh grade, he began taking the hobby more seriously, with a focus on making his journal neater and more meticulous. Specifically, he became interested in bullet journaling through multiple online posts that he deemed aesthetic. At the same time, he tried his best to remain eco-friendly, using recycled materials and conserving paper and supplies.

Shortly after Soumitra turned thirteen, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. While he was initially able to take it easy, he quickly grew restless locked up in the house with limited social interaction. He dedicated a lot of his time to improving upon his sculpting and working on his journals, but the repetition soon spurred him to lose a lot of motivation. He did well in school, prompted primarily by his parents, but often felt like he was just barely scraping by academically, especially considering the unfamiliar switch to online schooling.

By the time summer hit, he found it difficult to muster the energy to get any meaningful work done, so a fair portion of his time was spent scrolling on social media instead of engaging in his hobbies. At the time, he was on the upper end of what was generally considered to be the moderate weight range for a boy his height and age. However, as a result of unrealistic body standards pushed onto him through Instagram and TikTok, he sincerely believed himself to be overweight. This led to a long-standing insecurity that still has not fully dissipated. By the beginning of his eighth grade year, that insecurity had reached the point where he thought he severely needed to do something about it, so he often worked out. He often focused on high-interval intensity training and aerobic exercise, neglecting strength training, as his primary goal was to lose weight, not build muscle.

Among the aerobic exercises Soumitra practiced, running, jogging, and dance stood out the most to him. He perceived other exercises that he partook in as grating and laborious, practicing them only to achieve his goal of losing weight as efficiently and effectively as possible. He began to neglect his other hobbies, dedicating his time to more exercise in an attempt to achieve goals that weren't physically possible. His grades also dropped slightly as a result of this. Over the next couple of months, while he successfully lost a moderate amount of weight, his parents noticed a gradual, concerning increase in fatigue, physical pain, and anxiety from him, due to his over-exercising. Subsequently, they ordered a halt in his routines, urging him to spend more time resting. In this time, he returned to sculpting and journaling, easing back into those hobbies soon enough.

By the end of his eighth grade year, his insistence on constant exercise dissipated. He still partook in jogging, which he enjoyed as a way of getting fresh air and diminishing his restlessness. Soumitra initially wanted to aim for daily jogs, even after burning himself out from exercise, but quickly decided this was unrealistic. He still decided to make a conscious effort to go outside daily, opting to walk on rest days rather than jog. He often listened to music while out jogging, finding it to be an effective way to clear his mind.

Soumitra’s interest in dance, which was mostly spurred from its existence as a creative art form, quickly shifted to cheerleading after watching his parents’ favorite movie, But I'm A Cheerleader. While he had never given the sport much thought, the film allowed him to realize he was interested in it. Being moderately athletic and somewhat good at dance already, he translated those principles to practicing cheerleading. He practiced at a steady rate before trying out for the team. He made it onto the team, and would continue to practice over the next few years as he worked with his team members. Most of the joy he derived from the sport came from his admiration of the creative choreography, feelings of security in his physical health, and the close-knit connections he fostered through the team.

With the lockdown over and a reliable group of cheer friends, Soumitra found himself invited to social events on multiple occasions. Naturally, meet-ups with friends typically involved stopping somewhere for food. A majority of restaurants did not have many food options that adhered to the Jain diet, and the dishes that did were typically not nutritionally valuable or high-quality. Due to growing frustrations over this, he returned to the foundations Anjali taught him and began learning to cook more intricate meals than what he already knew. He didn't mind bringing home-cooked meals to places he went, because he didn't feel left out when other people ate. He also educated himself on nutrition to some extent, as it was crucial to get enough vitamins and protein with a limited diet such as his own. He enjoyed this activity not only because of the practicality it brought to his life because of his diet, but also because he could connect to his culture through traditional Indian recipes.

