Hiro "The Hero" Hayes-Honda

[WorldFat]

Name: Hiro "The Hero" Hayes-Honda
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Hobbies and Interests: Beyblade, the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game, Bakugan, anime and manga, video games

Appearance: In the Real World, Hiro is an incredibly average-looking mixed Japanese-American boy. Neither hideous nor handsome—but rather entirely unremarkable and plain—he is more likely to fade into a crowd than to steal the spotlight. The boy is 5'7", a few inches below the national average for men like him, and weighs about 130 pounds. He is somewhat underweight and, because of that, has a slender and willow-like build.

His pale, thin skin—mostly untouched by sunlight due to his lifestyle—largely fails to conceal what lies beneath: his veins and bones show almost openly, hidden only by his clothing. His being out of shape means he gets winded easily; his posture, too, is quite bad from many hours spent hunched over a keyboard. He tends to minimize himself in social situations, slouching to make himself seem smaller and less noticeable.

Hiro has dusky, cardboard-colored brown hair. He wears it short, in a forward-swept hairstyle with bangs that do not quite become him. His eyebrows are round and tilt slightly downward, framing his large, watery, single-lidded brown eyes in a way that makes it look like he is about to cry. Below them, he has a short, broad nose, a little too large and slightly askew. He has round lips, usually pursed together in a cautious frown.

His wardrobe—like him—is rather plain. He doesn't understand fashion, which shows in his dress: graphic t-shirts with designs related to his interests and anything else in his drawers. He dresses like this every day. Fittingly, he dressed in this same manner on the day of the attack: some rectangular glasses, a graphic t-shirt that said "I PAUSED MY GAME TO BE HERE," paired with jeans and some old, beat-up Sketchers sneakers.

In the Virtual World, Hiro—or as he prefers to spell his name, "Hero"—looks like the protagonist of an early-2000s cartoon designed to sell toys to children. His Avatar stands three inches taller than his actual self, at 5'10", and its build is changed to match, with a fictitious veneer of musculature and an athletic figure. His posture in Cyberspace is much better, and he stands and walks confidently, with his back straight and head held high.

His Avatar's hair is longer, medium-length, and carries an iridescent red tinge, styled into an impossible array of spikes and bangs reminiscent of the heroes in Japanese anime. The eyebrows on his Avatar are arched and much thinner. His eyes are large and almond-shaped, also reddened, the same shade as his hair, and no longer seem as watery. His nose is straight and narrow. His jaw is triangular and more handsome than before.

Hiro's outfit, too, is changed to match his new appearance; he dresses in an animesque manner, with outlandish, striking clothing that makes him look more suited to a cosplay convention than to the classroom. Hiro would usually wear outfits that would make him look like Yugi from Yu-Gi-Oh. Long jackets, dark gray or black shirts, dark colored jeans, sometimes even a chain. Generally speaking, he would generally tend to dress like characters that were protagonists, but his favorite looks were of Yugi, Jotaro Kujo, Tanjiro Kamado, or Deku. He feels this makes him look "cool." In reality, his taste in garments is rather tacky and induces more eye-rolling than awe among his classmates. He spends more money on clothes for his Avatar than ones to wear on his body.

On the day of the attack, his Avatar had on a buttoned, wide-lapelled jacket, purple with red trim, with big, metallic gold buttons; its sleeves are purple until about halfway down the upper arm, after which they become red; the right sleeve rolled up. Below that, he had a white t-shirt and black tech slacks with sneakers. As for accessories, he had a black choker and a black plastic vambrace on his right arm with a red band on the wrist.

Background: Hiro Honda was born the first and only child of James "Jim" Hayes, once in the top one percent of real estate agents in San Jose, currently an unsuccessful Libertarian politician—a perennial candidate for city council, though he never wins—and his wife, Tate Honda, his secretary. Their combined incomes would make them wealthy were it not for his father's insistence on starting a political crusade doomed to failure and obscurity.

As a small boy, Hiro's first encounter with school was also his first encounter with bullying. For his smallness—caused by some unfortunate genetics—and his glasses-wearing—caused by bad eyesight—Hiro got picked on and teased by other children. When retaliation didn't work—and landed him into trouble—Hiro withdrew into himself in the hopes they would get bored of tormenting him and leave him alone. It worked.

Isolated with his TV, Hiro became ensnared by early-2000s Japanese shows like Bakugan, Beyblade, and Yu-Gi-Oh! Captivated by their flashy animations and absurd character designs, the young boy developed a fondness for them from a young age, and so too for the toys that these shows sought to market to boys like him; his family was wealthy enough to afford to let him partake in these desires, and so indulged their son.

