Luciano Valerio

[UnmaskedMountain]

Name: Luciano 'Space Cadet' Valerio
Gender: Male
Age: 17
Grade: 11th
Hobbies and Interests: Daydreaming, people-watching, violin, harp, cross country

Appearance: At 5'8 and 132 lbs, Luciano is approximately average height and skinnier than the majority of his peers. He is significantly tanned due to his Salvadoran Mestizo heritage and together these facts cause him to blend in fairly well with the Hispanic population of Miami. He has long legs with a shorter torso, with much of his muscle focused on his legs due to his track training. In contrast, he has delicate long fingers and skinnier arms. He has a neck of average thickness supporting a rounded face with thin lips and sunken cheeks which cause him to look constantly unwell. He has brown, dullish eyes with narrow eyebrows above them. He has thick, medium-length black hair which he sweeps across his face to keep it out of his eyes.

He largely dresses casually and is typically observed donning a grey hoodie with black tracksuits. This is largely a deliberate choice to blend in and partially because of a lack of options available to him due to cost reasons. He intentionally avoids dressing fashionably to avoid drawing attention, but similarly ensures he dresses adequately to avoid the opposite negative attention. Upon being selected for SOTF-TV, Luciano was wearing a light red shirt under a grey hoodie that's too small for him as well as grey tracksuits to complete a full grey, boring look. He was further wearing black and white trainers, which appeared to be the only valuable item of clothing he ever wore.

Biography: Luciano was born and raised in Miami, Florida to Salvadoran parents Felipe Valerio and Marisol Tafalla. Childhood friends turned lovers, the two had a passionate relationship which was only strained when Felipe began becoming involved in gangs to protect his family and earn money. Although Marisol disapproved, she empathized with his perception of the necessity and realized she would be unable to prevent him from that lifestyle without extreme measures. Thus, she resorted to deliberately getting pregnant under the guise of fortune and accident in the hopes that it would convince Felipe to emigrate to the United States (which had been a childhood dream of theirs.) Following long consideration, Felipe consented and thieved a small quantity of money from the gang to afford the journey and future life. Hence, the two illegally emigrated to the United States to both protect their child from the impoverished, dangerous lifestyle they would likely experience in El Salvador and for Marisol's desire to improve her own quality of life and drag Felipe away from the violence and imminent threat.

Upon arrival, they begun to live in an empty flat as Felipe began to work as a bouncer to secure money for their future child. Unfortunately, the first child was a stillbirth. A fact made worse by information communicated to Felipe regarding the death of his younger brother by his old gang as retribution for his sudden exit. This generated immense friction between Marisol and Felipe as the latter became irate and desired to gain vengeance against the gang members who slaughtered his brother. As a last-ditch effort, Marisol became pregnant again and begged Felipe to stay. Although she explained that murdering his old gang members wouldn't bring his brother back, Felipe still gradually grew resentful and distant. Eventually, he resorted to drinking increasingly.

The child born from the second pregnancy was Luciano Valerio, assigned the same name his stillborn brother would have received under his mother's choice. As a child, Felipe refused to speak to Luciano in any language other than Spanish and dissuaded Marisol from speaking English to him because Felipe wanted the possibility of the family moving to El Salvador at any time to be realistic and having Luciano become Americanized might damage that prospect. However, Marisol continued to speak English to Luciano whenever Felipe was absent because Luciano was effectively her ticket to remain in an improved, safer lifestyle. Resultantly, Luciano's early years were strained by a tense atmosphere and he began to develop a shy personality.

His parents' relationship only continued to deteriorate as Luciano grew older. As their money became scarce, Marisol gained a job as a maid to help support the financial situation of the family however it emasculated Felipe who maintained traditional beliefs of a patriarchal family. Marisol began working longer and longer hours, while Felipe became increasingly involved with alcohol and gambling. He even began to use Marisol's earnings to gamble causing her to accuse him of gambling with his money solely to persuade her to quit her job. From there, Felipe became less distant and more aggressive, and the parental dynamics became a lot more aggressive.

