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lycorogue · 8 months

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Meet My OCs: Artie (Part 2 - Current Characterization and Images)

Hello again! Welcome back to my Meet My OCs series. This, surprisingly, took a couple of days to write up/edit. Mostly because Artie IS still an evolving character. I haven't quite locked them in yet, and I needed some time to sort out what to even share with you fine folks.

As I mentioned in Part 1 of my introduction to Artie, I tried to roleplay Artie twice, but both games quickly fell through. Artie's personality and gender identification also changed a bit between the two versions, as did their age. That's a lot to try to sort through and try to narrow down what will be canon for the character and what to scrap. This is made doubly hard because I don't have a story for Artie yet. They live in the ether of my mind, and that's pretty much it.

Lia, Willow, Trish, Shawn, Chayse (my husband's OC), and Devon (my friend Ronoxym's OC) all live in the story of X-Future/Glitches.

Amara, Jolene, Connor, and Nathalie live within the world-build of Gyateara. Every other D&D character I come up with - Arianna Snow, Emerald Gaze, Kriv, Elymoxa, Aubrianne, etc - can conceivably be slotted into Gyateara as well.

Mevakor is a fun NPC I came up with for my game of Scum and Villainy, and he can live comfortably in that world.

Colton and Zetelica have my completely original story to hang out in.

And then there's poor Artie. Orphaned (potentially) in character, as well as orphaned (truly) from any story they were crafted for. I'll have to sort out what to do with them some day. Maybe they will join Colton as he navigates his new life within the supernatural (pulling a little bit from the Dread game Artie was reworked for). Maybe Artie will find themselves in a desert portion of Gyateara (taking inspiration from the OG role play on Gaia that they were created for). Maybe Artie will become a glitch and join Lia, Willow, and Chayse. Maybe they will get their own original story entirely. Without really knowing, there's no way to hard-lock their build. They will always evolve as I find out more about them.

In the meantime, though, we have Part 2 of Meet Artie. I tried to really lock down what I feel are core components of the character, and then share those with you fine folks. I also brought up potential key traits and what I need to work out to solidify them more. Finally, I have a few images that I did up - thanks to Hero Forge and various Picrew makers - to TRY to lock in what Artie looks like.

Honestly? Considering how loose of a character build Artie still is, I'm surprised this post went as long as it did. I hope it's still a fun ride as you get to know them a bit better.

You still in?

You may have noticed that I never once mentioned Artie's last name. That would be because I never thought of one.

Whoops.

I don't think the colony culture within the Gaia RP required family names anymore. Everyone just knew who was related to whom (a necessity with such a small populous to make sure the gene pool remained relatively diverse). As for the Dread game? I don't think it was considered important to know the characters' last names? Most games of Dread are one-off/one-shot games, and, for Dread in particular, the characters may not make it out alive anyway.

So, positive side of never getting to play Dread with Artie: they didn't die. Whooo!

Not having a story for them means I haven't really had a need to come up with a family name. So, that's one of the things on my character-creation check list that I need to get to.

Overview

There are some elements that were consistent between the two versions of Artie. It's obvious that I'll have to keep them. They are core to their character.

For one, they are between 9 and 16. My current incarnation seems to be comfortably nestled at about the preteen range. That feels like the "right" age for them.

Artie's birth name is Artemis, and is AFAB. They also consistently dress androgynously, so that they can equally pass as either male or female. I do like the idea of Artie being genderqueer/GNC (are they two different things? Is GNC a subcategory of genderqueer???) Clearly, I need to do more research on what it means to claim those identities. I want to make sure if I stay on this route with Artie I don't use them to misrepresent the queer community. So, again, my Asks are open, and I am cisgender. If you have any advice, I would love any help I can get in making sure Artie is written correctly.

Speaking of things I'm not particularly knowledgeable about (yet), Artie is also good at engineering, and has a more analytical mind than creative/imaginative one. They are sometimes curt and a touch abrasive/blunt.

They aren't particularly close with their parents. Heck, Dread!Artie was straight up neglected/abused by her parents and killed her father.... sooooooooooooo. I haven't decided if Artie is just distant with their parents, but still living with them, if Artie is estranged from their parents, or if Artie is an orphan. I think I'm leaning towards the last one though????

Finally, Artie seems to have a special bond with animals - even wildlife - regardless of version. That trait is definitely staying.

Physically speaking, Artie is currently 4'8" (142cm), still fairly flat chested (they haven't started binding yet, but they wear baggier clothes to hide their developing curves), and weighs around 72lbs (32.6kg). Sometimes they weigh more, sometimes less, but usually they average out to 72. They're a lean little stringbean, but have a round face. They have a lightly-tanned olive skin tone and stormy-gray eyes. Their hair is a sort of silvery ash-blonde color that almost looks like gray sand. It's thick and has loose waves, but they keep their hair cut so short that the waves rarely show up.

They probably still fend for themselves, much like their Dread equivalent. I mean, their Gaia version also fended for themselves, but they also had a community available to help. I see this current incarnation not quite as self-reliant as Dread!Artie, but doesn't have quite as much community support as Gaia!Artie.

I haven't decided if Artie still has a petty father who named them "Artemis" to keep a family tradition alive despite Artie having a cousin named Artemis already (that had passed away just before Artie was born). I'm also still deciding as to why they were named Artemis in the first place. IS it a family tradition? ARE they at least part-Greek?

Personality

Artie is a bit of a loner. Gaia!Artie was irritated by people, but was still polite to them and showed them kindness. They were introverted, not wanting to be forced into socializing but feeling lonely if they couldn't at least hear people interacting around them. Dread!Artie was fully jaded and aggressive. She'd sell you out for a dollar if that somehow benefitted her. She yearned for Found Family, but never wanted to let anyone in and would self-sabotage to prevent anyone from trying. She was very much me-myself-and-I/survival of the fittest. Other people were only there as tools for her to use, she just needed to work out how to use them.

Current!Artie? Definitely still a loner, but probably not as grimdark as Dread!Artie. Also, probably a bit more jaded/snarky than Gaia!Artie. Some humble little Goldilocks area between those original two incarnations.

As mentioned, I'm definitely keeping the fact that Artie just feels more comfortable with animals (and they around Artie). Much like Dread!Artie, I don't think the current version would necessarily have a pet. While I haven't decided yet if they'll be homeless like Dread!Artie, I do still feel like Artie is nomadic, and might find it too difficult to travel with a pet? If I were to give them one, maybe a rat? Lizards feel the lowest maintenance for travel, but then Artie is stuck in warmer climates (or have to start lugging around heat lamps and the like). Dogs feel too big/high maintenance despite how many homeless people do seem to keep a canine companion. They aren't really "nomadic" though, so I feel like my point still hits. Maaaaaaybe a semi-domesticated stray cat (kind of like Gaia!Artie and their alien bug)? Gerbils/hamsters/guinea pigs all feel too hard to carry around without a cage. Rabbits also feel less practical for a nomadic life, but I could be wrong (please let me know if I am). Birds also feel too high maintenance, despite the trope of pirates keeping them as pets (if Artie were to have a bird, it would a type of corvid, I suspect). Rats/mice just feel like the right choice, if they were to have any pet at all.

Back to animal bonding though. I feel like a lot of the "weirdo Snow White" traits should carry over. Don't know if Current!Artie would use this connection with animals to win horse/dog racing bets or anything like that. I'll have to ponder that a bit more. Either way, they feel more at-home and relaxed socializing with animals than with humans.

Artie's Style

As I mentioned, Artie prefers loose-fitting, comfy, gender-neutral clothes. Jeans or denim overalls. Graphic tees. Plain t-shirts or long-sleeve tees. Work/hiking/combat boots; something durable and comfortable to walk around in for months. Hoodies or hooded zip-up sweatshirts. Swim trunks and light t-shirt to swim in.

They have a pair of steampunk-like motorcycle goggles - either the round lens or pilot style. They use them as sunglasses, to protect against the elements, or as low-end welding goggles while they're building something. Plus, they just like how they look. Makes for a good hair accessory.

They don't really wear any other accessories. No bracelets, necklaces, or piercings. They do have a basic wrist watch, but that's about it.

Visuals

Sadly, the computer that had my Gaia Online avatar rendering of the OG Artie died on me nearly a decade ago. I was going to recreate them, but the "Gaia Online Dream Avatar" creator Tektek was taken down nearly a decade ago, and I couldn't find an alternative. Shame, because I did enjoy that design.

Anyway, as I mentioned at the top of this post, I spent some time on Hero Forge instead to try to recreate Artie. The hair color isn't quite right, but I'm happy with them otherwise.

I decided to design them as if they were still in the RPGs I created them for. Gaia!Artie lived in a dust bowl/desert section of a planet. Dread!Artie was making her way to Las Vegas. Gaia!Artie would need a lot of pockets for their maintenance/engineering equipment, and had few other possessions. Dread!Artie was a nomad, and, again, was making her way to Vegas. The hair is still a touch too blond for what I picture. Some of the Picrew versions were a touch closer. Although, I ended up losing the skin tone I wanted for Artie when I switched to Picrew.

These two Picrew designs are probably closer to the ash hair color I picture for Artie. Not quite gray. Not quite blonde. Somewhere on the spectrum in between.

Nanameka: the maker used to create the left image, the one with gears behind Artie. The maker used for the right image: with the sun setting behind Artie.

Neither the hair color nor the skin color really works for either of these versions of Artie. The right "vibe" is there for them though? And the one on the left isn't TOO far off hair color wise. The one on the right isn't TOO far off skin tone wise?? I also like the clothing I could choose for them with that right image, and that they could have their goggles.

The maker used for the left image: Artie in a black shirt and brown hoodie. Maker 773 - the one used to create the full-body Artie on a rooftop.

So, what do you all think of Artie? Any advice on them? Any thoughts in general? They've been so neglected in my mind for so long*, and their call to be noticed was so loud the other morning. I'm glad to revisit them again. I'm also happy to share them with all of you.

Now to get back into the habit of working on this series a bit more. I still need to finish up my Meet Lia sub series....

*Poor thing! They get enough of that from their parents!... how sadly appropriate...

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lycorogue · 8 months

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Meet My OCs: Artie (Part 1 - Background)

WAAAAAAY back in May of 2019, I thought it would be fun to introduce my OCs to the world. I had created the Meet My OCs series with the intent to add to it every (other?) Sunday. I got to July of that year (but 11 posts... yay!) before I fell off the wagon for that project.

Well, this morning, I was suddenly struck with this urge to introduce you to one of my OCs again: Artie.

Poor Artie wasn't included when I first listed off my OCs (neither was Willow's brother Shawn... whoops!). For Artie, it was mainly because I was focused on the OCs I created for either my fantasy world Gyateara, or my X-Men-inspired cyberpunk-lite story Glitches. Artie fits in neither category.

(Along those lines, I have four other D&D characters, and 2 wholly original story OCs that should be added to that already 14-deep list of OCs....)

ANYWHO!

Who's ready to meet Artie?

Birth of Artie: GaiaOnline

Somewhere between 2008 and 2010 (I think), back when I used to frequent GaiaOnline, I was invited to a play-by-post roleplay game using one of GaiaOnline's private forum set-ups.

My husband's (then fiancé) friend had come up with this intriguing sci-fi/steampunk-Western setting. Much like in the anime Trigun/Trigun Stampede, humanity was forced to settle on a hostile planet. The area humanity was forced to colonize was a large dust bowl/desert (I can't remember which), and it was unknown if the whole planet was that way or if humanity was just unfortunate when they crash landed. No explorers in search to find out have returned. Also, for some unknown reason, humans no longer live past 25, and most die before they are even 20. The children all seem healthy, but as soon as someone turns 16 their health starts deteriorating (the adults that had crash-landed all died off quickly via a plague that didn't affect the children). This has caused the colony to become more steampunk in nature since the adults died before passing on knowledge of the technology they brought with them, and the kids are kind of reverse-engineering off of the starship's remains. But even then, they have to quickly pass what knowledge they've discovered down before they too die. Teens, out of necessity, started procreating and raising their own families in an attempt to keep the population from dying off. Children are "wise beyond their years" as they hit "adulthood" more-or-less at the age of 10.

This is the world where Artie was birthed.

Artie's full name is Artemis. They're AFAB. However, Artie picked up pretty quickly on the systemic misogyny still inherent in their society. Wearing masculine/gender-neutral clothes like simple cotton shirts, jeans, and work boots just made life easier to navigate anyway. They then shortened their name from Artemis to Artie, and kept their hair short (which is again convenient anyway when dealing with a sandy/dusty/wind-ravaged land). Some of the kids began confusing Artie for a boy, and Artie noticed that they were respected more, given more opportunities, listened to more, and didn't have their intelligence questioned. Finding life easier if they presented male, they ran with it. It never really mattered to them anyway if people thought they were female or male (think Haruhi from the anime Ouran High School Host Club).

Then Artie realized there were benefits to presenting female as well. Females were allowed to like cute things or cry or feel uncomfortable if presented with something unpleasant. Girls could be "emotional" and want/give hugs. No one made fun of females if they asked for assistance with something or if they got scared or wanted to sleep with a stuffed animal or special blanket. They could be sentimental.

Artie started "switching" between presenting male or female to reap the benefits of both genders. They rarely presented as both genders to the same person though. If you knew them as male, they were always male. If you knew them as female, they were always female around you.

(I'm cisgender... can you tell? I apologize if this is a terrible misrepresentation of being genderqueer. I'm still learning and Artie is still evolving as a character. This is just how they formed in my head way back in the early 00's. If you have any suggestions, I am very much open to them. My Asks are open. Thanks in advance!)

For the Gaia roleplay, Artie was kind of a loner. They made themselves a hammock in the rafters of the large warehouse-sized barn the colony lived within. They created a secret hide-away in the wall by their hammock where they hid their prized possessions (I have no recollection as to what those items were, but they could all fit within a size 15 shoe box). They didn't really have friends within the colony, but they got along with the livestock. They also had a pet alien bug (about the size of a corgi, with a bunch of stubby legs like a caterpillar) that they would bring into the greenhouse every night to help fertilize the fields before releasing them back into the wild during the day.

Artie was an engineering apprentice. Their job was mostly maintenance throughout the colony while slowly learning about the tech the teens were able to sort out/reverse-engineer off of the spaceship.

Sadly, the roleplay didn't last long before it fell through.

Artie's Revival: Dread

Artie then sat dormant until 2016. Another of Hubby's friends introduced us to the horror-survival game Dread. The concept of players pulling Jenga blocks from the tower (instead of the standard dice rolls) to determine the success of the action they took intrigued us. Then, our friend sent us a 40-question questionnaire for our characters. Based on the character class we picked, we were supposed to answer a set-number of questions within the questionnaire.

I was drawn to the character class "waif":

Never innocent yet always without a lick of evidence against you, the life of the ‘meek’ is made easier by your naïve appearance. Something about you makes everyone want to help you. You take what you want, and no one is the wiser. The pockets of some faceless person left you with a strange necklace. Every effort to pawn it has left you with a strange feeling, like it doesn’t want to leave you. The last town you were in grew wise, however. Jumping into the back of the nearest semi, you fell asleep and waited hours until it creaked to a stop. The welcoming sight of a motel and diner should make you feel better, but the knowing look of a stranger already has you on edge…

Artie shouted in the back of my mind, and I knew this was my chance to revive them!

Picking "waif" as my character class, I was given the following questions from the questionnaire to answer:

1. What mental illness runs in your family? 2. What do you do for a living? 3. Where did you grow up? 7. What is your favorite game? 13. How old were you when you learned you could predict horse races consistently? 19. Why were you named after your cousin instead of your grandparent? 31. What made you think you could get away with it, and how in the world did you? 33. What is the recurring dream and why does it frighten you? 35. What addiction do you hide from your friends? 36. What can you do that most other people you know can’t? 37. When all else is quiet, how do you silence the screaming in your head? 39. Why is next month big for you? 40. What unusual hobby do you have?

For this game, I had aged Artie up to 14, turning 15 within the next month. Artie also still identified as female, but kept the original character build of presenting male to make life easier on herself. People were less inclined to interact with a teen boy living on the streets than they were with a homeless teen girl. Others were more inclined to take a teen boy seriously than a teen girl. People were less likely to try to "white knight" a teen boy than a teen girl. Etc.

I'll admit, I largely based this redesign of Artie off of the character Jack from the movie Pitch Black.

This Artie grew up in Detroit with a drug-addicted mother and alcoholic abusive father. She never knew her paternal grandfather who died from ODing when he was 50. Fearful of having the same addictive personality, she's avoided drugs and alcohol, but has instead become addicted to arson. She's careful to not intentionally harm any living beings, but she gets an itch to start a fire if the opportunities arise, even if the result would be devastating (property wise or legality wise).

For the Dread version of Artie, Artemis was a family name. Her dad's side of the family is at least part Greek, and it's tradition that the first-born girl of each generation is named Artemis. Both Artie's dad and his brother were expecting daughters at roughly the same time (the first females born to the family in three generations). Artie's cousin was born almost a month premature. She was named Artemis, but tragically died before Artie was born. Since that generation's 'Artemis' had passed away anyway, Artie's father had 'Artemis' put on her birth certificate before his brother or sister-in-law could protest.

While Gaia!Artie did connect more with animals than humans, Dread!Artie has an almost supernatural bond with animals. She described herself as "some weirdo Snow White or something." She can just TELL what animals want/need, and they feel comfortable with her. Even wild animals gravitate to her. Deer will get as close as ten feet from her. Crows will bring her shiny things in exchange for food. Squirrels will eat from her hand. Feral cats frequently come to her for food and cuddles/pets. Dogs practically break their leashes to reach her. This is how she was able to accurately predict horse races. Much like Anne-Marie from the movie All Dogs Go to Heaven, Artie could sort out how each horse felt leading into any given race, and predict the winner from that. She was seven when her father stumbled upon this gift, and he forced her to skip so much school (so they could "play the ponies") that she actually flunked out of 2nd grade due to poor attendance.

One night, in a drunken rage, Artie's father killed her mother. In retaliation, Artie struck her father in the head with a hammer, and then burnt their home down to try to bury her past and hide the evidence (not that it mattered, she knew she could claim "self defense"... plus she was nine, so she was pretty positive no one would convict her).

Artie was basically a "rogue" to survive: she'd panhandle, pickpocket, con, and commit breaking-and-entering.

Her favorite activities are card games and pro-level yo-yo tricks (I even had Artie utilize the yo-yo as a weapon back in Aug 2016... only to discover the show Miraculous Ladybug - in which the main character uses a yo-yo as a magical weapon - in July 2017!). Cards and yo-yo are mostly her preferred because 1) they're fun (duh), 2) they are easy to carry around, and 3) they're versatile (many different card games; many different yo-yo tricks to try out; both can be used to entertain/swindle/bludgeon people out of their money).

Finally, the nightmare that haunts her is one where she and her parents are being chased by demons, are killed, and revived as demons themselves. (It's more involved than that, but this is already an epic-length post....)

In another tragic twist for poor Artie, the Dread game fell through before it even started. The players all filled out our character questionnaires. Then none of us were available at the same time. Eventually the friend who wanted to run the game moved away.

Artie fell dormant again.

And, with that. I'll end Part 1. This is already stupid long anyway. I'll catch you in Part 2, where I talk about Story-less Artie, and introduce their appearance.

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lycorogue · 2 years

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Master List of WIPs and Plot Bunnies (as of Jan 2022)

(roughly a 40min read)

As a means to try to get myself re-inspired to write, I've spent some time trying to collect all of my plot bunnies and WIPs in one place. Thus, I created a master-list.

Turns out, if you include things like my "365 anthology of daily writing prompts" that I’ve never completed, I have 22 WIPs (stories I have at least started, but haven't finished), and another 16 Miraculous Ladybug fanfic ideas (plot bunnies) that I haven't started yet.

Not to mention any Encanto plot bunnies that have been playing along the edges of my mind, but haven't quite formed enough yet for me to list them on the Plot Bunnies tally.

