Name: Christine Summers
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: Senior
School: George Hunter High School
Hobbies and Interests: Painting, recreational drug use, sketching, partying
Appearance: Christine is a thin framed girl that stands at 5’5” and weighs 120 lbs. Her scraggly, curly, shoulder-length brown hair alternates between being tied up in a ponytail or being left to hang down on its own depending on how she feels. She has hazel eyes with hooded eyelids. If she does decide to wear makeup, which isn’t too often, she would wear foundation at most and neutral or skin-coloured tones of lipstick and blush.
Christine cares little for fashion, often prioritizing comfort and utility over aesthetics. As such, most of her clothing lean more towards the loose and baggy side due to her common adventures to local thrift shops for new clothing. She leans more toward shirts and trousers than dresses and from there has picked up more than a few pairs of men’s clothing due to them having pockets more often than not. She wears a few accessories, mostly a few bangles on her wrists and the occasional hair band if it suits her mood. She often wears a simple pair of black studded earrings, preferring their light weight in comparison to other types of earrings.
For the school trip, Christine wore her hair in an up ponytail with a brown scrunchie. She wore a plaid red and black men’s shirt that hung loosely off her frame and a pair of simple, brown chinos. She also wore a pair of grey walking shoes with white socks.
Biography: Christine Summers was born on January 16th, 2000 to Miles and Lillian Summers, a conservative catholic family that had lived in Chattanooga all their lives. Miles was able to comfortably support the family as a HR Manager for a local law firm and while they weren’t the wealthiest family in Chattanooga, they had enough to not have to worry about monetary problems too often.
Christine’s birth was an unexpected one for the couple. They already had a boy 2 years previously, Ethan, and were comfortable with being a single child household. Nonetheless, they welcomed Christine into the family, though due to a mixture of lower funds and lack of time from taking care of Ethan, some of Christine’s things such as her cot were hand me downs from her brother.
From an early age, Christine watched as Ethan emerged as a very bright child, scoring highly in his academics and gaining the adoration of his parents. In comparison, Christine was remarkably average in most regards, struggling to stand out in comparison to her brother. This led to a common trend throughout most of her life where she would always be compared unfavourably to her brother by members of staff at her school. In the beginning, she felt pressured to meet up to the impossible to her expectations set by her brother. As she moved into middle school and finally high school, she had grown used to it and has stopped worrying about trying to be like her brother.
One of the few things that she was better than her brother at was art, in particular, painting. With it being something that she could hold over her brother, she invested significant effort into honing her artistic skills, sometimes at the cost of her other studies. Due to her parents and her brother seeing very little practical use for such skills in real life, they mostly overlooked Christine’s paintings and were more focused on her Ethan’s increasing academic successes. Even though her family didn’t appreciate it, she took pride in showing her art to her classmates who were generally impressed with her skills and has taken to using her painting to express and deal with her emotions to this day.
It was also around this time that she picked up sketching as a hobby. She doesn’t see her drawing skills to be as strong as her painting. Christine also hadn't pursued improving her skills in drawing as fervently as she did with painting. For her, sketching became a way to pass the time, observe the world around her and another vent for her emotions when they started to build up inside her. She always takes her sketchbook and pencils with her where she goes, and her school notebooks are filled with doodles and sketches that she makes during classes and during lunch periods. Her sketches widely vary between random shapes, things she sees in the scenery and occasionally people.
When Christine started middle school, the pressure that her parents put on Ethan began to increase. Though he continued to be academically successful, he came into more conflict with his parents at their increasing demands for academic success and for him to behave well and be a good representative of his family. This included being forced to go to church and follow the catholic faith, something that both he and Christine objected to. Christine felt uncomfortable with the many arguments that came about from the topic within the family. The arguments stemmed from Ethan's insistence that it was used as a tool to control him and keep him from spending time with his friends. She tended to lean more towards Ethan's side during these arguments, disliking the fact that God determined that they had to act a certain way or else be damned to hell. However, she decided to stay silent in these arguements so that she didn't get any heat from her parents.
