Daniel Arista

[cob]

Name: Daniel Arista
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Hobbies and Interests: Cyberspace, discos, video games, weightlifting

Appearance: Daniel is a tall young man who measures up at 6'2". He tips the scales at around 200 pounds flat, albeit with frequent fluctuations based on his water intake; he is on the verge of being considered overweight. This fact, however, results from a build that consists of large quantities of corded muscle rather than an excess of fat. He has dark skin, brown with warm undertones due to his mixed African-American and Mexican heritage; he does not burn in the sun, even remotely, but instead tans very well.

His body has an inverted triangle shape, heavy at the top and light at the bottom; his shoulders and torso are broad, but his waist is thin. Long, red, string-like scars line his back, in the area across the ridges of his spine, from both the accident that claimed his legs and from the resulting surgical procedures; they contrast heavily against his dark skin. His arms are big and wide, large muscles earned from the hard effort of weight lifting; his legs, meanwhile, have deteriorated over time from a lack of use.

Daniel has black, coiled, afro-textured hair inherited from his mother. He prefers to wear it short to keep it out of his face and out of his way—and because his father raised him to view long hair as a sign of femininity. Daniel wears it as a high-top undercut, sides and back faded downward, with short, spiked dreadlocks that burst out from the top of his scalp. He has angled eyebrows, the left with a strike through the middle. His hair is clean and well-kept, with no small amount of rigor made on his part.

He has a generally stern, somewhat intimidating look at a glance, with a long, angular, diamond-shaped face. His deep-set, hooded brown eyes often seem narrowed, if only because they are, by default, somewhat narrow. He has a sharp Roman nose with a dorsal hump in the middle. He has a medium-sized mouth and lips, often pursed in a frown; behind it, however, his teeth are clean and straight from braces—although some of his teeth are artificial implants, replacements for ones lost in the accident.

Daniel tends to dress in a casual, athletic manner as if he's ready to go the gym at any given moment; his outfits almost universally consist of activewear or athleisure, without much regard for formality or style. On the day of the attack, he wore a black Gymshark t-shirt with a scoop neck that emphasized his muscles, some loose gray sweatpants, white Nike athletic socks, and a pair of black and white Converse Chuck Taylor high-top sneakers. His Avatar wore the same outfit from within Cyberspace.

His Avatar has some substantial differences from his physical body. While his physical body's legs have atrophied in the years since his accident, with diminished musculature compared to his arms, his Avatar's legs are well-muscled and seem strong. His scars are still present in the Virtual World. The most apparent difference, however, between the real Daniel Arista and his Avatar is how he moves; his physical body is confined to a wheelchair, while his virtual body travels freely through Cyberspace.

Background: Daniel Arista was born on May 15th, 2004; born and raised in San Jose, California. His father is Hugo Arista, a former professional National Football League (NFL) running back and the current offensive coordinator of the San Jose State Spartans at San Jose State University (SJSU). His mother, Alyssa Arista (née Johnson), is an operating room nurse at a local hospital. He is the second of the family's three children: he has a sister, Maria, four years his elder, and a brother, Antonio, three years his junior.

He and his family had never wanted for money. His father's football riches and ever-lucrative salary, combined with his mother's highly-valued work, have ensured the family has a comfortable life and a secure safety net. Daniel's family is among the richest to have all their children attend Sycamore High School. They live in a five-bedroom, three-bathroom house, almost a mansion in size, located within spitting distance of the San Jose State University college grounds, where Hugo Arista works.

Nonetheless, Daniel's father did not raise him to be idle; from an early age, he was encouraged—or, more accurately, demanded—to lead an active and fit lifestyle. Hugo Arista wanted his son to follow in his footsteps as a football player and raised him as such. It served as a constant expectation on his shoulders. Nonetheless, he persisted with his father's demands, as he wanted to make his family proud. He found himself to be a talented running back, like his father, as a young child.

On April 17th, 2013, when Daniel Arista was eight years old, something changed his life forever. He was playing a game of street hockey with some other children in the neighborhood when the ball got knocked onto the street. He went to collect the ball, which landed near a corner of the road. However, unbeknownst to him, a vehicle was about to make a turn; just as he reached over to pick up the ball, the car struck him hard in the back. He went flying almost fifteen feet by the force of the impact.

