Characters

Please bear with me, this is going to be a little long, but I'll love you forever if you go through with it, I promise. (Also, since it's kinda hard to tell, some of the words in the first half-ish of the post are hyperlinked, just so you guys'll have context if you want it. Just a head's up to mouse-over the underlined words!)

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So, I've been drawing, in various incarnations of my current style, since sixth grade. This eventually led me to develop a whole cast of characters, and along with them, a bunch of sporadic ideas for stories. I've always wanted to do a sort of serialized online comic or something, where multiple story arcs take place, but I'm a bit torn, because I want them to all have an overarching through-line connecting the entire plot. I don't know how to connect all the dots, though, or even what order to do so. Of course, this might end with practice, but I don't know... I just don't feel motivated enough with a concrete story to want to sit down and iron stuff like that out. Of course, I'm putting myself in a catch-22, because I'd be more inclined to draw out a ton of ideas I have if I were a better artist.
Anyway, here goes with all their information:

Alex N. -- The first character I created, simply because I started drawing and he was the basic prototype design that came to me first. He has the typical anime eyes and black spiky hair. It kinda looks like Gohan’s as an adult. Later on, when I was starting to flesh out my characters a bit more, I decided I wanted his last name to start with N, so I settled on "Neerah," but I don't really like that name any more... He kind of represents motivation to me, since he was my first character. In terms of personality, I can’t really decide if he’s headstrong and silent, or nice and a bit of a pushover… I don’t know if I want to polarize him that badly, either. I just know he’s supposed to be dependable.

Dave Rash -- My second character. His hairstyle went through a redesign phase a couple years back, mostly because I had stopped drawing for a few months, taught myself how to draw ears, and then couldn’t draw his old hairstyle any more when I tried, so I decided to create something new for him. I’m a little afraid it looks too alike one of my other character’s hairstyles, though… (Seth's.) But yeah -- I couldn’t draw ears when I first started out, so I originally designed every character’s hair to be hiding their ears. In “canon,” if I can even consider myself having one, he’s a "best friend" figure, and also something to work toward; sort of a “perpetually one step ahead” kind of person, even in height, looks, charisma; all that. Kind of a mish-mash of a bunch of different real friends’ personalities. His hair’s red.

Me -- I was the third character I designed. “I” have probably gone through the most iteration, mainly just because I’ve grown in real life. I first started out with spiky hair similar to what Alex has now, then I drew myself with really weird spiky/shaggy/long hair, then I decided I wanted my character to look better and more mature, and developed this sort of dreadlock-looking style that was pretty cool, but eventually just settled on the most realistic style of all my characters, my normal long hair, which changed in length according to when I got my hair drastically cut. I’ve drawn it from chin length to somewhere around chest length. I’ve never been able to draw facial hair, though, which has really pissed me off. So, ever since the summer after sophomore year in high school all the way ‘til now, “Jesse” has never had a soul patch nor a goatee. :(

Eddie Catana -- My “alter-ego;” basically an “ideal self,” if you’re into social psychology. Always better than me at whatever I can do, and can do the things I can’t. At first, kind of developed/portrayed as introspective and brooding to seem cool, though if I were to write something, I don’t know how much I’d keep that. Also, I just thought his name sounded cool; I didn’t mean to base it off the sword. I sort of “transform” into him at times, a-la Yu-Gi-Oh (for the nerds out there). The connection’s linked, so I can do it at will (and he can go back inside, as it were), and we are aware of each other; it's basically the "two consciousnesses in one body" thing, but with different looks. Weird and doesn’t work, I know. Haha (I also have ideas for stories where we become physically separated, but that’s neither here nor there) He has a love interest in my love interest’s potentially alternate form. (I’ll get to that. ^^.'') He has lighter hair than me; kind of ash-sand blonde, and at first it was a really weird shape that I thought was cool, but then I made him more normal/mysterious/brooding (or maybe I just changed it), which led to dreadlocks.

Sara Kadi -- The second real person I based a character after. I tried to draw her in my style, and I created a character for her when I started drawing because she was one of my best friends, and I intended on having her as one of the main characters in my ill-fated comic. (Which you can actually see on my deviantART account… Though I won’t speak as to the horrible jokes and writing and art and stuff.) She’s since kind of fallen out of use because I don’t see her, like, at all any more… :(