Even so, Christine was often caught in the crossfire of these arguments, not being allowed to leave the dinner table while her parents and Ethan fought about different topics. Whether it be him not being allowed to go out to see friends because they wanted him to study more or arguing about catholic teachings and ceremonies. For the most part, she just did her best to stay quiet and weather the storm. On occasions that she did voice her concerns in wanting the arguments to stop, she was used as a bargaining chip by one of the sides to make the other feel guilty. This has led her to being conflict-averse to this day and will either try to stop an argument before it has a chance to escalate or just leave the conflict entirely.
After these family meals, she would often go into her room, put on some music and just stew in her emotions. It was her main way of coping alongside drawing and it allowed her to vent and get those feelings out without having to come into more conflict with her family. Nowadays, she has grown used to the negative feelings of hurt, sadness, stress and exhaustion and now finds them oddly comforting as they help reinforce her human nature. This change in her emotional state is reflected in her art, which often uses colder colours such as dark blue, black and white.
Christine found it odd that the same pressures that were being put on her brother were not being put on her. In fact, her parents didn’t seem to bother her too much, only checking in on her grades on occasion and making sure she was doing ok. At the time, she didn’t mind. In fact, she was slightly relieved that she wasn’t going through the same things that her brother was. She did notice that Ethan would be more critical of any mistakes she would make, be judgmental of her grades and lambasted her if she wasn't putting time towards studying or improving her grades. Overall, she felt that he was becoming more resentful of her. and her freedom, though never had this conversation with her brother out of fear of his reaction.
Middle school didn’t change much with Christine. Not having the same pressures put on her as Ethan, she started to slack in her studies but did just well enough to pass her subjects. This didn’t endear herself to her teachers, but her more blasé and chill attitude in school endeared her to her classmates and she managed to accumulate friends as she made her way through middle school. She eventually found herself comfortably in her own social group and found her time spent with her friends much more calming than her home life.
High school was a massive turning point in Christine’s life. Partway through her freshman year, she decided she was going to be vocal about her distaste of going to church and put her foot down, stating that she wasn’t going to go one Sunday morning. Her parents acquiesced to her demands with little argument. Expecting much more of a blowback considering how devout her parents were, Christine was stunned by their response and questioned how much they cared for her once they left the house. Christine's relationship with Ethan became even worse after the encounter as Ethan would refuse to talk with her and went out of his way to avoid encounters with her in school. Frustrated and exhausted by his brother's behaviour, Christine made no effort to try and mend their fractured bond.
Another large factor in her high school life was that she was invited out to more parties. So long as she said she was seeing a friend, it was relatively easy for her to get out of the house to attend events organised by her friends. At one of these parties at the end of her junior year, she was offered marijuana by one of her friends. The feeling of liberation she received from the weed became intoxicating to her and she started to actively seek it out.
Though her first experiences with weed were with a Sativa strain, she mostly prefers using Indica strains due to their full body effect alongside Christine preferring the stronger feelings of relaxation she would gain from it. Initially, she used weed sparingly, mostly at parties and gatherings. As time went on, she started to fall back onto weed more often as a way to help cope with the stress of her family life and school. Additionally, she found that smoking marijuana helped inspire her muse for painting, leading her to continue smoking it. She adopted the routine of smoking at the riverfront, making her way back home while high and doing her best to paint while high.
In order to hide this newly formed habit from her family, she started to take advice from her other weed smoking friends and looked up advice on sources such as r/trees and accumulated knowledge to help disguise her stoner habits. She picked up deodorant and chewing gum to help mask the scent of marijuana on her and when she could afford it, eyedrops to help mask the redness of her eyes. Though the eyedrops were more of a precaution as she suffers less from reddening eyes than others, she still keeps at least one bottle handy just in case. The flavour of chewing gum changes depending on what she can pick up quickly and cheaply, but she has a stronger preference for minty flavours with the occasional foray into sweeter flavours. Once she started smoking weed frequently, she had a fixation towards chewing gum, even when she wasn’t planning on getting high. Additionally, she started to chew at the end of her stationary when she can’t get access to her gum during school hours.
Knowing that she’s far too deep into smoking weed to escape from it, she has made the conscious decision to stay away from hard drugs such as Molly and LSD. Recognising that she has an addictive personality, she active refuses to even entertain the notion of harder drugs and does her best to stay away from them at parties.