Speaking of, the current tally looks like this:

WIPs

- 4 ML fanfics started - 1 Hey Arnold fanfic I never meant to abandon - 5 X-Future (X-Men with OCs) stories - 1 D&D character study - 1 recounting of a World of Darkness (Vampire: The Masquerade) character (probably forever abandoned) - an attempt to novelize the Cirque du Soleil show Varekai - an on-going attempt to convert X-Future into an original series called Glitches - 5 stories within my original fantasy world of Gyateara - 3 writing anthologies built from writing prompts (at least one is probably permanently abandoned)

Plot Bunnies (in order of how far I’ve gotten with the plot build)

- The PV of ML (Felix as Chat Noir and Bridgette as Ladybug) co-exists with canon - Adrien is in need of a fake girlfriend, and decides on Marinette - Rewrite of canon so that Gabriel is actually a decent father who loves his son - Non-magic game streamer AU - 3 different continuations of my story Ladybug’s Simp Squad - Adrien tries out the concept that “if you want the truth, ask the same question 3x” on both LB and Marinette, to surprising results. - Another retelling of the 12th chapter of Remember That Time When.. by @mostlovedgirl-writes This time focusing more on Adrien’s isolation after Marinette literally locked herself away from him. - 2 stories involving the New York Special - Plagg’s POV of the episode “Puppeteer 2″ (a companion piece to my story Painfully Close) - Alya (as either herself or her superhero persona) pinning Adrien against the wall as she accuses him of hurting Marinette - Master Fu backstory filling in the time between the fall of the monastery and when we meet him in Origins. Mostly focusing on the 1940s and WWII. - Adrien discovers that Ladybug is Marinette, and tries to figure out who this boy is that she’s in love with - Adrien finds out HE’S the boy that Ladybug keeps turning Chat Noir down for. (may or may not end up part of the above plot bunny)

Now to get motivation to actually WRITE some of this stuff.... Maybe if people bully me???

Honestly, the following detailed list of all my WIPs and plot bunnies is mostly for my benefit. That way I have a reference online for times I don’t have my computer on-hand. But if you want to join me down the rabbit hole (and get more of a feel of what I have in the fire), I’ll gladly see you under the cut.

WIPs - Fanfics

Miraculous Ladybug:

One and the Same - The sequel to my story Peeping Tomcat. I’ve been struggling to get this story done since 2018. I have some great moments here and there, but the overall story just isn’t coming together. This time, instead of the story being exclusively Adrien’s 1st person POV, I am tag-teaming Adrien and Marinette as 1st person POV narrators. In this sequel, Adrien is trying desperately to get Marinette to fall in love with him, and she’s not sure how to handle this....

I Don't Care - I already have 2 chapters of this story posted because I wasn’t planning on it being a multi-chapter story, and yet, here I am. It’s my interpretation of Gabriel and Emilie’s romance: how they met, them dating, their marriage, and their years with Adrien before Emilie fell into her coma. The title is a nod to the inspiration of the second chapter: “I Don’t Care” by Ed Sheeran. Mostly because I see that as Gabriel’s attitude towards Emilie.

Seduce With Caution - A smut story I started writing the summer of 2020 that has become a slow-burn MariChat story. Chat Noir tries to show off his new flirting/seduction techniques on Marinette to prove that he can get Ladybug to fall for HIM. He accidentally hits the mark perfectly without realizing. Marinette fights against her newfound attraction for Chat Noir while Adrien tries to figure out why he keeps picturing an unmasked Ladybug as Marinette in his fantasies. Some extra awkward Adrienette moments as Adrien wonders if he can also get Marinette riled up as himself, and Marinette tries not to combust as Adrien flirts with her!

Love Square Fluff Week - Back before the pandemic truly hit, I was working on the 7-day Love Square Fluff Week writing prompts. I have the first 5 chapters up before I fell into my pandemic-induced writing funk. I just need to figure out those last 2!

“Hey, Arnold!”

What is Truly Meant to Be - Using the premise of the never-produced spin-off series “The Patakis” as a guide, Arnold had broken up with Helga when his parents moved away from Hillwood. He had assumed it was selfish of him to ask her to keep up a long-distance relationship. Now that they have both graduated high school, and nothing is keeping them apart, Arnold rushes back to Hillwood so he can tell Helga he’s still in love with her and ask her to be his girlfriend again. Unfortunately, Brainy has already helped Helga mend her broken heart, and she’s been dating him for the past two years (? it’s been a while since I went back to this story. I think it was 2 years). Now Helga has to decide between the sweet and supportive boyfriend she currently has and the boy she’s been in love with since she was 3. I got 8 chapters (and over 60k words) into this story before I unintentionally abandoned it in 2013. 😅 Each chapter was based on a song - which became that chapter’s title - which is why I subtitled it “A Hey Arnold Musical”.

X-Future (an X-Men RPG created by my husband)

Please, Let Me Explain - Originally a short story that my friend Ronoxym wrote, and I sort of unintentionally hijacked it. It’s SUPPOSED to be a collab between the two of us, but neither of us have touched it since 2016. In the roleplay, my character Willow thought Rono’s character Devon had betrayed the X-Men to an attack from the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, which resulted in the Xavier mansion blowing up and killing at least 3 students. PLME has Devon trying to explain the situation to Willow, and how he had no clue what happened with the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters. If he had, he would have come home. Willow isn’t sure she can trust him, though. After a LOT of work, Devon finally convinces Willow to use her psychic abilities to delve into his mind to prove he’s telling the truth. That’s about where the story derailed and we haven’t been able to get it back on track yet. Still, I did post the first two chapters back in 2015. I do want to go back to this story eventually, and it does tend to invade my thoughts on occasion.

Some Like it Flame-Broiled - Another story that was originally written by Ronoxym. This was probably the first bit of smut I have ever written. Not sure if it will ever see the light of day, but I am still periodically tweaking it. I had written a solo scene on X-Future (a play-by-post RPG) where my tertiary character Trish masturbated to a gas tanker explosion (she’s a pyrophile). Now, the players were all over 20yo, and even so, the scene I wrote was more a simple T-rated “she masturbated”, as opposed to NC-17 explicit descriptions. Anyway, since Trish was originally created as a potential love interest for Devon when he joined the Brotherhood (she ended up being a rival bent on killing him.... whoops....), Rono wrote a smut AU where Devon truly did turn evil (instead of playing a double-agent) and Evil!Devon had a weird sexual relationship with Trish. I took Rono’s story and RAN with it. But, like I said, I still have some tweaks to do.

Untitled battle between Devon and Trish - A battle to the death between the canon versions of Trish and Devon. Trish and the Brotherhood were holding Devon’s girlfriend’s parents hostage. Devon went to save them, and ended up in a knife fight with Trish. This battle is canon to explain what happened to Devon during a time jump in-game, but the only bits that were canonically posted were the fact that there was a fight, and the result. I went ahead and wrote out the full battle, but I’m still learning fight choreography, so I want to go back and tweak it. Haven’t touched this story since 2017 or so, though. I also want Ronoxym’s input, since it does involve his character, even if we aren’t playing that RPG anymore.

X-Future: The Second Generation Begins - My attempt to adapt the roleplay into a more traditional narrative. Our method of tracking time - and what scenes happen when - was poor at best, however. So the conversion ended up a more intense undertaking than I originally thought. The RP went on for about 2 or 3 years, and I only covered the first 2 months or so (which was still over 67k words) before this project got shelved. Still want to finish it, though.

X-Future Snippets - As my way of doing character studies and sorting out what to do next with my characters in the official RP, I wrote a series of one-shots using my X-Future characters Lia, Willow, and Trish. I last updated this 15-chapter/35k+ word anthology of one-shots in 2016. I hope to get re-acquainted with my characters, and hopefully add more shorts to this collection.

D&D

Too Many Names, Even For A Gnome - A character study for my gnome Elymoxa. A way to learn who she is by figuring out what all of her names are, and how she earned them. As of right now, I only have three chapters up. I also haven’t played this D&D character since 2018, so I’m not sure when I’ll be going back to learning about this character.

World of Darkness

Lottie's story - This was my NaNoWriMo attempt back in 2014. I was playing the World of Darkness game Vampire: The Masquerade. Lottie was my Brujah vampire that was turned in the 1940s. I wanted to capture our gameplay. I failed to do so, as I only wrote 3000 words. I will probably never get back to this story, sadly. It was fun, though, to re-read that opening chapter. I instantly remembered who played which character based on how the characters interacted. Good times.

Varekai

Adaptation of the Cirque du Soleil show into a novel - Since the early 2000s, when I first saw the Cirque show Varekai, I fell in love with the story of Icarus falling into a mythical and magical forest instead of plummeting into the sea. For my birthday in 2017, I got a DVD of the show, and wanted to write a novelization of the story Cirque du Soleil told. I even watched it live that summer to help inspire me. It was also the year I fell in love with Miraculous Ladybug, though, and I ended up working on Peeping Tomcat that NaNoWriMo instead. So I have yet to write more than the opening chapter of this Varekai story.

WIPs - Original Works

Glitches

A rework of the X-Future world and original characters (the player characters) as an original story with no ties to X-Men or Marvel. I’ve done a lot of world-build thus far, and character reworks to turn Marvel-owned characters that are significant for the X-Future story into original versions. I’ve also written a couple of scenes. I’m still debating between trying to write this as a comic (which requires an illustrator) or a series of novels (but it feels like such a visual story). I just miss my X-Future characters and the other player characters they interacted with. I want to go back to writing them again in some shape or form.

Case and point - maybe rework the above X-Future stories so they are more original stories within the Glitches universe?

Gyateara

Lost Loves and Paramours - My 2016 NaNoWriMo story where I explored the backstory I gave my D&D character Jolene Crisslebalm. While I stuck to the backstory I gave her for the campaign, I also reworked a lot of it so it could be original. There’s still a few bits that were original world-builds of my DM that I have to edit out, and I might also rework some of the canon backstory. Either way, I did hit 50k+ words, making this my FIRST NaNo win! I’m not even half-way done with her backstory, though. So it definitely needs a lot of reworking, and I need to actually finish writing out her story. I do poke at this WIP periodically. Aug 2021 I created a Spotify playlist that tells Jolene’s story. Maybe someday I’ll post something publicly.

The Race for Destiny - My first-ever attempt at NaNoWriMo, way back in 2012. The story itself was first formed shortly after I played the Xbox game Fable back in 2004. This story (with its terrible working-title that desperately needs to be redone) originated as a Frankensteined cross-over fanfic between Fable, Inuyasha, Vision of Escaflowne, Legend of Zelda, and Fushigi Yuugi. The story was a classic isekai where Natalie is from a sleepy New England town, and stumbles upon a stone platform with strange runes etched into it. As she inspected the runes, she got teleported to Gyateara. There she was saved from monsters by hero-in-training Connor. The duo find out a Big-Bad is attempting to unlock a fabled artifact to rule the world, and only Natalie (who is assumed to be a messenger of a lost goddess) can stop the baddie with the aid of Connor. During their trials, Natalie and Connor fall in love, and Natalie becomes torn between staying with him and going home when Gyateara is saved. The story was so horribly cliche, but I had pumped so much into the world-build, I hope to one day find a way to salvage anything from this story and complete it.

The People of Gyateara - An anthology of the various cultures that makes up the world of Gyateara. As of this posting, though, I haven’t updated since 2016, and I only had 2 chapters written. Whoops. I should probably get back into this....

The Divine Legends - the various myths and legends that the people of Gyateara tell. I haven’t touched this poor anthology since 2014. I really should get back to this. I should also go back and edit the 3 legends I already have up, now that I have a better understanding of myth structures.

Amara's backstory (untitled) - My first-ever D&D character. Unfortunately, I only managed to play her for 2 sessions, despite her living rent-free in my brain since 2003/2004. Her backstory does keep changing as I grow and learn how problematic different bits truly are (I originally had her as a fantasy version of a g*psy). Amara is still evolving, and as she does, my need to work on this backstory continues.

Writing Prompts

365 Stories: 2017 - Back in 2017, I received a book that provided a new writing prompt every day for a full year. I tried to stick with the practice of doing a writing prompt a day, and create an anthology of these one-shots. Unfortunately, I ended up tapping out at only 26 prompts (27k+ words). It was a good start, but I want to give this challenge another try at some point.

Ronoxym's Flash-Fiction Challenge - Also back in 2017, I lamented to Ronoxym that I can’t seem to write short and succinct stories *side-eyes this whole post* Seems I still can’t. He challenged me to write stories that are under 1000 words. I only managed about 6 of them - which I collected in this anthology - before I waved my white flag. I feel like I should try to start up this challenge again, though.

Writing Prompts: An Anthology - Another anthology of one-shot short stories. This time, the collection comes from various writing prompts. Most of the prompts were given out at my local writing group, but some were from random friends, my husband, or interesting prompts I found online. I again only got 11 prompts in before abandoning the challenge. I really should get back into finding prompts....

ML Fanfic Plot Bunnies

1. Concept: The PV (where Felix is Chat Noir and Bridgette is Ladybug) co-exists with canon

This story is FAR from ready for ANY writing to be done as I still try to world-build, but my world-building does already fill 4 pages in OpenOffice Writer.

The main idea was based off of the Smile Fruit in One Piece. Namely, that the Miraculous that Felix and Bridgette get are artificial, which is why the jewelry itself looks different (especially the cat ring), why the “kwamis” are roughly triple the size of canon Tikki and Plagg, why the power sets are different, and why Felix is cursed (as well as the antagonistic dynamic Felix has with his “kwami”).

I talked about the idea in full detail in this blog post, but here’s a “quick” recap:

A prominent wealthy humanitarian and philanthropist in London is secretly a criminal mastermind a la Marvel’s Wilson Fisk, DC’s Lex Luthor, or Disney’s Gargoyles’ David Xanatos. This man is the PV version of Hawkmoth. Somehow, someway, there are artificial “Miraculous” made, but deemed failed experiments. By some weird circumstance, Felix - now aged about 15 or 16 - ends up with the cat ring and puts it on before discovering it’s cursed. He is now tormented by a magical black cat creature that can go invisible so Felix is the only one who sees it (maybe only those wearing that specific “Miraculous” can see the corresponding “kwami”???). The creature loves to cause bad luck around Felix, but Felix can’t remove the ring without first getting a kiss from the faux-Ladybug.

Coincidentally, Felix’s classmate Bridgette, who has been obsessively in love with him, ends up with the artificial Ladybug earrings. Her “kwami” is much kinder, and they become fast friends. London’s HM sends out his first minion (I might have to nix Mr. Pigeon and Mime since their gimmicks are such classic Parisian tropes, and are both reused in canon anyway). Bridgette is taught how to become Ladybug, and runs into the fray (she’s the impulsive fighter in this duo).

Discovering what his ring is, the curse, and how to remove the curse, Felix also learns how to become Chat Noir, and joins Ladybug in battle. His priority, however, is to get the kiss and end the curse. After being reamed out by Ladybug, Chat Noir focuses on the battle (he’s the calm and calculating one of this duo, but Ladybug is still the crucial one needed to execute Felix’s plans to save the day). Basically, I wanted to balance out their partnership a bit more: Felix’s Chat Noir can’t defeat the villain by himself, he needs faux-Ladybug’s powers (be it her own version of purifying the akuma or whatever). Meanwhile, while Bridgette has the powers needed to defeat the villain, she needs Felix’s tactical strategy to get even close to winning.

The story continues with the normal affair: Bridgette is in love with Felix, who is annoyed by her constant romantic advances. Meanwhile, Chat Noir is quickly falling for Ladybug, and his requests for kisses become less about ending the curse and more about genuine desire. Ladybug is as put off by his advances as Felix is of Bridgette’s; she accuses him of caring more about spending time with her than saving London... she’s not exactly wrong. Eventually, Felix and Bridgette start to become friends, and Ladybug starts to fall for Chat Noir. Problem now has become that if Chat Noir ever accepts a kiss from Ladybug, it will end his curse, but he can no longer be her superhero partner. Does he accept his lady’s love, and end his curse? Or does he suffer through the curse and reject his partner’s feelings so he can remain by her side as they battle London Hawk Moth? Also, does he (can he?) tell Ladybug about the curse???

This is clearly a MASSIVE undertaking, so who knows when I will have the time to start this project....

2. Concept: Adrien is in need of a fake girlfriend, and decides to ask Marinette

Another one where I have a lot of building to do before I’m ready to actually write the darn thing.

I go over the whole concept in this post, but, again, here’s a quick recap:

For ReasonsTM, Kagame suggests that Adrien gets a fake girlfriend. After going though a few options, Adrien realizes that Marinette would be perfect. It takes some convincing, but Marinette eventually agrees. The two go through a lot of the classic “fake dating” tropes, and Adrien is starting to realize his true feelings for Marinette.

HOWEVER, before fully realizing he’s fallen for her, he first discovers that Marinette has been in love with him more-or-less since they first met. He hates the idea that he’s been playing with her heart (even if it was unintentional), and instantly breaks things off.

Problem is that he breaks up with her by telling her he’s already in love with someone else.... using almost the exact same speech Ladybug gave Chat Noir at the end of “Glaciator”. Of COURSE Marinette recognizes her own speech, and now has to deal with the knowledge that Adrien is Chat Noir.

Honestly, I don’t know where to go from there... would Marinette battling with her half-reveal knowledge be its own sequel story? Or do I have that be part of the overall tale? What is the reason behind Adrien needing a fake girlfriend in the first place? What “fake dating” tropes should I indulge in? How does Adrien find out that Marinette isn’t faking, and has been in love with him all along? Just so many questions I still need to answer before I can start writing.

3. Concept: Rewriting of canon where only one thing is changed: Gabriel Agreste is actually a loving and attentive father. Potential Title: When Love Matters

The trickiest bits of this one includes figuring out what continuity order I should put the episodes in - production? air order? streaming-service order? Piece them together into my own order based on in-episode clues? - as well as how to rework episodes like “Chat Blanc” and “Ephemeral” without completely negating them (since most of the plot of those episodes revolve around Gabriel being a complete asshole of a human being).

I talk more about the project as an answer to this ask from good lord 2018

4. Concept: Non-Magic Game-Streamer AU.

This was another one that I need to iron out the world-build, but I’m already 2 pages deep into building it.

I posted the original concept back in May 2021, but here’s the “quick” recap:

Adrien is afraid his real-world celebrity will taint his success as a streamer (he wants to claw his way to the top like everyone else so he knows people like him for his streaming, not his celebrity). So he only ever goes by his handle “Chat Noir”, adjusts his voice via his mic somehow, and only ever streams off-camera with a catboy icon, or he’s a vtuber using a catboy avatar.

Marinette knows how much female gamers get harassed, and she’s afraid of getting doxxed. So she also hides behind a handle - “Ladybug” - adjusts her mic to hide her true voice, and streams off-camera. Despite getting a fairly large following as a gaming streamer, she purposefully keeps that life separate from her fashion designing.

Chat Noir and Ladybug meet in a game, and become fast-friends. Adrien actually gets quite enamored with Ladybug, and becomes one of her biggest fans. He tries to meet up with her IRL, or do a private face-reveal via DMs, but she refuses, too afraid to let anyone know who she truly is. Eventually, she also admits that, even if they did meet IRL, they could only be friends since she’s already in love with someone.

Of course, that someone is her good friend Adrien, who is oblivious to her feelings. He does suggest that she should start streaming since she’s such a great gamer, and she kind of awkwardly laughs and shrugs him off.

Hawk Moth is also a streamer, but one of those toxic ones who riles up his chat, isn’t much of a team player in MMORPG or MOBA parties/teams, and kill-steals or takes cheap shots whenever possible. Ladybug and Chat Noir are constantly butting heads with him to help protect the other gamers from his toxicity.

I haven’t decided yet if I need to change up everyone’s handles, since “chat noir”, “ladybug”, and “hawk moth” feel too generic to be available as-is. I’ll have to think more about their gaming handles. I also need to decide if I’m keeping Gabriel as Hawk Moth, or if I should hand the reins over to Felix instead.

Lots and lots of other questions need answers, but it’s a fun AU to tip my toes into now and again until I’m ready to write the dang thing.

5. Concept: Continuation of Ladybug's Simp Squad, but a bit angsty as it centers around Adrien and Plagg.

This plot bunny is courtesy of @BFG_blueapple303 on AO3. In the comments of my story Ladybug’s Simp Squad, they asked me why Adrien didn’t include his swan-dive off the Montparnasse Tower while battling for Simp Supremacy with Alya. (real answer: I forgot about that somehow)

This story would follow that train of thought: why didn’t Adrien mention that when he literally mentioned battling Gorizilla?

Plagg would ask Adrien about that omission, mostly because, after knowing everything Adrien actually does for Ladybug, Plagg is a bit offended that Adrien walked away with the #2 Simp spot.

