Zach's mom, Samantha Taylor (maiden name Zimmermann), is a stay-at-home housewife who holds down the fort while her husband travels for work and her son is off at college. She's an overprotective tiger mother with a genius-level intellect and has a severe case of obsessive-compulsive disorder which has only been exacerbated since she's been at home by herself.
For as much as Zach fears his mom, Samantha was apparently far more frightening before he was born, but the loneliness of a married life with a traveling husband and her unexpected difficulty with raising her single child have softened some of the razor-sharp edges of her character. In fact, she's kind of falling apart mentally, and has been for at least a decade. Zach is afraid of his mom, but he's also worried about and for her.
Mrs. Taylor is a genuine polymath with an eidetic memory and an IQ of 180 who absorbs information like a sponge. She was valedictorian of her 2000 class at LCU with undergraduate degrees in mechanical engineering and architectural design, and the only reason she didn't get further education was that it would mean less time around her beloved and expected child.
Zach has heard his mom tell the story of how she met the love of her life dozens of times, with various degrees of embellishment and omitted details every telling, but the true story is as follows:
Samantha bumped into Zach's father, Jeff, for the first time near the end of their first freshman semester. Samantha had been gloomily looking down at her feet (a habit from her childhood since people asked the girl with weird red eyes less questions if she kept her face down), Jeff had been looking up at an antique stained-glass window, and the two walked into each other. Samantha fell to the ground and her big glasses fell off. Practically blind as a bat, she scrambled around for them only for whoever bumped into her to put suddenly put them on her face again. She turned around and this 5'11" guy with short brown hair, expressive brown eyes, and great shoulders, biceps, and chest muscles sheepishly apologized for not looking where he was going because he had been looking up at the architecture of the awnings and the stained-glass window of the student center (one of the only buildings on campus that had survived when the area was essentially carpet bombed in 1974). He excitedly pointed out the details of the building and the roof to this skittish 5'3" half-Japanese/half-German girl with braided pigtails and huge glasses who was still sitting on the ground as she nodded her head with little idea of what he was talking about but enjoying how enthusiastic he was being.
He went on for about a minute before he realized he was getting carried away, and introduced himself as Jeffery Taylor. He simultaneously reached out to shake her hand and to help her up off the ground as Samantha introduced herself, feeling like she was about to have a panic attack. Her heart was stuck in her throat when Jeffery commented on her red eyes.
Samantha groaned as she'd gone through this hundred of times in her life, but he started going on about how neat they were instead of the usual questions "Are they real?" or "Did you know that your red eyes are weird?" He said that she should really ditch the glasses because she's got a great face, and maybe those braided pigtails too since they're really not her style, and seriously, those red eyes are so neat, but also that she should try looking up a bit more. "There's lots of cool stuff to see on campus, and you're gonna miss them if you keep staring down at your feet."
Jeffery quickly realized he'd started rambling again and apologizes again, and he said he had to to run off to his next class, an intro architecture seminar. Samantha, almost shouting, asked him for his phone number as he was about to walk away. They exchanged contacts and he ran off, not realizing the red string of fate was trailing behind him.
Samantha spent the next week in a daze. Within three minutes of talking to Jeffery, Samantha realized she was madly in love with. She came back to campus in January with a total image change. She'd straightened her long black hair and started wearing a cute white headband, she ditched the glasses for contacts, she started wearing a bit of makeup and showing her skin as much as her uniform regulations would allow, and began acting far more confident, almost in a sensual way.
Oh, and she decided to dual major in both Architectural Design and Architectural Engineering since she didn't know which one her future husband was doing and didn't want to miss him. Samantha always thought of Jeff as "my future husband" because she was that delusional in being that sure of herself that it was the only title that fit.
It's debatable how much Samantha forced herself to change to match herself to Jeffery's tastes before she chained him down, but what isn't debatable were the results. Jeffery definitely took notice of Samantha after her glow up and gave her a dorky winking grin with his thumb up, saying that he liked the new look, an act that made Samantha's heart melt.
