AE3: SHAWN THORNTON [DECEASED]

[The Honeless Beard]

DECEASED


Name: Shawn Thornton
Gender: Male
Age: 17
School: Davison Secondary School
Hobbies and Interests: Magic, Card Games, The Ladies

Appearance: Shawn is a fairly average looking teenage boy who nonetheless holds a certain presence. He is average in terms of build and while he leans more towards handsome than plain he is nothing special. However, through his clothing, his behaviour and general demeanour he is able to attract attention.

At 5’9” Shawn is of average height for a guy his age and at 136lbs he is slim but not skinny or in particularly good shape. He does not work out but rather eats well and has a good metabolism. His shoulders are broader than average and his arms are a little on the skinny side, making them look longer than they are in proportion to his body. His hands and fingers are long and dextrous, a result of his main pastime and all the practise he has done.

His face is long and oval shaped, his nose is a little on the long side and his eyes are round. Shawn’s light brown hair is about two inches long and quite thick; he is not particularly bothered about how it looks and he generally just lets it fall where it may. His eyes are a vibrant green, which he gets from his mothers side of the family and are something he is quite proud of, probably being his favourite feature. Finally his teeth are quite straight and very white, Shawn taking great care of them.

While Shawn’s choice of clothing might not be the most extravagant in terms of colour or flair, it is still a little beyond the norm. He usually wears the jeans and trainers combo which is common to most teenagers, as well as a t-shirt and undone button-up shirt in various colourful combinations. He also has a collection of wrist accessories he tends to wear, such as watches, wristbands and so on. He wears these largely because he likes them but also partly to aid with his magic hobby.

On the day he was taken he was wearing his usual blue jeans and black trainers alongside a black and purple vertical striped button-up shirt over a relatively plain black t-shirt with the phrase “Magic Is Real” printed across the chest in white. He also wore a silver (in colour) watch on his right wrist and a black fabric wristband on his left with stars set into it all around its length which aren’t visible unless you look closely.

Biography: Shawn is the not so normal middle child of an average middle class family. His father, Gregory, own and runs a car dealership in Albuquerque while his mother, Mary, is a personnel manager in a medium sized office who together make more than enough money to support their family. There were both quite young when they met, just out of high school, and ended up starting a family together not long after. They didn’t get married until their first child was already two years old.

Currently they have three children, two boys and one girl. As has been mention already Shawn is the middle child; he has an older sister, Jessica, who is twenty years old, and a younger brother Michael who is only ten.

Being only a few years apart Jessica and Shawn have a fairly good relationship, having grown up together. Jessica played the big sister role well, always looking out for and protecting her little brother. She made sure he was ok in school and at home and offered advice whenever he needed it.

When they were younger Shawn used to look up to his sister a lot, as little brothers are perhaps wont to do, though this has lessened as they both grew older and he began to catch up to her in terms of maturity; even so Shawn will still go to Jessica with any problems he has before anyone else, including his parents, seeing his sister as someone who is older and wiser, to an extent, but still someone relatable and approachable. They still spend a lot of time together even now, especially since Jessica has yet to move away from home, and while he is now old enough that he doesn’t really need looking after anymore they still talk often and she is still an oft used source of wisdom for her younger brother, especially when it comes to relationship troubles.

Shawn’s relationship with his brother is less developed. Since they were born so far apart Shawn never had much in common with Michael and never really spent much time with him outside of the few times he had to babysit whenever his parents were away and Jessica wasn’t available herself. Because of the larger age difference Shawn always saw him as a ‘little brother’ and not as a friend like he did with his sister. This extends both ways as well, with Michael not looking up to either of his older siblings as much as he does his parents; neither Shawn nor Jessica spent much time with Michael the way they spent time with each other, leaving him to rely on his parents instead. Out of the three Thornton children Michael is certainly the closest to their parents at the moment.

From an early age it was apparent that Shawn would be a high achiever. Even early on it became obvious that he was smarter than most other children his age with grades that exceeded those of his classmates, work that was completed much more quickly than anyone else and a reading age several years higher than his own. By the time he was in Elementary school he was being allowed to sit in on classes a grade higher than his own in the subjects of science and mathematics since he was so far ahead compared to his own classmates.

