#like if you want the sole female protagonist to be childlike why make her super cool powered-up form fanservice-y?

[novagon]

I personally think Nezuko's muzzle is useless.

[rahulisgood-blog]

Short Story Process Work

Story Title: Sidewalk Flowers

Character Builder

Main Character/Protagonist: Emily

Gender: Female

Age: 8

Height: 4”2

Physical Traits:

Emily is an 8-year-old girl, with black hair and bangs, and hazel brown eyes, not a normal brown, something she is extremely proud of. Her main clothes are a bright red sweater, black pants, and simple running shoes, an outfit that is extremely casual yet allows her to stick out and still be different from everyone else. Her parents only buy her running shoes these days after she tore through her first two pairs of nicer shoes, playing in the park and having fun.

Distinguishing Features:

Some features that set Emily apart from anyone else is her red sweater which she loves to wear and her thick bangs.

Family:

Emily has two siblings, a younger brother and sister, and two loving parents. Logic is quite important to Emily because of how her father raised her. As a businessman himself, he taught her to always observe the world around her and analyze everything as it happens around her.

Personality:

Emily is fun-loving and loves to be happy, something her parents instilled in her. She beams positivity and enthusiasm as she talks to anyone around her. She is always excited to meet a new person and craves to do so on her daily walks past the marketplace. Getting waved to is one of her favourite things, hence why she always wears a bright red sweater, forcing people to look over and interact with her.

Side Character: Emily’s Dad, John

Gender: Male

Age: 37

Height: 6”1

Physical Traits:

John is a tall man, standing at a whopping 6ft2. He is always wearing a suit, as his job at the bank requires it.

Distinguishing Features:

His height and kind attitude, something he learnt from his wife.

Family:

He expects his kids to be quite tall, one day he hopes his son grows over 6ft! He likes to think that his three kids will go into vastly different fields but successful nonetheless. Had dreams of his son becoming a basketball player before he was even born.

Personality:

He works at a bank and is up for a promotion soon, so he’s been put in charge of an important project. He began putting in twice the work, clocking in long overtime hours. He typically likes to leave work at work, as he hates stressing out his family and interrupting the time he gets with them. But, on one bad day, he ends up having to take a super important call, leaving Emily up to do whatever she wants. Typically, he’s a sharp man with good eyes, something he passed on to his first daughter and hopefully his other two kids. He had a passion for art growing up and always wished he had chosen that career instead of finance and hopes at least one of kids chooses a creative field. Overall, he is a super focused, logistical, meticulous man.

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Reflection:

The story that I attempted to create with “Sidewalk Flowers” was in some way related to real issues that I’ve noticed around me for the past year. Perhaps it's just me, but I feel like there has been an absence of happiness recently and people have started to focus on the negatives of life, rather than that which makes life amazing (at least with the people around me). I notice this especially in Grade 12’s who consistently express their excitement to graduate and get away from high school, and away from all the bad times high school has brought them. I find this answer quite ridiculous, and it reminds me of a quote I read earlier this year, “Did you have a bad day, or did you stretch five bad minutes into a whole bad day”, something that I think tons of people are guilty of.

The first draft of the story is rather different from the final copy because originally I tried to create a narrative where the message or alluded theme was acceptance from family vs acceptance from self. The original story had a prologue of sorts where it showed Emily as an orphan, and she was adopted into a family, and I was going to use that idea coupled with colour symbolism in the pictures and symbolism of a suitcase/backpack to show her slowly feeling the acceptance from her family and eventually accepting herself. However, I chose to take this out because I felt that there was a better story if I stuck with solely the colour symbolism and used it to represent happiness, within her and her community. Something that I quite enjoyed doing with this story was approaching the narration through a third person perspective while still exposing Emily’s character. I attempted to explain everything in depth while still keeping a childlike attitude of looking at the world, for example, describing tattoos as drawings on someone's arm or marital spats in the back of a car in the nicest way possible.