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| Joe Carrasco | |
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| Topic Started: Feb 3 2012, 08:22 AM (794 Views) | |
| Violent-Medic | Feb 3 2012, 08:22 AM Post #1 |
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Winner
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Name: Joe Carrasco Gender: Male Age: 17 Grade: 12th School: Aurora High School Hobbies and Interests: Medicine, mountain biking, cooking Appearance: Joe is Hispanic and has olive-colored skin. He stands at 5'11" and weighs 152 lbs. He appears rather skinny but has some wiry muscle from mountain biking, though not enough to be obvious at a glance. His limbs are a bit too long for his body and he has a thin face. His nose is large and rather pudgy. His thick, black hair always sticks out in odd directions regardless of how much he attempts to brush it, and it reaches past his chin. His eyes are light brown and often have dark shadows underneath them, usually from staying up too late. Joe requires glasses to read and can usually be seen wearing wire-rimmed glasses during school hours or while studying at home. Joe doesn't pay much attention to his clothes and wears whatever he finds convenient. Most of his clothes are jeans, plain t-shirts and hoodies. His clothes are consistently crumpled, as if he had slept in them. He usually carries around a cheap, green lighter and often plays around with it while deep in thought. Biography: Joe's parents, Matias and Fran Carrasco, as well as his aunt, Claudia, were born in Chile and moved to America only a few years before Joe was born. Matias and Claudia were from a family that only managed to earn just enough money to send one of their children, Matias, to college. Matias worked hard and eventually became a doctor. Years later, he moved to America with his wife and his sister so that he and his family would hopefully be able to find better work, and in turn have the money to provide proper educations for any future family members. Joe was born in America and his parents gave him what they thought was an American name in order to help him fit in. Joe has only been to Chile once, in order to visit some relatives, and although he primarily speaks Spanish at home, he has always considered himself an American rather than a Chilean. Joe's parents were very insistent on Joe becoming a doctor as well and rigidly controlled what classes he could pick and what activities he pursued, always trying to guide him towards things that would help him become one. It started small, like constantly challenging him to games of Operation when he was little and giving him picture books on the human body. When he got older, he was presented with more detailed books, and by the time he entered junior high they were giving him medical dictionaries to read. Luckily for his parents, Joe loved reading about medicine even from a young age. Joe finds medicine fascinating and likes studying how everything in the human body fits together and what can cause it to break down. Being a doctor would be his ideal career if it wasn't for one thing; Joe is afraid of blood and tends to freak out badly whenever someone gets hurt around him. This extends to animals and even looking at squished, twitchy bugs makes Joe feel sick. Joe brought this fear of blood up with his parents once, and asked if they would mind if he tried for a less bloody occupation. The only occupation that he could think of that he'd enjoy besides medicine would be being a chef. Cooking was a hobby that he'd enjoyed since he was young. Whenever his mother cooked, Joe used to like to help out because he liked the smells and found it relaxing. When he brought up the possibility of being a chef to his parents, however, his father shouted him down, saying that he hadn't moved all the way from Chile just so his son could cook like a common housewife. Joe never brought it up again. From a young age, Joe's parents pushed him to excel in all subjects so that he'd get the necessary grades to get into a good college. And if he wasn't excelling, they decided he wasn't trying hard enough. They would spend most of their time at home quizzing Joe to make sure he wasn't slacking off on his studies. If he wanted to do something besides study, he usually had to answer a long string of academic questions correctly before he'd be allowed to do so. If he got so much as a B he was in for long lectures. This rigorous training did make him rather intelligent, but it also caused him to become extremely stressed. Joe found out that he was gay in junior high. Until then, he'd assumed that he just hadn't found the right girl and that any odd thoughts concerning guys were just platonic admiration and curiosity. However, then he met a girl called Jamie O'Feefe. The two met when they had a mutual freakout over a dissection in Biology, and bonded over the fact that they were both being pushed into medical occupations by their parents. Joe thought that Jamie was the right girl, but after an attempt at kissing neither of them felt anything. Joe decided that feeling nothing for a girl that he liked as much as Jamie confirmed his interest in men. He kept this a secret because his family, including himself, were very religious Catholics and his father already showed annoyance when Joe showed any traits he deemed feminine, like wanting to cook for a living. Early in high school, Joe's aunt introduced him to mountain biking. Aunt Claudia had always been a rough, energetic woman less concerned with academics, and decided he needed something to keep his mind off his grades. She took him to the mountains and taught him about mountain biking. Joe quickly grew attached to the activity. Mountain biking was exhilarating and made him feel more alive than anything he'd ever experienced. It became a regular activity that he either did alone or with his aunt. Injuries occurred regularly, but they were normally just bruises or cuts. Although Joe still