Raj Jarrell Aleksander

[Malloon]

Name: Raj Jarrell Aleksander
Gender: Male
Age: 17
Hobbies: Theater, painting, graphic design, C-LARP, TTRPGs, skateboarding, electronics and microcomputing, fantasy and sf novels

Appearance: Raj is 5’10’’ and athletically built, but neither particularly broad nor thin. He has darker gold-brown skin typical of people from India, but frizzy, tightly coiled and coarse type 4C hair common in people with African American heritage, generally worn in cornrow braids that extend down the back of his head to shoulder-height. He has a narrow oval face, a small nose, large round ears, and dark brown eyes.

He usually wears t-shirts, jeans, sneakers and, when trying to impress, jackets and sunglasses.

His Sycamore High School and standard Avatars are the same as his normal appearance but subtract a few pounds and add a bit more muscle. His Cyberspace t-shirts are more vibrant and colorful than his Meatspace ones and feature designs of his own creation. He always wears jackets that complement these t-shirts. When he can – so not during class - he also wears distinctive wrap-around frameless sunglasses, which he considers a personal trademark. They’re coded to only block light in especially bright environments, leaving his vision unmodified normally, though this is not visible from the outside.

His backpack is a standard model and also features his designs, though he swaps these out less often than his t-shirts. His current design is one that has an electric-blue background, with images of yellow lightning-bolts and colorful paint-splashes in the foreground.

On the day of the attack, Raj was wearing a red t-shirt with an orange and blue geometric line pattern, a subdued pastel-pink jacket, jeans, and black and white sneakers. He also has his distinctive sunglasses with him, though he only puts them on while outside, in accordance with the school’s dress code.

Background: Raj is the product of so many different cultures and ethnicities that he can only truly be considered American: his paternal grandmother is African American, and his paternal grandfather is descended from Irish-, Armenian- and Polish-Americans, leaving his father, Denzel Aleksander, with almost exclusively African American features and a Polish surname. His maternal grandfather is indigenous Californian, from the Kumeyaay people, while his maternal grandmother is second-generation Indian American, leaving his mother, Hiral Luna, and her older sisters as Indians in both senses of the word.

Most of his family consider themselves misfits in their various cultures of origin, though they nevertheless retain aspects of those cultures that are dear to them. Raj feels proud coming from a family with such a strong sense of individuality and personal identity, though he sometimes feels pressured to live up to the example set by his family to be a truly unique individual. This is not helped by him having a large extended family, with his mother’s two older sisters and father’s brother all having multiple children, leaving him feeling limited in the ways he can carve out his own niche.

Raj’s father, Denzel, works as an OSHA-inspector, while his mother, Hiral, is an electrical systems engineer. He has an older sister named Imani Carina, who is studying linguistics at Stanford University. His parents met at a party in university in 1999 and married in 2002. Imani was born in 2004 and Raj in 2006. They moved from Los Angeles to San Jose in 2009. They live in a small house in the suburbs, which they had planned to upgrade from before the Cyber revolution happened. Now they are content to stay in the smaller house, given that it still offers each inhabitant enough personal space to cater to their physical needs.

Raj grew up having a deep desire to stand out, ironically in order to fit in with his eclectic family and not be overlooked as a less interesting member. His parents didn’t push him to this, but their emphasis that they want for him to become his own person and do his own thing - regardless of what other people think or are - is misunderstood as a push to be unique. As a result, he neglects his interest in electronics and microcomputing – building drones and other devices –, feeling it is too similar to the careers of both his parents and thus considers it a mere hobby. Instead, he focuses on his artistic side, taking part in Sycamore High School’s theater club, painting, and making graphic designs.

Raj didn't always feel the pressure to stand out, when he was younger and before he discovered how different his family was. His interest in electronics had sparked when he was introduced to electronic build kits, which his parents happily bought for him and helped him put together. This continued even when his capabilities outstripped the fundamentals the kits were designed to teach and they moved on to custom projects involving microcontrollers and the like. When his interest and talent in art showed itself to be more than that of an average child, they happily supported this too.

Raj's academic prowess had been average up until middle school, when his grades dropped as a result of him spending too much time on personal projects. It was at this time when his parents decided to have several talks with him about his future, the decisions he would have to make and the necessity of hard work. It was also around this time that they made him spend time learning about his heritages from his grandparents. Raj emerged from this with a deeper understanding of and respect from where he came from and where his future would lead, but also the inadvertent lesson that he woud need to carve out his own unique niche if he wanted to follow in his family's footsteps.

Raj has had other hobbies over the years, a lot of which were ways to make friends or things to do with his existing friends: He'd played softball while in elementary and many of his dearest early memories were of him going over to his friends' houses to play video games. He also took part in his elementary school's theater productions. In middle school he played basketball, he discovered he liked to read fantasy and science fiction novels and he started skateboarding. His early art was on paper and made with pencils and pens, but he started painting after art classes covered it in middle school. He started with graphic design once he became internet-savvy and discovered other artists online, which only happened after his parents bought him his own laptop and Cyberspace headset.

He gave up sports besides skateboarding in high school, but he also rediscovered his interest in theater, which he'd neglected after elementary, and through the friends he made here he discovered an interest in TTRPGs (Tabletop Role Playing Games) and C-LARPs (Cyber Live Action Role Playing). It was also here where he first made an effort to become, or at least seem, cool and popular, since he believed that being socially adept was another indication of success. His number of actual friends stayed about the same as it had always been, with him having strong relationships with people who share his interests and friendly aquaintanceships with a lot of other people.

