This is my first time submitting a character, I apologize beforehand for the text wall! This is the first of a group of six fankids I’ve been developing, and I think it’d be best to search for second opinions to solidify them and avoid potential screw-ups.
No worries, and no need to apologize! We're a review blog we kind of expect people to send us enough to build on. That said, your character seems pretty solid, so I'm not sure I have a whole lot to offer here!
So, here it comes the first one!
World: AU Earth, I suppose! It’s the same Earth where the Beta Kids live, except there’s no canon SBURB session released by Skaianet, and I guess the Beta kids don’t play the game/don’t exist? idk.
Name: Sona Kedrova! I guess being a fankid, names don’t exactly have much meaning like in trolls. Sona is a name mostly used in east Europe and some parts of Asia, and Kedrova is the feminine variant of Kedrov (“cedrus”). She has Russian nationality, hence those names.
Hmmmm “Sona” is most commonly the Sanskrit transliteration. If you want her to have the Russian variant you would probably go for Sonja or Sonya, though I don't know if you're sticking with a four-letter fankid. If so, perhaps Mila, which means “beginning?” Especially if you're going to make her the linchpin for your story.
Theme/Story: If it’s okay, I’ll start with the story! Since themes tend to be vaguer and more diffuse in fankids.
A little bit of in-universe context: in this AU, there’s no SBURB released to the public, and no Skaianet. There is another giant company that does some SBURB stuff behind the shutters, but in a more secretive, conspiracy-like manner.
One of their former employers is Dad Kedrov, who walked out of the company for reasons he never shared. The most common rumor, though, is that he left to calmly raise Sona on his own, and do his independent science searches.
Sona had a childhood marked by her intellectual capacities; she’s always received praise for her intelligence, but also had it balanced with stern education about not taking her talents for granted.
This has left her with a lot of ambition about her hobbies, and building and accomplishing her own future; there’s looots of frustration from being held back from different sides, mostly from her guardian.
Oh no. I am Relating to Her.
Eventually, she snaps at her Dad’s ultimatum: he wants to intern her at a prestigious scientific university, regardless of her opinion. Due of this and the following fights they have, Sona runs away from her home, wandering aimlessly through the world, in hopes her wits will be enough to keep herself afloat.
Needless to say, it’s a horrible idea that doesn’t go well. Thankfully, she’s got enough luck to accidentally stumble across the rest of her squad at different points, involving wacky shenanigans and an eventual SBURB session. She’s kinda the forerunner/leader of the group in this sense, being partly the catalyst for the adventure and linking the rest of the characters together.
As for theme… in the canon kids, that was mostly related to their elements (wind for John, water/liquid for Rose, fire/heat for Dave, plants/earth for Jade), which also were tied strongly to all their SBURB business. As well as their character archetypes, I suppose?
So, with that line of logic: Sona is associated with traditional urban settings, light and by extension electricity as an element (think of artificial illumination). Or fire, if we stick with the traditional 4 elements?
I also like this as a throughline with a spotlight symbolizing attention and focus.
Review Goals: A general overview if possible, please! There’s some shaky, incomplete details, and I fear for the overall cohesion of the character. I’m not sure if she’s a deep enough character, and if I'm overdoing her themes.
I'm gonna be real, you've laid some good groundwork here. I can see how a character whose upbringing and rebellion is themed around attention and when to invite or disavow it can lead to a powerful character arc.
Symbol and Meaning: A dark gold microphone; she likes singing!
Also a good choice for a character trying to find her voice.
Strife Specibus: undecided. I’ve considered microphonekind, which would functionally act as a flail, but I think it’d be virtually useless without some heavy SBURB alchemization (and said game doesn’t happen until much later). I’ve also thought of Sona accidentally assigning herself a completely random weapon, like how it happened to John?
Flashlightkind, like Joey in Hiveswap? Lets you continue to drill down into the theme of light, and also she can hit people with it.
Fetch Modus: Interval. Each slot in her inventory has a delimited retrieval time, and when it runs out, it’s the turn for the following slot.
Say you have seven slots in total, and each has, for example, 10 minutes. Slot 1 can have its item retrieved anytime as long as it’s within that 10 minutes interval. When that time period is over, Slot 1 closes and Slot 2 opens, and you have another 10 minutes interval to handle it.
The modus is SUPER glitchy though. It’s supposed to give all slots equal times, but sometimes it flips out and decides Slot 1 will have 15 seconds of time, while slot 2 will have 15 minutes. As per Murphy’s Laws, the most important items are the ones with nearly no time. Oops!
