Zander Lin

[Fenrir]

Name: Zander Lin
Gender: Male
Age: 17
Place of Residence: Singapore, Republic of Singapore
Language/s: Mandarin/English
Hobbies and Interests: Socialising, piano, collecting watches

Appearance: At 5’ 6” Zander is slightly shorter than the male average and has a slim build, with narrow shoulders and a thin waist. A lack of exercise means there is little muscle on his frame, but he does maintain a healthy diet allowing him to stay thin. He is of mixed Chinese and Malay descent, with his mother’s darker skin tone but with features more resembling his father.

Zander has black hair which is cut down to a high fade on both sides of his head and left longer on top; depending on how much effort he wants to put in he will either keep his hair gelled back on top, or just comb it back. His eyes are a dark brown under thin and straight eyebrows that he keeps trimmed. He has a narrow face ending in a round chin, his nose is long and his mouth is wider; overall his features are softer than he would like, as he feels his face makes him look younger than he is and less manly than he wants to be.

When it comes to fashion Zander tends to favour monochromatic colours and understated clothing, with an eye towards quality and expensive brands. He favours a smart-casual style of pressed button-up shirts and slacks, even in his down time, with sneakers and sports jackets; always of a recognisable and respectable brand. He doesn’t wear a lot of jewellery but he will usually have a thin chain around his neck, often gold but sometimes silver, as well as a watch, of which he has a small collection.

At the time of his abduction Zander was wearing black slacks with a white, long-sleeved button-up shirt and black Adidas sneakers. He was wearing a gold chain and a Rolex Submariner watch.

Biography: Zander is the only son of Jian Lin, a wealthy business owner, and his wife Masayu; they live in the city of Singapore with Jian being one of the cities many millionaires. Originally from China, Jian moved to Singapore as a teenager during the eighties when Zander’s grandfather decided to take advantage of the country’s growing economy and its support for business entrepreneurship; though already quite wealthy at the time, Zander’s grandfather founded a small tech company which grew rapidly alongside the country’s booming economy during this period.

Masayu, on the other hand, is a natural born Singaporean of Malay descent. When she first met Zander’s father she was working at one of the many nightclubs that inhabit the city at the time; Jian would visit the club frequently and the two entertained a fling with each other for several months, but were never serious about turning it into a more romantic relationship. It was not until Masayu became pregnant with Jian’s child that the two began to discuss anything further. Although Masayu initially objected to the idea of marrying and becoming a mother so young, she eventually agreed to stay with Jian and give birth to his son.

Their marriage was one that was mutually beneficial, but it was not one of love; Jian wanted a child, preferably a son, who would one day take over his the family business as Jian had recently done, while Masayu was more interested in Jian’s money and social status than the man himself. Both were aware of this and both were happy with the arrangement.

As a young child Zander did not often get to spend much time with his parents; Jian was regularly busy with work, the type to leave home early and arrive back late if he came home at all, while Masayu was simply a woman who was never interested in raising a child. Instead Zander was raised by a string of nannies and caretakers hired by his father, while Jian continued to run the tech company that Zander would one day inherit and his mother more or less went back to what it had been before her marriage; nightclubs, shopping and nights out with her friends. Even after having a child the biggest change in her life was that she was richer.

Money was the one thing that they always seemed to have in abundance. While the company Jian had inherited was already quite successful it continued to grow considerably under his leadership and Zander’s life was always a lavish one. Though lacking in affection or parental guidance, he never wanted for anything material; clothing, toys, games and so on were all easily purchased either with his allowance or simply by asking for it.

Perhaps the only area of Zander’s upbringing in which either of his parents showed any interest was education. It was vitally important to Jian that his son received a good education and exceled academically so that he would be prepared to take over the family business as planned. As such he made sure that Zander was provided the best education that money could buy and he was home schooled and provided with private tutors until the age of six, at which point he began to attend a private school.

Jian paid close attention in order to ensure Zander was doing his best with the resources provided to him, often checking in with his tutors to make sure he was performing up to an expected standard. So long as he seemed to be doing well Jian was content to leave his son be, but if Zander’s performance did not meet his father’s nebulous requirements or if the man felt that Zander was not taking his education seriously Jian would readily discipline him. Usually this would mean taking away possessions, cutting off Zander’s allowance but could also, at time, be discipline through more physical means.

