Character Blog.

Today, during our "character exercises", I believe that it truly helped me think outside the box. As I witnessed other's performances, it'd help me realize that my partner and I need to make sure that our story is exciting, and will keep the reader wanting more. For example, as we watched Kathleen Estrella, I noticed that she delivered her character perfectly! She brought her characters to life and wasn't afraid of letting loose; she definately inspired us to make sure we know about our character in full detail.

One of our characters is Livia, who is the step-mother of Natalia Donato, and the emperor's wife. The way we portrayed her was a bitter woman with an attitude, but she needs more spunk. After consulting with our student teacher Candace, she made it clear that Livia, in ancient Rome times, used people as if they were pawns on a chessboard. It made us thrive to bring out the "evilness" Livia truly has. We really love our other characters, although we need to change Tiberius' appearance, because in reality he was an ugly and an unintelligent man. Other than that, we think our character's personalities shall be presented beautifully in our graphic novel.

We're making this story dramatic, a "soap opera" if you will, which was how it was back then when Octavian forced Julia (Natalia in our story) to marry Tiberius, Livia's son. Today's mini drama 101 lesson, helped us out efficiently and helped up come up with a brighter story plot, and gave us great ideas to append. I have high hopes for our story line, and I believe it will be successful.

Persepolis.

Persepolis Blog

Previously in Humanities, we have been reading the book Persepolis which is about a veritable girl named Marji going through a great depression due to the economic and religious issues going on in Iran. She grew up in the 1980s which was when the Islamic Revolution took place. As she grows up, she hears and sees a lot of situations that goes on throughout the whole book. Her parents and she were liberal and decadent, but the country was turning fundamental and based itself on religion, which was hard for most of the citizens to handle because they were secular families. Marji was a blunt type of a girl, she wasn’t scared to fight for her beliefs; she resembled her mother. As the years went on, she turned into a brave teenager, and helped her family get through rough times.

It all began in 700 B.C when Cyrus the great was the emperor. In 1953 the Reza Shah returned and hell broke loose. The American’ and Britain’s used the Shah as a puppet to westernize and modernize Iran. In 1979, the shah was overthrown because he was trying to start the Islamic Revolution. Also in that same year, Marji applied a secular school where boys and girls were together, but then a year later, they were separated and the whole veil law was enforced. In 1980, Suddam Hussien invaded Iran and the war began. Marji wanted to engage in the demonstrations that were held, but it was forbidden. Marjane, Marji, was considered a martyr because she had strong beliefs and didn’t want anyone to get in the way of that. She considered people who went to jail, as “heroes”. Her family kept that her uncle was in jail for a period of time, a clandenstine; they didn’t want her knowing that part of his life. Later on, during the most significant time of her life, the war began to climax and her parents sent her off to Austria, to live a better life and to get away from the war.

I think that once Marji goes to Austria, she’s going to have a reservoir of problems getting used to a new place. She left her family, and doesn’t know anyone, so of course she’s going to have issues to deal with and try to find out who she is as a person. She lived a hard life in Iran for the past years and I know it’s going to be difficult for her to get settled; she’s going to feel out of place. I think she’s going to get into some type of trouble on purpose to have a reason to go back to her family in Iran. Once she returns to Iran, I think she’s going to have a hard time getting used to the change that she and Iran has overcome.

Views on Debate.

The process of researching an issue and a candidate has been hard. The most difficult part was having to protest your candidates views, even if you didn't agree with their opinions. My candidate was Hillary Clinton, although I respect her for being a strong-willed woman, I don't believe she's the right person to become president. Barack Obama is all about the working person and that's what I admire.