Team Blume trivia

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This article is a special supplement for "Team Blume" where I will talk more about the concept of both the story and the original ideas of the team. Contains story spoilers.

1. The idea of ​​"Team Blume"

Judging by the name, Team Blume was created when I was in the third grade of elementary school, when I started learning German. Here, I forgot almost all the words, but that's why I still remember the word for flower, that is Blume, after whom the team was named, and with it the members of the team. The idea came to me when I saw some cartoon on Bulgarian television with superheroines in dresses of different colors (now I think they were Winx fairies, I could somehow connect it), it remained somewhere in my subconscious even though I didn't even know about it at the time. I don't know how much time passed from the enthusiasm for these superheroines to the creation of Team Blume, I only remember one dream where I dreamed of myself in the Team Blume dress, which at the beginning of the dream was pink and turned blue, and then eventually were created and wings that were later inserted as the fifth power. Overnight, blue became my favorite color, and so it is to this day. : D

2. Developing an idea and choosing flowers
 
 As I have been drawing since an early age, in the meantime I have sketched my imaginary team similar to the one I saw in the cartoon, only with some of my own concept. Since I really liked the word Blume, I based everything on it, and all the members got their color and flower. As I mentioned in the story, the name of my flower - Blue Rose, came about when I saw a picture of the "Blue Moon" kind of rose in the catalog of rose seedlings, which attracted me at first sight, although now I know that it doesn't really have that shade as in pictures. I did not take the rose as a flower because it is supposedly the most beautiful or the best flower of all, as I think that every flower is beautiful, but because of that one specific flower in blue colour. Of course I would choose another flower because I am not a person who likes to stand out, and roses are called the queen of flowers, somehow I have always been uncomfortable that I took a rose as a symbol, I do not think I am worthy of it. However, the Blue Rose has become an indispensable part of me over the years, so I didn't want to replace it with something else. The symbolism of the Blue Rose is not standing out for beauty or elegance, but perfection that does not exist, just as blue roses do not exist in nature, and that perfection is exactly what my mind longs for in its imagination.

 As for other names, I was inspired by the flowers around me. Tulips and hyacinths are flowers that grew in my former garden, along with irises, lilacs and some other types of flowers. We only had one red rose, and for me it was a symbol of solitude, as a contrast to all those hyacinths, tulips, irises and lilacs that adorned the yard in the spring. We didn't have a pink tulip, but yellow and red ones, I think that another flower could have gone instead of a tulip because there are a lot of other flowers in that color, but I didn't want to change name now after so many years. The situation is similar with hyacinth - when creating the last member, hyacinth came to my mind as one of the flowers I love the most, there was only one white hyacinth in the garden, in addition to many purple and pink ones. I thought that White Hyacinth would become White Orchid in the story, as well as that Yellow Dandelion would get another flower, but it didn't make sense to change everything when I got used to their names a long time ago, it would be too complicated for me to write. In this way, I paid tribute to the garden from my childhood, mentioning two beautiful flowers that beautified spring with their intoxicating scent and grace.

 Yellow Dandelion was supposed to represent simplicity - it attracted my attention as the first yellow flower around me, although at some point it was an idea to replace it with mimosa, but the symbolism of dandelion as a flower was stronger for me. It is all around us, decorates the grass surfaces with its intense yellow color, but we often ignore it and forget its simple beauty. It may not be the most sophisticated yellow flower that exists, on the contrary - it seems extremely simple, but that is exactly its symbolism, and that is that we often ignore some small beautiful things in search of something almost impossible. Therefore, we have a contrast of colors and flowers between the Yellow Dandelion and the Blue Rose - the former represents what is achievable but often goes unnoticed, and the latter represents something that is (most likely) impossible to achieve. That is what I represent as a person, someone who is constantly wandering in search of a higher spiritual goal, getting more and more lost in the real world.

