[Deleted]

WELCOME TO LOS EUROSIA,

SAMUEL CHAL WHITT

"And then they showed me a world where I could be so dependable, clinical, intellectual."

BASICS

NAME: Samuel Chal Whitt

AGE: 33

BIRTHDATE: October 14, 1988

PRONOUNS: He/Him/His

SEXUALITY: Gay

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Married

OCCUPATION: Attorney

NEIGHBORHOOD: Westhook

MEMBER GROUP: Gifted

POWERS: Atmokinesis and Geokinesis

Samuel is able to sense and manipulate weather patterns, either intensifying or diminishing the effects of weather around him or by generating natural phenomena across the four major factors (air manipulation, electricity manipulation, thermal manipulation, and water manipulation). The four factors do not register for his powers outside of connection to the weather; a prime example is electricity. Samuel can conjure a lightning strike but he cannot power a television set or overload a generator. Similarly, he can create rain, snow, or fog by creating a storm, but he cannot manipulate the standing water in a pot. His powers are linked to his physical health and his emotional state; when ill or malnourished, his influence is weaker than when he is healthy and he is less capable of refined control (e.g. changing the temperature of an enclosed space. Likewise, if he is emotionally overwhelmed, the weather is more likely to turn foul. Use of his power causes fatigue and leaves him hungry and can affect his body's core temperature. Even when not manipulating the weather, he is sensitive to atmospheric changes, ensuring that he always knows when the weather will change. Despite depictions in certain popular media, he is unable to fly by riding wind currents.

In adulthood, Samuel's attunement to natural phenomena grew, encompassing a far more limited geokinetic affinity. He can sense the movement of the tectonic plates underfoot and can intensify or diminish the effects of their shifting, controlling the intensity of earthquakes to an extent but not starting one from nothing. He cannot generate or control any other manner of earth, rock, soil, or minerals. Such manipulation is more difficult for him than the atmokinesis due to less experience and natural aptitude; fatigue, nausea, and/or vertigo invariably follow such applications of his powers. His balance usually suffers in the aftermath as well.

THE LOOKS

HEIGHT: 6' 3"

WEIGHT: 158 lbs

HAIR COLOR: Black

EYE COLOR: Brown

FACE CLAIM: Jason Schwartzman

OVERALL APPEARANCE: Samuel is tall, thin, pale, and severe, a combination which often draws the attention of others, much to his displeasure, and for some reason invites the concern of strangers for his health. Despite first impressions, Samuel is, in fact, healthy as a horse, and he passes his annual physicals with flying colors. His posture is perfect, eking out every millimeter of his excessive height, and which causes him to loom over shorter people. His features don't come together in a way typically considered conventionally handsome, and a less secure individual might be self-conscious about his bushy eyebrows, pointy facial shape, and large nose. His face isn't particular expressive, and were he a woman, he would be accused of "resting bitch face" but the misogynistic description has never been applied to him.

Samuel is formal in his attire and stoic in his demeanor. He is almost never found outside of the house without wearing a suit, and even dressing "more casually" takes the form of button-down shirts and dark, pressed slacks. His hair is always kept neat in a traditionally masculine style, never allowing it to grow too long as to fall into his eyes, let alone run afoul of gender convention. For most of the year, he is impeccably shaved, each morning with the electric razor; the exceptions are fasting rituals where this is forbidden, and around Thomas's birthday because his husband likes the beard look and Samuel finds it difficult not to indulge him. He wears a pair of formal white gloves when he leaves the house, his way of preventing dirt from touching his fingers as well as creating a physical barrier between himself and other people. As a result of this complication, he wears his wedding ring on a chain around his neck and never removes it. He does better in one-on-one interactions, or best with his husband or legal partner by his side to interpret for him, than in groups. Groups are overwhelming and often lead to him shutting down emotionally.