At the end of her sophomore year, Ethan received an offer from the University of Pennsylvania to study economics. While her parents were proud of the fact that her brother managed to secure a spot in an Ivy League college, Ethan took the offer because he wanted to be as far away from his parents and Christine. Though Christine was initially worried that her parents would become controlling towards her now that Ethan was out of the house. However, her worries were soon to be unfounded when she found that her parents made sure to stay in contact with Ethan at least once a week, while at most they checked in with her occasionally to see if she was still passing.
As high school went on, Christine spent less and less time at home, making excuses to her parents such as spending time with her friends or that she was going to be late due to needing to do some things at school. She didn’t enjoy her home life, where her parents were busy with Ethan or otherwise giving a token effort to be a part of her upbringing. She was also worried that they’d catch on to her weed habits and didn’t want to face the inevitable blowback she would get should they find out. There have been times where Christine will often stay out late at the riverfront, looking over the river and listening to music as she soaks in her emotions and lets time pass, waiting until a time where she thought that her parents would be asleep.
When interacting with others, she often tries to stay calm, chilled and moderate. She stays away from controversial topics such as politics and religion, believing that they just bring unnecessary conflict and quickly tries to change the flow of the conversation should those topics arise. She does her best to stay out of drama and refuses to propagate any gossip that is passed around the school. She’s friendly with pretty much everyone so long as they’re friendly back. This attitude has allowed her to be relatively popular with the majority of kids at George Hunter and she does her best not to ruffle anyone’s feathers due to a mixture of not wanting to be involved in any conflict and a fear of being left alone.
In order to help subsidise her smoking habits, Christine works part-time in the Wicca-based store on 34th street. While she doesn’t have any significant interests in being wiccan, she finds the items she sells and the customers she encounters more interesting than if she took up a part-time job elsewhere. She has managed to form a friendly relationship with the shop owner, though has also hidden her spending habits from her as well due to the fear of being fired.
One thing that has constantly shifted as she had gotten older is her art style and paintings. Towards the beginning, she happily used warm colours such as red, orange and yellow in her compositions, though they didn’t really have any themes and were more paintings of objects such as the sun, flowers and trees. As she has gotten older, she has slowly started to shift towards cooler tones and has drawn upon her negative feelings as a muse and used art as a way to express and deal with the emotions bubbling inside her. Much of her paintings tend to explore themes of isolation, separation and pain with her examples being two figures separated by a chasm and a female trapped in chains composed of words she would hear during arguments at the dinner table. When she is high, while most of the composition retains the cooler, dark tones that she often uses, she has started to add splotches and patches of warm colours and allows herself to explore her more positive emotions. One of her most recent compositions is a frail hand reaching towards a light while surrounded by darkness.
While she would consider herself a fairly accomplished artist, she finds it unrealistic to try pursuing art as a career. She has strong doubts that her art would be able to sell for an amount that she could comfortably live on and has mostly looked at art as a therapy tool to get her through life. However, she currently doesn’t have any other plans for life after high school and is not sure if she even wants to attend college, reckoning that the school life isn’t for her and that she probably would be better off working full time at the Wicca store.
Christine puts in the bare minimum effort to pass her studies, though that minimum has increased due to the increasing difficulty of the content of work that is being taught. For most of her subjects, she averages C’s with the occasional B. She scores very well in Art as she actively enjoys the subject and has managed to achieve a low A so far. Most other subjects hold little interest for her and she often spends lesson time doodling in class rather than paying attention to what the teacher has to say.
When interacting with her friends, Christine does her best to act as a mediator and tries to nip arguments in the bud before they have a chance to form. She does her best to stay away from groups that tend to get involved in arguments or gossip but does interact with them on occasion when they aren't embroiled in drama. Christine tries to maintain a positive reputation for herself as a relaxed and open individual and in social interaction comes off as unoffensive, refusing to state controversial opinions. She also prefers to keep any negative emotions bottled up around classmates as she doesn't want to be a burden and ruin the mood. She reacts poorly to anyone who tries to call her out publicly. This mostly manifests as her becoming tearful or unable to come up with any response, though there have been times where she has run away from the situation.
She is well connected within the George Hunter marijuana scene and often smokes with them recreationally or at parties. She also gets some of her weed from sources within George Hunter. She generally feels most comfortable with fellow marijuana smokers and believes she can be more open with her emotions with them, especially her more negative ones. She has been known to occasionally do portraits of her weed friends while high and is happier to share her darker pieces with them while high or sober.