Samantha was initially dismayed to learn within the first two weeks of the semester that her future husband was a bit of an unintentional playboy with throngs of women around him because he had a habit of carelessly saying sweet lines to women that made them fall in love with him (like what had happened to her); however, what set Samantha apart from the competition was that she was willing to take extreme measures in love to win his heart.
Whenever a girl started to pull ahead of "the herd" (as Samantha internally thought of it, something she later shared with her future husband after she had won and a phrase he had adopted), she yanked them back down to the ground.
Samantha had a five-step system for dealing with girls who get too close to the man in her crosshairs. She would at first be kind but assertive to a girl, then pushy and passive-aggressive and telling a girl to back off, then mean and aggressive telling this girl that Jeffery was taken, then threatening whatever bitch she was telling to get the fuck away from her future husband with detailed and highly specific plans to murder them while she gave them a chilling frost witch glare and that they shouldn't interfere, and then actually murdering that slut for daring to get in the way of true love like hers.
Samantha never got to that fifth step (according to her), and it's debatable that she would be capable of ruthless first-degree murder when she's a fairly small and weak girl, but what isn't debatable was the results. The herd started to thin, and it wasn't just that Jeffery Taylor had built up a reputation on campus as a well-intentioned but ultimately heartbreaking playboy, just like Keisuke had (although Jeffery's issue was obliviousness to how his kind but platonic words could easily be misconstrued as words of romantic affection, while Keisuke's issues were kind but ultimately platonic actions and words that could cause a girl to fall in love with him, quickly realizing that love, and intending romance but coming off as crass and callous in a way that turned that girl's love into either disappointment, dislike, or hate).
Samantha played for keeps, but maybe that's because she's a yandere who "disposed" of the trash around her beloved. She at least gave that impression to her son, but she'd never incriminate herself one way or another. After all, a woman has to have some mysterious secrets about her, right?
Jeff (as he had later asked to be called) mentioned that he thought it was impressive that Samantha was a dual major. Samantha tried to major in Mechanical Engineering as well to impress him even more, but her course advisor told her that she couldn't be a triple major, so she dropped Architectural Engineering for it (since her future husband was only doing Architectural Design and it'd be redundant to do both).
She hit the books hard to pull this off. Samantha tested badly in school her entire life, but she took to studying like a bird took to air. Now that she had some self-confidence and a goal, both of which were things she had lacked for all her life, she was starting to demonstrate a frighteningly high level of intelligence. Her OCD was rechanneled into borderline autistic savantism through sheer force of will, and this was something Jeff (Samantha's future husband, remember? Samantha didn't!) noticed even more than her image change. It was also more attractive to him than that image change, even if he worried that she never seemed to sleep with how hard she was working.
Samantha didn't need to study with other people, but the new phase of her plan with her future husband was to be present if Jeff ever struggled with an academic question and to gently help guide him to the answer if he ever asked for it, with the assumption that he'd slowly rely on her more and more. While at a group study session with this purpose in mind, everyone lost focus, and someone put on an episode of Star Fleet: The New Generation and it turned into a watch party instead.
This turned out to be the single best thing that could have happened for Samantha Zimmermann on her quest to become Samantha Taylor, as the episode put on was one of the most romantic in the entire series and one widely considered as among the very best in the entire franchise.
Samantha and Jeff left the study-session-turned-watch-party together, and romance was obviously on both of their minds, although unlike Samantha, Jeff wasn't enraptured by it right now.
He commented on how intensely she was watching that episode and was curious why. Samantha's obvious answer would have been "I want that type of married life with you," but she mentioned that her dad is a jazz musician and that bit in the story with Picardy's whistle really spoke to her soul. Jeff shrugged and said the episode was very good but that he liked an earlier episode about the trial for proving Commander Info's sentience better. "Now that episode was peak television!"
