(To be clear, the character generally introduces himself to strangers as Carter, though among friends he does have a certain fondness for his old nickname of AC.)

Appearance
Carter stands about 5 feet, 9 inches and has a slim build.  He has brown hair, which currently hangs to the top of his neck and is in need of a trim.  His stance is usually relaxed and he has a disarming smile, though he tends not to reveal it around strangers.  He wears a pair of old, thin-framed glasses (sometimes...) and his casual wardrobe looks a bit worn.

Demeanor
Carter generally has a calm and pleasant attitude, though he tends to be quiet around new people.  He prefers free time over toil like anybody else, but never shirks his responsibilities.  He's disciplined when it comes to his job and finances, but has been allowing his ill-fated attempts at socializing take a larger portion of his time than he ought.

Good Stuff!

• RPGs, Video Games, Board Games ("I just got my copy of Xanathar's!")
  
• Power Metal and Synthwave ("Y'all hear that Keldian song about Mass Effect?")
  
• Action, Sci Fi, Fantasy, and Kung Fu movies ("Y'all ready to see Aquaman?")
  
• Coffee and Baked Goods ("Not good for you, good for your soul!")
  
• Science and Magic ("Y'all hear about Planet 10?")

Bad Stuff!

• Drama and Assholes ("Just say what you mean and don't be a jerk.")
  
• Cowboys and Jocks ("...")
  
• Squishy Food ("Mushrooms, tomatoes, pudding, yech!")
  
• Sour Food ("Why, though? But, why?")
  
• Horror Movies ("Uh, they're scary...")

Backstory (Deep Lore)
Feel free to read it, just beware of meta-gaming.

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Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)

Carter is just an average guy who's lost his way.

His father was a construction worker.  Carter Sr worked hard and played harder.  After long days long the job he would go out drinking and gambling until the early morning hours.  The elder Carter wasn't a violent man - that was against the Bible - but a drunk man certainly wasn't fully in control of their actions, and there were many nights that his father returned home with scrapes, cuts, and bruises that his mother had to tend to.

That was the majority of Carter's memories of his mother.  Violet Jones was a nurse and her skills certainly aided his father many times, Carter even helping out sometimes, since it was one of the few times he got a chance to see his father during the week.  She had wanted to become an astronomer when she was younger, and told young Carter about faraway stars and planets, as well as sharing a good bit of mythology, of which she was also fond.  She named Carter after a mythical figure, though she was the only one in his life that called him by his first name, and he preferred it that way.

But the world is tough and you can't always do what you hope and dream about.  Carter's mother switched her eight year degree to a two year one when she became pregnant, working in a local clinic to help the family make ends meet.  They had every appearance of a middle class family while Carter was in elementary school - a nice house in the suburb, two cars, and all the trappings that went with it.  But, that appearance was expensive, and between his parents they barely made the ends meet.  It looked nice on the outside, but under the surface the cars were used, the house in disrepair, Carter's clothes came from a thrift store, they frequented dollar stores more than department stores, and rarely ate out when they could make something cheap at home.

Still, Carter managed to grow up as a mostly normal kid.  He knew his parents loved him, even if he didn't feel it, and he made the typical allotment of friends and acquaintances at school and church.  His father was devout, in his own way, and they never missed a Sunday morning service.  Carter learned from an early age what was allowed and what wasn't.

But his mother had instilled a thirst for knowledge in him that would not be quenched, and Carter spent long hours exploring the world from behind the screen of his second-hand laptop.  It was there that he was exposed to concepts and ideologies that his father certainly wouldn't have tolerated.

It was around this time that Carter first started coming into his own.  He was learning what he liked and what he didn't, he was choosing his own friends rather than falling in the groups he was put into by his parents and teachers, and exploring music and art (when his father wasn't around to see what his son was getting into).  He fell in with a circle of nerds and misfits, playing D&D and talking about computers.  They might have ragged him about his first name when they learned it, but took to calling him 'A.C.' after a while.  He spent a lot of his afternoons at Daniel Mannigan's house, drinking Sprite, listening to heavy metal, and passing a controller back and forth taking turns playing Final Fantasy.  It was a time of a lot of firsts, more than Carter realized at the time.

