A32: ETIENNE MOLYNEUX

#1

Name: Etienne Molyneux
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Hobbies and Interests: Linguistics, video games, ice hockey, drumming, Model United Nations

Appearance: Etienne is a visibly lean, average-looking young man, standing at 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighing 144 pounds. In terms of body mass index, he is teetering on the edge of being underweight. However, he does very little to change his slim physique. His body is skinny with hardly any texture to his muscle tone, presenting a gangling lankiness. Despite moving to California six years ago, his skin colour remains a porcelain shade of pale, which resists tanning in the sun and warm weather. On top of his slim body is a diamond-shaped head, proportionally a little smaller than you would expect given his stature. His jawline is steep and due to his slender appearance, his cheekbones appear defined. His hair, often with very minimum styling, is a dusty golden colour which can sometimes appear strawberry blonde under natural light, and he wears his fluffy hair scraped across his forehead from right to left with a side fringe in the front and an unkempt shaggy flow on the back and sides. His hair covers both ears and rests halfway down the back of his neck. It’s rare that Etienne puts any effort or product toward styling his hair and often doesn’t even use a hairbrush but rather his hands to push his messy fringe to one side. His hair is naturally straight but starts to curl up once it gets to a certain length down the back. This is usually when he would get his hair trimmed but would never get a short haircut. Etienne’s piercing eyes are a fair cornflower blue and often carry an intensity. He wears a classic pair of golden-framed round eyeglasses that rest halfway down his straight nose. Appearing naturally between his sculpted cheekbones and resting above his pointed chin are a thin pair of lips, narrow with a slight plumpness on the bottom lip. His teeth are straight after several years of wearing braces but carry a gentle yellow tint after neglecting to brush daily when he was younger. He has started to grow facial hair; however, it is currently patchy and in awkward growth cycles. As a result, Etienne shaves regularly to maintain a clean-cut facial appearance. In terms of expression, he has a reputation for habitually frowning, rarely seen breaking into a smile unless on his own terms or surrounded by friends. The frown is more a front for his general nonchalance to his surroundings in San Jose rather than out of genuine sadness or negative thoughts.

Coming from a wealthy family, Etienne is rarely seen without wearing a collection of affordable luxury branded clothing, both in real life and in Cyberspace. In contrast to his distaste for consumerism, the irony of him regularly wearing branded clothing is not lost on him, however, it doesn’t prevent him from modelling brand-new clothes on a regular basis. His most frequently worn brands include Ted Baker, Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren Polo, Arturo Denim and La Maison Simons. In addition to this, Etienne takes pride in wearing trendy Canadian brands to exhibit his cultural identity. The biggest adjustment to moving from Montreal to California was the requirement to change his wardrobe, which previously consisted of plenty of sweaters, hooded jackets, and cardigans, to now a greater reliance on short-sleeved shirts, vest tops, t-shirts, and thin crew sweaters. He will still often wear more wintery clothing than most in a desperate bid to prove he isn’t like the rest whilst, in his mind, protecting his signature Canadian style. However, there has been a steady increase in chino shorts and loose-fitting vests joining his wardrobe for real life encounters as he starts to blend into his surroundings.

In Cyberspace, Etienne’s Avatar will primarily always stick to his layered Canadian look rather than adapting to his new Californian wardrobe, as Etienne has no interest in adjusting the appearance of his Avatar. On the day of the attack, Etienne’s Avatar was wearing a plain, khaki All Saints crew t-shirt, with nothing but the brand logo crested over his left breast. Over the top of his shirt, he is wearing his favourite ice hockey crew sweater, rendered with a woollen material that is mostly coloured red. Each sleeve has three thin white-and-blue stripes climbing up the sleeve at evenly spaced intervals. Round his upper torso is a blue stripe that goes the full way round under his armpits and over the back of the sweater, a smaller white stripe directly above and below the blue. Written over the blue stripe in big white capital letters is the word Montreal, alongside the logo of the Montreal Canadiens ice hockey team. The baggy fit of his sweater is paired with wide-leg blue denim jeans, which sculpt down from his tight waist to a looser fitting around his ankles. These are drooped over a pair of light brown loafers. Etienne has no tattoos or piercings, and very little interest in ever getting any type of body customization.