He would never walk again. The crash caused him a severe spinal cord injury that caused him to lose all feeling below the waist; feeling in his midsection and lower torso was only salvaged by a successful—and expensive—surgical procedure. In addition, his nose, jaw, and chin shattered in the fall, and he lost many of his teeth—which necessitated replacements. A jagged shard of asphalt embedded in his left brow had to get removed. The treatment cost grew to tens of thousands of dollars.

Daniel found himself confined permanently to a wheelchair. For months, as he recovered and as physical therapy came and went without much success, he mourned the loss of his legs. So too, did his family. His mother, a loving, supportive woman, doted on him at this time. His father secluded himself; at first, there were bouts of intense sorrow and then explosive anger. Eventually, though, Daniel's physical wounds healed, and in some time, he got discharged from the hospital—and returned home.

Hugo Arista, raised in a conservative, traditionalist culture, held tightly to particular views and expectations of masculinity; strength, stoicism, and sovereignty were among his core values—values that Daniel Arista, his son, could no longer uphold. He wanted to—and likewise wanted his sons to—embody his cultural concept of 'machismo,' a sense of pride and self-reliance. He viewed weakness and reliance as something he could not tolerate in his children. Daniel found himself the target of these ideals.

The two of them would never be able to reconcile these differences—it soon became a point of contention and formed a rift that would never mend. Daniel's father could never find it within himself to respect his son after the accident and came to view him as weak and unmasculine; Daniel often responded with disrespect in turn, as he believed that he needed to defend his masculinity from what, to him, seemed like a direct attack on it. His siblings and his mother often got caught in the crossfire of the fights.

As the years passed, his father moved on from Daniel and focused on his new favorite—Daniel's younger brother, Antonio. Antonio, like Daniel, showed an aptitude for sports and physical activities; Antonio, unlike Daniel, was not disabled. As a result, it soon became clear to all that Antonio was the favored child of Hugo Arista, something which made the younger sibling uncomfortable and his relationship with Daniel tense. The two's relationship is still rather complicated and strained to this day.

He sunk into seclusion as a result of his grief and his loss, both from the stress and pain of his injury and from his father's now-shifted attitude towards him. He began to spend most of his time playing video games on the computer, sinking hundreds and hundreds of hours into games to escape his reality. It was the only way he knew how to enter another world. To this day, Daniel is still an avid gamer; in particular, he's good at Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and sports games like Madden NFL.

On his thirteenth birthday, his mother organized a surprise for him: she bought him a state-of-the-art Cyber Reality Device. In addition, he learned that when the time came for him to attend high school, he would attend Sycamore High School. She had noticed how he secluded himself from others and became depressed after his injury and hoped that, through the medium of Cyberspace, he would be able to be himself freely—and without the fear or risk of judgment by others for his disability.

Daniel took to Cyberspace like a fish to water. In the Real World, Daniel, in his view, was a has-been—a broken person. In the Virtual World, though, he could be everything he wanted to view himself as; strong, secure, self-reliant—masculine. He could have the sense of 'machismo' that, in his eyes, he had lost with the use of his legs. Cyber Reality tech transformed him from a depressed child who spent all his time in his bedroom hunched over a monitor to a proud young man who could take life by the horns.

At Sycamore High School, he blossomed into a new self. While before, he struggled through even the most simple classes, unable to push himself forward, he now breezed through them effortlessly. Even today, he maintains a B average, buoyed by a willingness to work hard and a natural inclination towards quick thinking. However, not all was perfect. In sophomore year, he disclosed his condition to some friends; it soon spread like wildfire. He soon had to fight back against the pity of others.

Around this time, in sophomore year, Daniel began to try and get back into physical shape. He began to weightlift, like his father; while Hugo Arista never seemed to respect his efforts, they paid dividends. Daniel tailored his diet and water intake for maximum gain; due to that and favorable genetics, the young man significantly grew in both size and muscle mass. In the Real World, he could feel some amount of 'machismo' again due to his efforts, although there is still an intense shame about his condition.

Daniel continued to bolster his confidence in himself through Cyberspace. By fifteen, he began to attend virtual nightclubs—'discos'—for teenagers. Two years later, at seventeen, the young man started to party at discos for those above the legal age, using a fake identification card created by someone at school. He partook in alcohol there as well, though only in moderation. He does not want to risk his health to side effects or his mental state to alcoholism; he rarely smokes due to health concerns.