Seth -- Arguably, the real first character I ever "created." I started drawing because I liked Dragon Ball Z, and was originally trying to draw Goku, but since I sucked, I could never get him to look right, so I eventually took it in my own way and decided to make him my own character. I want his last name to start with an A, I think, but at first I chose “Alia,” and I don’t like it, because it’s the name of a character in the later part of the Mega Man X series of video games. The funniest thing is, I always drew him as a Super Saiyan at first, so I kind of had to “reverse engineer” his looks, if you will, when I finally started drawing him consistently to decide what his normal state looked like. In “canon,” he’s a teacher, probably of history, just because. He’s sort of a watchful eye over the cast of kids (keep in mind I started planning all this thinking in the present, so it’s all high school, though I still think about stories mostly in the present, so if I were to start something, I would probably have a few characters living together in a house or something), and a mentor of sorts when it comes to fighting, slash somewhat of a father-figure. (You know it has to have action in it. Haha) Keeping in the same line as DBZ, I’ve drawn him (and most of my other characters) as Super Saiyans, and usually painstakingly differentiating their hair between the different forms (Literally, every single one: Super Saiyan, Ultra Super Saiyan, Ultra Super Saiyan 2, Super Saiyan 2, and Super Saiyan 3. I haven’t designed many of my characters as Super Saiyan 3, though, just because I want them all to be distinct, and it’s difficult to draw all that hair. Super Saiyan 4’s out, because it looks weird.), which I find kind of hilarious, but still really fun, even now. Eventually, I made up a plot device in my canon that would allow them to turn Super Saiyan without it actually being plagiarism. Sometimes, they get armor because of it, too. Cool stuff. Hahaha

Crystal Morrow -- Really, actually, kind of an enigma of a character to me. Supposed to be my “perfect girl,” I guess (again with psych), but I find different things I like in different girls, so I still don’t know exactly how she embodies that. I guess maybe because I don’t know everything about her? As ridiculous as that sounds, I think that’s the truest thing I’ve come up with in relation to her character in a while. In canon, she’s supposed to advent by “transformation” similar to Eddie through whoever my love interest is. At first it was more complicated, in that she was linked to Sara, but Sara didn’t know it, and Crystal couldn’t actually trigger the transformation, and also didn’t know how to change back. When I thought more about it, I was wondering how I could have Sara go missing and Crystal show up for extended periods of time (because they couldn’t control it) and have no one think anything of it. I never ended up getting that far into planning that, though. I also wanted to have some kind of love triangle thing (Except, more complicated. Heh) going between Jesse, Eddie, Sara, and Crystal -- Eddie and Crystal would be in some sort of “mutual attraction” kind of weird relationship-thing because they understand a little bit about what each other are, then Sara is in love with Eddie, and Jesse’s in love with Crystal, and maybe starts to develop something for Sara, and then it all gets weird. I hope you can tell all of that has no grounds in real life. :P After a while, Crystal migrated to whoever I was dating at the time. (Of whom I've drawn a few.) After that, though, I think Crystal just kinda went on to become her own thing… Though I still do view her as a sort of “transformation coming from someone.” Kinda. I dunno.
Also, I’m constantly aware of and nervous about people not liking or having preconceived notions about the name “Crystal.” On one hand, I know people in real life with the name Crystal, but on the other, it just sounds like such a typical stripper name… And while she’s supposed to be attractive, I don’t want to have that associated with her. She’s supposed to seem more mature than me, I think. Ehheh
As for her name, I wanted it to start with M, so I originally used “Marius,” but I meant for that to be sort of a placeholder, because while I liked the name, it was a borrowed one; a friend of mine has a character by that name. I was running through the cemetery in Piedmont one practice in high school, and I started making a habit of checking all the gravestones with “M” names, and eventually saw one I liked: Morrow. That’s stuck for a few years, but I’m still kind of looking for that perfect one that strikes me. At a place my (college) team does work-outs, there’s a baseball field named after some “Minnitti” person or something, and I considered using that for a while, but I don’t think I will.
Her looks have also gone through slight phases, mostly with her hair. It used to be short and squareish, because I couldn’t draw, then it started taking on more girlish form, and has continued to, because she’s supposed to be sexy, and I have gotten a little better at drawing longer hair. (I thought it was ironic that I like long hair on girls, but my trademark "sex symbol" character had shoulder-length or shorter hair.) A trademark of hers is the front of her hair (she kinda has long bangs, I guess) are white, with a tuft at the top also white, and then reddish-brown hair.

Mark -- Originally based off a high school teammate, just coz I was around him so much. His character was around the advent of the ears. Heh. He’s now kind of departed from Ceraldi’s real-life character, because I don’t really plan on using him in any story, unless I embark on the idea of a semi-autobiographical comic, but… *Shrugs* Who knows. Anyway, because of that, his character model has mostly fallen out of use, except for the random doodle here or there. Still remains as a sort of antagonistic character. Ehheh
I almost forgot, there was actually almost a completely separate Mark; one I tried to create with a completely ridiculous hairstyle a really long time ago, because I had been drawing the same few people for a while, and wanted to branch out to include someone new. I think I tried to make him very anime-inspired; he had green hair. He was kinda beefy. He was supposed to be Dave’s brother, I think. Ironically, once my drawing skills improved, I tried to draw him after a long time (I never used him for anything, really), and I couldn’t do it, mainly because his hair was too weird.

