D3RP & PR0XY Release Info

Okay, so it's finally happening: Penelope Turner/譚平寧/タン・ピンニン/탄핑닝 (Pr0xy) and Jayden Hester (D3rp) are being released to the public! They're my last duo to be showcased, so that's good (I'll certainly have one-off characters after, though), though this does mean I have some different things to say about Pingning now, though the gist of it is relatively the same. Put simply, though, she's what the spiritual predecessor to Aleks would've been (dark days), which is why their behaviors are like twisted, fun-house versions of each other, as well as having many similar interests. As with basically all of my characters, these two have a troubled past as well (Penelope more than Jayden, but still), but Jayden is definately the people-person of the two. Penelope (unlike Aleks and Chloe) wouldn't make a brick wall cry if she ran into it, but her first car did have a person-shaped dent in the door for a while, if her experience with a bully is anything to go by. Penelope's existence is almost paradoxical to Aleks's, but she is technically not him. He drives a 1983 Plymouth K Wagon with an air conditioner and automatic transmission being the only two features on the car, Penelope drove a 1983 Chevrolet Cavalier Wagon until it bit the dust in 2022, when she replaced it with a mid-range VW Jetta. Aleks hoards anything and everything because of its uses while Penelope is selective about her "junk" (she used to use an Acer Aspire 4752z laptop in school, her work computer is from 1997, and she has two laptops from the late 90s). Aleks is a Soviet when it matters, Penelope is the "Non-Asian Asian" (she usually indulges in Chinese or Japanese culture if it comes up). The list goes on, it really does, but while Penelope & Jayden are in Bellevue, WA, the lives they lead can be interesting, even if one spends her days locked in a tech cave.

Penelope Turner (The West), 譚平寧 (China), タン・ピンニン (Japan), 탄핑닝 (Korea), or PR0XY (the internet) is a bat with all of the possible answers and a detest of the Romance (and English, by proxy) languages. She lives in a double-wide, formerly owned by her cousin on her family's campground and works as the data analyst, though she's usually out of office unless there's nobody else to be around (nights or Sundays). She owns her aunt's old Compaq Presario 1200 laptop, which she used for the first few months of ninth grade before the newer one was shipped to her, but now only gets used when she wants to do her job with The IT Crowd playing in front of her. She has it loaded with the same set of software as her computer in the store has (Windows 98 SE, StarOffice 8, Netscape 7.2, Encarta 99, as well as a number of other titles), as well as the same ridiculous upgrades, like a 48 GB SSD. Penelope is as tech-savvy as they come… growing up managing computer hardware from a DOS prompt leaves its mark. Her primary computer (an Acer Aspire 5 Spin 14) is loaded with an absurdly-large drive, maxxed-out memory, and a near-future-proof configuration. Being a bat, she has (for her species) exceptionally good daytime vision with an optometrist measuring her to be better than 20/30 in both eyes. In spite of that, she still wears sunglasses if she's outside on a day without substantial cloud cover. Like most bats, she can make screeching noises, though she is capable of achieving a volume and frequency that renders those in close vicinity helpless and with short-term tinnitus. Her usual attire is a random t-shirt, blue jeans, beige-or-black shoes, a jacket with some logo on the back, her square, gaudy sunglasses, a lanyard with her jump drive at the end, and usually dyed hair. From a young age, Penelope parsed reality in a fundamentally different way than other people, which led her to being labeled as "retarded" and "delinquent" by her peers, parents, and generally anyone she came into contact with in Manhattan. She would always go with her cousin to East Asia when he went and quickly took a liking to the culture and people, all of which were just as amazed by her ability as her family in the Northwest was proud of her. She became "CJK Fluent" in just under two years and, in writing, will often switch between Traditional Chinese Characters and English. Mandarin Chinese is her preferred loanword bin, often replacing Romance-derived phrases with their Chinese equivalents (for instance, "Au Contraire" becomes "Xiāngfǎn"), much like she swaps between Western Arabic Numerals and Eastern Arabic Numerals, usually preferring the latter. She has a decent-sized music library with a stereo system in her living room with her favorite album being from Mongolian rock band The HU, though she does have a box set of Maoist songs reimagined as 90s contemporary pieces. She enjoys cooking Asian food and is a caffeine addict that hates waking up due to her very-frequent late-nights.

Jayden Hester (D3RP) is Penelope's closest friend, as well as one of the few people willing to get to know the real Penelope Turner. Being a female deer, she doesn't have any antlers, or any features that stand out, aside from her left eye. She generally dresses in a plain shirt, blue jeans, and a pair of dark shoes. In middle school (the summer between sixth and seventh grade), she was in a car accident, which resulted in the loss of her left eye. Upon returning to school in the fall, she was quickly given the name "Derpy" by others as a means of bullying. What she did, rather, was to turn it into something empowering for her, which was her online handle. Always quiet and friendly, she was known to be good with computers, though her PR0XY-rivaling skills were only known to her mother and, later, Pr0xy herself. Between the two, Jayden is Good Cop and Penelope (while not doing anything unethical) is chaotic neutral. Very few incidents, if any, has Jayden not been able to take the high road on. Originally, her career path was to be a cyber investigator, though that changed when she found out how many hoops she'd have to jump through, not to mention what would happen to the information she has (especially on Penelope), she decided, with Penelope's help, to become a teacher. The name D3rp was well-known as the best white hat on the web, so she decided to teach what she'd learned and pass along her knowledge about computers to anyone willing to learn from the old building on Penelope's family's campground. Since it's known that the lessons come from D3rp themself, anyone who passes her class is the holy grail for the industry, though Jayden has made a silent effort to keep her online identity disconnected from her actual self because she doesn't want the credit- it was her work behind a keyboard that did everything, not her. When Penelope moved to Bellevue, Jayden latched onto her and, for a while, distanced herself from her social group before being forced to choose between "real friends" or the "weird bitch". Jayden chose the latter without hesitation and, while rough at the start, quickly grew to know and like Penelope better than her old friends, even if she didn't understand how 5+5=A or 2+2=100. Jayden has a strong moral compass and, very often, follows it, regardless of what happens. After meeting Penelope, Jayden was skeptical that she could read and speak Chinese. To prove her wrong, Penelope managed to get her cousin to let Jayden come to their trip to China where she acted as the translator between her cousin and the CEO of Great Wall Computer Company in Beijing. Overall, Jayden doesn't regret cutting ties to befriend Penelope, but she does miss the feeling of not being in an ethics battle most days.