Background: Etienne Charles Molyneux was born to French-Canadian parents Bastien and Juliette Molyneux at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He is an only child and as a result, has always lived a privileged and spoiled life. His father, Bastien Molyneux, grew up in the city of Saint-Rémi, approximately 30 kilometres south of Montreal, and was raised in a close-knit family by local golfing business owner Antoine and his wife Celine, a high school teacher. He was one of four children however, unlike his siblings escaped the suburban bliss as soon as he was old enough. Turning eighteen, Bastien left the family home to study Computer Science and Software Engineering at the prestigious McGill University in Montreal. After graduation, he stayed in Montreal, taking a job within a leading video games company as a design engineer. Due to his intelligence, he was seen as a high-potential employee and quickly progressed up the large corporate ladder before leaving to build his own cybersecurity design tech start-up at the age of thirty. It was shortly after founding his own business that he met Juliette Badeaux, thirty-three, a wealthy realtor native to Montreal. After a whirlwind romance lasting only five months, the pair wedded and built a home for themselves in the affluent Westmount suburb of Montreal. Half a decade later, the pair decided to raise a family and brought Etienne into the world through surrogacy.

Etienne’s early years were uneventful. He was showered with love and praise as the only child of two wealthy parents and steadily strayed into brat territory, with regular temper tantrums that were effective in getting whatever he wanted. He grew up with regular contact with both sets of grandparents, who would also recurringly spoil him, and whilst an only child, the family dynamic felt like one big happy family. Due to the work mainly of his father, coupled with his mother’s recognition of the importance of the English language in Canada, Etienne grew up in a bilingual household, becoming fluent in both French and English from a young age. It was this bilingual characteristic of his childhood that gave him a love of studying linguistics, something that he carried with him as he grew up.

Living in Westmount, known for its tranquillity, affluence, and desirable residential enclaves, meant that Etienne grew up in a big five-bedroom house where space or essentials were never a problem. He was regularly taken outdoors and particularly in the summer months was able to enjoy nature in the countless parks facilitating the local community, learning to ride his bike at a very young age and befriending many other children with ease at play parks and kindergarten. In the winter months, the weather was frosty, but he loved the snow the colder months brought. His family typically stuck to themselves, so as a result Etienne never experienced neighbourly spirit or wider community outreach. He was encouraged into sport at a young age however his passion outside of being an ice hockey spectator, specifically cheering on the family team the Montreal Canadiens, dwindled before his attention was caught by the world of video gaming. Having a father also heavily interested in video gaming laid the foundations for a close relationship between the pair, Bastien was excited that Etienne shared his enthusiasm for video games, and he had somebody to be his player two. This relationship strengthened as Etienne grew up in Canada, and he has always stayed closer to his father than his mother. However, the relationship was later tarnished after the family moved south to the United States.

By the age of seven, Etienne was an avid player of video games such as Mario Kart and Crash Bandicoot and the social prowess he had when he first started school began to diminish behind his newfound introversion. At school he followed in his father’s footsteps when it came to natural-born intelligence, quickly finding himself on the gifted and talented programme and being placed into advanced classes. Additionally, from the start of school, his parents paid for tutors to come to provide additional weekend lessons to make sure he was ahead of his classmates. Whilst good-intentioned, it left a negative effect on Etienne who started to feel overly comfortable which fed a trait of laziness, and occasionally arrogance. He often felt bored in lessons as his own education had already surpassed what was being issued in class. This boredom started to manifest itself as bad behaviour, often found scribbling in his textbooks instead of doing the classwork as instructed. This contrasted the innocence he displayed at home, a natural ability to manipulate the situation to be the shining good boy of the family to disguise any hints of troublemaking. Due to his good grades at school, his teachers often chose to ignore his antics expecting him to grow out of it.

The remainder of Etienne’s years at école primaire passed without consequence. His pattern of disruptive behaviours continued but was masked by being at the top of his class and through his posh, well-spoken demeanour. The family continued to invest a lot of time attending hockey games supporting the Montreal Canadiens, willing their home team on to another Stanley Cup victory. Etienne continued to support the team as he grew older but distanced himself from physical activities outside of physical education lessons in school. He had a growth spurt aged eleven and grew into a tall, gangly frame. From that point onwards, Etienne had always been taller than many of his classmates, not at all built for playing sports. He joined the école primaire chess club and went on to win the end-of-school-year championships twice in a row as he closed out grades five and six. Whilst he enjoyed it at the time, chess was not something that Etienne pursued as he moved into école secondaire at the age of eleven. Moving into secondary school was equally uneventful, with Etienne being extremely capable of traversing the complexities of going back to being the smallest fish in the pond. Naturally, he became friends with the nerdier groups whilst his main friendship group became the students who would hang around the music department during lunch periods. Growing closer to the musicians who would jam during the breaks encouraged him to ask his parents for a drum kit which they happily obliged, a decision they would quickly regret because of the noise Etienne would make whilst playing the drums in his room.

