Made a lot of (coloured) sketches recently about my story idea and I'm just gonna dump em here! Mostly because idk what I'm doing yet and I don't want people to get taken in by details that might change, but also to not spoil huge story points because I felt The Need to draw them and I have no restraint :-)
First image is just some sketches of the main character! I already had a pretty solid idea of what she'd look like, tho especially her outfit is still subject to change.
I also know I want her to be (or start out) as a massive bitch. Think Heathers/Mean Girls, but with a more outwardly nice façade that's inspired by the mormon smile. The only person she's somewhat herself with is her best friend.
She's a queen bee due to her dad being a higher up in the church, plus her mushroom growth being in a visible spot (this is a status symbol). She genuinely believes she's God's Favourite ™️ and better than others.
She's 100% daddy's little girl, and they mutually love each other so much. So I ABSOLUTELY want that relationship to get massively twisted as the story goes on! Her mom is out of the picture (also a huge plot point), so it's just her and her dad against the world. But as she is starting to doubt the religion more and more, her dad gets more and more obsessed with making his sweet little angel into the next prophet/saint/super spreader of the spores because she's so perfect.
The religion around the infection definitely has a lot of elements that require one to give up their body for the sake of (spreading) the spores, especially women/girls. This is to mirror the veneration of pregnancy/women being able to carry life, yet at the same time demeaning/opressing the process and the people being the ones to physically do it.
I imagine some kind of fucked up coming of age ceremony after which girls become able to spread the spores. There is no actual pregnancy anymore because the infection leaves people sterile (or in rare, rare cases: infertile)
(coming of age ceremony be like)
I imagine her mom being viewed as a saint, since she was one of the rare people able to get pregnant despite the mushrooms. Or maybe she was pregnant before getting infected. I'm not 100% sure about the exact role she played, whether that's more passive or more involved/evil. But she did pass away when the protagonist was young, and her dad is still obsessed with his dead wife. Seeing a lot of her in his daughter.
Last little doodle of our girl peacefully praying 🙏🏻🙂↕️
I have a lot more ideas for fucked up rituals and story beats but I only felt like writing out the ones relating to drawings I made last week during Playgrounds. According to my friends that were unfortunate enough to become the target of my info dump this was me
(I love them they had some very good ideas regarding a format/medium I could use as to not burn myself out too much)
