Lei Wan ZHU

Appearance
Natural Hair/Eye Color: Black hair, brown eyes

Height: 5'0"

Body Type: Petite. She is tiny all around: slim, flat-chested, with barely any hips to speak of.

Noticeable Scars/Tattoos and Location: Pierced ears, usually filled with mismatched earrings. She likes things that are cute and/or grim, like cartoon skulls or sheet ghosts.

Clothing Style: Lei Wan dresses like she walked into her closet and fell out the other side. She doesn't care about matching, frequently wears mismatched socks, stripes with plaids, skirts over jeans, short-sleeved T's over long-sleeved shirts, etc etc. She thinks it makes her look quirky and cute, but it just makes her look like a teenager who hasn't quite figured out that randomness alone is not endearing.

Her hair is just past shoulder length and she usually wears it either loose or in a low ponytail. She doesn't ever really dress it up, it's just There as far as she's concerned.

History
LeiLei's father is a first-generation American whose parents came over from China only a few years before he was born. Her mother came over from China as a young girl. Her mom cooks traditional Chinese meals on a regular basis, and Chinese is frequently spoken in the home. In fact, her grandmother expects to be addressed in Chinese and will get very angry if she isn't. Nonetheless, LeiLei's mastery of the language is lazy and very American; she's frequently accused of spitting on her heritage because of this.

Her mother is very strict and critical, constantly hovering and tearing down everything LeiLei does. She feels like nothing she does will ever be good enough to please her mother. It comes in small but everpresent ways, commenting that her hair is a mess, her clothes don't fit right, she needs to lose weight or boys won't want to marry her, walking into her room without knocking and complaining that it's messy, etc etc. It's a long list of minor frustrations that add up to make her mother nearly unbearable to live with.

Her father, on the other hand, is a very kind man but emotionally distant. It doesn't help that he's often away on business. When he is around, he does work to mitigate some of mom's criticism and give LeiLei her space. She likes him well enough, but feels a bit neglected nonetheless.

Basically, her home life is not all that great taken as a whole. Her reaction to it has been to pretend everything is fine and escape into her own little world whenever she can get time to herself.

She grew up in Underwood and has never lived anywhere else, but has visited China a few times to see her extended family. She's currently attending Stephanie Cruiser High School and her solid B grades are another thing her mother is constantly criticising.

Personality
LeiLei is a bubbly, cheerful sort. She's subdued about it, less cheerleader and more irrepressible optimist. She can say the most macabre things with a smile on her face and doesn't understand why it would bother people.

She's fascinated by ghosts, hauntings, grisly legends, and the like. If it's creepy, she loves it. And not in a teenage goth kind of way, but more in the same way as a kid who really loves dinosaurs. A major part of her escapist fantasies involve being a ghosthunter, checking out local hauntings, and being convinced she can see ghosts.

The constant cheer is a bit of a facade. While not entirely fake, there are plenty of times where she does feel sad and miserable, and her way of dealing with that is to pretend everything is okay and that she's not upset. She does it under the belief that if she doesn't admit anything is wrong, then everything is actually fine.

She's very friendly and sociable, but not outgoing. She doesn't initiate a lot of interaction (except with friends), but she'll respond favourably when someone else does. In reality, it bothers her to be the one sitting unnoticed in the corner, which is why she responds so favourably when others approach her, but she just never quite got the hang of making friends. The few she does have, she keeps very close.

She can also be a bit naive and too trusting, and relies too strongly on the idea that people are generally honest. It hasn't burned her yet, but she's only sixteen.

Flaws
Escapism. As much as she pretends everything is fine, her home life makes her miserable. She does everything in her power to ignore it and gets very involved in her own fantasies. By extension, her preferred problem-solving technique is to ignore it and hope it'll go away.

She hides her emotions. She's a bit of a Stepford Smiler in that, even if she alludes to being upset about something, she'll pretend it didn't bother her that much and shrug it off. Really, though, these things eat at her. She cries over the things her mother says, but only where nobody can see it. Even her close friends don't get to see the side of her that gets upset about things.

She has a bad habit of just dropping things she doesn't want to deal with. If an argument bothers her, she'll walk away from it. This goes back to her ignoring her problems.

Etc.
LeiLei can see ghosts! She has a fascination with the supernatural and enjoys all manner of spooks.

She knows Chinese well enough to hold a brief conversation because her grandmother insisted on it, but her accent is very American and she doesn't care enough to become fluent.

She loves spiders, praying mantises, scorpions, etc etc. Pretty much any creepy crawly that scares other people, she absolutely loves. However, she is Not Okay with having bugs crawling on her, despite how much she professes to like them. If you asked her to sit still and let a scorpion crawl across her shoulders, she'd scream and fling it off.

She's been taking fencing classes with Harriet.

Forum info

 * Username: LeiLei
 * Avatar: A cap from some horror film that shows a shadowy ghostly girl in a tattered dress lurking at the end of a hallway
 * Signature: A gif of a black cat sleeping peacefully

CR

 * Benedict 'Bene' Conrad: Had some very kind words to say about her wanting to become a paladin! (DROPPED)
 * Claudia Wilson: BFF, plays Gloria, Majestica's sister (DROPPED)
 * Eileen Wallace: Led her to the church in Bastan on Majestica
 * Gabriel Chen: The super nice Chinese college boy
 * Gunnar Hydrik: The assassin in her fencing classes that goes to her school, quiet but nice
 * Harriet Webster: Why don't you like ghosts Harriet, why are you such a stick in the mud Harriet, we are still friends even though you seem reluctant ok
 * Lera Savinkov: The nice lady who helped her out during the school bombing
 * Majestica: Her alt, has no interest in contacting her now that she's real
 * Melissa 'Missie' Eir Jackson: Plays Iravati, seems super nice
 * Noelle Kendall: The hunter Lera knows, kind of quiet, wasn't around her very long
 * Rasmus: The huge paladin, he is very nice and very impressive