Adrien reflects, but I think he’ll eventually land on 3 things: 1) he didn’t want to stress out his friends by letting them know/reminding them that he leapt off one of the tallest buildings in Paris simply at Ladybug’s say-so. 2) he knows in his heart who he is, so it doesn’t bother him that everyone thinks he’s #2. In fact, it may be better to cover his identity as Chat Noir. Finally, 3) Alya probably won’t be able to be Rena Rouge anymore (the story takes place between seasons 3 and 4), and Adrien felt she needed a win to prove that she’s still able to assist Ladybug, even if she isn’t a superhero anymore.

BFG_blueapple303‘s original idea had this conversation between Adrien and Nino instead of Adrien and Plagg. I think I prefer it with Plagg because Adrien could be more open about more things only Chat Noir would know, but I do also love the original idea with Nino. Plus, we don’t get enough Adrien and Nino just being buddies content. So I might go back to that convo instead.

Either way, I have most of the components all sorted out for this story. I just need the motivation to write it. (and figure out who Adrien is having this conversation with)

6. Concept: Continuation of Ladybug's Simp Squad where Marinette makes Nino a “#1 Rena Rouge Simp” sweatshirt.

This plot bunny is courtesy of @livrever over on AO3 when she mentioned Nino needing a sweatshirt as well.

Again, the story I originally wrote - Ladybug’s Simp Squad - is supposed to take place between seasons 3 and 4. So, as far as Marinette and Adrien are concerned, Alya’s and Nino’s identities as Rena Rouge and Carapace have been compromised, but those two were mind-controlled at the time, and probably don’t realize it.

So Nino asks for a #1 Rena Rouge Simp sweatshirt. He thinks he’s being clever, not realizing Marinette knows EXACTLY why he’d want that shirt. He also thinks it would be a great surprise for his girlfriend.

Poor Marinette is torn, because it almost feels cruel to make Nino a “#1 Rena Rouge Simp” sweatshirt when Alya may never again get to BE Rena Rouge.

Eventually, she caves, and it does make DJWIFI super happy.

I just need to figure out all the middle bits of this story.

7. Concept: Cuddly Ladrien fluff continuation of Ladybug's Simp Squad.

This one is just straight out of the story Ladybug’s Simp Squad when Marinette cuddles with the sweatshirt she made Adrien. However, I did have a couple of comments on the story of people wanting to see Ladybug actually snuggling Adrien in his Simp shirt. And how can I deny the people? (especially when I’m one of them)

Ladybug, now knowing how large of a "fan" Adrien is, visits him. They start pseudo-dating and ALLLLLL the fluff.

Alternatively, I could go with ALLLLL THE ANGST (MWAHAHAHAHAHA!).

A little while back, I read Comfort from Each-Other by ScarletRedFox. The basic concept is that Ladybug was concerned for Adrien’s safety if they were to date, so she breaks things off. Soooooo, what if Ladybug at FIRST goes to have sweet Ladrien cuddles with her #2 Simp, but then realizes how much danger she could be putting Adrien in, so she breaks things off????

I’m still pondering the potential of Super Fluff Story vs Super Angst Story....

8. Concept: Adrien tries out the concept that “if you want the truth, ask the same question 3x” on both LB and Marinette, to surprising results. Potential Title: “The Rule of Three”

Adrien found out about a conversational tactic called “the Rule of 3”: whenever asking someone an important question, the first response is the knee-jerk, socialized response they have on standby; the second response is the calculated, defensive response; the third is the fully honest answer.

He tries the tactic on Ladybug to figure out if there is ANY hope of her loving him back. She admits she's torn, and that - maybe - if there was no chance with this other boy, then she could consider it. Chat Noir can't use the Rule of 3 to convince Ladybug to admit who she's pining for, but he does find out that she's never officially told him her feelings because she believes he's in love with someone else anyway. (She’s just hoping he moves on as much as Chat Noir is hoping the same thing of her)

Unsure where that leaves him with Ladybug, he turns to Marinette. She's always felt like more than a friend to him. She always seems so unsure around him though, sending mixed signals like avoiding him but also fighting for him to join them in New York. He decides to use the Rule of 3 to figure out where he stands with her.

Chaos ensues when he does get the truth from her, especially when she acknowledges that she knows he’s in love with someone else and that she has no chance of them being together, despite her hoping he’d pick her instead.

I’m.... not quite sure where to go with this story, but it does feel fun to explore....

9. Concept: Another retelling of the 12th chapter of Remember That Time When.. by @mostlovedgirl-writes

This time, I want to go back to Adrien's POV. While that’s the POV MLG originally wrote the chapter in, she also kind of breezed past that awkward night that Adrien and Marinette packed for the NYC trip: They packed, Marinette hid in the bathroom while Adrien watched anime, Marinette changed for bed and promptly locked herself in her studio, and cut to the next morning.

I want to delve in again and focus on how Adrien tried to handle the isolation of Marinette literally locking herself away from him. What was it like to be in that big bed and empty bedroom by himself after waking up with Marinette in his arms?

Darn. Guess I’ll just have to reread RTTW again so I can get back into that mindset. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

10. Concept: A companion story for the New York special. Potential Title: See Through My Eyes

I’m a bit less compelled to write this one anymore now that it’s been over a year since the NY special aired, and the salt has died off. However, this was largely inspired by the fact that there was a lot of unspoken subtext that I felt a lot of the fandom was missing.

I wanted to show the "missing" scenes of the special (scenes that would help with character growth, but wouldn't necessarily help with plot progression, which is probably why they weren't written into the special), as well as scenes from other character POVs to better showcase what I interpreted as that unspoken subtext in the special.

A way to kind of explain it better to those who were a bit salty about how some characters/scenes were written.

Knowing that Adrien going to NYC would leave Paris without Ladybug OR Chat Noir, why didn’t Tikki try to talk Marinette out of confronting Gabriel? Why did Plagg suggest not telling Ladybug about Adrien being forced to go to NYC with his class? Why did Adrien agree? How did Adrien react to Marinette switching seats with Ms. Mendeleiev on the plane? Why did Alya keep pushing for Marinette and Adrien to get together despite Marinette claiming she was getting over Adrien? Why was Adrien so excited to hear that slow song, and want to dance with Marinette again? Why was Ladybug so mad with Chat Noir, and how did that anger seem to ease with a quick cry? Where were Marinette and Adrien as they wandered NYC in the rain? How did Adrien react after Marinette refused to ask him to stay in NYC? Why wasn’t Nino’s plea enough? Why did Alya send Marinette after Adrien alone while the city was in a lock-down? Did Alya feel guilty afterwards? Why did Alya’s attitude towards Marinette confessing change? (I feel like there were more questions I wanted to answer, but those were the ones I can recall off the top of my head almost exactly 16 months later)

11. Concept: AU ending to the NY Special

Uncanny Valley actually couldn't figure out who Ladybug or Chat Noir were under their masks, and so she couldn't return Chat Noir's ring to him.

I used this concept for my last “Plagg Appreciation Story” I Need Him Back. Basically, the premise is that the magic actually blocks Uncanny’s scans, as opposed to her being able to see through them. So she still sees the mask and suit, she just doesn’t have the extra glamour to prevent her from piecing 2 and 2 together. Given a bit more time, I’m sure it would be easy to figure out that the French superheroes that just so happened to be in NYC were one of the French students that were visiting (or chaperones), but for the purposes of this story, she couldn’t figure it out before the end of the battle.

ANYWAY, the story more-or-less picks up the same way I Need Him Back does, where Marinette is lamenting that she lost HER Chat Noir. Due to the magic, neither Plagg nor Tikki - the only ones left who knew who Chat Noir was - can tell Marinette who her Chat Noir was. So they devise a plan to convince Marinette to give Adrien the ring as a “replacement” Chat Noir.

She’s hesitant after the problems Adrien had as Aspik, but Tikki offers that perhaps that was because Luka was meant to be the snake wielder, and Adrien DID try nearly 26k times to save her as Aspik. He’s determined. Plagg adds in how brave Adrien was to be bait for Gorizilla until Chat Noir showed up.

Since Plagg has to pretend he doesn’t know Adrien, he only chimes in for times that “Chat Noir” and “Adrien” could have met up, and Tikki largely leads the charge for making Adrien the “replacement” Chat Noir.

Lots of angst as Plagg misses his boy, but can’t say anything to anyone but Tikki. And Marinette mourning the loss of “Her” Chat Noir as she struggles to either a) find a way to circumvent the magic preventing the kwamis from telling her or b) cave in and just choose someone new.

In the end, she decides to give Adrien the Miraculous, and he tearfully transforms back into Chat Noir. Upon realizing Adrien was HER kitty all along, Ladybug drops her transformation, completing the reveals.

There is SO MUCH to sort out with this story before it’s ready for me to officially work on, but it’s a fun one to think about.

**UPDATE: Soooooo not even 2 hrs after I published this list “Kuro Neko” airs.... >3> Nooooot sure what to do with this story now....

12. Concept: Plagg's view of “Puppeteer 2”

Oddly enough, this dreaded “cringe episode” is my guilty pleasure. Feed me that sweet, sweet second-hand embarrassment.

I’ve already written a companion story for this episode, where Tikki narrates the events of “Puppeteer 2″. I am curious about Plagg’s take, though. Especially that painful drive home when Adrien tells Marinette “the girl I’m in love with doesn’t like [jokes] either.”

13. Concept: Alya (as either herself or her superhero persona) pinning Adrien against the wall as she accuses him of hurting Marinette

I posted the original seed of inspiration - the scene where Alya (in some form) rage-pins Adrien in defense of Marinette - here on Tumblr back in Oct 2021.

Honestly, nothing new has come to me since, so who knows when I’ll actually do anything with this scene?

14. Concept: Potential collab with Taurus Pixie telling the love story of Fu and Marianne leading up to their departure during WWII.

This was a project that @thetauruspixie and I tossed around briefly after the episode “Backwarder” hit Netflix. That was back in summer of 2019, and we haven’t really come back to this idea yet. But it is still brewing all the way in the back of my mind. Maybe one day....

What did Fu do after fleeing the monastery? When did he stop aging normally? When did he decide to become the official turtle Miraculous bearer? How often did he protect people as Jade Turtle? How public was he? How did he meet Marianne? How did their romance go? How long were they together before we saw them part ways? How does Marianne know so much about the Miraculous? Was she a wielder? Which one did she use? Were there other bearers while Fu had possession of the Miracle Box? How did the Nazis find out about Fu, the Miraculous, and the Miracle Box? Where did Fu go to hide from them? When did he return to Paris? Why didn’t he reach out to Marianne? Why didn’t he feel safe after WWII ended? Was he ever planning on returning to Marianne, and if so, when would he have felt safe to do so? So many more questions to ask and answer. This would definitely be a major project.

15. Concept: Adrien discovers that Ladybug is Marinette, and tries to figure out who this boy is that she’s in love with

Adrien finds out that Marinette is Ladybug, but doesn't confess his love (as he did in Chat Blanc) because he still believes Ladybug/Marinette is in love with someone else (Luka????). So he tires to figure out who this other boy is, in part to make sure this other boy is good enough for his lady, but also in part to see if Adrien has a chance of wooing her away from him.

At some point in the story, he finds a way to reveal himself to her as well (maybe he feels guilty about the half-reveal, or it’s a situation like in “Chat Blanc” where the reveal happens while he tries to save her).

Marinette then laments how often she turned him down for... him! She confesses this, and Adrien is blown away that the man she was in love with was himself! Likewise, Marinette is baffled that the woman he was in love with the whole time was Ladybug!

Yeah... I have no clue where I’m going with this. Parts of this concept come up in various parts of One and the Same, so this just kind of grew out of the scraps from that WIP. Maybe I’ll do something with it eventually....

16. Concept: Adrien's shock that the boy Ladybug has been rejecting him for is.... himself! (may or may not end up part of the above plot bunny)

As mentioned, this plot bunny may or may not get rolled into the above one. It could also easily work as a jumping point for a Ladrien story as Ladybug finally confesses to Chat Noir that she loves Adrien. Not sure where I want to go with it, but it’s still hopping around up there in my brain, waiting to mature.

Aaaaaaaand there you have it! All 38 works of fiction currently battling for attention... and here I am with no energy to really work on any of them (although, I have been periodically poking at Seduce With Caution lately).

Feel free to ask me questions about any of the above. Poke me. Bully me. Get me talking about these projects. Maybe that will finally get me re-motivated to write. Because I miss it so much, but my brain just blue screens whenever I attempt to write any sort of fiction.

Also, if you are reading this, thank you for taking this trip into Wonderland with me.

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lycorogue · 5 years

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Who Wants to Meet My OCs? (Part 2 - Gyateara)

First and foremost, I meant to have this whole series to be sort of churned out the same day/week as Part 1. Life.... didn’t let that happen. I then figured “okay, I’ll update the series every Sunday” and then yesterday came and went...

Regardless, from the NEXT POST onward, I’m aiming to update every Sunday. Now, back to the series itself.

Ever since at least November, I’ve wanted to do individual posts for each of my OCs so you could meet them all. Well, I’m finally getting off my butt and working on this massive project (we’ll ignore that I’m spending hours working on this instead of my ML fanfic.... >_>).

In Part 1, I gave a broad overview of this whole Meet My OCs series, as well as gave some generic IRL background to the two main worlds my OCs hail from:

1) Gyateara

2) Glitches

Well, in this part of the series, I’m going to stay IRL as I explain where each individual OC within the Gyateara universe came from. If this is interesting to you, feel free to check below the break.

If you’d rather just skip ahead to the character bios themselves, my first one about my Glitches character Willow should be up in two weeks (sorry for the wait).

If I’m talking about Gyateara characters, I should probably talk about the one that first birthed the world:

Amara Yori

Amara was my first-ever D&D character. I had known of the game for ages since my father used to play it frequently (and apparently roped my mother into at least running the monsters so she’d be included; ignoring that she’d rather not be included XD).

I really got interested in D&D when I was a teen and saw the gorgeously stylized covers for AD&D ver 3.5. My father had passed away before officially introducing me to the game (although we did used to play Dungeon all the time, so that was a start...), and none of my friends were going to touch that “nerd culture” with a 10ft pole, so I simply admired the books, but never actually played. Then I went to college and managed to Nerd Out.

Hubby (then boyfriend) offered to help me build my first-ever character, but in 2004 the D&D 3.5 expansions were so massive I had far too many choices to choose from.

So Hubby had me go through some of his extra minis, and let me pick out one that I really liked. With his help, I ended up with the 2003 version of the Wood Elf Skirmisher.

Based solely on this mini, I started building Amara.

Hubby suggested that I try out the Scout class for my first one, since I couldn’t choose between a Rogue, Ranger, or Druid, and Scout is sort of in between at least the Rogue and Ranger classes. For whatever reason - I can’t remember it now - I also decided I wanted to play a half-elf.

Upon reading the generic backstory description the D&D books had for the Scout class, I figured my character needed some sort of Tragic BackstoryTM that would explain her scouting skills. Things like trap finding and dismantling, masterful rope use skills, hiding and tracking skills, and connection to animals.

I was in a big The Vision of Escaflowne kick at the time - which shows up in a couple other characters’ backstories - and was fascinated with the history between Van Fanel’s parents. Van’s human father Goau stumbled upon Varie, a Draconian woman, in the woods one day. Draconians have the ability to manifest feathered wings which allow them flight. It was rare to see a Draconian, and her beauty - with her wings shimmering in the moonlight as she waded in a small pool of water - mesmerized Goau. He instantly fell in love and brought Varie home to be his wife. The duo seemed to love each other deeply. Amara’s parents, on the other hand....

I’ll get into more when I break down their actual bios, but I took the idea of “Human stumbles upon exotic non-human in the woods and instantly marries her” and twisted it slightly. Amara’s mother was very much emotionally, and possibly even physically (I haven’t confirmed this yet), abused by Amara’s father. Amara, being a half-elf, also had to deal with abuse at the hands of many of her fellow clansmen - both the human and the elven clans; pretty much exclusively because she was a “half-breed” (Yes, I was really into InuYasha then too).

As I kept building Amara, I kept adding more and more tragedy to her backstory. I do enjoy what I created, but, especially after reading a lot of posts here on Tumblr, I’m afraid her history is nothing but a giant knotted ball of cliches and tropes. For now, though, I’m running with it. Perhaps I can figure out work-arounds later....

I never did get to play more than a session or two with Amara before the game disbanded (which seems to be a repeat thing with my gaming group), but she still lives on in my mind, and eventually in Gyateara.

Natalie

As I mentioned above, The Vision of Escaflowne very much inspired me while I was working on the earliest bits of Gyateara. Therefore, Natalie is your basic Isekai protagonist.

For those who don’t know the term (I didn’t know an official genre term existed until about a year ago), Isekai refers to a subgenre of fantasy/speculative fiction where the main character is abruptly teleported from their world to a new one; usually one with a fantasy setting.

It’s a massive subgenre and includes most of the fantasy animes I’ve watched:

InuYasha

The Vision of Escaflowne

Fushigi Yuugi

The Devil is a Part-Timer

The Rise of the Shield-hero

The Saga of Tanya the Evil

The Familiar of Zero

How to NOT Summon a Demon Lord

Sword Art Online (technically)

.Hack//Sign (technically)

Digimon (first season, specifically)

Psyren (manga)

The list can go on, but that’s not the point of this post. Getting back to the actual point, I clearly enjoyed this genre without even realizing there was a term for it, and created my own Isekai story. Natalie is from our world, but is abruptly teleported to Gyateara’s main Northern Isle, where she must save the country from being destroyed by a power-hungry, put painfully charismatic, villain.

I had taken elements from Kagome (InuYasha), Hitomi (The Vision of Escaflowne), Miaka (Fushigi Yuugi), and I think I had Ariel (The Little Mermaid) in there as well at one point. She was - and still kind of is - just “Generic Isekai Female Protagonist”, which is one of the main reasons the story she was in failed so soon into NaNoWriMo back in... 2014, I think. Almost a solid decade after I started dreaming up her Isekai story. She definitely needs to go back to the drawing board a bit to be properly fleshed out.

Connor

He was from the same story as Natalie. Connor was a denizen of Gyateara’s Northern Isles, and became Natalie’s traveling companion as he helped her try to find a way home. Ya know, that old Isekai chestnut. I even leaned heavily into the cliche and had the two of them fall in love throughout their journey. Which would lead to a third-act twist of “Okay, we can defeat the villain, but then what? Could they stay together? Would Natalie stay on Gyateara? Will Connor instead try to go home to Earth with her?” Real original. I know. Add in that Connor was a sort of Frankenstein’s monster of a character. Grab a snack, this is going to take a minute...

Connor’s traits included:

The basic backstory and drive of the player character in the video game Fable, in which his father was killed, his mother and sister tortured (and presumed dead, only to be proven still alive and captured), his home village burnt down, and he was taken in by the local guild so the guild master could train Connor to become the hero the GM believed Connor was prophesied to be.

The half-demon traits of InuYasha (InuYasha), which transformed him into a sort of were-cat. His mother, a full-demon, could become a 15ft (4.57m) tall panther with split tails. Connor’s half-demon heritage was hidden from him, and he only transformed under extreme moments of stress.

Yes. The “love interest is the only one who can snap the protag back from a monstrous rage” trope was heavily evident throughout the story.

His overall look was inspired by Link (Legend of Zelda video game franchise). His basic fighting style - swordsmanship and expert archery - was a sort of tag-teamed “thieving” from Link as well as Van (The Vision of Escaflowne).

A highly resistant, and begrudging submission to become the Hero of Prophecy lifted off of Tamahome (Fushigi Yuugi).

I know he was much more influenced by Van from Escaflowne when I was first making him. I even used Van as a reference guide when I tried to create character head shots of him. I just can’t recall now what else I swiped from that character.

I feel like there are also other male anime/video game protags I swiped traits from, but I can’t recall them anymore. Regardless, I threw them in a blender, and poured out the mixture that became Connor.

Jolene Crisslebalm

Ah, the character whose last name I always have to look up, because I can’t recall how I spelled it. Good starting point, right?

I am a very reserved person. In particular, a very sexually reserved person. But I do enjoy sex, and I love the act of flirting, and the “thrill of the chase” when it comes to dating, so a part of me always wonders what I would be like if I had let go of my reservations and just enjoyed the carnal pleasures of life.

So, two characters in particular - Willow (from Glitches) and Jolene - are my exploration of that Path Not Traveled.

