Randall Cimora

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Name: Randall Cimora
Gender: Male
Age: 17
Grade: 12
School: Aurora High School
Hobbies and Interests: Music (listening, making, playing, critiquing), video games, being imaginative, shooting BB and paintball guns

Appearance: Randall is 6' and 165 pounds. His hair is longer than normal for a guy, coming down to about his chin. Currently he wears it parted down the middle, and it generally doesn't fall in front of his face very easily. He has brown, straight hair, hazel eyes, and soft facial features that carry an easygoing smile that many have mistaken for that of a stoner. His face is rather rounded, with rather unnoticeable cheekbones and an inconspicuous chin, and what facial hair he is able to grow is very thin. He has a slight slouch and a moderate Southern accent, and generally looks very casual. He's rather pale from spending a lot of his free time indoors, but his tennis practice prevents him from being too pale. He's in rather average shape, though he's still on the thin side.

His choice of clothing goes further towards establishing his laid-back appearance. His favorite shirts are all T-shirts he got from merch tables at concerts, and he wears jeans in the winter months and cargo shorts in warmer weather. His clothes are deliberately ill-fitting, hiding his somewhat lanky build.

Biography: Randall Cimora was born on June 12, 1994 into a middle class family living in Texas. He had a happy home life, although he proved to be somewhat of an introvert and a dreamer, often spending recess letting his imagination run wild amongst concerns far away from the playground. Although he tended to lose focus during class, he made up for it at home, always getting good if not great grades. The family would often visit his uncle's cattle farm on the weekends as well. Although what he prized most about the visits was the wide open space of the fields, his uncle taught him how to shoot paintball and BB guns, and they would occasionally target practice with sheets of paper, stray bits of trash, or in the case of paintball, nearby road signs.

It was around the time he entered middle school that he started to discover his love of music. He had always been interested in whatever was playing in his parents' car, and his taste only expanded from there as he listened to whatever he could get his hands on, including the forgotten reaches of his parents' record collections. His allowance money started going towards CDs, and since where they lived wasn't too far from Austin, his parents started to take him to shows. He also started playing video games, preferring to get lost in games with imaginative settings and absorbing storylines. Using his pastimes as an escape, though, has meant that he has a hard time applying his creativity to the real world.

His outlook on life was shaped by those he grew up with in Texas, particularly in middle school. He felt that there was a preponderance of kids who were concerned with athletics or popularity, things he really didn't care much about. He found it much more interesting to talk about ideas than about other kids at school, a tendency which solidified over the years into a worldview based on lofty ideals and an admiration for ambitious, philosophical people. His dreaming has over time become deep thinking, even though most of it goes towards analyzing pop culture rather than discerning the meaning of life.

His middle school fed directly into a high school with one of the best football teams in the area, and he ran into athletic kids with whom he had little hope of fitting in and who saw him as an easy target for teasing. His dislike of the football kids evolved into a distaste for overt masculinity in general. His dress sense soon took subtle inspiration from the music he listened to as a reaction against those who excluded him. Whereas the aspiring football players would adopt buzzcuts to fit their helmets, Randall grew his hair out in imitation of glam bands; whereas football uniforms would accentuate big shoulders and slim waists, Randall wore indie bands' baggy clothes to hide his frame.

His introversion meant that he had little hope of finding students with similar interests to his, and he mostly accepted or internally justified being different from the student body, or at least the student body as he saw it. Music and video games provided a perfectly viable retreat from school, or so he told himself. He still had a lingering discomfort over not fitting in, though, and those feelings, coupled with the hormonal effects of being his age, caused him to have mood swings. It was not uncommon for a minor disappointment to send him into a spiral of teenaged self-loathing that lasted for a whole day. He never really expressed these feelings to anyone but family, and though his parents encouraged him to go out and find friends, it didn't really work. He had a tendency to nurse his depressive states when they occurred in an attempt to mine the outer edges of the emotional spectrum for inspiration.

His family moved to his current house in Seattle before he entered high school. He took the move in stride, not having been closely integrated with the school population in Texas in the first place. Although he was still a bit of an outsider simply because of his newcomer status and introverted nature, he found it much easier to find people with whom he shared interests, and he started making better friends with people. Both the social and chemical context for his mood swings coincidentally disappeared nearly simultaneously, and he became a much happier teenager in the process.

One of the negative consequences of moving to Seattle has been that he moved away from most of his extended family, and he only gets to visit during holiday breaks. He finds visits a little more boring now that he's more plugged in both to the Internet and to city life in general, and the politics and culture of the area are even more at odds with him than they were, but he still prizes the laid-back pace of life and the open air.

Upon moving to Seattle, Randall was amazed by the amount of musical history that the city had. His omnivorous listening habits accelerated, and his ability to attend shows increased significantly. He also discovered the ability to make music electronically on a computer around this time. Since he never learned to play a conventional instrument, his ambition is to become a talented electronic music producer, or possibly a studio engineer. Despite having made a fair amount of material, he considers most of it demo-quality and is generally reluctant to let people listen to it.

His attitude is very laid back whether it comes to grades or disagreements, taking an "it takes every kind of people" attitude towards others, although he still has a lingering mistrust of "jock"-types. He's quick to defer to other peoples' judgment most of the time, and sets realistic (if occasionally low) expectations for himself in all endeavors outside the creative realm. He generally projects a very chill demeanor, but when there's music playing, he has a hard time not tapping his feet or reacting in some way.

In high school, his parents recognized that all of his time spent indoors was not contributing much to his fitness, and asked him to start playing a sport. Randall initially hated the idea, but acquiesced and joined the tennis team. He found that he liked it; as a sport that emphasized gentlemanliness rather than just manliness, it appealed to him, and though he's not terrific at it, he can hold his own.

Advantages: Having played tennis for a few years, his agility is pretty well-developed. Also, his experience with a paintball and BB guns means he knows how to aim a gun and operate it on a basic level, although he doesn't practice outside of his farm visits. His laid-back demeanor means that most people would not perceive him as a threat, and his general idealism means that he's not likely to follow those with questionable motives.
Disadvantages: He's not that strong, and his head is often in the clouds. Also, though he has a few close friends, he's not that well known at the high school. His mistrust of jocks is less pronounced these days, but it's still there in some form, which might poison potential relationships with better-armed people on the island.