[Wu, Jonathan] Reference

-- [Wu, age 9]

On first glance, Wu, as he likes to be called, is nothing more than your average angsty teenager. Despite his attitude, he’s grateful, and lucky, that he’s going to school on scholarship for Beastmen, the first one in his family to do so. 

‘Course, that’s if you don’t look at the scarred nubs of horns from when they were cut off when he was six. Or the little bag of state-mandated Animal Suppression pills he “forgets” to bring with him when he’s out. Or the late nights he hides from his mother, spent vandalizing the homes and businesses of the most beast-man discriminatory places, all in the name of justice.

Backstory

Around twenty years ago, his mother, a well-known beastman advocate, had peacefully pushed for suffrage, for legal protection, for equality for beast people, supported by her then-husband, a beast person himself. She did this, until violent crackdown came from the government, and she desperately fell into line to protect the rest of her family- her son, Jonathan Wu. Despite doing all the procedures, letting him be tattooed with the mandated barcode, she had never quite let go of her ambitions. So she taught him all she knew.

“You could have been a king.” She’d told him softly. He took it to heart. 

Unlike his mother, he scorns the peaceful protest. Where did it get them? It got beast people tracked like animals. It restricted education, his scholarship nothing more than a series of favors his uncle had pulled. It relegated them to a single area within any given state, made it impossible for them to get jobs, real jobs that allowed them to not count pennies for their food. 

 He’s a dragon. If violence is what you expect of him, that is exactly what you will get. If violence is what’s needed to make the world change, that’s exactly what he will do. 

Personality

Wu’s always believed in “Do unto others, as you had unto others”. He’s grown up in the community of beast people, playing basketball with them, being fed for, and cared for by them. So when his people are mistreated, he sees no reason to treat those bigots with any respect. So he’s rough, tough, and rude to anyone that’s trying to hold back his personality, his background, his identity as a beastman, but he tries so hard to be good to the average person. You’re innocent before you’re guilty, he thinks, and most people are fundamentally good. But he’s also a teenager, and quick to judge. Two sides of the same coin, in the end.