Drew Kessler -- I've drawn a few of my friends (and like I said before, my classmates), but none with enough frequency where I get to the point that I’m able to draw him consistently and can consider him somewhat of a “recurring” character. I don’t really know where he’d fit into my action-oriented plot, but I also have no idea how I’d carry just these same characters through my autobiographical story and make it make sense or be in any way biographical. When dreaming up connections I could make with my characters and how I would portray their relationships, I was toying with the idea of making Drew and Alex brothers; I thought they looked kinda similar.

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…Whew! I realized after writing all this out that I actually, believe it or not, left out a character or two... Oh, well. :/
Kinda sad that I only have two female characters, yeah? I could go off on all the random ideas I have, too, but I never seem to get anywhere with them.

Please give me any and all feedback! Tell me what you think!

I Really Don't Hate Everything...

Or, "The Uncle Vanya Review."

...Sort of.

I'm not quite sure where to start. I might start skipping ahead of myself or jump around a bit, so I'm sorry if this post is a little disjointed.

I just realized how kind of depressed I am about my favorite -- not "genre" of play, but style, I guess? The slice of life. Because, I mean, isn't that what Uncle Vanya, and for that matter, most other Chekhov plays are? The idea that the thing I enjoy writing most could vanish with all other contemporaneous slosh that's not applicable to any other time period scares me. But why has Chekhov survived so well, then? I mean, I still like things to happen in my plays. And sure, stuff happens in Uncle Vanya, but... not much. I guess I kind of felt like there wasn't a very good reason for much of anything to happen there. What spurred everyone to be so discontent all of a sudden? Why didn't everyone realize Yelena is hot right off the bat? At the very least, I want an interesting catalyst. That's the biggest realization I've come to strictly in terms of writing, but I (of course) have no idea how I want to (more like "would") implement something like that.
...I respect Chekhov, I just don't know if I like him. And that's because I can't relate to the characters' situations; the Russian bourgeois is kind of an outdated class, or, at least, topic. So what am I supposed to do with that? How can I make sure that doesn't happen to MY characters?

Now I'm afraid my characters are just stereotypes. If you would all be so kind, please go critique my main character ideas -- I'll post them up after this blog.

As far as this production went, I liked that it was in the round overall, but sometimes my focus was pulled in weird ways. That was worth it, though, since it's so much easier to pick up emotions from closer in. I still had an issue with the emotions as they related to pace, though, and this is definitely a tricky thing with Chekhov: to prevent it from being boring, it needs to be done at a fast pace. But there still has to be time for the audience to become emotionally invested! I felt like they were racing through to see how quickly they could finish rather than let the heavy moments lie and gain any sort of weight. Where I found that especially to the point of just kind of hokeyness was with all the crying. I don't care if the actors aren't actually doing it; I can't cry on command, but everyone cried for like three seconds and then was over with it.
It just kept me more distanced from the characters than I wanted to be, is all. But how do you know what do to with that? How do you fix that as a writer? Chekhov apparently wasn't worried, what with his, like, five stage directions over his entire career. But was that just a product of being involved in the whole process? At CSSSA, when I was first trying out playwriting, I had way too many stage directions in there. My teacher even designed certain extra requirements for me to get me to pull them back. While some helped me write better leading dialogue for the characters, I originally had the directions in because I actually pictured myself directing the play I was writing. And when it gets boiled down, is specificity a bad thing? I mean, directors throw stage directions out the window all the time, right? So what's wrong with putting them all in, just so they're completely clear on the original intent?
Isn't it kinda like what happened with Sarah Ruhl's "five emotions in a second and a half" stage direction? I want to capture a mood, a feeling.
I suppose Chekhov does, too, but does starting out just wanting to convey that through a relationship or a peek into these peoeple's lives accomplish that completely? If their statuses are all stripped from them, or if they were in a different setting, would it be as good a play (provided it still made sense)?

I don't necessarily ever want to be in a Chekhov play... but do I want to write like him?! Augh! I'm realizing I haven't really thought about my writing on a large scale pretty much at all. Who would people compare me to? Would it be a good or bad thing?

...I'm getting way too ahead of myself, aren't I. I haven't even written a complete full-length play yet, and I have no idea how to cohere all my ideas for any specific project.
Balls.

This isn't even a review! I barely talked about Vanya at all. Sorry. :P
In conclusion?


I got a new tablet for my birthday.