When his sister moved out, his parents converted her old room into a hobby room and this is where he occasionally paints and works on electronic projects. He finishes a painting once every two months or so. Sometimes he gifts them people or displays them, but usually he just stores them. He keeps at this despite painting in Cyberspace being easier and more flexible, because he knows digital art is ephemeral and might become inaccessible when, not if, the hardware breaks or the software stops updating or loses developer support. Though this awareness can only compete somewhat with the comparitive ease of making digital art and if technology hadn't also made painting physically easier, such as by letting him e liked to read make mockups in Cyberspace first, he might still have given up painting in Meatspace entirely, instead of only focusing on digital art as he does now. As is his skill at making digital art is comparatively higher, though his skill at painting is still at the level of a very talented amateur, bordering on professional for subjects he's most practiced in, such as landscapes and compositions of abstract or geometric shapes.

In school, Raj is a capable student, earning high marks in art and STEM subjects and passing grades in others. He has quite a few friends, since he is compassionate and friendly, though he looks more popular than he is: His veneer of being laid-back and having easy charisma hides insecurities and social awkwardness, but not very well. His desire to stand out can come across as being slightly desperate to seem more interesting than he really is, which rubs some people the wrong way. He used to be part of the Robotics Team but left due to his beliefs about a future in electronics not being right for him. He is still part of the theater club and regularly participates in productions, often playing relatively important or secondary parts in plays and extra or bit parts in musicals, given that his talents lie more with acting than with dancing or singing.

Outside of school Raj enjoys skateboarding, both in Meatspace and in the Skating Paradise server, with him enjoying both the Real Deal Zone and the Just Chilling Zone. His stance on the rivalry between the zones is deliberately contrarian, him having stated that both zones have their own merits and that the rivalry is nonsensical, though he secretly prefers the Just Chilling Zone. His interest in escapist fantasy also extends to him frequently playing TTRPGs such as D&D and regularly participating in C-LARPs. The gamemaster of his TTRPG group hosts her own Cyber server where they play in a cabin that moves between fantastical locations; this lets them combine the advantages of playing online with playing in person. The C-LARPs happen once a month, mostly on weekends, with most being small affairs and large events happening every few months. These cost money to take part in, meaning that this, as well as his buying digital items to use during the game, is where most of his money goes.

To supplement his pocket money, Raj works in his local grocery store after school. He also has an art page on the internet that has several hundred followers and he occasionally gets paid to do commissions; he's developed his own distinctive style, which he uses to draw characters from pop culture, his own original characters, fantastic landscapes, abstract geometric designs, and a wide array of other less common subjects, He plans to become a full-time graphic designer after leaving school, with the first step being getting a degree. He does have some reservations about completely turning his hobby into a career, already sometimes having difficulty finishing commissions after having committed to them. But considering his talents and his need to take the path least travelled, he doesn’t see another option.

Personality: Raj feels the need to stand out, so projects confidence, casualness, and “easy” charisma, but this hides his insecurities about his uniqueness, his social standing, and his future. He is also socially awkward in unfamiliar situations. When he plays up aspects of his personality in order to stand out, he can come across as stand-offish or desperate to be seen as cool, which can rub some people the wrong way. But people who get to know him find he is kind and compassionate, creative, and intelligent. He has good relationships with his friends and family, though he is sometimes jealous of his sister and his cousins.

Due to the influence of his family, Raj holds mostly progressive and leftist beliefs, though he isn’t outspoken or particularly passionate about politics. He will not stand for people insulting him or other people for their heritages, however.

Reputation: Raj is generally well-liked by his classmates, though most see through his projection of coolness as the act that it is, which is off-putting for some. He has a number of good friends whom he shares hobbies and interests with. His teachers mostly respect him, with his great to passing grades in all subjects, though some keep a closer eye on him out of concern that his desire to be cool might extend itself to him being disruptive, though it rarely has. Bigots might take an issue with his appearance and conservatives might be annoyed at his treating certain progressive ideas as self-evidently true. His manager at the grocery store where he works knows him to be dependable, if not unfailingly diligent.

[Cicadan]

Hello there! There shall be critique.

[+] .

There shouldn't be paragraph breaks between the Name, Gender, Age, and Hobbies sections of the profile, per the version template.

tightly coiled and course type 4C hair

coarse

avatars

Avatars is capitalized when its the Cyber Reality entity.

cyberspace

Likewise with Cyberspace.

meatspace

Likewise with Meatspace.

American: His paternal grandmother

His wouldn't be capitalized here

from before the cyber revolution

Cyber Revolution would be capitalized. Generally, Cyber should be capitalized wherever it comes up.

Could you briefly describe Raj's childhood and the sorts of things he was up to then? The profile mostly focuses on his present day- good detail present, but its missing that history. I'd like to know if he felt that same sort of pressure to be a unique person from a young age, what he might or might not have done about it, how his set of hobbies evolved over time, his social tendencies and academic performance when younger, so on.

Given how important his art and theater activities are to him, could you give us an indication of his current skill and development in these fields?

That's it.

[Malloon]

Done.

[Cicadan]

Approved.