At the age of twelve, Etienne’s school life was still going strong, and he had secured himself a solid group of friends. He continued to play video games and started to settle down behaviourally, however, this was all disrupted once his father was offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to head up a cybersecurity function at a global tech firm. On paper, the job was perfect, however, one of the conditions was a need to relocate from Montreal to Palo Alto, California, as like many tech companies the headquarters were situated in Silicon Valley. The relocation was initially met with a lot of excitement from Etienne. The dream of travelling away from Montreal, seeing more of the world, enjoying warmer weather, the aspirations of the American dream. It all sounded too good to be true, but he was supportive of his father taking his new role. Ultimately, he probably wouldn’t have had much of a say on the move even if he was against it, but having his support meant a lot for his father who wanted to maintain the happy family relationship that the three of them lived. Moving to a large house in San Jose was a painless experience thanks to the relocation support provided by Bastien’s new company, however, it wasn’t long after settling in that Etienne started to regret his earlier keenness. There wasn’t anything outwardly wrong about San Jose or California, but he struggled with the adjustment to a very different lifestyle which he viewed as being fake and plastic.

Etienne’s resentment grew as he matured into his teenage years, distancing himself from his father and generally entertaining a deep-rooted distaste for the tech sector and the growing control and expansion they seemed to be having on the lives of everybody. He feels as if people have stopped living and are instead just resorting to laziness and being an Avatar. As expected, Etienne didn’t react positively to the introduction of Cyber Reality schooling and quickly began to detest school, California, the United States, and every utopian falsity that was sold under the banner of the millennial dream. His father’s successes juxtaposed his own personal feelings, climbing to senior executive level roles with ease and bringing a very large income into the house for the family. Etienne, hypocritically, took advantage of the money they had coming in to provide himself with the best, newest gadgets and gifts, in spite of his edgy, hipster persona and criticism of materialism. These gifts to himself included the latest games consoles, the freshest branded clothing, the must-have accessories, all things he took for granted ahead of the comfort he felt.

His bad behaviour from his earlier years stagnated, instead replaced by a general nonchalance and lack of enthusiasm for most things around him. Etienne took a step backward socially and as a result stopped hanging out with his new friends so much. Instead, he opted to play more video games, keep up with his tutoring sessions, which continued throughout high school even when he personally felt they were unnecessary, and distanced himself from the cool lifestyle of the other well-off kids around him. It wasn’t that he was introverted, as he did feel confident in social situations, he just preferred his own company or the company of close online friends who he felt shared a similar distaste for how people around him lived their lives with the falsehoods that a high wage and a self-important role in a big company brought them.

As a knock-on effect to his feelings about Silicon Valley and the rapidly expanding tech sector, Etienne turned towards bolstering the traditionalism of his French-Canadian upbringing and heritage as an act of rebellion to life in California. Materialistically, this could be seen through a greater trend towards French-Canadian fashion brands, a stronger, more nationalistic view of his childhood and homeland, and an insistence on making his family communicate to him in French. His accent, when speaking in English, had softened in the years he spent in California, a fact Etienne hated with a passion as it represented a loss of identity. Additionally, Etienne began to take a more obsessive interest in French linguistics, reading more French-language literature, consuming French-language media, and communicating in French language on all his social media profiles. More recently, Etienne has not shied away from his plans to relocate back to Montreal to study at McGill University. His passion for linguistics also extended to other languages and a keen interest in keeping up to date with global affairs and international relations. Using mobile apps and online guides, Etienne has started to teach himself other languages including Spanish, Italian, and Mandarin, investing a lot of time in his communication capabilities both written and verbal. This passion has accentuated his desire to become a translator or work abroad supporting cross-language diplomatic affairs, perhaps for the United Nations. Model UN was the highlight of his time at high school and has pushed him in that direction for his future.

Despite this passion, Etienne would consider himself politically homeless and purposefully ignorant to the worsening political situation as the country floats towards more extremist views on both sides of the table. His outlook is that whilst he isn’t happy with the situation, in his current life there is very little he can do to change anything and therefore he can carry a detached apathy towards the madness of the political sphere instead of what he perceives as moral outrage. In terms of his other hobbies and interests, whilst obviously unable to go to games regularly unless returning home to visit extended family, Etienne keeps up with the Montreal Canadiens despite their disappointing recent form. Etienne continues to regularly play video games but prefers more extensive worlds with MMORPG concepts such as Final Fantasy XIV compared to basic shooters like Call of Duty or Fortnite, whilst his drumkit stays in his room collecting dust unless he is in a rebellious mood. Despite this, his interest in music more generally has not subsided and Etienne enjoys listening to a perplexing mix of rock music, and more experimental electronic genres. Somewhere in the middle of that, he’s a big fan of unique female vocals and his current favourite musical artists include Maëlle, Angèle, Clara Luciani, Caroline Polachek, and Faouzia.

