Group Entry : Jonas Chlamydomonas (Behind The Scenes)

The Story Behind the Story Book

Our storybook, “Jonas Chlamydomonas” is a story about one who believes that one can survive alone, or rather used to believe. This story is derived from the common story of a boy, called Jonas, who believed that he was good enough to live on his own with minimal help from his peers of the same age. At a young age, Jonas was left in the care of his grandparents most of the time due to his parents’ respective jobs.

This childhood familiarity of not having the parents around at times, but mostly with sister and younger cousin, instilled within Jonas a sense of desire to become independent. He walked up and down stairs alone unaided, eventually leading to the scar on his eyebrow area visible until this day. Still, it wasn’t until much later that he would become much more distrusting of his peers.

When he reached kindergarten, a simple event of winning in a class game led to one of his classmates telling the rest not to play with him because Jonas won. Jonas was extremely confused by this behaviour of his ”friend” and so got into a sort of fight with him. Jonas was also rejected by the first girl he ever liked with this word: “che!”. At a tender age of around 4-5, Jonas had already been ganged up upon, betrayed by “friends” and rejected by the prettiest girl in his class, not really a good start if you ask me.

Growing up, Jonas started to trust in his abilities more than relying on others. True, it made him competitive, always desiring to be better than the others. It also made him somewhat of an outcast. And still he continued to distrust others. His cousin once traded his toy for another toy in (his cousin’s) school, something Jonas did not really appreciate. A couple of street kids forced sand into his mouth when he was a kid. His own sister pulled a prank at him and put powder inside his mouth. He was also shoved into a pool by two kids younger than him. Yes, Jonas was kind of the unlucky kid huh, but he was to an extent, determined to become better.

When he reached grade school, Jonas was shocked by the rapid change in his environment that he tried to rely on himself even more. From a sort of day-care kindergarten of less than 30 people in his class (only 1 class), which was only a few streets away from his house to a large private school with pre-school, grade school and high school students, located in another city! Yes it was a massive change for him, the poor kid. He got lost during the first day and ended up in the parking lot of the school... He also met several children who bullied him, increasing his distrust even more.

This continued for several years. Although he became more open to others in a way and made friends, he still distrusted most of the people around him. He came to recognize that he was surrounded by a lot of arrogant and proud people and so he generalized even those who were kind under the type of people he’d avoid. To counter the bad attitude of some of his peers, he became somewhat aggressive and impulsive. He reported many things to the teacher, incurring the wrath of several of his classmates. He was strict and unwavering, earning him a bad reputation in the batch as the kill joy. He also got into arguments even with people twice his size or with many friends who would slug him. Luckily, he only got hit a few times, most of the time though, it ended in shouting matches. During breaks he would spend time going around alone, being only slightly envious of his batch mates. He wanted to be the best, and he sacrificed his social life for it.

Pathetic as he may seem, he only ever wanted to make his parents proud and for others to like him. He knew what he did was the right thing but it always got him in trouble with his classmates. He was disliked for doing what he believed in and teased for being too square. So yes, he was utterly frustrated and this fuelled his determination even more. He graduated from grade school only a little less anti-social and square than before, thanks to the help of some close friends.

His turning point came in his high school. Yes, he was pretty much the same arrogant and selfish kid during the first few days, but later on this hard shell was destroyed. It pretty much took the realization that he could never be the best and that there were nice people around too. He met a great set of friends who stayed by him and met far nicer people in his new school compared to his old one. Eventually, his hard external wall crumbled.

Jonas is still struggling to completely move forward. Until recently, he has completely changed into a new and improved individual, but a recent event cause his hard shell to return slowly. In making this story book, Jonas hopes that he can help other children and even himself realize he truly needs others. :)



Symbolisms:
Predators: bullies and problems that haunt you
Turning into colonies: forming rings of friends, sometimes cliques that become harder to break up as they get to know each other more
Jonas Chlamydomonas: Jonas, the boy
Miko Mikrobiyo: the bullies...
Microscopic world: We are all small in this world, but we can have a great impact on the macroscopic scale (like how small microorganisms can affect humans, plants, animals, nature etc.)
Growing larger of Jonas: becoming stronger but harder to work with (or fuse with in this case)
SA:V ratio: the better one gets, the more effort needed to maintain and improve, it becomes easier if one works with others
Jonas: me


So.... we later realized that the story was a wee-bit flawed (okay fine, really flawed), so we (Josh Malapit and Patrick Go) changed some stuff for the final submission.
Changes:
Miko has been deleted O:
So Jonas is really just an arrogant kid.
Other than that, nothing much changed.
The drawing style did though.
And we also added a scene where Jonas' arrogance made his classmate cry, thus turning everyone against Jonas. It's a story development technique in order to raise the girl's reputation and positive karma in the story since she saves him in the end despite his attitude towards her.

There are people who are too arrogant. Yep there are, but the only way to get to them is through being kind. -Good Moral


Oh and many thanks to Ms. Joanna Perez and Courtney Mathay for helping us color our work! (if someone else helped, I'm sorry if I forgot, kindly comment and thank you :D).

Tidbits:
This was used to be called: "V is for Volvox"
but then the title didn't sound very child-friendly so we scrapped it.
We also had another ide while brainstorming for this story and here it is:

The Emo Mayfly
-about the short and sad life of a male mayfly (roughly 24 hours).
-the protagonist is a pessimist who was sad and depressed all his lifetime (24 hours XD)
-the others around him simply buzzed around eating and preparing for mating because of their instinct.
-the protagonist was born with a sense of being (it IS a children's story book!)
-the protagonist complains to other insects/animals/plants about its plight.
-only to realize too late that he was sad all his life
-he realized he should have lived those 24 hours to the fullest because it was his only life, however short.

:D
Patrick's joke: The mayfly uses the structures on its hands to cut (then again it won't be allowed to children's storybooks...)

We are proud of our project :)
Many thanks to everyone who helped us!
And to God for giving us a longer life span than Mayflies!

Contribution:
-Story, Artwork of most of the pages and some coloring.
:D