Hey you guys! I have yet another addition to my already diverse cast of OC Characters. This time, I have created a shy boy with nerdly tendencies named Connor Tran, who was born to a Caucasian mother and Vietnamese father. As I have stated many times before, I enjoy writing about people who come from all backgrounds of life, an seeing as I am somewhat of a mixture between an artist and a nerd, I feel my characters kind of reflect that. I may or may not have loosely based this new character off Kevin Stoley, but I hope you guys enjoy reading about him anyhow! Some of the people mentioned within his story are a few of my other OCs who I have yet to introduce, by the way. I am just informing you all of that to avoid confusion as to to who these characters are.
“Connor Tran- English/German (mother); Vietnamese (father)- Connor is a polite boy who is perceived as soft-spoken and timid, although he has a strong inner will that surfaces when he focuses on his goals. He is Julia Vasquez-Rivera's closest male friend and considered someone very precious to her in a platonic sense. Sometimes childish and naïve, Connor is an intelligent young man, yet can appear spacey to others with his inattentiveness, as well as socially oblivious and slightly odd. He was born in Santa Rosa, California alongside his twin sister Emma and lived there for an extended period before his family's move to Long Island the summer before second grade. He would settle there with his two sisters and grandparents during the periods his parents weren't traveling to Japan, Singapore, or Thailand together for his father's work for the IBM.
Connor tends to be regarded as being "brilliant, but incredibly lazy", as he is easily bored and oftentimes distractible. He is said to take after his mother in terms of personality, as he often escapes into and becomes consumed by his own thoughts. He reluctantly works a nightshift at the local Burger King to save up money for the New York Comic Con, which he has made a tradition of attending since he was 12. He is a naturally quiet, reclusive person who can often be found reading or tapping away at his phone, tending to connect better with his online friends than his real-life acquaintances. He can appear meek and unassertive, seeming spacey and indecisive and struggling to deeply connect with others.
Connor is not particularly popular among his peers compared to Emma and does not have many close friends, having been teased frequently throughout the years and made to feel insecure by other males due to his half-Asian heritage. He is still loyal to a small group of friends he has made and maintained at the school over the years. Connor also tends to bottle up and internalize his emotions more so than his twin sister Emma and usually has better control of his moods.
Although he is not averse to expressing his frustration when an unexpected or undesired event triggers a reaction from him, he is generally the less emotional of the two and tends to not form strong opinions on any person or subject matter. Despite his quiet demeanor, Connor will become much more enthusiastic whenever someone casually mentions one of his many nerdly obsessions. He considers Powerade blue to be his favorite beverage and shares a mutual love of Star Trek and superhero comics with Emma.
He is often drawn to the nerdier side of the cultural spectrum and can always be relied upon for his extensive knowledge of Star Trek plotlines. Like his sister, he loves electronic music as well, particularly old techno bands from the late 90s and early 00s. He and Emma are very close and had a shared affinity for and ritual of bonding over sessions of Dance Dance Revolution when they were young. They still engage in dancing sessions with each other every so often and consider each other their best friend. He also enjoys gaming with his friends and can never resist playing Minecraft.
Connor can sometimes feel overlooked by his parents in favor of his younger sister Jenny however, whom he claims is unfairly allowed to have lower grades while being given a higher allowance and a later curfew. He places a significant amount of pressure upon himself and doesn't consider himself naturally talented in most areas by comparison to his sisters. There is a straight A standard that looms over him during every assignment he completes in school, which causes him a fair amount of stress. He once received a C in one of his English courses on his report card, for which he was grounded by his parents for a week and denied access to his phone. Connor is also an infamously bad, reckless driver due to his distractibility, by contrast to his sister.
Although sometimes nerdy and inattentive to his environment, Connor can nevertheless prove himself to be intelligent and capable when he needs to be and is good with technology and computers, in addition to being a member of the school's robotics team. He can troubleshoot, program, and repair his own computers with some occasional assistance from his father. Despite his surface-level awkwardness, he is also a fast runner and excellent swimmer. He hopes to follow in his father's footsteps and travel while working in a similar field as an IT Consultant in the future.
