000.
Premade: The Mark Anthony: His rival, The Heathcliff, accuses him of taking the world too lightly, but The Mark Antony sees no reason that his drive and determination to succeed should prevent him from having a good time. He can jockey for position with the rest of the Valedictorians, but he can party with the Sporty Guys, too. A caveat, though - beware if you ever find yourself on his bad side. That drive and determination can be turned against others just as easily as it can advance The Mark Antony. Good friends with The Sherlock Holmes. Social Group: The Valedictorians.
Name: Anthony (Tony) Marks
Age: 16
Birthday: April 11
Sexuality: Straight
Neighborhood: Two houses, one for his dad and one for his mom, both in Ironwood. His mom's house is biggest of the two, thank you alimony. Tony likes the pool there. His dad's house has the better library, however.

Grade: Junior
Classes:
First Semester: AP English III, AP Biology, AP American Government, Honors French II
Second Semester: AP English IV, AP Calculus, AP European History, Honors French III
Position: Tony is a Junior Representative for Student Government (and has his eye on getting to be president in his senior year) and Student Head of the Debate Team.
Extracurriculars: Tony is one of those people who seems to be involved in everything. How does he do it? How does he keep on top of things? Is he a robot? All valid questions. Tony is involved in the following: student government, the debate team, the National Honor Society, and is an occasional member of the French club (when he remembers). He's also on the cross-country team. Tony manages to balance all these extracurriculars carefully, and if he has two conflicting events, he chooses the most important of the two: (here's a hint - debate and student government trump all). Oh yeah, and he sometimes does Quiz Bowl, if Stephen (the Sherlock Holmes) twists his arm enough. Does Tony ever sleep? Yes, of course! But... very, very little. Think about 5 hours a night, and on the weekends, he then crashes and sleeps for 16.

Likes / Dislikes: Tony tends to be very black and white in his likes and dislikes. Tony likes socializing, meeting new people, coffee (oh god he loves his coffee), energy drinks, the library, and running so far away in his cross country extracurricular that nobody will find him. He also likes ordering the debate team around, but he prefers actually winning. He likes expensive clothes and his Ironwood zip code. He likes showing off his family's money. He likes solving puzzles and riddles even if he can't get them quite as fast as the Sherlock Holmes. He likes girls who pose not a single challenge. He likes challenging girls as well. He likes music and is something of a snob about it.

Tony dislikes losing, no matter if a lesson was learned. He also dislikes being wrong in anything and god help you if you remind him of a time in which he was wrong. He dislikes socially awkward people, mostly because he's very good at schmoozing. He dislikes loud people because they disrupt his reading. He hates wool suits. He dislikes his parents from time to time, but only when they fight. He dislikes people feeling sorry for him about anything.

Goals: Tony has several goals that he holds close to his heart. The first and most immediate is that he wants to be the Student Government President in his senior year, so he's got approximately one year to campaign and plan. The second goal is to get into Harvard (or some other impressive Ivy League school). Ultimately, Tony wants to get a law degree and to go into politics. He's not really sure why... it might have something with showing up his father's own career.

Personality: The first thing you need to understand about Tony is his towering ambition. Once you get over the fact that yes, he's going to use you, and yes, he's probably got ulterior motives for everything, and yes, he's only half paying-attention to what you have to say, you'll get along fine with him. Tony tends to view people as Useful or Not Useful. People can switch out of these categories if they prove themselves or if they lose their use.

So yes, Tony is an arrogant, manipulative, popular jerk. However, he's also a hot mess of insecurities despite his intelligence and cunning. Tony strives to do well and to succeed above all and failing to do well gets him depressed and resentful for days. He couldn't say why being mediocre is such a horror to him. Probably because he perceives his parents as being that way and he doesn't want to embody them. Consequently Tony's one of the top students in his class and a very skilled orator in that he can usually relate very well to people - or at least fake it. In truth, despite his charm Tony sees the big picture in every argument, and as a result can seem a little cold on humanitarian issues. "Well, they're going to die of AIDs anyway; you need to research prevention rather than cure", he'd say, of the current AIDs crisis in Africa. And while he might be technically correct, that really doesn't make him any less of a hard-hearted jerk when he says it.

Tony's main philosophy in life is "Work hard. Play hard." He's not going to slave away over his books all night and then be a dull drab simpleton in the morning. Nope, he'll happily pull an all-nighter - but he's going to go to a party for a break and have some fun before buckling back down. His attitude irritates his rival, The Heathcliff, who Tony says is much too serious about everything. Tony may work his butt off to get great grades but he's going to try to make it clear to everyone involved that he's a smart cool guy, and not just some humorless nerd.

