Abel Kuntz

[Jilly]

Name: Kuntz, Abel
Gender: Male
Age: 17
Grade: 11th
Hobbies and Interests: Literature (horror & fantasy), debate, stocks

Appearance: Abel stands about 5’9” tall and weighs about 155 pounds. He is fairly lithe and sinewy and tries to take care of himself with adequate nutrition and serviceable bodyweight exercise routines. He carries himself well and in a collected manner for the most part, but he can also become easily agitated when provoked into some sort of argument.

Abel is ethnically a vague mix of Central and Eastern-European and has a pale complexion, a structurally round face, brown deep-set eyes, a prominent straight nose, and thin lips. He keeps his light brown hair shaved all the way down with clippers, and makes an effort to maintain it at about a week’s worth of stubble. He also shaves his face consistently about once a week, though he grows hair fast and has a light but noticeable starting of a goatee by the end of the cycle. He is near-sighted enough to need prescription-strength glasses or contacts.

Abel dresses conservatively and preppy; most of his outfits being different shades of office casual as he enjoys the clean cut aesthetic. On Casting Day, Abel was wearing a long-sleeve light blue button-down pocket dress shirt tucked into a pair of well-fitting blue jeans, black dress socks, and brown loafers. He also had on a brown leather belt, and he wore his gray half-rim eyeglasses on his face.

Biography: Abel was born in Miami, FL on January 14th, 2004. He is the second oldest of four born to Catherine and Kiefer Kuntz, a middle school social studies teacher and a civil engineer for the local government. He has one older sister Valerie (21), and was followed by two brothers, Patrick (13) and David (11).

Abel’s childhood was fairly mundane. Even from a young age, he’s never had much trouble talking to strangers or surface-level engaging with kids on the playground or at school. However, there was a catch to him being aggressively social; he was fairly bossy and almost always dictated how play sessions would go about, digging his heels in when he didn’t get his way or getting into arguments at the drop of a hat. As such, he had trouble actually making friends let alone keeping them; in most cases those friendships were quick and fleeting and fizzled out as kids started to slowly distance themselves away from Abel, oblivious to himself as he usually bounced to another group by then anyway.

This argumentative behavior affected his relationships in Abel's homelife, especially in regards to his siblings. He was extremely bossy and controlling of his younger siblings and older sister, leading to shouting matches between the four of them that sometimes spiraled out of control without the intervention of one or both of their parents, who would usually let the children fight disagreements out themselves seeing those conflict-resolution skills as necessary to instill at an early age. Though well intended, this usually ended up with Abel winning out and getting his way.

Because of this, Abel also had a good relationship with his parents, figuring himself something as the favorite child. He in particular was very close with Catherine and helped her out around the house or ran errands with her, both because he liked spending time with her along with using it as leverage to be in her good graces. He also bonded well with Kiefer, who would regularly play games or watch tv with him or bring home books for him to read as he tried to instill a love of reading into Abel as soon as he could.

It took until early middle school before Abel’s behavior really changed. In the second half of 6th grade, Abel made friends with a new kid named Jonah that had moved over the winter break. This was the first time Abel ever really felt a strong connection with someone else at his age with the same interests and hobbies. Although he still had trouble not being self-centered and fighting in arguments for the sake of it, he really enjoyed that companionship and thought Jonah felt the same.

Unbeknownst to Abel, though, this friendship was slowly decaying as Jonah grew more and more tired of his attitude. These tensions eventually boiled over after Jonah confronted Abel after school one day near the beginning of the 8th grade and severely reprimanded Abel to the point that the friendship was effectively severed.

This was devastating to Abel, enough that he slowly withdrew and detached from everyone. During this time, he started to turn to more solitary activities like reading. Always casually interested in reading, this was the period where Abel really started to consume books as a coping mechanism. He started reading gothic works like We Have Always Lived in the Castle and In the Shadow of Blackbirds, enjoying the dark and gloomy atmosphere along with the questions they ask about the human psyche. He also started reading low fantasy works, enjoying the sense of adventure and politics of other worlds along with just thinking magic is neat.

