~Who are the main characters of Brooklet Avenue? And is there one plotline?~
(A Retrospective)
I’m writing this more as a reminder for myself, but also kind of as a way to let you guys know as it will affect this blog. It took me looking back at the original intentions for creating Brooklet Avenue for me to realize things had kind of spiraled beyond what it was meant to be, and that it had began to cause complications. What is this? You might ask. Well it has come to my attention that I’ve been treating Brooklet Avenue as a series-based story, when that’s just not what it is. What you now see as the “plot,” is actually Knell and Nico’s storyline spiraled out into a giant web of character backstories and arcs, which I then started to treat as a complete story. Now this wouldn’t be a problem, if it weren’t for how it began to make me see Brooklet Avenue’s main characters: the Brown Siblings. To put things into perspective, the main storyline I often think about came from Knell and Nico. More specifically, Knell, as he introduces the Creature’s, and by being a Creature, introduces the Creature Hunters. This plotline becomes tangled up with the Brown Sibling’s storyline because I got Ben involved with Knell and Nico briefly in Step I, I also got Sadie more involved after creating connections between The Infector and the Creature’s, then Penny became involved when Millie was dragged into the Creature storyline by becoming Collie/SilverBell, and then things became more tangled up the more I fleshed things out. Once again, this wouldn’t be a problem, but I started to believe I was doing a bad job with the story because “the main characters are barely involved!” And therefore felt like I had to involve them, when they weren’t meant to be involved in the first place. The Brown Siblings were the first characters I made for Brooklet Avenue, and they were meant to have a story shown through visual storytelling: illustrations and concept art, and later being decided that I could also include the occasional comic page. Meanwhile at the same time I also made Nico and Knell, became attached to them, and decided to give them a story and plotline that I would work on for fun alongside the Brown Sibling’s side of the story. Point being: Of course the Brown Siblings aren’t that involved! They were never meant to be! It’s not their story, it’s Knell and Nico’s, and therefore the characters that are most involved are the ones around them. I watched as characters like Spider, Mary, and Jolie become more involved in the “main plot” than *any* of the Brown siblings (except maybe Penny, but she was still outshined by the other characters), and started to think that it was wrong, when it actually makes sense. In a similar way, Sadie Foxglove has her own thing going on, still connected to “the main plot” but also distant, just like the Brown Siblings, but because it connects to Knell and Nico’s story, I started to think her being in the background was bad story writing, when that’s just how B.A’s story works. Brooklet Avenue was never meant to have a singular plot like Harmony Academy, if anything it’s more similar to Endurance, having a bunch of lore and character stories shoved into the same universe (though B.A. is much smaller when it comes to the space there is to work with) and accidentally developing a bigger plotline because I can’t escape the story writer in me.
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| This plot chart I made while overwhelmed by the situation is what made me realize what the issue was |
What I believe will work best for Brooklet Avenue, moving forward, is to keep the Brown Sibling’s story and Knell and Nico’s story separate. The Brown Siblings can have what I will consider “cameos” in Knell and Nico’s story (as they’re already somewhat connected simply by having their own stories in the same time period and knowing characters involved), but the last thing I want is to force them to become involved simply because they’re “main characters” of Brooklet Avenue. I believe I need to fully cast aside the concept of them being “main characters” or I will continue to try and drag them in, it’s very problematic when two sets of “main characters” are both fighting for the spotlight. They’re still main characters of B.A, just not in Knell and Nico’s story. Unless it is past events, all storylines in B.A. are all within the same places and the same events, that being the four Steps, so naturally there’s going to be overlap in each character’s stories, but they’re all still separate, and should be treated as such. I’m going to officially give Knell and Nico’s story its own name (once I think of one…), and it will be the holder of basically all Creature centered stuff, as that’s how it’s going so far. The Brown Siblings story will still be under the name of Brooklet Avenue like any other character art or lore would be, that’s not going to change. And that doesn’t mean the Brown Siblings aren’t going to have a plotline of any kind, they definitely will and do, I just need this barrier between the two stories to be able to continue to work on B.A. as a whole.
I’m going to try my best to work things out, hopefully I can get some lore here soon!
(I’m really trying I swear)
-Stitch 🌱
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