- Name: ZHENG Songtao (郑 松濤)
Nickname: Song, if you absolutely must.
Gender: Female
Age and Birth Date: 24 years old, 12 October 1992
Occupation:
APPEARANCE
Songtao Zheng is a small and slender woman of Han Chinese extract, with long brown-black hair and brown-black eyes to match. She pulls her hair back in a severe chignon that, especially in combination with her large glasses, do no favors to her face. (She tried short hair once, just made her look "cute", which she loathed with the flames of a thousand suns.) Her chin is on the squarish side, and her nose is fairly small and flat.
She is, somewhat surprisingly, reasonably okay with her looks and does little to alter them. Song generally wears a socially mandated minimum of "natural" makeup (bb cream, mascara, eyeliner that no one can see, lipstick), and stud earrings to match her outfit. Much like her general demeanor, off the clock she dressed casually in loose tops, particularly cable knit sweaters, and jeans with flats. Song kind of loves being able to wear jeans all the time in America, not gonna lie.
PERSONALITY
Off the clock, Songtao can be summarized as [+]cool, [+]collected and, [–]super bitchy omg. At least, for the most part, she is indifferent until someone goes out of their way to elicit a [–]snarky reaction from her. She can even be considered a bit two-faced, since Song has her xiaojie personality, one that anyone who's ever worked in retail might recognize, and her actual self. (Xiaojie is Chinese for "young lady" or "miss", and is used colloquially in reference to young, unmarried women working service jobs.) Xiaojie Songtao is super perky and polite, always happy to help! Of course you're not bothering her at 2am wondering when the deer turn into elk! She loves her soul-crushing job serving rich idiots hand and foot! The moment she's off the clock, hell, the moment she turns away, Song is, practically and for all purposes, a different person. A different person who is probably smoking a cigarette with an impassive expression.
Really, Songtao is just 100% done with trying to do the whole "treat others the way you wants to be treated" golden rule bullshit. She generally assumes that most people are jerks ([-] pessimist), which I'm sure has nooothing do to with working in the service industry. She wants out as soon as she can, but she is grinding her way through because she is on a mission ([+]determined). Songtao wants to go to university; she wants to study her passions, instead of shuffling through life from paycheck to paycheck; she wants to break ground in sustainability and environmental science back home. As embittered as she is, she is also paradoxically hopeful about this.
The only things that keep her sane are her private study time and chain smoking. She's done a lot reading in the sparse spare time she has, and has basically consumed the recommended course reading for a handful of PhD programs, and comprehended the material, so she is definitely [+]smart. However, she grew up in the Sichuan countryside, and even by Chinese standards, she's no Miss Manners ([-]uncouth). Things have improved since she moved to the US, especially since it's more acceptable for women to be blunt and direct about what they say. However, things haven't improved so much that she doesn't miss important social cues on a regular basis.
Furthermore, she is deeply [–]conflicted about being the daughter of a poor farming family. Any hint of shade being thrown her way will infuriate her, usually resulting in one of a few reactions: her making a laundry list of every flaw of the offending party; a similar laundry list of how inferior Americans are, or laundry list number three, everything she's had to do to get where she is while the offending party just had their life handed to them by Uncle Sam. ([–] defensive)
[+] cool, collected, resiliant, determined, smart
[–] bitchy, snarky, bitter, uncouth, conflicted, defensive, capricious, impatient, addict
DEITY Demeter
Like many of the Chosen, a lot of Songtao's appeal lies in her potential and zealousness about her cause. There's also a great deal to be said about her willingness to kick a**. (She has words for Demeter about their weapons. WORDS.) She already done a great deal of research into sustainability in environmentally improverished mountainous regions of China, and is poised to do great works as soon as she has the power of a college degree behind her.
XP Log:
10 (Recruitment Solo)
10 (Down in the Bayou Intro)
15 (Monster, Lone Beast)
25 (Monster, Griffin Capture)
15 (Monster, Difficult Lone Beast with Sidney, Songtao, and Sylvia)
25 (Monster, Chris Capture with Izzy, Misha, Rob, Songtao, and Sylvia)
= 100
In Progress:
10 (Monster, Small Group as Solo)
10 (PRP with Briiva, Davor, and Songtao)
10 (PRP with Izzy and Songtao)
