David Posner

From the film's Dramatis Personae:

Posner Pupil; youngest, gay and Jewish

=Pre-Game History=

Posner is from a lower middle class family in Sheffield, and he attends Cutlers’ Grammar School. His parents are older, and his father is a retired furrier. He’s an only child and lives with his parents and his uncle.

Growing up, Posner was sort of doted on by his parents, mostly because he’s an only child who was born late in their life when they’d pretty much given up hope of having children. Most of his childhood was spent at home, mostly because his mother worried about him. When he started at Cutlers at age 11, he became a bit more socialized, easily making friends with the other boys, though this only lasted until they went through puberty and he, well, didn’t. After this, he wasn’t really close to any of them except Scripps, who was his best friend basically because he didn’t treat Posner as though he were only tolerating him. With everyone else, he felt like he was included by default rather than because they really liked him.

Posner is Jewish, and though he appears to be fairly lax about it, he does get in trouble at home over a conversation he has in a class about the Holocaust and afterward his father writes an angry letter to Posner’s headmaster about the conversation, which includes a demand that Posner stops being asked to sing hymns in school, though Posner actually enjoys this. Religion is an important part of his parents’ life, but for Posner, Judaism is more a cultural connection. His schooling has pulled him away from faith, and he isn’t actually sure he believes in God. This is largely due to the fact that he’s been different for most of his life, and that has made him want to distance himself from the things that make him different. He can’t stop being Jewish, but he can at least pull away from the parts that are by choice.

It isn’t until his last year at Cutlers that he realizes he’s gay. He’d always sort of assumed that the reason he was never interested in girls was that he was behind the rest of the boys developmentally. Even after he develops a crush on Dakin, he ascribes it to envy. Dakin is charming and good looking and talented, which is what Posner would like to be. Most of the other boys know he’s gay before he makes the connection himself. He’s hesitant to accept this about himself primarily because for most of his life the only gay person he knows is his teacher Hector, an overweight, married man who routinely gropes the other boys while giving them rides home on his motorbike. Posner sees how the others talk about Hector behind his back—regardless of how well-liked he is and how respectful they are in class—and he doesn’t want the same treatment. It isn’t until another gay teacher who is slightly less pathetic in Posner’s eyes shows up that he is actually willing to accept his homosexuality. He isn’t exactly surprised by this acceptance, more resigned to the idea that he will never be happy in his romantic life.

Because the film only covers the last term of his time at Cutlers, there’s very little actual background for him. He’s a very good student, having received 3 A-Levels and being among eight boys at Cutlers who stay on for an extra term to study for the entrance exams to Oxford and Cambridge. He ends up not only receiving a place at his chosen college at Oxford but also receiving a scholarship.

=Personality=

Posner is, in his own words, small, Jewish, and homosexual. (Also, living in Sheffield, and therefore, fucked.) He’s spent the last year studying for the entrance examination to Oxford. He’s also just realized he’s gay and is trying to come to terms with that. He’s had a crush on one of his classmates for years, and though he knows nothing will ever come of it, he still pines after him. He’s pessimistic about his sexuality, certain he’ll never have a fulfilling life as a homosexual.

Posner is the youngest boy in his class, and he takes the constant teasing about just hitting puberty with grace and wit. He enjoys his teacher Hector’s classes for their silliness, and is not opposed to getting up in front of the others and serenading them with old musical standards or acting out love scenes from classic movies. He’s open about his affections for Dakin, one of the other boys, but he doesn’t equate this with being homosexual until his last term. He’s friendly to his classmates, though reserved. He has a very dry sense of humor and only smiles rarely, though he often seems to be enjoying himself.

He started noticing the other boys before he accepted his homosexuality, but he just sort of wrote it off to something else that he sat back and watched rather than participating in. After he comes out to his teacher, he chalks his homosexuality up to one more thing that makes him different, and since most of the other boys knew already, he doesn’t feel the need to try and hide it. He even briefly tries to accept it openly, serenading Dakin in the middle of class. It’s easier for him to admit it because he knows that they feel rather protective of him, and he’s attempting to act as though he doesn’t care about the way they tease him. (Interestingly, the other boys don’t tease him about being gay, though they do tease him about being Jewish.)

In class, Pos is a bit of a suck-up. He likes that teachers like him, and while the other boys often try to get under the teachers’ skin, frustrate them or draw them into logical puzzles in order to back them into a corner and prove their superior intellect, Posner is much more likely to be the one to point out that the others are full of crap and to take the teacher’s side. This likely stems from the relationship he has with his parents, which is both respectful and a bit protective. He wants them to be happy and feels pressure to do so because he’s their only child and the last of the Posners, having no cousins on his father’s side. Part of living up to what he sees as their expectations of him includes being the best student possible. Another reason for the way he treats his teachers is his desire to be seen as normal. He wants people to like him, all people, especially people in positions of authority. He thinks this will make his life easier on the one hand, and on the other hand, he simply wants to leave a positive impression on everyone he meets.

He’s prone to melancholy—and depression, later in life—and he has a very pessimistic view of what his life will look like in the future. More than anything he wants to be normal, but he knows that he isn’t and he can’t change the things that make him abnormal.

For nearly his whole life, Posner has been different. When he was younger, being Jewish was the thing that made him somewhat odd. Once the other boys in his class started going through puberty, he felt left behind there as well. It’s this feeling of separation that makes him want to suppress the things about himself that make him different.

=Game History=

When David first arrived in Bete Noire, he stayed at Le Gode Hostel and after a short while took a position at the animal shelter. He has established something of a routine of collecting poems which he posts to the network every Monday, ostensibly because he would anyway, but mostly because he enjoys the conversations it engenders.

At the beginning of June 2012, Posner had a run-in with Rip Van Winkle which he considered a threat on his life, and he made a complaint to the police through Prussia during which he met Erik Lehnsherr. Erik then took David under his wing, including securing a room for him at The Victoria Hotel. He and Erik meet several times a week both for self-defense lessons and for an improvised Sabbath meal.

On July 4th, 2012, David met Blaine Anderson, and the two of them struck up a friendship of sorts with occasional notes of something else.