Luciano continued to rarely talk, but he would often cry when he was younger as he watched his parents argue. Upon kindergarten, he was one of the only children to be happy to be away from his parents. In class, he was largely quiet but he talked to some extent and thus no alarms were raised with any of his teachers. As a young child, he didn't have many toys so he resorted to daydreaming and imagining fantasy scenarios in his free time which resulted in him often appearing to phase out, causing his father to hurl insults at him from a young age regarding being mentally disabled and similar accusations.

As Luciano grew older, his father's words hurt him more and more especially as his mother returned home less and less due to working longer hours. He often wept, being a significantly emotional child, however he genuinely preferred when Marisol was absent considering the harsh arguments that occurred when she did come home. Staying at home became worse and worse for Luciano, and so he forced himself to concentrate on his internal fantasies and dreams to reduce his vulnerabilty. At elementary school, he began to learn violin and harp afterschool primarily because it reduced his time at home. However, Luciano was often quite boring or nervous when interacting with others which caused him to only have a small group of friends.

One day upon returning home, he observed Felipe slapping Marisol across the face. He swiftly learned that Marisol was acting as a prostitute for the man who had employed her as a maid, and Felipe had rapidly entered a state of rage upon discovering this. Luciano only watched as Felipe beat Marisol, berating her and claiming the worst decision in his life was moving to the United States. The image was scarred into Luciano's mind as he merely observed, clearing his thoughts and allowing it to happen. Marisol eventually got up and hobbled towards the door, shooting her son a look of confusion and disappointment before leaving. She would never return.

Following that incident, Luciano decided he would tell someone regarding his home life as he'd heard that venting helps alleviate stress. He hence chose his closest friend, an Anglo-American boy named Ryan, and genuinely poured his heart out regarding the topic. Ryan consoled him, but was doubtful and thus pressured Luciano into bringing Ryan to his flat. Upon arrival, Ryan witnessed the range of empty bottles lining the shelves and the heaps of dirty clothes littering the floor alongside the piles of squalid cutlery and plates. Never having experienced such a raw and dilapidated way of life, Ryan instinctively moved to leave, asking Luciano how he could ever live like that. Ryan proceeded to mention the story to some other close friends, and the tale of Luciano's home life spread like a tsunami throughout his elementary school. Although he overwhelmingly received sympathy and pity, Luciano merely felt disgusted by his home situation and started to utilize his methods of clearing his mind, listening to the words they muttered without really processing them as a way to protect himself. He vowed to himself that he would not repeat the mistake of confessing any of his secrets in Middle School.

Without Marisol's source of income, the family was significantly poorer as Felipe was no longer in a state to work due to his gambling issues and alcoholism. He was swiftly fired from any form of employment he successfully applied to. Resultantly, Luciano began to work as a paper round in a wealthier neighbourhood a significant distance from his flat to make sufficient money to buy food and basic supplies. Due to his reliance on cheap and unhealthy food, Luciano became a fairly ill and frail boy which began to reflect his quiet personality.

Entering middle school, Luciano's displayed personality was significantly contrasting relative to elementary school. Although he was shy in elementary, Luciano was far quieter in middle school and rarely said more than a few words unless he needed to. He would mostly sit quietly and study during schooltime, continuing his violin and harp practice in band club. That being said, he wasn't necessarily disliked because he rarely spoke enough to even say anything bad and he tried his best to always be kind. Regardless, he became an invisible entity in the classroom as he arrived, studied, ate and left school alone. The one advantage that brought Luciano was the fact that people began to talk as if he wasn't there at all, which meant secrets and conversations that would otherwise be private were sometimes shared in front of him. This led to two major developments in his life: learning about Karen Ruiz and learning the benefits of being invisible.

Luciano overheard a discussion regarding SOTF-TV and specifically the character of Karen Ruiz. Although Luciano had naturally already heard of SOTF-TV, he had never been invested into it and has some minor ethical objections that he would never realistically raise. However, the character of Karen Ruiz was interesting because she was someone who had come from a poor neighbourhood but profited massively following her victory and was now living a comfortable life in South California. Despite the unforgivable methods she utilized to attain the lifestyle, it imbued Luciano with an ambition that was already at the back of his mind to work his hardest to reach a better standard of life for himself. Considering he would massively prefer not to be involved with SOTF-TV himself and it would be extremely unlikely anyway, he decided to dedicate himself to academics to ensure he would be accepted into a good high school and later a prestigious University. Considering he already studied most of his time due to a lack of alternatives and social activities, he proceeded to build on a strong foundation throughout his middle school career.

