"Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well."
So, to keep themselves busy after school, the twins spent all of their time at the locally funded community center. There, they had unlimited access to recreational classes, sports, and friends without having to worry about spending money. As long as they had their shared bike, weather permitted, and the place was open, they had an outlet for the stresses of their home life.
While Ming gravitated toward music, Yue always found herself in the visual art classes. If she wasn't drawing, she was painting and if she wasn't painting, she was learning a new sculpture technique. The hours logged in the old building planted the seed that would eventually grow into dreams of being a professional artist. However, her life was turned upside down on the inevitible day that her mother died. The twins were just 12 when their father decided, after months of poorly handling his wife's death, that the family would be moving and finding a new life in America.
By her senior year of high school, she had one game that she played religiously just for the chance to talk to a friend she'd made. Over the prior couple of years, they'd become someone really dear to her and the friendship became something more. It became enough that, during uni discussions, she readily agreed to go to their top school together: University of South Korea, Busan.
Things were great for a while—at least a whole semester—but being with someone in person is way different from being together online. They eventually broke up, but Steph was already quite settled into her life in Busan and she decided to stay and finish out her degree in visual art. By the time that she graduated, she was extremely settled in and hasn't made any plans to leave outside of the rare vacation or yearly visits to see her dad in California; especially now that her brother has moved into the area.
Two years post-grad, she makes a living and makes rent with work as a freelance makeup artist and streamer—the latter being a trade she picked up during her time as a student to make some extra cash. During Twitch streams, she'll do different things depending on the day or her mood: grwm chats, mukbangs, gaming, or even just chatting/studyhall streams where she works on an art piece and invites others to work on their own assignments or projects. In order to separate her brands, she uses AfreecaTV for more adult-focused content. It's never anything M-rated, but everyone knows dance streamers are more for the sexualized male gaze than anything. She likes to sum it all up to being a friend on Twitch and being a girlfriend on Afreeca.
To put it at its simplest, Steph is an aquired taste. She's pretty, friendly, and able to make friends with just about anybody she meets. But, she's also the type to go on lengthy tangents about the gruesome history of a "cursed" movie set where every movie shot there has at least one cast/crew death. She has a pet snake named Ashmute, a huge dobie named Poly Styrene, and she will not hesitate to house an injured bird/insect/etc. long enough to rehabilitate and release it. She once raised a hurt praying mantis in her dorm and later went out to find another one so it could mate. Then, she ended up with hundreds of styrafoam cups each housing a little mantis baby. (Her roommate hated it until she started using the mantis she kept to catch other unwanted bugs.) Steph can be impulsive and doesn't stress much about anything. Every single aspect of her life is lived in the sole interest and pursuit of happiness and enjoying the moment.
- Malmyeong Horror Collective, met weekly to just hang out and watch a horror movie of choice | vice president during her junior & senior year
- USKB Happy Trees, met weekly to just create and share art without worrying about critiques and grades | co-founder and treasurer
- to have her own art exhibition in a notable gallery
- to do special effects makeup for a horror movie/show