Hi hi! Naarel here! It's been a while since I talked about Passerine Hills. I'm still working hard on delivering the full version of Passerine Hills: Just a Bite but my mental health isn't really making it into an easy task. Most things are written already, save for the final scene that I've been chipping away at for some time now; once that's done, it's all going to editing, then for testing, then finally, to you. I'm hoping for better days soon so that I can go back to PHJAB with all the attention it deserves.

That being said, I promised to write more about characters ages ago and I never did. I thought that writing a little miniseries of rambles about characters, route-wise, might be good both for me and for you. I guess we'll have to begin with Tiffany first, just because she is our main character and maybe that's a good start – especially since I find her quite fascinating. I don't know if I'll end up spoiling things from works that are already released because I'm mostly rambling without a plan but I guess I'll try to keep that to a minimum. That being said, let's get started.

The thing about writing Tiffany is that I'm working, mostly, with what I call an "empty character". It's really a vibe-based category – some characters just have a certain feel to them. The "empty" characters usually don't have a strong sense of self. They don't really know who they are or what they really want in life, which essentially makes them semi-blank slates. This is a perfect setup for a story that's meant to revolve around relationships because you can have your character get more refined and shaped by who they're associating with... and it's a difficult thing to execute. With no apparent drive towards... anything, really, characters sometimes just... drift on the plot and you need to be really careful to not let them just float there without gently steering them where you want them to be, if you catch my drift.

Growing up in 2000s-2010s Poland meant that I heard a fair share of insults and one of them was calling girls and women empty (pusta). That, of course, was a reference to an empty head, and was usually reserved for girls who cared a little too much about their appearance and didn't seem to have any meaningful intellectual pursuits going on. That, naturally, merged with the "dumb blonde" stereotype and the mean girl archetype really quickly. And so, a particular image formed in my head against my will: an apathetic and popular bleached blonde that literally can't be bothered to be anything more than... pretty, I guess. That combined itself over time with the common disdain for celebrities – people who are "known for being known".

It's not just me. That's the image that many people will have in their heads, independent of gender or age or country or whatever. It's a whole archetype on its own at this point, one that really lends itself to being hated. There's a reason for that, I suppose: you see this vapid, shallow person in the spotlight, getting money for, I don't know, just looking good on camera, I suppose. And it's really easy to not regard them as human. They're just something on your screen, another pseudostarlet that will be gone in a couple of minutes, or maybe they're just a vehicle for drama and fuel for snark subreddits and gossip sites.

This isn't to say that I like celebrities or influencers because I don't. If Tiffany was real, I definitely wouldn't think "wow, I wonder what she's thinking, maybe she's an interesting person once you get to know her". If Tiffany was real, I'd probably be wildly indifferent towards her, the same way I literally don't care about Kardashians or whoever the fuck is relevant now. If Tiffany was real, you probably wouldn't care about her at all because she'd be just another rich bleached blonde with That Accent (you know which one) that's known for being known. Maybe you'd hate her. Hell, maybe you'd be a fan. I don't know you, I can't tell.

I sometimes take some time to sit down and remind myself that all those people that I see on the screen might not be like me but they definitely have to go through some fundamentals just like I do. They wake up, eat, talk to others, go to the bathroom (how scandalous!), and of course, feel and think. And I wonder if they feel regret, if they wonder what their life would look like if they never became famous, if they feel like there's a disconnect between who they are on camera and who they are, well, outside of the spotlight.

Tiffany is an empty character because she's ruled by this disconnect. Everyone knows Tiffany the Persona and nobody really knows Tiffany the Person. Due to years of developing the Persona – that perfect little celebrity that you see on the screen – Tiffany as a person is a little... stunted. She knows that her life can't go on like this but she's not entirely sure how to fix that. She'd love to actually know people but she's not all that great at interacting with others as herself. She joined Passerine Hills specifically to finally get to know people without the fear of them trying to leverage her connections and what not – after all, she's probably on a similar level to people there, if not on a lower one. 

When I'm writing Tiffany, I feel that she's got a certain level of... detachment from reality which isn't voluntary. More than one person pointed out to me that she sounds like she's just telling a story to someone to "keep them up to date" or that she sounds like she's just doing a storytime video and yeah, that's what she sounds like to me as well. I think that on some subconscious level, she kinda thinks of what she's writing as another piece of content to produce because this is what she's used to doing. This might actually be the only way to express things that she knows at this point in time. 

I feel like there's quite a decent load of self-loathing and apathy in Tiffany. I feel like she recognizes the tragedy of having years of her life being cannibalized by the version of herself that only lives in the spotlight and on the screens, and I feel like this awareness is slowly killing her. She knows how empty she is. She knows what people think of her.

She might not see herself as a person at this point, really. 

All of that being said, she's not emotionless or uncaring. You can see that in her whole journey to find Holly and you can see that when she asks Izzy if she should get them help when they're bleeding. She's also not dumb... and she knows how to control the narrative. Yeah, she's not always a reliable narrator. In fact, she's been very careful about what she's saying – or not saying – in Just a Bite, I can tell you this much without spoiling stuff. There is depth to her that she doesn't realize, and neither do people who only know her from the screen...

...and that is a really great thing because those who underestimate her might be in for a big surprise later down the line.

Anyway. I don't think there's a whole lot that I can say about her as of now. If there's a character that you'd want to read the next miniessay about, let me know. For now, I'll go back to writing.

See you in Passerine Hills soon.