The second major realization was that being invisible had major advantages regarding learning about his classmates and their secrets. He had been a quiet individual for a long time, and his daydreaming had only been solidified at home due to a necessity to protect himself from his father's abusive behaviour and the parental disputes when he was younger. However, Luciano learned that one could appear to be daydreaming even when they weren't so long as they cleared their mind and feigned a lack of emotions, and hence Luciano decided he would try to do that to access even more information than he had been before. The ability to learn things he shouldn't know felt addictive to him, and hence his two ambitions for high school were to learn as much about people as possible by becoming an invisible entity and to work as hard as possible to secure a place at a prestigious University.

At home, he became increasingly distant but in the typical daydreaming direction as he discovered that although Felipe may be initially angry at him for an emotionless response to insults, he would eventually abandon the antagonistic situation after a sustained period of silence from Luciano's part. At home, he spent the majority of his time studying during Middle School due to his immense dedication and motivation to succeed in entering an academic high school.

Luciano successfully applied to Mangrove Garden High School via the scholarship entry examinations, and selected it due to its prestigious nature. Upon arrival, he committed to acting as a more extreme version of his middle school self. He remained largely silent in lessons and during free time in school, feigning daydreaming as much as he could to ensure people registered him as an invisible presence so he could resultantly attain their secrets to a far more extensive degree, to fuel his addiction and provide him with a form of strength from his perspective. He's often called 'Space Cadet' due to him seemingly spacing out all the time, however this is largely controlled due to his aim to fulfil his addiction. For a while, people attempted to pick on him to see him finally give a major emotional reaction but due to years of experience with Felipe, Luciano refused to allow that moment to come and hence the teasing eventually ended.

Luciano has largely succeeded in his goal regarding attaining his classmates' secrets, as he has accumulated a collection of their issues inside his head. He would never be unwise and write them down because of the associated risk, and because actively writing demonstrates Luciano was active and aware which directly contrasts his desired look.

However, Luciano's apparent emptiness and silence has left him with monumental issues regarding his identity. Due to his lack of major interactions with other people and lack of significant hobbies, he often ponders what kind of person he truly is. This is made worse by the butterflies he used to get in middle school when talking to some of the boys in his class, although that tends not to happen now due to his reduced personality. However, he suppresses these thoughts wherever possible due to it being distracting and harmful in his goal to ascend the rankings. For the rankings, Luciano consistently scores at the far upper end, reaching the top 1% in Chemistry and Environmental Science while averaging top 5% for most other subjects and trailing behind in the top 20% for English and Computer Science.

averaging in the top 5% with only his English scores trailing behind in approximately the top 20%.

In terms of clubs, he continued his violin and harp practice and joined the school band due to his sustained desire to minimize his time spent at home. Furthermore, he joined the school track team because Luciano wished to expand his extracurriculars to render his application more appealing to Universities. He specifically selected track team because it is more of an individual sport than team sports and resultantly it facilitated his continued invisibility. Other than that, Luciano spends the majority of his time in the library studying or in rooms full of other people as a background figure to overhear their conversations.

Following school, Luciano hopes to work in business because he perceives it as the most viable pathway to higher incomes. He has selected as many academic electives as possible to secure an academic future, however he has not got any experience in the business sector largely due to a lack of opportunities. He plans to accumulate wealth, leave home and never turn back - When he does have sufficient wealth, he hopes to establish better schools across El Salvador. Although he has never even been, he passionately believes that education is the best remedy to poverty and hence improved education would be far more impactful in the relatively more impoverished city of San Salvador juxtaposed to Miami.

