Luciano Ascencio

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

Appearance: At 5'9 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. Further, 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 either a grey or red hoodie with grey or black tracksuits respectively. This is largely a deliberate choice to blend in, an enjoyment of the comfortable style 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 Ascencio 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, Marisol told him directly that she would leave the country for the United States within the next thirty days, and that he could either come with her or lose her. With this ultimatum and fears regarding his younger brother joining the gang, Felipe eventually consented and brought most of the couple's possessions on a long journey towards the United States, leaving the remainder with the respective families of the couple. Thus, the two illegally emigrated away from El Salvador to protect their child from the impoverished, dangerous lifestyle they might likely experience in their homeland but additionally due to Marisol's personal desire to improve her own quality of life and drag Felipe rapidly away from the violence and imminent threat the gangs posed.

Upon arrival, they began to live in a small flat as Felipe took up employment as a bouncer for a local club in order to secure money for their future child. Unfortunately, it was a stillbirth which had significant negative and detrimental consequences on the mental health of both Luciano's parents. The baby's death further generated friction between Marisol and Felipe as the latter turned to drinking, taking up longer hours to provide more money and resultantly growing increasingly distant from Marisol. In juxtaposition, Marisol merely entered into a prolonged stage of sadness where she distracted herself from her anguish by working hard to make the most of their rough, somewhat squalid home. After approximately a year, Marisol began efforts to revitalize their marriage through small acts of affection and warmth; The efforts were significantly successful, causing Felipe to attempt to cut down drinking and resulting in Marisol's second pregnancy.

The child born from the second pregnancy was Luciano Ascencio, assigned the same name his stillborn brother would have received under his mother's choice. Despite the improving relationship between Felipe and Marisol (which had stabilized to its highest level of affection since the two migrated to the United States), there was still tension between them and this was amplified by disagreements regarding how Luciano would be raised. Felipe was desperate to ensure Luciano remained culturally Salvadoran and thus refused to speak to the child in any language other than Spanish, dissuading Marisol from speaking English to him to ensure that the prospect of the family moving back to El Salvador remained realistic. Despite the improved conditions of their new life, Felipe was underwhelmed by the improvements America provided especially considering the lack of family and as many friends as he had had in El Salvador. However, Marisol continued to speak English to Luciano whenever Luciano was absent because of two major reasons. Firstly, Marisol genuinely wished for Luciano to live a good life and speaking English would likely provide a tremendous help to his life. Secondly, Marisol knew that if Luciano became more Americanized, it was more likely that the family would stay in the United States and thus Luciano was her ticket to sustaining her improved, safer lifestyle. Resultantly, Luicano's early years were strained by a somewhat tense atmosphere which caused the boy to develop a shy personality.

As Luciano grew older, his parents' relationship returned to a period of deterioration due to further disagreements between the two regarding their son. Marisol wished for Luciano to work hard in school, while Felipe desired Luciano to become a manual worker and avoid drawing any attention to himself due to fears of migration authorities. Felipe relapsed when Luciano was still young, and begun to drink to similar levels as before which resulted in him being fired from his job due to drinking during working hours. Money resultantly became scarce and thus Marisol sought out a job as a maid to support the family's financial situation; Felipe was emasculated and somewhat angry because he maintained traditional beliefs of a patriarchal family. Marison began to work longer hours, while Felipe begun to get involved with gambling as well, even sometimes utilizing Marisol's earnings to gamble which resulted in greater tensions and Marisol even once accusing him of gambling just to persuade her to quit her job. From there, Felipe became less distant from Marisol but instead more aggressive, creating a heated atmopshere during Luciano's childhood.

Luciano rarely talked as a child, but would often cry when he was younger as he observed his parents arguing. During kindergarten, he was noted to be one of the few children who didn't cry when first in a setting devoid of his parents. In class, Luciano was still quiet but he talked to some extent and thus no alarms were raised with any of his teachers regarding his development. Due to the tightness of money, he lacked many toys other than a few models and a fluffy toy cat which he named 'Saltadora' (leaper) and kept close to him. Due to this lack of toys, Luciano often resorted to daydreaming in his free time and resulted in him often appearing to be inattentive and unfocused; this led to his mother worrying if he might suffer from a mental disability, and his dad accused him of the same thing with much harsher language.