Perhaps it was watching his parents' marriage fall apart so dramatically that made Tony have not the slightest interest in having a girlfriend. Perhaps it was the fact that his first and only girlfriend cheated on him with another guy that soured his opinion of romance. Either way, since breaking up in an extremely public way with Esther Prince, he's been known to date several of the popular girls casually - but only casually. Perhaps he just bores easily. Whatever the case, Tony might also be a player if he only had time. As it is, while most girls agree that he's pretty cute, he doesn't have much time to date. Oh, he has no problem with hooking up here and there, and has done so - but he's more concerned about his grades and his applications for college than he is chasing around some girl. There's not been a single girlfriend that's lasted longer than two weeks. Eventually, he has the potential to fall deeply in love with someone - likely someone clever, quick-witted, and passionate as him - but until then, he's looking out for Number One, and nothing else.

Obviously, Tony has quite a few nasty qualities. He's got some nicer ones, too - he's unfailingly generous with his few true friends. He's quick-witted, careful, and very good with the finer points of public relations. Even if he's not a little bit fake, he does have a heart, and beneath his cynicism is a person who genuinely wants to make things better for his school and loved ones. His thirst for success has a tendency to take first priority, but despite that, Tony is someone you want on your side. Influential, charismatic, and well-liked, Tony will be an asset to whatever he chooses to back. Even though he works himself into the ground, relying on coffee or Red Bull to survive, he never loses sight of having fun. In fact, he seems to have more fun than several of the other Valedictorians, a fact that doesn't go amiss wiht someone like the Heathcliff.

As far as school goes, Tony is an excellent student and truly does enjoy learning, both the academic and social aspects. His strongest subjects are English and History, and his worst subjects include French and whatever required science he's taking; although Tony makes decent grades in both subjects, he works very, very hard for these grades, and they don't come naturally for him. AP Biology in particular is going to kick his butt in his second semester. Tony studies very hard, and doesn't tend to be a partier, although he'll definitely attend the more-important parties in order to see and be seen. Tony occasionally drinks at parties, but he's never had any interest in drugs or tobacco.

Tony is gifted with wordplay, writing, speech-giving, and semantics. He keeps a cool head under pressure, and usually presents a very "with it" front for the public. However, he can and does loses his temper dreadfully, and when he does, it's a sight indeed - complete with swearing, kicking/punching walls, and lots of name-calling. He rarely loses his temper in public but has been known to throw tantrums when no one notable is around. On the whole, he's calm and presentable for his public. This makes him ideal for his favorite extracurricular of the debate team, of which he is the Student Head (and holy cow, he runs that team like an army. If armies had dictators.) The debate team is his baby, and he's just a little obsessed with it winning. Or... actually, he's a lot obsessed. If a team member is looking nervous, Tony has no problem crushing their dreams and pulling them out of the competition. Being liked, at least on the debate team, isn't his goal. His goal is winning, and he will win, and he doesn't care who objects. He'd be insufferable if he wasn't so good at what he does.

Family: Garrett Marks: Father, defense attorney, age 45. Garrett is an influential, powerful man within the Apple Creek Community, although his public image has been stained slightly by his two divorces. Garrett puts a great deal of pressure on his children to succeed, and has high expectations that Anthony go into law and politics.

Melissa Marks (maiden name of Baez): Mother, bored socialite, age 37. Melissa is enjoying her share of alimony from her divorce probably more than she enjoyed the marriage. Although a flighty, fake woman, Melissa genuinely cares about her children and tends to flood them with money to make up for forgetting birthdays, holidays, etc. Once divorced.

Emily Marks: Sister, student at Harvard, 21. Emily is a driven, ambitious girl not unlike Tony. On the honor council at Harvard and the vice-president of the physics club, Emily is extremely busy and doesn't have much of a social life. That doesn't mean that she doesn't take time out of her schedule to compare G.P.A.'s with her little brother.

Personal History: Garrett and Melissa Marks were married in a somewhat slapdash manner to keep the bride seeming pure for the wedding photography. Already pregnant with a baby girl, Melissa had been a secretary (and evidently so much more) for the unhappily married Garrett Marks. A quick divorce and even quicker marriage later, Garrett and Melissa welcomed a baby girl to their family which they named Emily and settled in to the Ironwood neighborhood in Apple Creek. Garrett continued his business (defense attorney for various nasty sorts, innocent and otherwise) and Melissa stayed at home with their little girl, enjoying her new wealthy lifestyle. Three years later, another baby (a boy named Anthony) was born.

