This story is about: The daily life of a teenager named Alden. He's growing up, slowly growing his powers, and figuring out who he really wa
I'm enjoying this. Alden has gone through a lot. The side characters are great. The little bossy wizard girl is a dote. The nerdy Stewrt is trying hard.
Unvale profile (includes all most art related to him)
✽ Basic Information
Male
5’6”
21 years old
Birthday: May 26
Psychology major, grocery store cashier, dog walker
✽ Personality
MBTI: INFP-T
Temperament: Phlegmatic-Melancholic
Alignment: Neutral Good
And for the other nerds out there: Hufflepuff
Best traits: Steady, gentle, empathetic, thoughtful and intentional, deeply caring, steadfastly loyal, attentive, emotionally grounded, playful
Worst traits: Avoidant, passive in situations that require intervention, emotionally self-suppressing, over-accommodating, detached under pressure
Core: He’s very empathetic and feels deeply, but most of his emotions and reactions are strictly controlled and suppressed, a learned habit from childhood. It gives him an air of calm and wisdom because he always thinks before he speaks and never lashes out, but inside he fears close emotional connection because he believes that if he shows anyone how “intensely” he feels things, they’ll pull away from him.
✽ Relationships
Vivian is one of his best friends. He cares deeply for her but struggles to speak up or intervene regarding her drinking because he’s afraid that any resistance will cause her to double down, and he’s scared of making it worse.
Bellamy is his best friend and confidante. He met her when he was fifteen, and since then she’s been the only person he really opens up to.
Skye is like the little sister he always wanted. She can bring out his silly playful side, and he loves her for it. He does his best to keep that childlikeness alive in her and shield her from Vivian’s addiction.
✽ Family
Clarissa, his mother, held high expectations for him growing up and often made him feel inadequate. He still visits because she’s his mom, but he can’t get very close to her.
John, his father, is very emotionally distant. He’s disappointed in Alden’s choice of career path, as he was hoping his son would pursue a more “manly” career than being a therapist. Alden secretly hopes to prove his dad wrong and change his mind about him.
Lily is his older sister, 27 years old. She’s the perfect child Alden’s parents always wanted, and is a little patronizing and critical of Alden. He’s not very close to her.
Clare is seventeen, the boldest of the three, taking full advantage of her parents’ more relaxed rules for her as the youngest child. Alden wishes he were closer to her, but she sees him as the “family weirdo” and teases him for his interests.
✽ Backstory
Alden grew up in a family that very much believed in masculine stoicism. As the only boy in the family, his parents expected him to carry their legacy. However, Alden’s dreamy, empathetic disposition didn’t match their description of what a man was supposed to be. Alden was taught that boys who cried over dead squirrels in the yard were weak and babyish, so he learned to hide his emotions at a very young age. He was often compared to his older sister Lily, who was the perfect model of what his parents wanted in a child. This left him feeling isolated and inadequate, but he took his emotions out on his arms, buried his negative emotions and stood strong because that was what was expected of him.
Alden struggled to make friends growing up. But when he was fifteen, he met Bellamy at a Christian summer camp. She approached him after a small group discussion to ask him about an answer he had given, and something about the way she asked made him feel like he could give her a more in-depth explanation. They soon discovered they went to the same church and school, and found each other again after the summer camp ended. Bellamy provided Alden with the first safe place to express his emotions he’d ever had, and he stuck close to her because of that.
Not more than a year after they became friends, Bellamy met Vivian and made their pair a trio, and Vivian brought her friend Skye. Alden immediately related to the way Vivian presented herself: cheerful on the surface, but masking a deep ache. As he got to know her better and she let her guard down more, she revealed a messy, raw, emotional side that Alden longed to be able to express himself. He began to feel that there was something wrong with him inside for not being able to show his feelings the way his friends could.
Bellamy was the one who first warned Alden about Vivian’s oncoming addiction. It was shortly after she herself found out that Vivian drank, and, frightened by the fact, she confided in Alden. At the time, she asked him what she was supposed to do about it, and Alden responded with something that he regrets his whole life: “I’m sure she’s fine. You should tell someone if it gets bad, but she’s probably just exploring and will age out of it. A lot of people our age do.” He blames himself for the way it spun out of control.
Once Bellamy and Vivian moved in together and Vivian’s drinking skyrocketed, Alden settled in as the background safety net, answering Vivian’s two am drunk calls, picking her up when she couldn't get home herself, and steadying Bellamy as much as he could. He knows someone needs to call for intervention, but he’s too afraid to do it himself, so he just watches everything collapse and hopes that his little nudges will inspire someone else to take action.
✽ Other Notes
Likes: Friends, nature, walks in the park around town, birds, tiny things, piano, poetry, comfy oversized clothes, fairy lights, being silly, music, cats, animals, reading, sketching, late-night conversations about life, mini figurines, whittling, geocaches, imaginary play, golden hour, Converses, wood, stars, pens, fairytales, people watching, Pinterest, shoes squeaking on tile, cool natural formations
Dislikes: Conflict, Elysium, judgement, notifications, fast walkers, fluorescent lights, his inability to speak up, feeling weak or inadequate, cooking, when things are uneven, black coffee, car alarms, itchy shirt tags, being laughed at for his opinions, soft drinks
He loves whittling tiny models and figures of his favorite places and people from sticks he finds on his daily walks. It’s his coping mechanism: he builds a little world of good things he can hold in his hands because the real one doesn’t always make sense.
He wears glasses when he reads and sometimes when he sketches <3