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. As his mother was gone, Luciano became Felipe's primary target for his aggression and thus Luciano developed a resentment against her because he knew that she knew what would happen when she was away. Felipe would insult him regarding being too Americanized, for ever saying anything that Felipe could twist as disrespecful and for not being as masculine and confident as Felipe thought he should be. Resultantly, Luciano often wept and was a significantly emotional child, but ultimately a somewhat selfish one as he preferred when Marisol was home just so that the harshness of his father would be redirected to her and not himself. Staying at home became worse and worse for Luciano, and thus he forced himself to concentrate on his internal fantasies and dreams to reduce his vulnerability, forming complex stories in his head to ignore his vulerability in the world. At elementary school, Luciano took up learning the violin and harp afterschool primarily because it reduced the time he had to spend at home and because he found those two instruments most interesting in particular. Although he spent a lot of time at school, Luciano was quiet and perceived as boring and timid by many considering he often paused before speaking, said mostly mundane things and rarely made jokes - this was largely because of his experience at home where he wanted to avoid misspeaking because anything even slightly wrong might result in verbal abuse from his father. Thus, Luciano only really had a small group of friends in elementary school.

One day upon returning home, Luciano observed Felipe slapping Marisol across the face and swiftly learned that Felipe was accusing her of prostituting herself out for her employer. Felipe had come home drunk and worked himself up in a rage, desiring something to take out his anger on and hence taking it out on Marisol. So focused on his anger, Felipe barely even registered Luciano watching the incident and continued to berate Marisol, claiming that she was the worst thing that ever happened to him and his life. This image scarred Lucian as he merely observed, allowing it to happen. Marisol eventually got up and went upstairs silently, glancing sadly at Lucian before reaching her bedroom. Although she knew he couldn't really do anything, she would no longer attempt to maintain a happy relationship with Felipe afterward and generally distanced herself from the family out of sadness and frustration with her own life.

Following that incident, Lucian decided he would tell someone else regarding his home life as he had heard that venting alleviated stress. He thus chose his closest friend, an amicable Anglo-American boy named Ryan, and genuinely poured out his heard regarding the topic. Ryan consoled him however was ultimately doubtful regarding the situation and attempted to pressure Luciano into showing Ryan his home. Luciano ultimately refused, which caused Ryan to suspect his friend might've been lying. Still, Ryan mentioned it to a couple of his friends, despite Luciano making him promise he would never say anything to anyone else. Resultantly, a few people in his school begun to think of Luciano as either poor or a liar, and some mentioned this to him, either teasingly or with sympathy. This led to Luciano feeling primarily disgusted by his home situation, and he denied all allegations, deliberately becoming distant from Ryan instead of replicating the emotion of anger which he had grown to hate after watching his father. Luciano begun to develop methods of cleaning his mind, using his techniques of just listening to words without ever really processing them as a way to protect himself. Ultimately, he vowed to himself that he would not repeat the mistake of confessing any of his secrets in Middle School.

Marisol grew withdrawn and distant from Luciano as well, resulting in the boy becoming increasingly independent and isolated. Felipe failed to maintain any form of long-term employment and was eventually employed as a manual labourer through one of Marisol's friends. Until that point, he hadn't found secure work for nearly a year and afterward he would continue to work a series of temporary labour jobs. Luciano himself begun to work as a paper boy and gardener in a richer neighbourhood a short journey from his own in order to buy stuff for himself, including food sometimes. His parents both had greater concerns than his diet, though, and resultantly Luciano often cooked for himself when his mother was away or bought junk food which caused him to become a fairly frail boy.

