James Highchurch

[Catche Jagger]

Name: James Highchurch
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Grade: 12th
Hobbies and Interests: Tennis, golf, EDM, DJing, libertarianism

Appearance: James is lean of build and about average height, standing at 5’9” and weighing 149 lbs. He is relatively fit, sporting a fair bit of lean muscle from regular athletic activity. He sports a head of well-kempt dark blonde hair of moderate length, not growing bast his ears. His eyes are hazel in color, with flecks of green, above which rest a pair of straight brows. James’s skin is clear and his face is clean shaven. He has a well-defined jawline, alongside dimpled cheeks, a somewhat long and pointed nose, relatively thin lips, and a set of straight white teeth. His skin is fair, reflecting his Anglo-American descent.

James dresses in a preppy style, frequently wearing brightly colored button up and polo shirts, and places a fair bit of emphasis on the upkeep of his physical appearance. On the day of casting, James was wearing a light blue polo shirt, white khaki shorts, a pair of boat shoes, a brown braided belt, and a pair of sunglasses.

Biography: James Highchurch is the only child of Andrew and Claire Highchurch. Andrew is a successful financial analyst, consultant, and investor who has spent much of his life based out of Florida and is the current owner and head executive of Highchurch Consulting LLC. Claire, an accomplished lawyer in her own right, is in fact his third wife and almost twenty years younger. Indeed, James is Andrew’s fourth child, having three older siblings all at least ten years his senior from Andrew’s first marriage that Andrew had won total custody over following the divorce. The second marriage was a bitter and relatively brief affair which resulted in little but resentment among all members of the family involved.

Claire avoided marriage and family life until shortly after entering her thirties in order to focus on her professional career, when she met Andrew, an older man of means who she found to be charming in his own way. After their marriage and the birth of their first child, Claire thought she might be able to put work on the back-burner in order to focus on raising James, only to find that while she did still love James, she was unsatisfied in the role of a housewife and soon took more and more time at her job.

With both of his parents frequently busy, a great deal of James’s childhood was spent in the care of a series of nannies from the time he was six with many responsibilities, such as transportation, often being delegated to his youngest sister Ella as time went on, as James’ parents believed that the girl needed to develop a greater sense of responsibility. Though she did view this as a sort of punishment early on, Ella grew to develop a fondness for her young brother, particularly in comparison to her other relatives. Even after graduating high school, Ella often found herself back at home, due to various difficulties in her academic and personal life, each time being saddled with some aspect of James’s care up until the end of his time at middle school.

Of his half-siblings, Ella would become the one James would grow closest to in spite of her being about ten years his senior, and it was her that originally got him into music, though her tastes skewed toward varieties of pop punk, which James would eventually drift away from. His oldest sister, Paige, moved to Arizona with her fiance when James was eleven and has maintained only very sporadic communications with the family since, much to Andrew’s chagrin.

On the other hand, James has grown to perceive his brother Stephen as overly sycophantic toward their father, attempting to present himself as some sort of successor in success, even going to school for finance and taking a job at their father’s firm. However, this negative perception also stems from a general cold attitude that Stephen presents toward his younger brother, viewing him as he does Ella, lazy and not serious enough.

Still, James has grown into an awkward middle ground position among the family. Though he likes Ella far more than his other family members, the path she has taken later in life, mismanaging money and stuck in a seemingly revolving door of toxic boyfriends, has left her a bit hard for him to admire. At the same time, though he deeply admires his father’s business sense and success in life, James himself has never held a particular interest in the study of finance.

This sense of divide only worsened following James’s performance on the admission test to Mangrove High, failing to place within the top fifty male applicants resulting in his family having to pay full tuition. Though they had no difficulty in paying the necessary amount, his parents, Andrew in particular, took this as a sign of poor development in James, a situation that was blamed on Ella’s influence on the boy. Ella was not cut off from the boy or anything so extreme, but now Andrew and Claire sought outside workers once more to provide care where they could not.