Christine feels distant to both her mother and father and sometimes wonders if they actually love her. With the added complication of needing to hide her smoking habit from them, she finds it hard to approach them with any issues and prefers to try and deal with her problems on her own instead of approaching either of them for help. Though she does wonder what life would be like if they spent more time with her and cared about her art, she’s also worried that they’d care about her too much and that she’d be stuck in a similar situation to Ethan. As such, if she does decide to go to college, part of the motivation would be to develop independence away from her parents.
When it comes to her sexuality, Christine hesitates to put a label on what her preference is as she has had a passing interest in girls and boys but isn’t really sure whether that interest is a fully formed sexual attraction. She has experimented a bit with a few make-out sessions with members of both genders but is still unsure where she falls on the sexuality spectrum. She hasn’t had sex, preferring to save her virginity for someone she considers special and is very hesitant to mix weed and sex due to being afraid of the effects it would have on her judgment.
Advantages: Her relative popularity and easy-going nature allow her to have an easier time forming positive relations on the island and reduce the number of potential enemies she may encounter. Her approach to conversations can help people be at ease with her and could help prevent arguments from escalating.
Disadvantages: Her overreliance on marijuana and other coping methods during stressful situations can lead her to having difficult coping with the high levels of stress on the island. Her aversion to conflict could be exploited by others and could cause her to have a difficult time coping on the island. Her smoking habits have caused her to have a reduced lung capacity in comparison to her peers.
Christine Summers
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jimmydalad
- Posts: 290
- Joined: Mon Aug 13, 2018 3:35 pm
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MK Kilmarnock
- Posts: 1931
- Joined: Fri Aug 10, 2018 5:28 am
- Location: On one of the coasts, generally
Hey, Jimmy. It's me, MK Kilmarnock, everybody's favorite staff member and definitely the nicest and friendliest. We all know that. And I'm going to be critiquing Christine today. Who, as you've probably figured out by the placement in the forums, is denied pending some edits.
Let's start with the Hobbies and Interests. 'Stewing in emotions' is inappropriate for this section (though I cracked a half smile) and needs to be removed. Her socializing is also primarily through parties. Parties are specific enough to get a pass but considering just about everybody is social in some capacity, 'socializing' can be removed as well. Also while technically correct, you can be more specific with 'recreational drug use' to be 'recreational marijuana use' (as that is the only drug you mention her taking). ... Unless she also drinks alcohol, in which case, disregard this.
Appearance section:
"While now she only has pierced her ears, she has toyed with the idea of piercing her tongue or belly button, though has decided she may as well save that until her 21st birthday." > The appearance section is a physical description of what she looks like. While I'm okay with some minor reasoning and padding here (like that included with the bits about her seldom wearing makeup), we really do not need hypothetical appearances for a birthday she has a >99% chance of never reaching.
"Christine decided to wear her hair in an up ponytail with a brown scrunchie. She wore a plaid red and black men’s shirt that hangs loosely off her frame and a pair of simple, brown chinos. She also wore a pair of grey walking shoes with white socks." > Why is this in past tense when the rest of the section is in present tense? Is this regarding the day of the abduction? WHEN did she decide to wear her in an up ponytail with... so on and so forth?
Biography:
" Christine Summers was born on January 16th 2000 to" > minor nitpick, comma between 16th and 2000.
" some of Christine’s things i.e. her cot were hand me downs from her brother." > either put the 'i.e. her cot' into a parenthetical citation (which is its own bugbear but I'd allow it here) or rewrite the sentence to 'some of Christine's things such as her cot were...'
"This lead to a common trend throughout most of her life" > This led to a common trend...
"Christine also hasn’t pursued improving her skills in drawing as fervently as she did with painting." > Stick to a tense, it's bad form to shift back and forth in a paragraph and worse to do so in a sentence. Hasn't --> Hadn't or She did ---> she has.
"This included being forced to go to church and follow the catholic faith, something that both he and Christine objected to, though Ethan was more verbal about his distaste for Catholicism than Christine was." > Without some outside interference, a child raised in a religious family doesn't tend to stray from that structure, at least not around a middle school age, which tells me there's some form of catalyst here that causes doubt for the two children. Could you go a little more in-depth for why Ethan and Christine object to Catholicism?