A friend of mine was hosting a D&D campaign via Roll20.net, and wondered if I wanted in. I hadn’t been involved in a D&D game in a year or so at that point, and I’ve enjoyed playing a couple of one-offs with him DMing, so I leapt at the chance to join. I had almost always played a form of Rogue class (hence the internet persona) in previous D&D campaigns, so I decided to stay the course, but with a twist I hadn’t tried before.

I wanted Jolene to be a sort of reluctant adventurer, preferring instead to be a cat burgler, but I also wanted that sexual/sensual exploration of character. So, she was a traveling prostitute (not exactly legal without proper ties to a brothel; much like a Sex Trade Guild sort of thing), but she also used her “alone time with clients” to scope out the place to see if it’s worth robbing.

Fast forward about 3 years, and I end up watching the first episode of the Freeform Marvel series Cloak and Dagger... where I saw Tandy doing the same thing, but roofying her targets instead of sleeping with them first... Great minds, and all that?

Eh, Jolene figures “might as well make money off of them before coming back and robbing the rest... less to carry later...”

In the end, while Jolene had an.... interesting run... and one I actually did enjoy role playing, even if it did leave me a bit frustrated afterwards (a good frustrated?)... Jolene just didn’t fit the world the DM created, nor did she fit in quite as well as I would have hoped with the other players.

They were all AMAZING players, by the way. Some of the best role players I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, and such fantastic writers as well. BTW, we wrote out everything in the Roll20 chat log instead of verbally playing or using video-chat. I must admit, I was quite envious of their skills. It was just a tighter knit group, and I wasn’t able to feel out their play-style well enough to continue with the group. Eventually they all had to go their separate ways anyway when their schedules no longer lined up.

Still, I LOVED Jolene, and she was the D&D character I had the joy of running the longest, so she NEEDED to live on. She did, in my first NaNoWriMo “win”. I managed to hit those 50,000 words, but I still had about 3/5ths of her story to write.

See, while coming up with Jolene’s jaded attitude towards love and her pull towards a more hedonistic lifestyle, I went with the good old cliche of Heartbreak Was The Culprit. (With so many cliches in my character builds, is it a wonder why I just stick with fanfiction... the characters are already created...)

Jolene had her heart broken five times between the ages of 13 and 21. She was the type who fell quick into love, and fell HARD into it, and always felt intensely betrayed by her lovers when they left her. To be fair... they did routinely leave her for a woman of better social standing, or - in her youth - someone more willing to put out, or just straight up abandon her without so much as a farewell note. Eventually, she gave up on trying to find love, and joined a brothel, and then the thieves guild, and then headed out on her own from there.

The DM thought it unlikely that she was a prostitute for the better part of 5 years without a single pregnancy, so he rolled for it, and Jolene had one miscarriage, one still born, and one healthy child she gave up for adoption. I was not expecting to include that in her backstory, but it actually worked fairly well.

And all of that was the subject of my NaNo project: Lost Loves and Paramours. Jolene’s full biography leading up to the campaign: every man she fell in love with, every person she slept with, the one client who tried to murder her to avoid a scandal of his lust getting the better of him, the pain of her miscarry, the devastation of her stillborn, the heart break of giving up her surviving child, the struggles against a stalker, and her over-all YOLO attitude.

(Bitmoji is a beautiful thing...)

Well, second long post of this series is now complete. Next week, I’ll talk about the IRL inspiration for my Glitches characters. Thank you so much for indulging me on these epic ramblings.

#writing #LycoRogue writing #OCs #Meet My OCs #character creation #IRL character inspiration #writing process #cliches #long post #Gyateara #Amara Yori #Jolene Crisslebalm #Natalie #Connor #series post #2 of 17?#LycoRogue original

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lycorogue · 5 years

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Who Wants to Meet My OCs? (Part 1 - Creating Worlds)

Okay, so I wanted to do this for months now, but was always too lazy to just sit down and do it. Well, I’m feeling motivated now, so let’s give it a whirl.

I’d like to introduce each of you to my OCs with their own individual posts. You are more than welcome to AMA about them or send me asks requesting for a specific character to answer. I want YOU to know more about them, because that helps ME learn more about them. :D The thing, though, is I’d also like to let you guys know the IRL background for each character. I’d LOVE to let you guys in on the process of how I came up with these OCs in the first place. So I’m starting my Meet My OCs series with exactly that: a break-down on how I came up with them. I’ll be posting a new one every Sunday for the next few months. It became quite lengthy though, which is why I’m splitting them up into a mini-series. However, if you really don’t care, and wish to just jump to the info posts for the characters themselves, you can check out my first character intro: Willow Driver If you ARE interested in my character creation process, feel free to check below the break, and thank you for indulging me. :)

My main OCs come from one of two places, both of which includes role playing. I guess that means I can’t discover a character for a full-length story unless I’ve ran around in their skin for a few months...

For this first part of the series, I’m going to start large: introducing the main Inspiration Spring for my OCs and the worlds they live in.

Those two worlds/stories are:

1) Gyateara

2) Glitches

The second part of my series will talk more about the IRL origins for my Gyateara characters. And the third part will explain where my Glitches characters came from.

Then I’ll get into the actual character intros.

But first: the worlds!

Gyateara

The characters for Gyateara are (mostly) from D&D campaigns. This original world of mine (of which I’m still painfully building) is your classic High Fantasy/Tolkien-esque/D&D setting. However, Gyateara itself refers to the world a series of not-necessarily-interconnecting stories will take place on. There may even be multiple book series written within the overall Gyateara universe. Much like how Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind are all the Ender Series, meanwhile Ender’s Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, and Shadow of the Giant are all the Shadow Series (following Bean), but they are both series within the overall Enderverse. Buuuuut, I’ll have to FINISH CREATING THE WORLD before I think of anything that in-depth.

My original inspiration for Gyateara was the Xbox game Fable, way back in 2005. I sort of took the world build around the country of Albion in that game, added in some Hyrule from the Legend of Zelda franchise, sprinkled in Feudal Japan as presented in the anime InuYasha, and finished off with a dash of Gaea from the anime The Vision of Escaflowne. Once I mixed that hodge-podge pot of environments and world-builds together, I poured it out into the half-baked cake that became The Northern Isles. This was the main setting for my failed first NaNoWriMo attempt: The Race for Destiny. (The story is so bad, you guys! TT^TT)

As years crawled along, I got introduced to the webcomic Order of the Stick (which is excellent and still going, btw). Strip #273 started a mini-series called The Crayons of Time, which told the world creation story. It also discussed the four main pantheons; which were typically the Main Four that D&D players use if they don’t want to put in the effort to create their own gods. The Northern Gods are the Norse pantheon, Eastern Gods are the Greek pantheon, Southern Gods are the Chinese Zodiac, and Western Gods are the ones created for D&D and presented in the Player’s Handbook. The gods battled each other frequently, and so they went to the four directions, promised not to really intervene with the other regions, and kind of ignored each other.

I LOVED this concept, and wove it into my world, where there are multiple pantheons, much like there was IRL, except, Gyateara’s gods are KNOWN to be real, but they don’t intervene outside their region of rule, so it’s rare for non-travelers to even know of the other gods/pantheons.

I’ll have to dedicate time to go more in-depth with Gyateara and it’s build in the future.

Glitches

While Gyateara refers to the world, and not the intended stories themselves, Glitches very much refers to one intended series/saga. I envision it as a large-cast project I’d love to one day create as a webcomic. Sadly, I can barely draw stick figures, and I have yet to accomplish the task of writing a comic script. I’ve written movie scripts before, but not comic scripts. I did debate waving the white flag and just going with my trusty skill as an amateur novelist, but Glitches just seems like such a visual story to me. Which is probably why I have multiple character images for Glitches, but not so much for my Gyateara characters.

Glitches actually originated as a message board play-by-post role play game.

Back in 2012, my husband and I rewatched the TV series X-Men: Evolution. Hubby loved how the show re-imagined a lot of the canonical X-Men characters, and decided he wanted to host a role play game using that universe. Hubby wondered what the Evolution characters would be like as adults in this universe. More importantly, he wondered what THEIR CHILDREN would be like. So he started up the game we titled X-Future.

In the RP, each player got to pick a parent off of a list Hubby provided and regularly updated. Then, because life is random, Hubby rolled on a chart to determine the second parent for the player’s character. Once that’s figured out, Hubby rolled on yet another chart to see what powers the character inherited. The player then had fairly free-rein to create from that moment on. Sadly, most of the parental pairings were suuuuuper random, and the players not THAT creative, and so we had a LOT of “one night stand souvenir” kids. Regardless, the actual character creations, development, and interactions were fairly good.

In fact, after a solid year or so of playing on X-Future, I realized I loved our overall story so much that I wanted more than just our players to experience it. At first, I attempted to just rewrite our game sessions as story chapters. It... got long and messy, especially when I tried to go back and re-organize the order of the posts. We... didn’t focus on continuity and timelines as much as we should have in those early sessions.... Nearly 70,000 words and 14 chapters in, and I had only recapped the first couple months of the game.

Perhaps someday I’ll attempt to continue (and complete) the project, but for right now it’s just too much for me to work on with everything else.

Eventually, while working on my rewrite project, I realized I wanted to polish things up, tweak others, and kind of just go down my own storytelling road. That’s when I decided I wanted to take some of the more prominent characters from X-Future and drop them in an original, non-X-Men-related, story.

For whatever reason, I pictured X-Future as being a sort of baby cyberpunk environment. Not as extreme as say Ghost in the Shell, or Blade Runner, or Johnny Mnemonic, or Æon Flux or anything like that. It’s more like the cusp of cyberpunk, like the world just as it’s transitioning into a cyberpunk one. Because of this, I thought that instead of “mutants”, my characters would be called “glitches.”

I talked a bit more about the world of Glitches in three posts back in November:

Generic History of the World

Explaining The GRID: Part 1

Explaining The GRID: Part 2

The Characters

Alright, now that you know a bit about the worlds and the IRL inspiration for them, how about the characters I’ll be introducing you to in this series?

From Gyateara:

Amara Yori

Jolene Crisslebalm

Natalie [last name TBD]

Connor [last name TBD]

From Glitches:

Willow Driver

Amelia “Lia” Mordeaux [last name not set]

Patricia “Trish” Morrison

Chayse LeBeau [last name TBD]

Matteo [last name TBD]

Emily [last name TBD]

Ryder [last name TBD]

Keahi [last name TBD]

Cody [last name TBD]

Ignatius “Iggy” [last name TBD]

I’d also like for you guys to meet Devon St. James from Glitches, but he’s actually my friend’s OC for X-Future, and I haven’t received permission to officially include him in Glitches yet. Likewise, I would LOOOOOOVE to include the characters Lucas and Lincoln from X-Future, but the player who created them specifically requested that he is the only one who writes them. So, sadly, they will not be making the transition into Glitches.

Also, all of those “Last name to be determined” for Glitches is because they all still have their Marvel Canon last names right now. I still have to tweak those.

Matteo, Emily, Ryder, Keahi, Cody, and Ignatius were all originally Marvel-owned X-Men canon characters that were parents and/or mentors for the characters within X-Future. While I reworked their looks, personalities, backstory, and even their powers a bit, I only focused on new first names. Eventually I’ll figure out their last names...

Chayse and Lia have their fathers’ last names, and their fathers are X-Men canon characters, and so I still have to tweak their last names as well.

As for the “Last name to be determined” for those two Gyateara characters? Well, they’re from “The Race for Destiny”. That failed NaNo project I talked about above. One of the failures was that I never really put in the effort to come up with last names for them... so I’ll need to work on that as well.

Phew... that... was a lot. Thank you so much for reading through it all!

Next up, further IRL creation stories for my Gyateara characters.

#writing #LycoRogue Writing #OCs #Meet My OCs #world creation #IRL inspiration #IRL creation #writing process #long post #Gyateara #Glitches #series post #1 of 17?#LycoRogue original

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lycorogue · 4 years

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Latest “Writing” Blog Post is Live

The Rogue’s Scribe: Hitting the Birthday Reset Button

With any luck, and some perseverance, this will be the last week I have quotation marks around that word ‘Writing’ in that title....

It’s my birthday on Thursday!

And I’m determined to get my act together for my 36th year. To prepare for that:

I recapped why my 35th year sucked, and it was more than just the normal “2020 sucks!”

A lot of it consists of not having the funds or mental/emotional stability to be where I always envisioned myself when I’m 35

With regards to writing, I’m just in a HUGE funk at how obscure my writing still seems to be. :’(

@zenmisery‘s latest chapter of Dressed to Confess helped jumpstart those creative juices, even if they probably won’t result in anything. Still, it’s more than I’ve done in about 4 months, so a HUGE thank you to Zen for the jump. <3

Hubby’s early birthday gift to me might help me get more of those creative juices flowing as I’m gonna try to get into the head of a dark mage slowly building up my own grimoire.

Hubby got me a gorgeous hand-bound journal with red-dyed leather cover, and the PDF for Sigils in the Dark by Kurt Potts.

I’m also hoping to get back in the saddle with my Glitches and Gyateara world builds thanks to another solo RPG I just bought after Dicebreaker introduced me to it.

The city-building solo RPG is Ex Novo by Martin Nerurkar and Konstantinos Dimopoulos

I thought about my writing process after listening to Johnny Chiodini give Luke Westaway hints on how to build a D&D session as a DM.

Namely, the tactic to “Plot Backwards; Write Forwards”

I finish by wishing my nephew a happy 5th birthday today, as well as again show off my “Wash Your Dang Hands!” shirt.

I may have started the blog off on a low note, but I think I finished on an optimistic high. If you want to know more about all I talked about above, check out the full blog post. The Rogue’s Scribe: Hitting the Birthday Reset Button

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lycorogue · 5 years

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Meet My OCs: Willow (Part 3 – Character Arc Events)

Hello yet again! Ready for the next part of Willow's introduction? I'm telling you, when I first started working on this, I did NOT intend on Willow's entry surpassing 30pgs single spaced within a Word document, nor did I expect it to take a week to write up and edit! Thankfully, the epic document was easy enough to break down into 6 parts for slightly easier consumption. I wonder if my other characters will be as detailed....

Anyway, how about a quick recap before I keep going? This is part of a multi-post series I started here on Tumblr about a month ago. A means to introduce you guys to my main OCs.

In Part 1 of this series, I talked about why I'm doing it in the first place, as well as explain the real-world influences that helped me create my two story worlds of Gyateara and Glitches.

Part 2 of the series talked about the inspiration that birthed each of my four main Gyateara characters.

Part 3a did the same, but for my four main teenage Glitches characters.

Part 3b then talked about the Glitches main supportive cast of six adult characters; each one originating as a canonical X-Men character.

Earlier today, I moved on to Part 4 of this series: the official introduction of my characters, one by one. I started off with my most present character: Willow Driver. In Meet Willow: Part 1, I shared Willow's background, gave an overview of her personally, and talked about her powers. There were also some lovely pictures to showcase what she looks like.

In Meet Willow: Part 2, I discussed her main relationships.

Part 4 will showcase the other artwork I created for Willow, as well as two cards @chibisunnie created for me that feature Willow.

Then, in Part 5, Willow is showcased narratively with a series of scene samples and shorts.

Finally, Willow’s introduction is concluded in Part 6 with a couple videos of wrestling intros we created for Hubby's WWE13 video game. It will be a fun closing post for this mini-series about Willow.

Now, getting back to this post (Part 3), I'm going to discuss Willow's main story arc events, as seen thus far in the X-Future play-by-post game she originated in. In truth, I haven't played Willow since 2017, so I had forgotten just how eventful her X-Future life truly was! At the end of this recap of her life, I'll also talk about how any of these events will relate to my intended opening character arc for Willow in Glitches.

So, hopefully you have a snack and a drink, because this ended up being 10gs long in my word document. It may take a minute or two to read. Once you're ready, go ahead and check below the break to see what Willow has been up to in X-Future, and how it will transfer to Glitches.

X-Future:

Most of the early events I had already talked briefly about in Part 2 of Willow's introduction, as I discussed her main relationships.

She was at Colossus Academy from the ages of 13 through 15, but when Colossus and Jubilee were killed on mission, and the Academy was shut down, Willow transferred to the Xavier Institute along with her close friend Marge, her surrogate younger brother Hedge, and her pseudo-girlfriend Penumbra. They were a tight clique, but she quickly grew attracted to Chayse, formed a rocky friendship with Lia, and found a playful flirt-buddy in Devon.

She was pushed hard by the faculty at the Xavier Institute, and held to a higher standard than she was used to. This forced her to shape up, mature a little, and stop pranking/bullying others as much. She became closer to Devon, and focused using her powers to mostly prank and tease him and William.

Devon couldn't really hide his attraction to Willow, despite her teasing, and she soaked up as much of the attention as possible. She also tried to ignore her feelings for Chayse, who was dating Lia at the time. Instead she leaned more towards her feelings for Devon, much to Penumbra's dismay.

Willow noticed William's straight-laced and overly conservative personally, and put it on herself to get him to loosen up and act like the 17yo he was. She falsely believed he had a crush on her, so she routinely teased him with sensual images. She thought he was riled up because he, a nearly-18-year-old, was trying to resist his attraction to her, a 15-year-old. She didn't realize he actually got so worked up because she was genuinely annoying him.

One day there was an accident. William was practicing unsupervised as he pushed his powers to their limit. He ended up passing out when he teleported too high into the atmosphere, and plummeted to his death. Willow and Lia joined forces to lead a vigil and build a statue dedicated to William's memory. Willow then realized she thought of William as a brother, as she remembered her own estranged brother. She regretted her treatment of William, and toned down her sensual illusions to tease people. She didn't give them up completely, but she certainly used them more as a means of flirting with those who positively responded to them, as opposed to using them to tease and prank as she had done with William.

Life evened out for a few months, getting back to some sort of normalcy within the school. Then came the day that Devon went to Willow to confide in her. He was on a mission to recruit a new kid for the school, and he had run into The Brotherhood. The leader of the organization, Pyro, told Devon, who was abandoned at a church orphanage while only 4months old, that The Brotherhood could help him figure out who his parents are. Devon had turned down the offer, knowing the Brotherhood to be a terrorist group trying to rule over humanity, as opposed to the X-Men's goal of cohabitation. Devon couldn't get the offer out of his head, though. Trying to help Devon clear his mind, Willow suggested he try out his first Danger Room session. Cyclops offered to run the session, and went to the control room; leaving Devon alone in the DR. Willow moved to an observation deck, assuming watching Devon's first DR run would be hilarious.

Instead, it became something that would haunt Willow for the next couple of years. Devon was put through a generic rescue mission training, in which he had to recover Penumbra. Upon freeing her, Devon was promptly knocked out in a surprise attack. Willow was horrified as she watched the Danger Room transform to look like the school’s infirmary, making Devon believe he was outside the simulator when he awoke. Devon was then told of a mission he needed to go on, and Willow desperately tried to signal to him that nothing he was seeing was real.

While on this “mission,” Devon was paired up with Willow's friend Marjory (Marge). They were separated from the team and confronted by Pyro, who again offered Devon information about his past. All he had to do was “get rid of” Marjory. Devon wrestled his teammate, put her into a sleeper hold, and knocked her out. He discretely checked that he didn't kill her, and then swiped her phone, hoping to use it to contact the X-Men with a location once Pyro brought him to Brotherhood HQ. The simulation didn't last long enough for Devon to execute his plan, however. Cyclops shut the simulation down, declaring Devon a failure of his loyalty test, and instantly put Devon on probation; resulting in him getting limited access to X-Men records and withholding information on who Devon's parents are.

Willow was beyond pissed at the deception, not fully grasping the irony of her anger. She viewed Cyclops a villain for his manipulation, and stormed off to cool down. She intended to check in on Devon later that night, but she never got the chance. Devon had decided he would prove Cyclops wrong by following through with is Danger Room plan, but in real life. He'd infiltrate the Brotherhood, find out about his parents, and then lead the X-Men to the Brotherhood stronghold to take the organization down. He wrote a letter of apology and gratitude to Headmistress Kitty Pryde-LeBeau for giving him the opportunity of joining the school. He wrote another letter of apology to Marjory, in case she truly was in the DR with him instead of a simulation. He wanted her to know that he never meant to hurt her. Finally, he wrote a farewell letter to Willow explaining why he had to leave, and his plan for coming back. As proof that he intended to return, he left Willow his prized possession: his customized lighter. His only means of creating fire that he could then manipulate with his powers.

