Personality
Vivienne is a very driven individual, enjoying to push her limits and test new things regardless of what anyone says, and that leads itself into Aristides' toolkit perfectly. Both of them may come across as thick-headed at times due to their blunt, forward-going nature, preferring a good spar to a conversation. This is because Vivienne is not a people person. At all.
Part of the reason she likes Terrasphere so much is that everyone is somebody entirely different from who they are, which means she can be, too, but that still means she has to
talk. Because she often takes a long time to think of what to say next, Aristides may come across as distant, or even seem like he's ignoring the people speaking to him, especially to strangers. If it's a familiar face, though, then there is a kind, albeit shy soul under all that muscle, and Vivi is looking for some like-minded people to help pull her out of her shell.
Even if that shell is a fairly attractive dog-boy built like a brick house.
Positive: Driven, Adventurous, Courageous, Fair
Negative: Socially Awkward, Blunt, Reckless
Biography
Vivienne grew up in a small suburb in France with her mother, father, elder sister Joyce, and younger brother Marco. The family of five was not particularly wealthy, and both of her parents needed to work in order to keep food on the table, leaving Joyce to take care of her siblings more often than not. Because of this, Vivienne was a free-range child, spending most of her time outside getting into mischief. She taught herself how to climb trees (but never how to climb down--she preferred leaping back to earth, which earned her a few fractured bones over the years), became one of the fastest kids on the block, and occasionally went home with a bloody nose because "Bobby down the street said girls can't be strong". Joyce, bless her, tried to keep her sister safe. It was just difficult when they were only three years apart, and Marco was much younger still.
When Vivienne was in her first year of high school--now a fully-fledged fiend of track for her class, though her grades left something to be desired--and her sister about to graduate, something unfortunate happened. Her mother and father declared that they were going to separate. Vivienne and Marco, still being young, were to stay with their mother, while Joyce made the choice to stay with their father. Though their parents claimed they would still see one another often, Vivienne couldn't help but feel betrayed. Was Joyce fed up with taking care of her siblings? Yes. Undoubtedly. That still didn't give her the right to just go away when she chance presented itself...right?
Vivienne didn't speak to Joyce for all of high school. Even when she was kicked from the track team for her low grades, she didn't tell Joyce. Even when she met a boy, fell into bed with him, and felt so empty afterwards that she stayed home the rest of the week, she didn't tell Joyce. Even when she came out as asexual to her mother, father, and Marco, the only one not there to hear was Joyce. The rift between the two of them became so great that on the few holidays that Joyce was home, Vivienne deliberately wouldn't be there to see her. It was a petty reason for keeping away, but Vivienne just couldn't shake the feeling of being betrayed.
When graduation came, and Vivienne had been accepted into a school across the Atlantic in America, she celebrated with her family, her few friends that she felt comfortable with from school, and not a hide nor hair of her elder sister in sight.
In America she studied hard. She felt she had to, after her many fuck-ups in high school. She studied to work with computers, then when that didn't work she moved onto engineering, and when that didn't work she finally wound up working with straight-up mechanics. It was nice being able to use her body and her brain to fix things up, and it wasn't too bad with pay. After graduating Vivienne stayed in the States to continue working at a shop she'd been interning at in school, and everything was okay. Good job, little social interaction, good pay, nice little apartment, still in touch with family...most of them. Everything was fine.
Then one night, while she was fiddling on her computer, she received a mysterious email. At first she didn't recognize the sender address and was about to delete it, but then her eye caught and held on the image attached. It was Joyce. Unmistakably, unbelievably, it was her sister whom she hadn't spoken to for a better part of a decade. Suddenly the feelings inside of her burst. Guilt for being so petty and avoiding her sister who had done nothing but take care of her for all of her childhood. Regret that she had been so selfish and so cruel. Confusion as to why Joyce was contacting her now, after all this time, and with such a strange message.
(Translated from French:)
"Hey, little sister. It's been a long time, but I felt like this was as good a time as ever. I've been playing this game called TerraSphere for a while. It's really good. I know mom bought you a VR helmet forever ago but it should still work fine. Maybe we can find one another.
Lots of love, Joyce"
Vivienne didn't waste much time. She set the game to download, and dug her old VR equipment out from where she had it stored. TerraSphere, huh? She had heard of it before, but only on the covers of magazines running what she read as a scare campaign against a harmless MMO. Every generation had one of those, and this didn't seem to be any different. Still, she had no idea why she was doing this instead of just messaging her back. Maybe because all of her feelings, all of her doubt and regret and fear, couldn't be put into an email, and she had no idea where Joyce even was these days. If there was anything that this game might offer her, it would be the chance to talk to her sister--if not in person, then close enough--and reconcile for what she'd done. All she had to do was find her.
How hard could that be?