Abel’s parents, at first, figured his change of behavior was just a fluke due to teenage hormones. However, after several months of this social withdrawal along with noticing other self-destructive traits such as noticeably not eating, they decided they had to step in. After plenty of talks between them where Abel slowly opened up again. Eventually, he decided to try and reconnect with Jonah, this time with the idea that always getting your way isn’t how the real world works, though Abel more took this to mean you have to let others win sometimes even though you were actually always right. This strategy along with the healing that comes with time worked, and Jonah accepted Abel’s apology and agreed to be friends again. Although they aren’t as close anymore due to Abel getting a scholarship to Mangrove Garden and them not going to the same schools anymore, Abel keeps an effort to regularly stay in touch to the point where they still hang out just about every other weekend.

In high school Abel has managed to calm down somewhat. With a chance to start with a more or less blank slate he has taken this time to restructure himself as someone much less combative, though this is easier said than done; there’s still times where he will push boundaries or be pedantic for the sake of arguing, although he has managed to keep his tendencies in check before they ever cause a scene. However, this made him a great member of the school’s debate team, at first something he picked to do as just an extracurricular but eventually something he really enjoys mostly for the fact that it is just competitive school-sponsored arguing. Gradeswise, Abel is somewhere in the middle of the pack—he makes As and Bs in the more science based classes and the occasional C in the humanities or English, finding them rather boring.

His home life has also taken a turn for the better, as far as his relationship with his siblings goes. His relationship with Patrick is still really fractured and tense to the point that neither speak to each other much without a potential argument breaking out, but Abel has been able to get along better with the other two.

As Abel got older, his taste in literature matured more and more. Stephen King became one of his favorite authors, in particular due to The Stand and The Dark Tower series. He also became fond of Edgar Allan Poe, in particular his work The Mysterious Stranger due to the philosophical questions and answers put in the book; although he did not particularly believe in these questions or answers, he still found it a fun read. For full fantasy books, he would dabble in books such as Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones and Discworld, enjoying each for their expansive wordbuilding and political intrigue while still having that element of adventure as an escape fantasy.

Recently Abel has also taken an interest in economics, especially the stock market. Originally finding it just as a conversation point along with something that just seemed like the kind of thing smart people were into, the subtle gambling mechanics and prospects of building wealth enticed him to eventually try to day trade on his own, through a sock puppet account set up by Kiefer due to him still being a minor, reasoning that it was a good thing to start doing young so Abel could get ahead in life. By making enough good calls to outweigh the bad puts, he has managed to make a small fortune for himself in the amount of a few hundred dollars.

In regards to SOTF-TV, Abel doesn’t have a lot of interest. He knows of it enough to skirt by in conversations without coming off as some sort of uncultured troglodyte, but he also is turned off by how popular it is and finds it as the sort of thing uncultured troglodytes like.

After high school, he isn’t sure about where to go after graduation. He’s considering going to college most likely, but he’s putting that decision off until the fall semester of senior year when the time is up to make a decision.

Advantages: Abel is smart and strong in his convictions; if he thinks he is right, he won’t back down unless there’s a reason to. He is physically healthy, and may not have too hard of a time adjusting to the environmental stresses of the game.
Disadvantages: Abel really doesn’t like when he is questioned, easily falling into that trap and will argue with others for the sake of it especially without thinking. He may be hard pressed to find people willing to work with him for this reason, assuming said people could even stand him already in a lower-stress school environment.

[Namira]

HI Jilly,

Abel's looking almost good to go, I'd just like a bit more expansion on two topics.

Firstly, his hobbies feel a little sparse in that the reading interest falls away after its first mention and doesn't resurface when it was last raised in middle school: I'd suggest either an additional hobby or more info about literature now that he's older.

Secondly, he has a huge family and we have almost no detail about how he gets along with them! His dad helped him out with the trading account and his parents tried to get him back into having friends, but I don't have any sense of how he is with his parents in general, just by inference. Similarly he has three siblings but no mentioned relationship to any of them. How is Abel with his family? Do his argumentative tendencies come out with them, too? Please expand!

:Let me know when edits are done and I'll review.

[Jilly]

Thank you for the critique, Namira. I've edited Abel like you requested, totally on my own and without the help of any other people.

- Expanded on his literature hobby, making it more relevant by way of his father pushing it while he was young along with the kinds of books he reads now as a young adult
- Expanded on relationships with his family; dedicated a few paragraphs in the early and later sections to talk about his good relationship with his parents along with his poor relationship with his siblings that eventually got better as time went (for 2/3rds of his siblings, anyway)

Let me know if I still missed something or fuddled something up with the new additions. Thank you!

[Namira]

Approved