Before anyone realized Devon had gone, and/or found his letters, the school was attacked by a large energy blast. The energy blast created a major explosion that collapsed the school. Chayse and Gambit were able to read the energy change around the school soon enough to give almost everyone enough warning to get to the safety bunkers below ground. There were still some casualties, though, and Willow feared that Devon was among them. The faculty wouldn't let the students leave the bunkers as they did headcounts and looked for the missing. Drifting to the Astral Plane, Willow watched the clean-up and rescue crew pulling bodies from the rubble. She was relieved that none of them were Devon, but devastated to discover young Hedge's body among the deceased. She swore vengeance on whomever attacked the school.

A few hours later, security film revealed that Devon had run from the school campus an hour before the attack, although the actual attack wasn't caught on cameras; they were all damaged by the energy surge.

Most at the school suspected that Devon was somehow involved; signaling to The Brotherhood for the attack. The fact that the faculty knew Devon was the son of two Brotherhood members, and that he had been in and out of juvenile detention centers for the past five years didn't help matters.

Willow decided that Devon was a traitor, and his was the face she'd picture whenever she thought of revenge for Hedge. She spent the next two years hating her former best friend and crush; picturing ways to torture and punish him for Hedge's death. She also hated Cyclops for his deception, although she understood why he did it. The whole experience showed her, from an outside perspective, what her own powers do to people, and her use of them to pull pranks dropped significantly.

Around the same time as the attack on the school, Chayse's best friend Nix was abducted from the school's infirmary. Chayse had a lead on where Nix could be, and desperately wanted to follow it. Cyclops was chosen as an escort, and Willow his teammate. Lia wanted to go as well, but her earth/magma manipulation powers were too valuable for the fortification of the school's foundation and bunkers, so she was ordered to stay behind to help with reconstruction. Nix's girlfriend Annika also stayed behind, working with her mother Rachel Grey to try to find any other hints on Nix's abduction.

Willow and Chayse spent most of that summer running around Europe, following faint traces of clues to Nix's location. On a mountain range in Bulgaria, their search came to an abrupt end when they came across an experimental facility. While searching through the building, Chayse believed he heard Nix call out to him, but there was an explosion shortly after. Chayse had to decide between Nix and Willow, and decided to phase Willow to safety. Having pushed his powers to an extreme he never tried before in order to save Willow, Chayse collapsed from the strain. The explosion had also separated them from Cyclops, so Willow was left alone to fend for both of them for three days before they were rescued. When the trio went back into the building to see if there were any possible survivors, the facility was in complete ruins, and charred remains rested where Chayse thought he heard Nix call to him. The DNA sample they took revealed that it was indeed Nix. Their search was complete, and Chayse had failed. Annika wouldn't believe them, though, claiming she still felt the psychic link she had with Nix. When everyone tried to tell her she was in denial and grieving, Annika left to prove that Nix was still alive.

Willow helped Chayse grieve over the next few weeks. Between that moment of vulnerability and the months of being each other's companions, the two became incredibly close. They both felt sparks, but both assumed it was simply a product of traumatic events – Willow's near-death and having to nurse Chayse, and Chayse's grief over Nix – and assumed the feelings would fade again. Chayse remained faithful to Lia, and Willow became even more flirtatious with just about every other student at the school.

The next year went fairly smoothly, mostly focused on rebuilding the school, grieving the students they lost, and continuing their trainings so they would be strong enough to take down The Brotherhood. During this time, Willow became Lia's new roommate to replace Annika. This allowed the two of them to get fairly close, and soon enough Willow, Lia, and Chayse became the big power-trio on campus: The Three Musketeers.

Then, while protecting a new recruit coming to the Xavier Institute, Chayse was attacked by a new Brotherhood member. He managed to defeat the Brotherhood, and get the recruit back to the safety of the school, however, he was badly injured: two spiral electrical burns to his chest. While Chayse was in the infirmary, Willow realized how much she truly cared for him. Not wanting to break up a happy couple, she decided to keep her distance while Lia stood watch over her boyfriend.

Chayse was hurt that Willow didn't visit while he was injured, and confronted her about it. Eventually, Willow admitted to her feelings, and how she had them nearly the whole time she had known him. Chayse confessed his feelings as well; they never truly waned after their mission to rescue Nix. Willow refused to be the reason he broke up with Lia, though, and told him they needed to stop hanging out. Chayse admitted that he and Lia were drifting lately (a fact Lia ended up not realizing), and that he couldn't ignore his feelings for Willow any longer. They agreed that Chayse had to break things off with Lia, and that they'd allow her time to grieve the relationship before Willow would start dating Chayse. She didn't want to rub her relationship in her roommate's face while Lia was still healing.

While on the subject of healing, Willow then checked on Chayse's chest, and was confronted with two healing spirals that would be scarred there. Chayse told Willow of the attack, and described the assailant: a man about 19 with the same silver-white hair and aquamarine eyes Willow had, and went by the code name Screwdriver. Willow was dumbfounded to discover that her brother had powers, had teamed up with The Brotherhood, and had attached Chayse. She didn't want to believe any of it. Picking up on how overwhelmed Willow was, Chayse left her to process everything.

The next day, Chayse went to break things off with Lia. She was so devastated by the news that she lost control of her powers, nearly burning Willow with a fire blast, and forcing Chayse to strain to use his powers to help her regain control. Chayse wasn't healed from his brush with Screwdriver, and fainted under the effort. Willow stayed by Chayse's side as Lia rushed to get help. The two of them had a fight in the infirmary waiting room as Chayse was taken care of. The fight ended with Lia running out of the building to hide by the river that ran along the border of the school's estate (more about this in Lia's intro in 2 weeks).

Chayse recovered fairly quickly, and he and Willow walked on eggshells for the next couple of weeks while Lia recovered from her heartbreak. As Prom neared, Chayse asked Willow to be his date. Trying to extend an olive branch, Willow asked Lia and a couple of other girls on their floor if they all wanted to go dress shopping and get ready together. Lia, now infatuated with two newer recruits Lincoln and Ripley, agreed to the group Prom-prep party. Willow and Lia still had a rocky relationship, and Lia still hated to see Willow and Chayse together, but they were at least civil and attempted to be friends.

At the prom after-party, hosted by one of the students - a former Irish pop idol - the Brotherhood attacked. They were again after the recruit Chayse had saved from Screwdriver. Shawn had already killed the mutant Dazzler, who was there to perform at the after-party, and then he set his sights on Chayse. He quickly picked up that Willow cared deeply for Chayse, and so Shawn focused on killing his sister's boyfriend in front of her. Willow, being protected and carried away by a fellow student, slipped into the Astral Plane in order to try to create illusions to distract the Brotherhood long enough for the students to escape, as well as have enough power to mentally attack Shawn to slow him down and protect Chayse.

In the end, Chayse was able to take down Shawn on his own, but Screwdriver was whisked away from the battle by his teammates before Chayse could properly capture him for transport to the X-Men. Meanwhile, Willow's illusions made it look like the Brotherhood's target was killed in the crossfire, rendering their mission complete. Just as the students were going to call themselves the victor, Chayse noticed the same energy signature he felt just before the school collapsed two years prior. He alerted Willow via telepathy, and she relayed the information to the other students. They ran for cover as she used her telekinesis to hold the building together long enough for everyone to escape. The strain of using her powers so much that night, and lingering on the Astral Plane for so long, left her unconscious the next day.

Shortly after recovering, Willow's world was rocked by a new arrival at the school. A man with silver hair in his early 20s. A man who had come from the future, and one who looked an awful lot like an aged up Chayse. Soon enough, it was revealed that this man – Sebastian – was Chayse and Willow's son. He was from an apocalyptic future where an organization called Challengers of Heaven took over the whole planet. Sebastian and is fiance Brianne - who was originally from the present, but was thrown into the future via a wormhole - came to the present to try to stop the Challengers, who had also sent warriors to the past.

Sebastian was excited to spend time with Chayse, who had died when Sebastian was about five. Meanwhile, Willow was trying to wrap her mind around the fact that she was going to have a kid with Chayse, and that she would be known as one of the Great Protectors; the last of a resistance against the Challengers.

As Willow continued to recover from the prom after-party, and tried to cope with finding out about Sebastian, Lia was in charge of an escort mission. During the prom after-party, Lia managed to capture the Brotherhood member Trish. Lia was the only one who couldn't be burnt by Trish's pyrokinesis, so she, and a few other students that had signed up as X-Men junior recruits, were assigned as prison escorts for Trish's transfer to S.H.I.E.L.D. custody. The mission went horribly wrong. A relatively new student, who went by the code name Psyke, had betrayed everyone to The Brotherhood. The terrorist organization managed to kill most of the S.H.I.E.L.D agents, and Psyke killed a student who believed himself Psyke's best friend. The Brotherhood also managed to rescue Trish from the X-Men and S.H.I.E.L.D. The only victory the X-Men had on that mission was three Brotherhood members defecting. Lia had run into Devon while he was there to rescue Trish, and he instantly switched sides to help Lia and the X-Men. His pseudo-girlfriend Nyssa followed suit, as did Devon's best friend Zeke. The former Brotherhood trio even rescued Lia from a new villainess who called herself Agony; a mutant who has the ability to transfer the pain and physical damage she received to whichever target she picked. So any time Devon would punch Agony, Nyssa would feel the connection as if Devon had punched her instead. That sort of thing. She has far more powers than just that, but those will relate more to Lia's intro, so I’ll talk about them then....

Upon arriving back to the Xavier Institute, Lia vouched for Devon, Nyssa, and Zeke, and asked for them to be accepted into the school. The trio was vetted by the local telepaths, and were put on probationary student status. Willow was NOT a fan, however, and instantly attacked Devon the second she saw him. Chayse had to peel her off of Devon to stop her from knocking him out, especially since Devon was just accepting her hatred and punishment, and likely would have allowed her to beat him unconscious.

There were a lot of arguments between Willow and Devon as he tried to find his place within the Xavier Institute again. The main conflict between them became the premise of the collaborative story “Please, Let Me Explain” that Devon's creator Ronoxym and I started working on YEARS ago. (We need to get back to that story...).

Shortly after Devon's return, Chayse and Willow had their own encounter with Agony. They were off to recruit a mutant, but their mission went south the second they landed at their destination. They quickly realized they were sent to the same portion of Bulgaria where they lost Nix. The very mountain range the facility was on rose above the valley they landed in. Chayse, already suffering from PTSD, instantly dropped to the ground and became catatonic. Telepath and team leader Emma Frost almost instantly realized that the PTSD flashbacks must have left him vulnerable, and he was attacked by a powerful telepath. Chayse was stuck in some sort of mental trap, and Willow needed to enter his mind to rescue him while Emma looked for the attacking telepath. It was tricky, since Willow never astral projected herself into someone else's mind before, but after a couple of tries, she succeeded. While in Chayse's mind, she saw him tortured by Nix; screaming about how little Chayse must have cared for anyone if he let Nix die and abandoned Lia for Willow. Willow quickly stepped in to try to protect Chayse and reassure him he had done nothing wrong. When Nix retaliated against Willow, Chayse came to his senses and rescued her. That was when it was revealed that Nix was actually Agony, astral projected into Chayse's mind, just like Willow, but cloaked in the image of Nix. After a quick battle, wherein Agony failed her attempts to mentally attack Willow, the duo incapacitated Agony, and Emma created a means for the three of them to escape the mental trap Agony set for Chayse.

Once back to the real world, Agony physically attacked; attempting a sneak attack to stab Willow through the shoulder blades. Chayse stopped Agony, and knocked her away. Willow then attacked Agony, knocking her to the ground, only to watch Chayse fall to the ground as well. Any injury inflicted on Agony would also happen to Chayse. To further prove her point, Agony stabbed a barbed spike through her own palm, and Chayse's hand went limp and began to bleed. Willow and Agony tussled a bit more, before Willow accidentally stabbed one of the barbed spikes into Agony's side in a take-down tackle. Thankfully, Chayse phased at the last second, transferring the pain of the stab, but the injury couldn't be transferred since he didn't have a solid form at the time. With Willow distracted in making sure Chayse was alright, Agony slipped away, vowing to not underestimate Willow next time.

After patching Chayse up, he, Willow, and Emma made their way to a Bulgarian prison where their recruit was being held. After a tense prisoner exchange, they got the new recruit Nodya to safety and flew back to the Xavier Institute.

To try to help Willow relax after so many emotional and physical shocks, Chayse took her to Japan for her 18th birthday; spending two weeks on the other side of the world. The trip didn't go exactly as planned, though, since they experienced some fairly open mutant discrimination and hatred. Chayse was even attacked while trying to defend Willow against an anti-mutant threat. Chayse managed to win the fight, barely, and they spent the next three days holed away in his mother's summer home in Japan (where she was trained by Wolverine, once upon a time) while Chayse recovered. The majority of the trip was lovely, though, and Willow appreciated both the distraction and the time away with her boyfriend (and future baby-daddy).

Returning to the school refreshed, and seeing how much effort Devon truly put in trying to make amends with the school, Willow's hatred for him faded. He didn't really do anything terribly unforgivable, and he had suffered just as hard over the past two years: thinking he had abandoned his friends to die. The Brotherhood wasn't actually at fault for the attack, and so Devon had also spent two years looking for revenge for the death of his found family. Devon and Willow never got back to the same level of closeness they had before he had left, but they slowly became friends again.

Then, a few weeks before the summer break ended, Nyssa started receiving letters from her estranged family. She had been disowned simply for being a mutant, but her parents realized how much they missed and loved their daughter. They asked for forgiveness, and begged for a chance to make amends. Nyssa mostly ignored her parents' pleas, but then she received a letter from Trish stating that she was with Nyssa's parents, and vaguely threatened their lives. Nyssa couldn't leave her parents to that murderer, and so she decided to go stop Trish. Devon insisted he'd come as well, since Trish was clearly after him that whole time anyway. They asked the X-Men for help, but there was a delay (for some reason that I can't recall... lack of intel?). Nyssa and Devon couldn't wait for the X-Men to be ready to go in for the rescue, so they went on their own. After a long battle with Trish (another story I've written but still need to polish before publishing online), Nyssa and Devon were killed. Turned out Nyssa's parents were already long dead, and all the letters about making amends were written by Agony, who had partnered up with Trish for this bit of sport.

Willow grieved the loss of her friend, unbelieving that he was truly gone this time. (In truth, Devon was revived, has amnesia, his mutation gave him a new default face, and Devon now lives in a mutant safe-house as he tries to remember who he is; no one knows any of this though.)

As the summer came to a close, and everyone once again grieved the loss of student lives (real safe place, the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters.... >_> ), Willow was rocked by another development. She had gone to Chayse's room one day, to discover him missing and the room ransacked. There was a note that Chayse had received, which told him to go back to the destroyed building the prom after-party was held in. The note's author, who turned out to be Agony, offered up information about what had happened to Nix all those years ago if Chayse agreed to meet.

Willow gathered up Lia and Zeke to try to help track Chayse down. They managed to get to the destroyed building shortly after Chayse. Agony originally mocked Chayse, but when he attacked her, she was rescued by a man made of ice and dressed in a monastery robe. The man called himself Boreas, and he could control winter weather – creating a frozen tundra on the building's lawn despite it being early September in New York state. Chayse instantly recognized Boreas as Nix; his DNA somehow altered to remove his telekinetic powers, but his ice manipulation powers enhanced to Omega level. Another body had its DNA manipulated to match Nix's, and that was the body Chayse had recovered from the facility two years prior. Willow raced to Chayse's side to help him as Boreas cried out for vengeance for being abandoned, and attempted to kill Chayse. Pissed that Chayse had backup, Boreas used a massive arctic wind to knock everyone away from them. He then created a maze of magical ice; the same thing he had used to help Trish escape S.H.I.E.L.D. custody.

Chayse was alone with Boreas, and knew his only option was to fight his former best friend. He hoped that once he incapacitated Boreas he could bring the man to the Institute, and have Nix be restored. Willow, Lia, and Zeke were all separated from Chayse in the maze – and Zeke separated from the girls. They rushed to try to get back to him, but Agony managed to corner Willow and Lia, cutting off their advancement to Chayse. Avoiding a two-on-one fight, Agony welcomed into battle Boreas' main ally, his partner Judgment. She was a woman in her early 20s, dressed in battle armor, and resembling a warrior angel as flame wings erupted from her back. Judgment declared Lia her opponent, and Agony happily detained Willow. Before anyone could react, Agony used yet another power no one know about, and encased Willow in an orb that forced her onto the Astral Plane.

Willow and Agony battled, and Willow managed to get the upper hand at one point, threatening to stab Agony. Unfazed, Agony simply stepped into the knife, spraying blue blood all over Willow. The blood then paralyzed her, trapping her stiff on the “ground” of their battle field. Once fully incapacitated, the blue blood spilled off of Willow, and formed into a blade within Agony's hand, leaving Willow vulnerable to Agony's killing blow. At the last second, the three copies Willow made of herself earlier in the battle lunged towards Agony, stopping the attack. Agony was startled that the copies moved of their own accord and independent of each other, the doppelgangers Agony created earlier in the fight could only mirror her movements. It was then that Willow discovered that the illusions she made on the Astral Plane were actually psy-weapons, which meant Agony disbelieving the illusions didn't dispel them. As the three Willow copies wrestled Agony, the dagger fell from her hand and shattered. Terrified by the sight of the blade breaking, Agony quickly retreated, and wished Willow luck in escaping the Plane Agony had put them in.

As Agony vanished within a blue orb, the landscape changed to a faded image of their battleground; gray and barren. The only thing Willow could see was a large blue crystal in the distance. The paralysis gone, she ran towards the crystal, and spotted the silhouette of a woman sleeping inside it. Finally, Willow got close enough to discern who the woman was: Willow herself. Upon that realization, Willow was brought back to the physical plane, the ice walls of Boreas' maze still up, the growls of battle around her, and her physical body locked comatose within a blue crystal right where she was when Agony forced her onto the Astral Plane.

Willow was still astral projected, as if she were a ghost on the physical plane. However, she was locked; not on the Astral Plane, and not truly on the physical one. She couldn't interact with anything, and couldn't communicate with anyone, despite how hard she tried. As if she were watching a TV show she couldn't control, Willow was forced to watch Lia finish her battle with Judgment, who had turned out to be Lia's friend and former roommate Annika; Nix's girlfriend who had volunteered to join the same villainous group as him, simply to stay by Nix's side.

In a cruel play, Judgment pretended to be Annika again; confused as to what had happened. As Lia ran to comfort her friend, Judgment held her close, and then used telekinetic powers to throw six adamantium spikes at Lia. Even in Lia's obsidian form, adamantium was the toughest substance on the planet, and they could rip right through her. Lia, in survival mode, dodged out of Judgment's death grip. She still was struck in the face, legs, and arms. Two spikes even ripped straight through Lia's shoulders like bullets. Already bleeding out pretty badly and in pain, Lia then noticed that in dodging the spikes, she condemned Judgment to be struck by them instead; all six impaled in the woman's torso. Willow was helpless to stop any of it.

Judgment collapsed into Lia's arms. She teased that Lia was capable of killing someone after all, and then passed out. Lia screamed for help, and the ice walls fell. It wasn't clear if Judgment had died in Lia's arms, but shortly after, her body vanished within a blue orb, just like Agony had done to escape the Astral Plane. Boreas escaped the same way as well. Chayse then rushed to Lia's side, with some assistance from Zeke. Once Chayse was certain that Zeke could care for Lia, he ran to the crystal that had encased Willow. He tried to phase her out of it, but the crystal reacted with violent electrical shocks, badly burning Chayse's hand. Zeke got to one of the motorcycles they had used to get to the ruined building, and sent a distress signal while Chayse tended to Lia's wounds.

Willow tried to call out to them, but her telepathy didn't seem to work. She tried to run for some help, but she was tethered to her physical form, incapable of going more than 20ft (6m) from her body. She screamed again for help, and Zeke responded to her; surprising her since she didn't realize he was a telepath. Chayse causing the electrical reaction from the crystal managed to create a microscopic crack that allowed Willow's telepathy to leak out slightly; catching the attention of other telepaths within that same 20ft radius she was locked within.

