Interests

► Social media and fandom spaces (Twitter, Tumblr, Deviantart, Forums)
► Anime (favourite genre is magical girl)
► Hacking
► Information gathering, research
► Science, technology
► People watching

Personality

On first observation, ‘shy’ would be what immediately comes to mind to describe Aislin. She has serious issues handling her social anxiety, to the point where she legitimately cannot speak up around others. Because of this, she prefers to communicate using the text-to-speech function on her phone, leading many people to believe she’s actually mute. This, in turn, makes Aislin feel guilty for tricking people into thinking she has a more serious condition, and thus even more afraid of facing the consequences by speaking in front of others. It’s a vicious cycle, but simply pretending to be incapable of speech is easier for Aislin than confronting her own anxieties, so she cannot stop doing it. Her anxiety also causes her to constantly compare herself to others as a means to ‘justify’ her inability to communicate with them. Other people are much smarter, much prettier, and much more confident that they wouldn’t tolerate someone like her ruining their day with her presence. She tends to be more intimidated by other women compared to men, as she feels like she’s not as interesting or as attractive as those of the same gender.

The only time Aislin does feel comfortable ‘speaking’ out loud is through online outlets. She’s an avid user of social media, and considers herself to be a member of multiple anime fandoms. Thanks to the guise of pseudo-anonymity the internet provides, she’s comfortable expressing all the opinions she has about anime and the magical girl genre, often racking up around a hundred tweets in a day. She has little to no friends online, but sees her mutuals and even those she follows who don’t follow her back to be people she would befriend if she wasn’t so anxious about actually talking to people. Aislin also follows quite a few online celebrities and popular people in fandom, who she doesn’t interact with but likes to imagine herself bumping into on the street and then becoming their friend. She’s aware of the concept of parasocial relationships and tries not to get too attached, but falls victim to the pretty faces and friendly personas very easily.

Despite her anxiety and tendency to compare herself to others, she still desires any sort of companionship and thus tries to not create too much distance between herself and those she likes. She’s incredibly observant, and is very good at remembering tiny details about other people that may go unnoticed. She’s quite empathetic, and will do her best to lend a helping hand to someone in need even if she’s intimidated by them. She’ll even go as far as using her psiionics to keep an eye on someone without their knowledge, though she often feels guilty about invading their privacy. She likes to buy or make thoughtful gifts for others to show her affection, as well as offering to do things for them they might not enjoy, such as helping with chores around the hive. She’s very grateful that actions speak louder than words.

Aislin is also a hopeless romantic at heart. She develops crushes on people very easily, and if a stranger happens to catch her eye she might end up daydreaming about what kind of life they’d have together if she had the courage to talk to them. At the same time, she gets incredibly flustered over the thought of romance, as is embarrassed by her own fantasies. The idea of holding hands with someone she loves is too much for her, and believes there’s no way anyone would want to do anything romantic with her. When she is interested in someone romantically, she prefers to observe them from a distance and imagine what dating them would be like.

While her psiionics are something that she relies on and she doesn’t outright hate them, she has quite a few hang-ups over how others perceive her because of them. She knows that her surveillance powers are creepy and weird, and believes that those who don’t already know of her powers would be disgusted by her because of what she’s capable of doing. When it comes to those who already know what her psiionics are, she fears that she’ll only be seen as a tool and not as her own person. Those who aren’t made uncomfortable by her abilities find their potential to be useful solely for their own agendas, and she was recruited to her current job primarily as an asset to be utilised. She often wishes that she was hatched with different powers so that people won’t just be interested in her because of what her psiionics can do for them, but at the same time knows she’s nothing special without them. She’s uncomfortable with attention being drawn to herself, but equally as fearful that she’s just as bland and weird as she perceives herself to be.

