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Sophia Mallard
Topic Started: Feb 16 2018, 01:44 PM (256 Views)
PopukoIsLit
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Name: Sophia Mallard
Gender: Female
Age: 17
Grade: 12th
School: George Hunter High School
Hobbies and Interests: Films, Religious Symbolism, The Bible, Anime, Visual Arts, English.

Appearance: Sophia is 5'6" tall and weighs 290 pounds. As such, she is clinically obese. Her fat is distributed in a pear-shaped manner which means she carries the majority of her fat on her hips and thighs. Both her arms and legs are wide in diameter with the tops of her legs often rubbing up against one another. She has round C cup breasts. Her hair is short and in a bob. Her hair is also dark brown and somewhat unkempt due to having many split ends. She tends to wear large, thick wool sweaters and a grey medium-length pleated skirt. On her feet, she commonly wears knee socks underneath plimsoles. When not wearing that attire, she usually wears t-shirts and grey trousers. Her t-shirts usually display either characters from popular Mahou Shoujo anime (such as Revolutionary Girl Utena) or religious iconography. In warmer weather, she tends to wear a sun hat and pink tank top but can also be seen wearing t-shirts on such occasions. Her lips are neither excessively full or flat and are usually somewhat dried and cracked. Her ears are slightly smaller than average, are quite soft and have free, unconnected earlobes but other than that are rather nondescript. Her skin is, for the most part, clear apart from a beauty spot on her upper right cheek. Her eyes are brown and her nose is slightly upturned. Also, she appears to have prescription glasses that are used to compensate for her short-sightedness. On the day of the abduction, she was wearing a black t-shirt with a minimalist depiction of the crucifix upon it (a simple white cross against a black background), a hair pink polka dot hairclip and a pair of jeans from Goodwill.

Biography: Sophia was raised in a small flat on the outskirts of Birchwood without much social contact apart from her mother (Maria Green) due to the fact that her mother had no interest in building social relationships outside of the one she had with her daughter. She has been overweight since the age of 5 and this has resulted in the development of asthma and a somewhat weak heart. She often clutched her heart (and continues to do so) when extremely shocked. She used to take pills for her heart but the need for that has lessened over the years (but it has not entirely gone away). As she grew older and her weight increased, she paid little attention to her health or her body image, often seeming oblivious to her condition at times. Her mother never appeared particularly concerned about Sophia's weight and at some points wilfully overfed her. She managed to convince social services and whatever few people she met that weren't Sophia that they were both trying but Sophia had an irrepressible glandular condition. This garnered sympathy from most and Sophia grew up believing that she did have such a condition. This made Sophia believe her weight was out of her control and her mother soon assuaged her desire to get rid of her condition and the resulting turmoil. Her father (Gabriel Mallard) had broken away from the family before Sophia was born. Not much is known but some suspect this was due to an argument about whether or not to abort the foetus that was to become Sophia. Her father had attempted to contact her in long rambling phone calls but Maria changed the number whenever this occurred and Sophia did not understand the concepts her father was trying to impart to her at the age of 6. Maria supported herself by working at a Greengrocer's which meant that she often had to leave Sophia alone or with a babysitter. As such, Sophia had little else to do in her leisure time apart from watching movies with her mother or with whoever she was with at the time. Sophia never engaged in social activities at school and instead focused on her studies. She was sometimes bullied during primary education but these occurrences were often curtailed by the teacher who impressed upon them the importance of not judging others and reminded the bullies of SOphgia's alleged glandular condition. After this was explained, the bullies became somewhat apologetic. This pattern reoccurred over most of Sophia's education. The teachers described her as immature due to her stubborn refusal to socialise with any of the students. This changed as she grew up and school put less of an emphasis on socialising and more emphasis on studying. At age 7, Sophia's mother brought home a visitor in the form of Sophia's grandmother (Alyssa Green). Maria had reluctantly let her in after many phone calls expressing a desire to see her granddaughter. This had been one of the few people Sophia had seen apart from her mother. On that day, Sophia was gifted with the King James edition of the Holy Bible. After having been read the book by her Alyssa, Sophia gained an obsession with finding what she called "signs from God" due to her having finally received confirmation that there was "somebody out there". She did not understand much of what was read but the basic concepts were explained to her by Alyssa. When Sophia matured, this blossomed into an obsession with religion and religious texts. This was the first time religion had been introduced into her life. Soon after, Sophia learned the concept of symbolism and this soon replaced her obsession. She now looked for the symbolic meaning behind what most would consider ordinary objects. She would often go as far as to say everything was symbolic of something. This caused her social situation to worsen even more. Her mother did not seek treatment or attempt to better her social skills and instead played along with her fantasies of finding symbolic meaning being in every object. She was supportive of Sophia's religious preoccupations and often drove her to Sunday school. There has been much speculation as to why she supported this but many believ tha this was due to Maria acknowledging that Sophia needed a release from her surroundings every now and then otherwise she would not be able to cope with simply growing up with her mother and her mother alone. Sophia was growing up, she began to look for media that was more targeted towards her age group. She found this in anime and became a fervent collector of anime DVDs and box sets ever since. She was mostly interested in the Seinen and Shoujo genre. As she entered Secondary education, Sophia gained an interest in English and the Visual Arts and performed to a reasonable degree in both. Sophia enjoyed Visual Arts as it was an outlet for visual ideas within her head that had been brewing for a long time. Prior to this, she had not had any interest in the subjects as they were simply challenges presented to her but anything she enjoyed in a concrete manner. They provided a distraction from life with her mother and the other people attempting to influence her into socialising. English was simply due to the many texts with symbolic meaning and subtext which was bereft from the earlier texts taught during primary education. From observing other's interactions and conversations about families while stubbornly resisting any attempt to open up, Sophia realised that there was a possibility that the dynamic she and her mother had was strange and perhaps her mother didn't want her talking to other people. She also grew somewhat envious of the people describing parties and nights out with their friends which were both somewhat alien concepts to her. Sophia's grades tend to fluctuate between As and Bs while only occasionally going up to an A+. She has a talent for memorising the core parts of the syllabus and much of the content of the textbooks supplied to her. As she has grown older, she has made more and more attempts to try and come out of her shell and interact with her fellow students. These attempts have had varied results. At one point, she joined a circle of friends which decided to use her desire to fit in in order to repeatedly abuse her trust and physically abuse her. She accepted their excuses that it was "just a joke" in order to fit in and be within a group.