Item storing, however, isn’t restricted by the intervals. If there’s a free space, that’s where the retrieved object will automatically go.
Cannot emphasize how much I love this.
Personality: Sona is a curious person by nature, always eager to learn about everything! A bit too eager at times, though; she can be unintentionally nosy in foreign business. But she’s quick to back down when told she’s overstepping boundaries.
She has high logical and musical intelligence, and works very hard to hone her talents, which makes her quite the easy to frustrate perfectionist. She takes her own failings harshly despite being rather forgiving with others.
She’s a sweetheart who highly values politeness. Which is one reason why Sona doesn’t like imposing her opinions, and rarely fights back if her interlocutor disagrees with her (especially if they’re ill-humored, actually screaming at her, or backed by other people; Sona will likely give up on talking).
Though, she can be pretty stubborn on the rare cases she gets heated, especially later in her journey. And empty words won’t do: she will try to prove her point with all she’s got! Sona refers to stick with hard facts… but sometimes, she might hypothesize too many theories and get off-tracked until reality pokes at her. Sona can also be rather ramble-y.
She treasures all of her friendships, and feels at home with her five online friends. Sona’s very attentive with them and remembers each tiny detail she’s told. Related to the above, she prefers not to argue with them if it isn’t needed, and often steps as an intermediator if a fight breaks between her pals, as a neutral party (which doesn’t always works).
Interests: lots of artistic interests! Primarily music (she sings and plays the piano/synthesizer), sometimes collaborating with some of her friends; as well as theater and acting, and any combination derived from these you can think of.
Also likes watching movies of all sorts (and then writing reviews about those she’ll never post in the Internet in fear of backlash), and reading screenplay books under the covers at night while at day she reads more scientific-oriented stuff to keep her Guardian happy. Fantasy literature overall is up her alley.
Sona is also one of the most social-media oriented of her group and likes scouring the news on your average webpage. She has the secret vice of snooping through the occasional drama going on but SHHH you didn’t read that. Nobody has to know, it’s wrong! But still the rabbit holes are just so weirdly interesting… how can she help it? She follows a lot of famous folks and influencers too.
She has taken a side interest in fashion, though her current lifestyle doesn’t let her experiment much.
And though science isn’t her priority, she enjoys botany and cooking: she cultivates edible plants, and brews her own tea and coffee, because she has a busy schedule and no time to sleep. She has a sweet tooth and often indulges in dessert making.
Due to her Guardian’s rather mobile lifestyle, Sona gets to travel a lot; she often records all of their travels and has left a bit of a wanderlust wish on her!
(I’m trying to think a couple more interests to round her up a little still.)
...I mean. Man, I can't even critique this you've made such a tight character. This is less a review and more an example of how to make a fankid.
Guardian: Her Dad, Ivan Kedrov. A famous scientist specialized in the Physics field, who’s been on a slowdown while raising Sona. However, he still works in his own laboratory, away from the remote directive of a world-wide famous company who pesters him every single day to come back.
He’s a stubborn, hard-working man, determined in accomplishing his objectives, which would be a good thing… if he wasn’t so stuck about doing everything his way. Honestly, he’s got a heavily jaundiced view of life, so his tolerance levels are in the negatives.
This rigid personality is a catalyst of conflict with Sona, especially now that she’s getting closer to choosing a career for her life. He pressures her to take a more scientific path, instead of pursuing her artistic dreams, arguing that she has the capacity to do great things with her talents instead of wasting those in “useless” jobs.
Sona is complying with her Dad’s wishes mostly out of fear of doing the wrong thing, and also because… well, it’s her dad. She doesn’t have the right to tell an adult what’s right or wrong! He’s bossy and never listens to her, but he’s still her dad! What’s she gonna do?
Basically, their relationship is beyond craptastic. Despite Doc Kedrov acting like an ass, he does care for Sona and only wishes the best for her, hence why he insists on her taking a career with future that guarantees her some stability.
The problem is that he had the same problem with his former family when he was younger (they told him not to become a scientist), and doesn’t realize he’s continuing the shitty parenting cycle with Sona. She’s not deep into the same route as her old man, partly thanks to the positive influence of her friends, as well as her fear of becoming like him, but…
So this family dynamic isn’t healthy, but it’s meant to leave room for conflict and development for this dude, since Guardians in my fanventure have a very predominant role.
(That, and also, I really don’t want to write an outright abusive relationship with no saving grace, we’ve had enough with Bro Strider in the canon verse. I want to write a shitty parent who actually realizes their mistakes, if it makes sense?)