At the Institute, Chayse and Lia's wounds were taken care of. Chayse was released later that day, and Lia a few days later. Willow, on the other hand, was stuck with her body; trapped inside the private room in the infirmary for a week. Finally, when no one else could figure out how to get Willow out of her crystal, they called in the Sorcerer Supreme: Pixie. She was shocked at the massively advanced spell – one that she had only heard rumors of previously – and tried a few spells of her own. She was able to dispel the crystal, and trap it for further examination to see what kind of sorcery they were fighting against. Finally free of the crystal and the infirmary room, Willow went off to freshen up, have a few arguments with Chayse and Lia over how they overburden themselves as if they were the world's lone protectors, and then Willow blew off some steam at a new parkour training park Deadpool had built. She ran into a couple of new recruits, worked out on the parkour course for a little bit, and then headed back to the school in hopes of getting back to whatever her normal was.

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Like I said at the beginning, Willow has gone through way more than I remembered. And it's the points that I remembered that will make it to Glitches. Mostly because they were the most impactful on both Willow as a character and me, as a “reader.”

First and foremost, I don't want to get into the complexity of time travel in Glitches with everything else I'm trying to balance. So Sebastian and Brianne won't be making their way to Glitches. However, they MAY make their way into their own side-story at some point, but that's probably a couple decades into the future, especially at the rate I'm going....

Things with Nix and Annika are a bit too complicated as well, plus Nix/Boreas and Annika were created by other players (although, Husband came up with the Judgment persona for Annika after Nix's player came up with Boreas). Nix and another character – Lucas Kinney – will most likely become an amalgamation; one of the glitch children Matteo rescues when he tries to break his sister out of the experimentation facility. I can go more into this when I introduce Matteo.

Similarly, I don't know if I'll have the William plot exactly. Again, mostly because I don't own William, so I'd have to create a replacement character, and I'll most likely have to discover a new reason for Willow's grief over him, her realization of that brotherly connection she destroyed, and her adjusting how she uses her powers; assuming I have her still be a callous prankster at first.

While the Japan trip is sweet, we never actually role played it, so I don't see the over-all impact on Willow's arc, so that's also gone.

So, what bits are staying? For me, these are the key parts of Willow's development:

Willow's dual attraction to Chayse and Devon.

Willow becoming best friends with Devon, only to feel betrayed when he runs away to find out more info about his past.

I'm still trying to decide if the school will again be attacked by a third party so that Willow ends up hating Devon, blaming him for the attack, and vowing vengeance for Hedge's death.

Since Devon's DR run, his running away, the school being attacked, Willow's self-hatred for “pushing Devon” to betray them, as well as her hatred towards Devon, and then their subsequent reunion makes up soooooo much of Willow's arc in-game, I feel it NEEDS to be in Glitches in some shape or form.

The real trick is either convincing Ronoxym to allow me to write Devon/co-author Glitches with me, or I’ll have to create my own Devon from scratch...

Willow discovering her brother Shawn not only has powers, but has also joined The Brotherhood (Called The Virus in Glitches) and wants to kill her and their parents.

Seeing the interaction between Shawn and Devon would be interesting

Shawn will just be “turned evil” by his childhood; no additive of being a psychopath needed (I'll leave that to Trish).

Shawn will still be discovered via his attack on a new recruit for the school. I'm debating if I want it to still be Chayse, and Willow finds out after-the-fact, or if she is there for the first interaction...

While not necessarily a prom after-party, I do want an off-campus gathering to be attached by The Virus in order to capture one of the students. That way Lia can show off her badassery with her one-on-one with Trish, and Willow can still prove her usefulness by using illusions to throw off the attackers into thinking their target is dead. Also, that was her greatest showcase of her telekenetic powers, and it also showcased the downsides to Willow having to be on the Astral Plane in order to fully utilize her powers.

Willow's interactions with Agony; a means for her to push her mental powers, and a foil as Agony has similar powers of manipulation/illusion.

Hubby originally headcannoned that Agony was actually Jacob's first child before meeting Meryl and having Shawn and Willow. Which is why Agony and Willow have similar power sets. It seems a bit weird, however, that Shawn's powers wouldn't match those of his sisters, nor did it seem logical that both of Willow's siblings were murderous psychopaths that loved to torture and torment, but Willow wasn't like that after seeing how much her powers truly hurt others. So, I'm still debating if I want to make Hubby's headcannon official.

Willow being trapped within the crystal after a battle with Agony. It would be interesting to have the time to fully explore that experience, and the grief her friends suffered while trying to break her out of it.

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You good? Everyone caught up? You can take your pee-break now.

Makes sense that this kept me so long to write up and edit down, no? Anyway, thank you guys SOOOOO MUCH for again indulging me and sitting through all of that! You all amaze me!

Next up: Part 4 - Images. Who’s ready to see all the different versions of Willow I’ve collected throughout the years?

#writing #LycoRogue writing #OCs #Meet My OCs #Meet Willow #long post #Glitches #Willow Driver #Willow #Willow's backstory #Willow history #X-Future plot #X-Future vs Glitches #series post #7 out of ?#updates every other Sunday #LycoRogue original

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lycorogue · 5 years

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Who Wants to Meet My OCs? (Part 3a – Glitches Originals)

Look at me, following my plan and actually having the next part of this series posted on a Sunday! Whoot!

As I have mentioned before, I've wanted to do this series since November, so I'm excited I'm able to actually follow through with it finally. If you're just getting into this series, the long-and-short of it is that I want to introduce you fine people with all of my main OCs. They will each get their own Sunday bio post to introduce them individually, but in the meantime, I wanted to give insight on how I came up with them.

In Part 1, I had given a broad overview of the whole Meet My OCs series, as well as some generic IRL background to the inspiration and creation of my two main worlds:

Gyateara

Glitches

In Part 2, I talked specifically about the IRL inspiration for my main Gyateara OCs:

Amara Yori

Natalie [Last Name TBD]

Connor [Last Name TBD]

Jolene Crisslebalm

Now, in this third part for the series, it's time to talk about my IRL inspiration and creation for my Glitches OCs. This list of characters is MUCH longer than what I have for Gyateara, so this may take a bit. In fact, there were so many characters - this post was 9 pages in Word - I had to split up this part into two more parts. So this first part (3a) focuses mostly on the Original Characters that are characters from the role play game X-Future. The next part (3b) - which will be published in a few minutes - will focus on the characters that started off as X-Men canonical characters, and how I reworked them into originals.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, feel free to keep reading below the break. If you'd rather just skip on ahead to the character bios themselves, my first one should be up next Sunday.

First, I should probably explain how characters are supposed to be formed in the game that birthed Glitches. As I mentioned in Part 1, Glitches started its life as an X-Men role play on a message board/internet forum in a Play-By-Post style. The role play game is called X-Future, and I loved the story we were telling so much that I wanted to re-tell it to the world. However, the more I build Glitches, and the more I try to make the story an original work, the more I realize that only a small portion of the characters and overall role played plot can truly transition over.

Regardless, the way characters are created for X-Future is as follows:

My husband has a lineage chart set up on the forum. There are two lists of available X-Men comic book canonical characters: list of usually male and usually female characters. I say “usually” because there are characters like Mystique, who is usually recognized as a female character, but is technically gender fluid, and has had long canonical runs as a male character.

The players get to choose ONE of the listed characters; therefore choosing either their character's father or mother. This allows the players to have a connection to at least one canonical character of their choice, and/or the potential for a power set they'd like to have for their character.

Hubby then rolls on the other chart to determine the other parent. Therefore, if a player chooses a female character for their parent, Hubby rolls on the male list to find the OC's father. There is also a “Sinister Shenanigans” option where the X-Men character Mr. Sinister created you as a clone of two mutants, in which case your “parents” could be both male or both female as well as the standard “a male and a female.” There is also a chance – again using Mystique as an example – for your character to have “same-sex” parents biologically, since Mystique could also be someone's “father.”

Once parentage is figured out – and Hubby posts the second biological parent on the boards – he then rolls on another chart to determine the character's power set. He does this because it keeps the players on their toes, evolution is weird, and real life is random, so why can't games be? Options he uses for a character's powers include: --> Character inherits powers from both parents in equal amounts --> Character inherits powers from both parents, but favors the father's powers with only hints of the mother's powers --> Character inherits powers from both parents, but favors the mother's powers with only hints of the father's powers --> Character inherits a variant of both parents' powers --> Character's powers are a mesh of both parents' powers (for instance, a fire manipulator and a rock manipulator could produce a lava manipulator) --> Character inherits father's powers --> Character inherits mother's powers --> Character inherits a variant of father's powers --> Character inherits a variant of mother's powers --> Character inherits neither parents' powers, and instead forms their own powers (I think that's all of the options he uses...)

Once Hubby figures out the mutation the character has, he posts it on the boards. After that, the player then gets (mostly) free rein to create their character. Some other restrictions include the starting age of the character being high-school-age unless special permission was given, the backstory of the character must not counter other character's backstories or the already established history of our Marvel continuity, the character has to be an Xavier Institute student or Brotherhood of Mutants member, and Hubby needs to double check character profiles for any potential issues before they can be posted. (It's rare that Hubby doesn't approve of the profile)

So, those are the basic 5-easy-steps to creating an X-Future character, which comes into play with 2 of the characters I'll introduce today. Speaking of, let’s get to them, huh?

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Chayse LeBeau [Last Name to be Changed]

Ironically, I'm going to start off with a character that isn't mine. Chayse is my husband's character, but he gave me full permission to use him in Glitches. Mostly because he trusts my treatment of his character – most of my Miraculous Ladybug readers will tell you I'm very good at keeping characters True-to-Canon – and because Hubby knows that I'll probably talk about nearly every single one of Chayse's lines and actions with him, just to make sure I'm keeping him in character.

Chayse, being my husband's character, was the first character ever made for X-Future. Hubby's favorite X-Men of all time is Remy “Gambit” LeBeau, so naturally Hubby chose him as Chayse's father. When Hubby rolled onto Kitty “Shadowcat” Pryde as Chayse's mother, we had to do some quick continuity work to figure out HOW that relationship happened. We are HARD CORE Gambit/Rogue shippers. They are by FAR our OTP (with Shadowcat/Colossus as a close second). If Gambit was with anyone other than Rogue, we needed a reason for Rogue to not be in the picture; not a possibility at all. Hubby created an event called The Reaping where Professor Charles Xavier, Jean Grey, Magneto, Mastermind, and Rogue all die in battle. There may have been some other casualties, but those are the main ones I remember...

Anyway, once we realized Rogue had to be dead for Gambit to be with anyone else significantly enough to have a kid with them, we then went back to “X-Men: Evolution”; the show that inspired Hubby to create X-Future. In the TV series, Kitty and Rogue were besties, and so Hubby and I decided that Kitty and Gambit were comforting each other in their grief over losing Rogue. That grew into a tight friendship, and eventually a romance blossomed. The two got married, and Chayse was born.

Chayse is basically my husband without the anxiety and terrible knees. If Hubby could be as athletic and outgoing as he wished he could be, he'd be Chayse.

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Amelia “Lia” Mordeaux [Last Name Still Workshopping]

Lia was my first-ever character for X-Future. Since Rogue is clearly my favorite X-Men – I mean... check the handle and icon – I really wanted to chose her as my character's parent. However, after Hubby and I jointly determined that Rogue had been dead for nearly two decades, I struggled to figure out who else to choose. So many different power sets and great characters. However, in the end I ended up going with Amara “Magma” Aquilla. I am a bit of a fire freak – something that will come up later – so the idea of my character being able to manipulate magma seemed fun to try. In truth, though, the deciding factor – aside from how adorable Magma was in “X-Men: Evolution” - is the fact that her name is Amara.... like my Gyateara character; my oldest OC.

Rolling on the chart, Hubby landed on Jamie “Multiple Man” Madrox. Based on the personality we saw in “X-Men: Evolution,” and ignoring that poor Jamie was only about 12 or 13 when depicted on the show, I lamented at how “lame” Lia's father was going to be. In the end, I did sprinkle in a touch of the badassness Jamie showcases in the comics, as well as whenever he's shown – usually as a villain *sigh* - in the cartoons. However, he's still LARGELY a nerd still for X-Future, and became a bit of a neurotic helicopter parent.

Lia ended up with her mother's powers exactly. The only difference is that instead of just a magma form, Lia encases herself within obsidian skin. I even designed her to look like Amara did in Evolution, with the straight brown hair and Brazilian skin. (It was easier for Evolution to just have Amara be Brazilian than trying to explain the existence of Neo Roma within the Brazilian rain forest so she could remain White with blonde hair and blue eyes) Lia being basically a carbon-copy of her mother – something I headcanon as Jamie's duplication DNA accidentally turning Amara's egg into a clone of her – meant my next struggle was trying to figure out why Lia was at the Xavier Institute. I didn't want her to have been raised there, but why couldn't Amara just train her daughter on how to control identical powers?

In the end, I decided that Amara has to go. Hubby and I came up with a mission where Amara went MIA. She is perceived dead, but isn't confirmed dead, along with Storm, who went missing on a similar mission a few years prior. Without his wife to help train their daughter, and having NO CLUE how to handle a 14yo blowing up his yard with geysers, Jamie sent Lia to the Institute, and promptly signed up as a faculty member so he could still be close to and keep an eye on his daughter: the last family he has left, and a reminder of his wife.

For Glitches, I did end up shifting Lia's race to Hawaiian (Polynesian? Should I specify?). Having her be part Native Hawaiian just felt more fitting with the lava-focused powers. Yes, there are volcanoes in Brazil, there is also one in Washington state. Still, you wouldn't necessarily equate Washington state with lava as much as you would equate lava with Hawaii.

Lia was SUPPOSED to be my naive rebel; a 14yo who was getting her first taste of freedom at the Institute. She was going to wear less-conservative outfits, be flirty, and maybe break a few rules: curfew, being in the guys' wing of the dorms, skipping a class or two, etc. She even started off like that... for about a game session or two. She instantly fell into her main personality though: reserved, shy, maternal, and unsure of herself. While I do love this character and who she is, she also wasn't who I initially wanted to play. Enter: Willow.

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Willow Driver

Originally, we had about a dozen players, which was fantastic. However, Hubby still wanted to “fill out” the school. He wanted a few NPC students the players could interact with when the other players weren't available. He had a small list of NPCs, some of which will make their way to Glitches as background characters. On this list was Willow. Hubby actually created her, designed her, and was all set to role play as her. Then we got to talking about how I loved Lia, but was a bit disappointed that she didn't turn out the character I was aiming for. Hubby knew that Willow was indeed much more like who I wanted to play, so he passed her over to me.

Soon enough, Willow went from an NPC I ran to my secondary character. Since she was the character I wanted to play the whole time, she quickly surpassed poor Lia as my preferred character. In fact, a lot of my “companion stories” that I have written for X-Future center around Willow. Specifically, Willow and my friend Ronoxym's character Devon. They have a.... complicated relationship. Willow is just a much more fun character to write. She's playful, manipulative, unsure, confident, loyal... she's just a walking ball of contradictions as she's trying to figure herself out.

If Chayse is who Hubby wishes he could be, then Willow is me with virtually no inhibitions. She's my playfulness, my confidence, my lust, my impulsiveness, my spontaneity, and the athletic prowess I wish I had.

In contrast, Lia is basically everything keeping me from being Willow: my caution, my fear of disappointing my parents (both the one who passed and the one who raised me), my maternal instincts, my reservations, my critical thinking, my constant knowledge of potential consequences, and my insecurity that I'm ever going to be the best version of myself.

There's one more side of me though. That's where Trish comes in.

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Patricia “Trish” Morrison

Trish did NOT turn out remotely close to who she was in my head. Heck, she even refused to be properly formed while I still was picturing her in her first incarnation. Trish truly did create herself.

Remember my friend Ronoxym's character Devon I mentioned a few paragraphs up? Well, he's the son of two Brotherhood of Mutants characters. In other words, he's the son of villains. He was orphaned as an infant, and when he was a teen at the Xavier Institute he ran into his father Pyro. The man suspected that Devon could be his long-lost son, and hinted that if Devon joined the Brotherhood then Pyro could help Devon figure out who he was. Devon eventually took the bait, and left to join the Brotherhood and discover who his parents were.

At the time, The Brotherhood was just made up of the Marvel canon characters; no one there for Ron to role play against aside from NPCs. I decided to create Trish so he would have a player character to role play off of. Originally, Trish was supposed to be a potential love interest for him.

Trish.... was not a fan. I actually had mental images of Trish gagging at the thought of her destined romance with Devon. Even when I tried picturing her flirting with Devon for the sole purpose of getting close enough to stab him or slit his throat: a sort of Black Widow character. She still gagged and REFUSED to let me have her show Devon anything other than disdain. He became her number 1 rival; her arch nemesis. She was actually in love with Pyro, and hated that Pyro's attention was now torn between her and his long-lost son. Her goal in life, aside from making Pyro fall in love with her; age be damned, was to murder Devon.

She then became more psychotic the more I wrote her. She has the power to create fire, and is completely fireproof herself. She loved playing with her fire, and became a pyrophile; getting highly aroused around flame. She had the stereotypical serial killer childhood of fulfilling her early bloodlust by torturing and killing animals. When she got caught by her twin sister, and her parents threatened to call the Mutant Police to collect her, Trish burnt everyone alive in their family home. She then lived on the streets, killing anyone who got in her way of survival. Eventually, she got taken in by The Brotherhood and Pyro, where her murderous tendencies were aimed at anti-mutant groups like The Purifiers.

If each of my main X-Future/Glitches characters (jointly named simply My Girls) is a part of my personality, then Trish is my anger, my love of fire, my dark desire to be an arson (ya know, if it didn't cause terrible destruction and harm), my ability to hold grudges, and my aggression. I wanted her to be fairly on-par with Azula from “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” but with her manic end-game personality making more of an appearance. I wanted her to be like Minatsuki Takami from “Deadman Wonderland”, or Tanya Degurechaff from “The Saga of Tanya the Evil.” In other words: tiny and unassuming, but terrifying and intimidating if her true self is ever seen.

I don't know if I never played her correctly, or if Ron just couldn't picture a character I run as THAT intimidating, because Devon was always quite unfazed by Trish and her threats...

EDIT: Holy smokes! How did I completely forget that Trish has theme music!? The main reason Trish is yet ANOTHER fire user, when we already have so many in X-Future, is because of her theme song. See, I was fairly obsessed with Fall Out Boy’s song “My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light Em Up)” when it first came out. I would spend days just listening to it and “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons on repeat.

One day I was rocking out to MSKWYDITD for probably the 4th time in a row or something, and I lamented Lia being so mild mannered. I would have loved to have had a chaotic fire user that would follow the destructive high energy I felt whenever I heard that song. Someone who would as much fun as those women in the music video. I mean, just watch them. I wanted a character with their energy and vibe:

youtube

I wanted another fire user, and Devon had JUST defected to The Brotherhood on X-Future, so I figured it would be perfect to make that more chaotic fire user as a Brotherhood member. THAT was when I figured “She could be a good foil for Devon; two fire users, one more chaotic than the other”... and THAT was when Trish went “Fire yes; Devon fuck no!”

I haven’t been able to control her since...

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So, there you have it, the truly original characters that make up the core cast of Glitches. Next up, as in a few minutes, will be the adult cast of my story: the characters reworked from their X-Men canonical origins. Stay tuned!

#writing #LycoRogue writing #OCs #Meet My OCs #character creation #IRL character inspiration #writing process #long post #Glitches #Chayse #Lia #Willow Driver #Trish Morrison #series post #3 of ?#LycoRogue original

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lycorogue · 5 years

Text

Meet My OCs: Willow (Part 5 – Stories)

You still with me? You are friggen awesome!

Just two more to go! This post and the next one, which will be a post showcasing some fun wrestling entrances I created for my husband’s WWE13 game.

Before we really get into this post, though, how about a quick recap of this series thus far?

Part 1: Introduction to the series, as well as explanations of the real-world influences that helped me create my two story worlds of Gyateara and Glitches. Part 2: Explaining the inspirations that birthed each of my four main Gyateara characters. Part 3a: Same, but for my four main teenage Glitches characters. Part 3b: How I reworked 6 canonical X-Men characters into the Glitches main supportive cast of six adult characters.

Meet Willow mini-series:

Part 1: Willow’s background, personally overview, and powers. Part 2: Willow’s main relationships. Part 3: Willow’s history on the X-Future game, and how it will translate to Glitches Part 4: Willow visuals; fanart, commissioned art, and fashion design games

Now you get a bit more into Willow’s head via 5 writing samples. Two are adaptations of the play-by-post game itself, and three others are side-story narratives. Check below to read them.

