David Whitehead

[lanzandpine]

Name: David Whitehead
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Grade: Senior
School: Southwest Red Rock High School
Hobbies and Interests: Reading, writing, nordic walking, ontology, theology

Appearance: At a stature of 6’1” or 185 cms, David is a lean, healthy-looking man with broad shoulders and long, toned legs. His skin is of a slightly tanned beige color. His face lacks any blemishes, and his wide and round brown eyes are adorned with a couple of barely seen dark circles. He has collar-length, straight hair of a natural dark brown color that he sometimes ties up into a ponytail. David’s hands have calluses, ranging from barely felt to very obvious. David often has a relaxed, pleasant expression, usually wearing a light smile.

Choosing among many styles of clothing, David often opts for light and casual attire; most often he wears unbuttoned Oxford dress shirts, usually with short sleeves, and long-sleeve T-shirts underneath, wearing black trousers and suede boots for the bottom half. He can be seen, especially in colder weather, wearing a casual blazer.

His favorite bit of clothing is a pale, almost pastel light-blue cotton shirt that he wears most often on weekends or on good days, usually with a subtle scent of male citrus perfume following him each time. David has a surplus of long-sleeve, loose hoodies, but he seems to wear them rarely, if only in winter.

Biography: David was born on August 8, 2007, the second child in the family, though he wouldn't find out about his deceased sister, something that his parents tried to hide from him, until later in life.

His father is a professor of philosophy, a gentle, even timid person, complaining only about things that didn’t suit his taste. His mother is a philologist, born into a rural family, loud and energetic. David never saw his parents argue, and they worked together closely on bringing him up well. Their parenting was relaxed and more hands-off. Their strategy seemed to do its work as well, as David ended up growing up into a calm-natured, yet talkative young man, with a booming voice and a loud laugh.

Perhaps it was the nature of his parents’ work, but David was inquisitive and thoughtful. Being surrounded by books of all kinds worked to get him a hobby of reading, something that he engages in to this day. His father humored David with recommended books from his own library; his mother, on the other hand, provided him with much fiction of all kinds. Most likely it was this overload that led him to a burn-out in junior high. David would come back to reading only in freshman year of high school, although he finds himself reading less than desired.

David lived in a fairly modest house, despite the fact that his parents managed to have become decently well-off. Many facilities, quite luckily, were in walking distance, the farthest away being the mall, taking an hour to get there by foot. For a reason that David did not understand at the time, both parents refused to own a car, and, at most, used public transport, bicycles, or walked. The last option was something that David had to choose at the time. There he found out about Nordic walking, which eventually transformed from a means of travel to a hobby. Eventually, David’s confrontations with his parents regarding getting a car subsided, and he felt himself quite engaged in the process of walking.

David found out about his sister Amelia's death at age 12. She was born 2 years before David, on January 22, and died in a drunk driving accident, the explanation for his mother and father's aversion to vehicles. His parents were clearly still traumatized over the fact, and them not talking about this intimate question with him sowed doubt and paranoia in him. He believed that they wanted him to replace Amelia. David struggled to talk with his parents properly after finding out due to his distrust, especially with his father. For some time, David could be described as neurotic and unconfident.

High school, despite much going on in the world, seemed to ease the situation in David's family. He returned to his previous positive state and began talking with his parents once more, although the stress seemed to have caused him to become more reserved. David began reading once more; his parents seemed to have come to a closure. Life seemed to be truly taking a turn for the better. However, David could never shake off the feelings of slight fear and distrust concerning his parents. A lack of support from them and possibly losing this stability is one of his fears.

Reading has become something of a fundamental part of David's life. This is also a field where he allows himself to be as greedy as possible, stocking up on various books that interest him, no matter their use or the possibility of him reading them in the end, and surrounding himself with them. David borrows books from his parents' libraries, his father providing him with various non-fiction, such as Wittgenstein and Hume, and his mother providing him with prose, such as Camus, whose "Exile and the Kingdom" was a major catalyst for his interest in writing. The intensity of his interest in reading shifts every day, with some days being quite poor, David having only read one page, and other days having been spent reading hundreds.