got squeamish or a little bit afraid when he got a bloody cut, they were small enough to not scare him away from mountain biking. This lasted until his second-to-last year of high school. Late in the year, while Joe and his aunt were out biking again, his aunt crashed badly and broke her arm. It was an open fracture and very bloody. Although Joe managed to find his phone and call for help, he was unable to do anything for his aunt because he was too afraid to go near her. He wasn't even able to provide comfort. His aunt eventually recovered, although her arm never fully returned to normal. Joe felt horribly guilty for not being able to help, and terrified at an injury like that happening again, and has not been mountain biking since. He still rides a bike to and from school, and sometimes really misses mountain biking, but he's too afraid to try again. Just a few days after the incident, there was a major Biology test. He had slacked off studying due to spending most of his time visiting his aunt, and when he stared at the questions his mind couldn't come up with any of the answers. Combined with everything else, it was enough for him to have a mental breakdown. He fled from the classroom, screaming about how he was stupid, that he could never become a doctor and that he wanted to quit school right now. After this brief mental breakdown, there were several rumors around the school on the subject of Joe's mental health. These rumors were all untrue, as Joe is completely sane apart from some high stress levels. After the brief breakdown, Joe had to visit the school counselor regularly through the rest of that school year in order to talk about his problems. Joe never brought up much of what was troubling him to the counselor. These sessions stopped at the beginning of his final year of high school, since they decided it was just regular stress. Because Joe didn't want to return home to face his family after the breakdown, after school he ended up hanging out with a friend, Travis Webster. Because he was stressed, Travis offered him a joint and Joe, being the curious type, accepted. He choked a lot the first couple of attempts, but found that the weed helped distract him and numb the stress about his grades and parents, enough so that he didn't break down again when his father confronted him for skipping class and making the school believe he required counseling sessions. His father didn't notice the red eyes he had from smoking, and his mother assumed that it was because he'd been crying or something similar. Smoking marijuana would quickly become a regular habit. However, it only helped Joe delay the stress about his grades and parents. Whenever the stress would become too much, Joe would smoke so that he could ignore the problems entirely. It's an unhealthy way to solve the problem, and Joe has started to find that stress feels much worse when he isn't high than it used to be when he never smoked at all. Especially since he now has to hide his habit from his family. Joe's grades are still high at the moment, being mostly As. However, Bs are becoming more frequent. As his last year is in progress, he is attempting to pull his grades back up to straight As, and tries to keep a clear head before or during a big assignment or test. After a big test, the first thing Joe will usually do is find somewhere safe to smoke. Joe intends to go on to study medicine at college, just like his parents want him to. However, he knows that it'll all be pointless if he can't get over his fear of blood and bodily fluids. For this reason, Joe has taken to regularly watching tapes of surgeries and other bloody footage in order to get used to the sight. He also attempted watching Survival of the Fittest once because he thought that if he could watch that then he could manage any amount of blood. However, after only a couple of minutes he turned it off, threw up and never watched it again. Nowadays, Joe can look at most pictures and videos of blood and fluids without getting nauseous. But, as proven in Biology class and the biking incident with his aunt, Joe still can't handle excessive live blood. Due to how much pressure his parents put on him, Joe's relationship with them isn't very good. He does try to make them proud whenever he can, but constantly worries that he isn't good enough. His father is prone to very loud, terrifying anger and so Joe is often scared of him, but he has Joe's best interests at heart. His mother is just as strict as his father, but a lot calmer and easier to talk to. Joe is closest with Aunt Claudia, but has been more distant with her since the accident due to feeling guilty about not being able to help her. Like his parents, Joe is a Catholic. He goes to confession every month and it's one of the few times he manages to talk to strangers, most likely because having a screen between him and the priest helps. He tends to feel guilty for a lot of different things, so if he didn't go he would break down from all the bad feelings. The priest has had to assure him at least twice that getting a bad grade isn't a sin, despite what his parents might say. Joe has felt little religious guilt for being homosexual, however, due to considering it a very outdated idea. Joe has a strong sense of curiosity. Curiosity was what kept him interested in medicine, despite his fear of blood. Although most of the studying he does is to keep his grades up, he's also prone to studying non-essential subjects just to learn more about the world in general. He likes learning just for the sake of learning, and prefers it to learning because he'll fail if he doesn't. His curiosity is also the reason why he will often try new things, such as smoking marijuana, with little hesitation, because he thinks it's good to try things at least once. This can surprise people due to how nervous Joe often is. Joe's jittery, nervous behavior is worse during tests or assignments, but he's almost always somewhat nervous. He is only completely relaxed