hi everyone!!! am i late or is everyone early HAHA anyways im jo 25+ she/her, super excited to be here with my pretentious queen shen yuxiao! ♡ it's been a hot minute since i last rped on tumblr, so apologies if anything looks off! also, all the wang churan posts on tumblr are from her historical dramas so no #visual posts from me, you'll just have to look at my pinterest board if you want to see more of her!
she's inspired by industry's harper stern & every other stereotypical mean girl in office who has an undefined chip on their shoulder~ she's still a wip, and i'm typically a person who fleshes out more of my muse once i write them / get interactions going so this will be some sort of an iterative process but just sharing some of her bare bones for now! again, very excited to be here so do hit a like and i'll be in ur dms! or if you prefer, we can also make our way to discord!
background
(tldr: girl who lies)
born liu xinyi on november 11, 1998 in the outskirts of hangzhou, china. her family owned a tea plantation, you know the whole usual small town girl spiel
nothing glamorous about her life really. her family made money from having tourist visit and pluck leaves, and all xinyi wanted was to get out of that small town
eventually, she did make it to shanghai. studied her ass off to get admitted into donghua university, where she did her bachelors in digital media design
it was a huge fucking struggle for xinyi, really. made fun for her rural hometown, could never pronounce any designer names, felt like she was already lagging behind all her classmates who had connections with people whose names she'd read in magazines
did anything she could to fit in; dyed her hair blonde, went out to all her parties, bought expensive clothes to wear once and return, rented handbags, came out with outlandish lies. (everyone could see through them)
did a year abroad in france (very important because she'll tell everyone she bounced between shanghai and paris during her university time. it was just one year.)
but it was then xinyi realised the magic of starting afresh. no one knew her name, no one knew her background (in fact, no one even knew the difference between hangzhou and shanghai and beijing and she could just.. lie)
anyways, magic couldn't stay long and eventually, she returned back to shanghai and got a job as a junior fashion editor at some digital publication. spent two years there before moving to nylon china
all the while, she'd created this lavish lie about her life -- her parents were famous fashion designers who passed away, that's why she bounced between paris and shanghai, that chanel bag was a hand-me-down from a popular actress she went to school with, she had a decade-long collection of dior limited edition shoes. always some desperate, frantic lie she would make up on the spot, trying to make herself seem cooler and better than she actually was
unfortunately, with china being so small and with all her stories never adding up, she was found out and asked to leave the company #humiliating
inexplicably decided to try her luck out in korea. with the fashion industry booming, it was far enough that she could start afresh. took a year off in 2024 to rebrand herself - got a nosejob, changed her name, studied so fucking hard to be fluent in korea and in june of 2025, become the associate fashion editor of highbrow :DD
also she learnt from her mistakes and now, tries not to share more than necessary and has a perfectly crafted backstory that no one can question
in my head, she doesn't speak that much. quiet, keeps to herself, gets stuff done but she's also the type to never admit that she doesn't know anything. you mention some niche designer? she'll pretend she's aware of his collection and LOVES all his stuff but then secretly googles it later in the bathroom
can come off as condescending -- will most likely be all like "oh you didn't know that? mm. okay."
specifically lives in seongsu, even though it's more expensive and further away, because it's seongsu. does everything for the name value and her image ("who are you, when you are not performing?")
all she wants to be is cool. (ideally for people to think she is effortlessly so)
plots/ connections
i'm always big on brainstorming! but off the top of my head, unexpected friends (my vibe is them smoking silently beside each other, knowing that they both have skeletons in their closet and not asking each other about it), fwbs (i think shes very lonely and is always seeking companionship or at least just a warm body at night), someone she's deeply envious of and it's just v obvious, someone who calls her out for being condescending or knows that shes hiding something more than she lets on!! anyways i know this is #SOL but if we can make it as dramatic as possible.... i am so down
John Green & David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson // @sweatermuppet // Jamaica Kincaid, The Autobiography of My Mother // Entropy, "Luck" // Anne Sexton, A Self-Portrait In Letters // @100493503004422 // I'm Not a Good Person—Pat The Bunny // Veronica Roth, Insurgent