Religiously, Soumitra agrees with many Jain ideals, most particularly that of practicing nonviolence. On the other hand, he isn't entirely sure if he believes in the spiritual aspects of his religion, such as the existence of moksha. He prefers to think that he is a good person from his own volition, rather than to simply achieve liberation from saṃsāra. Abstinence from alcohol and sexual contact are still somewhat new topics for him, as he never actually interacted with peers partaking in such behaviors before reaching high school. He likes to believe that, if faced with an opportunity, he would reject both.

Academically, Soumitra performs well, particularly in art and humanities subjects. He is politically left-leaning and very vocally against Canon. He remains close with many cheer team members and makes an attempt to be friendly to other people he talks to, garnering a mildly positive reputation at school. He's become relatively good at cheerleading and extremely good at sculpting, both due to continuous practice. He still keeps up with his goal to spend time outside every day, even for a brief amount of time.

Although Soumitra would love to go to an art school for sculpting, he is far too concerned about the financial ramifications of that career path to follow through with it. Instead, he has opted to attend San Francisco State University, which happens to be close to his extended family on Anjali's side, to pursue industrial design, which he views as a safe balance between art and something financially secure.

Advantages: Years of jogging experience means that Soumitra has good endurance and stamina, which will be useful on the island. He is also sociable and generally known to be a friendly person, so finding allies should not be a problem for him.
Disadvantages: Not only will he have to break through the moral barrier that most kids will have to, but he will also have to break through a religious barrier that strictly promotes nonviolence, even in cases of self-defense, which will make him an easy target with a low chance of truly defending himself. His strict diet may also serve as a problem on island, as he may be averse to eating other foods, even if they are the only option.

[Deamon]

Hey Finch, Soumitra is off to a very strong start and we don’t have too much to go over here. It’s a few clarifications and some expansions and then we should be good to go. So let’s get into it.

Soumitra is 5’10

You need to put “ after the ten to mark inches.

His daily fashion consists of what he believes to be trendy, although his opinions on fashion are typically dissonant from popular opinion, usually unbeknownst to him.

Does he just never look into this?

On the day of the abduction, Soumitra wore a white undershirt under a grey, hooded cotton jacket under a thin blue and black flannel.

Is he wearing two jackets? What’s going on here?

He also wear black jeans and black Converse shoes. Ij terms of jewelry,

Wears and In

A minor thing but you open the jewellery sentence with “in terms of” and the next sentence about makeup also starts “in terms of” so change one of these.

His family did perform daily rituals or prayers, and only went for temple worship during festivals.

Based on the context of this sentence I think you’re missing out Not after did.

even if they were somewhat finicky with what aspects they did or did not follow.

Just a bit more explanation of this please. Good detail on the root vegetables though.

For the religious practices of the household, there are two major sects of Jainism, given, both parents are women I would assume they’re followers of the Śvetāmbara sect, but if you could confirm this within the profile for me.

The paragraph after the religion paragraph covers the same subject as the transition paragraph and also repeats some of the same content, so you’ll need to move this up and remove the repetitions.

Thus, Soumitra was a well-behaved, albeit restless, child.

Why was he restless?

However, it was still evident that he preferred to be outdoors to indoors

This is the first indication of this we’ve been given so it will need to be expanded upon.

So we know Soumitra only sculpts with clay but what exactly does he sculpt?

What does Soumitra enjoy about cheerleading?

What does Soumitra enjoy about cooking?

Years of jogging experience means that Soumitra is a quick person with high endurance,

I’d nix the quick, but you can say he has good endurance and stamina.

break through a religious barrier that strictly promotee nonviolence,

Promotes

And that’s everything I spotted, so post back here for me once you’ve made the edits and I’ll take another look!

[the finch]

Hopefully this should cover everything / hopefully I interpreted everything correctly LOL

Here's two (very long) screenshots of what's been changed, barring minor spelling or wording errors. Not sure how much I can trust the accuracy of Google's version history (or the formatting - no clue why it does that to that one paragraph ), but the original text is, of course, up there anyway.

[Deamon]

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