Sugar, spice, and everything nice
A long time ago, my older brother had an English learning tool—a player where you would insert a card and press a button, and it would play English sentences and music.
There were about three types of files that looked like VHS cases, categorized by genre: Aesop's Fables, Grimm's Fairy Tales, and Mother Goose. (Or so I recall.)
I liked Mother Goose the best.
Peter Piper, Humpty Dumpty, and that one who liked apple pie. That was also a Peter, wasn't it?
And my favorite, even back then, was the title of this post.
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice, And all that's nice!
Little girls are made of sugar, spice, and everything nice, it says.
I imagine many people know this list from a certain cartoon featuring a trio of girls.
I still think that's true today, and if anything, I believe that a girl's entire life is a story in itself.
In the manga "Zeni," there was a character who interpreted a maid cafe as "placing a mouse character in the wilderness to build a theme park," and I think the same can be said for fictional girls.
I love writing about girls, and I love drawing them.
I also love hearing and seeing the life stories of others.
If possible, I prefer girls who have a quirk or two.
I like eccentric girls who seem strange to outsiders, are troublesome, and aren't easily dealt with.
Because a heavily layered backstory is packed with that girl's entire life.
Whether it's a tsundere, a yandere, a refined lady, a chuunibyou, or an uncontrollable pervert.
They might be called gimmicks, one-hit wonders, or oddities, but isn't that just a lack of interest? Don't you want to know what that girl is made of?
What she likes, what she dislikes, what she wants to become, what she doesn't want to become, who she has interacted with, who she has avoided, and how she arrived at those traits. The more packed it is, the better.
And I want to pay respect to the form that the girl herself desires.
Conversely, I dislike the trend of only praising the "as-is" state. It feels like disregarding the effort the person put into creating themselves, and it pains me to deny what someone says they love just because of my own level of understanding. It's cruel.
Enjoying the form they present—saying, "This is my sugar, my spice, and my everything nice"—is my own personal pleasure.
By the way, specific heroines I like include Kukuri, Cat Girl (especially from the 4th season), Patty, Reiko Shiratori, Karen Otonashi, Yukako Yamagishi, Mikoto Urabe, Hitagi Senjougahara, Reika Tamaki, Reika Aoki, Darjeeling-sama, Mami Tomoe, Machiko Nanamagari, Rosemary... there are plenty more, but these are the ones that come to mind right now. I have fairly straightforward tastes.