At first, it started small—a deck of cards here, a Beyblade there—but it soon escalated. Unlike most children, who would buy a toy, use it, and then toss it away when it broke, Hiro was careful and treated his toys and cards as though they were extensions of himself; his father, himself a collector of stamps, recognized the collector's mindset in his son and encouraged him. Hiro, for his part, was just glad his dad bought more.

Later on—when Bakugan and Beyblades and Yu-Gi-Oh! trading cards became the new thing, a fad among his peers—Hiro was ahead of the curve. He leveraged his prior interest—which before would have gotten him labeled an archetypal nerd—and spun it into schoolyard popularity. He had the best Bakugan, the best blades, and the best cards, and every other kid on the playground had to admit that.

Eventually, though, as with every other childhood fad, people moved on. And so, the other children moved on too; they were no longer impressed and in awe of his card-playing, Beyblade-spinning, or Bakugan-rolling. Hiro refused to move on. He rode the last remnants of his popularity into the sunset, clinging tight to the few things that had ever brought him a combination of fame and joy. And the other kids laughed at him again.

Because now, they did not see Hiro as the kid with the best toys and cards; they saw him as the kid who wouldn't shut up about the games everybody else had long ago forgotten. So they shunned him again. Vindictive, Hiro shunned them back, preferring his isolation—and a growing network of online friends in similar situations met via forums dedicated to their now-niche hobbies—to conformity with his peers.

That only made Hiro more sad and more lonely. He spent all his time watching reruns of the shows that captivated him as a child and playing video games. His days were a cycle of going to school, doing work, eating lunch, doing more work, going home, and then wasting the day away until he had to sleep and reset the cycle again. Life was unsatisfying to him. Outside of the most dedicated hobbyists, nobody seemed to understand.

Cyber Reality was always in the picture, Hiro was privileged enough that his parents were quite well-off, and could afford to get into it early on. When Hiro was younger, he never quite understood what CR was, or how to even do anything with it. He only really decided to dust it off and get into it when he was a bit older. And when he did, he abandoned the old, lame "Hiro" he had gradually seen himself become and tried to be more like the protagonists he idolized. Hiro could share his hobbies with others online due to the simulated physics of Cyberspace. And he could do so from millions of miles away, unafraid of mockery.

At first, Hiro spent hours in CR. Then, days. Soon, he spent more time in CR than outside of it. His father—now more concerned with his political aspirations, which Hiro knew nothing and cared nothing about—was oblivious. His mother was just glad that Hiro was happy again. So, when Hiro begged and pleaded with his parents to transfer him to the nation's first all-Cyber Reality middle school, they indulged him in that desire.

Hiro's grades improved, and it was like he was a different kid. His emotional state improved, and their parents were finally glad they found something to make Hiro happy. As far as they were concerned, Hiro's parents viewed it as a success story. So, when he graduated from middle school, the choice to enroll him in a Cyber Reality high school—Sycamore High School—was hardly even a choice. So they did. A few months later, when the matter seemed entirely settled, something started to change about Hiro.

In the past, he had taken steps to abandon the old "Hiro" he had grown to loathe—the small Hiro, the weak Hiro, the nerdy Hiro—and adopt a new persona. High school marked a drastic escalation in this attitude. Hiro began to change his Avatar with increasing regularity and severity. By the end of his Freshman year of high school, it was barely recognizable as him. By the start of his Sophomore year, it looked nothing like him.

Hiro had abandoned his old personality entirely. Gone were the days of the Hiro who tried to make himself small to avoid the looming threat of bullies; Hiro became cocksure and capricious, confident to a fault. But, instead of making him beloved—like the heroes he idolized—they made him loathed by most. Hiro kept a small core of friends, other outcasts or those who felt more secure around someone more confident than them. The others were dismissed as naysayers or as jealous. This made him ever the more rude, or even hostile, towards the people he saw as his enemies. Every attempt to calm him—whether by students or staff—led to more doubling-down.

Eventually, he abandoned the name his parents had chosen. He refused to spell it as "Hiro"; instead, the boy spelled it as "Hero" and refused to acknowledge that it had ever been anything else. He insisted that everyone call him "the Hero." Nobody did—except to mock him. His behavior grew more erratic as his Sophomore year continued onward. Eventually, something had to give, and ultimately, something did give.

Hiro's parents intervened after he locked himself in his room for three days straight and refused to come out for any reason. After that, he began to attend weekly counseling sessions with a licensed therapist. They determined that his crisis came about due to a years-long struggle with depression and his prior experiences as a victim of bullying. He was prescribed selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and mood stabilizers.