Advantages: Sophia can absorb and retain instructions very well due to her increased memory. Her unconventional obsession with finding meaning can be charming to some students. Her desire to fit in makes her eager to join any groups or participate in any activities.
Disadvantages: Sophia can often be bullied into doing something she would not normally do more easily due to her social ineptitude and desire to fit in. Due to her increased weight, Sophia cannot run nearly as well as the other students and can get winded very easily. Sophia's ignorance of social cues can be a turn-off for many students as they often think she is either stupid or mocking them.
Edited by PopukoIsLit, Feb 23 2018, 01:38 PM.
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Paige/EP/Plush, they/them pronouns pls thanks :3
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Howdy Howdy PopukoIsLit. I'm the neighborhood Paige and I'll be critiquing Sophia this round. Sophia is temporarily DENIED pending a need for expansion before we can really dig into her profile. You have a good base for Sophia, but she's very brief by our standards at the moment and I'd like to see her fleshed out some more. Before we dig into specific points, take a look at some of the approved profiles for V7 and the roster for V6. If you'd like recommendations I'd be happy to give some, but just grabbing a few at random should give you a good idea of the level of detail we're looking for in these profiles.

With that in mind let's look at the things I'd like to see for Sophia in particular, starting with her description. While you have a good frame here, we're missing some important things like the color of her hair and what her overall body type is. You mention she's obese, but people carry weight in a lot of different ways and there are things you can describe like the proportions of her limbs and digits that would give us a better picture of what she actually looks like. Her face could also use a little more detail; things like descriptions of her lips and ears are always nice! Is Sophia's general fashion style limited to that one skirt and sweaters? What does she do when the weather is warmer? What was she wearing in terms of colors and accessories on the day she was abducted? For this section, I find it's helpful to organize it into a set of paragraphs: One dedicated to their face/hair, one dedicated to their body, one dedicated to their general fashion and then a final snippet about their abduction outfit. You can also add an optional section here about what her voice sounds like if you'd like, which isn't a necessary change but is something I find interesting to think about when fleshing out your character!

Moving into the biography and going back to her weight, 290 and 5'6" is medically obese as you state, but to an extremely concerning level. That puts her at a BMI of 46.8, which speaking as someone in that range myself is on the high end of the bell curve. If you're going to skew that high I'd like to see it come up more throughout her profile; does she have any health issues because of it? Is it part of why she's bullied? How does she feel about her own body image, and if those feelings are negative has she tried to do anything to change it? Is this something her family/teachers/friends are ever concerned about, and how might she respond to that concern?

On the topic of friends and family, why did her mother have no interest in social relationships other than her daughter? Why did her father leave their family? Has she ever tried to find her father or make contact with him? Does she even know who he is? If Sophia's mother has such an obsessive relationship with her but is also a single mother, how does she support them? Why was Sophia's grandmother absent from her life for seven years? How does her mother feel about religion and why had she not introduced Sophia to it before now? Sophia's mother, father, and grandmother all need names.

