Although she doesn't appear to think so, Alice is an average teenager. She mostly doesn't think she's an average teenage girl, as she struggles to fit in with the other girls her age, but neither does she fit in with boys her age. At least except for Art, but he feels the same way, just the other way around.
But what gives her this sense of detachment? She's not completely sure either. Alice thinks her interests are too nerdy and corny, even the trendy or "normal" ones, which might just stem from low self-esteem. Well, what does she like? Comics, shows and video games, in summary. Mostly sandbox games as she spends most of her free time messing around with them. But she feels like people don't understand these mediums the same way she does, or not "enough", like she does.
Even thought she's seen as introverted, Alice wouldn't say she's shy, just socially awkward. She's not afraid to talk to people or talking in public, she just doesn't know what she's supposed to say, or if what she's saying is inappropriate. She does want to make friends, but the whole world in general just feels like it wasn't made for her; it feels like having a lot of friends isn't achievable because she was born with "problems", one of them being generalized anxiety disorder.
When not overridden by her anxiety, Alice is very proactive, a trait that contributed to her role as a class representative for most of middle school. She likes accounting for everyone's personal insights and hopefully coming with a solution that benefits everyone. She's open minded but can be very vulnerable to criticism at the same time.
Alice has a pet hermit crab named Carrie. Although she's good at handling animals, she doesn't believe she's responsible enough to actually fully look after something like a dog (also because this would be just a weird Goofy and Pluto situation), so that's why she settled for one that she thinks isn't as time consuming.
➢ View more on Toyhouse
Arthur is very shy and recluse. Some people say he's always on "his own little world" although he doesn't like that description, even if it's partly true. He gets very nervous sharing simple things such as his hobbies or just how his day was, so he prefers being quiet and avoid saying anything at all.
Art opens up to people once he gets comfortable around them, like with Alice and Sienna, but he never fully stops being reserved, even with closer peers like his family. Art is slightly less shy online, though. He enjoys conversing with strangers about his interests such as music, movies and MMOs, although he mostly prefers to remain anonymous and gets extremely anxious making forum posts, to the point where he always quadruple checks everything he typed to make sure he didn't accidentally actually write a declaration of war and attach an embarrassing video of a moment that was never even recorded in the post.
Arthur is extremely agile, although not really "strong" – that is, he could be a gymnast but not a weight lifter. Aside from the fact that he's an octopus, that ability also comes from being forced to take martial arts classes as a kid. He didn't particularly enjoy it, but he appreciates the lessons that he learnt. It also made him feel like a fighting game character at the time which is a good thing. When people find out they immediately ask him to do movements he knows, but he inevitably feels overwhelmed and messes it up most of the time. People also tend to ask him to recover missing objects in spaces that are hard to reach.
Art is the third oldest child out of his 5 other siblings, making him accustomed to having to look after children. He's not the greatest "babysitter", but he has more experience than most people. He's also used to a loud household, although he never really grew up to actually not mind it. Most of the time, he'd drown out the noise by isolating himself in his room with music. Despite having a large family, Art doesn't feel very connected with them; he always hated family reunions, going out, getting ready for school everyday in a crowded house... Even if those aspects of his life bother him, he still loves his family deep down.
➢ View more on Toyhouse
If asked to her peers, Sienna would be described as enigmatic. Those who are not quite acquainted with her would describe Sienna as sophisticated or egotistical, depending on who you ask. Her parents describe her as a troublemaker.
Sienna's motivations always feel quite unclear; she doesn't seem to follow a list of values or morals and just does what she personally thinks results in the ideal outcome. That isn't to say she's completely apathetic to everything and everyone, quite the contrary, Sienna is very interested in the nature of, like, just everything in general—she's very inquisitive.
One of Sienna's biggest interests is history. They aspire to learn as much as possible about how the world used to function, what customs and cultures people used to have, just what society was up to back then. They're mostly compelled by cultural artifacts. She holds a particular fascination for the middle ages and classical music.
Sienna likes literature, but mostly history books as she's not a fan of fiction, which people tend to find odd and assume she just doesn't read or watch anything at all. She mostly can't stand fantasy and thinks it's ridiculous, which makes her stand out from her friends, and just other teenagers in general. Sienna primarly appreciates how people can express their emotions through literature, a sentiment that is shown through her enjoyment of poetry. Even though the same can be said for fiction, the ways these emotions are expressed in that genre are not as appealing to her. They don't find it substantial, as they believe they aren't really learning anything by reading works of fiction; it's a waste of time. But she still finds its essence – what motivates people to write fiction – "interesting".
Sienna is very easily peeved off by people who belittle the things she's passionate for, or just don't take her and her passions seriously. Like when they tell people that they mostly listen to classical music. But that's hypocritical as she's selfish and doesn't take people seriously herself, at least when they don't align with her views of what she thinks makes someone worth talking to.