Samantha was a little upset at herself for not realizing that she and her future husband were both total Fleeters until this exact moment. She wouldn't even have needed to do anything for this slam dunk of getting him to like her more since she genuinely loved the franchise as it was one of the few pieces of media she was allowed to consume in her very strict household growing up.
Jeff brought Samantha back from her self-deprecating internal monologue about her failure to notice this by commenting that it was cool seeing Samantha act so passionate about something as simple as a TV show, even if it was a good show and a good episode from it. In fact, it was just cool seeing how much more passionate she'd gotten about everything since they first met. He never would have thought that meek, fidgety dork he bumped into almost a year ago would have turned out to be such a wonderful woman, but he's glad that she did.
Samantha nearly screamed in triumphant joy from this. This is what she has been waiting to hear from her future husband for over a year now!
But she played it cool and gave a coy grin and a flirty wink (she knew she couldn't quite copy all of Jeff's moves and throw them back at him or he'd start to get suspicious, so she omitted the thumbs up), and she said, "Stick around. I'm full of surprises."
Jeff told Samantha that he was going to take her up on that offer and asked if she wanted to start going out with him.
Again, Samantha nearly screamed out in triumphant joy, but she settled for a very subtle fist pump, just barely tensing the muscles in her arm.
She next laid on the charm a bit thick here (but she knew she could get away with it and that Jeff adores that seductive sultriness) and smoothly said, "Sure, but you're going to have to work hard to keep up with me."
Samantha truly considered everything after this in their relationship as the very long victory lap, but she couldn't slow down now. In fact, she could never let herself slow down ever again, because she was positive that what Jeff likes about her is her passion and her drive.
If anything, she needed to speed up. Maybe she hadn't got him yet? She couldn't risk that, so she had to do everything she could not to lose him.
Samantha dialed her confidence up to an actual ego, something she'd never had before. She had once reserved that "frost witch" thing she can do (as Jeff called it once, something she later started to think of internally as) exclusively for women trying to get close to her future husband, but it now came out a bit more often; still, she knew it was something she had to use sparingly as she knows firsthand how worrying or even genuinely frightening to watch someone turn into a demon like that, even if it was just temporarily and with her full control.
She also started getting a bit argumentative with professors when they were wrong or imprecise, but she knew she was right for correcting them. The best part wasn't that a professor who was an expert in their field had to acknowledge that this young woman smugly disagreeing with them was making a good point, but that Jeff saw this.
Samantha noticed that Jeff liked when she started to talk passionately about academic subjects, but she'd talked so much about her interests from her sheltered childhood that she's exhausted a lot of her supply. So she gave herself new ones: astronomy ("Isn't the universe just full of endless possibilities and wouldn't it be wonderful to travel to the stars to find out that we aren't alone? It's such a romantic thought!"), photography (Samantha knows this subject well and can force herself to enjoy it; plus, she could take cute picture of her future husband for... reasons), rocket science (She actually liked this one; sci-fi nerd, remember? Also, the field was still developing as the space race never happened and the sky was the limit), softball (Jeff mentioned that he and his dad liked watching baseball, but she couldn't actually get into baseball as that was too masculine and she had a carefully-cultivated image to maintain), chemistry ("Did you know that the stained glass panels that you pointed out to me when we first met are actually a very slow moving liquid known as an amorphous solid?"), paleontology (She never actually care for this one, but every guy likes dinosaurs, right?), political sciences (Samantha thinks politics are irrelevant as the rest of the world could go to Hell and she wouldn't mind much as long as she and especially Jeff were okay), gardening (Samantha quickly realized it was a genuinely stressful experience for someone with severe OCD to kneel in the dirt all afternoon, but she supposed it was feminine enough that it's worth exploring and suffered through the discomfort; plus, there's no way she's going to let her future home with her future husband not have a beautiful garden), geology (Samantha once got into an argument with Jeff for 2 hours because he stubbornly refused to concede that ice counts as a rock just to see how she'd react; the answer is that ice is both a mineral and a rock and that her reaction of frustration was adorable, but