Interlude to remark on something that's cropped up a few times, and a core issue to the profile (and something that helps to needlessly contribute to its length, WRYYYYYYY): There's a lot here that takes from too close to Ethan's perspective. It's important to remember that while the pressure extolled by Christine's parents regarding Ethan plays a big role in shaping Christine, this is still HER profile. So things like "Ethan began to grow resentful of Christine and this resentment caused tension between siblings" and "From an early age, Ethan emerged as a very bright child, scoring highly in his academics and gaining the adoration of his parents. In comparison, Christine..." read like an Ethan profile, not a Christine profile. The active voice and the viewpoint should both stay on Christine. How does she know Ethan has grown resentful? It's more apt to say that she felt he was growing more resentful of her, leaving it ambiguous as to the extent, or if it was really the case at all. This is something that should help in shaping future profiles, to keep your focus, and to cut down on unnecessary details.
I actually have nothing to say regarding her drug use. I WOULD have had something to say, but you covered both hiding her habits from her parents and realizing she had an addictive personality which explains her dependence on marijuana (which has not proven to be chemically addictive in the same vein as tobacco or most hard drugs, etc.)
"Christine’s relationship with her brother is highly strained and fractured. Due to Ethan’s increasing resentment and anger towards Christine, he made her life difficult at home and did his best to undermine her art and make her feel smaller than him by constantly mentioning how much smarter he was and how she would amount to nothing with the grades she was achieving. While she has taken those words to heart to a degree, she also feels resentful of the fact that he received attention for her parents and that they care and support what he does while they at best provide a token amount of interest towards her hobbies. This conflict has persisted to today, where they still rarely, if ever, talk with one another." > This entire paragraph is, at this point, almost entirely redundant. I know I normally ask for more in terms of interpersonal relationships but there's just been so much to say regarding Christine and Ethan that at this point, there's nothing more to add. Conversely I know very little about the types of people she considers her friends other than they party and smoke weed together. A quick search reveals 'friends' comes up seven times in the profile and there's still hardly anything said about that. Nix this paragraph and tell me more about her fraternal relationships.
Advantages and Disadvantages:
Some advantages and disadvantages clash with each other. She has an ability to stay chill and calm, yet her over-reliance (not overreliance) and other coping methods that she most likely won't have access to lead her to have difficulty coping with high levels of stress... which means she won't be staying chill an calm.
On the flip-side, I do like the other pair that do seem to clash but can still work, her easy-going nature allowing for allies but also easily exploitable as a high aversion to conflict, meaning she can ally with the wrong person. So that can stay.
Would like the inclusion of a shortened lung capacity due to reliance on smoking weed. Guess what, kids? Smoke of any kind is bad for your lungs, it's not just cigarettes.
Anyway, that just about wraps it up. Lemme know when you've made the appropriate changes, including a changelog if you are so inclined (I'd appreciate it), and I'll give Christine another look.
Let's start with the Hobbies and Interests. 'Stewing in emotions' is inappropriate for this section (though I cracked a half smile) and needs to be removed. Her socializing is also primarily through parties. Parties are specific enough to get a pass but considering just about everybody is social in some capacity, 'socializing' can be removed as well. Also while technically correct, you can be more specific with 'recreational drug use' to be 'recreational marijuana use' (as that is the only drug you mention her taking). ... Unless she also drinks alcohol, in which case, disregard this.
Appearance section:
"While now she only has pierced her ears, she has toyed with the idea of piercing her tongue or belly button, though has decided she may as well save that until her 21st birthday." > The appearance section is a physical description of what she looks like. While I'm okay with some minor reasoning and padding here (like that included with the bits about her seldom wearing makeup), we really do not need hypothetical appearances for a birthday she has a >99% chance of never reaching.
"Christine decided to wear her hair in an up ponytail with a brown scrunchie. She wore a plaid red and black men’s shirt that hangs loosely off her frame and a pair of simple, brown chinos. She also wore a pair of grey walking shoes with white socks." > Why is this in past tense when the rest of the section is in present tense? Is this regarding the day of the abduction? WHEN did she decide to wear her in an up ponytail with... so on and so forth?
