Percy Jackson OC Critiques [PAUSED]

34 - RandoJambo

Full Name: Callum Stone 

Nickname: N/A 

Height/weight: 114 pounds and five foot 11 

Appearance: Callum has a warm ivory skin tone and a medium build, with slightly broader than average shoulders. He has light brown hair that he usually just combs back and dark blue eyes. 

In simple terms, Callum is a white, athletic brunette guy with blue eyes. 

A splash of freckles cover his face (along with a bit of acne). He has scars all over his arms due to his constant clawing of them (Due to a variant of OCD, i'll explain later). He is a full time camper and is often seen wearing a long sleeved CHB shirt with blue jeans and sneakers.

Freckles and acne are good details! While they don't establish much about the character(unless his freckles are prominent because he spends a lot of time in the sun or his acne is really bad because he never washes his face), they're nice things to mention in passing to distinguish your character from the people around him.

The clawing is just dermatillomania, right? It's a pretty common variation of OCD. Honestly, I'm just more surprised it doesn't also apply to his acne.

Birthdate: October 22nd, 1999 

Godly Parent: Apollo 

Powers from Godly parent: His father is the sun god, and so Callum has a slight control over sun magic. He can engulf his enemies in a powerful light, causing some burns and temporary blindness (though it drains him afterwards) 

Apparently Callum traded all the lame healing and singing abilities for the cool Ultimate Rune of UV Light. Is there any specific reason he got this particular configuration, or was it just luck?

Also, sure! Powers that drain you if you go overkill is the most basic, standard way to limit power, and it works just fine. Keep his power limit relatively consistent and there shouldn't be any problems.

Age at beginning of Book: 14 

Personality: Callum is very skittish and jumpy, going from one thing to the next as quickly as possible. He doesn't stay in one place for long, and if he does, he freaks out. He doesn't really talk to people because he is afraid, not of them, but of what he thinks he will do to them. Callum is a nice person, but struggles to befriend people because he thinks he is a bad person. Callum has a variant of OCD called violent intrusive thoughts, which causes him to at random start to suddenly think about graphically killing innocent people, whether he knows them or not. When he has these thoughts, it causes him to start clawing at his arms, usually to the point where they bleed. This causes other campers to (naturally) be afraid of him. He believes that he is a monster and deserves to be alone. 

Hyperactive - Not sure if this is in an ADHD way or a loose symptoms way. I think OCD and ADHD tend to bleed into each other a lot anyway, so we're gonna call this a symptom.

Social anxiety around hurting people/being a bad person - Also common in people with OCD.

Intrusive thoughts - ...Only that? Intrusive thoughts tend to vary in topic and are mostly just things that are distressing. Does he also have thoughts like "what if this car crashed and you got trapped in your seat while you bled to death" or is his fear of hurting people so extreme that it completely overpowers the more random fears?

Other people are afraid of him - That's not really a personality trait.

Thinks that he's a monster and deserves to be alone - That's a personality trait. Obviously not a healthy one, or a correct opinion considering he's only dangerous to himself and intrusive thoughts are by definition not reflective of your actual desires(hence the 'intrusive'), but a reasonable one considering he's 14 and not in therapy. 

This is kind of a dangerous personality because it's about two inches away from becoming an extremely fetishistic "look how edgy I am" trainwreck that gets off on the suffering of teenagers with untreated mental illnesses(a bad thing to do), and the difference is basically just how informed you are about OCD. 

If you are a teenager with untreated OCD then Hang In There, call crisis hotlines when you gotta, and you have the constitutional right to write this guy however you want because it's your self-insert coping mechanism and you get to choose the characterization.

If you're a psychiatrist or someone else who's well-informed, then...cool? I'm glad my work is reaching a wider audience? Anyway, you probably know that representing kids with OCD as violent and crazy is a frustrating trend in media and that it's important to frame this as his wrong view of himself that he needs to correct during his character arc.

If you're another, third thing, then fun fact: representing kids with OCD as violent and crazy is a frustrating trend in media, and it's important to frame this as his wrong view of himself that he needs to correct during his character arc.

Anyway, does Callum have any traits outside of his OCD? His personality is obviously going to be heavily influenced by it, it's a fairly extreme mental illness that he hasn't had the therapy to separate from the rest of his personality, but if you want him to be a complex guy, he really needs to have some qualities other than "Has OCD" and "feels bad about having OCD". 

Likes: The color yellow (he sees it as a color of purity and reminds him of his father), being alone, reading poetry (He especially likes Edgar Allen Poe because he feels he can relate to it) 

Dislikes: Large crowds, His intrusive thoughts, The color red (he is more likely to get triggered when looking at it because its the color of blood) 

Interests: Poetry 

Writing? Reading? Is he a "This Has To Rhyme Or It's Not Real Poetry And I Am A Fraud" kinda guy or is he more of a "fuck it, it is 2 AM and I just had a panic attack, let's vomit some words onto a page, press enter once in a while, and call it freeform poetry" kinda guy?

Worst fear: That one day he will act on his intrusive thoughts and murder an innocent person 

Romantic/Sexual Orientation: He can't even think of romance at this time. 

Understandable.

Friends: 

Luna Miller: A daughter of Apollo, She is a wonderful healer and one of the lead medics at the camp. She was the first person not to judge Callum for his OCD and she also helps him with his arms when they bleed from his clawing. Callum deeply cares for Luna and looks for people like her, believing that people that are like Luna are trustworthy. Luna also learns from Callum, She hopes to one day be a doctor and Her friendship with Callum teaches her many things about being a doctor. 

That is a very nice way of saying that she uses him as a training dummy to practice her healing skills!

Enemies: Most of the Ares and Aphrodite Cabins make fun of him for his OCD, 

That would do it! Does he have any less extreme enemies, or is that the extent of his social web?

Backstory: Callum was born in St. Louis, MO, where he lived with his Mom and stepdad. Callum started having Intrusive thoughts at age seven, but his OCD was undiagnosed until he was 10. His family couldn't afford medication so his OCD got worse and worse. 

Explains why he's not in treatment and makes me slightly less judgy about his friend and the people around him not getting him a goddamn therapist.

He would have vivid thoughts of killing his family and others, which caused him to run away at age 12 Callum ran into a satyr charged with bringing a child of Apollo to camp, and followed them to New York. 

...Okay.

Callum has been in Camp Half Blood since.

Rating: 4/10

Beyond the "make sure not to imply that viewing kids with OCD as monsters is natural and correct" thing, this is just kind of an underdeveloped character concept that needs more detail.