Psiionics

Aislin’s psiionic power is a variant of technopathy, focusing entirely on Technopathic Surveillance. Aislin is capable of tapping into any surveillance camera within her immediate area, and then seeing through the lens as if it were her own eyes. While her psiionics are active, her other senses dull dramatically almost to the point of non-functionality: She cannot simultaneously see through the camera and her current surroundings, and her awareness of her immediate environment is diminished, making it unsafe for her to use her psiionics in public. She also cannot tap into any camera but the one that is currently closest to her, and instead has to ‘jump’ from camera to camera in order to reach her intended destination. Aislin is capable of blinking while her psiionics are active, at the cost of missing small segments of the scene she is currently watching. She’ll record feeds of the security cameras as a backup. If a camera is turned off or destroyed while she is looking through it, her psiionics will forcibly disconnect, causing headaches and potential eye injuries depending on the severity of the disconnection.

Her psiionics are capable of developing further, in particular extending her reach into being able to watch through any device with a functioning camera such as a webcam or a mobile phone. She is capable of using her psiionics on ordinary handheld cameras, but tends to avoid those as it is less relevant to her job and she considers it a breach of privacy she’s not comfortable with. Her psiionics are also highly sought after by the Fleet, and with the right augmentations she could be turned into the perfect organic surveillance system for the empire, just like her ancestor, The Panopticon.

Backstory

Aislin’s childhood was quite uneventful. Hatching into the orange caste placed her towards the bottom of the hemospectrum, but that wasn’t something that bothered her too much. She could get by fine, and had little aspirations for any sort of illustrious career or anything that would cause her caste to be a hindrance. Like many other trolls living in Block 136’s lowblood district, she was provided with a small apartment that she’d spent most of her time in. She never intended to be that much of a shut-in, but even as a child other trolls just… Intimidated her. Being in the presence of others made her feel overly-conscious over just how plain she was; she couldn’t help but feel like she was being scrutinised over every misstep she’d make in her attempts to be social, and the gaze of others always felt judgmental. It didn’t take long for her fears to develop into severe social anxiety, to the point where even talking to others felt impossible. At some point, she stopped speaking around others entirely.

What also developed rather early in her childhood was her psiionics. She can’t recall exactly how or when she realised their existence, it just seemed to come naturally to her that she could tap into the security cameras around the city. This ability both fascinated and terrified her: She could see the world outside her apartment without having to interact with it directly, but what if other trolls found out she could watch them without them knowing? It was a horrible invasion of privacy so she tried to avoid using it, but sometimes she just couldn’t resist. There were other trolls out there far more braver than her, and she could peek into their lives and learn what makes them so confident. Even as she eventually started gaining the courage to occasionally leave her hive, she found herself falling back on her powers as a way to safely experience the world.

As she got older, she found herself relying more on the internet as both entertainment and a primary means to interact with others. She discovered anime and manga, and became more involved with social media communities related to the shows she enjoyed. Talking to people online felt much more comfortable as she could hide behind a username and a cute icon, but while she had mutual followers and people whose comments she might reply to, the idea of making friends still felt scary. What if they met offline and she wasn’t what that person expected her to be? But soon, her worries started to ease when she began talking to a user named xx_SoullessChaos_xx. He was brooding yet charming and kind towards her, a tortured soul with a heart of gold. Perhaps the fact that he sounded exactly like some of the anti-hero love interests in some of the anime she loved should have been a red flag, but she was completely smitten. They’d talk for hours, and Aislin would talk about her life and xx_SoullessChaos_xx would occasionally impart small details about his. His real name was Varali Kaitou, he also lived in Block 136, and his favourite anime were Death Note and Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Perigees passed, and finally he asked her if she would like to meet him at a local cafe. She was somewhat cautious, but felt like she could trust him as it sounded like he had a genuine interest in her as a person.