While his parents consider him much too irresponsible to care for a larger pet, he keeps two hamsters named Biscuit and Lola in his bedroom, affectionately calling them his "minions." Connor has nonetheless had a secret, albeit unrequited crush on Julia ever since they met in the 3rd grade. He is also close friends with his younger equally nerdy homeschooled neighbor, Starkey Johnston, whom he has frequent debates regarding the differences between Star Wars and Star Trek with. He plays the trombone for the school band and is best friends with Alec Buckley and good friends with some of his fellow band classmates, including Morgan Fischer, Sophie Bergmann, and Mark Albo.
He is close friends with Sanjay Gupta as well and has somewhat of a close bond with Julia's younger brother Rafael due to their similar interests and complementary personalities. Connor seems to be unaware of Alicia Morales' feelings for him however due to his low self-esteem and neglect of his surroundings. He wears glasses and has shaggy dark brown hair, narrow almond-shaped dark brown eyes and a light, beige complexion like his sister Emma's. He is slightly below average male height at 5 ft. 7 and despite having visible admixture, leans slightly more towards his Asian side, a fact that makes him somewhat self-conscious and insecure.
The one constant that always remains in Connor's life however is his love for his family, particularly his twin sister Emma, with whom he always shared a special relationship and chose to surprise at one point during his spring break semester after momentarily finishing his studies at UC Berkeley. Even as their college years briefly separated them from one another, Emma continued to miss an ever-busy Connor's presence and often wondered whether their bond would become fragmented with their inability to see each other face-to-face as Connor studied on the other side of the country in California.
Having waited excitedly for her in her dorm room at New York University, he and Emma shared an emotional embrace as they managed to catch up on what had been going on in their lives since then while spending quality time together throughout the weekend. Knowing Emma's recurring loneliness as she spent time away from her loved ones while attending school in New York City, the two promised to become more actively involved in each other's lives and realized that the distance between them had never fragmented their bond but had only strengthened it.
Connor also admitted that Emma was irreplaceable in his heart and that regardless of the numerous friends or new faces that could walk into their lives, they would always be not only siblings, but best friends and share the same telepathic "twin instinct", a statement to which Emma wholeheartedly concurred. Having eventually come to terms with the fact that Julia would only ever see him in a platonic sense, Connor also decided to be near the one girl who had always acknowledged and accepted him regardless of his nerdish ways and ungainliness, whom was Alicia Morales.
Upon realizing the nature of his "love" for Julia had merely been an ongoing infatuation and this his true romantic feelings lay with Alicia, he chose to see Julia only as a close friend, allowing him to close that past chapter of his life and carry on towards new ventures. This led him to have an honest conversation with Alicia, during which he admitted that he had never truly known what it was like to be in love with someone before he first met her.
As Alicia tearfully confessed that his feelings were mutual, he apologized for all the unintentional past hurt he had caused and tightly held on to her, vowing to never let her feel any less than the most important person in his life again. After giving their relationship an opportunity to bloom during their senior year of high school, Connor chose to be near Alicia as she attended Stanford by choosing a nearby college in California that would lessen the distance between them and allow their love to blossom into full fruition.
With the 31 miles that separated Stanford from UC Berkeley, the two maintained a long-term relationship that continued to flourish as they paid frequent visits to each other's campuses and took periodic road trips to Disneyland in Anaheim together. They eventually married at a vineyard at a small, quiet reception with just a few guests, with Connor's childhood best friend Alec Buckley serving as the best man alongside Alicia's closest male friend Josue Ortega and Emma and Julia also serving as bridesmaids.
Despite Alicia's initial refusal to have any children of her own, she and Connor made a compromise and agreed to give birth to one child together, a single daughter they named Miranda Evalina Tran. Alicia remained a career woman who was deeply invested in her work as an architect along the West Coast, frequently accompanying Connor on his travels throughout the world as he succeeds in becoming a consultant. INTP 5w6”
Let me know what you guys think!
