'RJ' Woodard

[Cicadan]

Name: Riley James 'RJ' Woodard
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Grade: Senior
School: Saint Editha Academy
Hobbies and Interests: Hip-hop, rapping, travel blogging, partying, weightlifting, African American history, creative writing and essays.

Appearance: Riley is 6'0" and is slim and muscular at 160 lb, with defined pectorals and broad shoulders. His skin is dark, his black hair is styled into an inch-long flat top. His face is long, his chin is square and flat, he has strong lips and a small button nose. His eyes are brown and expressive. He wears trimmed stubble over his jaw. He has a stylish eye but practically sticks to jeans and tasteful pattern tees. He wears the occasional designer brand, and likes caps and pageboy hats.

Riley maintains a distinctively smooth 'city accent' from his days in London. His voice is rich and baritone, and he tends to sound like he is smiling even when he is not. During the American abduction RJ wore the school uniform with two fashionable variations: opting to wear the uniform skirt, and paired it with a collared Chanel black jacket.

Biography: The Woodard family emigrated to the UK during the non-American purges, and settled in the Tottenham area of London. They were working class for two generations up through the birth of Riley James to father and salesman James Woodard and mother Ella Adenuga. RJ lived in a small townhouse with the elders of his family, while he was young he was enraptured by his grandmother's stories of America, and the struggles the family had faced there. The extended Woodard family, due to it's size and a large amount of physically disabled elderly incapable of collecting welfare, struggled with keeping the house afloat and RJ grew up helping around the house in all manner of ways. He learned many of the tricks of the trade from his mother, who was a phenomenally skilled homemaker on a budget.

He was a playful child, street smart due to the bustling livelihood of the area he lived in. He did okay in school and showed creativity in his crafts and writing, and he had strong social aptitude, with many friends both in class and out. His early ambition was to be a writer, and he wanted even this young to share his grandmother's stories to a wider audience.

When RJ entered Year 6 his friends introduced him to hip-hop, and they would go after classes to see local performing artists, who inspired RJ and interested him in hip-hop. He and his friends would start having cyphers- musical improv with freestyle rapping- and RJ spent his free time writing lyrics and slam poetry that often drew inspiration from his grandmother's own rich tales of life in America, along with his youthful musings on the poverty and lifestyle in his home city. He'd befriend local rappers and show them his work, some invited him to events and critiqued his output.

When he was to enter secondary school his father received a lucrative promotion to manage a car dealership in Bellington in that he felt motivated to take, as it'd significantly boost his extended family's finances. Ella, however, had to stay behind to help out around the house with it's mostly aging population. RJ and James would go ahead to Bellington alone, spending weekends travelling back to London. RJ was initially reluctant to go but Saint Editha Academy offered a full arts scholarship, which seemed to be his best option for further education due to prices and quality in London.

In Saint Editha RJ socially flourished. He was initially nervous about how he’d come off as a Londoner from a poor area, and he consciously worked on his persona. He could never get rid of the accent but he cultivated his speaking skills and was rewarded with friends and party invitations he took readily to keep his clout solid. He also had discretionary allowance for the first time in his life as his dad’s paychecks started coming in. He developed a taste for fashion, usually saving to buy carefully chosen brand name pieces in order to keep his projected image suave and slick as he liked to imagine it. He turned his learned trappings and taste for hip-hop into part of his persona, a genuine font of cultured and conscious rapping that earned him friends for the novelty.

RJ continued to focus on classes with historical or sociological bend as per his interests, and he only scraped passing marks in more uninteresting, inflexible topics like science and math. Though he never joined debate clubs formally he would impress English teachers with his oral communication skills and written essays. With their interest and assistance he would win scholarships, and has an opportunity to attend some of the best schools in the nation with his well-defined, culturally-rich narratives and opinion pieces he will occasionally see published in the school or local newspaper.

His academic pursuits are secondary in time devoted, however. For the most part in school his reputation is that of someone well-connected and easy to befriend, and to some extent he has rewritten himself as a person to fit in. He keeps his academic views moderated, well separated from his party lifestyle. He has been convinced to act wild and sometimes will lose evenings of memory to hard drinking and party drugs. His reputation remains unsullied as he is not a raging sort of drunk, and he convinces himself that he is young, experimenting, and that his tendencies to be manipulated by peer pressure mean nothing. He sometimes ruminates on the dissonance between the stark realities of his childhood and his larger-than-life party lifestyle, but convinces himself he must put that aside for the sake of social relevance.

Due to pressure from the in-crowd he has also taken up bodybuilding to improve his aesthetic, though he does not personally enjoy the hard work and effort much he has some body issues due to the pressure to keep up appearances so he puts in at least four days of work a week at the gym, along with rigorous dieting, to keep up his appearance.

He sometimes finds that time away from Bellington alone with his family is spiritually refreshing, and especially in recent years as his involvement in Saint Editha’s more hedonistic scene has grown he has come to cherish these times. His time with his parents is important to him, and he finds himself learning more and more from his mom as he gets older and her perspective comes to make more sense. He stays at his grandmother’s side, trying to get whatever else he can from her before she passes as she is now bedridden. He debates with his mom and dad, and also travels with his dad to conferences. He has come to enjoy the English countryside, and privately blogs his experiences, choosing to publish under a pseudonym so as not to add this aspect of himself to his public persona and his more exaggerated life.

In his Senior year he is considering taking up on his scholarship options, though he keeps this news private and continues to party without a care. His mom encourages him to consider coming home, and he is receptive to the idea, though stymied by the lack of options due to his mediocre grades. He has yet to have a steady relationship, he is famous for hitting on girls in a friendly way but he can become flustered by those who reply back in kind. His grandmother’s more spiritual stories have imparted onto RJ that he should wait for marriage to consummate, though he does not otherwise consider himself religious.