Frustratingly, Zander found that his father was often not very forthcoming in how he was under performing; only that he was. Even when his tutor said he was doing well Jian would sometimes still punish him and Zander often felt that he was being penalised due to his father’s whims rather than anything that was his fault. Nonetheless, this treatment did ensure that Zander always took his studies seriously and the result was that his academic performance was always exceptional for his age, even if it did nothing to endear him towards the man.

In all other areas it Zander was given almost unlimited freedom; so long as it didn’t affect his lessons or his tutors’ reports the usually stern man would seemingly turn a blind eye to anything that Zander did. His mother on the other hand was affectionate but distant, deferring all responsibility to the hired help even in matters of discipline. There would rarely, therefore, be any consequences for anything Zander did outside of the view of his tutors, something that he was quick to realise and even quicker to take advantage of. It was not long before Zander was taking his frustrations caused by his father’s stifling expectations of him out in other ways and it was often his nannies and caretakers were the ones to bear the brunt of the resultant behaviour.

Tantrums, fits of anger, yelling at or even striking those who were hired to take care of him; Zander found such acts cathartic and enjoyable. Even more so because he knew there would be no repercussions for it, no lasting ones anyway as any time his behaviour was brought up to his father or mother it would either be dismissed and ignored or even blamed on his caretakers for not being able to keep him in check. It gave Zander a sense of power and control where he otherwise had none and it only grew worse over time.

The nannies and caretakers employed by his father were often not employed for very long.

By the time Zander began to attend private school he was academically talented, but emotionally and socially stunted. Going to school was the first time he had ever interacted with people his own age and he had trouble adjusting to the new environment to say the least; though Zander endeavoured not to disrupted lessons, as he would with his tutors, he still operated under the notion that anything outside of that would be accepted only to find this was not the case. His problematic behaviour, which had gone unchallenged for so long, was now being confronted. Tantrums, fights with other students and even occasions of theft and vandalism of others’ property were harshly punished and it was a jarring experience for Zander to have one of his main outlets taken away from him.

His behaviour was bad enough that he was given continual detentions and was even given a suspension within his first two months. The school contacted his father but the man initially took the position that it was the duty of the teachers to correct Zander’s behavioural problem and not his own; his only concern was with Zander’s grades and so far he had proven himself to be near the top of his age group in that area. It was only once the threat of expulsion was brought up that Jian saw fit to discipline his son and warn him against future trouble.

More than the staff however, Zander had even more trouble dealing with his fellow students. They, like his teachers, were neither as accepting nor as powerless against his actions as his nannies had been and Zander soon found himself confronted by people who were able to fight back, both physically and socially. Though he had always been alone in the sense that he had never spent time with people his own age, Zander soon learned that being ostracised was a different experience to just being on his own. This experience, along with the threat of further discipline from his father, was enough convince Zander to behave while at school.

It did not take Zander long to realise that he did not enjoy being unpopular or having people ignore him; he would watch his classmates and see the way they interacted, would make note of the fact that some were more respected than others, that some would be listened to more readily or be sought out more. They were popular and he wanted the same for himself but had little idea of how to achieve it. His initial attempts at bridging the gap between him and his classmates were blunt and forceful, as that was the only way he knew how to get things; they were unsuccessful and probably did more harm than good. He tried a more diplomatic approach next, clumsily, but even then found that many would not even let him speak to them before pushing him away; his past actions having poisoned the well.

Through all of this Zander maintained his high grades, his academic performance a step above most of his peers. It was this fact that bought him his first breakthrough, when one of his classmates asked for his help preparing for an upcoming test after seeing the score on a piece of Zander’s homework left on his desk; Zander initially denied this request but the other student persisted, eventually offering to do a favour in return when Zander kept turning him down. Once Zander realised that this could potentially be leveraged to make friends he agreed to tutor his classmate.

Tutoring his classmate meant spending time with them, which allowed him to slowly get to know them and become acquainted; this classmate then told their other classmates that Zander would tutor them if asked, while also helping to spread the idea that he wasn’t as bad as they thought. Through this Zander was gradually able to make friends with some of his peers, even spending time with them outside of tutoring them. These friends tended to be those students who were not a part of the popular groups he had observed, they tended to be the troublemakers and the class clowns; he was still disliked by most of the rest of his class, but he had gathered a small social circle of his own.