Following in his parents’ footsteps, David is agnostic, but he got interested in theology in junior high. He claims that it is purely from an anthropological perspective, something that isn’t necessarily a lie, but often times he feels as if he needs something to grasp. He wants something to find certainty in, even if it was otherworldly. He usually reads basic, beginner material pertaining to major religions.

While his interests shift from time to time, being with his father has given him a prolonged interest in the nature of this world — the field of ontology. As many fundamental books pertaining to this field are too hard for him right now, David usually keeps to finding out more through his parents, articles, Wikipedia and so on. He cannot seem to come to a full conclusion regarding this world and what it means to him.

Although he doesn’t do it often, David writes, much of his prose and verse having been thrown out by himself. He can’t explain the reasoning behind this, but it feels somewhat liberating from the chains of uncertainty and fear in this life. Most of his work goes unpublished, but at times he shares it with his parents only. David has only a couple of actually completed works in his repertoire, with many ontological essays and short stories having gone unfinished. To him, it's still a very personal hobby.

David performs fairly well academically, although he certainly feels that there is much, much more to be done about this. He wants to go to a good university and get a higher education. He isn’t in any clubs, something that he finds a little disheartening, as he would love to find something that interests him. But currently, he feels quite satisfied with his position in life.

Advantages: David is good-natured and friendly — making allies may be easier for him. His experience with Nordic walking has resulted in a fitter body, allowing him to traverse rougher land and bigger distances with relative ease; his stature may prove to be intimidating. Hours of self-development and fighting with neuroticism have allowed him to develop ways to stay calm and stave off anxiety.
Disadvantages: His docile, somewhat passive character forces him to assume the best in all people, allowing enemies to take advantage of him much easier. Years of reading led him to worse eyesight – he can’t see too far away, worse still to his lack of glasses or eye contacts. His voice is louder than usual and it wouldn’t be much of a problem to hear him from afar. He is slightly averse to risk.

[Ruggahissy]

Hello hello. I'm Ruggahissy and I'll be your mystical profile guide.

- Don't need to capitalize each word in the interests and hobbies since it's a list

At a stature of 6’1” or 185 cms, David is a lean, healthy-looking man with broad shoulders and long, toned legs, a bit of evidence of his constant walking, with a very slightly tanned beige skin color.

- Bit of a run on sentence that covers his height, weight, body composition, shoulders, legs, walking, and skin color all in one. Chop this up a little.

If there’s an opposite of “resting bitch face”, David might as well have it, his face often wearing a relaxed, pleasant expression, and it almost seems as if something is just tugging at his lips to force him to smile.

- We strive for a more neutral and less editorial tone in the profiles which I'll explain in more detail in a moment, so you can cut this down to "His face is often wearing a relaxed, pleasant expression."

He is never ever seen in any “white tie” attire, despite having all the pieces of clothing that he needs to assemble something close.

- I don't think any high schooler has highly formal wear as part of their regular rotation, so you can take this out as its kind of assumed.

His favorite bit of clothing is a pale, almost pastel light blue cotton shirt

- Compound adjective before a noun gets a hyphen, light-blue.

Alrighty, on to biography.

Up top here I'm going to say that a lot of the language in this profile is a bit too flowery and editorializing than we would normally want for profiles. You are absolutely allowed and encouraged to write in whatever personal style you have when writing aaaalllll of the rest of your content on SOTF, except when it comes to the profiles.

Here is some information on tone from our Profile writing guildelines

3) IS IT TONALLY CORRECT? This is a hard one, but also very important. The tone of the profiles should be as impartial as possible, mimicking the writing style of a bored henchman forced to crank out hundreds of detailed profiles for children who are about to die anyway. Quotes, parentheses, profanity, exclamation marks, and other stylistic choices are not acceptable. Feel free to use them as much as you want in your posts, but your profile needs to match the others in tone. A fun way to check is to read your profile aloud and see if you can naturally do the entire thing in a monotone. If you find yourself adding emphasis, your profile may be too stylistic.

