Abel Kuntz
Name: Kuntz, Abel
Gender: Male
Age: 17
Grade: 11th
Hobbies and Interests: Literature (horror & fantasy), debate, stocks
Appearance: Abel stands about 5’9” tall and weighs about 155 pounds. He is fairly lithe and sinewy and tries to take care of himself with adequate nutrition and serviceable bodyweight exercise routines. He carries himself well and in a collected manner for the most part, but he can also become easily agitated when provoked into some sort of argument.
Abel is ethnically a vague mix of Central and Eastern-European and has a pale complexion, a structurally round face, brown deep-set eyes, a prominent straight nose, and thin lips. He keeps his light brown hair shaved all the way down with clippers, and makes an effort to maintain it at about a week’s worth of stubble. He also shaves his face consistently about once a week, though he grows hair fast and has a light but noticeable starting of a goatee by the end of the cycle. He is near-sighted enough to need prescription-strength glasses or contacts.
Abel dresses conservatively and preppy; most of his outfits being different shades of office casual as he enjoys the clean cut aesthetic. On Casting Day, Abel was wearing a long-sleeve light blue button-down pocket dress shirt tucked into a pair of well-fitting blue jeans, black dress socks, and brown loafers. He also had on a brown leather belt, and he wore his gray half-rim eyeglasses on his face.
Biography: Abel was born in Miami, FL on January 14th, 2004. He is the second oldest of four born to Catherine and Kiefer Kuntz, a middle school social studies teacher and a civil engineer for the local government. He has one older sister Valerie (21), and was followed by two brothers, Patrick (13) and David (11).
Abel’s childhood was fairly mundane. Even from a young age, he’s never had much trouble talking to strangers or surface-level engaging with kids on the playground or at school. However, there was a catch to him being aggressively social; he was fairly bossy and almost always dictated how play sessions would go about, digging his heels in when he didn’t get his way or getting into arguments at the drop of a hat. As such, he had trouble actually making friends let alone keeping them; in most cases those friendships were quick and fleeting and fizzled out as kids started to slowly distance themselves away from Abel, oblivious to himself as he usually bounced to another group by then anyway.
This argumentative behavior affected his relationships in Abel's homelife, especially in regards to his siblings. He was extremely bossy and controlling of his younger siblings and older sister, leading to shouting matches between the four of them that sometimes spiraled out of control without the intervention of one or both of their parents, who would usually let the children fight disagreements out themselves seeing those conflict-resolution skills as necessary to instill at an early age. Though well intended, this usually ended up with Abel winning out and getting his way.
Because of this, Abel also had a good relationship with his parents, figuring himself something as the favorite child. He in particular was very close with Catherine and helped her out around the house or ran errands with her, both because he liked spending time with her along with using it as leverage to be in her good graces. He also bonded well with Kiefer, who would regularly play games or watch tv with him or bring home books for him to read as he tried to instill a love of reading into Abel as soon as he could.
It took until early middle school before Abel’s behavior really changed. In the second half of 6th grade, Abel made friends with a new kid named Jonah that had moved over the winter break. This was the first time Abel ever really felt a strong connection with someone else at his age with the same interests and hobbies. Although he still had trouble not being self-centered and fighting in arguments for the sake of it, he really enjoyed that companionship and thought Jonah felt the same.
Unbeknownst to Abel, though, this friendship was slowly decaying as Jonah grew more and more tired of his attitude. These tensions eventually boiled over after Jonah confronted Abel after school one day near the beginning of the 8th grade and severely reprimanded Abel to the point that the friendship was effectively severed.
This was devastating to Abel, enough that he slowly withdrew and detached from everyone. During this time, he started to turn to more solitary activities like reading. Always casually interested in reading, this was the period where Abel really started to consume books as a coping mechanism. He started reading gothic works like We Have Always Lived in the Castle and In the Shadow of Blackbirds, enjoying the dark and gloomy atmosphere along with the questions they ask about the human psyche. He also started reading low fantasy works, enjoying the sense of adventure and politics of other worlds along with just thinking magic is neat.