Currently, Etienne is just counting down the days to escape from California. He has already been accepted, conditionally, on to a course to study a major at McGill University in linguistics with a minor in as many languages as he can cram into his timetable, as well as a focus on European culture and studies. Ideally, he is planning to study abroad for a year as part of his degree and enjoy the other-worldly experience that comes with that independence. He maintains a strong relationship with both of his parents and shows loyalty to the family name. Even though he would never admit it, he is proud of his father and how much he has gone on to achieve within the large tech corporate world. Whilst sad to potentially be leaving them if his life plans worked out as planned, he is reinforced by their support and validated by their pride in how he presents himself. Etienne identifies as a bisexual, more interested in exploring the beauty of the human body than forming any meaningful sexual or emotional relationships. As a result of a low level of emotional intelligence, Etienne suppresses his own emotions, and as a result he is not a very emotional person. He would find it incredibly uncomfortable to talk about his own emotions and would never be seen upset or crying in public.

Personality: Etienne isn’t a very emotive person, and due to his general disinterest in most things, he struggles to make small talk or keep the conversation flowing, instead usually opting for the awkwardness of silence. His personality is dry, in line with the cool-as-a-cucumber persona he radiates. Etienne is not the most conversational of people, for the most part choosing to be introverted despite deep down having extroverted tendencies. These tendencies do sneak out at parties or social gatherings where he is comfortable and surrounded by like-minded people. He would describe his personality as nonchalant, ensuring he maintains a calm and relaxed composure pretty much all the time, even under duress. Etienne has a short attention span, and quickly tires of conversations with others. He is generally unimpressed with the state of the world, the growing dependence on artificial intelligence and cyber reality, and finds the obsession a lot of young people have with wanting to be famous or live a bohemian lifestyle out of an inflated self-importance painful. Therefore, Etienne tends not to engage with people like that and prefers his own company over building fake relationships.

Etienne is judgemental and is burdened by a stubbornness against ever conceding defeat. Quite simply, Etienne never feels he is in the wrong and would rather talk his way out of a problem, usually by tying his opponent in knots through his quick wit, instead of admitting he was wrong. Etienne’s personality as he has grown older is largely built around being an only child and being spoiled with whatever he ever wanted by his rich family, whilst also having a very high opinion of himself mainly down to his high level of intellect. He can often be dismissive or condescending and hides behind a sarcastic exterior as his first line of defence. Etienne's reactions tend not to be explosive. Instead, he plots his way through life in a calm and calculated manner. He is highly competitive so will continuously strive to be the best and doesn’t like taking no for an answer. Fundamentally, Etienne is a good person and does want the best for those around him, which is partly why he finds parts of modern life and the reliance on technology insufferable. He doesn’t like to rock the boat and carries a conservative outlook.

Reputation: Due to Etienne keeping his emotions largely to himself, to other people he can come across as cold and disinterested. He plays up to a self-portrayed image of being the coolest uncool guy, despite personally not seeking out the approval or attention of others. He stands out due to his height and awkwardness, but Etienne would prefer to fade into the background. If you don’t know Etienne closely then an easy mistake to make is that because of his regular indifference to social situations he is not a nice person and that means sometimes people keep their distance or don’t bother to befriend him. Despite this, those close to Etienne find him a loyal person, somebody you can rely on. If one can tolerate the more unpleasant aspects of his personality, they will find themselves rewarded—both by his quick wit and invitations to enjoy his lavish lifestyle via parties and barbeques. In class, he is more of a wallflower, rarely speaking up or answering questions despite knowing the answers. However, he becomes more social during lunch and free periods. The staff at the school are mostly fond of Etienne, however, there is a recurring theme that they wish he would apply himself better to live up to his potential in the future.

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Designated Number: A32

Designated Weapon: WA-4 — Keyblade
Designated Utility: UA-2 — Gas Mask & Tear Gas Canisters (x4)

Evaluation: "The Keyblade, huh. Well, thanks to his drumming skills and careful study of hockey matches, A32 should have at least some experience in beating things with a stick, so that checks out. Just don't come crying when your victims fight back." — [POLK], Armory Programmer