O09: WANG, MAKARIA [DECEASED]

[Brackie]

Name: Makaria Wang
Gender: Male
Age: 17
Place of Residence: Yishun, Singapore
Language/s: Mandarin, English
Hobbies and Interests: Video games, fandom culture, hobby drama, badminton, psychology, human sexuality, writing

Appearance: At 5’8 and 130 pounds, Makaria has a slightly thin, gangly figure with a bit of a pear shape to his body- his hips are wide compared to his waist and chest, but he doesn't have that much curves to him and in general he's rather lanky. He is in the middle of a growth spurt and his limbs are relatively long, with faint stretch marks on the back of his knees. He is ethnically Congolese on his mother's side and Indian on his father's, and his skin tone is quite dark with a cooler undertone. His hands and feet are calloused, but he has otherwise smooth, unblemished skin with the exception of small scars that absolutely litter and almost cover his shoulders and upper arms from him picking at his pimples when he was younger with implements such as sharp pencils, and then picking at the scars that his habits caused.

His features are relatively sharp with an almost feminine edge, sitting on a diamond-shaped face. He has almond, heavy-lidded light brown eyes underneath thin, sharp eyebrows and a straight, slightly larger than average nose. His cheeks are a bit hollow, and his cheekbones are high and rounded. His mouth and lips are average-sized, and he has a mole under his left eye, its growth being a concern for him. His forehead is a little higher than normal and he is unable to grow any significant facial and body hair, but still shaves his face regularly. Makaria has curly black hair put into tiny box braids that reach his shoulder blades.

Makaria doesn't have any sense of fashion and finds clothes shopping pointless, often sticking to a combination of large shirts and unpatterned pants or shorts. When possible, Makaira always eschews socks and shoes. He dislikes buttons and doesn't wear jeans because he feels as if they are uncomfortable, and absolutely loathes collars and ties in his school uniform, generally detesting any clothes that cover his neck or are tight. Similarly, he doesn't like any metal jewelry, or any jewelry at all in general, but he still wears a good luck charm given from his parents in the form of a red string bracelet with a golden charm of a monkey, his zodiac animal, on his right wrist because he feels like he shouldn't waste his parents' gifts despite his lack of belief in superstition.

When he was abducted, he was coming home from school. He was still wearing the light brown khaki shorts in his uniform, but had changed from a white button-up with a red tie to a loose, oversized white t-shirt. His shoes are white sneakers with discreet red and blue lines around the base, worn over short white socks. He had no accessories except his bracelet and a white hair tie on his right wrist.

Biography: Makaria Wang is the adopted child of Jennifer and Adriel Wang, a pair of ethnically Chinese second-gen immigrants and owners of a small landscaping company who are unable to conceive a child and wanted to adopt a child, especially once that they consider to have suffered from great misfortune. Makaria’s birth mother was an 18 year old grocery store worker and single mom who died in a motorcycle accident when he was very young, and his father was unknown. According to what he knows about his family, his mother was kicked out of his first-generation immigrant family after a dispute, but he doesn’t know much about her and has no memories of this period of his childhood. Jennifer and Adriel were generally accepting and tried their best to make him feel accepted in his family, but despite that he feels as if he doesn’t belong because of both his status as a transracial adopted child and introverted personality, along with his odd name, which was given to him with intentions of sounding good and being unique but ended up getting him teased as a child.

Growing up, Makaria was always a quiet child- he preferred playing by himself instead of interacting with others, and it was something that his parents were slightly concerned by, but in the end they didn’t intervene and try to find him friends because they thought that it’d better to let him be happier alone if that’s what he wanted. Makaria has experienced consistent teasing, if not straight-up bullying, that he never bothered to report, feeling like he shouldn’t ruin other people’s fun and get them in trouble for something that’s so trivial in his eyes, preferring to laugh with them at himself instead. His quietness, willingness to learn, and high grades has gotten him the reputation as a good student in his primary school.