Advantages: Luciano's primary physical advantage is his ability to sustain a good pace for long distances. Although he's not especially fast, he has a far greater endurance than most of his peers. His mental advantages are his intense motivation, as Luciano commits fully to every ambition he establishes (although these ambitions are rare and extremely significant to him), and his knowledge of the secrets of the students in his grade which he may be able to exploit.
Disadvantages: Luciano's primary disadvantage is his extreme lack of friends and allies and the fact that his social skills would be bad even if he tried due to a history of largely being quiet and avoiding conversation. Furthermore, although Luciano often feigns the phasing out, his reliance on daydreaming in the past still occasionally does cause him to drift from reality which could be devastating in a lethal situation like SOTF-TV. Furthermore, his lack of physical upper body strength may be a significant hindrance to him.

[Namira]

Hi MaskedMountain, Luciano has some solid elements but is temporarily denied pending some fairly significant revisions.

To cut straight to the heart of matters, I don't think we can maintain Luciano's home situation as it stands. There are major abuse issues present throughout and as well as his father's criminal background, we're just tipping the scale a bit too far in terms of what I can accept in the profile. I'd like you to consider the following elements regarding home life:

* Illegally emigrating to the USA when the incentive was a fortuitous pregnancy + His mother resorting to getting herself pregnant again to convince Felipe to stay: this feels a little on the gratuitous end, perhaps it's just the way that it's worded in the profile.
* The retaliatory killing of Felipe's brother: this is a bit much, especially when it takes place before Luciano was even born.
* Felipe's overall abusive behaviour: I can understand him being a poor parent and having problems with anger. However, the extent to which it's present throughout the profile makes me doubt that it would go unnoticed and to be frank that he would be allowed to keep Luciano, not least because there were actively stories about Luciano's home situation in elementary school. It's just a bit much, especially when he apparently deteriorates to the extent that Luciano is more or less supporting him and his father: I don't think a paper round is enough to do that and I think Luciano's situation at home would be out and out squalid if this was the case.
* Marisol walking out on the family + prostitution. So far as I can tell, Luciano has no emotional reaction to this whatsoever: once he vents to Ryan, his mother never comes up again. I don't feel that this is given appropriate weight, and it doesn't seem to fit with how she viewed Luciano as key to her having a good life in the USA to just abandon him.

In general, I just don't think it can remain within the profile in its current state, which will obviously have a fairly significant knock on to the rest of the profile due to the nature of revisions. I will give a few further critique points, but I will need to review the profile a second time upon edits and may bring up things that didn't come up first time around.


There will need to be some significant reworking in the portion of the profile that concerns Karen. Although in real life, TV1/season sixty-five was several years ago, in the timeline of the roleplay, it took place in 2020, essentially the summer of the previous year to when TV3/season sixty-seven will be taking place. From a chronology standpoint, it isn't possible for him to have picked up on Karen during middle school.

My suggestion would be to take a look at lore seasons and winners between 2015 and 2017 if you're interested in having that element of the backstory intact.

" Computer Science.

averaging in the top 5% with only his English scores trailing behind in approximately the top 20%."

- rogue paragraph break here.


I like how you work in the hobbies throughout, touching back to them at a few different points. This is a good handling of that part of the profile. (I'd like to know if he actually enjoys the instruments/track, however, because it's a lot to take on purely to duck home, and this of course links back to what I said earlier about the home life).

Finally for this first go around, I want to touch on Luciano's interest in secrets. While it's not inherently problematic for him to enjoy figuring things out from other people, the execution is something that I'm concerned about, particularly given that it's an advantage for him. At present it's put out there in a way that makes it come across that everyone just spills whatever right in front of him because they view him as not really there/not important enough to bother with, which is quite improbable. I'm also concerned that it may come into play as essentially a means by which Luciano can just 'know' things about other characters even if they're very private or indeed secrets. I'd suggest that you consider how you are executing this and also that Luciano, if you're bound on keeping it, plays a more active role in snooping on other people and in turn that you present real consequences to this kind of behaviour. After all, people wouldn't take well to being spied upon and it'd be an interesting aspect to touch on if Luciano had to deal with the consequences of his snooping.

Again, though, I would caution you to be very conscious of what exactly Luciano might know and be very careful not to metagame if you want to keep this interest/advantage. It's going to be difficult to strike the right balance.

Let me know when you've made some edits and I'll have another look.

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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.