➢ View more on Toyhouse
Clover is a very kind and considerate person, which leads a lot of people to assume she's also naive, but that's not the case at all. She was taught by her parents to always try seeing good on people, which often led to her being taken advantage of when she was younger. These experiences molded her into the person she is today, still a nice person that always tries to help whoever she can while also being very impartial and realistic.
Nevertheless, Clover could still be described as optimistic, in the sense that she always tries bringing positivity despite of tragedy. She's sensible enough to know when's the right time and place for that positivity, but, in spite of that, some people would say she's overly optimistic. This is something Clover tries to work on, as she's afraid she'll wind up being someone who spreads toxic positivity, which aren't her intentions at all.
Being a librarian, Clover has an adoration for literature and its ability to allow creativity and promote knowledge. She was kind of a teacher's pet when younger, which contributed to that way of thinking. The only reason she didn't grow up to be a teacher is because she doesn't know how to deal with children and teenagers; she's barely able to look after Sienna at work. To her, it feels like babysitting sometimes, but she appreciates Sienna's company regardless and likes being a positive influence for them (at least that's what she tries to achieve).
Clover likes surrounding herself with things that bring comfort and coziness.
➢ View more on Toyhouse
Lucien is laid-back and easygoing. He likes being around people and rarely ever gets mad at anyone, which gives the idea that maybe he's trying way too hard to fit in and be social. But that doesn't matter because he doesn't listen to the haters.
Lucien is somewhat able to make even the most introverted people talk with him once he starts conversation with them. This is how he befriended Ked. Furthermore, after meeting Arthur through Sienna and Clover, he quickly bonded with him over their shared passion for music. However, Lucien is somewhat loud and gets too comfortable around literally everyone, which does cause several people to find him insufferable. His charisma does work with some people, though (mainly Arthur).
One of Lucien's biggest flaws is being self-centered; he doesn't completely disregard other people, but he thinks way too much about himself, which makes him vulnerable to criticism. He has a fragile ego but tries hiding that fact, a facade that does manage to fool people who don't know him well at first but can quickly fall flat.
Lucien follows a music career. He doesn't sing, just makes beats (of varying quality). He does manage to make a living out of it but, like all artists, he can't survive just off of it. Even so, he doesn't seem interested in following any others careers, but he does the effort of searching for part-time jobs when Clover and Ked are struggling.
➢ View more on Toyhouse
Ked is very moody and quick to anger. She prefers to stay away from crowds and spend time alone, although she does appreciate the few friends she has. She's not shy – as she's not afraid to argue with people over the smallest things – just a bit aloof. She lets her guard down once she gains someone's trust, but that doesn't make them immune from frequent passive aggressive remarks.
Ked's distrust for most people comes primarly from losing a parent at a very young age. Her parents had already been separated when she was a toddler and, after living with just her mother for a handful of years, she eventually lost her and became an orphan for most of her life. She never really trusted anyone who tried to help her and that mindset stuck with her through adulthood. The mistreatment received at her orphanage also made her grumpy, pessimistic and violent; she's well aware of those traits and, while deep down she wants to be a better person, she feels like she's not ready to unpack and confront her traumas yet.
Ked has an interest for the medical field. She's mostly captivated by the biology aspect of it rather than the helping people aspect, which is why she chooses to work at pharmacies instead of directly interacting with patients. Inevitably, that position still requires her to interact with very annoying people, but she's used to it at this point.
Ked is somewhat physically strong from often reacting with physical violence when she's mad, which people don't really expect due to her height.
➢ View more on Toyhouse
Yves praises science and only believes in things that can be scientifically proven, even through questionable methods. As a teen, they developed an interest for computer science as well, which is what they have a degree on. Their knowledge of anatomy, biology, chemistry and physics comes entirely from school and their own independent research.
Yves' interest in science come from their fascination for how the world and its organisms work. They're the kind of kid that picked up a dead bird and studied it and enjoyed dissecting frogs in school. They also always liked doing those easy at home chemical experiments—out of all science areas they like chemistry the most. They had support from their family since having a scientist in your family is typically seen as a great thing, but their desires were beyond just being a regular scientist...so they became...a MAD scientist... As time passed, they increasingly became more and more obssesed with anatomy and the limitations of the body.
Yves is simultaneously really chill and really unstable. They're not the type to lash out on people or get angry in general, but some of their attitudes could be seen as maniacal. For example, they frequently have passive aggressive interactions with QWERTY, they are, admittedly, somewhat neglectful to Yoel at times and they can be conniving with Billy. Even if they seem to acknowledge these flaws, they don't really go through any efforts to improve them because they don't think it matters that much. In their perception, they're fine the way they are since the people they're closest to seemingly don't mind these flaws, or at least they don't mind them a significant amount.