The Set-up: An example of the Willow/Devon dynamic before Devon left to join The Brotherhood, leaving Willow feeling betrayed.

Word Count: 1174

- Mutual Teasing -

Labored breaths fell in rhythm with pounding footfalls. The humidity of the summer day settled on the thick lawn that was a few days past needing a mow. Broken blades of grass stuck to two sets of sneakers. Their path was already visible behind them with the wet greenery staying crushed under their tread.

"There!" Willow panted as her fingers brushed Devon's shoulder. "Finally caught your ass." She gargled some sticky saliva and spat it to her side. She braced herself with her hands on her knees as she took a long breath. Moving her hands to her waist, she exhaled and arched backwards before flopping onto the grass. The budding dew cooled her bare legs.

Devon allowed one foot to slide out on the grass and landed beside Willow. He thumbed his nose and coughed the burn out of his lungs.

"Worn out already?" he laughed. "I thought you do street running or fast running or Perk-ore or whatever."

Willow leaned back on her elbows, tossed her short silver hair out of her face, and focused on Devon out of the corners of her aquamarine eyes. She clicked her tongue against her teeth before huffing a sarcastic laugh.

"First: you're an ass. Second: how the hell did you grow up in Brooklyn and not know what Free-running is? Also, it's pronounced Parkour."

"Eh, whatever. You knew what I meant."

Willow let her arms give out beneath her and stretched across the grass. She closed her eyes and flicked Devon in the wrist as her fingers brushed his skin.

"Hey!" Devon pulled away before smirking and skirting around to her head. Kneeling at her shoulders, he pinned her arms. "How am I the ass when you're the athlete who can't handle a quick game of tag?"

The fifteen-year-old opened her eyes again, only to squint them as if she were trying to stare at the sun. It kept her a couple of seconds to adjust to Devon's exotic brown eyes only being a couple inches away. The flecks of color embedded in the cocoa of his irises flickered a rainbow of reds, golds, greens, and oranges as if Devon's eyes were kaleidoscopes.

Abruptly, Willow killed the silence by blowing on Devon's nose. Instinctively, the seventeen-year-old pulled a hand away to rub the itch she caused. With Devon distracted for a couple of seconds, Willow easily slid her other arm free, twisted into a sitting position, and flicked him in the forehead all as one fluid motion.

"You're an ass because your 'quick game' lasted over an hour with barely any breaks. Plus, your mild healing power increases your endurance. No lung or muscle burn means running is easier. Simple science confirms your assness. Boom." She motioned her hand like she was dropping something, and the image of a three-inch atomic bomb appeared, complete with a mushroom cloud explosion when the bomb disappeared into the grass.

"Bah, you're just a sore loser." Devon tilted to his side and rolled onto his back. "So, whaja wanna do now?"

"Sun's down. We should probably start heading back." Willow stood and brushed the moisture off herself.

"Sun's down," Willow's voice parroted back to her, "We should probably start heading back."

Willow turned to see herself lying in the grass, one leg hooked over a bent knee, kicking slightly.

"I hate when you do that." The real Willow tucked her hair back to make sure Devon saw her full glare.

Imitation Willow laughed in Devon's baritone. Her long, slender legs shimmered as they became quickly covered in heavy denim jeans. Her petite chest broadened and her pale skin darkened to an olive-tone. Finally, her heart-shaped face, framed by an asymmetrical bob, shifted into Devon's chiseled jaw with spiky brown locks; his nondescript features returned, again suggesting that he was somehow all races at once.

"Come on," Devon said once he was back to his normal form, "you secretly love having a twin."

Three Willows formed out of the air behind the original. In unison, all four replied, "I could be however many I want. All you do is simple mockery."

One of the false three walked over to Devon and knelt beside him. She rubbed his chest and stroked his jaw with a silky smile across her face. The original Willow stepped to the side of the other two in order to give Devon an unobscured view.

"I can do more than mimicry though," the real Willow cooed.

The two illusions that stayed behind turned to each other and moved in for an embrace and kiss. Before their lips met, they transformed into Devon sloppily making out with himself.

The seductive Willow illusion still stroking Devon's chest burst into laughter. The real Willow joined suit. With a flick of her wrist, the illusionary Devons were only in matching white boxers with hearts on them. One Devon grabbed the other's ass.

"There we go," Willow snorted, "much better. Don't you think? Oh, and a goosing too. You frisky devil."

Devon smirked. "I think I'm damn handsome actually, and would gladly make out with myself given the chance. I also think you secretly want to see me in those." He gestured towards the boxers and winked at the real Willow. He then tapped the illusion Willow on her nose to disperse her; breaking Willow's spell.

Willow huffed as she waved her hand as if erasing the illusion of the making-out Devons. They too vanished, leaving only the original Willow and Devon alone in the field.

"Well, I think you have too high of an opinion of yourself." Willow crossed her arms in front of her and pouted; her fun ruined. "Like I'd want anything to do with you and your boxers."

Devon stood up and chuckled. "Say what you want. Your illusion showed me all I needed to know."

"Shut up! I was trying to mess with you."

"Would have worked if you got some details right." Devon dramatically shrugged with his arms out to his sides. "For starters, you clearly don't know how make-out sessions work."

"Y-yes I do!" She blushed. "I was purposely making it bad to imply that you're a bad kisser."

Devon shoved his hands deep in his pockets before walking over to Willow and leaning in close. "Want me to show you how well I kiss?" He wagged his eyebrows at her.

Willow's face flushed. "No! Gross! I'd probably have to teach you anyway." She stepped back and hugged herself. Her face scrunched up like she smelled a used diaper.

"You also got the boxers wrong. I go commando. Makes the morphing easier with less clothing. In fact, who's to say if I'm wearing any actual clothing right now?"

"Ewww!" Willow shoved him further away from her and started running back to the dorms.

"But I would totally sport only those white boxers with the hearts if that's what you're into," Devon teased, chasing after her. "And when should I expect those make-out lessons?"

"Hate you, Devon!" She playfully called back.

"You love me," he laughed.

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The Set-up:

Devon returned to the X-Men after spending two years with The Brotherhood of Mutants. Until the X-Men can decide if they can trust him, Devon is in a holding cell hidden under the Xavier Institute. Willow, feeling conflicted on the return of her former best friend and crush, decided to visit Devon to get some answers of her own. The answer she got was that he wasn't part of the attack on the Xavier Institute; he didn't even know about it until months later, and he grieved the presumed loss of his friends. He had every intention of simply infiltrating The Brotherhood and coming back to the X-Men as a spy to prove his worth to the X-Men. This is a sample from the larger story “Please, Let Me Explain” co-authored by me and Devon's creator Ronoxym.

Word Count: 843

- Can't You Be The Bad Guy? -

She peeked over her shoulder and back at Devon before turning fully around. "I saw what you did in the Danger Room. I was so intrigued by the idea of your first DR run that I made sure to set up shop in the observation deck. I watched the whole thing: wandering the desert, saving Penny, getting knocked out, waking up in what you thought was the infirmary before being convinced that you were going on an actual mission, going up against The Brotherhood again, and taking out Lookout once Pyro offered you info on your parents. It was a mean trick, but it seemed to seal your coffin well enough."

"I really wish you hadn't seen that." He shied away, ashamed at his behavior, but also growing angry at the reminder of the cruel misdirection. That session had ruined his life.

"Yeah, well, I did. I was so mad. I hadn't known you for long, but I thought I knew you pretty well. Even after the thing with Marge in the DR, I tried to come up with an explanation. But then you flee before the place blows? You had betrayed us to The Brotherhood and clearly didn't care about us any longer. My life for the past two years was hating you to no end. Vowing that I'd avenge Hedge. That I'd get payback for the other three lives you took. So, tell me, Devon, if you are as innocent as you claim, how doesn't that make the last two years of my life worse?"

Devon looked bewildered by her question. He had figured that being innocent would always make things better, not worse. Willow didn't miss a beat in informing him otherwise.

"Don't you get it? I just spent the past two years of my life hating you! Despising you! Having nightmares about you! I had a sickening sense of betrayal whenever I thought about you - even the few good times we had. I had emotional breakdowns and loathed my best friend for the past two years over a misunderstanding? That's supposed to cheer me up? I blamed you for four deaths you had nothing to do with? That's supposed to lift my spirits? Do you realize how much I put myself through because I thought I was the one who drove you to it? I mean, I was the one who convinced you to try out the DR in the first place! If I hadn't suggested it to Wolverine then maybe you wouldn't have left. Now knowing that I just might be right about that fact is supposed to perk me up?"

She started screaming at him as she wept. "The amount of time I wasted hating my best friend. The amount of energy I dedicated to hardening my heart to you. The days of self-loathing because I thought I put you up to it, or because - to this day – I'm still pissed off at Cyclops for tricking you like that! You were the enemy! Cyclops was right about you, and he was justified in testing you in the DR instead of letting you betray us in the field. Yet I still hated him for such a horrible ploy. Then I felt guilty for siding with a foe instead of a professor."

She hung her head and her hair spilled from behind her ears, hiding her right eye. It was manic whenever Trish's hair fell into her face, but it was sweet and a bit heart-wrenching when Willow's silvery-white locks drifted into hers. Devon just wanted to brush them away from her eyes, and help dry her tears. It pained him to the core that he caused her such grief.

Her voice cracked as she breathed out the next sentence. "It's just easier on me if you really were the bad guy. So, just- can you just give me that?"

Devon had no clue how to respond. They stood in silence for a few minutes - Devon staring at Willow as she focused on her own feet - before she finally ran out of the room. Mirroring Devon when he left the institute two years prior, Willow didn't bother to look back or say goodbye.

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The Set-up: Nyssa, Devon, and Zeke just defected to the X-Men from The Brotherhood. Willow has not taken kindly to the trio, and is particularly harsh with Devon. Nyssa, Devon's unofficial girlfriend, decides to take it upon herself to get Willow to chill. This story is a companion piece to X-Future.

Word Count: 1613

- It Is So On! -

Willow sighed and flopped on to her bed. "What do ya want, Nys?"

The blonde slammed the door closed behind her. "We need to talk about Devon."

Willow squeezed her eyes closed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "No, we don't. We really, really don't."

"Yes, we do." Nys' voice was firm, like a scolding school teacher. "Or at the very least you're going to hear what I have to say."

Willow opened one eye to glance over at Nys. The girl had a stubborn determination. Willow could already tell that she was in a losing battle. She closed her eyes and waved Nys on.

"You need to lay off him," Nys demanded.

Willow loudly drew in a hissy breath. On the loud exhale she rebutted, "How about nope?" She then rolled off her bed and walked over to her desk. "Well, that was fun. Buh-bye now."

Nys bit the inside of her cheeks and folded her arms. "Are you this hostile to everyone?"

Willow swung out her leg as she pivoted on her opposite heel, and then gracefully landed in her chair. "Only potential threats," she said matter-of-factly. "Ya know, like former members of an organization that already blew up this school once."

Nys stormed over to the desk. "That's not fair! First of all, none of us had anything to do with that! We weren't even members back then. Secondly, The Brotherhood had lied to us and kept us in the dark the entire time we were with them. None of us are actually bad people."

Willow cocked an eyebrow. She carefully watched as Nys took a few steps back and sank on to the bed. The blonde's harshness melted as she slumped on the soft surface.

"Look." For the first time Nys' voice was soft and a bit defeated as she studied her woven fingers. "Zeke is a bit simple minded, but he's really just a huge teddy bear. He's devoted and loyal as long as you treat him well, and he really just wants to be a good person. He's actually pretty devastated that he was part of a terrorist group. Well, we all are, honestly. Anyway, Zeke doesn't deserve you or anyone else here harassing him about his past."

"Yeah, okay, don't pick on the humanoid St. Bernard. Whatever." Willow made a display of yawning before she checked her desk clock. "Weren't you invading my room in order to talk to me about the Traitor Supreme?"

Nys vaulted off Willow's bed and got up in the younger girl's face. "Never ever refer to him like that!" she snarled.

Willow leaned back and shot her finger up at Nys. "Ah, there we are. Full circle back to rage. Fascinating how that works." She crossed her legs, and again casually waved for Nys to continue. "Well, if I have to hear this, can you at least move it along?"

"Move it along? Move it along! Are you kidding me right now?" Nys slammed her hand on the desk beside Willow. "Listen up, bitch, and listen carefully. You want this short? I'll make it simple for you then. Leave. Us. Alone. Easy enough for you?"

Willow scoffed and pivoted her chair so she had space to stand up. Nys caught the armrest and swung the chair back to center Willow on her. Holding firmly to each side of the chair, Nys leaned in close. "Don't mess with me, skank."

"Excuse me?" Willow knitted her eyebrows in disbelief and shifted her weight to one side, ready to sweep kick Nys away from her if need be.

"Don't pick on Zeke," Nys continued completely undeterred. "And certainly do not harass Devon. Don't be mean to him. Don't treat him harshly. Don't call him names. And never call him a traitor again! You would be lucky to have a loyal friend like him!"

"Loyal?" Willow's voice cracked as it was torn between yelling and laughing. Her face hardened. In a quick movement she simultaneously shoved Nys away from her and stood up fast enough to kick the chair behind her. "Now listen up here, sweetheart." She spat out the last word as if it were a curse. "I already had Devon as a friend, and let me tell you, it was far from lucky. Plus, he was about as loyal as a pet tiger. So it's time for you to sit down and listen to Teacher."

Nys rolled her shoulders and took a step back so her nose wasn't practically brushing Willow's. The silver-haired girl clenched her jaw as she growled through her teeth. "That jerk caused nothing but chaos when he left. And I certainly didn't feel his loyalty, or feel lucky to have been his friend. You want to know what I did feel? I felt lost. Betrayed. Hatred. So, you can keep him as a friend. 'Cuz I certainly don't want it."

The blonde shifted, gently tilting her head and calculating. "You liked him," she finally guessed after a few heartbeats.

"What?" Willow stiffened her back and glowered.

Nys struggled to keep the smile from tugging on her lips. "You did, didn't you?" She scanned her adversary as she softened her stance. "That's why you're so hard on him. He broke your heart when he left."

The belly laugh filled the room. Hugging her stomach, Willow snorted before she was able to recompose herself. She held up her hand apologetically as she took deep breaths to calm the giggles. "I'm sorry, but Devon? Devon St. James? That punk kid? Break my heart?" She guffawed and quickly muffled it with a hand. "Yeah, alright, ya got me. He intrigued me a little, and I may have thought he was kinda cute. That's it." She fought against smiling and it was killing her cheeks. "Broke my heart. You're so cute. Look, I was with someone then, and I'm with someone now. I wouldn't want Devon St. James ever. Hate to break it to ya." Willow winked at Nys and giggled a bit more.

"Oh, right, dating someone." Nys stared at a patch of wall just past Willow's shoulder. Her voice was distant as she tried to grab at a passing memory. "That Chayse guy, right?"

Half of Willow's face pulled up in a smile as she cocked a hip. "Yeah. Chayse. Someone way better than that runaway douchebag. Yet another reason your little Don Juan scenario would never happen."

Nys' eyes bore down on Willow for yet again disrespecting Devon. Taking a couple long breaths, she calmed herself. Something about the younger girl seemed a bit off balance since it was suggested that she had a crush on Devon; maybe even loved him. Nys decided to take a stab in the dark: that the images Lia had seen during their battle were at least based on truth. "This oh-so-fantastic Chayse guy, he was with that Lia girl before, am I right?"

Willow's chuckles quickly died. She scowled and again stiffened her back. "Watch it."

"Yeah, I think I heard that the two of them were actually a cute couple for a while. Then you stole him away from her with your slutty feminine wiles." Nys smirked and her eyes twinkled.

"Listen here, Tinkerbell," Willow shot forward to get right in Nys' face. She poked the girl in the shoulder to accentuate her point. "Don't go around talking about shit you know nothing about."

Nys casually gave a sideways glance at Willow's poking. As if swatting a fly, she brushed the younger girl's hand away. "I also heard something about you creating unnecessary chaos between that Irish couple."

Willow gave Nys a shove. "I told you to stop."

Nys stumbled back and landed on Willow's bed. She quickly crossed her legs and leaned back as if she had intended to sit down anyway. "Seems to me you enjoy causing needless drama among happy couples."

The slap echoed throughout the room. Nys gripped the side of her face, knowing a handprint would show up in due time. Willow remained in the follow through of her swing. Her breaths were slow but heavy. "I said," Willow growled, "stop it."

Nys pushed Willow out of the way so she could stand up. The two stared each other down for a good minute. Nys was the one who finally broke the silence. "Listen, bitch, I don't care if you despise Devon or love him. He's mine and you're not going to cause drama between us. Try all you want, but keep in mind that I have my own way of getting into someone's head." Glaring, Nys released some of her pheromones and Willow became lightheaded.

After a little wobbling, Willow allowed herself to collapse on to her bed. Nys smirked and let up on her powers. "Just a little taste. You'll be fine in a minute or two. Open the window to help that along." She walked over to the door and stopped with it half open. "Trust me, mess with Devon anymore and I'll make it ten times worse for you."

Nys slammed the door behind her when she left. Right on cue, Willow's eyes refocused. She stared down her bedroom door and imagined the blonde that just left. Her fingers still tingled from slapping the girl. Willow studied them before clenching her hand in to a fist. "Challenge accepted, Nys. Challenge accepted."

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The Set-Up: The villain Agony managed to force Willow onto a weird sub-set of the Astral Plane in order for the two of them to battle. After a few scuffles, Agony drops some blood onto the “ground” of their battle field, and “crew” three copies of herself. Willow, using her illusion ability, did the same: creating 3 copies of herself. During the four-on-four battle, Agony circled the Willows, who are grouped together with their backs to each other. The Agonies formed scythes in each of their hands, meanwhile, Willow had her and her copies form daggers and shields. This is an adaptation of an actual X-Future role play scene

Word Count: 1358

- I am a Badass -

Boy, did I screw myself over by not keeping one hand free. I couldn't vault myself like I normally would as Agony and her copies each swiped at us with their scythes. The best I could do was an aerial spin.

I jumped up, pulled in as tight as I could with the dagger and shield, and spun a bit so I was above the high blade. I came down just as Agony's clone's scythe finished it's swing. I managed to land on the blade and push it down to the ground. My illusionary selves mimicked me as we all land on the scythes and pin them to the ground. Unfortunately, I don't know if it was my clones or Agony's that were out of sync, but the duplicate behind me had her left shin badly sliced on her landing. Her balance off, she missed pinning the scythe of her Agony, and she nearly took out the Willow to my right.

My focus shifted for a half-second as I watched the girls tumble into each other. I made a mental note to watch my back for the free scythe. Lowering my weight to make sure the scythe I was standing on was pinned, I smirked at the Agony in front of me, my dagger out towards her throat.

“Your move, Kaiba.” I mocked.

Agony grinned and took a step forward, driving my dagger through her neck. Before I could register that she was obviously one of Agony's illusionary duplicates, blue “blood” sprayed out of the woman's neck; coating me. I guarded my face with the shield, and took an instinctive step back.

I wasn't pinning her scythe any longer, but it doesn't seem to matter as the injured Agony dropped to the ground and 'died.' The other two illusionary Agonys vanished as well, leaving my copies dazed as their fighting partners disappeared. Regaining our bearings, my illusionary clones and I all turn to the real Agony.

She didn't seem to care about her scythe any longer, dropping it to the ground, and letting the psy energy dissolve back into the atmosphere. Instead, Agony threw back her head and laughed.

Even with the shield, the spray had come at me too fast to block it all. I still had some of it on my face and shoulders. I kept my eyes on Agony as I tried to wipe the blood off me. The second I touched the blue goop it started to glow. Its pulsating felt like my own heartbeat pushing through my skin.

“What the hell!?” I chanced looking away from Agony for a moment as I inspected the damage. The pulsating blue blood glowed brighter. Startled, I tossed my shield to the side, and frantically attempted to brush the liquid off at all. I only managed to spread it onto my clean hand, and then down my unsoiled arms. No matter what, the blood won't clean off; like it was attached to me now. My hurried swipes became noticeably slower, and my head grew heavy, as if I were tranquilized. I dropped to my knees, and my head swayed and bobbled as I struggled to stay alert. My only thought was Seriously? This is how I'm going out?