By the time that he was born, the bloom was already off the rose in his parents' slapdash marriage. That said, it wasn't that Tony had an unhappy childhood, exactly - despite their mistakes involving marriage fidelity, both Garrett and Melissa were affectionate parents who loved their children - it merely shaped him to be an attention-hungry, manipulative boy who was extremely careful with his own self-image. Emily and Anthony were often subject to their parents' fighting, and quickly became accustomed to being used by one parent or the other. Anthony and Emily were in competition with one another for their parents' attentions, and it was through vying to be noticed that Anthony (or Tony, as most called him) grew to love the limelight and attention. Throughout the years, he and Emily have grown a little more close, but it's a very catty relationship never the less. The two siblings are constantly trying to outdo one another. Emily graduated with honors from ACSH, and is in her second year at Harvard. Tony has plans to get into that school as well, and is determined to be near the top of his class, if not the top, no matter what he has to do to achieve it.

Tony and his elder sister Emily didn't lack for anything material growing up. Garrett Marks's cushy job as a defense attorney provided more than enough money for the family, and placed them nicely in society's upper crust. Tony attended a private elementary school and middle school, and was always an excellent student, if a bit of a competitive jerk when it came to class games and sports. His interests included both history and writing, and he got a fair amount of ribbing from his friends at obsessively watching game shows on television instead of sports so that he could memorize random and useless facts. Tony also enjoyed playing soccer as he grew up, but is too busy to play these days.

In his sixth grade, he finally asked out a good friend of his, Esther Prince. A pretty, popular cheerleader with brains, Esther looked great on his arm and was a confidante and a girlfriend all in one. Things went well in the beginning - at least the first year and a half. However, in the eighth grade, Tony's parents' marriage finally fell apart completely. Tony entered ACHS in his freshman year about the same time as his parents' divorce. Tony remained on decent terms with both his parents, and agreed with his sister that his mother and father were better far, far apart from one another. Still, going to two different houses at holidays was painful for him, although he never opened up about it. In fact, he wasn't opening up about much of anything anymore - not to his friends, and not to his girlfriend, Esther. The accumulative strain on their relationship cost them both dearly in the end - Esther cheated on him with an unknown boy and wound up pregnant. Esther confessed to him what she had done after she discovered the pregnancy, and Tony was faced with a choice: to swallow his hurt and forgive her for the betrayal, or to seek revenge.

He opted for revenge. Esther Prince was ruined the very next day, dropping off the popular radar with the speed of a bowling ball dropped out of an airplane. If Tony's sorry about what he did, he's not showing it - and in fact is still cold to Esther to this day.

Appearance: Tony Marks is pretty darn good-looking, and he knows it. He has a naturally tan skin and dark brown hair that he keeps just long enough to be interesting, and just short enough to be respectable. Probably his most attractive feature is his mega-watt smile that lights up a room. Tony has light brown eyes framed by thick eyebrows and something of a round face that made him look pudgy as a kid, but now that he's hit his growth spurt he's lengthened out considerably. Being active in cross country gave him a wiry physique, and although he's not got distractingly massive muscles like some guys, he's certainly fit. He's not the tallest boy, either; standing at 5'11, some other guys certainly stand over him. Tony wouldn't let anyone else know that it bothers him, however. His eyesight isn't the best, and he wears glasses to read - but never, ever to class. Sign of weakness, you know.

Tony is extremely animated, and is one of those people who seems to really listen to you, and seems to really care whatever you have to say. When Tony likes you, it's all smiles from here to Niagra Falls. He tends to gesture emphatically, and you usually can tell exactly where he stands on most issues by his body language or the way he's holding his face. Although Tony is very good with words, he's fairly transparent when it comes to flat-out lying; his emotions are usually plain to see if you know where to look. One of his dirty little secrets is the fact that when distraught, he nibbles his nails.

Tony doesn't walk so much as swagger, and he doesn't stand; he poses. A natural at flashing a smile for a camera, Tony is extremely confident in his appearance and isn't the least bit put off by talking in front of people, whether unofficially or speech-making. He keeps himself very neat and well-kept, and his clothes are usually expensive and in classic cuts - nothing too frou-frou, but he obviously is dressing to impress.
PB: Emile Hirsch, especially in The Emperor's Club & The Girl Next Door pics - anything where he's cleancut and/or wearing glasses.