Of course, nothing lasts forever, and the end of some things are set in motion before they even begin.

When his dad got laid off, it was actually nice at first.  Both his parents were around for a chance, and they stayed in high spirits in the beginning.  It was worrisome, but they knew his father would get a new job soon and things would work out.  And they sheltered Carter from the worst of it, as usual.  His father did find a new job, but it was in a different city a long way from where he grew up.  Carter wasn't happy about it, of course, but he knew there was no way to change things and did his best to make do.

Moving to a new town half way through high school was rough.  Not only had he left his friends behind, now there were no familiar faces around campus at all.  Not the students or the teachers.  Instead of being known as 'Carter Jones' boy' he started to be picked out as 'the kid with holes in his shoes.'  Without having a place among the students, he spent much of his time trying to pick up on who was who - who he might be able to sit near at lunch and who to avoid in the hallways.  His quiet inquisitiveness only exacerbated the problem, making him an easy target for bullies.

Carter was caught off guard multiple times: found in secluded places where he could be assaulted without fear of interruption, before he learned to avoid them.  Of course, that only helped a little bit, as Bill Dietrich and his ilk quickly found new places and new ways to torment him.  But, his dad raised him to be a 'real man,' so he didn't snitch.  Unfortunately, he didn't know anything about fighting either, so he suffered several beatings before he graduated and got away from them.  He mostly tended to the scrapes and bruises on his own, or lead his parents to believe he enjoyed athletic escapades more than he actually did.

Things at home got worse as well.  Bills were tighter than ever, and tension from his father's addictions was mounting.  He wasn't a gullible child anymore and could see that things were bad.  He tried to help as much as he could.  He didn't ask for extravagant things for his birthday or Christmas, he started working after school and during summer jobs to afford his own car, and even started buying a lot of his own clothing.  He even had a bit of money to spend on music and games, getting back into a bit of the heavy metal that he couldn't play around his parents.  He tried to help out around the house as much as he could, doing chores, or just spending time with his mother when she seemed stressed.  He hated how much things had changed but he knew there was no going back, only forward.

He tried to pick himself up from some of the impressions people had of him, working to get into some of the cliques at school.  He somewhat succeeded, meeting some new people and even a girl he started to date.  It was nice, but his focus on his studies fell somewhat and the A's and Bs he had on his transcript were followed by Cs and Ds.  Of course, this damaged his chances of getting a scholarship to pursue a college degree, but he was too focused on other matters to worry about that.

He felt lost, and only near the end of his Senior year did he realize how much he had to leave behind when his family moved.  The degree he had planned on getting seemed empty and pointless.  His relationships seemed hollow compared to those he had made naturally during his childhood and first half of high school.  And he was doubting much of what his father and the church had taught him about life.  He had friends who were gay, and trans, and atheist, and other religions.  People were having sex and doing drugs and he was torn between fitting in and sticking with the traditions his father has taught him, while starting to see the hypocrisy of spending the week sneaking out to casinos and then washing it all away in the confessional on Sunday.

His growing attraction to people of his own gender certainly wasn't helping.  He didn't have to admit it to anyone: he liked girls just as well and used that to mask some of his true thoughts.  But, he began to admit it to himself and somewhere in the back of his head he wondered if Danny had been his first crush without his realizing it.  Of course, his father would have disowned him if he ever did anything to hint that he was thinking that way, so it remained a secret for now.

Now that he's graduated and has the rest of his life looming before him, he's even more unsure of his place in the world.  People say you can do anything you want if you set your mind to it, but what if you don't know what you want?  There are things he wants to do and to try but doesn't know how to go about exploring them.  There are places he wants to go but he has no way to get there.  The few real friends he made in the last couple years are largely moving on to colleges in other places or just entering the workforce.

For now, he's just drifting along with half-made plans and vague goals.  His grades weren't good enough to get him a scholarship into a good university, so he'll settle for using a grant to get to the community college, because it's better than nothing.  He hasn't even settled on a degree yet, he's just gonna get through his general studies credits and hope he's found something he wants to pursue by the time he finishes it...

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