Entering middle school, Luciano's exhibited personality had significantly evolved from elementary school. Although he was already considered fairly introverted, Luciano became almost silent and rarely said more than a few words unless it was necessary. He would mostly sit quietly and study during schooltime, continuing his violin and harp practice by joining band club. A lack of friends provided one major advantage in that it gave him time to study and resultantly his grades improved immensely in middle school. He couldn't really tell if he enjoyed violin or harp, as he felt like he phased out when he played them, but continued regardless as it allowed him to stay in school for longer. Luciano wasn't necessarily disliked during middle scool because he rarely spoke enough to even say anything offensive and wasn't really a target for bullying because he kept his head down and was largely inoffensive when he spoke. Regardless, he became an invisible entity in the classroom as he arrived, studied, ate and left school alone.

There was one boy named Jairo who often attempted to interact with him, partially because of a lack of friends on Jairo's part and partially because he always wondered why Luciano was so quiet. Luciano initially spoke to the boy a few times, and was warmed by the kindness Jairo presented, but conversations were frequently awkward because Luciano lacked major social skills and Jairo wasn't the most social person himself. Worse still, Luciano sometimes experienced butterflies when speaking to Jairo which resulted in him eventually withdrawing from conversations with the boy, leading to distress and persistence on Jairo's part that eventually withered and ended Luciano's sole friendship. Although he didn't really want to think about it at the time or later, Luciano later understood to some extent that he might've liked Jairo romantically and the stress of that leading to his anxiety regarding talking to Jairo (because of a combination of a lack of social skills, internalised homophobia and talking to someone he liked).

Without Jairo, Luciano's status of almost being an ornament in classrooms became more distinct as people began to talk about stuff in front of him without even mentioning him or even appearing to notice him sometimes. For some reason he couldn't quite explain, Luciano loved the feeling of knowing things he wasn't supposed to, even though this primarily consisted of small, insignficant and petty drama like who liked who. Experimentally, Luciano wondered how he might get more people to murmur their secrets in front of him without caring or worrying and spent some of the money from his job on a pair of cheap blue earphones. After buying them, he would always wear them but never actually attach them to anything or play music; they would merely allow the pretense that he was listening to music so people would be less likely to assume he was listening.

One of the most important events for Luciano was hearing a discussion regarding SOTF-TV. Although Luciano had naturally already heard of SOTF-TV, he had never been invested in it and had some minor ethical objections that he would never realistically raise. However, he heard how rich some of the contestants became following their victories regardless of their methods. This was significant because it imbued Luciano with an ambition to work his hardest to reach a better standard of life for himself, regardless of the methods he used to do so. Considering Luciano would prefer not to be involved with the show himself and it would be extremely unlikely anyway, this conversation solidifed his dedication to academics so he could be accepted at a good high school and 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. Thus, his aims in middle school were to study as hard as he could and learn more and more of the addictive private information of his peers (the latter having limited success, with Luciano only really learning small inconsequential secrets from the same sections of the student population.)

At home, Luciano became increasingly distant to his already distant family. He discovered that although Felipe may be initially angry at Luciano's emotionless response to insults, it was the best method to get Felipe to eventually abandon the antagonistic situation after a sustained period of silence. At home, Luciano spent the majority of his time studying during middle school and was rarely seen without a textbook or notepad.

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. With his hood up and his earphones in, Luciano is an unremarkable presence and succeeded to some extent regarding his goal of attaining his classmates' secrets. Although he would never be unwise enough to write them down because of the attention it might draw, Luciano has attempted to remember as much as he could regarding small information like crushes and similar topics. As with any addiction, Luciano has built up some form of tolerance for that and thus desires more, leading to him joining the school newspaper to gain additional intel. Furthermore, his most bold stunt was hiding in one of the classroom cupboards when he overheard that two girls would be arguing about something in there. Although he was successfully hidden, one of the girls lingered in the classroom after the argument until class started which meant that multiple people watched him climb out of the cupboard at the beginning of class, resulting in him receiving questions and odd looks alongside small rumours. Still, no one really cared about Luciano and thus the rumours rapidly died out although it pressured Luciano into taking a more backseat role, reducing the amount of information he learned as he returned to just hanging around places in the background. A disadvantage of Luciano's knowledge of secrets, though, is that he only really knows secrets held by multiple people due to the nature of overhearing conversations and therefore he doesn't know what he desperately desires, a raw personal secret.