However, in each successive grade he started to fall behind in these advanced classes, especially in the fourth grade when his grades were just above average for the classes he was attending at the higher levels. In the fifth grade it was decided that he would again attend classes at his own grade level, rather than continue on to Middle school classes with his older classmates. This was because it was determined that overachieving at a normal level was a better option than underachieving at a higher level.

In Middle school this downward trend continued and Shawn’s grades slipped further. Shawn continued to score highly in his classes but no longer achieved to the level that he used to, still often scoring in the top ten students in his class but no longer standing out as particularly smart compared to other high achievers.

This sudden drop in performance was somewhat worrying to Shawn’s family, but Shawn himself was not particularly concerned. Neither was his school, as such a drop is not unusual as it is often the case that those who appear to be prodigies at an early age will level out with their peers as they get older.

However this phenomenon is not the only cause for the drop; as Shawn got older he grew less and less dedicated to his schoolwork and more distracted by other matters. At first it was thought that Shawn was simply interested or even unchallenged by the current school material but as time passed and no improvement or change was seen it became apparent that Shawn was simply losing interest in school altogether.

Things have not improved in High school and Shawn currently sits on the lower edge of the top third of the school population in terms of grades, achieving roughly a B average overall, though his actual grades flux quite a lot. Shawn at present is someone who does not apply himself during lessons and is often a person who forgets to hand in homework; he appears more concerned with outside interests than his school work. He keeps his grade average afloat at their current level mostly through high test scores and good marks on practical assignments; these, along with exceptionally high scores on the Davison Secondary School entrance exam, make Shawn somebody with great potential and with high expectations from others, but also somebody who never seems to reach that potential and unwilling to try harder to do so.

Due to this he has been made to visit the school councillor many times in the past three years in an attempt to motivate him or find the cause of his lack of interest. He has received talks from teachers, other school staff, his parents and on two occasions his older sister, trying to get him to live up to his potential. Usually this will result in a spike in his grades for a week or two, just long enough for the person responsible to leave Shawn alone again, before they drop back down to their previously level. It has been quite a while since anyone has tried again.

A number of factors most likely contribute to this growing lack of interest, but the main culprit by far is the fact that around this time Shawn was growing increasingly interested in a new hobby. This hobby being magic.

Ever since he was 8 years old, when he first saw a stage magician performing on TV in some rerun of an old magic show, Shawn had been enamoured by it. He can’t even remember who it was he saw performing that day, but he remembers how he felt as he watched the illusions and tricks being played out, the feeling of wonder, of being amazed at what he was seeing. He wanted to know how it was done; he wanted to be able to do those sorts of tricks himself.

Up until this point Shawn had never really had much on an interest outside of schoolwork. He had friends, he played outside as much as any kid his age would, but he never had any hobbies or distractions to take him away from his schoolwork or his studies so that is what he spent most of his time on.

With magic, he suddenly had an interest, one which began to consume an ever growing piece of his life. More often he would find that he just wasn’t interested in studying or doing his homework, he would find himself distracted and restless while doing so and would end up abandoning it halfway through to read or practise instead, something he never would have done before.

He started small, buying a book explaining how to do simple magic tricks for beginners, such as disappearing a coin up his sleeve or something equally small scale. He found these tricks surprisingly easy to do and found it amusing that when he performed them for friends at school that they had no idea how it was done.

Given that he started up this new hobby a little under a year after his baby brother, Michael, was born there was, not unexpectedly, some speculation from his parents that he might be doing it for attention, something he was getting less of from his parents since the birth, but this was not the case.

It was not the performance or the reaction of his audience that made him enjoy magic. For Shawn it was the technical side, not the performance side, which interested him. As he grew older and he got more and more experienced with magic his tricks became more technical, rather than more extravagant. Shawn never really thought to use big props; tricks like sawing a woman in half or disappearing from a cabinet didn’t interest him as much as a simple act of sleight of hand. Anyone can disappear through a trap door, but it takes real skill to make something vanish right before somebodies eyes from your hand.

Shawn took a liking to card tricks quite quickly and spent most of his time from that point on learning and practicing them. He liked their simplicity, and also their complexity; a simple deck of cards with no additions or alterations, something that anyone could get their hands on, but which required a certain level of technical skill to pull of convincing tricks with. It was a rare sight to see Shawn without a deck of cards in his hand past the age of ten, the young boy spending every available moment practicing his shuffles, his palms and his ability to plant cards and arrange a deck the way he wanted it without anyone noticing anything untoward happening.

