Barton the Badger

BARTON TERRY

• Species: Badger
• Sex: ♂
• Age: 29
• Height: 4ft 11in
• Weight: Not given
• Siblings: None

Barton is gentle-spirited and kind original character who grew up in Badgerton and appears in the [i]Lunar Academy[/i] series. During the events of the story his right arm and parts of his belly are turned into plush material, turning him into a part-plush. Later he will go on to become fully plush, but continue to be able to move like the flesh-and-blood individual he was before.

Trust & Confidence

Baby

Barton was born to Melissa and Edward Terry.

His mother had a gentle yet engaging style of parenting that Barton took notice of as soon as he was able. Even though he was still very instinctive at this early stage, his mother had a way of capturing his attention, even beyond the bounds of parent-child symbiosis. They bonded with very simple play (such as playing with his hands and feet), with eye contact, and with funny, cute little noises. He reciprocated as much as he could, but even when he couldn't, Barton enjoyed the display she put on for him and remained alert for more.

Freedom & Self-Determination

Toddler

Barton was a curious cub from toddlerhood, and his parents were alert to his curiosity and guided him to make sure he remained safe while also preserving that sense of interest in the world around him.

Sometimes Barton's parents would take him into town. However, the first time this happened they quickly noticed that Barton felt overwhelmed by the large number of people and traffic; he reacted by withdrawing into himself. They responded by taking him out of the busy hub of town to somewhere more easy-going.

The gradually re-introduced him to town by taking him to less-populated areas such as parks until he had acclimatised to being in a slightly busier environment than at home. Then they tried town again. Fortunately, this technique worked very nicely for Barton. He continued to become familiar with the idea of there being a wider world and the 'otherness' beyond his family's front door, with few further problems.

Ambition

Young childhood

Barton never became very ambitious – at least, not in the sense of wanting to come out ahead of others or to leave his mark on the world. His ambitions were, and are, more about co-operation and about helping individuals, without any grandiose sense of 'changing the world'. In many ways, Barton's ambitions are about co-operation for co-operation's own sake.

As a child he wanted to succeed at the tasks he was given, but he was always happy to do it as a team player. He takes a community-orientated, rather than an individualistic, approach to achievement.

Productivity

Older childhood

At first, Barton found the transition into more focused school jarring. However, in time he settled in and became a real team player here too, whether he was in a group project or not.

Without realising it, Barton established himself as the helpful one, the one diligent and attentive enough to understand what he was taught and to help his school-mates learn when they were struggling with the material.

Adult Selfhood

Adolescence

As Barton became more comfortable with the company of others, with meshing with his peers and being a model pupil for his teachers, he began to establish more consistent friendships.

In particular he became close friends with two other badgers from Badgerton. The first of them was Roy. Roy shared Barton's 'sensible' ethic, but had a little bit more of an appetite for adventure. He enjoyed camping out, trips to the beach, and similar outings. However, he was very capable of 'straightening up' when the situation called for it.

The other badger Barton became close with was Ken. Ken was quite traditional by Badgerton standards, although he very much enjoyed tokusatsu shows from Japan.

These three young badgers hung out a lot, going on camping trips and other such adventures together, visiting the cinema, and other activities. This became Barton's adolescent in-crowd.

Aside from this, since Badgerton was not a large town, he also became friends with other residents including Alex the baker, Roy and Ken's parents, and at times the town's mayor, Matthew, along with several other inhabitants. As he became more independent from his parents, he made a point of re-establishing his relationship with them, this time as an adult.

Closeness in Relationships

Young adulthood

Barton was invited to teach at the Lunar Academy. At first he considered this a great honour as he assumed the academy to be high-class and well-regarded, and he accepted the role. However, within a very short time working there he realised that something was not as he had assumed.

Lunar Academy was a boot camp for creating strong combatants and predators. In addition to this, the teachers had the power of transformation over their students: teaching could be cast aside completely if a teacher felt that a given student would serve better as a statue, painting, a meal, or any one of a range of inanimate objects.

Barton confronted one of his co-teachers about this, and his suspicions were confirmed. Worse, his desire simply to teach his students created the first major conflict in his life: he did not fit in with his fellow teachers. He found himself badly wrong-footed, even traumatised, by all of this.

However, two of his students, Whitestripe and Leogun, spotted his distress and encouraged him to stick to his guns, so to speak. With their help he recovered his resolve, and decided to teach and support his students in a manner that would have made the Badgerton residents back home proud.

Under different circumstances Barton may have left Lunar Academy in search of a space that felt safer, more sane, and a better match for his personal values. However, his history of helping students, dating back to when he was a child, had left him with a sense of justice. At times, he had felt like he needed to rescue other children who had been struggling with their school work, perhaps due to outside influences. While he hadn't gotten involved in their dramas outside of school, he had felt that he could at least provide extra help with school work itself.

This vaguely 'rescuing' position ultimately led to his choice to stay at Lunar Academy and provide the support the students needed.

In terms of his friendships, both platonic and professional, Barton had by now established a firm preference for people with a positive outlook. He was less keen on people with a negative view of the world, but had the wisdom to listen for any subtext or context in their words, to see if he could detect a gentler spirit underneath.

Passing on Responsibility

Middle age

Barton has not yet reached this stage of his life.

The Lunar Academy as a faculty will change over the course of Barton's adult life, and by the time Barton reaches middle-age, will match his values far more so than it did when he first went to work there. This new version of the Lunar Academy plans on one day having Barton train another to take over his role. Barton himself feels conflicted over whether he would have started working at the academy in the first place, if he had known before joining what he learned after settling in.

However, he knows he will never have any regrets about the students he has got to know, and supported.

End of Life

Old age

Given that Barton always wanted to be supportive of those around him, and found himself a niche doing just that, he may very well end his life feeling content that he has done what he wanted to know with his life. However, he is still a long way from old age so it is too early to make much more than a very approximate guess about how he will feel at the end of his years.