Makaria was a curious child, but preferred to learn about fantasy worlds instead of the real ones. While he liked reading as a child, movies made him uncomfortable because of how real everything looked, a fact that he feels like he shouldn’t be disturbed by but still is. So, he turned to cartoons, and then to video games at around fifth grade primary, when his parents bought him laptop, because of more opportunities for him to interact with characters and fictional environments. His taste in games is a mix of semi-obscure indie games and AAA games that are very mainstream, but he avoids shooters and anything first-person that’s very violent. He also enjoys sandbox and simulation games that give him space to experiment and play around. He enjoys misusing many different kinds of games in a way the developers did not intend, making up his own challenges and rules. Makaria tends to move on from one game to another, putting intense focus on a single game for a period of time, instead of playing them all at the same time. Once in a while, he would upload playthroughs, but they received little to no attention online.

Disliking small talk both in-person and online, he doesn’t contribute to online discussions about games much but does like to write blog posts and essays on existing sites and forums, such as Tumblr, analyzing them and their characters, preferring deeper discussions with random people instead of hanging around the same people. He does consume fan media, particularly fanfiction, but isn’t confident in his ability to write them himself and doesn’t share anything that he does write, even if he spends a lot of time on it. He finds comfort in taking the role of an observer, especially in fandoms that are rife with conflict, and over time has begun to enjoy reading about discourse even though he thinks that he probably shouldn’t use other people’s conflicts as entertainment. In his mind, people fighting online is entertaining in a way that conflicts in shows are, but he tries to maintain neutral and not say anything when he does develop an opinion.

Makaria isn’t exactly sure when he developed an interest in psychology and human sexuality, but he is sure of the fact that his interests are niche and that writing character analysis and playing games that revolve around psychology and characterization played a large part in that. Although he has always had a passive interest before, by the time he entered secondary school he was reading articles for fun. At least partially, his fascination with sexuality stems from his disconnection with his gender and his own conflicted feelings about his own sexuality that arose during the first year of secondary school after he thought he developed a crush on another boy- he struggles to separate romantic, sexual and platonic attraction from each other and frequently gets confused when he experiences any sort of want or need to talk or to get close with someone, an occurrence that is rare. He isn't conflicted with his gender, however, and simply acknowledges that it isn't really a part of his identity at all. He considers himself to be incredibly self aware, but at the same time he has a negative view of himself. He is aware that his gaming has caused him to be less focused on schoolwork and that he couldn’t keep this lifestyle up forever, but that changing himself is incredibly difficult. Makaria isn’t sure what to think of himself, but has come to the conclusion that his lack of social connections and notable achievements is his own fault and that he has a flawed personality. He has a low ego, and considers his knowledge about psychology and his skill at video games to be the only things that he are particularly good at.

Gradually, starting at about the time he entered secondary school, his interest in video games has caused his grades to drop. His drop from a relatively high-achieving student to average isn’t significant, but his parents aren’t sure what to do- when his games are taken away, he would act out, and they have found out that when entertainment is taken away from him and all of his time is spent on study, he actually does worse in school and becomes unable to focus all together. Makaria is unable to focus on his schoolwork for a long time because his natural intelligence has caused him to breeze through his early school years easily, and he hasn’t developed a proper work ethic that helps him study, and he naturally gets distracted easily, slipping into daydreams when he doesn’t have his phone nearby. For a long time, his parents ignored his lack of studying because of his good grades, but by the time he entered secondary 4th grade this wasn't the case anymore.

Even as his grades declined, he didn’t try very hard to improve- not because he didn’t care, but because it was hard for him to try altogether. Most of his improvement from average to slightly-above average is attributed to his parents hiring tutors instead of their threat to limit his time spent on electronics. His grades, in actuality, aren’t bad, but he has unintentionally given high expectations due to being a good student in his younger years and struggles to live up to that. Most of his efforts are bare-minimum, and even though he never protests when his parents sign up for stuff he has found that he doesn’t find joy in many things and that the sense of achievement when he gets a good grade or wins a game isn’t really worth the work. He recently joined a club for robotics, and although he did well he actually thought of it as being incredibly boring.

