Physique and repute: acne and braces, A-squad by tenacity, Clipperton raconteur, prankster accomplice, the HmH chill

texture · STANDING

• When: STANDING — ongoing physical and social texture across YDAU
• What: Struck's body carries the grind: a heavily pimpled back (among the worst at E.T.A.), cystic facial acne he picks at constantly ("Struck-like facial cysts" serves elsewhere as a simile), braces the dining-hall bread is unkind to. He keeps his 18-A spot by dogged tenacity despite the debutante's-curtsy serve. Socially he holds a fixed niche: designated teller of E.T.A. legend — he specializes in the Clipperton-v-Reat story for new arrivals, the Reat photo Elmer's-glued to his own door — and willing prankster accomplice (he and Axford distracted Lyle for Stice's Krazy-Glue prank; Stice later suspects Struck of meal-carding his door; post-Eschaton he and Pemulis blarneyed Lateral Alice Moore into piping Tavis's placative parent-interfaces over her intercom speaker, concurring that the Headmaster with parents is "a master charmer past all social gauge, a Houdini with the manacles of fact" — n266 pp. 1046-1047). At the Headmaster's House he is barely welcome: Avril's faultless, brittle politeness to him raises the dining room's hair, and Hal rarely brings him anymore.