Bryanayah Chang/IF-97.392

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Rumor / Community Lore
This article contains lore created collaboratively by the Blaseball community. It is just one of many Rumors that we've found in the Interdimensional Rumor Mill. You can find more Rumors about Bryanayah Chang at their Rumor Registry.

Before Blaseball

常桂英, romanized as Chang Guìyīng, was born and raised in Shanghai, China. Chang’s parents tried to get her interested in several sports, including volleyball, basketball, and blaseball. The latter was the only one that stuck, and by the time Chang reached high school she was a fairly good athlete. Her parents expected her to continue into professional sports; however, high school was when Chang met her true love in the form of cinema. Chang spent her time in high school in fine arts classes and devouring as many films as she could find, trying to balance her newfound passion with her studies and with sports practices.

Chang got an undergraduate degree in business administration, continuing to play blaseball and devour films. When she decided to continue her studies, she made the decision to study abroad, and ultimately moved to Boston to attend Hlarvard’s masters in business administration program. Shortly after arriving, Chang met a group of amateur filmmakers and befriended them. She had small roles in several films. In order to distinguish her professional career from her interests in film, Chang adopted a new given name, Bryanayah, for any film credits she amassed.

Throughout her adult life, Chang began collecting movie memorabilia. She focused on Chinese cinema, although this broadened out during her time in the United States. Chang’s collection included costumes, posters, old film reels, jewelry, DVD copies of obscure fifth- and sixth-generation Chinese cinema, and vinyl records of scores and soundtracks. Around the time Chang realized that she needed to move into a bigger apartment in order to fit all of her memorabilia, she obtained her master’s degree, and decided to open a small business. She also decided to operate it under the name of Bryanayah, cementing that name as the one fans would later know her by.

The Peach Blossom Boutique, located in Boston’s Chinatown, quickly became Chang’s pride and joy. The store’s purview expanded to include general antiques, items from estate sales, and secondhand and vintage clothing. Chang herself lived in a small apartment above the storefront, where she stored some of her favorite memorabilia. The boutique had a small but fervent customer base. Chang was friends with several regular customers, and a handful of local teenagers got their first job experiences working at Peach Blossom with Chang serving as their remarkably casual boss.

On the Flowers

One of the regular customers at Peach Blossom was Beck Whitney, who appreciated having somebody to talk to that was just as interested in vintage items and the past as she was. Chang and Whitney were incredibly close, and Whitney was one of few customers that Chang spent time with outside of the boutique. When blaseball returned, Whitney remembered that Chang had played at the collegiate level and invited her to the team. Chang accepted.

Returning to blaseball was strange for Chang, who found herself out of practice. She was nonetheless determined to play well on the team. Chang developed a friendship with King Weatherman, formed by teasing each other about their differing aesthetic tastes: King preferred bespoke formalwear, and Chang wore at least two clashing patterns at all times. She also retained her closeness with Whitney. In the early days of Whitney’s captaincy of the Flowers, Chang was responsible for encouraging her to take breaks and spend social time with the team.

Chang was incinerated early in Season 3. She left the Peach Blossom Boutique to Whitney, who became the steward of Chang’s collection.

Trivia

  • Chang’s favorite director was Zhang Yuan.
    • For her birthday one year, Whitney got Chang a poster signed by Zhang. Chang spent the following months agonizing over what to get Whitney in return, only for Whitney to admit that as a vampire, she had been alive so long that she no longer remembered when her birthday was.
  • Chang hosted several movie nights for the Flowers at the Peach Blossom.
  • Chang regularly volunteered with local Chinatown organizations to help translate English documents for fellow Chinese immigrants.
  • Chang’s favorite food is har gow, shrimp dumplings.
    • For her birthday one year, Chang taught Whitney how to make har gow. Whitney would later declare that, despite not being sure it was her birthday, this was the best birthday present she’d ever received.
  • In one of her few interviews before her incineration, Chang stated that taking on the name of Bryanayah for her acting career was not only a business decision, but also an attempt to find a new name as she transitioned into her new gender.
  • Chang’s most notable film appearance is in the amateur short film ‘’Stoneface,’’ where several narrators improvise descriptions of the surface of a brick wall. Chang’s performance was a standout, as she described the life course of several microorganisms on the wall.