Red Carnation is inspired by the women's holiday - the eighth of March, I was fascinated by how a flower that is rarely seen in gardens during the year suddenly floods the streets in early March. That holiday has always brought some enthusiasm for planning to buy flowers for school (now I personally do not celebrate it, I do not feel that it is my holiday, although I have not celebrated my own birthday for a long time either), so this flower is now a symbol of female strength, which I wanted to conjure up through the character of the Red Carnation. For the younger me, the carnation was a wonderful flower, at first it seemed as if it wasn't even real because of its stability. Maybe that's why it reminds me of a strong woman who shows her splendor while standing upright no matter what, but we must not forget that Carnation is basically just a lovely flower that can be broken if not treated carefully.

3. Members

Since I believed that creating Team Blume in real life was possible, then I tried to find five (real) people who would be a part of it. I came to a permanent set of Red Carnation, Yellow Dandelion and myself, with a potential Pink Tulip, but White Hyacinth was never one particular person, constantly changing because I couldn’t find another person I could imagine as a definite member of the team. Times are changing, after a while it became insane to talk about a team that saves the world, so I abandoned the search for members even though my brain still wanted a realistic version of Team Blume, even without power. It's no secret that I am nuts and I believe in power, magic and inexplicable phenomena, so don't try to explain to me that such things are impossible, I thought it would disappear in time, but it's still present. They say it's part of a schizoid disorder, who knows, and I don't care if it's a disorder or just normal because I'm an artist anyway, it can't hurt. : D

I didn't want to look for real people for Team Blume anymore, but suddenly the idea came to me to create four different people, with different traits and interests, only at the end of writing I realized that I could easily connect each of them with one of my four personalities, although they are all pure opposites. I replaced the places of Pink Tulip and Red Carnation, so the red color belonged to the most fierce person in the group and the pink to the most gentle, which was logical. They are not inspired by any specific people, not even the people I imagined as part of Team Blume, and the reason is that everything would go completely differently if I knew those people better in the story, and I like to be realistic even when writing in the fantasy genre. Considering that in earlier stories I didn't really pay attention to the skin color of the characters because I consider all people equal, I didn't emphasize who has what shade because it was somehow meant to write about a neutral environment (people in my country usually have medium light skin type, so in earlier works I did not think about that topic in my works), unless it was about a specific environment such as e.g. "Moon and Sun", where most of the characters are from Japan, therefore have characteristic facial features for that climate. In this story, we have people from different climates, from superheroes to villains, so I wanted Makena to have a darker skin tone and a beautiful contrast with the white Team Blume dress. :)

4. Superhero uniform

 In the beginning, the Team Blume dress was sleeveless and strapless, knee-length, complemented with elbow-length gloves, a tiara and a necklace, along with various hairstyles. As I believed that the concept would continue even after my childhood, I also created an "adult version" with shorts, a top and knee-high boots, with loose hair and a ribbon. I believed that I would grow and lose weight by that age, at eighteen I was thinner, but my height was always below average, so nothing of that idea. It remained only as an idea on a piece of paper put on the wall of my room, without further elaborating of the idea.

In the meantime, there were ... certain changes, so the original version of the dress got black undersleves, and leggings were added, the boots turned green from brown to symbolize the leaves / flower tree, the tiaras were replaced with ribbons. I wanted the dresses to have as few details as possible because the glittery fabric is enough in itself, along with other details like crystal earrings and collar necklaces in our colors. The only detail that is excluded in this official version is the high hat of the White Hyacinth, as well as the curvature that her dress would have and it would give it a slightly different shape from ours, I thought they were unnecessary, so I removed them from the sketch. This is how Makena's natural hairstyle came to the fore, and some changes were made to other hairstyles. In the first version, Red Carnation had two tails on the side, Pink Tulip one braid, Yellow Dandelion bun, White Hyacinth short hair (because the team member at the time had short hair). My palm bun also has its own story; when I went to the birthday party of my only crush in life, my mother made me that hairstyle and it was the most beautiful hairstyle I had ever had. She lifted my hair into a high ponytail, tied the ends with hairpins and it looked really nice at the end. Although ... let's not lie ... I think it's more what that haircut remind me of. Although I haven't had romantic feelings for that person for a long time, but I consider him a friend from my childhood and I really want us to stay on good terms, I still can't forget that I kissed him on the cheek for the first time when I congratulated him on his birthday. Well, it meant a lot to me then, those were different times and a kiss on the cheek was a big deal. : D