In Middle school Shawn would sometimes perform his tricks for an audience from time to time. He much preferred to hone his skills instead, but he would often be seen practicing at school and he tended to draw a crowd of onlookers. Some days he would be drawn into giving a little show. He tended to just treated this as another chance to practise; from his point of view if he could fool a crowd with his tricks then it meant his practise was paying off.

Over time however, he came to like the act of performing. At first it had been a distraction and a little annoying, something which took time away from his practise, but after a while he came to relish the opportunities to test out the results of his hard work.

It started out slowly, Shawn was still a young boy who was sociable but not used to being the centre of attention and he suddenly found himself in the spotlight. He was awkward at first, but the longer he worked at it the more confident and competent Shawn became. What started out first as him just showing off a couple tricks to watchers became something resembling an actual show, with Shawn talking to and engaging his audience, cracking jokes and generally just messing around and distracting everyone while his hands did the important work.

He grew increasingly comfortable with being people’s focus, to the point where it no longer bothered him or made him nervous. He became a confident speaker, capable of talking for long periods of time without stumbling and capable of adlibbing and changing tacks on the fly when need be. He was engaging as well, capable of holding an audiences attention. As a result of this success at playing to a crowd, the Shawn who left Middle school was noticeably more confident, composed and sociable than the one who entered. He didn’t have a drastically different social life afterwards and didn’t exactly become popular, but people knew who he was and he was capable of being friendly and holding a conversation with pretty much anyone.

It was also around this time that Shawn started to notice girls for the first time, another potential factor in his increasing distraction through Middle school, and despite his new found confidence he still had trouble when it came to interacting with the opposite sex in any meaningful way.

The main cause of his troubles was a girl called Melanie Green; a petite brunette from the swim team. For the first two years of Middle school Shawn developed a growing crush on this girl, but unfortunately outside of sharing a few classes he had no reason to speak with her and not enough confidence to just walk up to her. They did not move in the same circles or share any friends and she was not one of the people who generally attended his ‘performances’ during lunch.

Shawn went to his sister, Jessica, for advice with this issue. He chose to ask his sister as opposed to his parents partly because he felt that the conversation would be less embarrassing that way and also partly because he wanted advice that amounted to more than ‘just be yourself’.

As it turned out, that was more or less what his sister told him anyway. She included much more useful advice about how to approach a girl, how to start a conversation and so on, but the main crux of what she told him as not try any gimmicks of tricks to get her to like him; it never worked and even if it did he would have to drop the act at some point anyway and the relationship probably wouldn’t last past that point. Better not to bother.

The details of Shawn’s attempt to get a girlfriend from that point on are not important or relevant to this file. Suffice to say it did not go as planned and Melanie Green was not interested in a relationship with Shawn and she shot him down gently. However, despite this failure Shawn’s confidence was still buoyed by the attempt and the fact that it had gone better than he had expected.

Following this, Shawn later had a couple other relationships while still in Middle school neither of which lasted very long, a few months at the most. However, this is not counting the several other girls who he also approached during this time that did not lead to relationships. After Melanie, Shawn no longer felt as apprehensive around girls, and with his rising confidence levels through Middle school Shawn was less reluctant to ask for a date and would do so whenever he found a girl he liked.

Unfortunately, Shawn can perhaps be described as someone who appreciates form over substance in the girls that he likes. He is the kind of person who falls easily for a pretty face and as such often finds himself liking a girl and asking her out; sometimes this results in a relationship and sometimes it doesn’t.

Since entering High school things have remained more or less the same. Shawn still practises magic when he can, which is often, the main difference probably being that he doesn’t attract as much of an audience as he used to. Most of the people around him have grown up and probably aren’t as interested as they used to be, or perhaps are just taking their studies more seriously than when they were in Middle school – while Shawn isn’t – and aren’t as willing to waste time watching tricks.

However, one other interest which developed from not being able to perform as often is playing card games; given that he was constantly walking around with a deck of cards in his hand this is not very surprising. It would often occur that during lunch and other downtimes that Shawn or some of his friends would grow bored or restless and would look for a distraction and since Shawn always had a pack of cards on hand it was an obvious solution.