Jeff apologized later when he realized he might have actually made her upset), philosophy (Samantha thought that Plato was a complete idiot who didn't know what he was talking about, but she thinks that the rest of the famous ones have made at least somewhat valid points), languages (Samantha already knew how to speak English, Japanese, and German, but she becomes natively fluent in Polish, Latin, French, Italian, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, and Arabic), cooking (Samantha was not good at it despite a mother who demanded that she needed to be, but her self-study was far more helpful than her guided study in her childhood), biology (Samantha reminded her husband that he shouldn't ask a woman about the details of this subject), mathematics (Samantha stopped showing off how good she was at doing complex equations in her head when Jeff made a slightly tasteless joke about her being a human calculator that she took as him making fun of her for being half-Asian), computer science (this was the one thing she actually didn't learn much more about as she wasn't allowed much access to technology growing up and would later be mystified that her son liked technology so much; had she learned more about computers, the web blockers and parental controls she put into place might not have been so easily circumvented), and engineering (Samantha would later get so good at this that's she'd graduate with honors from a highly-rated major university as the valedictorian of not just her department but the entire class; also, to the annoyance of her professors, she drafted everything by hand and refused to use CAD whenever she could).
Oh, and architectural design. The thing her future husband is actually in school for and that she started majoring in to get close to him. She should get passionate about that too, and she quickly begins to excel at it in a way that truly impressed Jeff (but also made him ever-so-slightly jealous).
Samantha lost her virginity to Jeff at the start of Junior year of college. A part of her was frustrated that they had been dating for over half a year with little more than kissing or Jeff getting a little handsy, but the more romantic part of her considers the wait making that moment so much better. She was already so madly in love with her future husband that she had pictured the scene in her head hundreds of times, but the genuine experience was far, far better than anything she could have imagined. She doesn't like to think about it that often because it makes her upset, but Jeff was in fact a bit of a playboy before she chained him down, and he's got a great deal of experience in being just as rough or as gentle as a woman wants... and knowing what she needs.
After that, it was like a dam burst for Samantha. Like she was making up for lost time, she'd act insatiable around Jeff. Even when they were in public and having a great time, she'd sometimes wish they were in the bedroom and couldn't wait to get back there. Sometimes, she couldn't wait, and they'd break off to a quiet spot for a quickie. Usually, she'd be the one dragging him, but as infrequent as they were, she especially loved when Jeff was the one who initiated. God, she loved being picked up by him and literally carried to a spot where she'd be leaned against a wall and fucked until her hips just slightly hurt. Because of their size difference, it was more comfortable for Samantha to be on top, but she adored the crushing closeness of a matting press, and when there was wrist control and when they kissed during sex, oh my God...
Samantha was and still is the peak definition of a power bottom. It's a shame for her budget that her OCD is so severe that she can't let herself keep furniture after it had become stained with their sexual fluids, because that happened quite often. She maybe should have put sheets over all her furniture, but she loved the spontaneous nature of her sex with her future husband (and present husband) far too much to admit that she was planning it. At least they always had condoms lying around.
Zach... has heard way too of his mom and dad having sex, but he's also been told about his mom's sex life from her directly. Samantha views sex as the purest expression of her love for her husband and a quasi-divine act, so there's no reason to be ashamed of it. Because of her, Zach views sex as something you only do with the love of your life... which has contributed to him never having it.
The third happiest day of Samantha Zimmermann's life was when Jeff proposed to her just before graduation. Literally, like as she was about to get on stage for her valedictorian speech, he popped out the ring and proposed, and of course Samantha accepted, but she was a little pissed at his timing because she had rehearsed that speech so much and she now she had been turned into a flustered and fidgeting mess who could barely focus on getting the words out of her mouth. Jeff knew this was going to happen, and to his delight and possible danger, he does enjoy teasing Samantha because she acts so adorable when he makes her frustrated.
