Full Name James Michael Anderson
Pronunciation Just like it sounds.
Alias
Gender Male
Age 19
Birthdate Fall 10th
Race Human




Inventory
-A collection of LSD that would put Timothy Leary to shame.
-A backpack full of notebooks, pens, and a small laptop.
-A cellphone with only one number in it, old and worn and with a bad antenna. Sometimes it rings, and when he's lucid enough to notice, he answers. No one speaks, but he can hear someone breathing. He knows someone's listening. He just has no idea who.


Aspirations
To feel safe somewhere, and to overcome his mental illnesses.

Current Occupation
Drifter

Home
A small house on the edge of town, with the lawn overgrown and the shades drawn. The door has four locks that he installed himself, and a mail slot in the door so he doesn’t have to go outside to get his mail. His walls are covered with writing and drawings, a common symptom of his Apophenia (a mental condition where you see connections where there are none).

Workplace
None. He's managed to get just enough money to live on by writing surreal, often David Lynch style paperback thrillers, although he hasn't had much of a success with them. To be honest, they aren't all that amazing, although some of them were moderately well-received by critics. In the Lion's Den was his most successful book, a conspiracy thriller with a mentally unbalanced female protagonist lead. The entire book was heavy with symbolism, and the ending was open to interpretation. A french director tried to make a movie out of it, but it got lost in red tape before the script was even finished.




Appearance
His appearance depends entirely on what state he’s in when you see him. If you see him when he’s in a good state and hasn’t had an episode in a while, you’d think he was a cute, sweet-looking guy who hadn’t slept in a while. He’d have long brown hair, a charming smirk, and yet somehow still seem… off.

But when he has an episode, he looks much worse for wear… The first thing everyone always notices about him is his eyes. Warm brown pools of kindness that are skewered vulgarly on all sides by his bloodshot veins. He’s like the personification of all those over-the-top anti-drug movies you saw in high school gave birth to a single, pathetic being. He has heavy bags under his eyes; almost pitch black in color from the constant lack of sleep. His stubble-covered face is blessed with attractive features, and if he were to clean himself up he’d actually be quite attractive. Unfortunately, with his mental conditions, he’s unlikely to do such a thing very often. His skin is also painfully pale, almost pure white.

He’s got shoulder-length brown hair, brushed to the side carelessly. It frames his face in a way that makes his face seem longer than it is, although not oddly so.

His body is underweight, but not exactly emaciated. He may be thin, but he makes up for it in height, standing at six foot three and towering over almost everyone he meets.





Personality
James is a sweet guy. Loyal, kind, fun, and utterly insane. He has severe undiagnosed mental conditions, and has been known to have prolonged psychotic episodes where he hallucinates and suffers from various delusions. He has significant trouble telling these fantasies he gets trapped in from reality, and thus his behavior can come off as QUITE eccentric. He’s a high-strung paranoid schizophrenic with strong tendancies towards apophenia, and even in his most lucid moments he’s known to be strange. The degree towards which he is removed from reality can vary widely, depending on the severity of the episode. Some days, he’s perfectly rational and social, if a bit eccentric. Others… Well, sometimes he can come off as a complete psychopath, ranting and raving about hidden patterns without going outside his house for days on end. The problem is that he doesn’t view reality in the same light as ordinary people do.

James prefers to be alone generally, although he occasionally does feel the need to speak to people and socialize, like any non-sociopath. He has a habit of going to a new town, finding a home, and then basically boarding himself up inside it. He keeps all the doors locked, all the shades drawn, and he rarely answers the door. He usually has things delivered to his door rather than go outside to get them, although he occasionally goes outside for other reasons, especially if he’s going through an episode and isn’t aware of his surroundings.

James has a bit of an obsession with conspiracy theories, and it’s actually one of the few ways he can be a social success. He can talk for hours and hours about how the government is secretly watching it’s own citizens with satellite cameras which track them by the fluoride that’s in their teeth from water fluoridation. The walls of his home are usually covered in scrawled text, meandering theories connected to one another in completely insane and nonsensical ways. Secret societies that control all the power in the world, beings of energy living in our sense of smell, the number 23… He has extensive notes and rambling diary entries about all of them.

Likes
-Feeling at home somewhere.
-Conspiracy theories.
-Legal and illegal drugs (despite the heavy toll on his mental and physical health).
-People helping him with his theories, even if they’re just humoring him.
-Classic rock.

Dislikes
-People not leaving him alone when he’s going through an episode.
-Being called crazy.
-That feeling he has that something is terribly, terribly wrong with the world.
-When his episodes are unpleasant instead of just being psychedelic or nonsensical.
-Cheese.

Talents
He’s actually very intelligent, and there’s a couple gems among the lists of insane conspiracy theories that are actually something truly, terrifyingly true.
He has a high tolerance for psychedelic narcotics, to the point where he has to carefully manage his doses to make sure he doesn’t overdose. The idea of quitting hasn’t occurred to him yet…

Inabilities
He can’t stay focused on most things for very long, and his rational thought process is heavily impaired when he’s having an episode. He is generally regarded as looking ‘off’ or ‘twitchy’, and even in his best moments he's not good at lying or anything too socially complicated. Unexpected things, like someone suddenly hugging him or someone yelling at him all of a sudden, can trigger an episode or worse. The thought of suddenly dropping into a terrorizing mania greatly frightens him, and that fear greatly stunts his courage. Given the option, he'll choose the safe, quiet, simple solution everytime.

Fears
-Being stuck outside without a safe place to go.
-Large crowds.
-That one day he’ll enter a delusion and never come out, eternally trapped inside his sick brain.



Family
James has a little brother, and two loving parents. He had a perfectly normal family life up until his psychotic break. They were very usual sorts of people, and they lived very usual sorts of lives. He even had a girlfriend, named Maria. She has no idea what happened to him, and whenever he tries to think about her or his family, his head hurts and he typically has an episode. He theorizes that it's because it's too close to the traumatizing incident that caused his psychotic break. He doesn't have amnesia, he's sure of that, but he's pretty sure that his brain isn't ready to get that close to the point of trauma. Last time he tried, he had an episode and ended up in a field after a long, drawn out series of hallucinations and delusions. He lost a week to the episode, and has no idea what he was doing during it...

History
James lived a normal life up until one spring day when he was seventeen. He was walking down the road to his house from school when a freak accident happened. Up in the sky above him, a depressed and hopeless man who was on a commercial airplane flight for his business made a mad dash for the airlock. Fighting off the flight attendants, he threw himself from the plane and landed right in front of James. A heavily disturbed and terrified James, covered from head to toe in indescribably horrific gore, did the only thing his traumatized brain could think to do…

He cracked.

James never went home again. As far as his family knows, he’s long since dead. He has a gravestone in his hometown and everything. Its inscribed “James Michael Anderson. Loved by all, missed by too many.”