Abel’s parents, at first, figured his change of behavior was just a fluke due to teenage hormones. However, after several months of this social withdrawal along with noticing other self-destructive traits such as noticeably not eating, they decided they had to step in. After plenty of talks between them where Abel slowly opened up again. Eventually, he decided to try and reconnect with Jonah, this time with the idea that always getting your way isn’t how the real world works, though Abel more took this to mean you have to let others win sometimes even though you were actually always right. This strategy along with the healing that comes with time worked, and Jonah accepted Abel’s apology and agreed to be friends again. Although they aren’t as close anymore due to Abel getting a scholarship to Mangrove Garden and them not going to the same schools anymore, Abel keeps an effort to regularly stay in touch to the point where they still hang out just about every other weekend.
In high school Abel has managed to calm down somewhat. With a chance to start with a more or less blank slate he has taken this time to restructure himself as someone much less combative, though this is easier said than done; there’s still times where he will push boundaries or be pedantic for the sake of arguing, although he has managed to keep his tendencies in check before they ever cause a scene. However, this made him a great member of the school’s debate team, at first something he picked to do as just an extracurricular but eventually something he really enjoys mostly for the fact that it is just competitive school-sponsored arguing. Gradeswise, Abel is somewhere in the middle of the pack—he makes As and Bs in the more science based classes and the occasional C in the humanities or English, finding them rather boring.
His home life has also taken a turn for the better, as far as his relationship with his siblings goes. His relationship with Patrick is still really fractured and tense to the point that neither speak to each other much without a potential argument breaking out, but Abel has been able to get along better with the other two.
As Abel got older, his taste in literature matured more and more. Stephen King became one of his favorite authors, in particular due to The Stand and The Dark Tower series. He also became fond of Edgar Allan Poe, in particular his work The Mysterious Stranger due to the philosophical questions and answers put in the book; although he did not particularly believe in these questions or answers, he still found it a fun read. For full fantasy books, he would dabble in books such as Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones and Discworld, enjoying each for their expansive wordbuilding and political intrigue while still having that element of adventure as an escape fantasy.
Recently Abel has also taken an interest in economics, especially the stock market. Originally finding it just as a conversation point along with something that just seemed like the kind of thing smart people were into, the subtle gambling mechanics and prospects of building wealth enticed him to eventually try to day trade on his own, through a sock puppet account set up by Kiefer due to him still being a minor, reasoning that it was a good thing to start doing young so Abel could get ahead in life. By making enough good calls to outweigh the bad puts, he has managed to make a small fortune for himself in the amount of a few hundred dollars.
In regards to SOTF-TV, Abel doesn’t have a lot of interest. He knows of it enough to skirt by in conversations without coming off as some sort of uncultured troglodyte, but he also is turned off by how popular it is and finds it as the sort of thing uncultured troglodytes like.
After high school, he isn’t sure about where to go after graduation. He’s considering going to college most likely, but he’s putting that decision off until the fall semester of senior year when the time is up to make a decision.
Advantages: Abel is smart and strong in his convictions; if he thinks he is right, he won’t back down unless there’s a reason to. He is physically healthy, and may not have too hard of a time adjusting to the environmental stresses of the game.
Disadvantages: Abel really doesn’t like when he is questioned, easily falling into that trap and will argue with others for the sake of it especially without thinking. He may be hard pressed to find people willing to work with him for this reason, assuming said people could even stand him already in a lower-stress school environment.
Designated Number: Stephanie’s Buccaneers 10 (SB10)
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Designated Weapon: Elgin Cutlass Pistol
Mentor Comment: "BEST BOY. BEST BOY. If I can, um, be honest, that isn’t really a high bar because he’s the only guy on this team who isn’t a… boinkboy, but… team captain potential? A gun? And he likes the Dark Tower? I love him already : ) : ) : )”
The above biography is as written by Jilly. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.
Evaluations[edit | edit source]
Handled by: Jilly
Kills: None
Killed By: Seo-yun Lee
Collected Weapons: Elgin Cutlass Pistol (assigned weapon, to Seo-yun Lee)
Allies: Virginia Burns
Enemies: Seo-yun Lee, Mandy Gross
Mid-game Evaluation:
Post-Game Evaluation:
Memorable Quotes:
Other/Trivia[edit | edit source]
Threads[edit | edit source]
Below is a list of threads containing Abel, in chronological order.
