GENERAL

Name: Watson Brooks
Nickname(s): none
Gender/Pronouns: genderfluid, male-leaning | he/they
Birthdate/Age: December 31, 2003 Capricorn | 15
Grade: sophomore
Sexuality: asexual panromantic, but highly unaware of either of these things as of yet. He doesn’t even seem to be aware that his lack of sex drive could be seen as unusual, chalking it up instead to his disability.

Major Arcana: Hermit | Soul-searching, introspection, being alone, inner guidance | isolation, loneliness, withdrawal
Minor Arcana: Coins | manifestation, realization, proof, prosperity | overly focused on career, overly materialistic, greedy, possessive

Concept: Baby of the family steps out of siblings' shadows, falls over.

Height:	5’3”	Hair Color:	ginger
Build:	awkward	Eye Color:	blue

Watson is right in the middle of the never fun event known as puberty. He was always rather soft as a boy, but now he’s trading that in for a more angular jawline and fuzz sprouting everywhere. He doesn’t know how to feel about this, experiencing low-key dysphoria as time goes on. He consistently works out to make up for his disability, but now the subsequent muscle gain and toning freaks him out a bit.

Watson makes up the lack of control he has over his illness with the sort of meticulousness over his personal appearance that would please even the strictest boot camp sergeant. Every bit and bob of his uniform has a place and a purpose, and he irons and hangs everything he can reasonably get away with, including his t-shirts. Out of uniform, his casual clothes may not be new, but they are clean and repaired (either clumsily by himself or more neatly if he got his mother to help). He trends to whatever is easiest for him to put on and is comfortable, so while he usually can be seen in jeans and long sleeves, there are days where he can be found wandering around in sweatpants and forgoing a shirt altogether. He can almost always be seen with his cane, a black thing with a foam grip that can be looped in his backpack if he doesn't have an immediate need for it. His most prized accessory is a black ring, kept looped in a necklace and tucked under his shirt.

He also wears glasses sometimes! Usually, it's a sign he's dealing with a bad day, so expect him to be extra grumpy because he hates wearing his glasses. And now we can not so awkwardly transition into...

[Juvenile Arthritis]: At first glance, Watson only stands out because of his slightly baggy clothing and ever present cane (it's normal for teens to look like they never sleep, right?), but if you spend any time around him, you learn that it's not all true. Watson suffers from a moderate-to-severe case of arthritis that concentrates primarily in his left hip and knee. This pain requires daily use of prescription painkillers and his cane as a walking aid, as well as various forms of physical therapy. While it's true he has a handful of good days that lets him walk about without so much as a limp, it's usually counterbalanced by a severe crash later where he struggles to make it to class on time.

A severe crash can manifest in a few different ways, depending on how hard he's been pushing himself and if he's been taking care of his body. On the extreme end of the spectrum, he could be confined to a wheelchair and need help with dressing and other complex tasks that require intricate legwork, but this is fairly rare, occurring only if he's been neglecting his regular therapy in favor of aggressive physical work for months. Normally, his crashes mean the pain surpasses the pain medication's ability to suppress it, and he has to move with extra care as the pain will flare up his spine with any pressure. This makes him slow physically, can affect his sleep and eating habits, and limits the physical activities he can do to mostly just walking between classes. Most of the time though, the pain is moderate, requiring his cane and medicine but allows him to be mostly independent.

PB: Alex Saxon

Likes: swimming, marine biology, dubstep and other EDM, small spaces, success, organization and control, photography, the air in the fall, pumpkin spice, lace and flowery things, pastel colors

Dislikes: being compared to his siblings, being called robotic, mustard in all shapes and forms, tomatoes, mosquitos, humidity, pity for his disability, failure, sexual innuendo (specifically because it usually goes over his head), lying, hamsters and small furry things

---

Watson is a quiet, level-headed kid whose personality veers towards the undramatic and nearly forgettable. Having grown up hearing adults say he is a mature young man, he tends to emulate how he believes "real" adults to act, but at a cost to his ability to naturally engage with his peers.

Watson outwardly expresses an analytical, logical mind and is driven to succeed and prove himself to, well, something. He's not sure what, but he has to show he's the best, either academically, physically, or just as a human being. This drive to succeed can lead to great things; Watson is remarkably calm under pressure, able to lock down and focus on the task at hand in a second. But it is also his Achille's heel as he isn't at all as physically capable as other kids his age. This disability can frustrate him to the point of tears on the worst of days, and without guidance it can lead him to pushing himself harder, setting himself up for a worse crash even later. Needling him about his cane or therapy is a quick way to unbalance him, even when he's trying to focus on whatever task is at hand.