Biography:
" Christine Summers was born on January 16th 2000 to" > minor nitpick, comma between 16th and 2000.
" some of Christine’s things i.e. her cot were hand me downs from her brother." > either put the 'i.e. her cot' into a parenthetical citation (which is its own bugbear but I'd allow it here) or rewrite the sentence to 'some of Christine's things such as her cot were...'
"This lead to a common trend throughout most of her life" > This led to a common trend...
"Christine also hasn’t pursued improving her skills in drawing as fervently as she did with painting." > Stick to a tense, it's bad form to shift back and forth in a paragraph and worse to do so in a sentence. Hasn't --> Hadn't or She did ---> she has.
"This included being forced to go to church and follow the catholic faith, something that both he and Christine objected to, though Ethan was more verbal about his distaste for Catholicism than Christine was." > Without some outside interference, a child raised in a religious family doesn't tend to stray from that structure, at least not around a middle school age, which tells me there's some form of catalyst here that causes doubt for the two children. Could you go a little more in-depth for why Ethan and Christine object to Catholicism?
Interlude to remark on something that's cropped up a few times, and a core issue to the profile (and something that helps to needlessly contribute to its length, WRYYYYYYY): There's a lot here that takes from too close to Ethan's perspective. It's important to remember that while the pressure extolled by Christine's parents regarding Ethan plays a big role in shaping Christine, this is still HER profile. So things like "Ethan began to grow resentful of Christine and this resentment caused tension between siblings" and "From an early age, Ethan emerged as a very bright child, scoring highly in his academics and gaining the adoration of his parents. In comparison, Christine..." read like an Ethan profile, not a Christine profile. The active voice and the viewpoint should both stay on Christine. How does she know Ethan has grown resentful? It's more apt to say that she felt he was growing more resentful of her, leaving it ambiguous as to the extent, or if it was really the case at all. This is something that should help in shaping future profiles, to keep your focus, and to cut down on unnecessary details.
I actually have nothing to say regarding her drug use. I WOULD have had something to say, but you covered both hiding her habits from her parents and realizing she had an addictive personality which explains her dependence on marijuana (which has not proven to be chemically addictive in the same vein as tobacco or most hard drugs, etc.)
"Christine’s relationship with her brother is highly strained and fractured. Due to Ethan’s increasing resentment and anger towards Christine, he made her life difficult at home and did his best to undermine her art and make her feel smaller than him by constantly mentioning how much smarter he was and how she would amount to nothing with the grades she was achieving. While she has taken those words to heart to a degree, she also feels resentful of the fact that he received attention for her parents and that they care and support what he does while they at best provide a token amount of interest towards her hobbies. This conflict has persisted to today, where they still rarely, if ever, talk with one another." > This entire paragraph is, at this point, almost entirely redundant. I know I normally ask for more in terms of interpersonal relationships but there's just been so much to say regarding Christine and Ethan that at this point, there's nothing more to add. Conversely I know very little about the types of people she considers her friends other than they party and smoke weed together. A quick search reveals 'friends' comes up seven times in the profile and there's still hardly anything said about that. Nix this paragraph and tell me more about her fraternal relationships.
Advantages and Disadvantages:
Some advantages and disadvantages clash with each other. She has an ability to stay chill and calm, yet her over-reliance (not overreliance) and other coping methods that she most likely won't have access to lead her to have difficulty coping with high levels of stress... which means she won't be staying chill an calm.
On the flip-side, I do like the other pair that do seem to clash but can still work, her easy-going nature allowing for allies but also easily exploitable as a high aversion to conflict, meaning she can ally with the wrong person. So that can stay.
Would like the inclusion of a shortened lung capacity due to reliance on smoking weed. Guess what, kids? Smoke of any kind is bad for your lungs, it's not just cigarettes.
Anyway, that just about wraps it up. Lemme know when you've made the appropriate changes, including a changelog if you are so inclined (I'd appreciate it), and I'll give Christine another look.
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jimmydalad
- Posts: 290
- Joined: Mon Aug 13, 2018 3:35 pm
The edits have been made, as requested. Please find the changelog below.
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MK Kilmarnock
- Posts: 1931
- Joined: Fri Aug 10, 2018 5:28 am
- Location: On one of the coasts, generally
Approved