None of them knew how to play cards particularly well, but they made due with staples such as Poker, 21 or Gin Rummy, all of which helped to pass the time. The amount of people they would play with, and therefore the games they would play, would vary often and sometimes a new arrival to the group would bring with them a new game or variation to play with. Sometimes they would even bet on the games to make things more interesting, though usually only in very small amounts with cents nickels and dimes beings the typical wagers.

It should also be mention that Shawn is never, ever allowed to deal during any of these games, or even left in possession of the deck for any length of time. Especially since the incident where he managed to deal everybody a four-of-a-kind on the first hand of a game of Poker. Nobody knew how Shawn managed that one and he is still quite proud of it.

As for relationships, Shawn hasn’t changed at all since Middle school when it comes to girls and he still regularly tries to flirt with and ask out girls that he takes a liking to. However, this rarely leads to anything more, as Shawn asks out girls with such regularity that he has developed a reputation of being something of a ‘player’ and even his sister had jokingly called him a ‘man-whore’ for how quickly he jumps from one girl to the next.

In reality Shawn has only had about a dozen or so short relationships in his life which, while admittedly is a fair bit more than most boys his age, all ended fairly quickly. The longest relationship he has ever had only lasted a few months and despite his reputation Shawn has never had a girlfriend long enough to proceed past first-base. Shawn is fully aware of the irony of someone who pursues girls as often as he does having less experience than those with steady girlfriends and has a decent sense of humour about it. He is not the kind of person who brags about conquests or exaggerates the things he has done; he accepts his reputation as something he can’t help and when a girl shoots him down because of it he dusts himself off and moves on.

As far as SOTF-TV is concerned, Shawn has a passing interest in it and is moderately aware of what goes on in each season but nothing more. Having a young brother SOTF is never really allowed on in their house lest Michael be exposed to it; however once his brother goes to bed the array content that can be watched is opened up and sometimes that means SOTF. His sister, Jessica is more of a fan of the show and watches it when she can, but not religiously. Shawn is exposed to it at home due to this and also has friends at school who watch it and as such he hears about and sometimes sees many of the big events in each season and can remember the names of most of the winners in recent years, though other big players tend to slip from mind once a season ends.

Advantages: Shawn is a well-liked and moderately well-known factor in the school, meaning that, hopefully, he should not have anything in the way of enemies going into this game, but instead might have a few allies he can depend on. Even if he doesn’t, Shawn is sociable enough to not have trouble finding new friends and his confidence and capable speaking skills should carry him through most social situations that don’t involve lethal weapons and probably a few that do.

His main hobby also provides him with a few skills which he could turn to his advantage. Practised dexterity mean that he is quite good with his hands and he would probably be quite good at handling weapons with competence once he familiarises himself with them. That said handling a gun well and shooting accurately are not the same thing. His specific skills of tricks involving sleight of hand or diversions may even prove useful in certain situations.

Lastly, Shawn is not someone who is likely to bow under the pressure of being televised. He is not bothered by the idea of being the centre of attention and the idea of being on camera, currently being broadcast to millions of viewers should not faze him as it might others; he might even enjoy it.
Disadvantages: Shawn is perhaps too easily swayed by an attractive girl. Not hopelessly so, but he would still find it hard to see a pretty girl as a credible threat within the game and would probably try to flirt with her instead. Dismissing anybody like that in this situation could easily come back to bite him. Shawn could easily fall for the ‘black widow’ approach that has been common in past seasons. Furthermore, his reputation as a ‘player’ among the girls of his school could mean either that they would be unwilling to ally with him within the game, or it could mean that they will know of a way to easily manipulate him and try to do so.

Overconfidence is also a likely problem for Shawn; success academically and even personally has always come rather easily to Shawn, fostering a sort of laziness in him. He sometimes feels like he doesn’t need to try that hard to succeed, as demonstrated by his approach to his schoolwork, and he is likely to approach most situations, even SOTF with this feeling. Once he realises the stakes of the situation he is likely to take it more seriously, but that is still a dangerous approach in SOTF where you may not get a second chance if you make a mistake.

Designated Number: Amber Eagles 3 (AE3).

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Designated Weapon: SOG Knife

Mentor Comment: "So little loverboy got himself a blade. Here's to hoping that the magic man can keep his mind on the task at hand and off his dick long enough to get the job done."


DECEASED