CONFESSIONS OF A CHARACTER FREAK

CONFESSIONS OF A CHARACTER FREAK: YOUNG & HUNGRY

I’LL ALWAYS TRY TO AVOID SPOILERS!

Zoe Jay S

Good evening! I’ve got a late post on my hands due to the stress of “midterm season” and being tired from work.

How is the pandemic/pandemonium/panorama treating you guys? (If you don’t follow the trend on social media, and you didn’t laugh, I will be highly offended.) Any who, part of quarantine lockdown meant we were stuck indoors surrounded by FOOD. And what better show to discuss than one that his cooking as it’s central focus? Yay.

And which character am I choosing to focus on? Sofia Maria Consuela Rafaella Rodriguez!

Sofia; best friend to the main character and a TOTAL babe.

Sofia is my favorite because she is the fun, when she needs to be, and self-aware best friend. She’s a total sweetheart who is also no non-sense as she climbs her way through the corporate world while living with her whimsical blonde best friend, Chef Gabi.

The show has a total of 5 seasons and a lot of us fans were pissed at the abrupt ending with a cliffhanger that makes me want to yank my hair out! Because why?!

But back to Sofia. She is the brunette brains to her bestie’s… um, you know, blond-ness. Her alter ego is my personal fav (I find it so cute when she tries to be down lol): Lil So So. We get to enjoy watching this alter ego purchase weed and it’s the cringiest/funniest thing ever and I live for it!

Because of her attitude towards life, it makes it difficult for her to find romance, because like most women she has “the list” and most guys don’t fit the bill and it depresses her. There’s one episode I love where she meets a British neighbor who’s in a band, but she can’t stand his music. She puts plugs in her ears not realizing he would start a whole conversation and it ends up being this long thing of her thinking he has some kinky lifestyle when all he wanted was a girl to play tambourine! LOL, literally.

Okay, zodiac! This is a tough one. I want to say… Capricorn. She’s a feisty one with a mama bear persona but also down to have all the fun! And every Cap I know is just the same. They are unproblematic people that you simply need to have in your life.

Then we have her work journey. She starts out as a bank intern, becomes a Soul Spin instructor, and ends up working as a personal assistant for Logan Rawlings company, Clikd, that resembles BuzzFeed just a tad. It’s pretty awesome. One of my favorite Sofia quotes happens during this job:

“You know what? I was about to walk outta here, and then I thought… “Why? Why am I leaving? I did an incredible job.” I worked my ass off for you. I got you in a room with Rooster, which led you to getting the most viewed article in Clikd history. If that’s not closing the deal, then I don’t know what is. You know what? And I’m gonna leave you with one last thought. This whole issue you have with “I’m sorry”? I’m not sorry. But you’re gonna be. Because you are losing the best damn assistant…

Ughh! A queen if I ever heard one. She’s supportive, gorgeous, put together, and not afraid to have adventure. We stan!

Let me know what characters you guys want me to do in the future! xoxo

Thomas Benke: Looking Around In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott, in the Chapter “Looking Around,” says this: Now, if you ask me, what’s going on is that we’re all up to here in it, and probably the most important thing is that we not yell at one another. Otherwise we’d all just be barking away like Pekingese: “Ah! Stuck in the shit! And it’s your fault, you did this …” Writing involves seeing people suffer and, as Robert Stone once put it, finding some meaning therein. But you can’t do that if you’re not respectful. If you look at people and just see sloppy clothes or rich clothes, you’re going to get them wrong. She goes on to speak about empathy for other people and also, as an extension empathy for yourself. So, in a sense as you try to write believable, relatable characters, you will come to forgive people their trespasses—because no one believes they are the villain of their story, so you have to write “bad,” or “evil” characters from a point of view where they rationalize what they are doing in such a way that it is the right or only way they see is possible. By extrapolation, then, if you begin to forgive and withhold judgment from your less-than-desirable, or annoying characters, perhaps you can extend the same courtesy to yourself and forgive your own trespasses and sins. This, for me, starts to enter the realm of “writing as therapy,” and though I am a firm believer in that—I practice it to this very day—I think I would caution anyone who thinks that simply writing through things is going to lead you to a place of light and love. I am not saying it can’t by any means. What I am saying is I have wrote through my thoughts and my problems and my desperation and depression for decades and I still had enough baggage on my shoulders to supply an army platoon with rations for a year. In any case, when thinking about craft, it is very important to step into the shoes of all of your characters, especially those characters that you see as antagonists and villians. I believe there are very few universal maxims in writing but one thing is virtually certain: every character you write is your version of that human being. Confucius said “everywhere I go, there I am,” and that is never more true than when you are writing. So if you are writing a character that is distasteful to you, it might be effective for you to ask yourself why that is the case. I wrote a blog for Obscura last semester titled, “The Puppy Had It Coming.” The gist of the article was to pose a puzzle to writers. How can you write a scene where an adult human kicks a puppy across the room and the reader at least understands why. I am not saying there is any way to justify the action or for the readers to be on the human’s side unless they are sociopaths. I am saying you need let the reader know how dark the place is in the character’s mind that he is capable of doing that.

CONFESSIONS OF A CHARACTER FREAK

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