Charles Hoffer

> "He's a lot like me. Which is my least favorite part about myself!" -Charles
>
>

Charles is a friend and romanceable character in *Growing Up*. Charles uses he/him pronouns and he will date male players.

### Storyline

You meet Charles in middle school during the class president elections because you were assigned to write about him for a history project, as he was one of the candidates for the elections. He goes by the name "Hoffer." Upon getting to know him, you are surprised by how seriously he takes the elections and the interview. You can choose to play along or not. Eventually, Hoffer wins the elections because he is quite popular due to his father, who is the mayor.

After winning, you see him talking to his father, and you discover that his father is pressuring him to run in these elections as a "training" for him to follow that path in his adulthood. Hoffer invites you to join his re-election committee. During middle school, you have a few short meetings to discuss election matters, although they always turn out to be more social gatherings than anything else. You learn a few things about him, like his good relationship with his sister and his desire to be liked by others. On one occasion, you catch him staring intensely at a woman in the park, to which he reacts a bit embarrassed and mentions that he does it on his father's advice.

After winning the school committee elections again, he decides to invite you and his friends to watch an action movie at the cinema. During a tense part of the movie, he clings to you, earning him teasing from his friends, who ask if he's a "sissy." As middle school comes to an end, Hoffer tells you that he plans to run for elections in high school during his first year. He also mentions that his sister and his father had an argument, and his father plans to send her to a boarding school.

However, in high school, you find out that it wasn't true, and they were actually "playing chicken." For these elections, he asks you to vote for him, and despite his genuine efforts to gain voters, he ends up losing by a significant margin. This deeply unsettles him, and you later find him in the bathroom talking to himself, calling himself an idiot for believing he could actually win. You decide to console him.

If you're playing as a male character, and depending on the choices you make, he may attempt to kiss you and confess that he is gay at that moment. If you push him away before he kisses you, he'll threaten to ruin you if you tell anyone and will stop talking to you. If you kindly reject his advances, you'll remain friends, and if you accept his confession, you'll start a relationship at that moment.

After that, you continue to see each other more often, and you'll discover that he's afraid to confess to his father that he is homosexual, and only his sister and you are aware of his secret. In the final round of elections, you can ask him if he really wants to run. He will admit that he's not sure and that he'd probably prefer to work on the strategy and publicity rather than be the one in the spotlight on stage. You can convince him to have a conversation with his father and stop trying to please him, allowing him to focus on what he truly wants to do with his life.

### Good Ending

He came out to his family shortly after deciding not to run for student council. They kicked him out of the house and stayed with you for a few months. He does marketing and runs campaigns for LGBTQ rights and stays close to her sister. If you romanced Charles, you end up dating him on-and-off for a couple of years until you settle down together

### Bad Ending

He becomes a politician (not sure if he was president or something like that), however he ends up being polemic when his personal life gets out to the public. He never comes out of the closet.