The experience was educational for Zander and taught him several key lessons that influenced how he would approach social situations in the future. The main conclusion he drew it was that friendships are transactional in nature and that you must have something to offer if you are going to make friends; that didn’t have to mean money, even though he certainly had an easier time getting people to spend time with him when he was willing to buy them lunch, but everyone needed some kind of commodity to make it worth spending time with them. For him his commodity was tutoring, for others it was their personality or their connections to other people. Popularity was something that could be bought, same as anything else, you just needed to be able to offer something someone else wanted. Once he framed things in that way, social situations began to make a lot more sense.

Not all of these thoughts were fully developed at the age of seven, but their basis was born from this early experience.

At the age of nine Zander took a number of tests that would determine whether or not he was accepted into the Gifted Education Programme; the tests were designed to identify the top one per cent of the student population so that they could enter the programme aimed at developing gifted children to their top potential. Jian had been hoping that Zander would be accepted, but unfortunately his test results were not quite good enough and he continued his education in the private school he had been enrolled in, to his father’s displeasure.

At the end of his primary education, based on the results of his PSLE (Primary School Leaving Examination), he was placed into the SAP (Special Assistance Plan) for secondary schooling; this was due both to his high test results and his skill at speaking both English and Mandarin. None of his friends were able to achieve the same kind of results, leaving Zander to enter secondary school by himself. Zander was not overly bothered by this, instead seeing it as a chance for a fresh start where he could see how popular he could become without the hindrance of a bad first impression slowing him down.

As was the case in primary school Zander was one of the smartest people in his age group, but the gap between him and the bottom of the class was no longer as wide as it had been; the students surrounding him had also been accepted into the SAP after all and the school had systems in place to help those who needed it, so the commodity of tutoring was not worth as much as it once was. What he did still have though was money, an abundance of it; that money, when tactfully flaunted, both impressed and made people curious in a way that attracted them to his side. Once that happened it was relatively simple for Zander to make friends with those who were drawn to him; some genuinely liked him, while others only stayed with him because of his occasional generosity. Zander was fine with either, being more interested in the quantity of friends he could make rather than the quality of them.

Upon entering secondary education it was necessary for Zander to select a co-curricular activity; though taking on an extra-curricular was merely encouraged in primary school, it was mandatory for all students his age to take part in one. None of the clubs offered by his school interested him but his father, though not outright stating a preference, clearly favoured the idea of Zander taking part in some kind of sport; this was good enough reason for Zander to avoid those options entirely. Eventually Zander decided to join his school’s piano ensemble, despite not knowing how to play or having any interest in learning, because he knew that while his father would be disappointed he also knew that he wouldn’t object to the choice so long as it was respectable in the man’s eyes; it was a small and mostly pointless act of rebellion, but it pleased Zander to do it.

However, learning to play turned out to be harder than Zander expected. Memorising the sheet music and position of each key was fairly simple for him, but he lacked the hand-eye coordination and dexterity of the other members of the ensemble; nor did he have the same experience as those who had been playing for years. He was able to pick up the beginner pieces he was told to practice fairly quickly but was frustrated by the fact that others were better than him, playing pieces he struggled and stumbled over, even though they had a head-start and no one expected him to match them.

Being so thoroughly outperformed at something vexed him and Zander ended up dedicating himself to learning to play more than he had planned to. He enjoyed very little of it at the time, but he continued until was able to improve enough to meet his own standards.

On his fourteenth birthday, Zander’s father gifted him a watch. It was an expensive present, but as Zander was often able to afford whatever he wanted with his allowance anyway, things like birthday presents rarely meant much to him; especially if they came from his father. Something about the watch was different however, there was a weight to it and a solemnness in the way it was presented to him; it felt significant for some reason and after a while Zander realised it was because it was the first gift his father gave him that felt like it was meant for an adult. He felt prouder of that fact that he was comfortable with. It was also a very nice watch. Since then Zander has bought several more watches, creating a small collection to go with his first.

After a couple of years Zander was a well-known element within his secondary school, for mostly the wrong reasons; he was a top student and his disciplinary record was cleaner than most, but at the same time he chose to hang out with the more delinquent parts of the student body. Zander was the clear ringleader of this group and though he rarely got into trouble himself, his friends did and they often got into trouble in ways that benefitted him. It was common knowledge among the other students, though never in a way that was provable, they people who got on Zander’s bad side for one reason or another, tended to be on the receiving end of said trouble.

