A18: DANIEL ARISTA

#1

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. His shoulders are broad and flat, and his torso is very wide, but he has a thin waist. 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, styled with no small amount of rigor 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 wealthy, among the upper bracket of those who send their children to Sycamore High School. They live in a five-bedroom, three-bathroom house, almost a villa, 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 impact caused him a severe spinal cord injury that caused him to lose all feeling below the waist; feeling in his midsection and upper abdomen 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 also got 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 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 after some time, he was 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.

His father also espoused some misogynistic views, which often came out during these fights, the man subjecting Daniel to insults about a perceived lack of masculinity. These opinions caused discomfort for his older sister, Maria, then twelve, who would silently resent her father's misogynistic view of the world for years; after she grew old enough to leave the house, she did so and currently has limited contact with Hugo Arista. He chalks it up to her being busy with school, unwilling to accept being the problem.

His mother also bristled under these views, as, while Hugo Arista had never been a progressive man, the ramifications of the accident caused his beliefs to come out strongly. She often tried to stand up for her son and defend him from these verbal abuses, but Hugo would shout her down. As a result, his mother was generally cowed into silence by his presence. She thus spent more time trying to console Daniel in private (when his father was not present) than to defend his honor from him.

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. It soon became an almost addictive behavior for Daniel, who often neglected everything else to spend time partaking in online spaces.

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. However, due to his later efforts to recover physically from his injury and his transition to the Virtual Educational Environment (VEE) through Cyber Reality, his outlook towards them is no longer as addictive and unrestrained. He still enjoys them as an activity but no longer feels as if they are his only option for enjoyment to cope with the world.

Daniel, ever since his accident, had struggled in school. He was largely uninterested and unwilling to interact socially with his peers and teachers, as he feared judgment for his condition. In addition, his performance and participation in classwork verged on nonexistent. These facts resulted in many complaints and concerns being directed towards his parents by faculty, who stressed that were these patterns to continue, Daniel would get held back. His mother was concerned. His father was apathetic.

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.

Daniel, already vigilant towards the perceptions of others due to his experiences at home and the verbal abuses he suffered at the hands of his father, became wary that they would treat his disability as a form of weakness. As a result, he worked hard to perform and put up a front of total masculinity and strength to make it harder for others to view him as a weakling. He fought, using words as his weapons, with anyone he saw as "taking him lightly." Often, he would jump to conclusions as a result.

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.

As a result of this shame, Daniel is often hesitant for others to see him outside of the Virtual World, preferring the pseudo-anonymity of CR and Cyberspace, where he does not need to worry as much about others and their perceptions of his disability. Most of his friends have not seen him in the Real World (aside from pictures of his face), and he tries to keep it that way, as he does not want them to change their views on him. He fears being seen as weak will cause others to abandon him again.

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.

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Designated Number: A18

Designated Weapon: W-27 — Tennis Racket
Designated Utility: U-18 — Non-Fungible Token (NFT)

Evaluation: "It's funny, in a cruel sort of way, that the life you wanted was over long before we knocked at your door. Maybe you deserved better. Maybe not. Ultimately, it's up to you what you do with what you have. Happy hunting." — [COOLIDGE], Live Stream Operator