Still as eccentric as ever—but no longer as erratic or disconnected from reality—"Hero" continued to try to emulate the characters he admired, but more for the values they exhibited rather than the popularity they seemed to hold. He did not change his Avatar to how it once looked—having grown to prefer seeing the version of himself that he had created over the real one—or go back to his old personality, as he still felt ashamed.

To this day, "Hero" is considered an odd man out. Despite significant improvements in his behavior, he has few friends among his peers. He does not feel happy with his life—which he attributes to the emotion-blunting side-effects of his medication. He has no plans for the future; as the time until the end of high school draws nearer, Hiro begins to feel intense stress due to the pressure to commit to something permanent.

Personality: Hiro, in the Real World, is subdued almost to the point of catatonia. Rarely speaking—often saying fewer than fifteen words in an average twenty-four-hour span—he feels uncomfortable with being himself. The boy minimizes himself purposefully to deflect attention and awareness away from him. He chooses to roll with the punches and move with the waves. Outside of the confines of Cyberspace, Hiro is effectively a non-presence.

"Hero," on the other hand, is almost a different person entirely. He tries hard to keep up the personality of the characters he idolizes but often leans too hard into those traits in a stereotypical, caricatured manner: confident becomes cocksure, changeful becomes capricious, charged-up becomes chaotic. As a result, his behavior in his "Hero" persona is viewed by most around him as aggravating at its best and alarming at its worst.

Reputation: Hiro—and his "Hero" persona, the face he universally presents to his peers—is widely and wildly unpopular. Most view him as unstable and unpredictable, even medicated for his problems as he is now. Beyond that, even those who tolerate his eccentricity can only handle so much of him, as his larger-than-life, put-on personality proves to grate rapidly on those around him, especially with repeated, continued exposure to it.

[Cicadan]

Hello there! There shall be critique.

[+] .

At 5'7" and 130 lb I find it difficult to believe he'd be skin and bones. That's well within a healthy BMI. An unhealthy pallor I can see, but he'd probably have more of an average appearance under his clothes than the significantly underweight one you describe.

Could you describe how he generally dressed in his day-to-day appearance with his Avatar? Right now we only get the specific outfit he was wearing on the day of the attack. Similar to how you gave specific examples for his Real Life self. There's a range of cosplay-inspired over-the-top looks he could take inspiration from so I'd like it narrowed down a bit.

He had the best 'gan

This shorthand here is too colloquial- profiles are supposed to be written with a more dispassionate 'I don't care' tone.

In general the profile sort of verges on the edge of being written with a bit too much of a narrative voice that actually is trying to tell the story of Hiro as opposed to flatly detailing who he is and how that makes him liable to die/not die when he gets kidnapped. I'm mostly okay with it as it is but I'd watch for that when writing future profiles.

—because it was the truth

As above, this is unnecessary for the sentence to work and a bit much.

And then Cyber Reality came along. And Hiro, once again privileged by his family's wealth, was among the first to adopt it.

The timing here is a bit off. Cyber Reality hit the public consciousness in 2010, and Hiro would have been around 5-6 around this time, so if his family were early adopters he would have already been well accustomed to Cyber Reality before the period of time where he had temporary popularity due to his TCG and anime habits- unless you're telling me this all happened when he was in the 1st-2nd grade, which I think is developmentally a bit early for TCG to have been a fad in his age bracket. I'd recommend either him being into CR from a young age but it only becoming a big part of his identity as he got older, or pushing back when in his life his parents picked it up and introduced him to it.

He began to end his days with smiles rather than tears.

Another bit of too colloquial phrasing.

Every attempt to dissuade him—whether by students or staff—led to more doubling-down.

I feel like we need to drill down on the change in his personality in high school in a bit more depth. Being annoying and cringe isn’t really, like, a criminal offense by the standards of staff or students I’d say- he’ll probably get ignored and bullied a lot, but if it’s not leading to anything like fights or disrupting classes I don’t think he’d get in trouble for it. He’d definitely be a pariah generally, but I also do feel he’d attract a small core of friends who would be fascinated by him or benefit from his more overconfident tendencies (as a leader, so on).

In general I’m just not satisfied with the current depth of his high school transition and I’d like to see more description of what exactly happened. What is the nature of his outbursts and how disruptive and embarrassing are they? Examples would help a lot here to help justify the impact his weird behavior has on his social standing.

This can still lead into his eventual mental breakdown, that part makes enough sense to me, I’d just like the build up to be detailed more since it’s a bit on the extreme end.

That's it.

[WorldFat]

tell me if i fixed everything - please point out if anything is not good enough or if I missed anything, its been a bit because of travel

[Cicadan]

Approved.