Loving My Side Characters (Don’t Neglect Us!)

Every hero needs an awesome sidekick

The COT universe has many side characters so I have to take special care of this bunch. I have main side characters and minor side characters. The main side characters pack a pretty heavy punch to the flow of events in the story and heavily influence the direction my three lovely MCs take. Sometimes it’s easy to neglect side characters when you’re focused on making the MCs the coolest and realest people on this side of the imaginary world. Therefore, it’s only fair that that I surround my MCs with a fascinating and sometimes twisted bunch of supporting characters.

Zackaria, Ryker, and Meliz share three best friends that make the siblings bizarre, confusing life so much easier. First, there’s Ezekial Rushil Battacharjee, aka Zeke, who is half-Indian (father), half-Jewish (mother). He is also Zackaria’s boyfriend. Tall, athletic, kind, possessing gorgeous green eyes speckled with red, it’s no surprise that the 16-year-old junior at Caber Daley Academy (the private school they all attend) has a strong band of followers and admirers. His parents are big shot Hollywood screenwriters who write for award-winning dramas on prime time television. They travel constantly (alone), leaving Zeke behind with the help and his thirteen-year-old bratty brother. He writes frequently, taking from his parents, and video records his friends whenever they hang out because he dreams of becoming a big time movie director a la vein of David Fincher. Zeke’s main problems are that his parents are getting a divorce, and he later discovers that his girlfriend, Zackaria, possesses some sort of freaky super human abilities. Who has a girlfriend who can possibly kill you before you blink? Zeik does.

Next is Zeke’s good childhood friend Faust Beckett. German born Faust is another wildly handsome junior at Caber Daley high school. Half-Black (father) and Half-Latino (mother), Faust has a reputation for being the class clown who takes no prisoners. His father is a punk rocker and his mother a poet. He has two older sisters in college—one is in Germany and the other England. Faust speaks fluent Spanish and German. He moved to the States at the age of nine and met Zeke shortly after in elementary school. Although he has the face piercings and tattoos of a punk, he doesn't want to go into music, but rather loves making graphic novels and comics. Faust is a talented artist and he and Zeke used to combine their creative energy to make comics that they would sell to their classmates. His main problem concerns his new girlfriend, Cielle Jeong, who happens to be the Kato siblings’ biggest pain in the ass. He loves Cielle, but she seems more preoccupied with his friends.

Their third friend is Fallon Nolan, the short but sweet Irish girl with the big, long curly mane of bright copper hair. Her tresses make her easily identifiable at Caber Daley. The junior is the daughter of a former-model-now-photographer (mother) for the nation’s top fashion magazines and a designer (father) who lives in Italy. Faust’s parents are divorced and she’s an only child. Her parents backgrounds have influenced her interests in fashion and photography. She runs a popular fashion blog whose high status has given her access to fashion shows in New York, Italy, and Paris. Her biggest problem right now is making a decision about whether to accept her father’s offer to study fashion in Italy and leave behind her dear friends. She cares a lot about Meliz and worries that her friend is sinking further into herself.

The Kato siblings' friends are two years older than they are but since the siblings have heightened intelligence, they take a mixture of the most advanced junior and senior classes at the school, sharing a few classes with their friends. The trio knows that they’re adopted and their adoptive parents (a Japanese couple who recently had a son—the trio’s newest sibling) revealed that the papers say the Kato siblings are fourteen-years-old. 

Anyway, Zackaria, Ryker and Meliz love their friends to death because these three are the only true friends they’ve ever had. Past attempts at friendship often failed because of rumors and fears circulating around Zackaria and an incident involving the serious injury of three students. That event belongs to the story only, however. Haha. Hope you enjoyed reading about some of my three main side characters.

Question: How do you take care of your side characters? 

Thanks for reading,

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