Joseph Umland

Joseph - better known to all as Joe, to the point that if someone speaks to Joseph (or worse, Joseph George), he may think they are speaking to someone else - is of perhaps slightly less than average height, with a broad sort of build. He has slightly wavy dark blond hair and brown eyes and inherited a traditionally pleasing arrangement of facial features from his biological mother, including a very straight nose and straight, even teeth. These are frequently on display, as Joe is the kind of person whose automatic response to seeing someone else is to smile. His clothes are usually immaculately clean and tidy, and rather preppy in appearance, but almost all show the unmistakable signs of being heavily worn, as they are all second-hand at best.

Joe was born and raised in southwestern Canada. His biological mother, Samantha Breaman, had named her two older sons after two of the Beatles, but upon hearing of the death of her beloved grandfather, named her third Joseph George in his honor instead of just George in keeping with the theme established with his older brothers Paul and John. When Joe was just shy of two, however, he was adopted by the Umland family, gaining in the process the people he considers his parents and two additional siblings. His devoutly Catholic adoptive mother, Alison, considered it a good sign that all her new sons already had saints' names, and Joe two of them; John would later take the confirmation name 'Thomas' in honor of St. Thomas Aquinas, but Joe went with St. George as his patron by default for lack of any stronger attachments. Unable to remember a time when he was not part of the church, he regards being a Catholic as something as much a part of him as the color of his eyes, and something he thinks about only slightly more than he thinks about the color of his eyes. He is not troubled by strong beliefs, as his brother John is, nor by his own lack of such beliefs, as his sister Julian is. His interests are much more neatly confined to the terrestrial sphere, with social studies his favorite area of study in his homeschool and scouting courses before Sonora.

Joe has a fairly large family, being the fifth of five children. When they were younger, he and his siblings were sometimes divided into the 'Big Pair' (his older brothers Stephen and Paul), the 'Little Pair' (Joe and his older brother John) and 'Julian' (his older sister Julian, the only girl in the family and, worse, the sibling who fell in age just between the two pairs of boys.) In actuality, however, the whole family is relatively close, and he thinks of himself more as part of 'we three' or 'the Js,' the trio of himself, Julian, and John. This is part of the reason why he was not altogether thrilled when Julian married, transforming the family from 'we seven' to 'we seven and William.'

At Sonora, his closest connection for his first few years was John, following their pattern from home, but a brief estrangement from John in Joe's fourth year and John's absence from Sonora from Joe's fifth year onward led to him expanding his boundaries. He bonded with Jozua Sparks over an enjoyment of dueling (if only in class in Joe's case) and having grown up wanting to be Arthurian knights or Victorianesque gentlemen explorers, and developed a protective feeling toward shy, academically struggling classmate Raine Collindale. Their relationship got more complicated, however, upon Raine's discovery of the concept of friends with benefits, one the less experienced and somewhat emotionally repressed Joe was sufficiently flustered by that Raine's attempt at seducing him made him worry for their friendship.

Joe arrived at Sonora in a state of high anxiety, knowing that his older brother John had little but contemptuous inattention for Crotali and certain that he would be Sorted into Crotalus. It was to his extreme, if puzzled, relief that he went into Teppenpaw instead. His first few years passed peacefully and largely uneventfully until the first day of his fourth year; over the summer preceding that day, John had nearly died and then run away from home, so upon seeing John before the Welcoming Feast, Joe, half in shock, attempted to attack John with his bare hands and instead nearly knocked over Headmaster Mortimer Brockert. Despite this, to his absolute shock, he became prefect in his fifth year and Assistant Quidditch captain and seems set to follow in the path of achievement established by Julian and John at Sonora before him.