Wednesday, 20 March 2013

Character Identity

We had been given the task in the module Contemporary Media Issues, to create a character(s) with some sort of narrative, using social networking and present it to the rest of the group. We were given the choice whether to make it realistic or fictional. I worked with Megan on this task, and after a lot of thinking, we came up with the idea of creating two characters, Lucy Taylor and Sophia Jones. They are both friends and are both are 21 years old and come from Liverpool, however the twist to the narrative was that Lucy is suffering with anorexia.

We wanted to make this story and the characters realistic, as the topic is very sensitive and serious. We decided to look into it before posting anything, so we knew exactly how it would feel to be anorexic and anybody who cares for them. We found on NHS Choices website, a story from a 19 year old girl called Katie, who suffered 4 years with anorexia. It gives very in depth details about her journey in and out of this illness, and also gives different reasons why she felt she ended up with this illness. We found out one of the reasons was that her parents split a couple of years before, so we felt we could base Lucy around this real life person's story, to make it as realistic as possible and to deal with it properly.

We created both characters a facebook, twitter and tumblr each, to express any feelings they had about the illness or anything else in their life. Lucy did interact with 1 or 2 people, going through similar problems as our character. Megan spoke to these people which made her feel quite guilty as she wasn't really having to deal with any of these problems, however we felt it would be better to reply and help these real people talking to her. We felt the task went well, however next time, we would maybe pick something less serious, as we felt pretty bad pretending to have all these problems, when it is real life to many people, however it was challenging and we felt we handle everything well.

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