B017 - Cappotelli, Bart[/DECEASED]

[MK Kilmarnock]

DECEASED


Name: Bart Cappotelli
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Grade: Senior
School: Cochise High School
Hobbies and Interests: Animation, sketching, storytelling, internet forums, mythology, rap music

Appearance: Bart is very large for his age, standing at 6 feet tall and weighing around 280 pounds. He has a light olive complexion from his Italian heritage. His body carries a lot of fat, particularly around the midsection. His arms are rather weak and flabby-looking while his legs, albeit not particularly strong-looking either, are at least sturdy enough to hold him up.

Bart has a lot of baby fat in his round face, mostly concentrated around the chin and cheeks. His eyes are wide ovals with a dark, slightly yellowish green color, and his eyebrows are thick and expressive. His nose is somewhat thin compared to the rest of his face, and its shape resembles a blunted arrowhead. His dark hair is a mess that refuses to cooperate no matter how much it is combed or brushed, especially when it grows out. His ears are quite flat, and they tend to get obscured whenever his hair gets too long. However, at the moment it is cut quite short, only going down to his ears. In addition, he has a lot of small acne scars on his face due to a bad habit of picking at pimples and zits.

Unrelated to physical appearance, but still notable, is his body odor. Bart suffers from trimethylaminuria, a rare metabolic condition that causes sufferers to exude a strong smell similar to that of fish. Although he showers regularly and is a bit paranoid when it comes to germs, the smell always lingers around him.

On the day of the field trip, Bart was wearing a gray Steven Universe T-shirt, khaki cargo shorts, and white sneakers with black soles.

Biography: Bart was born in Kingman to a young Italian couple, Nick and Lorna Cappotelli, a garbage collector and insurance agent, respectively. His early days weren't really much to speak of. Their combined jobs were enough to make sure that money would never be a dire issue barring unforeseen circumstances, but the fact that they both had to work similar hours meant that they would need to find a way to make sure that little Bart was cared for during the day.

Fortunately, Nick's sister Erin, a freelance artist, lived in the area, and was more than willing to look after their child. As a result, Bart spent a lot of time growing up with his aunt Erin instead of his parents. This was a concern for the adults, as they were worried that Bart wouldn't be able to forge a relationship with his parents. This fear drove Nick and Lorna to use every day off of work that they had in order to spend time with their son and make sure that he was able to establish a connection with them.

Bart liked staying at his Aunt Erin's house, but his favorite thing to do whether he was there or at home was watching cartoons.  Like many children, he was initially drawn to the brighter colors of the cartoons compared to the comparatively drab palettes of live-action shows. At first he would watch anything, but after a few months he began to develop his own tastes. He grew to love some shows more than others, and some shows he would just turn the TV off rather than watch them. He tended to prefer cartoons like Hey Arnold, which had a wide cast of characters and a storyline for every episode. Shows with little storyline that mainly focused on random humor, on the other hand, tended to lose his attention rather quickly. The shows that he did like would stick with him. He started drawing his favorite characters during free time at school and at home, and he would try to make up new stories for them, mainly focusing on adventures that his favorite characters would have between episodes. He would try his best to stick to the characterization in the shows, and had a tendency to rewrite entire portions of stories if he felt that he had slipped up somewhere. This was the first step on what would be a lifelong passion for animation and storytelling.

From grade school onward, Bart would spend most of his spare time drawing up sketches and writing stories. Once he had filled almost an entire journal with doodles and stories about his favorite cartoons, he started to make up his own characters. At first they were essentially the characters he already watched on TV wearing different outfits, but they slowly evolved into more unique characters in their own right. By middle school, Bart's characters were almost nothing like their original inspirations. Since Bart spent so much time engrossed in his stories, he tended to get lost in his own worlds sometimes and not pay much attention to other students. Occasionally someone would comment on his art or start a brief conversation, but Bart mainly stayed by himself with his art.

To Bart, the best part of storytelling is the ability to really make an impact with his writing.  He believes that a story's greatest strength is the ability to make people care about what is going on.  Not just simple feelings like hating a villain, but when they can actually feel sympathy for a character or get invested in the lives and relationships of the cast.  Bart thinks that if the audience cannot find a way to care about the story and the characters, then a rewrite is desperately needed.

Unfortunately, Bart's love of drawing and writing took up almost all of his time, and his lifestyle became very inactive. As the years went by, his lack of exercise combined with a poor diet caused him to gain weight at a rather worrying pace. By the time he reached high school, he was already well over 200 pounds. It also didn't help that it was around this time that his trimethylaminuria was getting worse, going from what was once a barely noticeable whiff to a strong odor. A few other students began to tease him, and because he was already so meek, he took it to heart and became even more withdrawn. Bart's parents notified the school, and a couple of the ringleaders got in trouble, but the damage had already been done.

Bart's weight had become a significant problem at that point. At first his parents weren't too concerned, since people in their families tended to be a bit on the larger side anyway, but by the time Bart outweighed his mother at 14 years old, they decided to do something about it. They tried multiple diet plans, but unfortunately, none of them ever seemed to take. Either the diet would be ineffective, or they would be too lax on the restrictions. When they felt they had no other options, they decided to just show Bart a video about the health issues brought on by obesity. This seemed to work, as Bart hasn't gained any significant weight since that time, although he has yet to slim down very much either.