while high or when he's cooking. He was also less nervous when mountain biking before the accident, due to the exhilaration and freedom of it completely wiping away any other worries. Joe is a very shy, timid boy who tends to blend into the background most of the time. This makes it difficult for him to make friends. To the few people he considers friends, Joe is extremely loyal and would not hurt or betray them for the world. Towards everyone else, however, it's difficult for Joe to manage more than mumbling in a conversation. Joe is usually afraid that he's going to offend people if he says a single wrong word, and as a result normally stays silent. But if people bring up the right topics, such as bikes or the theoretical side of medicine, that is usually enough to lure him out of his shell and make him talk extensively for a while, and once he becomes friendly enough with someone he becomes significantly more talkative. The only time he can easily talk to people is when he's high. Due to still being in the closet, Joe has never dated someone who he's actually been interested in. He has never told anyone, apart from Jamie O'Feefe, that he's gay. Not even his friends know about it, because Joe is afraid they'd stop being friends with him if they found out. Even though he's too afraid to talk to most people he will almost certainly stop to help if someone needs help with something that doesn't require any talking, like picking up things they dropped or moving furniture. He's a gentle kid who just wants people to like him. However, he does have a strong pessimistic streak. If there is even the smallest possibility that something will go wrong, Joe will believe wholeheartedly that the worst-case scenario is going to occur. He doesn't whine or complain about it and often turns out to be wrong anyway, but the belief is usually there. Advantages: Joe has always been careful not to offend, and thus wouldn't have really made any enemies. He has a decent amount of medical knowledge. Joe is familiar with mountainous terrain due to his mountain biking activities. Disadvantages: Joe can get very nervous and jittery, and would be liable to freak out in either a fight or a stressful diplomatic situation. Joe is not good with people and would be terrible at making allies. If he didn't have his glasses he would be unable to read any instruction manuals for weapons or maps. His fear of blood will also be a problem and render much of his medical knowledge useless. Edited by Violent-Medic, Feb 5 2012, 12:38 AM.
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| ZombiexCreame | Feb 4 2012, 10:25 PM Post #2 |
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it was a graveyard smash
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Hey there, Violent-Medic. I'm gunna critique your profile today! For starters, remove the 'grade' after 12th in the grade section. It's just repetitive information since we already know what 12th refers to. Appearance is good. Now for the biography:
In the bolded sentence, change the word 'like' to 'likes.'
This sentence doesn't have anything grammatically wrong with it, but it just seems oddly worded. Joe seems to enjoy medicine and the medical field, as seen by the previous paragraph, but this sentence makes it seem like Joe is interested in no other career path than cooking. I would just reword it a bit.
Either make this "a long lecture" or "long lectures."
The word 'was' in the bolded sentence should be 'were' since thoughts is plural.
Second-last would be better changed to second-to-last. Second-last kind of sounds like Joe is in his second year of 12th grade or something.
This is a minute detail, but aside from being a strangely worded sentence (it's an incomplete sentence and would probably do better to be combined with the previous sentence by use of a comma), it just seems unlikely that Joe would get a detention for leaving class because of a breakdown. I think teachers and staff would be more sympathetic towards educational-caused breakdowns than to slam a detention on someone for leaving a test with a fairly probable cause/a freak-out Joe probably couldn't control given the stress he deals with.
In the bolded sentence, I think you meant for that period to be a comma. So that's that for minor corrections. In general, I think you have a nice lengthy profile with some great details and a good sense of Joe's past and who he is, but the paragraphs are all over the place. I've love to see some of the smaller paragraphs clumped into a larger paragraph with other relevant paragraphs containing similar information. For example, all paragraphs talking about Joe's general behavior, put into one paragraph. Any information talking about Joe's personality at school, you could also talk add the paragraph about how he's yet to come out of the closet, since that's a persona he's hiding from his peers at school. Have similar paragraphs with like information lead into the next paragraph with similar information. You don't want to feel like you're jerking the reader around. Match some paragraphs together, and you'll be doing good. ![]() The advantages/disadvantages look good. Just make those changes, and I'll give Joe another look. Thank you kindly~ |
![]() ♥Dawson Demarke: School Cafeteria♥ ♥Soon to come: Francis Scodelaris♥ | |
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| Violent-Medic | Feb 5 2012, 12:39 AM Post #3 |
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Winner
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I think I covered everything that I needed to change. Hoping he gets through this time. |
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| ZombiexCreame | Feb 5 2012, 11:03 PM Post #4 |
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it was a graveyard smash
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APPROVED |
![]() ♥Dawson Demarke: School Cafeteria♥ ♥Soon to come: Francis Scodelaris♥ | |
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