The only extracurricular his parents signed him up for that he genuinely enjoys is badminton, and even then the happiness has been fading in the last year or so. His parents wanted him to participate in a sport, and enrolled him in classes twice a week when he was 15 after they realized that he wasn't doing well in table tennis and disliked that activity. When he gets exercise or wins a game, the rush of happiness feels incredibly temporary and he dislikes the feeling of exhaustion. Both his badminton classes and robotics clubs involve him being in an environment where he is expected to talk to people. Although Makaria gets by just fine, he finds himself suffering from intense jealousy at those that are perfectly happy having many friends, and the more he interacts with others in order to contribute to any group work, the more negative he feels about himself as he sees other people as having more mentally healthy lives.

Makaria has found that his parents harbor a slight stigma against the mentally ill in the conversation they have and struggles to bring up his own troubles around them. He has found in himself many symptoms of multiple mental illnesses but is terrified of being seen as mentally ill, to the point where he has recently tried to go above and beyond to blend in with others, forcing himself to talk to people occasionally. Making conversation in general is draining to him as he over thinks about almost every word and gets frustrated when his psychological knowledge doesn’t apply in small talk. He doesn’t have anyone that he would consider to be a close friend, and tends to see other people as either obstacles or those that could help or benefit him in some way. He feels very uneasy at his lack of positive emotions when interacting with others and his tendency to reduce others to their benefits and setbacks instead of thinking of them as actual people. However, he is also aware that what he thinks is the lack of empathy may just be the fact that he isn’t very emotionally close to other people and he thinks that he isn’t a very emotional person in general. His parents often try to encourage him to have friends in terms of people helping or benefiting him, which further encourages him to think of people as resources since he doesn’t find any benefit in simply having friends to talk to. His relationship with his own empathy and loneliness is complicated and although he tries hard to figure himself out, he always gives up in the end. Notably, he uses fiction as inspiration for trying to forge real-life connections, trying to replicate how bonds are created in video game systems.

The prospect of having to enter post-secondary education is at first a source of great stress to him, but as the GCE O-level test approaches, he finds that he is worried less and less. If anything, he is more worried at his lack of worry, with both himself and his parents being concerned at him seemingly not caring. Most of his stress related to the test now is related to all the extra study and work that his parents signed him up for. He wants to become a psychologist when he gets older, but has been persuaded by his parents to reconsider due to the lack of good-paying jobs that he will likely get. Because he has trouble deciding what to do, he tends to let his parents choose for him, something that they do appreciate but also causes them to be concerned at his lack of agency.

Advantages: Makaria is very self-aware of his thought process and himself, and even though his self-esteem and perception of his own personality is relatively negative, he is at least perspective and knows a lot about how the mind works. He has good hand-eye coordination and finger dexterity from gaming and badminton, and is relatively intelligent and strategic. In general, he has dulled emotions and what seems like a slight lack in empathy, which could possibly let him hurt other people without much guilt and act logically. Even though he lacks agency, it could theoretically be a good thing because he gets along with others easily and doesn't like causing problems.
Disadvantages: Makaria tends to freeze up in high-stress situations by becoming more laid-back and ignoring what’s causing the problem. He struggles to adjust to new situations, feeling more at ease when following schedules and working at his own pace. When faced with conflict, he gives up easily and avoids escalation by trying to please others instead of fighting back. Makaria suffers from an inability to devote himself to work entirely, and is not very adaptable nor good at motivating himself, tending to accept defeat very easily. He tends to overthink and overanalyze himself and harbors the belief that he is very mentally unhealthy, something that is at least partially correct. When others make decisions for him, he would rather go along rather than protest because of his dislike of conflict. However, he feels uncomfortable talking to people and won't actively seek out allies, making potential alliances a lot rarer.

Designated Number: O09

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Designated Weapon: MAG-7

Conclusion: Too much of a beta to die screaming. - Polar