The reason for drawing myself as the Blue Rose in a slightly thinner edition is again related to my psychology, as a child I was obese and then it represented for me what I wanted to be, I really wanted to be able to be thin, at least for a while. I kept it this time too, so the Blue Rose looks better than my awfulness, because I’ll obviously never have damn confidence. Yes, I know that my dissatisfaction with myself is felt in the story, if it wasn't so, maybe my life would be different. I also sketched designs for other members as leaders of their armies (spoiler), and in the sketch are Harmony in a light dress decorated with flowers, Amora in a Greek style dress with two heart-shaped ornaments, Rea in tight shorts and top with a sword in her hands, as well as Makena in a high-tech striped suit. Since the scene with them ends in front of Magnolia, the sketch was not used, the scenes with them as leaders were not added as planned.

5. Trying of writing this story earlier and other characters

 Villains and Andor / Arik are also sketched on paper. Selina was inspired by a villain from demo of a story I wrote about ten years ago, I even tried to make a comic book story, but it didn't work either, until now. Only in my imaginary world of doll I had a "series" and "movies" Team Blume and Solo Blume (the second part of the movie where the Blue Rose beats the villain herself: D), I couldn't fit that into the story, until now. The first villain was Shelley, she was a resident of another planet and she wanted to destroy the Earth, obviously for no reason because it never occurred to me to create a reason for her when I was writing. And so, Shelley was turned into Selina, since in the meantime Shell was created in the story "Depth of the Deepest Thoughts" and the name would be too similar, she was turned into a fairy and were given a reason to destroy the human species. The other characters also got their different reasons, which further enriched the concept of the story. I based each concept on things that are around us and for which someone could really make such a revolution as the destruction of the human species. That is why we have human negligence towards the planet, the use of technology as a weapon, the creation of a new world war, resentment / envy / anger (although that villain did not feel anything, those feelings are the triggers) and the loss of control over ourselves.

 Magnolia was added to the story (it didn't exist in the childhood idea), I wanted a certain character to give information about missions and enemies (like in the "Power Rangers" series where they get instructions before the fight, and that's a good introduction to what's next ). Magnolia is another plant from my former garden, the only thing is that its flower lasts much shorter than in the story, it has a wonderful scent. As the character was supposed to be a young flowering tree, I also considered lilac, linden and paulownia, opting for this tree of gorgeous pink flowers.

Andor and the Blue Rose were never even a potential couple, but his choice was the person most similar to him, not the person he was looking for for his own reasons. Although the Blue Rose had a partner in the imaginary world, I didn't want to convey it here because I didn't like the idea at all, but I have no doubt that "Lilith" and Arik could be friends, precisely because of "Lilith's" nature that doesn't want relationships but friendships.  Andor / Arik was transferred from the original idea as a male part of the team, he was given a more active role (I would compare that with the character of Mamoro from the "Sailor Moon" series where he fights with the top five), but the love part was left out, I think that the story is more interesting without it. It was just hard to figure out how and when to put him in the story to make sense, so he’s been an active character only from the middle of the story. (spoiler for the end) His character is important just before the end, because the transformation into the Black Rose was avoided precisely because of his return to life, that is. by giving up power for his sake. If the powers remained it would probably have been impossible to defeat the fifth enemy because Black Rose would have known all the weaknesses, powers and details regarding Team Blume as she is the creator of the team. Black Rose is the darkest shade of rose in nature that grows only in Turkey, only in one region, it's so rare that it is almost a myth just like blue rose. However, it also has its own reflection, so it could be said that completely black roses do not exist, just like blue ones. Blue in the story has a symbol of perfection that does not exist, black in this story would represent the chaos of all mixed colors that leaves only a deadness of blackness, but still more achievable than the blue of perfection. I consider black to be the strongest “color” because it contains all the colors in it, and yet those colors get lost in it and leave a void.

-I hope you like the story "Team Blume", I wouldn't go too far in analyzing it so as not to ruin the experience for those who are just going to read it, this was like a discussion I didn't add at the end of the story and which I think was  ;)