Developing The Characters Part Two

Let's get straight into this post, no introduction needed! For the first counterpart to this post, click here.

 TEEN BOY CHARACTER

Physical Description: Body type isn't really a point of much importance to me with this character- they can be tall and buff or short and fat, it really doesn't matter. It just needs to be understood that this guy is kind of a loser nerd type, not getting out of the house often, wearing baggier/unkempt clothes (damn this might just be describing myself), and generally appearing to be on the complete opposite end of the social hierarchy than his sister. As long as it is visually apparent that this guy is a Discord gamer type of person, any appearance is fine by me.

Satirical Representation: With this character, I want to illustrate extremely common addictions that teenage boys fall into- gaming or pornography. It is no secret that this demographic has long been known to be the most sexually repressed population, and this leads many to seek online pornography, and because of the developing teenage brain, may get addicted to the dopamine of it. When researching the different vices technology has given rise to, I found a very interesting article on how porn is affecting teenagers and even young children, and reading through this, it is apparent that this porn addiction trend has been largely thanks to the increased availability on the Internet. While I do want to make fun of porn addicts with this character to an extent, I also want to give this character some nuance and show that this teenager is a victim, not just a pervert (though these can coexist).

A different addiction common among male teens is that of GAMING. I, myself, am guilty of this one, devoting hours everyday to mindlessly play online games rather than being productive working at a job, or, I don't know, writing blog posts for my media project... Getting back to the point, if you're friends with a teen male, a parent of one, or are one yourself, you know that gaming is an almost natural thing for men to do in modern times. When once men would go off to war, conquering distant lands in the name of their homeland, they now sit at a chair all day and scream gibberish at each other through game chats as they make progress in meaningless games. We fell off.

There is some credibility to videogame addiction being a legitimate issue rather than just your standard "videogames bad" take. In this article I read regarding symptoms of the addiction, it's gotten to a point where the DSM-5 has started listing possible symptoms of videogame addiction, to help diagnose and assist people with this vice. Therefore, I think gaming is an important enough topic to address and criticize with this character as my medium to express my criticisms.

Jokes: The jokes here are pretty low-hanging fruit, if I'm being honest. The guy's a loser- jokes can be made about his porn addled mind, the fact that he's "coming out of his gaming cave for once", etc. I think I'd want to explore more comedy out of his social awkwardness, a symptom affecting both gaming and porn addicts. Having no understanding of social cues- making inappropriate, awkward jokes, and generally feeling cringe is the direction I want to take this character.

Making him cringeworthy is going to be both very fun and equally painful- he's going to be that guy. Even if you claim not to know what I mean by this, everyone understands the concept of that guy, always making awkward jokes, uncomfortable comments, and just feeling out of place (which would be especially fun in this case, imagine being considered the black sheep of this dysfunctional family). The only question is, how far will his degeneracy go for the sake of comedy? I'll have to ponder this one further...

TEEN GIRL CHARACTER

Physical Description: This character is meant to be the preppy, popular, social media addicted "popular girl" that everyone follows- illustrated through her fashionable clothing, the styled hair, and generally carefully maintained appearance. As mentioned before, she's meant to contrast both her father and brother- politically and socially. Ideally, she'd mainly be wearing a blue outfit to represent her strong liberal leaning, and to contrast her brother, she really only has to be somewhat clean and attractive (just anything that could make her immediately identifiable as the "popular girl").

Satirical Representation: With this character, I want to pull back the curtain on the ever-preppy and pretty social media influencer types- someone whose dependency on social media followers and likes for validation has corrupted her being. I'd like to depict her as somewhat neurotic, constantly monitoring her social media accounts to get dopamine rushes and validate her identity as an influencer. I may play with a Jekyll and Hyde concept for this character- when on camera she's smiling, laidback, and clever, seemingly effortless in her every action, but when off-camera, she's stressed, hyper, and obsessed with finding the next photo op, hungry for her next dosage of online validation. This will likely lead to her personality being catered toward people pleasing (to get a taste of validation after the computer has broken) or rather manipulative to people in order to get something post-worthy off of them.

Jokes: There are a lot of jokes here. However, for this character, instead of being a direct, clear joke with attention given to it, I want to have her as more of a background character with small moments between the time I dedicate to other characters. At first, I think she would be beaming, almost intoxicatingly peppy and energetic, shoving a phone in people's faces, but as the funeral progresses, her phone battery dies, and she becomes desperate to squeeze any bit of clout from the event to keep her fans interested in her before the phone turns off. Her posing with the casket for a selfie to post on Instagram may be a cheap shot, but I still find it pretty funny.

Additionally, I think it'd be both a great joke and refreshing perspective to have if she's the only family member who doesn't actually mourn the computer's loss, since her addiction is to social media, which is typically most used on phones or other mobile devices. Logically, it makes sense that she's unbothered by the computer's "passing", because she wouldn't use it much anyways, instead preferring her phone over it. There's a lot more room to joke with this concept because she can be preachy to the family mourning the computer (this may be where her liberal tendencies shine), only to be revealed as a massive hypocrite, freaking out when her phone dies. Overall, I think she's going to be the most versatile when it comes to writing jokes for, because there's just so many directions to take it in.

That's all of the main cast done! Attentive readers will have caught that I've nixed the inclusion of the old man character that I initially planned on including. I decided to scrap this character because 1) I don't have time for more characters, 2) Casting an old man simply isn't going to happen, and 3) Making fun of an old man's inability to remember things just felt a little wrong. It left a sour taste in my mouth and that's an instance of technology actually helping people, not giving them an unhealthy addiction. Therefore, no more old man character. See you next time!