Monday, February 14, 2011

A Young Eli

As a child, Eli was always tiny. Even when he grew up in Prince Edward Island, Canada, it wasn't really that much for a very long while. You can tell his smallness by comparing his size to the pillows. But he's watching at all times with his large, dark and knowing eyes.

From birth, he'd been learning at an accelerated rate. There were a lot of milestones he reached before his first birthday that most children reach at one and a half years of age. Most of his early achievements were thanks to the equally early maturation of his muscles, bones, and nervous system. But his mental abilities benefited the most from this premature growth. By the time he was in kindergarten, he was intelligent enough to perform well at a 6th grade level.

In fact, he was developing so fast, a great number of people thought he had a vast array developmental or genetic issues. Eli has a tendency to smile and has a naturally smiling mouth. He was incredibly fidgety as a child, and, combined with his early smiling, doctors thought he had Angelman's Syndrome. But as it turned out, his muscles were maturing quickly, and he was merely trying to sit up and move around.

Eli, becoming fully aware of all these gifts at a very young age, became extremely arrogant. One of, if not his greatest, flaw was that he figured that he was so smart, the time to stop doing something would naturally coincide with his desire to stop. Seeing as that rarely happened exactly that way, he would overdo things fairly often and cause himself and others trouble. Eli also learned to be manipulative. Never for small or worthless things. As a child, a number of important questions involving his life and origins were left unanswered or lied about. He could tell he wasn't getting the whole truth, and from there and other worse places, he developed the desire to have what he wanted the way he wanted it. With that came strategies to get it. If he can help it, he avoids people, however. An introvert, Eli sees himself as performing best when he's alone or with as few people as possible. Sometimes he would go out of his way to drive people away. As well as his bad sides listed above, Eli also has an affinity for nosiness.

For all his shortcomings, Eli was still a child in some good places in his heart. He was willing to believe that people were good in the end, and he let himself trust people, especially adults he approved of. Despite how he felt, he really did always try to be polite. Eli inherited a colossal fortune from his surrogate mother, who left almost everything to him, and he isn't miserly in the least, often saying plainly that he doesn't know what to do with all his wealth or giving huge amounts away to total strangers. The latter of which is not the best thing to do. His caretaker, Professor Roy, is his constant source of comfort and information. Eli loves spending time with him and learning from what he has to tell him. He usually keeps a cool head in stressful situations and is rarely too shy to ask anyone to teach him something.

I hope you enjoyed that breakdown of Eli's persona as a child.

This picture is also on deviantART.
Baby Eli
GenreChowderStudios' deviantART homepage

Later.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Raven and Sheldon


























I'll make sure not to bore you guys. *rye laugh* These are two important characters from my Sanitize Trilogy novel series.

The relationship between Ravenna Greenwich (lavender) and Sheldon Lamar (grassy green) is one of close friendship. When they first met, they didn't fight but they didn't hang out for a very long time. As they grew closer, they turned into very good friends, and Ravenna started hanging out with Sheldon and his closest male friend, Ethan. Soon they became closer than this and got to the point where if one of them had a fallout with one of their other close friends or family members, they went to one another for company and comfort.

Raven, as Sheldon calls her, is Irish by birth, intelligent, law-observant yet not rigidly rule-abiding. Her smarts are geared towards figuring out how to do-or-die in spades, or trying to see her whatever to the end and doing it to the best of her abilities. Raven doesn't exactly fit into the category of "fun-loving," but she's perfectly capable of having a good time. And instigating a few here and there. Though, she has the (unhealthy) tendency to bury her emotions and personal desires when in stressful situations and not uncovering them afterwords. It is easy for her to keep a level head, and she has bravery enough for several people. Not many things scare Raven, and she has said that one of the few things that do is when Sheldon is having an episode. We can see a caring side to her in this sense. But the defining characteristic of Raven is honesty and earnestness, something that Sheldon, who suffers from paranoia, is grateful for and drawn to. Originally, I had her very reserved, but now she's more open to explaining her ideas, how and what she thinks, and other things. She uses adverbs like "incredibly," "truly," and other words of that nature a lot to emphasize her point. Not to mention she brings attention to things when she notices them. For better or for worse. In fact, she's not afraid of using brutal honesty if need be.

Raven, like many of my characters, has the propensity to stare at things and people. Sometimes for no reason, but mostly for various reasons. Raven doesn't always smile when she's happy. It's regularly when she's amused, like in her picture above, or interesting in something. Confidence is a fair part of Raven's persona, but her appearance, especially her blank eyes and tiny eyebrows, is a touchy subject with her, though she doesn't show it outwardly. But slights on appearances don't bother Raven nearly as much as they bother Sheldon.

By now, you lot have heard about Sheldon, so I'll spare you the total personality dissection.

Sheldon Quincy Lamar is American, but his grandparents were Swiss-German, and he enjoys recognizing his heritage in his clothing and other things. Despite his looks, he is more or less gentle in nature. As someone with rather untreated undifferentiated schizophrenia, Sheldon has numerous paranoid and bizarre delusions and emotional and cognitive issues; he also experiences a number of hallucinations that support the delusions, and naturally, what he experiences makes him act strange and often extreme ways. But his personality can be seen as clever, creative, sensitive, and pure-hearted. Yet, as Sheldon very often shows, he has a sarcastic streak coated with stubborn cockiness. With quite low self-esteem, most, if not all, attacks on his mental illness and unpleasant appearance are taken personally. Spending time with a calm, patient person like Raven is nice for him when he wants to get away from insults.

Sheldon feels miserable much of the time, and it shows on his face. The look on his face above is pretty much the face he normally has. He also has the tendency to stare, but it's more of a suspicious stare than Raven's you're-there-so-I'm-looking-at-you stare. Also, as honesty is Raven's most notable trait, creativity often interpreted as eccentricity is Sheldon's. This can be seen in the way he talks, how he approaches art, but especially how he solves problems. Because of his mental deficits, he's used to trying to find ways out of doing things he's not good at or able to do.

At times, Sheldon takes his frustrations or his suspicions out on Raven, and she sometimes reacts badly. But mostly, they have a trustful, innocent relationship. Both Raven and Sheldon are quite creative; they enjoy bouncing ideas off each other and expounding on things they hear. There are instances when they do great things together because of what they come up with. When Sheldon is having a "bad day," Raven is content to being a listening box. And Sheldon often shows her some of his artwork or something interesting for her valued input. In terms of leading their duo, it's usually Raven, but often, she's following Sheldon while he wanders. Sheldon does possess leadership qualities (they're latent and buried and stuff, 'kay?), so Raven does tend to push him to take charge. He doesn't usually give way, 'cause he prefers to follow her...

Well, I hope you enjoyed this analysis of Sheldon and Raven's relationship. Thanks for reading!

These pictures are also on deviantART.
Raven's picture
Sheldon's picture
GenreChowderStudios deviantART homepage


Later.