As he spent more time in his room than before due to his mockery, he became more invested in the internet. He had begun to make short animations featuring his characters on his computer and post them to YouTube. He had also began a habit of browsing internet forums, particularly those focused on animation and cartoons.  It was in these forums that Bart felt he finally had a place where he could talk freely about things that interested him.  He could have conversations without feeling like the other people involved wanted him to go away or didn't care what he was saying, since the conversation would always continue onward instead of coming to an awkward stop.  He became known for being rather outspoken on his opinions about various shows, and has gained the respect of many posters thanks to his unabashed honesty. In addition, he felt that he was able to make friends more easily on forums because he wasn't held back by his shyness and self-consciousness over his appearance.

Since Bart's weight issues had been dealt with for the moment, Nick and Lorna decided to work on his isolation habits. About midway through his sophomore year, Bart was at the point that he would rarely leave the house except for school and family functions. They suggested that he join the writing club at school so that he could have an outlet for his creativity, and he reluctantly agreed. He was nervous at first that the other members wouldn't like him, but their expressions of approval once he showed them some of his work caused him to change his tune. He became seen as one of the more analytical members of the club due to how deeply he looks into nearly every aspect of the pieces that he writes and reads. Thanks to these newfound feelings of acceptance, he now looks forward to writing club meetings.

Bart does decently in school, but he is definitely far better in creative pursuits than academic ones. His grades in English and art have been straight A's for as long as he can remember, but other subjects like math and science tend to be straight C's, with a B or two if he's lucky. This also mirrors his feelings about those subjects. He enjoys writing and doing art, and is very enthusiastic about both. However, other subjects tend to bore him at best and frustrate him at worst. The only time he ever managed to get really invested in another subject was when he studied mythology in history class, mostly because he was so intrigued by the lore of each creature and figure that he studied. He has attempted to write some pieces inspired by mythological creatures, but he wasn't very satisfied with the results. He has trouble fitting those sorts of fantastic elements into his stories, which tend to be more grounded in reality. That hasn't stopped him from reading up on the subject, however. Even though he isn't very good at writing it, he still finds it extremely interesting, especially when supernatural creatures are involved, since he likes to see how unique they can be as opposed to human characters.

One other hobby that Bart enjoys when he has some free time is rap. He loves the flow of the music, and he's very impressed by how the rappers can keep themselves understandable even when they're rapping at high speed. He tends to prefer old school rappers to the current generation, mostly because he dislikes how much of modern rap consists of bragging songs. He prefers listening to Big Pun when he wants to hear something serious, and the Fat Boys when he wants to hear something fun. He has never really tried to rap for himself, however, primarily because he doubts that he would be able to match the skill of the rappers he listens to. Whenever he's feeling too stressed out to write, listening to rap is what he does to chill out.

Bart's taste in cartoons hasn't changed very much since he was young. He still watches the shows that he liked when he was growing up, and he has continued to add to the list of shows that he enjoys. At the moment, his current favorite shows are Gravity Falls and Steven Universe, and he takes them as proof that animation as an art form is on the upswing. Those two shows, along with Hey Arnold, are his primary inspirations in his work. As he continues to rewrite and redraw his creations from his childhood, hints of those three can be seen in them. However, he takes care not to make any of his characters or stories too close to their inspirations, as he wants them to be able to stand on their own merits rather than constantly being compared to the work of another, or worse, referred to as a rip-off.

Bart shows quite a lot of potential as a cartoonist, but his primary flaw is perfectionism. He constantly fears that the slightest error or inaccuracy will ruin a character or story in the eyes of others, and he constantly rewrites his scripts and storyboards. Ironically, he is rather forgiving when one of his favorite shows makes an error, so this is a bizarre sort of hypocrisy on his part. His perfectionism even concerns his parents, as they're starting to fear that he will never be satisfied with his work at the rate that he criticizes and edits it.

Bart has already decided what he wants to do with his life. He plans on becoming an animator and making a series out of the characters that he has been working on since childhood. He has been putting a portfolio together as his senior year is reaching its end, and he plans to move on to college afterwards to further improve his craft.

Advantages: Bart's size could be a deterrent for potential attackers due to how he outweighs a good percentage of his classmates. His generally unassuming personality is also unlikely to start fights if he talks to anyone on the island. In addition, he could have an easy ally if he meets up with someone else from the writing club.
Disadvantages: Bart is extremely out of shape, and has very little stamina compared to most of his peers. His size also makes it rather difficult for him to get from place to place in comparison to most other students, severely impacting his mobility. In addition, his medical condition makes it nearly impossible for him to sneak by unnoticed thanks to his body odor.

Designated Number: Male student no. 017

---

Designated Weapon: Dale Carnegie's "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living"
Conclusion: Am I reading this right? He smells of FISH!? I'm dying in my chair here, but writing 'hahaha' over and over again for a conclusion is kind of tacky. I'll just say I'm glad we have sophisticated life monitoring technology, because we sure as hell couldn't use a sniff-test on B017's body. - Dennis Lourvey

PS: Abby says that one was a little mean. Guess I should lay off the Red Bull.


DECEASED