(someday, there will be an image here)




Name Alexander Yu-jin Chin
Age early 20s
Height 5'10"
Weight 160 lbs
Ethnicity Chinese-American
DOB March 5
Birthplace Fremont, CA
Current Residence Berkeley, CA
Appearance Well, he has that generic "skinny Chinese boy" look, although he's not as skinny as many o his Chinese peers. Maybe he eats more or something. He also has that stereotypical "pale Computer Science major" look. He has multiple piercings: three in his right ear and two on his left. He went through a hair phase at one point, so his hair was blue a lot, with that mussed, just-got-out-of-bed look achieved from product. His usual attire is jeans and a t-shirt.
Family Steven Chin (father), Rebecca Chin (mother), Alicia Chin (sister)
Likes Computers, math, black, dinosaurs, pizza, alt. rock, sci-fi, coffee, soda
Dislikes English, beef jerky, Barenaked Ladies, telemarketers, religion, homophobes



Bio:

There are two versions of Alex. There's the one named Keiji, and there's the one named Alex.

Alex is the current version. He grew up in Fremont, in a predominantly Asian neighborhood, and had a relatively normal childhood until he outed himself in high school, when he went through some rocky times. He got through them all right, got good grades, and applied to several out of state universities as well as Californian ones. However, his parents desired that he stay in the area, and Alex eventually acquiesced to their wishes. He chose to attend UC Berkeley, a very prestigious university, albeit extremely competitive. Rather than commute from home--which was very possible--he opted to live on campus, to at least have the illusion of being on his own.

There is no particular reason that Alex and Jesse should have met and become close. They had different majors and different circles of friends. Alex hung out with several of the LGBTQ crowd and some of the CompSci crowd, while Jesse ran with the humanities people. They lived on the same floor--just a few doors down from each other, as a matter of fact--but that, too, is no indication that people will necessarily become close. It was more chance, than anything else, that Alex needed help on an essay, and Jesse offered to help him.

UC Berkeley students aren't guaranteed housing after their freshman years, and so Alex moved off-campus into an apartment on Shattuck Avenue. Jesse entered room draw and moved into a co-op. They should have drifted apart, but Alex took the first step into changing their relationship from friends to lovers.

However, Alex wasn't satisfied in the Bay Area. He felt stifled. Though the Bay offered more job opportunities for a computer science major, he felt the itch to get farther away, where no one knew him or had any expectations of him. After graduation, he moved to New York and effectively dropped off the face of the planet. He didn't contact Jesse, his sister, or his parents.

When Alex resurfaced some years later, he was deeply unhappy. He was unable to forge any close relationships after Jesse. When he returned to California in an attempt to re-establish ties, he found Jesse happy and engaged to a beautiful woman. He became even more of a wreck after the visit and, during an anonymous encounter with a man he picked up from a bar, actually had something of a breakdown.

Fortunately, the anonymous stranger was Joseph Schlosser, who was kind enough to stay the night and pick up the pieces. Oddly enough, he and Alex actually developed a relationship from this first, rather messy encounter. He's patient, funny, and understanding, and Alex is learning how to be happy again.


History of the character:

Alex's first incarnation was. . . oh, many years ago, when I was in middle school. He was embarrassingly effeminate; I was very into anime at the time, and it showed on almost all of my writing. As I--and my writing--matured, he became a much more realistic character, and it became my goal to write the most realistic gay Asian male I could. This is something of a challenge, since I'm a gay woman.

The first incarnation of Alex was named Keiji--Keiji Yu-jin Amano, to use his full name. He was half Chinese and half Japanese and had something of a melodramatic past involving a mother who was disowned by her family for marrying a Japanese man, etc. Really, his racial heritage was pointless, something I developed to challenge him unnecessarily. I eventually stripped this, deciding that being gay was challenge enough for him. Besides, I myself am not biracial, and it felt unfair to all the biracial people in the world to write something for which I had no personal connection.

Keiji was also, originally, from Southern California, from one of the suburban Chinatowns. You'll note that his current incarnation hails from the Bay Area. There were several reasons for changing his locale. The first is that I'm actually not as familiar with my hometown as I'd like, mainly because I don't have a car and it's hard to get around there without one. The second is related to the first, and it was that I really didn't think Keiji--well, Alex at this point--knew how to drive, or at least didn't own a car. So I just transplanted him, so that at least there was viable public transit he could use to get around.


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