Outside of school, Zander would often take groups of friends to places to hang out or out to restaurants and would pay for the whole thing himself; cinemas, karaoke bars, bowling, etc. Even nightclubs, when they were in their last year of secondary school; the kind of places that didn’t mind letting underage people in if paid enough, though they could never be convinced to serve them alcohol. The friends that surrounded Zander as this point were mostly sycophants and hangers-on and these gatherings were his way of maintaining his connection to them; he knew that if his money, his father’s money, ever dried up he would lose most of his ‘friends’ as a result.

In a way Zander preferred such a state of affairs; he was aware that the people around him were only using him, but he was using them in turn. Even if his friends were only his friends so long as he kept the money flowing that was fine, because he didn’t foresee running out of funds any time soon; with the amount his father allowed him even the cost of keeping so many people around left Zander enough money for himself. The dynamic of his social group was one based on power, with himself on top so long as he kept up his side of things; frankly, he put more faith in that than in something as fickle as friendship.

So long as Zander didn’t delude himself into thinking any of the people around him felt any real loyalty towards him, he would be fine. It wasn’t dissimilar to the relationship that led to his parents getting married, after all; a marriage that had lasted at least as long as he was alive and was still going. It also allowed him to revert back to some of the old behaviours that he had had as a child, the wilful disregard for the feelings of anyone not himself, now that he didn’t need people to like him to be friends with him.

Upon graduating from secondary school, Zander applied to and was accepted to the Millennium Institute based on his ‘O’ level exam results; it was the only pre-university centre in Singapore that offered advanced level exams in commerce, meaning it was the only one Zander was allowed to apply for. He has been attending for a year, studying management of business with the intention of studying the same at university before getting a job at his father’s company and, years from now, taking over.

As was the case with his transition from primary to secondary school, very few of his friends made it into post-secondary education or even chose to apply; of those that did, only two attend the Millennium Institute with Zander. However, aside from making it harder for them all to meet up together some times, this has had little effect on their group and Zander still sees his friends outside of school regularly.

His relationship with his father was also little changed by his graduation. There was no celebration, no congratulations given for passing his exams, not when Zander has only done as had been expected of him. The only difference was that now when Jian spoke of Zander joining his company, always ‘when’ and never ‘if’, it had the tone of something soon to happen rather than being some distant goal. His mother did congratulate him, as she always did, with an air of impersonality; vague wording like she wasn’t even sure what she was congratulating him on.

To his own surprise Zander continues to play the piano on occasion, even though he left the ensemble behind upon leaving secondary school and no longer has an obligation to continue. He doesn’t practice as much as he used to, but from time to time he will be drawn to the instrument and will play a few pieces just for the sake of it; this usually happens when he is in a bad mood as the act of doing something that he is good at, which can be done correctly, helps him get over whatever it bothering him.

Advantages: Zander is an intelligent individual, both academically and also when it comes to people; if need be he can turn that intelligence in a number of directions, including aiming it towards his fellow abductees. He is also capable of being cruel if need be and has little regard for others; such a lack of empathy could be useful depending on the approach he chooses.
Disadvantages: It is unlikely that Zander will make long term allies with his fellow abductees; his usual methods of making friends will not serve him well here and he is arrogant and unlikeable enough that many will not want to ally with him. Even if they did, his need to be in control and his tendency to butt heads with others will tear any alliance apart in time.

[Cicadan]

Nice profile, Fenrir. Just a few minor fixes to be made:

[+] edits

Jian was regularly busy with work, the to leave home early

I'll admit I'm not sure what word should be there but that's not it.

Jian had wanted a child for only one reason and that was so that he had someone to pass his business on to when he retired

Redundant clause, this was mentioned recently enough in the profile that I don't think it warrants repeating more or less exactly what was already said.

often checking in which his tutors

with

though he certainly had an easier time getting people to spent time with him

spend

One thing I'd like to see a bit more of is how his relationships changed, if at all, upon entering post-secondary school. I'm well aware it's possible they didn't change much, since Zander is still of a similarly young age to his secondary school years and there wouldn't be much physical distance involved to change his established social sphere, but even if that's the case I'd like to see it in writing. What about his parents' expectations now that he's close to adulthood, so on.

[Fenrir]

Edits done. I've corrected the wording where you highlighted typos and reworded the part where I mentioned the important of his education to his father.

I also added a couple paragraphs around his transition to post-secondary education and how this affected his relationships/how his parents reacted.

[Cicadan]

That's good. Accepted.