Advantages: RJ enjoys a solid social standing due to his friendliness and relatively clean and respectable persona, and he will likely not have to deal with as much difficulty in this regard. RJ is a skilled speaker and quick on his feet due to his experience with academics and rapping, and he may be able to navigate dangerous conversations well.
Disadvantages: RJ is less convicted and self-aware than he may understand, given his vulnerability to expectations and social pressure he may fail to use critical thinking in group settings. This tendency also means he downplays himself due to shame and difficulty with his esteem, meaning his confidence is fragile and may break at crucial stress points.

[MurderWeasel]

Heya, Cicada! Apologies for the incredible wait.

RJ looks almost good to go, but is DENIED pending a few little tweaks.

Did RJ's mother work, or was she a stay-at-home mom? What about the older generation? Were they retired, or working too, and if the former, did that make it hard on the family?

"Cypher" is a niche enough subcultural term it'd benefit from a quick definition in the profile.

"He has been convinced to ‘act wild’ and sometimes will lose evenings of memory to hard drinking and party drugs." <- Can this be rephrased to avoid the use of quotation marks? They make it a little difficult to tell what's actually meant and with what degree of irony, and we'd ideally like profiles to be unambiguous where possible.

"he convinces himself that he is young, experimenting, and that his tendencies to be manipulated by peer pressure mean nothing." <- This suggests some ambivalence and self-awareness on RJ's part. Could I hear maybe a bit more about that?

When you say RJ privately blogs, do you mean he does so under a pseudonym? Or is he not posting it online at all (and, if the latter, what distinguishes it from keeping a journal)?

Can I hear just a tiny bit more about RJ's relationship with his mom? How has it been affected by the move? How does he feel towards her overall?

Is RJ weaker than the average student (and not just for his level of fitness)? If so, how does it impact him during normal life? If not, it's probably not severe enough to qualify as a disadvantage.

Post when that's taken care of, and we'll give RJ another go (and quicker this time ><). Thanks!

[Cicadan]

The Woodard family emigrated to the UK during the non-American purges, and settled in the Tottenham area of London. They were working class for two generations up through the birth of Riley James to father and salesman James Woodard and mother Ella Adenuga. RJ lived in a small townhouse with the elders of his family, while he was young he was enraptured by his grandmother's stories of America, and the struggles the family had faced there. The extended Woodard family, due to it's size and a large amount of physically disabled elderly incapable of collecting welfare, struggled with keeping the house afloat and RJ grew up helping around the house in all manner of ways. He learned many of the tricks of the trade from his mother, who was a phenomenally skilled homemaker on a budget.

He and his friends would start having cyphers- musical improv with freestyle rapping- and RJ spent his free time writing lyrics and slam poetry that often drew inspiration from his grandmother's own rich tales of life in America, along with his youthful musings on the poverty and lifestyle in his home city.

Fixed the sentence as requested.

His academic pursuits are secondary in time devoted, however. For the most part in school his reputation is that of someone well-connected and easy to befriend, and to some extent he has rewritten himself as a person to fit in. He keeps his academic views moderated, well separated from his party lifestyle. He has been convinced to act wild and sometimes will lose evenings of memory to hard drinking and party drugs. His reputation remains unsullied as he is not a raging sort of drunk, and he convinces himself that he is young, experimenting, and that his tendencies to be manipulated by peer pressure mean nothing. He sometimes ruminates on the dissonance between the stark realities of his childhood and his larger-than-life party lifestyle, but convinces himself he must put that aside for the sake of social relevance.

He sometimes finds that time away from Bellington alone with his family is spiritually refreshing, and especially in recent years as his involvement in Saint Editha’s more hedonistic scene has grown he has come to cherish these times. His time with his parents is important to him, and he finds himself learning more and more from his mom as he gets older and her perspective comes to make more sense. He stays at his grandmother’s side, trying to get whatever else he can from her before she passes as she is now bedridden. He debates with his mom and dad, and also travels with his dad to conferences. He has come to enjoy the English countryside, and privately blogs his experiences, choosing to publish under a pseudonym so as not to add this aspect of himself to his public persona and his more exaggerated life.

In his Senior year he is considering taking up on his scholarship options, though he keeps this news private and continues to party without a care. His mom encourages him to consider coming home, and he is receptive to the idea, though stymied and frustrated by the lack of options due to his mediocre grades. He has yet to have a steady relationship, he is famous for hitting on girls in a friendly way but he can become flustered by those who reply back in kind. His grandmother’s more spiritual stories have imparted onto RJ that he should wait for marriage to consummate, though he does not otherwise consider himself religious.

Removed the disadvantage, on further thought.

[MurderWeasel]

Looking better, but one little thing remains:

Earlier in RJ's bio, it's stated that despite his grades his writing is a pretty big deal:

"With their interest and assistance he would win scholarships, and has an opportunity to attend some of the best schools in the nation with his well-defined, culturally-rich narratives and opinion pieces he will occasionally see published in the school or local newspaper."

But then later we get this:

"In his Senior year he is considering taking up on his scholarship options, though he keeps this news private and continues to party without a care. His mom encourages him to consider coming home, and he is receptive to the idea, though stymied and frustrated by the lack of options due to his mediocre grades."

Neither is a problem on its own, but I don't think RJ can both be a prospect for some of the best schools and have few options for his future, so I'd like to see one or the other picked.

Post when that's taken care of, and we'll give him another look. Thanks!

[backslash]

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.