Underneath the stoic exterior and past the frustrating cycle he has dealing with his arthritis, Watson can be a genuinely sweet boy. He wants to be the best, and that includes doing what's best for the people around him. Yes, he's awkward to talk to and has trouble making eye contact, but he wants to be there for his classmates and squad. He wants people to trust him and see him as someone who, while maybe not leader material, is dependable and someone to admire.

tl;dr Watson is an outwardly level-headed and robotic teen who doesn't know how to communicate with kids his age and can get easily worked up and frustrated over perceived faults in his image, especially his disability. Underneath all that, he is incredibly driven to be an admirable figure and someone that is dependable, even if he is awkward and more than a little shy of showing off any true personality to strangers.

Finchwood has given Watson a chance to learn more about himself in a (relatively) more safe and accepting enviroment. Having grown up in Smalltown, USA, his exposure to the LGBT and left-wing identities was nonexistent before moving. He also has found success to be extremely satisfying when he gets his squad home and their world safe.

Ranked from most proficient to least proficient by combination of skill, natural talent, time spent, and enjoyment.

[Physical Therapy]: Thanks to Watson's disability and a small state stipend, Watson was able to take three years of physical and water therapy before he was left on his own. He uses these three years of experience and his own research to continue his work. He does have a tendency to focus on his arms and upper body when it comes to strength training, as exercising his bad leg too much can lead to painful flare ups. Range of motion exercise and water therapy are also staples.

[Swimming]: It is a Brooks family tradition to visit Lake Guntersville during the summer and... dumping the underage children on some second cousin who happened to buy land by the water for pretty cheap. Therefore, all Brooks children, including Watson, know how to swim. And Watson in particular loves the water. When he first got his cane, he went through a period where he wished he could become a fish instead. He has fallen asleep multiple times tethered to a dock. He's never gotten freckles out of the subsequent sunburn either.

[Tai Chi]: Alice once caught Watson trying to follow a youtube video so he could "become a ninja" when he was nine. Since the family didn't know what was causing Watson leg pain at this time, Alice employed some basic Google skills, enrolling her baby brother in a local Tai Chi class shortly afterwards. He doesn't know Tai Chi for self-defense. He uses it primarily as a supplement to his physical therapy and a way to relax.

[Photography]: Watson fell in love with photography thanks to a disposable camera tossed amongst some art supplies during free time in sixth grade. When his teacher developed the film and discovered his shots amongst her vacation photos, she told him and his parents that he had a natural eye for someone that never touched a camera before. His first camera, a polaroid, was a thrifting find from Oliver. His second was a DSLR he got as a Christmas present from the entire family (the only present he got that year, and an instant regret for the rest of them). When he got into Finchwood, his siblings pooled together some money to buy a camera that uses film. He turned his bedroom into a dark room that summer.

[Cooking]: Strangely enough, as the youngest Brooks, he often found himself fixing his own dinner while his parents worked and his siblings were too preoccupied with their own lives if they were even home to deal with him. He ended up learning to cook for himself when he began therapy so he could have healthy meals. It ended up that he’d cook for the family, and they would indulge him with appropriate spices as needed.

Family:

Hometown: New Hope, Alabama. A big enough town to have its own school, but small enough to not need a traffic light. Comes with the expected amount of conservative rhetoric a small town in Alabama can be expected to have.

---

[Pregnancy and Birth]: Elizabeth Brooks does not believe in birth control. A very conservative Christian woman, she strongly believes that God will gift her with exactly how many children she is meant to have, no more and no less. It's a family joke that Watson didn't want to be the baby by too much, as he arrived a full week before his projected due date. Like his siblings, Watson is named after a literary character.

[Early Childhood]: Since most of his siblings are so much older than Watson, he ended playing by himself, or at the very least as the supporting role for Jane’s antics. Even early on, he was more serious than Jane, preferring the quiet of building with nearly ten years’ worth of collection of Lego over running around slaying dragons. This is when the comparison to being a little adult began.