Thanks, staff.

This is something that will need to be looked at throughout the profile but here are some accepted profiles you can take a look at as examples:

Sample 1: Zara
Sample 2: Niall

As an additional example:

A well-off, calm, loving family was very happy to have had David as their second child, on the night of August 8, 2007. He never heard or saw of his sibling, and would only find out about her later in life, at a delicate time and a delicate age.

So this should be a bit more neutral. Something like "David was born on August 8, 2007, the second of two children, though he wouldn't find out about his deceased elder sister until later in life.

His father, a large man with a set of gray hair that only made his face look even kinder, is a professor of philosophy, a gentle, even timid person, complaining only about things that didn’t suit his, quite frankly speaking, overly refined taste.

- I'm not sure what "Set of gray hair" means. Set is usually for something that's more than one of something and "hair" is singular. You can't really have a set of one thing. And as before with the tone I just mentioned most of this is fine but "quite frankly speaking" is too casual and should be removed.

The end of this section that finishes with "never in between." also has a formatting issue that continues throughout the profile. For some reason some of the paragraphs don't have a full line break, but some do. Either make those the same paragraph or add another line break so that the text isn't right on top of each other. Please fix those throughout.

His mother is a philologist, born into a rural family, and might as well have become a pinnacle of the belief that “opposites attract”. Energetic, lively, and very loud, she somehow only complimented the quiet nature of her husband in the family. Surprisingly enough, David never ever saw them argue. Many of the family dinners felt like watching a double act.

- Another tone example here, you should take out "might as well have become a pinnacle of the belief that opposites attract" and "many of the family dinners felt like watching a double act." I'm also not sure what a "double act" means. I will stop at this point with the tone notes or it will be quite a lengthy critique. Just go through with the information we've provided and spruce up to be a bit more plain (sorry, but you can go hog wild with the prose in posts, as mentioned).

- The reveal about his sister takes up way too much real estate in this profile. I would save a lot of this and make it into a memory thread or memory post to detail him finding about about this. As it stands, this seems to have fairly little impact on his life overall and its main affect seems to be getting him into Nordic walking.

- I need more information on all of the hobbies except the walking. Each hobby should generally have a small paragraph that covers
1. How they got into the hobby.
2. How they engage with it currently
3. Some examples. In this case I don't know what kinds of things he likes to write or read or what kind of theology he is reading about or how he engages with this hobby.
4. What he gets out of each one or likes about each one.

A hobby is something you do consistently and spend a decent amount of time on.


And I think that's where I'm going to end it for now, since this will need to be rewritten and edited a bit to align with the things I've pointed out. If you have any questions or need assistance I am available here and also on Discord. Let me know when there are edits and I'll take another look!

[lanzandpine]

Thank you for your critique. You pointed out some things that I was a little unsure about while writing and after, too, which is nice.

I've edited the profile accordingly, taking some liberties and adding a little bit of extra information here and there as I was rereading it. I tried to make the text more neutral and worked a bit on the formatting.

[Ruggahissy]

Sorry for the wait!

This looks much better, thank you. As such, I only have a few things:

- Can I get some examples of genres and titles of what he likes to read?
- Writing doesn't seem to really come up as a hobby. You can add a bit about that, or remove it from the list.

In advantages and disadvantages:

Reading allows him to stay calm.

- This sounds like something in regular life more than would help in a life or death game. I don't know if he'll be taking books and I'm not sure how much time there'll be for reading.

His life has led him to become a more relaxed person when it comes to others, allowing enemies to take advantage of him much easier.

- I'm not sure that I heard anything about him being especially relaxed in the profile. Is he perhaps still not terribly confident as a person?

That's it!

[lanzandpine]

thank you for the critique. I tried to expand a little on the parts that you mentioned, I hope that this is fine.

[Ruggahissy]

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