Right now, Luciano has a largely distant relationship with his parents and tends to stay alone at home. This isn't necessarily that difficult because he's used to doing so in school regardless, and thus it's merely an extension of that however it used to be a greater source of pain in his younger years. Now, his lack of connection to his parents is more advantageous from his perspective because it motivates him to study harder as he has no reason to attend a local university near his parents juxtaposed to a better one further away.

In terms of clubs, Luciano continued his violin and harp practice due to a newly developed sense of enjoyment from the activities. Although he initially took them up merely as a way to avoid home, he has grown to love them as a staple of his life and control over his own life and resultantly prioritizes them highly. Further, he joined the track team in order to expand his extracurricular portfolio and thus 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.

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 hobbies he enjoys other than music and learning secrets, 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 muted 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.

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. The reason he wants to help El Salvador specifically is due to a combination of a projection of his own aims of alleviating his poverty onto the nation and from a sense of connection he has with the nation due to his heritage.

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 significant 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 as he is unlikely to be able to put much power into physical fights.

Designated Number: Jewel's Leviathans 02 (JL02)

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Designated Weapon: Dacian Falx

Mentor Comment: "If you're going to go monochrome with a splash of red, why pick grey? He's so close to something almost approaching a facsimile of fashionable, though a tracksuit always has that I-couldn't-manage-anything-better vibe to it. Ugh.

"Well, that aside, I see some things I like. Drive is the most important attribute. I can work with someone who knows what he wants. As to cooperating with anyone else? 'You don't need to work with the team to work for the team, know what I'm saying?'"

The above biography is as written by UnmaskedMountain. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.

Evaluations

Luciano Ascencio (sprite edit by Almostinhuman)

Handled by: UnmaskedMountain, Skraal

Kills: None

Killed By: Anthony Golden

Collected Weapons: Dacian Falx (assigned weapon)

Allies: Amy Barrows-Shaw, RJ Blackburn, Amanda Brooks

Enemies: Amy Barrows-Shaw, Anthony Golden

Mid-game Evaluation:

Post-Game Evaluation: In the end, Luciano got outplayed in a fight and died for it. That's about all there is to it. Of course, such a simple situation is itself unusual for this season. Things haven't worked like you might expect all that much, and that plus a relatively easy road right up until the end probably made it easy to forget how quickly things can turn bad.

Like I think I told a few people, if you're not going for ten the only fight that really matters is the last one. But avoiding others on the way isn't so easy. Luciano wasn't quite crazy enough to throw down with Anthony. If you want to make people think twice, you need to get into a state where every fight is that last one, where anything you do you put everything into. If you're crazy and violent enough, people will regret fucking with you and try to change their minds. And as soon as that happens, as soon as they let up or hesitate, you have to press on and end it. If you give people second chances, you have to be ready for them to kill you.

Oh, and for the record I did know Luciano was almost certainly going to die when we talked last. I've said it before, but this job is like being a hospice worker. You do what you can to comfort and ease. I was honest and tried to offer some sense of purpose. It is what it is. I really don't know if the other mentors see it that way or understand. - Jewel Evans

Memorable Quotes:

Other/Trivia

• Luciano Ascencio was adopted by Skraal

Threads

Below is a list of threads containing Luciano, in chronological order.

TV3:

• Bloody Palms
• Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?
• Try Like the Devil
• Half of a Heart
• The One Where You Are Crying And I Don't Do Anything At All
• Song of the Candle
• The Worst Kind of Tribute
• It All Fades Away

Your Thoughts

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 Luciano Ascencio. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here!