Yves had poor eyesight ever since they were young and, after a workplace accident, completely lost vision from their left eye. They don't use glasses most of the time as they are used to the terrible vision and can locomote using other senses, but they've modified their goggles to work as prescription glasses, since they need to see during experiments if they don't want things to go terribly wrong. They also have Billy as a guider of sorts whenever they do experiments together, which is most of the time.
➢ View more on Toyhouse
On the surface, Billy is apathetic, detached and deadpan. No one can really figure out what goes on in his head just by looking at him. He's mysterious, in such a way that gives the impression he's hiding something... but that's primarily due to his neurotic behavior. He's very anxious and paranoid; he never really lets his guard down, as if he fears that something bad could happen to him or those who he cares for at any time. This leads to his actions being seen as sort of irrational and even superstitious. Billy just happens to have a poor grasp of social norms and cues, he kind of does his own thing, which gives away an odd first impression to strangers.
Billy is interested in pseudoscience and magic symbolism such as the paranormal, astrology and cartomancy. This contrasts with his friend, Yves, but that isn't to say they don't find Billy's interests very intriguing. His way of making money is by attracting people who believe in that stuff, as he works as a cartomancer during his free time. His clients find him kind of weird, but shouldn't this be like a good thing when it comes to that field? Anyway, he's a trusted professional as his clients appear to be satisfied by his service, even with his clumsy, anxious way of doing it.
Billy is very appreciative of the people in his life since, due to self doubt, he doesn't really think he "deserves" being loved by people, and such can't process actually getting to experience what he thought was impossible. Even if Billy seemingly enjoys the current place he chooses to dwell, he still feels like he doesn't really "belong" to any place at all.
Billy has a lot of issues with his own sense of self in general. He doesn't know if he has to conform to a concrete identity, as he feels like his existence goes beyond that. That aspect of him is reflected on how he always seems to find new ways of expressing himself, namely with his hobby as a magician.
➢ View more on Toyhouse
Yoel is a very lovable and nice guy, to a point where he's kind of clueless to bad intentions. He tries giving people second, third, fourth... chances, even when he's aware he's bound to get disappointed. He thinks anyone can change if they put their mind to it as he tries seeing the good on everyone, mainly because of QWERTY, who's basically the most hateful individual he knows but she's actually a nice person on the inside (only with him).
Yoel is seen as childish by most people, which he doesn't know how to feel about. He agrees that he has a sort of child-like wonder to him, but part of his identity still feels mature and he still tries to act like an adult. His appearance doesn't help with that, either, since anyone would assume he's really young at first glance. His voice is age appropriate, though, which is what gives it away to strangers. This perception of immaturity makes Yoel think he's not capable enough to do some things, specially since Yves and Billy are always trying to help him even when he doesn't ask for it.
Those experiences trigger a level of confusion with his own identity, which gets worse with the fact that he's seemingly just a robot. Yoel doesn't think he's one – hence why he treats Yves like his parent, and Yves doesn't mind and fully sees Yoel as their son too – he thinks he's just like everyone else. In reality, he wants to be like everyone else. Some of those feelings also relate to gender, since all robots are automatically genderless if you think about it – QWERTY is one example – but he feels connected to his personal idea of masculinity. He's not 100% sure about concepts relating to identity and emotions.
Yoel ADORES tabletop games, most of his time is spent playing them either alone or with QWERTY. He's not bad at any of them, just slightly better at some. His database is full of strategies. Although he appreciates card games and stuff like battleship, he prefers the roleplaying and board ones. He also likes baking, drawing, sewing, crocheting, knitting and sometimes singing. He got all these hobbies from having a lot of free time, and because he wanted to feel less like a robot.
➢ View more on Toyhouse
QWERTY was created by Yves as part of an experiment. Even thought that's an achievement to be proud of... the pair's relationship is quite complicated, being best described as "frenemies". She's not completely sure about how she feels towards Yves being her "creator" since, to her, they're just sort of like a co-worker, or a roommate.
Even though her experience with her existence is complicated, QWERTY likes being herself. She likes being assertive, grouchy and, for lack of a better word, hateful. She doesn't think kindness and patience benefits her in particular and, no matter how much you try, you can't change that aspect of her. Was she programmed to feel this way? Not really, maybe she just learnt to feel this way.
Nevertheless, QWERTY does enjoy the little things in life. She likes board games, animals... she doesn't know how to feel about non-sentient electronics. She likes watching sports, movies... She wants a mundane life, one where existential crisis doesn't constantly getting to her.
The people she's closest to, like Yoel, don't really get on her nerves, but those are the few exceptions. She also appreciates others who think like her.
➢ View more on Toyhouse