Sandbox:
TV3:
Your Thoughts[edit | edit source]
Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Abel Kuntz. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here!
- Here we go, the second Abel in the great and growing lineage. Abel was an early out, but manages to stand out well despite that, and is a worthy entry in the series.
The first thing I'd like to touch on is his Sandbox run. Abel gets only two posts in a single thread, and one of those is only one word. Despite this, his brief outing does a lot of work. I've been sitting on this musing for a while, but I'm gonna put it out there now: Jilly is quietly one of the best Sandbox/Pregame writers out there, and a lot of that can be credited to a specific formula that's on full display here. The secret spice is that Jilly's characters enter scenes and then work a perpendicular narrative to the core thrust of those scenes in a way that pushes new angles and opportunities for everyone involved. This pairs well with a restrained, understated sense of voice, which prevents this behavior—which could easily be obnoxious or destructive in less sure hands—from completely stealing the spotlight. In this case, the core of the thread prior to Abel's entrance is a search for a missing notebook. Abel's first post reveals that he knows where the notebook is, has known for a while, is aware of the search in progress, and chose to just sit back and watch everyone look for it for a while until he got bored and put it to rest. This shifts the identity of the thread from a search to a recovery, while also recontextualizing what came before; the whole affair could've ended in seconds but didn't because Abel chose for it not to. This tells us a whole bunch about who he is. Notebook recovered, everyone else leaves, and Abel soon finds himself left alone, closing the scene out on an ambiguous "Hmm."
This ambiguity is what carries through most strongly into Abel's first in-game thread, which sees him popping into frame behind Virginia Burns, who has just witnessed the killing of Oliver Sheffield by Carol Hong. In this thread, Abel comes across as truly, profoundly sketchy and untrustworthy, something achieved not by hamming it up, but by letting his reactions be a few notches too restrained. There are moments of suggestion that he's more affected than he lets on, but it's never out and out stated in a reliable way, and he's consistently pragmatic in a way that had me wondering in the moment how the meeting would have gone had he and Virginia not shared a team. He's just a stuck-up, casually dismissive dude, and Jilly does a great job making that the point of Abel's characterization that sticks by having him exit while calling Virginia the wrong name, a callback to earlier in the thread where he's surprised to learn he had her name wrong back at school. He hasn't retained the info that runs counter to his preconceptions, because it just didn't have enough value to him.
From here, Abel and Virginia find themselves in a stand-off with Seo-yun Lee that quickly turns into a fight, which costs Abel his life. On a scene level, Abel does a good job ramping up the tension without it feeling like a narrative contrivance. Abel's a great character to escalate by being stubborn and shifty, because he's been stubborn and shifty in everything he's done to this point. The fight itself is pretty quick, and the physical specifics are more or less beside the point; the best two beats for Abel are his "choice" to quit trying rather than to lose and the final note about how expensive his now-ruined shirt was. To the last, Abel is kind of an unlikable dude who can't get over himself.
If there's one thing I'd pick at a little, looking back, it would be the framing of Abel in his last thread. On a character level, the beats are all really good, but in his previous two threads Abel's narrative has this extra edge to it that subtly sells him as a potential menace, and that is much less prominent when faced with Seo-yun and his death. I think it's something that could have actually pushed both sides just a bit more had it persisted, because as-is the kill falls into a pretty clear case of Seo-yun as perpetrator and Abel as (suspicious, granted) victim. But I think that without changing any of the beats, the framing could've landed more as a turnabout and/or more even villain throwdown and that that might've fit the vibes Abel had going just a little more (this was, after all, Seo-yun's first kill, so the idea of their being evenly matched is plausible). This is a very minor nitpick that I'm digging at to find something, though; for the most part Abel is a classic Jilly character who does a lot of work in a short space, has a unique and distinct voice, and is slightly out of step with everything around him in a way that makes him fascinating to follow. - MurderWeasel