11_Wyatt, 12_Sadie, and 13_Eleanor

So I hit some major artist block last night trying to do some A Jagged Road characters so I decided to pull a 180 tonight. Details are sparse on these kids since I just kind of started with shapes and then expanded from there. I’m gonna be kind of stream-of-consciousness writing this so bear with me.

Eleanor

Ellie (I might look for a more creative nickname further divorced from her given name – ‘Eleanor’ is pretty white-bread and it may be cliche for her not to like it, but it’s cliche for a reason) is a big bear of a girl. She’s ‘overweight’ but the cause isn’t particularly clear, be it glandular or genetic or just plain old overeating. It’s not really important to the character so much as it is that she’s bullied a bit for it. In fact, all three characters are bullied for different things, and is one of the factors that’s brought them together to become friends. All three are students at the same junior high school.

Ellie also doesn’t clearly identify as a ‘girl’ although she is completely ignorant about gender identity and the like, just another way that she feels alienated from other students. She has a plethora of body image issues, although in that regard she’s consciously aware of them (although being aware of the way society judges her doesn’t help her self-esteem). She’s also an artist, although she’s too self-conscious to show most people her art or writing and so keeps it secret.

Wyatt

Wyatt can be summed up as ‘he hates people.’ He’s generally rude, offensive, obnoxious and loud, but mostly this is just his coping mechanism for the shitty hand life dealt him (however much of it is true and however much of it he’s convinced himself it has). It takes a very unique person to be able to tolerate Wyatt’s presence, fortunately he’s found two (and even they have to regulate their exposure to him).

Wyatt isn’t athletic, art oriented, good at math, or really anything. He’s not even very good at video games and has a stack of them at home that lay unfinished despite pouring through internet guides. He has abysmal scores in online competitive games, but he doesn’t play to ‘win’ those anymore so much as find ways to grief and troll other players. In fact, the one thing Wyatt is really good at is trolling people. He’s done it so long and so well that he’s made an art of it.

His swagger as an anonymous internet rabble-rouser doesn’t translate into real-life as he’s bullied not for being a hermetic basement nerd as much as rumors that started circulating long ago that he was gay. The rumors weren’t based on anything real, but as much as he tries to deny, as puberty peaks the rumors are turning out to be true.

Sadie

I have Sadie in mind as this confident, smart, athletic type, mostly track and field, although that makes her difficult to place with the other two. An obvious choice would be to have her be bullied for her race, but I honestly have no clue how common or severe that would be in this day and age, especially since modern schools will be more on the lookout for racial-oriented bullying than homophobic or body image bullying. The other thing is I don’t want her to be the Token black girl at the school, which means that if there are plenty of other colored kids then racial discrimination is going to be even less useful as a narrative device.

Then again a sad reality is how schools are districted, and paid for solely by tax dollars in that district. That means that a low income black neighborhood has an abysmal school system compared to the middle income white neighborhood down the street. Sadie’s parents pulled some strings and jumped through a few hoops to get her into the better, safer junior high. Sadie wouldn’t exactly be appreciative of the uproot, even if they have her best interests at heart. I’m sure the vast majority of the kids at the new school will have no problem with her, but it only takes a couple of persistent assholes to poison the well.

Category: 2011, Drama