CIVILIAN. CHEN, ADELAIDE

female

heterosexual

twenty-ONE

july 7, 1990

german/chinese

english, Mandarin chinese (fluent), german (kinda)

Addie (family only), Chen YongLi (陈勇丽) (Chinese given name)

0.50

Civilian

N/A

N/a

24 October 2013
By Bubbles

kit



medium

Erza scarlet (fairy tail)

Adelaide is a college student at UCLA, living in an apartment close to campus in the surrounding Westwood area. She has two bunnies, Dani and Ellie, which are really big and free-roam the apartment, much to the surprise of visitors. 

On a whim, Adelaide took a bartending course and took up a side job in West Hollywood, for shits and giggles. 

Adelaide's mother was 3/4th German and 1/4th French, and her father Chinese. She wouldn't be remarkable at an average 5'5", but her wavy reddish-brown hair down her back and green eyes like her mother's are quite striking, and a more European face with slight traces of her Asian heritage in her cheekbones and nose make her looks peculiar in a way people can't quite place. She isn't slim, but has a built dancer's body, with those muscular thighs she's a bit conscious of.

Day to day, she dresses casually in a bright light tee or flowy top and jeans (regular blue or maybe an exciting colour) tossed with a hoodie or zipup. She likes to keep her long hair down but sometimes that's impractical in the hot SoCal weather. 

Spontaneous, blunt and tirelessly exuding a touch of insanity, Adelaide is easily mistaken for an air-headed, silly girl. But behind her endless energy is a introspective and deeply contemplative mind with a penchant for musing, wondering, and second-guessing herself and her choices. Despite being competent socially and academically, she questions and doubts herself and life direction internally. But she doesn't let that show, always facing the day with a smile and laugh.

Adelaide likes goofing off with guy friends, preferring their humor and open personalities, as opposed what she sees as the underhanded, gossipy way of girls. Despite her constant smiles and cheer, there is an undercurrent of something else that she doesn't discuss with her lulsbuddies. What she really needs is someone she can fully trust and confide her fears and anxieties to, but her personal insecurities and doubt make it difficult for such an interaction to emerge.

She's full of energy but also ideas. Adelaide wants to do things, she wants to go places and see sights and put herself to work. She wants to take all life has to offer, grab it by the tail and not let go. However, her lust for opportunity also means that she is loathe to close any doors, sometimes leaving decisions up in the air simply because choosing one or the other means the remaining options are now no longer available. As such her behaviours exhibit this strange sort of paradox where striving for everything often leaves her with nothing, and ends in burying herself in doubt and the mercy of hindsight.

In line with her love of choice, Adelaide greatly believes in freedom. She thinks that free will the the most powerful asset of any person. This may be part of the reason she is frustrated at being a girl, because this greatly limits her aspirations (discrimination in the workplace, physical vulnerability, etc). Often she will bitterly reference the fact that her life is limited by the fact that she is a woman.

Her mother died when Adelaide was two, and her father, though he loves Addie, was much too absorbed in his work to closely raise her. Born in London and raised in Chicago then Boston, Adelaide has a whirlwind history revolving around the cities her father relocated to for work. Her childhood was a blur of being passed from one asian Auntie to another, of being looked after by the Chinese grandparent couple down the street who'd read her folk tales about roosters and snakes, of after-school ballet and of Sundays in Chinese school reciting traditional poetry and folding paper birds.

When she grew older, Adelaide was free to do what she wanted with minimal parental intervention, given that she kept up her grades and performed well. She thought this to be a fair deal. This enabled lots of traveling, adventuring, and trouble. At heart she is a city girl, but she is drawn to the solace of the outdoors, the mountains and open trails. When life gets chaotic, Adelaide grabs her pack and heads to the wilderness.

Her empty home and tendency toward contemplation has made her accustomed to being alone, and she doesn't often make deep and close friendships. There are many people she could chat with or hang out with, but not many could say they truly understand Adelaide. She's really close to her cousin Gina but aside from that locks her feelings away. 

Having lived in the Northeast the majority of her life, Adelaide decided to pack up and venture west for college. She is a junior attending UCLA, majoring in business and actuarial science. She started college as biochem premed but went through a mini life-choice crisis/reevaluation and changed to engineering, then experienced another rift of doubt and settled on business.

Adelaide visits her father's extended family in China once a year for a few weeks, staying at her grandparents' land. Her father's modest beginning may be the root of his workaholicism, and they continue to manifest in Adelaide's life as external pressure from both him and her grandparents. Adelaide speaks fluent Mandarin and can somewhat read (context clues are a blessing), and type (but not really write, having stopped practicing after the AP Chinese test in high school). Her extended family affectionately call her Addie (best they can), including all her cousins and Aunties, but her grandparents adamantly call her Yongli. She took up German classes in high school as an homage to her mother's heritage but is much more distant from that side of her family, being both unsure of how to contact her mother's parents (who passive aggressively seem to blame her father for her mother's passing) and awkward about the interaction.