… When she arrived at the cafe, however, she was devastated to discover that this “Varali Kaitou” did not exist at all, and the troll she’d fallen for was an informant named Dismas Teufel. He had learned of a troll with Technopathic Surveillance psiionics who lived nearby, and had spent all this time trying to gain her trust so that he could recruit her on behalf of the local Legislacerator’s Office. Aislin didn’t know how to react; she felt mostly betrayed, but was also afraid because she’d been dealing with a legitimate dangerous troll. If she refused him, she didn’t know what could happen to her: She had no other friends, so no one would notice if she just disappeared one night. At that point, she knew that her insistence on avoiding interactions with others and trying to stay out of sight was a mistake, and that while it was built entirely on a lie, the troll sitting opposite her was her only friend. She begrudgingly accepted the offer.

Aislin has worked as a Surveillance Officer at the Legislacerator’s Office for around about a sweep and a half now. It’s a position that she can’t help but resent, not only because of the circumstances that caused her to gain the job but because it represents everything she hates about her psiionics. However, she acknowledges how fortunate it is that she has a job like this, opportunities of a similar caliber are very rare for lowbloods. While she’s still quite intimidated by her co-workers, they do treat her decently and at times she feels like she’s more than just what her powers can do for them. Her friendship with Dismas has also improved over time, and it seems his fake identity used to recruit her may have had some genuine feelings behind it. She knows that one day she’ll have to disappoint everyone by revealing she’s been lying about being unable to talk, and that she’ll inevitably get scooped up by the Fleet for her psiionics. But for now, she feels content.

Trivia

Appearance

► Her voiceclaim is Emi from Jaltoid.
► She has an English accent, specifically a South London one.
► Her glasses are only reading glasses, but she wears them all the time because she thinks they're cute.
► She typically stands pigeon-toed.
► She likes both 'kawaii' fashion and outfits similar to the gothic lolita style, but she's too self-conscious to wear those sorts of outfits in public. She's bought a couple outfits that she still has yet to wear.
► She always wears bike shorts under her skirt, or skirts that have shorts sewn into them.

Habits

► Due to her social anxiety making it difficult to talk to others, she'll usually type messages on her phone and show them to people, or use the text-to-speech function.
► She tries to work overtime and assists with her colleagues jobs in hope that they'll see her as someone other than a tool for catching criminals.
► She has a very good memory, and is good at remembering tiny and insignificant facts about other people.
► She tries to not use her psiionics for seedy purposes, but when someone catches her eye she can't help but get curious as to what they do in their daily life.

Hobbies and Favourite Things

► She's incredibly active on social media, particularly on Twitter and anime-related messageboards. She can make up to 100 tweets a day, usually about her liveblogging a show she's watching.
► She'll watch most anime that comes out every season, but tend to drop them after a couple episodes and only watches the ones she's really invested in.
► Her favourite animes are the Pretty Cure franchise and Sailor Moon.
► She has very strong opinions on anime, and has gotten into many online arguments over magical girl shows. She's a firm believer that Madoka Magica ruined the genre by introducing overly-dark themes that now every show after it tries to copy, despite earlier shows managing to have dark storylines without resorting to mindless suffering. Don't talk to her about Madoka.
► She frequently saves up money to buy tickets to anime conventions, but gets too anxious to attend and ends up watching them through the security cameras instead.
► She's also interested in cosplaying, but like all her other hobbies, is too self-conscious to do it in public. Her dream is to do a couple cosplay with someone.
► She loves researching random topics that catch her interests, and has pulled many all-nighters reading random wikipedia articles. Her favourite topics are science and technology-related, but she'll read anything and everything.
► She dabbles in hacking during her spare time, and has become the unofficial IT Guy for the office.
► She's recently gotten interested in baking, though she hasn't tried anything more complex than sugar cookies. She's been getting really good at decorating them.

Residency

► She lives on the bottom floor of a small hivestem in Block 136's lowblood district. Unlike the towering apartment buildings around the rest of the city, her hivestem is only a couple stories tall.
► She isn't that big on interior design, but she does occasionally buy cute kitchen utensils and decorations. She has a growing collection of pastel pillows and cute plushes taking over the lounge area and her room.
► Most of her anime merch is contained to her room, with the exception of her DVDs and a stray figurine or two in the lounge.

... And Everything Else

► She's allergic to flower pollen.