No yeah I get it. Lol I see a bit of my own dad in this Guardian so it hits a little close to home.
Handle: artistesAnagnorisis. Artiste is just a synonym for a musical performer (it can also refer to someone who’s pretentious with their artistic work, though Sona herself is unaware of that connotation. Blissful and ironic ignorance!).
Anagnorisis is one of many literary devices attributed to Aristotle in ancient Greek theater.
In Wikipedia’s words: “is a moment in a play or other work when a character makes a critical discovery. Anagnorisis originally meant recognition in its Greek context, not only of a person but also of what that person stood for. Anagnorisis was the hero's sudden awareness of a real situation […]”.
Basically, it’s the critical plot twist that reshapes the story and it’s elements, and how you (or the character) view it. Which works for Sona in several ways, due to her interest in acting performance and literary stories (and in a more meta POV, her God Tier, and the fact she’s the forerunner of her group and possibly the one to discover first whatever plot madness I end coming up for her group).
I’m not fully convinced on this handle, though. It seems too intricate compared to the canon kids’ handles, who at most had one fancy term but a second simpler word. Another options I’ve considered are:
- ardentTheatergoer (ardent is an adjective to describe fiery passion, and is also a pun on the fire/light element; a theatergoer is a film/theater lover);
- ardentThespian (thespian is a formal term for an actor, generally of dramatic genre, and acting related stuff) or ardentActress.
Aaand as well as other combinations from these words that might arise… help OTL
(I’m keeping the AGCT handle abbreviation from canon, because some vices are hard to get rid of and I haven’t thought of anything better. *shrugs*)
I agree with your critique on the first chumhandle. It also doesn't exactly roll off the tongue when you say it out loud; most of the chumhandles can reasonably be inserted into conversation without breaking the flow. I kind of like ardentThespian!
Quirk: Types properly except for capitalization! Also uses a varied array of emoticons of the “: )” kind, and can be verbose to the point of sending several lines in one massive chunk of text.
Special Abilities: Not applicable here.
Appearance: See sprite work above! She’s very tall (5’ 9” ft) and chubby, towering over her friends.
Lunar Sway: Derse, since she eventually takes proactive action and refuses to go with the flow of things. Derse dreamers are known to have some sort of secrecy about themselves, and Sona, despite her seemingly extrovert personality, isn’t very open about some of her true feelings.
She’s also quite the brainiac with plans she doesn’t want to deviate from, which is accurate to Derse dreamers according to the True Zodiac tests.
Title: I think Light fits her as an Aspect! Light deals with information, relevance and luck, which fits Sona as she’s very knowledgable and curious, and wants to prioritize her interests (and she had quite the luck to find all of her online friends. Hooray for unlikely statistics skewering!)
For a Class to challenge her, I’m tempted by Maid? Most common interpretation I’ve seen is that they’re takecarers and creators of their Aspect, despite not having much of a grip on it at first, or doing it wrong.
Aradia is the Maid of Time, but not only her own time ran short before her session started; it’s been implied she didn’t do her functions as a Time player during the session, besides hopping from doomed timelines. Which is possibly a reason for why Karkat and Kanaya ran out of time to properly breed the Genesis Frog.
Jane was the heiress to the baking empire of )(IC, and wanted to use her inheritance for good. But she was always under the indirect grip of the ruler via subliminal messages (and later, literally brainwashed with the tiara thing). Not to mention all the assassinations attempts, and the overall lack of “nurture” in her friends’ group (despite Life dealing with rebelling from the system, growth and vitality).
Sona has her own Light muddied by her Dad, since she’s in his shadow in many ways. She’s rather naïve, since she hasn’t experienced much of the outside world on her own terms — she doesn’t have first-hand knowledge about stuff like screwing up by her own hand. Not only that, but she never dares to share in depth her opinions or argue back against others, even if she knows they’re wrong.
Her title wouldn’t only challenge her to create own relevance, prioritize herself, and put her knowledge to use to improve certain situations. It’d also challenge her with self-introspection to avoid the “my stuff is the only important stuff!” route she could dangerously tiptoe into, moreso considering her Guardian’s drama. It’d be up to Sona to acknowledge her own flaws, not look away from those or excuse them anyhow, and work to better herself.
Extremely well-reasoned. I co-sign your decision.
Land: to be frank, I don't know how to translate her character arc on a Land… any ideas, please? ; ;
Hmmm. What about Land of Echoes and Mirrors? I like the idea of both sound and light being multiplied in a way that could be powerful or manipulative depending on how it's used.
Thank you for taking your time to review this! o/
No, thank you for submitting such a well-rounded character!