[Juvenile Arthritis Onset and Diagnosis]: Watson began to feel pain in his left hip and knee after his eighth birthday. He wasn’t diagnosed with juvenile arthritis until he was nearly ten, in part because his parents thought it was just growing pains or kids being kids, and in part because he would keep quiet unless it was really bad. It didn’t even come out until a checkup with the doctor when they asked if Watson had anything to talk about. It took a couple months to figure out what was going on, and Watson was given state-funded therapy to work his muscles and prevent the arthritis from progressing too quickly. Unfortunately, his family couldn’t afford to send him to a specialist, and the government allowance for his physical therapy was limited, so Watson had to learn as much as he could while it lasted. He was thirteen when the funding ran out. By this point, the damage had spread enough that he needed a cane.

[Middle School]: When the money ran out for his hospital bills and therapy, Watson was able to attend school more regularly. It ended up being the worst time he could rejoin his classmates, as puberty is a turbelent time for any kid, and he had the additional baggage of having a visible disability. It was incredibly isolating, but Watson threw himself wholesale into his studies, making up for lost time and developing his drive to become the best.

Middle school is also when he discovered his fascination with photography, marine biology, and kissing boys. He also got into his first fight at school, fending off an older kid from trying to take his cane again by hitting him with it. He began to take strength training in gym to supplement his physical therapy, but his condition still worsened. Throughout eighth grade, his bullying worsened, and he eventually asked his parents if he could go to a private school in Huntsville instead. This led to a very frank conversation about family finances that quieted him for a time on the subject.

[Finchwood Academy]: Just because he stopped asking to go elsewhere didn't mean he wasn't still looking. He hunted for academies and schools with scholarship programs, and that's how he stumbled across Finchwood. The idea of leaving Alabama and his bullies behind for a little while sounded especially nice. His parents didn't have high hopes for him, but since it was free anyway, they decided there was no harm in letting him fail. When he was accepted, they were shocked and said no. It took the combined efforts of all the Brooks children to convince them to change their minds. And so, over that summer, Watson learned the truth of Finchwood.

[Freshman Year]: Even knowing what Finchwood was for, Watson was utterly unprepared for what was to come. At first, he hated the idea of playing the role of support, convinced that he was being sidelined because of his disability. But he learned quickly that he wasn't any lesser than the people doing the fighting, and with Ms. Voss's help, he soon saw his role as perhaps one of the more important ones. While he does still deal with the creeping thoughts of being lesser from time to time, usually tied to the frustrations with his arthritis, he's now mentally in a much better place and has thrown himself into his role wholeheartedly.

Persona: Poyel, a giant mermaid looking creature with a lantern head for Watson to sit in
Element: Earth

Core Classes: English II, Geometry, Biology*, US History, Training

Elective Classes: Art, Life Skills, Philosophy, Support

Clubs: Print, Dance, Community Outreach
timetable here
General Performance: As been mentioned before, Watson is driven to do his best in anything he tries. This is especially true of his classes, and he feels pressure to live up to his siblings’ 3.5 to 4.0 GPA. He excels in sciences and maths, but sophomore US History is a literal chore to sit through, simply because he’s heard the same history about three times over now. He will compete with everyone in his classes for top spot, and while he won’t always get it, he will always be somewhere close. Especially if someone decides to compete with him. It’s serious for Watson, but it’s fun all the same. Unsurprisingly, when things get competitive in training, he will overwork himself in order to compete. Part of his training is learning to listen to his body and knowing when to stop.

His elective classes and clubs he chose to continue to figure out who he is and his place in his family and society at large. Plus, he’s hopeful of Ms. Kowalczyk helping him set up a proper dark room so he can truly feel like a photographer. In fact, her open-mindedness about exploring creatively easily makes her his favorite teacher.

People probably think he’d be overwhelmed with all of this, but the truth is he thrives on the challenge of so many classes. He does require special accommodation, mostly in the form of extra time getting from class to class and a cushion he tries to keep stuffed in his backpack. If he has a flare up and has difficulty walking, he’ll still show up to class, especially apologetic if he ends up being late. While the teachers might have wanted to go a little softer on him in the past, he refuses to be soft on himself, and now that he’s at Finchwood, he can’t afford to be.

Player: Isaiah | he/they
Email: brothfeldt@yahoo.com
CDJ: n/a
Other Contact: tumblr, dropbox, or PM for discord
Time Zone: CDT