Boston Sullivan

[Brackie]

Name: Boston Sullivan
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Hobbies and Interests: Football, MMA, guitar, shooting, adventure racing

Appearance: Boston's Avatar stands at 5'7", 191lbs, with most of his weight being body fat, and fair skin one could almost describe as pale. His pudgy build is emphasized by his round, soft face, thin lips and bulb nose, which hold up a pair of thick square-shaped glasses. His eyes are downturned in shape, and a dull blue in colour, sitting beneath a pair of dark blonde, straight eyebrows of medium thickness. His light blonde hair is short and has long side fringes. His clothing changes from time to time, but he most commonly wears whatever he believes will make him stand out the least. His Avatar has a distinct difference to his real life appearance, where he is 6'1", 180lb (most of which is muscle), with tanned skin, a square face with an impeccable jawline, a larger but thinner nose, pointy natural lips, no glasses, sparser eyebrows, and dark blonde hair slicked back into a side part, an appearance that would be described as incredibly attractive.

While Boston in real life likes to dress in mostly athletic clothing, opting to dress himself up on the occasions he does go out to social events, his Avatar has a much more muted aesthetic, going for darker greys and blacks on simpler clothing. On the morning of the abduction, Boston’s Avatar was wearing a plain grey shirt covered by a dark grey zip-up hoodie, a pair of dark navy cargo pants, and a pair of navy-coloured high-top Converse.

Background: Boston was born the first of two children to Florence and Sydney Sullivan in San Jose, California. Sydney was a security guard, who later had to change industries due to injury, and Florence was a factory supervisor. His younger brother, Monty, was born approximately two years after Boston.

Boston was fairly active as a child, opting to spend his time with outdoor activities over indoor ones. He often played with kids in his neighbourhood, making friends easily, and adjusting well when he eventually started attending school. While he preferred to be outside on the playground than in a classroom, he was never a bad student, often just completing his classwork and homework as quickly as possible so he could get to doing something he enjoyed. To this end, his parents signed him up quickly for Jr. Pee Wee football in his area, a sport he initially knew little about, but picked up the rules fairly fast.

Middle school came, and although Boston’s grades slipped slightly, due to not having learned proper studying habits as a child, his enthusiasm for the outdoors and sports did not. Even with a huge technological revolution happening in the wider world, Boston was not interested in the world of Cyber Reality. Not only was it an indoor activity, but his parents and brother lived fairly technology-averse lives. Florence was a firm believer that parents who simply gave their children video games or screens to distract them were bad parents, and that children should learn to either entertain themselves in their home environments, or just learn to deal with being bored once in a while. Sydney, on the other hand, was similar to his oldest son in that he preferred to be outdoors rather than cooped up inside. On Boston’s thirteenth birthday, Sydney took his son along to a shooting range near Henry W. Coe State Park, and taught him how to handle a rifle. While not as much of a natural at shooting as he was at football, in fact only ever becoming adequate at best by the time he turned 18, Boston saw it as a challenge to be risen to, and practicing his shooting became a monthly tradition.

High school, however, was a major change compared to middle school. While most of Boston’s classmates and friends graduated to a physical middle school, Boston was out of their district by a single block, and thus graduated to a fully-CR school instead - Sycamore High School. While Boston initially adapted to the technology needed to have him attend class, he was not prepared for the total culture change. Before, he was actually somewhat popular, and his being a footballer carried some weight due to being such a regular staple of schooling life at his previous schools. Now he was at a school that was in CR and completely online, one where the lack of familiar schooling environment due to the removal of sporting culture to a single, optional day in the schooling week, meant he was now in a place where he felt that most of his classmates simply did not care about his sporting accomplishments. While being popular was not something Boston placed a high value on, it being something that just came naturally to him, he reacted badly to now seeing himself as irrelevant and unaccomplished by his classmates’ alien standards. He entered a period of depression over the change, initially not knowing what he was doing wrong, and later realizing there was nothing he could do about it without changing everything he was interested in.

However, rather than doing so, he simply doubled down on his Meatspace lifestyle - he began seeking out more things to do that didn’t involve him being in CR, and came across MMA. He initially interpreted MMA as being just the combat part of general sport, but realized soon it was actually considered a martial art unto itself. While he took a while to understand the fundamentals behind being a good MMA fighter, Boston quickly adapted once he figured it out, and eventually started applying the techniques he learned to his football training, which he did as both a physical activity on Saturdays at high school, and in his local football club.

