Face Claim: Ling Chao (of Oner)

Julian is tall and gangly, at about 6'/182 cm but barely topping 125 lbs/55 kg. He hopes that eventually his slight frame with small bones and narrow shoulders will fill out a little bit. He's not got any tattoos, though he does toy with the idea. He's also considering the idea of some ear piercings, but hasn't managed to get them yet. He dresses pretty stylishly, but definitely favors soft, colorful looks. He has dyed his hair several times now, but it's naturally dark brown. His eyes are a surprisingly light, topaz brown with a much darker ring around the edge that has gotten comments since he was very small. He's got delicate but also rather sharp features.

Julian is sensitive to the emotions of people around him, and he cries pretty easily. He cares about everyone and everything very hard, so it makes it easy for him to get emotionally overwhelmed. He is also curious and likes to learn. It was fortunate for him that his innate curiosity lined up well with academic pursuits. Julian doesn't give up easily. He works his way through really tough things because he doesn't like giving up. This can also lead to him being unnecessarily stubborn at times.

Julian grew up a sweet, sensitive child who liked the arts and academic pursuits in an area that very much favored manly men and sports. He's kind of sensitive to how other people perceive him because he's been criticized for it so much all his life. As he got to be a teenager, he kind of embraced that side of himself more, especially as he came out to himself, joined the GSA, and started to make peace with who he was, but he's still very sensitive to how people will react to him. He's been getting a little bit more open and flamboyant in his personality as he has settled into living with his older brother in Cedar Beach.

MOTHER
Name: Mari Wang
Birth Year: 1969
Occupation: Nurse
Feelings Toward: Betrayed, angry. He was close to her when he was young, but after he started school, she was constantly pushing him to be more acceptable, and the only thing she ever praised him for was academic achievements. She was the one who made the final decision to kick him out after he got outed.

FATHER
Name: Jeffrey Huangbao Vu
Birth Year: 1964
Occupation: Court Clerk
Feelings Toward: Betrayed, Angry. He'd always been more distant from his father than his mother, but he also was less pressured to be good at school (not that that was exactly a problem for him to achieve, but it was still pressure). His father refused to speak a single word to him during the time between when he was outed and when he got kicked out.

OLDER BROTHER
Name: Jordan Jiangda (江达) Vu
Birth Year: 1991
Occupation: Engineer
Feelings Toward: Basically like he is his only remaining family. Jordan got kicked out when Julian was only about nine, but he managed to stay secretly in contact with his brother, and his brother was one of the first people he came out to. He was the first person that Julian turned to after getting kicked out himself, and his brother is basically his main support at this point.

Mari Wang was a second generation kid from a Chinese immigrant family who ended up in the outskirts of Spokane. She was pushed towards pursuing the most academic field her family could afford, and she ended up in nursing. She carried that idea forward to her own kids, pushing them to be the best the could be at academics so that they could end up in better respected careers than she had.



Jeffrey Huangbao Vu was a first generation kid who had been born very shortly after his family fled Vietnam to the US. His family was ethnically Chinese, and they spoke Mandarin as one of their main languages at home. He was pushed to get a good education and a respectable job, while his parents and older siblings worked in more labor intensive jobs, and he ended up getting a paralegal certificate and eventually becoming a court clerk at a district court.



They met in high school and were married right after Mari earned her nursing certificate at 21. Slightly less than a year later, they had their first child, Jordan Jiangda Vu (Julian's older brother). Both of them worked very hard to establish themselves and make a good life for themselves and their child, but they raised him with very specific expectations. He was to do well in school, and get into a good university and take on a profession that made them proud.



They had their second son, Julian Jiangqing Vu, ten years later. When he was little, his older brother would often babysit him while he was doing his homework. Julian was originally kind of spoiled by his mother, but by the time he reached school age, he was also put under the same pressures as his older brother to do well in school above all else. When he showed interest in dance and singing and art, he was discouraged from doing it as anything other than a school sanctioned hobby that would look good on college applications.



When Julian was 9, and Jordan was 19, and Jordan was back on his first break from undergrad, Jordan tried to come out to their parents. Their response was to disown him and tell him he had 24 hours to get all of his stuff out of their house. Julian helped him hide some of his stuff and get the rest of it into bags.



Julian had hugely looked up to his older brother all his life, and his older brother helped him set up a secret email so that they could stay in touch. When Julian hit about seventh grade, he started to realize that like his older brother he was gay. The first person he told was Jordan, and he slowly figured out his own comfort with it, joining the GSA at school, though he told his parents that he was doing a peer tutoring group to fulfill his volunteer requirements (he did that too).



He excelled in academics, earning a full ride scholarship to UW, which was the school that he had wanted to go to because it would mean being in a more liberal part of the state and being close to his older brother for the first time in a long time. They'd seen each other a few times when Jordan had come back to visit friends in Spokane, but it had been tricky for them to sneak those visits because Julian's parents let him do very few things without their direct supervision. He wasn't allowed a job, to earn a driver's license, or to sign up for activities without their approval, and most of what they approved was through the school.



During his senior year, Julian covertly dated someone he knew through GSA. He was thrilled that he got permission to go to prom with "his friends" from his parents, especially because prom fell on his eighteenth birthday. However, that day turned out disastrous. A classmate who had bullied Julian from elementary school onward caught sight of Julian and his boyfriend kissing in what they thought was a tucked away corner. In the fall out of it, Julian got outed, his boyfriend dumped him and basically threw all the blame on him to get himself out of trouble, and by the end of his birthday week, his parents had kicked him out.



One of his friends convinced her family to let him stay with her until the end of the school year, and when he frantically reached out to his older brother, Jordan promised that Julian could live with him, his partner, and their best friend during college, free of charge, and they'd feed him, since he had a full ride scholarship. He was going to move in at the very end of the school year. His brother bought him a plane ticket for the evening of Sunday, June 9th, right after his senior graduation.



He was nervous about sharing a room with a stranger, but anticipated starting college and living with his brother. He was also very curious about his brother's partner and best friend and the Seattle area.



He's gotten pretty close to Kenichi (his roommate) since moving to Seattle, and may have a bit of a giant crush. He's getting more comfortable in himself, and he's been enjoying college. He took the first two years of his four year scholarship figuring out what he wanted to do, and over the summer between his sophomore and junior years, he decided on the BA in Social Welfare with a minor in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies. He is planning to go into the accelerated MA of Social Work program at UW afterwards to become a licensed clinical social worker.

Hello! My name is Etienne!
I was born in 1989.
My pronouns are he/him.