Face Claim: Zhou Mi

Allen is tall and lanky, though he's slowly starting to build up a little bit of muscle on his frame. Depending on the day and how good a week he's been having he sometimes still looks rather sickly, but he generally looks a lot healthier now than he did a few years ago. He's got naturally black hair, but it wanders between different shades of browns and reds a good deal of the time. He has one ear pierced and keeps contemplating a tattoo but hasn't been able to settle on one yet. His eyes are dark brown, and he has really stunning cheekbones. He would describe himself as pretty rather than handsome, but he doesn't really mind that.

Allen has faced a lot of challenges in his life through health problems and different barriers that have come from moving between countries among other things. He has the drive and determination to push through most challenges that he might face.

One of the things that a few near brushes with dying has given Allen at this point is a determination to live life to the fullest because he sometimes feels like he doesn't know how much time he's got left, and he can either let that make him miserable or use that as encouragement.

While many people when he was growing up described Allen as intellectually gifted, he's always seen his own defining intellectual trait as his curiosity. He always wants to learn more and find out more about the world around him. It sometimes makes him come off as younger than he actually is because he's so openly joyous about it.

Allen finds lots of small joys in life: that he can go on long rambling walks with his camera now, finding a new piece of clothing that he likes, pretty things in nature, delicious food that isn't trying to kill him. He is often frustrated with how careful he has to be with restaurants and just life in general due to his health problems, but he tries to focus on the good things that he can have rather than the downsides.

MOTHER
Name: Tan Jili
Birth Year: 1971
Occupation: Chinese Professor at CBCC
Feelings Toward: Deep caring, sometimes they confuse each other a lot though

FATHER
Name: Wen Hongshen
Birth Year: 1970 (deceased when Allen was very young)
Occupation: History Professor
Feelings Toward: barely remembers

Allen was born in Lanzhou, Gansu Province in China. He barely remembers it, just as he barely remembers his father because after his father passed away when he was four, almost simultaneously with the first time that Allen got severely sick in his life, his mother managed to get a teaching position in the US and moved them to California. First they were in the Bay Area, where she had her first position and Allen was treated for what turned out to be a case of (fortunately non-reoccurring) tuberculosis. He seemed to recover well, and during his hospital stay picked up English remarkably well. By the time he was enrolled in first grade, he was tested into advanced programs, and eventually, moved up a grade.



In time for Allen to start sixth grade, his mother got a new position in Cedar Beach, WA, and they moved there over the summer before he started middle school. By a combination of ridiculously high scores on placement tests for the gifted program, and a bit of a mix up in paperwork between school districts, instead of going into sixth grade, Allen went into seventh, placing him two grade levels above where he theoretically should have been. By the time anyone realized the mistake, Allen was earning straight As and exceeding pretty much all expectations of the school in the advanced classes for seventh graders, so they just let it be.



Everything seemed like it was going incredibly well until his junior year of high school. One day in P.E., Allen suddenly felt dizzy and tight chested and passed out. He was sent to the hospital for what turned out to be a collapsed lung. This was the beginning of a mess of health concerns, mostly respiratory that took nearly three years to sort out. While Allen still graduated near the top of his class, when he was sixteen, he was not able to take the scholarships that he'd originally been looking at from some pretty big name schools. He started out slowly with college, taking only a few courses at Cedar Beach Community College, where his mom taught, so that he didn't fall out of practice with academics.



As his health got better, he dived back in to his passions, including academics, but he had decided that he would focus on things that made him happy. While he was recovering, when he was healthy enough to do so, his doctors had started encouraging him to do gentle exercise such as walking, and Allen, bevy of inhalers safely in tow, had discovered that he really enjoyed what he saw and noticed on walks that got progressively longer and longer. He took a photography class on a whim his second quarter at CBCC, and he fell in love with it. After a year and a half at CBCC, he transferred to UW with an arts scholarship and majored in photography, with a minor in journalism, and landed an internship with a fashion magazine based out of Cedar Beach that turned into a full time job when he graduated, still rather ahead of academic schedule.



These days, most people can't tell that he's spent a lot of his life severely ill, but Allen is still very careful to not go anywhere without the medications that are likely to keep him safe in a minor health crisis. During his period of major illness, and after he graduated high school, he didn't have much energy to stay in touch with his close friends from high school, but he has been trying to reconnect with the ones of them who are still in Cedar Beach and the nearby areas.

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