Still, James still found his greatest passion outside what might have been hoped for by his parents. Music was a passion that he was introduced to by Ella back when he was in middle school, listening to her favorite tracks together and talking about them. Exploring this interest online, James found himself getting into the craft of track remixes and eventually started to try his hand at creating his own.

As James has improved in his abilities in this arena, he has begun to favor the style of EDM more and has been trying his hand at DJing, taking what few opportunities he can get in that field at this point in his life.

Growing up around and among many teenagers and adults surrounding him but few that could truly be called peers, James initially struggled to adjust to the social realities of school as a very young child. However, the development of a natural charisma and social ease seemingly inherited from his mother (as well as the material wealth of his family ensuring that James usually had access to whatever was new or cool at a given time) would eventually earn him a great many friends.

The dynamics of these relationships were significantly different to those he had at home. James had grown up surrounded by either apparent indifference or at least inconsistency. In school, though, James could be admired, even looked up to. As James matured, particularly as he became pubescent, he grew more dependent on the sense of affirmation this dynamic could provide him, eager to please and to impress those around him. This trait remains strong in him today and though it has brought him skill in the field of social maneuvering, it has left him highly subject to peer pressure and the whims of large groups he seeks to appease.

The boy has found a similar sense of affirmation in romantic relationships. James had his first girlfriend in middle school and though the sense of having a girlfriend was gratifying, he felt himself burdened to meet many things she asked of him, neither messaging her or paying her as much attention as she had wanted. James was frustrated by her complaints and ended the middle school relationship not long after it began.

Similar attitudes continue to pervade James’s relationships with girls in high school, seeking the emotional and physical gratification that such relationships entail for him, but being unable or unwilling to meet the needs of his partners or flirtations. This pattern of not committing to or sticking with a relationship for long before getting involved in something else has garnered James a reputation as a flirt or more negatively as something of a lecher. In terms of how he views these girls, James has been rather inconsistent as of late, sometimes viewing them as people he is sincerely interested in dating, while at others assured that all of these interactions are nothing but casual fun.

James does engage in some athletic activities, though mainly sticks to those which he grew up taking part in with his father, brother, and other family members and friends, namely tennis and golf. Neither sport is something that James considers to be an essential part of his life, but values the exercise and does genuinely enjoy the competition.

He is, however, rather proficient in tennis and can even play at a competitive level, being on the team at school. With golf, on the other hand, James is a much more limited hand, something Stephen takes time out of his general indifference to remind him of, and remains more of a casual player.

With the assistance of some tutors, James has managed to maintain a class ranking at about the middle of the class. He has sometimes managed to rise above the middle of the pack, but he has failed to achieve such results on a consistent basis. His placement in class has allowed James to avoid his parents taking interest in his academic progress again, much to his relief.

Though not much of a political mind, James has picked up a lot of libertarian ideas from his father and has grown fond of his idea of the ideology, often throwing out bits of like minded political wisdom he has heard elsewhere in relevant contexts, such as arguments with more liberally-minded classmates. However, James’s understanding of socio-economic issues is rather shallow, a fact that has been caught out for on a few occasions.

James does not frequently watch SOTF himself, just not finding the show particularly entertaining or interesting, though he does often look up information on the show online in order to keep up in conversations about it. He does not have any objections to the show’s existence, though. In a viewpoint also inherited from his father, James believes that the success of SOTF validates its worth to people, that if it were somehow wrong people would just stop watching.

Advantages: James is quite physically fit from regular physical activity in sports, providing him good stamina and speed. He is also rather skilled socially, being relatively charismatic and generally well-liked by his wide social circle.
Disadvantages: James is not a particularly independent thinker, frequently caving to social pressure when push comes to shove and frequently allowing his outlook to be shaped by others. Additionally, his flirtatious and cool attitude will not have endeared him to those who don’t already consider him a friend. Having grown up in a life of limited physical strife, James is also unlikely to handle matters of physical danger well.

[Namira]

Approved