Willow Kalayaan Ngo Yapchulay

"Hindi mahanap sa lupa ang pag-asa." ("You cannot find hope on earth.")

Willow has a dusky mocha complexion, a flattish nose, full lips, and long hair that is naturally very curly and bushy. Some people might call him "scruffy" while others see a very pretty young man, given his somewhat smooth features. He doesn't smile very often, even when he's happy, but that doesn't mean he's as cold or serious as he looks. At full height, he's quite short, reaching only about 5'5" (165 cm), and made even shorter by the fact that he's in a wheelchair. He usually is clean-shaven, but sometimes forgets or decides he wants a change: when his facial hair grows, it grows in thick, and were he to let it grow longer than the tidy goatee he occasionally keeps it in, it would easily be as thick and bushy as the hair on his head. Willow favours casual, comfortable street clothes: t-shirts, jeans, hoodies, et cetera, though he cleans up nicely and can look quite smart in a suit or other formal or semi-formal attire. The last time he wore a suit, however, was for his father's funeral when he was nineteen. He has two tattoos, currently: one on the underside of his left forearm, of a lotus blossom, and one on his stomach, of a manananggal.

Reference image located here.

Generally, Willow is an easygoing person. He isn't a doormat, but he dislikes causing a ruckus and will let pretty much anything slide so long as it isn't overtly derogatory. He has a deadpan sense of humour, made all the drier by his seemingly perpetual sternness of face. He's neither always serious nor always funny, but usually leans more toward the former. It's sometimes difficult to tell when he's kidding around due to his dry, monotone voice; this has caused many people to get angry at him for his jokes. Willow's not a highly social individual, and tends to get uncomfortable around more than three or four people, particularly strangers. When meeting someone new, he will rarely come out of his shell without a nudge (or several) from someone he already knows. Even then, it's highly possible that it could take several meetings for him to feel comfortable enough to talk and socialise.

In supernatural-type roleplays, Willow is a manghuhula, or soothsayer. He can "see" the future with the help of spirits who linger on the living plane. His visions and omens are rarely clear or complete, and not always fully correct, but usually at least an aspect of them will prove true. He is not able to physically see the spirits to whom he communes, but he can hear their voices and (in cases of very strong presences) experience their memories. Younger spirits tend to be easier to communicate with, as their memories of life are often more clear.

Regardless of genre, Willow is bilingual, speaking English fluently as well as a good bit of Filipino. He rarely speaks Filipino around people other than his relatives, unless he is extremely intoxicated (which is just as rare).

Willow Yapchulay is Filipino-American, the first generation born outside of the Philippines. His father's side is from Mindanao and his mother's side is from the Visayas, but both relocated to the West Coast of the United States several years before Willow was born. As a young child, he and his parents took frequent trips to the Philippines to visit the family, so he grew up essentially split between two cultures. These visits came almost to a complete stop when he was sixteen, after a devastating auto accident left him paralyzed from the waist down, and his father brain-damaged to the point where he was reduced to a vegetable. Since that time, Willow relies on a wheelchair to get around; he initially resented his disability but has grown to accept and even embrace it in recent years. Because of the desolation rendered by the accident and the essential loss of his father, Willow and his mother Maricel often fought and became somewhat estranged. Willow's grades in school began to decline, and he ended up dropping out at the beginning of his senior year, much to his mother's intense displeasure. He started doing odd jobs for people around town who knew of the family's difficult situation: jobs including babysitting, dogsitting, helping out with spring cleaning, and other such things.

When Willow was nineteen, the decision was made to turn off his father's life support, thereby ending his suffering. The funeral was a small, quiet affair and ended with Maricel returning to the Philippines on her own (she'd given Willow the option of coming with her, but he refused). Living now on his own, he started dating and going out to clubs. It was at one of these clubs that he met his on-again, off-again boyfriend Scott, with whom he eventually moved in. Even though they don't always work out as an item, Willow and Scott are very close friends. Scott is aware of what happened with Willow's family, and is supportive of his slowly repairing relationship with his mother. It was Scott who pushed him to write his first novel, which was a near miss for the bestseller list. He is currently twenty-seven years old and working on his second, the sequel to the first.

Willow hates being called "Will" but will tolerate it from most people (unless he's comfortable enough to tell them to stuff it). His relatives call him Lowang, Lowlow, Bolbol (from arbol, meaning tree, as in willow tree), Gulong (meaning wheels), or Kuya (elder brother; only his younger cousins call him this).

His full Filipino name is Willow Kalayaan Ngo Yapchulay. Following Filipino naming conventions, Willow Kalayaan is his full first name; Ngo is his middle name, derived from his mother's maiden name; and Yapchulay is his father's surname. On his birth certificate, however, his name is written Willow Kalayaan Ngo-Yapchulay, with Kalayaan being his middle name and Ngo-Yapchulay being a hyphenated surname.