INSIDE

LIKES:
-Harvest season
-Trial preparations
-Salt-water taffy
-Hot tea
-Libraries

DISLIKES:
-Parties
-Being touched by strangers
-People asking him how he gets his protein
-Fireworks
-Lawyer jokes

STRENGTHS:
-Excellent memory
-Detail-oriented
-Intelligent
-Multilingual (English, conversational in German and ASL, reads Hebrew, learning Spanish for client accessibility)
-Hard-working
-Good hand-eye coordination

WEAKNESSES:
-Overwhelmed easily in crowds
-Inflexible/Requires routine
-Touch-averse
-Can become ill from eating food that has touched meat
-Struggles to parse other people's emotions unless given explicit explanations and likewise has blunted emotional display himself
-Workaholic

OVERALL PERSONALITY: Samuel's personality cannot, wholly, become separated from the markers of his OCPD, as is the nature of personality disorders. OCPD is characterized by perfectionism and attention to order, devotion to productivity, rigidity, emotional restrictiveness, and strict adherence to rules. These all apply to Samuel in one form or another, which in some ways make him ideal for his job, and which he rationalizes to himself outside of his therapist's office. Doesn't one want their attorney to keep track of everything and follow the rules of professional responsibility? Doesn't his productivity keep the office on top of their billing obligations? Why should he open up to strangers? He loathes tardiness and sloppiness, and hypocrisy. While he expects much from other people in terms of social or professional contract, he never demands more than he is willing to provide. He's never late. He triple-checks his work. He's generous with his time and money. In his own way, he's affectionate to Thomas, and besides, his husband knew his myriad shortcomings when they first began dating. He can deny Thomas very little.

At first glance, he is often taken for more conservative than he is - in appearance, in dress, in manner of carrying himself and way of speaking, in how he considers himself devout religiously. Yet, his ethical adherence and strident honesty also lend themselves to liberal, sometimes radical, beliefs that surprise those who form snap opinions. From the moment he came out, he has never hidden or downplayed his relationship with Thomas, and he has no tolerance for homophobia. He has no tolerance for any of the myriad bigotries that plague their society or for those who use the law as a cudgel to beat the downtrodden or to circumvent equal treatment under the law. He is a strict vegetarian and teetotaler. He doesn't see the value in compromising politically and while he loathes engaging with strangers, he doesn't back down from political debate if drawn into one.

BACKGROUND

HOMETOWN: Lewiston, Maine

FAMILY:
-Thomas Saller (Husband)
-Saul Whitt (Father)
-Emily Whitt (Step-Mother)
-Elizabeth Whitt (Half-Sister)

PETS: A cat named "Asher."

HISTORY:

Content Warning: Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder

Samuel was raised by his father alone for the first few years of life, after his parents had divorced on the grounds of an affair. He has no real memories of his mother, although he has a few photos of her from before she left. When Samuel was in pre-school, his father, a surgeon, remarried, another medical professional whom he had met at the hospital. Within a year, his sister, Elizabeth, was born. The age gape between himself and Elizabeth wasn't insurmountable, but it was wide enough to ensure that they didn't regard one another as playmates. Instead, Samuel felt protective, a sense of responsibility, but no particular sense of belonging, after the novelty of a new baby in the house had worn off.

Their family wanted for little in the material world. Beyond his father's surgeon salary and the addition of Emily's assets, the Whitts had some prominence in their community, a line of doctors dating back generations to before they changed their surname in the midst of xenophobia during WWI. Unfortunately, Samuel had little interest in medicine, and he chaffed against the expectations of his father and grandparents as eldest child and only son. Powers were not unknown among members of his family, and it was not unexpected when he developed one. The importance of control was drilled into him, and it was yet another obligation and area where he had to restrain himself.

His years in school weren't easy for him. He struggled socially, unable to bridge the gap with boys and girls alike, and more than a little judgmental of their habits. He lacked the vivid imagination often found among that age cohort, and he preferred to avoid any activity that might get him dirty or disheveled. He would read to himself above grade level. He always colored inside of the lines. He went through a period of selective mutism through all of kindergarten and most of first grade, which resulted in school-sponsored therapy.

