Faye Ayato

Faye Ayato is a tall, dark-skinned human male with dark circles under his eyes and messy hair that reaches down the length of his head. He usually dresses formally, sporting a white button up shirt, arm garters, a dark red vest, and a long, checkered coat.

Unlike his often silly best friend Mo, Faye is serious and strait-laced, speaking softly but with authority. He loves books and can often be found studying in the university library. Endowed with knowledge on a variety of subjects, he is often eager to share what he knows with his viewers, even if Mo will tease him for being a “nerd”. He is proud to know as much as he does, such as when he showed off his Japanese fluency to viewers of his debut stream. Faye believes that media literacy and the ability to think critically about media and its production are important skills to possess and wishes to share this knowledge with the world. He is also a good leader, exemplified by his heading a team of interns to assist in his lab back in his home world.

Despite this, Faye is not without a sense of humour. Sometimes impulsive, he isn’t afraid to rib and play jokes on Mo, such as when he kicked her through the portal to Earth. He takes everything with a detached but endearing dry wit and seems to have a one-liner prepared for most situations; his first comment to Mo turning into a human being “bruh”. He can also be caught off guard, becoming nervous when he realized he didn’t account for having to come up with a surname to use on Earth. Yet, his quick thinking just as often saves the day, exemplified by when he swiftly devised the name Ayato for himself and Mo from the IAT in SIAT.

One of Faye’s lesser stated traits is his empathy and compassion for the marginalised: Even in a society where he was the benefactor of injustice, he loathes racism, choosing to use his position of privilege to provide for the lower class; becoming Mo’s friend and caring for her to the extent that he would leave everything and everyone he loved behind to help Mo immigrate to Canada, despite the fact that such a practice was deemed highly illegal by his world's government.

In August 2024, 's School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT) announced an initiative in partnership with Sawmill Studios to create its first-ever "Virtual Ambassadors" in order to represent and engage with the SFU community. These Virtual Ambassadors would be functionally identical to VTubers. Auditions for the talent opened that September. The duo debuted on March 1st, 2025, livestreaming both separately and together on the SIAT YouTube channel. Their primary activities involved giving feedback to student work from the SIAT program, as well as promoting the SFU's values, courses, and facilities. The initiative was billed as grant-funded research, employing motion capture technology to create full 3D models of the Virtual Ambassadors and a chance for students to work in a professional motion capture studio environment.

In promotional material, the university has referred to the duo as "Canada's first university Vtubers", or alternatively, "The world's first university Vtubers". The characters were said to have come from a magical fantasy world to SFU in order to study at SIAT. Faye Ayato was said to be "a graduate studies student before he leapt through the portal, unfortunately, his course credits did not follow him to Earth." An animated trailer would expand on this backstory, showing Faye opening a portal to Earth and the two fleeing their homeland, where they suffered discrimination from a system that favoured those with magic powers over those without. Arriving inside of SFU Surrey's motion capture studio, Studio SIAT, the trailer shows Mo transforming from her Cappu form into her human one, after which the two would take on the name "Ayato" from the pronunciation of the "IAT" in "Studio SIAT".

Mo and Faye would appear at Anirevo 2025, Vancouver's largest anime convention, to interact with guests live and ask them about their favourite games. Attendants were given SIAT-branded hand fans as a reward for following the channel. Two weeks later, during an anime convention held at the school they represented, SFU Summerfest, a scheduled second live interaction with fans in the form of a game show would be cancelled due to technical difficulties. The game show was streamed a few days later.

Mo and Faye would appear at Fan Expo 2026, an annual pop culture convention taking place in various Canadian provinces, where they would tease the second generation of SIAT Vtubers. A graphic showing the silhouettes of the new generation was teased as well.

