Some trivia regarding Larisa Sticlaru!
A lot of my current cast of characters were made in 2024 as 2024 was when I really began to create some of the most familiar aspects and characters, Larisa being one of these more recent additions!
Larisa probably has my favourite design out of my original characters, which she would probably love to hear considering she is into fashion design!
Larisa wears a haircut known as a French bobcut!
Her favourite colour is heliotrope.
As specified in the post I made about my character heights, she is the shortest of my characters who have a larger role to play in my story.
One of the biggest reasons for making Larisa Roma is because, aside from being very interested in the history of the Roma diaspora, I, being part South Asian, wanted to include a character of South Asian descent in a story and considering the Romani people originated from Northern India and have a significant diaspora in Eastern Europe, I thought Lara should henceforth be Romani. Obviously, Romani culture has evolved significantly since their migration from the Indian subcontinent and differs immensely. Highly recommend checking out this guyās channel on YouTube as he makes fantastic short form and long form Romani related content that has served as a fantastic resource for my research.
I also made Larisa Roma because I did see throughout my research process for my worldbuilding that apparently dhampirs originated from the Roma diaspora in the Balkans. I say apparently though because I havenāt seen anything specify whether dhampirs actually did specifically originate within the Roma or if aspects of dhampir lore were added onto by the Roma themselves. Regardless, it is a very interesting possibility!
Two drawings I did of Larisa are based on paintings! One is based on The Two Fridas by Mexican-German artist Frida Kahlo and the other is based on the painting Clytie by English artist Evelyn de Morgan (whose style I ESPECIALLY love).
Iāve already stated plenty of times that Larisa is named after Larissa āLaraā Antipova from Doctor Zhivago, but she also has some more aspects of her relating back to the story! For example, Larisaās face is heavily influenced by Julie Christie, who plays Lara Antipova in the 1965 David Lean film adaptation (my favourite movie ever by the way).
In the artwork inspired by The Two Fridas, the 14 year old Larisa sitting to the left is wearing a dress directly taken from a scene in Leanās adaptation Doctor Zhivago where Larisa goes out to dinner with Komarovsky (I wish I could find a photo without a watermark but I couldnāt š).
There is a certain title of another film Julie Christie was in that I wonāt specify but it is very coincidental to meā¦perhaps yāall can try to guess which title Iām referring to and in the future perhaps you might be correctā¦ š