At first, his father insisted that the school was overreacting to conscientiousness in his son. Samuel was mature for his age; there was nothing wrong with that. And Samuel did eventually talk to his peers and participate in class, but he wanted to continue seeing the psychologist. He liked the psychologist’s office; it was full of puzzles and games, and he only had to talk to one adult, whom he sometimes ignored. Certain topics were off-limits, and if it rained more during his bad days than his good ones? Nobody outside of his family considered it more than a coincidence. They lived in Maine after all; wet and chilly weather were to be expected.

His social and personal preferences remained through elementary and middle school, and so did his therapy visits. Eventually, he was placed with a child psychologist outside of school, which allowed him to vent a bit about frustrations with his peers or at home.

By high school, Samuel remained a studious loner. He excelled in his studies, and sometimes the teachers took advantage of his personality, using him to clean up messes and compensate for shortfalls created by his peers. He didn’t complain about the work itself, only that it was necessary because nobody paid attention to details and nobody worked hard enough. They were preoccupied with useless socializing, and they remained sinful. Puberty made him tall and thin, but it brought none of the strange new feelings it was supposed to; he had no use for anyone around him.

On the cusp of adulthood, his therapist took aside his father to give a diagnosis – OCPD, Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. It was a personality disorder, rather than an anxiety disorder, often categorized by preoccupation with order, rigidity of thinking,  perfectionism, judgmental tendencies, excessive stubbornness and adherence to one’s own beliefs, and miserliness. Samuel was generous with charitable donations but otherwise ticked the box for every other symptom. After the diagnosis, he stopped therapy for a long stretch.

College brought newfound opportunities and a break from his family; he went off to school on the other side of the country, and, from the security there, informed his father that he didn’t want to be pre-med. He had no interest in science whatsoever, instead opting for a degree in Law and Society. It was everything that he wanted, particularly with the concept of black letter law. He attended services at the interfaith chapel every week, and he participated in the mock trial team, and he ate alone in the cafeteria when he couldn’t bring food back to his dormitory. And then, junior year, another young man plopped a tray down at his table, introduced himself, and changed his life.

They became inseparable, and all of those delayed feelings slowly peeked through his layers of introversion and personality disorder. Confronted with reality rather than something abstract that he could dismiss, Samuel had to face the elephant in the room. He was gay.

He was gay, and so was Thomas, and they were fond of one another, and they would have to do something about that. They were never apart from the day that they came out to one another. From there, he was dragged to the campus Pride Network meetings, and they celebrated holidays together. When they graduated, he attended American University's Washington College of Law, and Thomas applied their graduate programs for his PhD in Anthropology. They lived in graduate student housing, and from the safety of distance, Samuel came out to his family. In law school, he made his second true friend. Christopher Rinalid was his complete opposite - extroverted and easygoing, gregarious ad charismatic. There was no obvious reason for them to get along, but they shared a similar analysis of their first-year curriculum and formed a study group. They complemented one another, and by the time graduation rolled around, they’d agreed to go into practice together. At first, this brought them both to the public defender’s office, where Chris finagled his way into choosing his own trial partner.

Eventually, Thomas graduated with his PhD and applied for academic positions throughout the U.S. A tenure-track position (in short supply) in Los Eurosia, California, was available, and after several rounds of interviews, Thomas was hired. Of course, there was no way to continue his work with the Public Defenders, and Samuel put in his notice. Long conversations about the future with Christopher, combined with the other man's impulsive streak, saw him leaving as well, and the three of them traveled out west to open their own firm.

In the midst of this, DOMA was rescinded, and same-sex marriage legalized after a Supreme Court case in 2015. Samuel and Thomas tied the knot, and his wedding gift was the promise to begin therapy again. In the years since then, life has proceeded a pace, and he has made some progress in therapy, even as his baseline personality remains largely the same. Two people can tolerate his company, his law practice has flourished, and who needs more than that?

THE PLAYER

NAME: Mystic

AGE: 40

TIMEZONE: Eastern

[Stark]

ACCEPTED

I love to see Jason Schwartzman as a face claim, he's so rare. An attorney is sorely needed in Los Eurosia, I think, but I wonder if anyone here can shake up his life a little?

FACE CLAIM • MEMBER DIRECTORY • POWERS CLAIM