We'll circle back to religion in a minute, but while we're here let's tackle Sophia's school life. When did Sophia enter school? It sounds like she was public schooled for years before meeting her grandmother, which means it doesn't make very much sense that she hasn't met very many people outside of her mother and grandmother. She would be spending more time with other children than with her mother, and while that doesn't mean she would become a social butterfly I worked in the early childcare public school system for a few years and this would be a huge red flag. It's something her teachers would likely try to discuss with her mother, so I'm curious if her mother was actively encouraging her to socially isolate herself, and if so why?

I'd like a more concrete timeline on Sophia's religious journey. A seven year old becoming obsessed with signs from God when religion has had no prior place in her life seems very sudden to me, and I'd like to see this handled over a longer period of time. Does Sophia attend a church? Does she have religious friends, especially in the modern day? What's appealing about Christianity and Christian symbolism in the world around her, especially at such a young age? How does she reconcile this with her obsessive relationship with her mother?

Why did Sophia start looking for other media? So far she's been locked into what her mother wants and that changes really quickly here. In fact her mother's influence seems to drop off entirely in the latter half of the profile. How does her mother feel about Sophia developing her own interests and reaching out to others, and how has that affected her home life? What does she find appealing about anime? What sorts of shows does she watch? Anime has a wide breadth of genres, most of which are very different from each other, so I'd like to know what in particular she's drawn to and what if anything she doesn't like.

How and why did Sophia gain an interest in English/Visual Arts? You mentioned that in the past she's been very studious, so high school seems like a late blooming period for her to have found her favorite subjects. What subjects, if any, does she not like? Do her teachers still see her as immature? Have any reached out to help her with her social issues over the years?

You mention in Sophia's disadvantages that she can be bullied into doing things she otherwise wouldn't; how has this gotten her into trouble in the past? Why does she suddenly want to fit in when she's spent so many years refusing to interact with her classmates?

I realize I'm giving you a lot here and I hope you don't feel overwhelmed. I see a lot of potential in Sophia and I'm really interested to see what kind of answers you come up with for these questions. As one last quick reminder, try to keep the tone and style of the other profiles I linked above in mind as you think about these changes. Post here once you've made them and I'll give her another look!
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Thank you very much for the critique. I was aware of the lack of detail but was not sure what to add and decided to wait until I received critique in order to expand upon the character. Thank you.
"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" - Sigmund Freud (I think)
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Hey, I've edited the post. Would you like to take a look?
"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" - Sigmund Freud (I think)
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Paige/EP/Plush, they/them pronouns pls thanks :3
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Sophia's going to be DENIED again on this pass; we're making progress but there's still work to be done. As a reminder before we start, please only post in this thread when you have made your edits, otherwise it can be difficult to keep track of where you are in the queue and whether staff has gotten back to you at a glance.

The big thing Sophia is going to need in this next round is paragraph breaks. Right now all of her information is chunked into one thick wall of text and that's really difficult to read. For her appearance, I'd like to see it organized by section; describe her body, break for a new paragraph. Describe her face and hair, break for a new paragraph. Describe her fashion sense and what she was wearing for the abduction, and we're good. Beyond that her appearance is looking much much more complete, great job!

Let's talk about her bio. First off, this is going to require paragraphs too, and I'd like you to aim to organize all the information in as close to chronological order as possible. We're jumping around a lot here in the beginning from when Maria was born to when she was five and her obesity began to before she was born when her father left to back when she was six and receiving phone calls from her father. It's very hard to keep track of the information when it's presented this way, especially when it's all flowing into each other in one big chunk. I'd encourage you to look back at those profiles I linked you to before and see how they organize their information as an example. I'm also gonna propose some structure for you to hit the minimum of what we're looking for:

  • One paragraph on her early childhood.
  • One paragraph on her elementary and middle school years.
  • One paragraph on her high school years.
  • One paragraph on her current life.

Information about her hobbies, friendships, and family life should be interspersed in these paragraphs wherever it's appropriate. Again, try to keep everything in chronological order wherever possible. We may need to split this information into more paragraphs as we edit, but this is a good outline for us to start with. Regardless of what changes you make to the details of her bio in this next pass, I'd like to see the information organized around this structure.

Content time! Small note, while the parenthetical statements are mostly fine I'd like to see all names appear in the sentences themselves rather than in parenthetical asides. It flows cleaner that way. I'm still not seeing any explanation for why Sophia's mother is only interested in social relationships with her.

