LOST & FOUND

For my creative project, I did a movie poster for this original story that I've been working on for a long time. Basically, the story is about this girl La, and her journey in finding out what self-help is. When I basically I mean basically, and that I'm turning this in late because I've written a god Three different versions of this blog post they've all ended up the same way with me writing a three-page "Brief" summary. 

The reason I did my own story for the creative project that's meant to represent some sort of unrepresented background of people, is because for the past year I realized that I wanted for La to help give a better image of what day to day life with certain mental illnesses is like. Specifically, I mean Complex PTSD, Comorbid PTSD, and Major Depressive Disorder. To add a little bit of education to this I'll tell you what each of those is.  Complex PTSD is defined as "PTSD caused by multiple traumatic events, not just one", whereas Comorbid PTSD is a blanket term for co-occurring disorders which she has because she also has  Major Depressive Disorder more commonly known as Major Depression, "A mental health disorder characterized by persistently depressed mood or loss of interest in activities, causing significant impairment in daily life". Before I get into the story component, let me tell you why I wanted mental illness to be the focus. The main reason has to do with the fact that most characters from most genres that are revealed to have or show signs of having any kind of mental illness, they are the villain or depicted as being weak, which I've always thought was really unfair. Good examples of this are the Joker, almost any horror movie, Split (the unbreakable franchise), and I'm going to throw the Legend of Kora in here too. For the example of the villain portrayal, I'm going to focus on the Joker, who has always been one of my favorite characters but one thing that has sometimes rubbed me the wrong way is how he's written as someone who "snapped" at some point (depending on the variety of origin of course) after having some sort of fragile faze in his life and having in many cases signs of MDD. This isn't too much of a problem because I do feel like it's usually for a purpose of making sure people watch people around them and to help them with what there going through because you never know what they're dealing with. But the problematic part I don't like is the fear factor, wherein the outcome a lot of the time after people read or watch this part of a Joker origin, they end up thinking "I better be nice to 'so and so' or else they might kill me and g crazy" which I think is a very clear problem. In the case of the legend of Kora, I think it does one of the best jobs representation wise, the only thing I thought wasn't enough or rather something that could have been done better is how they mixed 'will' and 'ability to' together, specifically in terms of being the Avatar. This example is directed towards the beginning of season four, where Kora clearly has PTSD and MDD, and how it was depicted was very well and pretty accurate for a fantasy-based setting. However, when talking about her ability to be a good Avatar, I think they unintentionally made it look like her PTSD and MDD is what made her weaker mentally and physically. When I say unintentionally I was revealed that there were some trace amounts of mercury in her bloodstream that was doing this to her, but I do think how they wrote that I think they made the PTSD and MDD symptoms directly related to each other if that makes sense, anyway. 

Now I'm sure there are a couple of questions in mind about La, the one I'm going to answer right now is how did La get to that point. Well, you see how I intend for this story to be told is I wanted it to start at her lowest point. After all, I want the focus to be showing her own strength as a person and getting noticeably healthier as the story progresses with of course that uphill not just going I one direction because that's unrealistic. But essentially (and I'm going to try really hard to keep this short) La and her Tui sister were bred as "weapons" by her father who was the leader of a big Triad gang. Then use them to end a gang war and gain power. After using them and succeeding in coming out on top he wanted even more power and to take over the whole continent, all the while keeping the sisters in captivity, constantly training, only to come out when needed to kill and always without knowing why. Because of this by the time they are sixteen their minds, personalities, and their overall process of emotions are just underdeveloped. However when they are sixteen that when their life changes when two "heroes for hire" (bounty hunters with moral compasses) named Ekka and Jake come to take them away from this life in exchange for something better. Again I'm skipping a lot but long story short they all live together for the next two years, go on adventures, save lots of lives, their group grows from four to six, with the inclusion of Shock and Jun. 

During this time period, the sisters went from robotic, to more dynamic and getting to show their true selves in their own personal ways. La ends up being a very energetic, creative, caring, and fearless person, wh usually rushes into things without thinking. Whereas Tui was more matured, distant, patient, but harsh and far less compassionate. The group however really got to blossom into a full family and called themselves the Lost &Found, because of how they found that they resembled a lost ad found items bin. Things turn dark, however, when the program that La and Tui were made in starts up again in their home country. This time, however, the new 'weapon' has an ability that resembles a small scale nuclear warhead. So the Lost & Found of course goes out to try and stop this operation from taking off. Their mission fails quickly, only has the weapon been developed and is an 8-year-old girl, Tui was the one who helped establish her father's gang and the 'weapon' project. Saying that she doesn't feel like she is purposeful with the life she has now and that she wanted to go back. The rest try and stop her and all of them fail, the sister fights out and Tui comes out on top and ends it by breaking Las left arm in multiple places then stabbing her in the abdomen with Las own sword then Tui telling her that they are no longer sisters. She goes to take the kid and flee but Ekka tries to stop her, Tui shoots him down, but before dying he activates the 'weapons' powers, so then she becomes too dangerous for Tui to take the kid with her. Tui makes it out safely with her plan in the end fail, but Ekka dies in the explosion. 

So that's how La ends up with Complex PTSD, Comorbid PTSD, and Major Depressive Disorder, at the beginning of the story and all the things I mentioned are meant to be explained later in parts. But basically, the main story would follow her having to come back from this defeat, and come back to the person she was before this all happened, while all at the same time have to take care of the Lost & Found and take up the leadership role the Ekka once held, and also take care of the girl that unintendedly killed him, (which is at first unknown to La). How I have her try and be able to grow is through helping someone else, a mysterious character with unknown origin, they have a fully reflective glass-like head, without and facial feature, and a body that is translucent and colorless. The two find each other when the mysterious character saves La from death at the beginning of the story after she leaves to go out on a mission to take go on a mass-murdering spree on an organization that was partially responsible for what happened to Ekka and herself, a mission that she never intended to come back from and was meant to be a way for her to go out fighting. As she was about to be shot dead she came to a realization that this isn't really what she wanted and she had too many reasons to keep going. Feeling like there wasn't anything to she could do to keep herself from dying, that's right when the figure latter to be known as M (short for Mirror) comes and saves her. M is unable to speak and doesn't act human, or rather it becomes apparent that they hadn't existed for too long, and greatly resembles La and Tui when they first were taken in. So the story becomes, La teaching M what being human is and by doing so is able to herself grow through him (hence the mirror). 

So that sums up my whole idea and reason for using it for this project, sorry it's a little long but trust me it was a lot longer at first. Thanks for reading and sorry about the errors and mistakes because I know there's probably plenty that I didn't see. See you next time!