Abel Atkins

[Jilly]

Name: Atkins, Abel
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Place of Residence: Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia
Language/s: English
Hobbies and Interests: Drawing, video games (adventure), r/c copters

Appearance: Abel stands at 5'9" and weighs about 190 lbs. He has a build best described as rather average for someone with a mostly sedentary lifestyle, with a lack of real defined muscle along with a bit of a gut around his midsection.

Abel is ethnically a vague mix of European features and has a pale complexion with some acne scarring on both cheeks. He has a round face, brown sunken eyes, a prominent straight nose, and thin lips. He maintains his light brown hair well and keeps it styled in a short, textured quiff. He doesn't grow facial hair very fast and can get away with shaving about once a week, though he also likes staying clean-shaven so usually does so every few days.

Abel is low-energy and someone who prefers to stay out of the spotlight. He doesn't react much as far as with facial expressions and the like, and when he does react there tends to be a bit of a delay. He is rather soft spoken; when he does speak his voice drawls out slowly and calmly at a pitch a notch or two higher compared to most other young men. His Australian accent is fairly subtle.

Abel doesn't bother much with fashion, mostly out of no desire to really improve his appearance or want to stand out along with the difficulty in finding designer-brand clothes that fit him well in the first place. As such, his wardrobe consists mainly of one-color or very conservatively patterned polos, tshirts, and pants and the like.

Abel was kidnapped while biking home from school on the day of the abduction. He was wearing one of the boys' summer uniforms for Irvine Senior College, consisting of a short-sleeve white button-down shirt, a dark green-and-white plaid tie, black slacks, and black dress shoes. He also had on a pair of black polarized wrap-around sunglasses.

Biography: Abel was born in Alice Springs on January 14th, 2003, and has lived there all his life. His father, Richard, is a firefighter, and his mom, Leila, works as a nurse practitioner. His parents were both natives from Darwin; what had originally been a temporary situation due to a work contract on his mother's part turned into a permanent residence after both of them fell in love with the area, enjoying the history and culture surrounding the area, along with the isolated atmosphere from Australia's coastal cities. Abel is an only child with no brothers or sisters.

As a child, Abel was rather disinterested with interacting with others his age, favoring solo activities such as reading or working on puzzles and the like. It was also around this age where he started to draw as a hobby, mainly of landscapes. He enjoyed it as a creative and communication outlet and enjoyed that it made his parents smile.

When Abel was about 8 years old, his uncle gifted him his old Nintendo Wii and a few games to go along with it — notably A Boy and His Blob and Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure.. This was his entry point into playing video games. His favorite genre is adventure games as he enjoys watching the stories slowly unfold along with solving puzzles and thrilling situations. Later on he would develop a taste for more mature games, favoring games like Pathologic 2 and Night in the Woods when he got around later into high school. He enjoys the adult narratives along with the harsh and hostile gameplay in Pathologic's case, feeling a sort of kinship with the harsh atmosphere of the Outback.

As a bonding tool, along with being an excuse for Abel to go outside more, Richard introduced Abel to the world of radio-controlled helicopters when he was about 10 years old. He and his father would go on RC helicopter outings together every few months. Later on, when he was old enough to be responsible with it, Richard gave him a budget camera drone as a birthday gift. Abel enjoys using it not only just for the intrinsic entertainment value of flying it around the Outback landscape, but also as a tool to take video footage and photos to use as drawing inspiration for later. Even up to current day, he still continues to go out to parks or on hikes with his father to fly his camera drone or sometimes even do a throwback and fly their remote-controlled helicopters.

In school Abel makes decent marks, ranking somewhere above average across the board. Socially though, he is frankly rather invisible. At best, he is amicable enough and floats around with surface-level acquaintances. At worst, his classmates don't really remember much about him other than that his name is Abel and he, presumably, goes home after school.

Due to the extreme hours that his parents sometimes have to work due to their occupations, Abel is often on his own. It’s not something that he begrudges his parents for and then makes as much of an effort as possible to make the time they do spend with him quality time. Often he will draw for them or show them his art and it still brings them a lot of joy.

In his free time, Abel has an active online life as a part of several active video game fandoms and art Discord servers, and the like. It's through these avenues that he met who he'd consider his best friend, Jonah, a boy his age from Belgium who likes horror movies, survival horror games, cars, and collects Dutch clogs.

Abel has also tried his hand at making webcomics as a hobby, along with taking art commissions as a supplemental income and generating online clout. For the past three years, he has been writing and drawing “The Beautiful Lives of Bradley Baxter,” a webcomic about a young man who is cursed to reincarnate and live 96 different lives. Abel updates it every Monday and Thursday and hasn't missed any part of the schedule since starting it outside of one week where he had the flu. Due to the consistency of his updates and the word of mouth throughout the various communities and Discords he is a part of, his webcomic has garnered a small but invested following of about 500 unique readers a week. Due to the smaller size of his readership, he doesn’t get a huge amount of trolls or means comments. He engages minimally with those that do read and sometimes takes feedback for changes in the story or improvements to art.

After high school, Abel plans on going to university up in Darwin. He isn't sure what he wants to do as a career, so has defaulted to just continuing to go to school. However, is keeping the idea of being a professional artist in his back pocket. Both of his parents are very supportive of whatever his post-secondary school plans are.

Advantages: Abel's greatest asset is his ability to stay calm and rational, analyzing situations from multiple angles before stepping in. His more passive nature may help him to stay under the radar and away from being sized up as a threat.
Disadvantages: He may be considered easy prey as someone more socially aloof and lacking conviction in a physical presence. He is also rather out of shape, making the survival and endurance aspects of the game harder to overcome.

[The Honeless Beard]

Hi Jilly! I'm PG-Rated Handholding and I'm here to critique Abel. He's looking pretty fly but is not quite ready for INTL.

First let's do some general cleanup:

"going on father/son outings about once every few months.. " - Remove the double period!

"but at worst his classmates just don't really remember him other than that his name is Abel and he may go home after school." - Very awkwardly phrased, specifically the 'may go home after school'. It reads as this being notable that he has permission to go home, vs the 'he goes home I guess' energy that he's going for.

Now for some details:

Does The Beautiful Lives Of Bradley Baxter have much of a following? If so, how does he manage that? Does he want to monetize it?

What kind of social and intellectual damage did Abel receive in his childhood to allow him to enjoy Pathologic 2?

There's very little about Abel's relationship with his parents - can I get some elaboration there?

Also, my guest star critiquer: olivia, crossbow pig — Today at 8:38 AM
@crazy frog axel f 2021 remaster so I shouldn't maybe backseat critique but I figured if you wanted to know that "secondary school" over here is called high school

Let me know when you've addressed these!

[Jilly]

i hate you for making me do profile edits

[The Honeless Beard]

When you've got a rhyme nipped you can spin a Fable,
When you've got a dope script, you can be like Abel,
Webcomic writing and pixel hunting games,
Hopefully he can live through this and emerge with some fame.

Welcome to International.