I'd like more details on Sophia's heart problems; a little research on my part seems to indicate that while childhood obesity can lead to cardiac issues later in life, they don't develop until mid teens at the earliest and I couldn't find any evidence for obesity linked heart problems as early as the age of five. It sounds like you're describing hypertension, which is less about her heart being weak and more about having abnormally high blood pressure. When you're rewriting this part of her bio I would encourage you to do some research on hypertension and it's long term effects if you're going to have her develop that at such an early age.

Why did Sophia's father actually leave, and what was he trying to call her about that she couldn't understand? Write these profiles from a functionally omniscient perspective; even if no one but her father actually knows why he left, we as readers should know his reasoning and what he was trying to tell her.

I notice Sophia has her father's last name. Why, when he left before she was even born and her mother wants no contact with him? The profile does not currently indicate they were ever married or that Joseph has any involvement in Sophia's early life outside of his intercepted phone calls, so it is unclear to me why she wouldn't have been given her mother's last name.

"but some suspect this was due to an argument about whether or not to abort the foetus" <---Foetus should be fetus.

Do social workers and others just take Maria's word that Sophia has an irrepressible glandular condition? That's something they would follow up with a hospital about and look for a diagnosis. If her health was such a large issue that social services had already become involved on multiple occasions, a lie like this wouldn't hold up at all. Why is she deliberately overfeeding her daughter? Where does she get the money to do so when she's a single parent working a minimum wage job? The affordable ways to do this like feeding her cheap junk food would also be red flags if a social worker is investigating her case.

You mention Sophia is often left alone with babysitters; is there a consistent person that her mother uses? What's Sophia's relationship with her babysitters like? Why would her mother use babysitters instead of a daycare service? Was Sophia's grandmother unavailable to watch her? If Sophia is getting much of her care from babysitters and later the school system, how does this factor into her mother deliberately overfeeding her? Her mother wouldn't be around to provide most of her meals from the sound of it, so she wouldn't be there to make sure Sophia ate more than she needed.

"Reminded the bullies of SOphgia's alleged glandular condition"<---SOphgia's should be Sophia's. The same notes above about Sophia's glandular condition apply here, I don't think this is an element that is going to work so I'd like to see a different sort of intervention from her teachers.

Something I'd like for you think about is whether there's a particular reason Sophia is watching movies at a young age with her mother and her babysitters rather than that being a starting point for her interest in anime. There doesn't seem to be a reason later on other than Sophia wanted something more targeted at her age group, and while that's all fine in character you could make those connections a lot tighter and less arbitrary if you decide to start it here.

Why was Maria reluctant to let her mother in to see Sophia, and why did she relent after seven years? What's their relationship like? Does it have something to do with Alyssa appearing so religious while Maria appears to have no religious inclinations, and if so why does Maria so readily accept Sophia's dive into Christianity?

The quotation marks around "signs from God" and "somebody out there" are unnecessary, you can just leave them as statements in the sentence. I'd like you to dig deeper into this; what is so appealing about the idea that somebody is out there to Sophia? Why did this cause her social situation to worsen? While certainly there are people who would look down on this and make fun of it for her, you indicate she's also going to Sunday School now and Tennessee is a very, very religious state. There would be an abundance of people who find this to be a very appealing character trait; is she still not interacting with people when she goes to church or when she's around other religious classmates?

Most of the things in Sophia's current life look good but I'm extremely wary of the note that she has a circle of friends that abuse her trust and abuse her physically. I'm gonna need a lot more detail on that and the kind of consequences it has for her, because physical abuse from a friend group is a pretty concerning concept and one that I don't think could go unnoticed in this setting. I would also caution you against including something like this unless you've already worked with some handlers on the site whose characters are willing to fill that role; otherwise you're boxing yourself into a corner where all of Sophia's closest and most problematic friends are a cast of offscreen NPCs, which is going to be really challenging to RP. Before committing to something of that level in the profile make sure you know how you're going to carry it out, and if you do have specific people you've talked to who are going to be filling that role then I would include their characters here.

Post here once you've made these changes and I'll give her another once over! If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to hit me up using the PM system; replies to this thread should only be made once you've finished your edits.
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This character biography has had no alterations for more than two weeks and has been put in the abandoned characters forum. This profile is eligible for resubmission by the handler upon alterations requested by the staff.
"Art enriches the community, Steve, no less than a pulsing fire hose, or a fireman beating down a blazing door. So what if we're drawing a nude man? So what if all we ever draw is a nude man, or the same nude man over and over in all sorts of provocative positions? Context, not content! Process, not subject! Don't be so gauche, Steve, it's beneath you."
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