The second happiest day of Samantha Zimmermann's life was when she stopped being Samantha Zimmermann and became Samantha Taylor. Their wedding wasn't a particularly large event (let's just say that Samantha's side of the family was noticeably thin), but she felt like a goddamned princess as she walked down the aisle with her dad to her prince. One of the things she likes the most about Jeff (it's a long list) is that he's as cool as a cucumber under pressure, but he was noticeably nervous as the priest recited the vows. She kept thinking about how her very soon not-future husband needs to stop looking up at the awnings and stained-glass windows and look at her, but when his best friend, Leon Burton (Rich's dad) handed him the ring to put on her finger, it all fit together just as well as the ring fit on her left ring finger and he gave her the most romantic kiss of her life after they said their vows (Samantha still gets a little gooey thinking about it over two decades later; in many ways, Samantha's genius is a curse as her eidetic memory and obsessive thought process keep the important details of life running in her head like a movie with near-perfect detail, but she's glad whenever this particular clip plays).
The happiest day of Samantha Taylor's life was she went to the hospital for a routine checkup with her vision (her condition with her red eyes is unique enough that she has to go to an actual optometrist in a major hospital for it) and was told she was pregnant after a doctor saw her stumble out of the checkup room and forced her to get checked up on since that's not something that can be ignored while in a hospital after someone stumbles. He ran a quick test on her that told her the sex of her child.
Despite appearances from where she is now, Samantha still entered motherhood with the best of intentions. Zach needed to grow to develop his own interests and not be shoved into academics so hard by his mom just because she was a genius and would not accept even the thought that her child shouldn't be one too, but she's made several personal sacrifices and put in genuine effort to be the best mom she could and raise a happy, healthy, and successful child.
In didn't really turn out that way in the end, but in an attempt to be a better mother, she even shelved her plans of opening up a small architectural design firm with her husband to be a full-time housewife and mother to her new son. This came with a drastic consequence, as she and Jeff had just built a new house in Lake Oswego, OR (20 minutes south of Portland, OR, where both had grown up). They had designed this house together, but it had been an expensive project and they had been planning on financing their loans with income from that design firm.
This house was slightly outside of their projected means, but even as a student Samantha had built up connections with future clients interested in working with her because of her sheer talent and obsessive attention to detail. She could have looked forward to a long, distinguished, and profitable future career as either an architect or an engineer. Her husband was no slouch himself and could have gotten a small architectural design firm off the ground by his own merits, but it was simply not realistic to expect the same level of income without her involved in the process.
Samantha and Jeff talked the decision over in a very frank discussion. This was the closest Samantha had ever gotten to being insistent with something Jeff had serious doubts about, but they came to the same conclusion eventually: family comes first.
Unfortunately for that conclusion, Leon Burton, Jeff Taylor's best friend from college, came to him an offer too good to refuse once he heard that Samantha was going to be a full-time mom instead of starting that firm with him, and Jeff began working for Leon's new online real-estate marketplace company. The well-paying job was the head of the evaluation/repair/renovation department, but it required a lot of traveling. So much, in fact, that he'd only be home for about two months total throughout the year, and then later after a promotion, he would spend just under one month combined at home every year.
Also, Samantha is the reason why Zach and Keisuke became best friends in the first place.
The Nakamuras moved next door to the Taylors right before Zach turned 5. They were a family of three: Hideyoshi, a Japanese husband who did the accounting for a number of law firms in the area; Anna, a stay-at-home mom of Swedish ancestry with the whitest skin and blondest hair you've ever seen; and Keisuke, a young boy who was 2 months older than Zach yet looked like he was at least 6 if not 7 with how big he was.
Naturally, a playdate was arranged so that the two boys could meet each other.
Zach first thought of the giant kid (that he was mildly scared of) who had been invited into his playroom without his permission as a lumbering oaf of a gorilla, and had Keisuke not been so big compared to Zach, he would have shoved Keisuke for breaking some of his building toys because he hadn't been gentle with the delicate parts while separating them.
