Zoiah

 For this piece, I went more on instinct for assembling her collage. Zoiah was the first character in this story I ever created, back when I was 11 years old, so this character is someone I have come to understand very well.

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Zoiah was an orphan who gained two very close, very important friendships in her youth, ones that shaped and consequently broke her perspective on love and connection. Her struggle to find peace is constantly interrupted by self-sabotage the minute she starts to feel someone getting too close.

The large imposing face takes up the majority of the page, perhaps implying that Zoiah feels like she is too much for anyone to handle, which is why she consistently isolates herself from other people. However, there is still some obvious goodness to her that she finds hard to see; the beautiful sunsets on the beach, the captivating deep red and oranges of the flowers that surround her, the comforting night sky accompanied by the moon... These are things that reflect who Zoiah is that many times she, maybe, refuses to see, in order to believe the worst about herself. The "worst" I take to be the deep, dark, imposing black lines that stretch across the page. They cover some of what is good, hiding them. Some of them pierce into her head, as shown at the top of the page, highlighting how these "bad parts" she defines herself as affects how she thinks and acts, blinding her to what those around her see in her (aka the good things).

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My favorite part of this piece is the letter that is not overtaken by the bold black line. Zoiah has trouble expressing herself and being vulnerable with her emotions, and that is why her work as an assassin works for her--because she is detached emotionally from the world. However, when she engages with that part of herself, indulging in feelings and sharing them with others, (perhaps by working up the courage to write and send a letter to a loved one), that is when her goodness is not and cannot be overtaken by everything else. The reason the perfume and the stars are on the page are to signify that as she evolves, Zoiah will begin to allow herself the luxury of indulging in what makes her happy, not what keeps her miserable.