• Originally from the world of Avenaria, Faye was a magic-user who worked with a number of interns (most of them Cappus) in a lab studying Conjuration within a Magic School, becoming a pioneer in Magic Portals. His society favoured those who were able to use over magical powers over those who did not. An oppressive regime that governed the use of magic, The Bureau, eventually rose to power.
• A graduate student at that same Magic School, he would eventually meet the magic-less Cappu, Mo, a victim of discrimination. Compelled by her plight, he befriended her. Using his influence in the academic system, he kept Mo around as a lab assistant, much to the chagrin of some of his discriminatory superiors and The Bureau. Together, they searched for another world to emigrate to. Upon realising that Earth did not have any magic, they became fans ("earth weebs", in Mo's own words) through using magic to connect to the planet's internet. Faye would also study the craft of opening portals in order to legally access media from Earth's libraries, eventually perfecting this technique for his eventual immigration to Canada, despite such a practice being illegal. Using magic to enroll in online classes at Simon Fraser University (SFU)'s School of Interactive Art and Technology (SIAT) during the , they decided to permanently move there by way of Faye's magic portals. Due to the limitations of his portals, Faye began sending signals through the portal to Earth, where individuals from , heeded his call and helped him stabilise the portal from their end. Faye humorously kicked Mo through the portal before walking through himself (which was later revealed to be an illegal act punishable by time in Gay Baby Jail). Arriving in the middle of SFU's Studio SIAT, a motion capture studio, Faye found himself mildly bemused that his best friend of many years was magically transformed into a human. The two would take on the name "Ayato" from the pronunciation of the "IAT" in "Studio SIAT".
• Due to the untraceable nature of Faye's portal spell, The Bureau were unable to go after Faye, although defecting agents of the Bureau Wren and AP0110 were able to locate him through other means. It was also this specific spell that resulted in Mo becoming humanoid.
• Mo's transformation into a human was a result of the specific spell that Faye used to conjure a portal to Earth, although he has revealed he is working on the prospect of chemically endowing Mo with magical powers. Although Mo's human form rendered her unable to utilise magic, Faye did not give up, and continued his experiments on Earth, such as crafting a potion that would place Mo's consciousness in his body temporarily. This also did not yield results. Driven by his desire to make scientific progress, Faye continued undeterred.
• At SFU, Faye concluded that human technology such as gaming was indistinguishable from the magic he studied in his world. However, he was appalled to learn that his credits from Magic School did not transfer over and that he would have to begin anew as an undergraduate. He was further appalled to learn how high the rent in Vancouver would be.
• He is a grad student who studied conjuration in his homeworld, and transfered to a senior SIAT student.

The following section recounts more general details of Faye's fictional world of Avenaria, from which he originated before coming to Earth in his backstory, in no particular order.

• Faye is a licensed . He obtained his license in Avenaria, although he has not practiced in years.
• Faye defines his theory of magic portals as envisioning the point of origin and the target location as clearly as possible before conjuring the portal. Because of this, his immigration to Vancouver was hampered somewhat by the fact that he had never been to Earth, and only had human media to envision what the place looked like. To circumvent this, he relied on the method by which he was able to obtain information through the portals. He would first send only information through from Earth (such as radio waves) through the portal to a collaborator on the other side, who would relay the desired information back through the portal. Through this communication, the portal stabilised, allowing him to cross over to the other side. The individual that ended up stabilising the portal was the player of the SIAT ARG that launched with Faye's debut.
• Faye believes that the average wizard from Avenaria would lose a fight to the average, due to lack of magical education producing subpar and sloppy casters who treat their wands like guns. Faye also professed to using a wand this way.
• The Bureau Headquarters Wren and AP0110 SFU SIAT.png origin of magic in Avenaria was . The people of Avenaria were descended from birds, and through their song, it was said that magic entered the land. All magic is simply a translation from birdsong. Methods of casting include runes or phonetics, hence why Cappus are biologically incapable of using magic. (The spells are all tuned specifically for human use.) Despite this, birds in that world do not receive as much respect as Faye believes they should.
• Faye's specific casting takes the form of rune-writing, meaning he physically writes all his spells. In his case, there is no vocal component involved in the casting, although he has revealed that differs between magic user to magic user.
• Faye believes that duelling between human wizards is frivolous, hence his interest in the academic study of magic, which involved more typical "post-grad doctoral work".
• While Cappus are incapable of using magic, there are non-human species in Avenaria capable of understanding and replicating the magical properties of birdsong.
• Rodriguez was an ancient mage by Faye's standards, who revolutionised what magic looked like in Avenaria, allowing it to industrialise. AP0110, incidentally, is much older.
• The Bureau withheld much of the technology developed by Rodriguez in much richer cities. The feudal, medieval style city shown in Faye's lore trailer and the modern city shown in Generation 2's lore trailer actually exist at the same time, to illustrate the extreme gap of both knowledge and wealth that The Bureau created.
• Faye describes himself as not being from the boonies, but certainly not from a rich region.
• It would later be revealed that in-lore, Faye was sending these signals to participants using an "interdimensional communicator", which subsequently became an item of interest in the launch of the second generation of virtual ambassador's backstories as well.

• His favorite games includes a variety of genres:
• Puzzle: Baba is You, Professor Layton, and "nazotoki" (mystery solving) games.
• Faye reported not seeing much of the Nazotoki genre in the west, so he gained a passion for adapting it for western audiences to get invested in.
• Action/Adventure/RPG: The Legend of Zelda, Monster Hunter, and Chrono Trigger.
• Weird games, such as Gnosia and Pro Office Calculator.
• Card games - "all of them," to which he later clarified, "Not all of them, but a lot."
• Board games, including the Betrayal series and We Didn't Playtest This.
• Tabletop RPGs - he makes his own.
• His favorite anime amd manga are Assassination Classroom, World Trigger, and ''Slam Dunk.
• His favorite movies are The Princess Bride and Seven Samurai.
• His favorite tokusatsu series are Kamen Rider De-O, Kinohger, and Bokukenger.
• He dislikes racism, Kamen Rider Saber, forced replayability in games, and thoughtless magic systems.
• He likes Uma Musume
• He likes Cheerios.