Today, Daniel feels indecisive about his future. Once, he held onto dreams of becoming a professional NFL player, as his father wanted, but he knows those are now impossible. At first, he planned to attend San Jose City College (SJCC), but his father shut the idea down, as he felt it was "too low" for his son, insisting on SJSU instead. Out of spite, Daniel decided on the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) instead to get away from his father. He has not yet chosen a major—soon, but not now.

Personality: Daniel is a stern young man who embodies a mixture of swagger and attitude in equal parts. Around others, he tries to project an impression of confidence; this is a mask that he uses to hide his inward insecurities. He attempts to embody the qualities of 'machismo'—strength, stoicism, and self-reliance—that his upbringing has ingrained as a crucial component of masculinity; his masculinity being something he is fiercely protective of due to his disability, which he sometimes views as an emasculation.

He can often be surly, with no small amount of bitterness towards his life and the world writ large. Pity, in particular, is met by Daniel with no small amount of disdain and defensiveness. However, he rarely explodes and tends to simmer and stew in his anger instead. The only things that consistently cause him to boil over with rage are slurs and insults directed at him based on his disability and his father's hurtful words towards him, which wound his heart just as deeply, if not deeper, than any injury.

Reputation: Daniel demands respect; he has lived a difficult life and came out with no small amount of physical and mental battle scars. Some, however, view him with pity on account of his disability, something that he resents. He is known to clash with those believed to be looking down on him, whether the insult is real or only perceived; as a result, Daniel sometimes comes off as thuggish and aggressive. In addition, he projects an image of total masculinity amongst his peers, which he is profoundly defensive of.

[Cicadan]

Hello there! There shall be critique:

[+] .

heavy at the top and light at the bottom

Not really sure what this is trying to say and in context it's not needed, an inverted triangle as a descriptor speaks for itself.

with no small amount of rigor made on his part

Don't think made is needed here and it makes the sentence a bit hard to parse, you can remove that.

Daniel's family is among the richest to have all their children attend Sycamore High School.

We discourage making superlative statements such as this within a profile. Now its certainly a reasonable claim as a family featuring a former NFL player, but this can lead to conflcit with other peoples profiles and in general we discourage making broad statements like this. You can say something like 'an upper-bracket family' or the sort, I just find the language 'among the richest' to be a bit too close to a tricky line we try to avoid in SOTF profiles as a rule.

The crash

Minor quibble but calling it a crash seems like slightly wrong wording- accident would be more accurate.

lose all feeling below the waist; feeling in his midsection and lower torso was only salvaged by a successful

This is visually confusing, because I believe by standard definition the waist would be part of the lower torso? Either you mean he's lost all feeling below the hip/groin perhaps? Or in the legs? Or if you mean that he can't feel those areas you should indicate feeling in his midsection was the only thing restored.

With Hugo's disrespect of his son, I'm specifically interested in how the family being caught in the crossfire affects his relationships with them, specifically the two women older than him. Is his mother passive, does she defend her son? You did mention earlier that she is the doting sort but that was only in the context of his accident and later on, but I don't have much of an impression of how she felt about her husband's behavior and how Daniel felt about her. Likewise with the elder sister, who never really comes up.

You mentioned in his blossoming as Cyberspace gave him confidence back that he struggled through simple classes before, could you go into detail with this? If he was mired in depression there's potential of negative consequences like him being held back, his parents being notified that his performance in classes is nonexistent, so on. There are wide enough implications here that I do think it needs to be clarified.

He soon had to fight back against the pity of others.

How did this change his social perception among his classmates, what sorts of actions did he specifically take? You mention his defensiveness and dislike of pity from others in Reputation, but in terms of this being a shift in how he interacted with peers at school I think I'd like a few more details on the sorts of actions he took, and how that leads to the modern version of his reputation in Sycamore.

Beyond his weightlifting, how does he act in the Real World now considering his continued shame over his condition despite improving himself somewhat in self-image? Does he spend most of his social time in Cyber Space, essentially? Friends don't know where he lives or have never met him in person IRL? That's also something to touch on in Personality/Reputation maybe. Discussing how much he plays video games in present time seems like a relevant topic, how his relationship with them for coping has evolved.

That's it!

[Cyber_HELPline]

This character biography has had no alterations for more than two weeks and has been put in the abandoned characters forum. This profile is eligible for resubmission by the handler upon alterations requested by the staff.