Aeryn Zhuang

Aeryn Zhuang is one of the main characters of TAPC. She is a first year student reasonably well known for her many quirks and being a huge nerd.

She has short, messy purple/pink hair and pink eyes, although she'll insist that both her hair colour and eye colour are purple. The shortest of the characters. Wears rectangular glasses.

Her headset is a somewhat older model, and therefore somewhat clunky and rectangular looking. Black (like her soul).

Winter Uniform: Open Gakuran over a red tshirt

Winter Casual: Hooded Vest over a red plaid shirt/Black long sleeve with purple trim

Summer Uniform: Open Male Shirt over various tshirts

Summer Casual: tshirt and jeans/cargo pants

Biography
Aeryn lives with her parents and older brother Alek a fair distance from TAPC.

Childhood
She met Matsuri in first grade, and met Kaira and Reiichi when they transfered in the second grade. The four of them remained friends throughout elementary. Matsuri moved during the latter part of middle school but the four of them are reunited in highschool.

As for her home life, Aeryn's parents are both busy professionals often with one or even both of them being away on business trips. As a result, Aeryn and her brother grew up taking out their frustrations on each other.

Alek, as the elder sibling, would be left in charge, and was savvy enough to abuse the responsibility as much as possible with minimal consequences. Aeryn learned extremely quickly not to expect protection, care, or attention from her parents beyond the minimum required. Their parents eventually took notice of their extreme sibling rivalry, but only enough to force both of them into using psychological and emotional tactics instead of physical ones.

By the time she enrolls at TAPC, Aeryn is distrustful and paranoid (especially towards authority figures), but feels uneasy about being so towards her friends. She is not on speaking terms with her brother, and has zero interest in changing that.

Gaming with Friends
Aeryn befriends Erica after accidentally running into her while turning a corner and buys her lunch (despite protest). This is how she meets Matthew and probably Chiaki.

Aeryn introduces everyone and her, Erica, Kaira, Matsuri, Matthew and Reiichi start eating lunch together. Bonus points if Matthew feels jealous or threatened by all these random people.

At this point I imagine they've all fiddled around and played with the Augmented Reality, but haven't played any of the full Virtual Reality games.

At this point they start playing games. Smaller ones, like party rpgs or FPSs and stuff. (They play the Touhou VR game somewhere here). Aeryn is really freaked out by realism of the VR though she tries not to show it and plays anyways.

Persona
Kaira suggests they play a VR MMO based on Battle Royale and is unanimously outvoted. Instead they play Persona, a recent release in the third-party-VR scene.

Aeryn's persona belongs to the hermit arcana, (wisdom, introspection, solitude, retreat and philosophical searches). Her shadow stems from a fear of being alone, and a fear of being rejected if she tries to reach out. Aeryn's shadow accuses her of being a hypocrite who pushes people away despite being lonely, and who claims to value truth despite hiding behind a mask and lying to herself.

The resulting facing-your-own-shadow and we-are-nakama drama in the game simultaeneously makes everyone in the group feel a bit closer to one another, and feel incredibly awkward. The group makes an unspoken agreement never to talk about what happened in-game with anyone not in the group.

School Life
Probably around the time that the student council realizes Aeryn's been observing their meetings.

Also when the TAPC Aeryn msn thingies happened, which was basically Aeryn messing around with experimental single player VR games. She arrives at school one day sleep deprived and incredibly out of it, constantly looking confused and muttering to herself, "Oh right...that didn't actually happen."

Sgrub
Aeryn is concerned about philosophical implications but curiousity and peer pressure eventually win out and they play Sgrub. During the course of the game Aeryn has a kismesissitude with Chiaki, almost ends up murdering him, pale flirts with nearly everyone, has a flushcrush on Matsuri, and platonically hates Kaira.

The next week or so is hellishly awkward for everyone involved. Aeryn flat out avoids Chiaki and Matsuri for a week. She has a moment with Albert. She eventually gets lonely and hangs out with them again, but still refuses to speak about what happened.

Personality and Traits
Aeryn is a gigantic nerd and will happily talk your ear off about any subject that interests her if you allow her to. Her nerdiness occasionally borders on mania: things like staying up all night reading scientific journals or skipping school in favour of going to the zoo or museum.

She changes around her interests periodically, for example spending a few days focused on absorbing history before getting terribly enthusiastic about something completely unrelated like calligraphy. As a result, Aeryn is something of jack of all trades. Her consistent hobbies are jamming on the piano, cooking, and martial arts.

Aeryn dislikes pop music, girly clothes, and sitting in one place for too long.

Her speech is a mix of random technical terms, stream-of-consciousness, and friendly boasting, and the same can be said of her personality. Under stress or in more serious situations, her speech becomes more formal.

Aeryn is friendly and amiable to pretty much everyone and is fairly infamous at TAPC after a few months. She is something of a social chameleon, adjusting her tone and word choice depending on who she's talking to. A casual glance shows an energetic, sociable, and intelligent (if rather headstrong) boy. Or girl.

Contrasted with her general friendliness, Aeryn is very secretive and emotionally uptight. Getting closer to her is difficult and takes much patience and effort. Very few notice how carefully she avoids talking about herself and how she constantly keeps people at arm's length. Beneath the first mask of friendliness and easy-going calm is another mask of cold and sometimes cruel snark meant to keep people away. Winning her over gets you a vitriolic best bud for life who will be fanatically and embarrassingly loyal.

Relationships
Albert: Aeryn finds him absolutely hilarious. Like a bomb you can keep exploding again and again.

Chiaki: She dislikes him more than he really deserves, in her opinion. Chiaki is pretty much the epitome of clueless, relentless hope/faith, something that intensely bothers the skeptical, cynical Aeryn. She tends to flip flop between trying to be nice to him (which he usually misinterprets) and heaping emotional/verbal abuse on him. Chiaki continues, unrelentless, which simultaenously angers and guilts Aeryn, and the cycle continues.

In Sgrub, this dynamic becomes a trainwreck of a black/pale flip flopping relationship that results in a general BAD END for everyone.

Erica: She is good friends with Erica, often trading recipes, media recommendations, and really bad puns. Aeryn admires her intelligence and wit, and in some areas sees her as something of a rival. Like with her other close friends, Aeryn is rather protective of Erica, sometimes nagging her to eat properly, or tutoring/helping her with schoolwork.

Kaira: Aeryn's closest friend. She usually relaxes when with Kaira. Aeryn enjoys teasing and embarassing her, often competing against Matsuri in the "teasing olympics" to see how flustered/angry/embarassed they can make her. Despite this, she is also somewhat protective and maternal towards her, seen when Aeryn decides to start making Kaira lunch everyday to make sure she eats right.

Aeryn often tries to get Kaira to read certain things, or tries to wrap Kaira up in her questionable schemes. She'll often give unsolicited advice on Discplinary Committee matters which has probably had a (somewhat questionable) influence on how Kaira runs it.

Matsuri: She is a little bit intimidated by Matsuri, since Matsuri's pretty much immune to teasing, and also because Aeryn had a crush on her in middle school before she moved away. She considers Matsuri a good friend by the time highschool starts, always up for teasing Kaira, or talking about the latest VR games. She admires the depth of Matsuri's empathy for her friends, but privately sees her as somewhat naive and idealistic. Rarely, when she's not wrapped up in group drama or her own issues, Aeryn worries about her.

Matthew: Aeryn and Matthew sometimes shoot the shit about random stuff. More so than the rest of the group, they share a cynical and dark humour that she rarely shows around others.

Reiichi: She views him as something like a younger brother. A partner in crime when trolling, teasing, and generally being silly.