emi

Age: 31

Likes: Guitar, rock music, plants, paid leave

Hates: Hate is a bit of a strong word~

Fave Drink: Coffee

Apartment Balcony Activity: Watering her plants outside

Evil Fact: The form fitting clothes she wore nearly a decade ago when she was still in a band are a lot tighter on her now.

A ditzy office lady. She always puts on a smile, with "I'm sorry" being essentially ingrained into her vernacular. Her smile, although perfected, hides a lot of discontent with life. She's trying to find a balance between work and life to the best she can, but she usually fails and and tends to bedrot, glued to scrolling through SNS on her phone.

The company that she works at isn't bad, all things considered, but it does ask a lot from her and she would push herself to fit some sort of perceived standard. There was a period of time in the past where she was very burnt out from work and was hopelessly out of tune with herself. For a lack of better terms, she was depressed. Thankfully, she pulled herself out of that slump and is working hard to get herself reattuned.

She lives in a small apartment complex next door to a particular pink haired freak (Lapis). She doesn't take very good care of herself outside of a work context and her apartment building is oftentimes messy and full of trash. Lapis kind of sees her as a helpless person, and often comes in to help her clean things up.

She can cook for herself perfectly fine and often prepares her own lunch ahead of time, something she always seems to have energy towards. She likes to invite Lapis over for dinner, to which they often enjoy each other's company (even in spite of the constant verbal abuse she is subject to, Emi knows its just Lapis' way of showing love and appreciation for the food).

She plays guitar in her spare time, and often records demos on her PC. She has a full setup stored away and can't really let it loose because of noise complaints. Her beloved guitar is a Fender Jaguar she's had for a decade, and likes to play alternative rock and experiment every once in a while.

She used to play in a band before eventually comitting to a life of desk work, and started to see some success in the underground sphere. However, this wouldn't come to pass due to a dire falling out with her band— she was ultimately blamed when in reality it wasn't her fault at all. Her confidence was dashed and she was resigned for some time, but encouragement from her friends (particularly from Fey, and being allowed to play solo sometimes at her record store) has helped her regain that spark.

She dreams of fronting a band again. She proposes it constantly to her friends but they're all a bit shy about it despite seeing some latent talent in all of them— her on rhythm guitar and vocals, Michie on the drums, Nino on lead guitar and backing vocals, Fey on bass...! And Lapis standing at the merch stall outside the venue, or something like that. She'll keep insisting whenever they get together.

nut comment: Emi has a bit of an interesting story in regards to her conception. I kind of challenged my friend, Zim, to make an OC after spreading the Michie+Nino agenda around, and he came up with an office lady. I thought it was a fun idea so I came up with Emi and drew the two of them drinking together. This was during a drawpile with a bit of a limit in regards to time so I threw some ideas onto the table. I hadn't really drawn a ponytail character before so I kind of went for that— there's a blue haired girl named Ayumin from the Gorillaz-esque fictional singer band, Sayonara Ponytail (if you know this band then you're cool). Ironically, Ayumin is the only character in the SayoPony universe who even has a ponytail, so that's kind of why she in particular stuck with me next to her wispy voice in her first incarnation during the twee pop album phase, uh, anyways, enough about music, this is about Emi. If you look at her one thing I try to keep consistent is her eyes. Michie's eyes are always just a stark black void, with Nino's being a bunch of ovals. I thought Emi should follow suit with crosses for pupils for no particular reason other than that it looked cool, really.

Sadly, Emi has kind of gotten the short end of the stick in regards to how much I draw the others. The last drawing of her I did (not including the chibis I did recently at the time of me writing this) was from like... 2021. Sorry Emi-tan. I did make her on a whim design-wise, but as I thought more deeply about her and her story I kind of wrote her to be someone who struggles to find a balance. She used to just be resigned to knowing that she had nothing more for her than just work. She was in a rut. I've been in periods like that before— I'm sure we all can attest to that one way or another. In a way that core idea was a bit prophetic in the sense that I had a very tumultuous time of burnout in regards to work— which was what got me to quit nicotine to begin with. But now that my hobbies and love for them have been completely reinvigorated after a long year of just feeling lesser than human, I feel like it's time to give Emi a bit more love, right? I'd love to write a story with her and the other two girls. Let's all wish for her happiness in the future.