Again, Zach's mom isn't a completely horrible mother and she saw the potential of Zach developing a friend, and she insisted that the playdates continue despite Zach's dislike of the boy.
Plus, Samantha had gotten some clues that Keisuke's home life was violent and thought it'd be best for the kid to seek refuge in her home while keeping Zach out of his. Hideyoshi was clearly alcoholic, and Samantha recognized the signs of domestic abuse from Anna. Anna insisted that she just got cold easily and was protecting her delicate white skin by wearing long sleeves everywhere, but she'd suddenly favor one arm over the other some days, and sometimes she'd have a pair of sunglasses on during cloudy, overcast days.
While Samantha Taylor regrets not intervening with the domestic affairs of the Nakamuras more, forcing her son to play with their son turned out to be one of the best parental decisions she has ever made; as much as Zach twisted his friendship with Keisuke into something unhealthy, Zach would have been a far more troubled individual had he not become friend with Keisuke. Keisuke liked Zach from the start, and while it took Zach about a month to warm up to the boy, the two were an inseparable pair after that. Yes, Zach thought Keisuke was a bit of an idiot, but the boy was almost twice his size and very strong and could run fast and that's something a frail 5-year-old boy admires; in return, Keisuke thought Zach had a bad habit of lying constantly and acting smug about being smart, and he was a bit annoyed that he was always the one making suggestions about what to do and often rejected Keisuke's suggestions, but Zach actually was smart enough that even a kid with D-tier book smarts like Keisuke could realize how smart he was and her respected him for that, and it was Zach's house that they were over at almost every time and he got to make the rules.
While Samantha Taylor's body isn't as well-endowed as her daughter's (largely due to Zach's edits in re:Dreamer's character editor), the apple hasn't fallen far from the tree. Zach inherited her distinctive red eyes and most of her black hair, as well as her natural attractiveness. She's 160 cm/5'3" (contrast with the slightly taller 163 cm/5'4" height Zoey has) with a beautiful and youthful appearance that has only recently showed the slightest signs of starting to fade at 44.
Zach often worries that he shares more in common with her than her eyes or hair color, such as missing a few gears in his head that more "normal" people have. Now that he has a female body, certain things in his physiologically female brain have been rewired, a change that is only going to become more apparent as Zach adapts to his new female body chemistry. Zach's typical smart-ass personality and sarcastic jokes have started to become a scary-ass personality and chilling outbursts.
In conclusion, Samantha Taylor is an... interesting individual painted with vibrant colors and subtle shades. Ever the polymath, she's simultaneously a tragic victim of circumstances beyond her control, a sympathetic villain who has nevertheless been an antagonist in Zach's life, a clinically insane rouge operating on several layers of external and internal deceit, an eminently talented Renaissance woman who sometimes acts regretful or even bitter when she starts thinking that she squandered her vast potential on a silly little thing like a family, a stubborn and emotionally turbulent bitch with a massive ego, a frighteningly protective and jealous yandere who's been running her victory lap with her trophy husband in her hands for 22 years, a doting and excessively lonely wife who misses the company of the love of her life so much that she's going insane, and a loving mother with unfairly high expectations for her son who is at her wits' end with him because she knows she tried her best but hasn't raised Zach well or even in a way that would let him find a happy and successful future for himself despite all her spoken claims to the contrary. For all of her many faults, Zach's mom is an excessively perceptive and self-aware person, and she regards her failure as a mother as the biggest failure in her life. For all her intelligence, and all her love, she failed her son.
She's a woman fueled by an unstable and turbulent blend of OCD, PTSD, BPD, and love. To varying degrees, the severity of the first, the strength of the last, and her own intellect have been the driving force of her personality; again, she legitimately has a 180 IQ and is an actual polymath and she got there through obsessive willpower (and severe mental illness). This has been the glue holding this severely broken person together, but after two decades, that glue has started to lose strength as she's left alone with her own worst enemy: herself.