Portfolio

Charlie O.

she/her, 18, Filipino. Located in New Zealand. Volunteer. Also known as CCBO. Represented by 15 Agency.

A volunteer and freelancer looking to publish all kinds of creative work in digital magazines. Aspiring librarian.On this site are examples of work in the form of written pieces (fiction and non-fiction) and visual artworks (digital photographs and cinematography shots).Publications:
∙ When I Die: - Published in Issue 01 of Aetherium Literary
∙ I Hear You Like Monsters - Published in Issue 03 of Luxury Literary Magazine
∙ In the Wake of a Brawl - Published in The Florist’s Shop: The Spring Collection of Apricus Literary
∙ Sweet Gum; Sweet Girl - Published in Issue 03 of The Passionate Post
∙ Speak to Me - Published in Issue 01 of Lugar MagazineCurrent Volunteer Positions:
∙ Goetheanum Youth Section - Volunteer, Graphic Design
∙ Ellen Melville Centre - Volunteer, English Conversation Club
∙ The Elysian Chronicles - Staff Editor
∙ Butter Mochi Journal - Staff Writer
∙ Ephemeral Gazette - Staff Writer

Written Works

Fiction: Prose

I Think I'm At the Wrong FuneralThere is a man in the room. One thing — apart from the obvious — that the whole room shared is that no one in attendance knew him.He had been asleep from the moment the mother — ever weeping, ever sobbing — arrived. She did not disturb him, for who would wake a softly slumbering man? Through the entire ceremony, with its cracked speeches and tear-filled drinks and discarded tissues, he did not stir. The cousin — ever observant, ever perceptive — spotted it when he finally woke. It was a stir at first, a small twitch that soon ran through the rest of his body. The aunt — ever disturbed, ever frustrated — started when he opened his eyes.He did not ask, but the question was clear on his face, ready to be spoken on his lips, the ever simple, ever straightforward Where am I?The cousin leaned towards him, curious. The aunt tried to brush the cousin off her lap — she was almost lying on her now — but he did not move.The question, clear on her face as she turned it towards the aunt, was Who is he?The answer, stark in her eyes but unformed in her mouth, was Leave it alone. There are much bigger things to worry about. She did not have the answer. Instead, she pushes the cousin’s head away from her own, commanding her to stay in her own seat.The man is appropriately dressed, appropriately silent in respect for the speaker and the speech, yet he hadn’t seemed to have heard anything the speaker seems to have said. The speaker — the sister, but he doesn’t know that — has downcast eyes, never lifting from the face of the lectern.He doesn’t know this — he couldn’t, he wouldn’t, and he won’t — but ink stains her fingertips, dried out from only hours before, when she first sat down at her dimly-lit desk and picked up her well-worn pen and put it to tear-stained paper to write the most arduous speech she’d ever have to deliver in her life.The man watches the weeping, searches the room for a name or a face, anything that could help him understand. He does not know that he is seen, that he has been found — he is simply too busy searching for the answer to his own question. He looks down; he does not remember putting on this suit and tie, nor what came before this moment in time.There is a man in the room, and one thing — among many — that he does not know is whose body lies in the coffin.

Fiction: Poetry

Inspired by Fall of Icarus, 1975, by Marc Chagall:

Non-Fiction: Essay

An excerpt from an essay I wrote in my final year of high school.
Title: "Fair" Isn't Fair: On Eurocentric Beauty StandardsWhat is fair? Does fairness—that is, being light-skinned—equal beauty? Can you be beautiful without being fair?We all know someone who is trapped in the throes of toxic beauty standards (sometimes in a literal sense, what with all the dangerous chemicals they could be rubbing into their skin), from the subtle to the alarmingly concerning. These degrees of entrapment can manifest in different ways: someone who has a 24-step makeup routine because people they follow online swear their lives on it, someone who counts their calories and consumes protein on a numerical basis because they want to have the best-looking muscles possible, someone who is ashamed to look in the mirror every day because they do not live up to the world’s view of someone who is beautiful—someone who is fair—someone who rubs cancer-containing (Ly et al., 2018), skin-lightening lotion on their body in order to change their skin tone. This is what I’d like to talk about as a fellow person of colour.Because, what does beauty look like? Is it white skin? Big, blue eyes? Straight, blonde hair? A small, slightly upturned nose? Long limbs? Smooth, clear skin? No body hair at all? These doll-like, Barbie features seem to be the standard for people with white and European features—but where does that leave anyone who doesn’t fit into these extremely specific, Europeanised, white standards? Where does that leave people of colour? Being a person of colour literally disqualifies us from that by name alone.Is looking fair fair (equal or impartial)? Of course not. Especially not to people of colour. So how come these standards are applied to us?There are people whitening their beautiful dark skin every day, straightening their tight curls, paying for nose surgery in order to look like that one actress from that one movie from the other side of the world—Emma Watson in Beauty and the Beast (2017), for example—that they look nothing like. I, personally, know of multiple people with beautiful Filipino noses who have considered altering them with rhinoplasty because they feel it makes them look “ugly”—and whether they know it or not, this view of themselves would not exist without the onset of Eurocentric beauty standards.The industries of beauty, makeup, and cosmetic surgery are built upon the insecurities of the average consumer, which, through colonialism, pushes white beauty standards onto people of colour—most likely the ones who live in previously colonised territories. This creates an inferiority complex in many people of colour, making them believe that they are somehow uglier or less than those of European descent—which is, frankly, unreasonable, as the features that this ideal totes are racially different from those that people of colour are likely to have. Fair is not fair, and this simple fact enrages me._{( Cited source: Ly, F., Diousse, P., Ndiaye, C., Déme, A., Diatta, B. A., Ndiaye, M. T., Diallo, M., Diop, A., Kebe, A. D., Fall, F., & Kane, A. (2018). Cutaneous squamous cell carcinomas (SCC) associated with cosmetic skin whitening: 8 cases reported in Senegal. Annales de dermatologie et de venereologie, 145(2), 83–88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annder.2017.10.010 )}

Visual Artworks: By Hand

Artwork: Painting

Title: Bakunawa

Artwork: Painting

Title: Old Friends. Composition inspired by La La Land (dir. Damien Chazelle, 2016).

Artwork: Ink

Title: Portrait of Marie. Inspired by T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land.

Visual Works: Behind the Camera

Guilty Conscience

I directed, wrote, edited, primarily shot, and produced a short film in my final year of highschool. It is an action-mystery story told in flashbacks.The film is currently in the post-production stage.

Cinematography

Clips from the short film that I shot. I also edited the fight scene in the middle.

Directing and Editing

A rough trailer I edited for the short film.