#askjanella

Hmm, I don't remember a troll...I think you might be talking about Annagrok? She's actually an ogre! Her backstory was centered around beauty initially, but her final concept was completely different by the time she appeared in "As Nature Intended".

But yes, I did recycle aspects of that concept for Janella! I thought the concept would work better for a troll than an ogre, since trolls are the ones getting dumped on for their looks moreso than any other peoples.

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Questions/Comments?

The first controversy came from an early interview. Janella was asked what happened to her old elven friend who got snubbed in favor of Janella at her first audition. Janella responded,

"Chasiana won't even talk to me anymore! I thought she would be happy for me, but she couldn't even get over herself enough to show up to my last birthday party. Elves are just dramatic like that, you know? It's not her fault, it's just her culture. She can be mad at me if that's how she feels, but I'm not mad at her. In fact, I wish her the best!"

While Janella meant well, elven audiences did not take kindly to her generalizations about their species. Elves have been stereotyped as "fussy" and "difficult" for ages, and they feared Janella's statements would only worsen the problem. Janella quickly made a public apology, assuring them that she spoke out of ignorance and she knows better now. The public reasoned that she was only a teenager, and ignorance is to be expected from such a young person, so this didn't affect her career much.

However, the controversy didn't end there. Several years later, Janella gave a disasterous speech at a charity event to rebuild schools in Yerim-Mor Kingdom. Long story short...not only did she mispronounce Monarch Roz's name as "Monarch Rose", she also congratulated his family on their success "despite their heritage", insinuating that goblins cannot be noble, brave, or wealthy. She then made half of the speech about herself, claiming she "knows what it's like to be underestimated, because as a troll..." and then compared her comfy middle-class upbringing to the suffering of oppressed, war-stricken Morites. Basically she made herself look like a dumb bimbo, and this speech caught her a lot of flak for many years. But she was still quite young and she meant well, so once again the public let it go and her career continued to climb upward.

Several years after that, Janella began dating the divine of sport, Devajaya. She and he attended a celebrity gala in Matuzu Kingdom, hosted by Feztavi, the divine of revels. Janella got pretty drunk and made a scene when she claimed she saw Feztavi flirting with Devajaya. She and Feztavi got into a verbal fight that would have turned physical, if security had not dragged Janella out of the building. Devajaya was so embarrassed by the incident that he broke up with Janella that night, and to this day, Janella and Feztavi occasionally talk trash about eachother in interviews. Janella's fans found this celebrity feud more entertaining than anything, though it left a bad taste in the mouths of Feztavi's most die-hard fans, many of whom boycotted Janella's content after that.

Janella has a long string of other dumb little statements behind her, but nothing truly malicious that would tank her career...at least not yet. Her fans are always there to defend her, claiming she was thrust into stardom at a young age and never even got to finish school, so a little ignorance is to be expected of her.

It seems Janella has the charisma--and perhaps the good looks--to keep shrugging off incidents like these.

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Questions/Comments?

It's gotta be a thing. I imagine he gives even the best movies bad reviews for the most arbitrary reasons. But if Janella stars in it? Then it's 5/5 stars, no matter how shitty it was. He praises her every performance and worships the ground she walks on, hoping one day she'll notice him. He's been trying to get an interview with her for years, but he's too small-potatoes to get her attention. He's been beat up by her bodyguards a few times. She's never seen his show and doesn't even know he exists.

Just my interpretation of a character like this, lol

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Questions/Comments?

Good observation! Janella is quite thin by troll standards, certainly to an unhealthy degree. But this is true across all species in the Zareenite film industry; their media personalities are encouraged to have specific body types. These body types are meant to be very hard to obtain, and something that the average person can't get without making a full-time job of it.

Janella doesn't have much fat on her at all, which is bad news for trolls. That fat serves an important purpose for their health. Any "thickness" you see in her body is just her trollish skeletal structure, and I imagine she's probably had some plastic surgery or magical procedures to shape her too.

This is one of the major things her critics complain about, that she's setting dangerously unrealistic body standards for young trolls. Since most of her work is geared towards kids and teens, this could be seen as a problem.

At the same time, the blame shouldn't really be placed on Janella herself, but the industry behind her. If she reached a healthy weight for her species, the industry would drop her immediately. She is doing what she must to keep her career.

She's stuck between a rock and a hard place on this matter. I imagine she doesn't like it either, but she doesn't have much choice. She is sacrificing her health for financial security...which almost all Zareenites are doing in one way or another, even if they don't realize it.

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Questions/Comments?

I would like to make more celebrities in the future, yes. Most of the divines are celebrities, and there are some existing celebrities listed on the Masterpost such as Sage and Scylli. Janella is the first Zareenite star so far though.

I plan to incorporate every single concept on the masterpost into the main LG series at some point! Janella included. I haven't decided how just yet, but the possibilities are endless. Maybe she hires the FGG as extra security. Or maybe they get invited to a gala and run into her by chance. Maybe they are hired by someone else to sabotage her next film...her old elven friend maybe? Or maybe someone is holding her for ransom and the FGG have to rescue her. I could do a lot with this.

You can bet at least one of the Freelance Good Guys is a big fan of hers though. They get dispatched to Zareen Empire a lot, and one of the things they do to unwind after a job there is go to the movies. I'm sure most of them have seen at least one of her films, but aside from that, she's also a popular figure in magazines, so they've probably read about her too.

Alaine and Jeimos are probably into her work, having both lived in Zareen Empire for so long.

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Questions/Comments?