However, even as Boston remained himself, he felt more and more uncomfortable at school due to the drastic difference in culture. He eventually figured out that it was his stature, size and personality that made him stand out in a way that he felt was negative for him - many of his classmates obviously did not look and act in real life how they did in CR, especially in Boston's class, but how one looked and acted in CR was all that mattered for school. He eventually figured out a plan to make school life at Sycamore High easier for him. Gradually, over the course of the end of ninth grade, Boston began requesting infrequent, small changes to his Avatar. He decreased his height, he gave himself some weight in fat rather than muscle, he softened his features, and he even changed his clothing to what the less noticeable kids of his class would wear, with the ultimate goal being to become forgettable and unmemorable amongst his peers. As for his personality, he spent most of his time in the school library on Reddit, asking what people did to be memorable and eventually doing the exact opposite when the time called for it, often giving vague generic answers to personal questions, or giving the same answer anyone else would give. While the change was an active effort for Boston, and went contrary to how he’d spent his entire life, it was preferable to feeling visibly out of place like he had for the entire year so far. However, while his school social life became a facade, an active chore he needed to keep up, he began to improve in other facets of his life. Boston became more enthusiastic about his out-of-school hobbies, his relationship with his parents and brother improved positively, and he even began seeking out new hobbies to help improve his social life in other aspects.

One of the major interests Boston accrued was a vested curiosity in a sport called adventure racing, as it seemed to embody everything he looked for in a team sport - being outside, working together with like-minded individuals, competitiveness against opposing teams, and many other facets. However, despite his enthusiasm, adventure racing at the only clubs within a reasonable driving distance was exclusive to people over the age of 18, and thus he wasn’t able to partake for many years. In the meantime, however, he picked up a passing interest in playing the guitar, due to much of his music being acoustic guitar-based and it being fairly easy to learn in comparison to other instruments he liked. While he never got any lessons, and in fact never really got good at playing at all, he was content to just have one in his room to pluck at whenever he was bored, and it also lead to him figuring out something to do in CR - whenever he felt like disappearing at lunch, he would find himself in Sycamore High’s music rooms, tuning a guitar with something simple to play in front of him.

While Boston has never told his parents and brother about his relatively major change in Avatar, due to never having any interaction with them on the school's CR server, he does otherwise have a fairly close relationship with them. He remains enthusiastic about the shooting range with his dad, even if he’s not particularly skilled with a rifle after many years, and tells Florence and Sydney about anything exciting or noteworthy that happens at football or MMA. He even manages to convince his family to try some of his interests, leading to Florence taking up the flute for the first time since before Boston was born. He’s even managed to convince Monty to try out MMA, even though Monty is much more into CR than anyone else in his family. Boston’s birthday also occurred the week before spring break - this meant that before returning to school, a place where he merely receives adequate grades in all his subjects, he got to attend his first adventure race as a participant, with his team being adult friends he’d made in MMA and local football. His team didn’t do well, but they didn’t come last.

With graduation upcoming, Boston’s plans after he graduates are to begin attending a trade school. He hasn’t decided which particular field he would like to enter into, but he is thinking of becoming either a plumber or electrician.

Personality: Boston in the real world is comparable to a golden retriever - filled with endless enthusiasm, ready to help others, and always ready and raring to go when it comes to physical activity. He’s always willing to try new things, as he believes that he’ll never grow as a person if he doesn’t expand his horizons. However, this does not extend to anything CR-related, due to his fairly sheltered upbringing with technology, and also his bad experience entering high school.

To this end, Boston’s put-on personality when attending class is one of an extremely boring, unmemorable teenager. He doesn’t express any unique opinion, nor have anything interesting to say. This is by design, as he wants to avoid people going out of their way to speak to him unless they absolutely need to.

Reputation: While Boston is fairly well-known in his out-of-school hobbies, one would be hard pressed to find anyone who remembers Boston without him standing right in front of them. He has no real interaction with his classmates unless absolutely necessary, such as for classwork or group assignments. Those who did somehow remember Boston would most likely only know him from ninth grade as the enthusiastic guy into Meatspace sports. However, as he looks considerably different now than he did back then, one would need to be extremely observant to connect the two.

[Cicadan]

Welcome back!

[+] .

he was now in a place where his classmates simply did not care about his sporting accomplishments

This particular phrasing is a bit too presumptive. I'm mostly happy with how you reframed his culture shock entering CR schooling but this one still paints his peers with a broad brush- like I said before, sports in Meatspace might not be important to a lot of his peers, but it'd still be to some. It's really just a matter of phrasing I think- some or even most of his classmates not valuing his sporting accomplishments as much as he does- something like that would be a more neutral way of understanding the situation.

Still don't need to put air quotes around Meatspace. You also do it for CR at some point, so I'd also remove that.

That's it.

[Brackie]

changes made!

[Cicadan]

Approved.