“You. Bitch.” I coughed out; dropping onto my hands as well.

"Soon you will be fully paralyzed, then I'll have you at my mercy." Agony smirked as she folded her arms across her chest, waiting for the inevitable.

My three duplicates stared at me as I collapsed, completely baffled. Morons. That's when I figured that maybe them being dumbfounded was actually in my favor. Agony doesn't seem to be paying much attention to them anymore.

Go! I mentally whispered to them. Move! Help!

I was frozen; pinned to the floor. My body wouldn't move.

Agony took a step towards me, and held out her hand. The weird blue blood finally peeled off of me like liquid metal being pulled by a magnet in Agony's hand. As it pooled on her palm, it solidified into a crystalline dagger.

Help, I plead once more to my illusions. They had to be listening to me, right? Agony kneeled down in front of me, pulled her arm back, and as she swung her arm down to plunge the dagger into my back, my clones finally leapt at her.

“What the hell?” Agony bellowed as my illusionary duplicates pinned her in place, pulling back on the hand with the dagger. “How are your petty illusions moving on their own?” She struggled for a few seconds before smiling down at me. “No matter. This won't hold me for long.” She closed her eyes, relaxed her struggle slightly, and concentrated on her breathing.

Moving on their own? It didn't make sense to me that she'd be so confused by that fact. Oh, right! Her illusions moved completely in unison with her! They could only mirror. She can't create autonomous clones!

I made a mental note to use that fact against her, assuming I survived long enough for that knowledge to prove useful.

“They're not real!” Agony's voice squeaked with a twinge of pain as she started struggling harder against my duplicates again. “They are not real!” She screamed.

Oh, shit! That was it. Agony knew my weakness. Disbelieving in my illusions dispelled them. The only things literally holding her back from killing me would be gone any second now. I was doomed. I clenched my eyes closed and focused on getting my body to move.

Move! Move! Damn it, move your big toe! It worked for Uma Thurman in Kill Bill! Now do it!

“They are not real!” Agony yelled again. Her eyes flew open and stared down her attackers. “You are not real! What is going on? Why are you still here?”

Opening my eyes, I struggled to arch my neck to see. All three illusions truly were still fighting back against Agony as she frantically squirmed against them. I was clueless as to how that was possible. Was there some part of her brain that sincerely believed the clones were there? Was that why she couldn't dispel them?

That was when my eye caught the shin of the copy that was hit by the scythe earlier. Blood was trickling down her leg.

Holy shit! I couldn't believe what I was seeing. They're real? They're really real? Oh. Em. Gee! I'm so friggen hard core!

The blood trickling down my illusion's shin had a purple hint to it. Same as the shading of the actual Astral Plane. That's when I truly realized what happened. The damn things were more psi-weapons! Just in human form! You can't dispel psi-weapons!

I made another mental note: when I'm on the astral plane, any illusion I create is a friggen psi-weapon!

My humanoid psi-friggen-weapons pulled harder back on Agony.

“Get off me! You're not real! You're not supposed to be here anymore! How are you still here?” Agony twisted more against the clones, panic starting to draw onto her face.

The copy that had Agony's wrist yanked harder on her hand to make Agony's grip loosen. My copy leaned in close to Agony's ear.

“We're all still here-” the clone said.

“-because I am-” continued the clone yanking on Agony's shoulders to bend her arms back away from me.

“-a mother-effing badass!” the injured duplicate finished, then sucker-punched Agony in the gut.

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The Set-Up: Willow unintentionally finds Lia hiding in the community bathroom. Lia blames herself for Annika/Judgment's possible death, as well as Devon's death (although technically, he's still alive), and Liam's. This is an adaptation of an actual X-Future role play scene.

Word Count: 1390

- Check the Ego -

“Oh, hun, no.” Willow dropped to her knees in front of Lia, who was curled up on the floor, hugging her legs. Willow placed her hands on Lia's to try to get her attention. “No, none of that is your fault. None of it! Do you hear me? You were fifteen when Annika left. What could you have possibly done? As for a last week? She was trying to kill you! You did what you had to in order to survive. If she is dead, it's her fault, not yours!” Willow moved her hands to Lia's face, and pulled her head up so Lia was looking in Willow's eyes.

“And both times Devon left were his own fault. He was the one that didn't want to include us. How could you possibly think you were responsible for that moron's actions? As for Liam? From what I gathered, you weren't anywhere near him. Know who was? That asshole Roscoe. Ya know, the guy who pretended to be Liam's BFF only to literally stab him in the back? Why? Why do you take all of this on? It's not your fault!”

Lia choked down tears in a sobbing hiccup. With the heel of her hand, she blotted away the few drops that pooled in her eyes. Despite Willow still holding her face, Lia refused to look in her friend's eyes, looking down to her arms instead.

“I-I dunno. I dunno why I feel guilty. Why do I feel guilty? What's wrong with me? I- I just can't help but feel like I failed, like I could have done something, like I could have done more. If only I could have gotten through to them. If I were better at understanding people. If I were better at my own powers. But I just keep failing. I keep proving to the world that it got left behind an inferior model. And-” Lia's eyes shoot up to meet Willow's. Her hands whipped to cover her mouth, a loud gasp attempting to suck up the next sentence back into her throat.

Willow's eyes slowly widened as realization washed over her. Abruptly, she ripped her hands away from Lia's face as Willow sprung up to tower over her.

“You're not your mom!” Willow shouted, wildly gesturing, uncaring that Lia's father was waiting for her just outside the bathroom door. He needed to hear this ridiculousness too. “Christ, girl, lower your ego a bit, huh? Is that really what this is all about?”

Lia gasped again at Willow's harsh words, glaring a little at her supposed friend. Willow didn't care, she hoped she was pissing Lia off; make up for how pissed off Lia just made her. “Seriously. Everyone looks at poor, little, emo Lia whining about how useless she is, and we all think 'Why does she have such low self esteem?' I should have known better. I should have known this whole thing was actually because your ego is way too big!”

Lia shifted awkwardly on the bathroom floor tiles, but Willow stepped closer so Lia had no room to rise; to move away from hearing this truth.

“Lia, you have no control over the world. You're not that powerful; you'll never be that powerful, so dial it down, 'kay? The world doesn't revolve around you. These bad things aren't some weird karma directed at you. The world isn't mad at you for not being your mom. Christ, not even your mom was that important to the world. So, come on, get over yourself. You are you. You are as good as you can be; you train hard for that. Learn from your downfalls and improve. Don't mope. Don't cry in your emo corner. No one else cares. No one else blames you. So stop inflating your ego thinking that everyone depends on you. You're not anyone's mom here, you're not even your own mom. So knock it off!”

Willow bent down to grab Lia's hand, and pulled her to her feet. Before Lia could catch her bearings, Willow had her in a tight embrace.

In a softer tone, Willow muttered one last thought in Lia's ear. “So, you gonna go back out in the world and learn? Or are you gonna stay in here and hide some more? Because I still need a shower, and Chayse is probably wondering were the hell I am.” Willow leaned away from Lia and gave her a gentle smile. Patting Lia on the cheek, Willow gathered up her supplies and headed towards the shower stalls.

Lia sniffled, her head hung. Tears spilled over this time, and she didn't bother attempting to wipe them away. “What's the point? You said it yourself, no one depends on me. Probably because they can't trust that I can do any good. What's the point of staying here to learn any more? I'm no hero. I can't help anyone here.”

The tiles squeaked as Willow skidded to a halt. Rage filled her face as she whipped around and stormed back over to Lia.

“Seriously?” Willow screamed in Lia's face, mere inches from her roommate's nose. She then leaned back and crossed her arms, her hip cocked as Willow stared Lia down. “Seriously. Alright. Fine. We're doing this then. Whatever. Sure. Sure, you're useless. You haven't saved anyone. Sure. Ignore the fact that it was because of you that Devon, Nyssa, and Zeke joined the team in the first place. But nope. You don't reach anyone.” Willow smacked her lips to resist smacking Lia. “Ignore the fact that, for the limited time Lincoln was here, he seemed the most calm and at peace whenever he was around you. Nope. You're useless. Right.” Willow took a step away from Lia, rolled her shoulders, and gave up trying to keep her voice low. “We'll also forget that we were able to capture Lighter in the first place because you stopped her single-handedly from turning all of us into fried chicken.” She was waving her arms wildly now, pacing in front of Lia like a lioness cutting off a gazelle's retreat. “Chayse tries to be better not because his parents berate him, but because you do. Ripley found an anchor here - excuse the pun - and rejoined society because of you.” Willow roughly poked Lia in the shoulder before throwing up her hands over her head. “But, nope. Nope. You are useless. No one needs you here. You're just wasting everyone's time. Sure. Sounds about right.”

Willow shook her head and stomped over to the bathroom door. She held it open and motioned to Lia's father standing guard in the hallway.

“Your dad's right here. Do you want to tell him that you want to move back to your old home, or should I? Because I sure would hate for my time to be further wasted by you,” she snapped out sarcastically.

Concerned, Jamie timidly poked his head through the community bathroom door, and glanced over at his daughter. “Lia? Baby, you okay? What's going on between you two?”

“Oh, nothing much, Mr. Madrox,” Willow spat out as she glared over her shoulder at Lia, “just your daughter whining again because she's not a 'hero,' which apparently everyone else in this school is. Cuz, ya know, I've stopped tons of arch villains myself. Same with Crystal, and Tyler, and Colette, and Alister, and Sasha, and dozens more. Yup. We're all big bad superheroes ready to join up with SHIELD and the Avengers; leaving her behind.” She fully turned and screamed back into the bathroom. “Right, Lia? So, what's the point in staying here? Lord, it's all or nothing with your ego, isn't it?” Willow shook her head, and shoved the bathroom door as open as it would go before storming out.

“Ya know what,” Willow muttered over her shoulder, “Screw the shower. It could never clean this grime off me anyway. Such bullshit.” A few stomps down the corridor, Willow pivoted and shouted back to the bathroom. “Just let me know where I'm shipping your shit!” Spinning on her heel, Willow stormed back to her bedroom.

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WOW! There... was... a lot of Devon in there... >_> Hubby doesn’t really write anything terribly in-depth, so most of the Willow/Chayse role play is “off-screen”, things like “They go on a trip to Japan for a couple of weeks” or “They nurse each other back to health after a tough battle” or “He takes her to a secluded place for a picnic of Cajun food he made himself.”

Ronoxym, on the other hand, did a LOT of dialog-focused role play with Willow, and he was the one who came up with the concept for “Please, Let Me Explain” so I guess it makes sense that most of my Willow examples center around Devon....

Anyway, one last post to go! Who’s ready to see some fun wrestling entrance videos?

#writing #LycoRogue writing #OCs #Meet My OCs #Meet Willow #long post #Glitches #Willow Driver #Willow #narratives #stories #scenes #short stories #Devon St. James #series post #9 out of ?#updates every other Sunday #LycoRogue original

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lycorogue · 5 years

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Meet My OCs: Willow (Part 4 – Images)

We've made it to the home stretch! This post should be a lot more fun, though, because you get to literally see Willow! I shared some images here and there throughout this mini-series about Willow, but the vast majority of my images of her will be below.

Before I continue, how about another quick recap of my Meet My OCs series thus far?

I started up this multi-post series almost exactly a month ago. I had wanted to do something like this for MONTHS, and I'm finally getting my lazy butt in gear. This way, you guys get a chance to learn about these vocal people that have been hanging out in my head for years.

In Part 1 of this series, I introduced the concept, as well as explained the real-world influences that helped me create my two story worlds of Gyateara and Glitches.

Part 2 of the series talked about the inspiration that birthed each of my four main Gyateara characters.

Part 3a did the same, but for my four main teenage Glitches characters.

Part 3b then talked about the Glitches main supportive cast of six adult characters; each one originating as a canonical X-Men character.

Today is Part 4 Day; the official start of the individualized characters' bio posts. I couldn't think of anyone better to start off the next part of the series than my most present character: Willow Driver.

In Meet Willow: Part 1, I shared Willow's background, gave an overview of her personally, and talked about her powers.

Meet Willow: Part 2 focused on her main relationships.

The epic post that made up Meet Willow: Part 3 told her plot line/story arc main events within the play-by-post game X-Future that Willow originated in. The end of the post also discussed which of those main plot events will find their way to my original story Glitches.

Next up, I’ll have a few writing samples to showcase Willow, and I’ll conclude today’s massive series of posts with two customized wrestler entrances I created on Hubby’s WWE13 game. So.. just two more to look out for! 0_0

All caught up? Great! So let's get to the fun of Willow's Multi-media presence. Starting with some more fun art of her.

I know I already shared this in Meet Willow: Part 1, but I love this image of Willow so much I'm going to show it off whenever possible.

Prior to commissioning @edendaphne to draw me the gorgeous above photo, I had some other hand-drawn artwork of Willow. For two different birthdays, @chibisunnie included the X-Future core group for personalized cards she drew me.

Check out the full-quality image on her DeviantArt

Hubby and I routinely pointed out the almost perfect parallels between the “Girl Meets World” characters Lucas, Maya, and Riley and our X-Future characters Chayse, Willow, and Lia, respectively. So Chibi went ahead and drew Chayse, Willow, and Lia as Lucas, Maya, and Riley all hanging out in Riley's bay window.

Check out the full-quality image on her DeviantArt

Last birthday, I wanted Chibi to have my X-Future characters interacting with her Team Giraffe Guy characters. Willow is dancing with her OC Todd, Trish is giving her OC Zahir a mini-heart attack, and Lia is chilling with her OC Bob the Pumpkin Cat from her other original story The Pumpkin Prince.

I still absolutely love how energetic Willow looks in both of these images, and I think Chibi really captured who she is. <3

Prior to the commissioned piece by Eden, or the two works of fanart as birthday cards drawn for me by Chibi, I used doll makers to help me visualize Willow.

My first incarnation of Willow was thanks to a hodge-podge of items designed by ChaZie for her Dollz over on Dollz Mania. (anyone else remember these being huge in the early 2000s?) You see, ChaZie designed easily a hundred different Dollz creators/designers, each of them with their own themes: Halloween, fantasy, fairies, Scene, Kardashians, Lady Gaga, Valentine's Day, etc. Back in 2012, I had spent WEEKS saving nearly every element of nearly every doll designer ChaZie created. I gathered them all into one MASSIVE Photoshop file with nearly all of ChaZie's doll bases, hair, clothing, accessories, pets, etc. That way I wasn't restricted by the designer theme groupings ChaZie created; I could take hair from Lady Gaga, put it with a Halloween costume, and throw on some fairy wings. Using this method of Frankensteining ChaZie's designs, I created a large portion of the early X-Future cast. One of the firsts was, obviously, Willow, shown here in her first X-Men uniform design.

Sorry for the quality. My computer crashed about 3yrs ago, and I lost that ChaZie dollz design master file, so all of the ChaZie design dolls I showcase will be downloads of my posting the images online.

Anyway, once Sebastian was introduced into the X-Future canon, I decided to re-design Willow to see how she might look in the future. So, here is Mama Willow with newborn baby Sebastian, as well as Adult Willow in a much more traditional X-Men uniform as she took on the mantle of one of the Great Protectors.

Finally, a picture of Willow in street clothes while with her brother Shawn. I had already posted this in Meet Willow: Part 2, when I talked about their relationship. However, why not re-share it, right?

A couple of years into playing X-Future, I was introduced to the Chibi Maker doll generator by gen8. (can also be found here) I couldn't resist coming up with Chibi-fied images for the main X-Future characters. Naturally, I went with Willow's classic Cheshire Cat illusion for her chibi verseion.

After losing my ChaZie master file, I tried to rebuild it, but at that point Dollz Mania had shut down. I'm slowly beginning to find ChaZie's doll makers popping up on other websites, but I needed other alternatives for character designs and re-designs. That was when I was introduced to the X-Girl doll maker by Candy. I've had a lot of fun designing characters in this game, and decided to re-designs Willow to give her a more mature look now that she's not 15 anymore.

Hubby and I also tried to re-create, and then re-design, Willow's X-uniform.

I really like how the uniform re-design turned out.

I was fairly content on my representation of Willow with the wide variety of above images. Then, late last year, I started playing the fashion designer mobile game Love, Nikki.

I was just enjoying the game for what it was; not even thinking about X-Future/Glitches. But then I started finding more and more blue and white clothes that made me think “Willow would like that.” Soon that was my mission. I found a few white/silver hair options that I tried out, and aimed for a make-up set that would give me aquamarine eyes. Since hitting my main Willow make-up and hair goals, I've had loads of fun designing and re-designing Willow in the game.

The blue and white striped socks and those blue eyes were what first made me want to find a way to build Willow. I also tried out just about any silver/white hair and blue eyes combo.

After getting the aquamarine eyes I loved, the next trick was trying out the hair styles. There are soooo many platinum-white, white, gray, or silver hair styles in this game! This isn't even all of them; just the ones that seemed Willow-esque. First up was an an attempt to keep Willow's short hair:

Picture #3 was the only one that really worked, and I ran with that hair for a little bit. I just liked the pseudo-punk look of those sharp edges.

A lot more of these could possibly work, although they aren't the Willow I had in my head. Even so, I could picture Willow with hair styles #2, #3, and #4.

I really can't picture Willow growing her hair out so long. It would bother her to have so much of it. However, out of the above pictures, #2 would be close, if it were the right color. Beyond that, I think #4 feels the most like Willow, with #1 being close behind.

Sadly, the ones that are the closest to Willow's hair style are all the wrong color. #1 is almost exactly Willow's hair style, just parted the wrong way; her longer side is over the right eye. Although it's a bit too short, and clearly the wrong color, #2 is at least parted on the correct side, and it does have some blue tips; probably the second closest to her canonical look. I could picture Willow in all of those hair styles, though.

This hair style isn't all that bad, and it is pale, but it's still platinum-blonde instead of Willow’s silver.

After a LOT of working and re-working, I decided this hair style works best. It's short, but not terribly masculine, choppy, or overly fancy. It's also the right shade of silver, and the low-lights in the hair almost look like they're blue. Once I had it figured out, the next trick was the outfit. I had her in this one for quite some time. Then I was playing Love, Nikki during the winter. I also got some coats that would work really well for her. I went formal and fantastical with the cape, and then more canonical and “real world” with the down vest. For both images I also included some extras that made it look like she was creating illusions.

I then had to switch her up for spring:

And again for summer, so this is what she's currently wearing in my game:

We'll see what other kinds of visuals I can make of Willow over the next few months/years.

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Alright, well now that you have a good mental image of what Willow looks like, how about we find out how she talks and acts?

Next up: Meet My OCs: Willow (Part 5 – Stories)

#writing #LycoRogue writing #OCs #Meet My OCs #Meet Willow #long post #pictures #Glitches #Willow Driver #Willow #series post #8 out of ?#updates every other Sunday #LycoRogue original

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lycorogue · 5 years

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Meet My OCs: Willow (Part 2 - Relationships)

Welcome back, folks! As I mentioned in Part 1 of Meet Willow, she became a bit overwhelming, forcing me to post a week late, as well as break her introduction into a mini-series in and of itself.

A quick recap before I keep going. This is part of a multi-post series I started here on Tumblr about a month ago. A means to introduce you guys to my main OCs.

In Part 1 of this series, I talked about why I'm doing it in the first place, as well as explain the real-world influences that helped me create my two story worlds of Gyateara and Glitches.

Part 2 of the series talked about the inspiration that birthed each of my four main Gyateara characters.

Part 3a did the same, but for my four main teenage Glitches characters.

Part 3b then talked about the Glitches main supportive cast of six adult characters; each one originating as a canonical X-Men character.

A couple minutes ago, I moved on to Part 4 of this series; the official introduction of my characters, one by one. I started off with my most present character: Willow Driver in her own multi-post mini-series. In that first section, I talked about Willow's background, gave an overview of her personally, and introduced you to her powers.

In Meet Willow: Part 2, I'm discussing her main relationships. Then, within the next few minutes, I'll also have Part 3 posted, which will discuss her story arc thus far in the X-Future play-by-post game she originated in, as well as how it relates to my intended starter character arc in Glitches.

Then, as I move onto Part 4, I’ll display all the other images I have of Willow. Part 5 will complete Willow’s official introduction with some scene samples and shorts. Finally, this Willow mini-series will conclude with a bit of fun: videos of her as a customized wrestler on my husband’s WWE13 video game.

For now, though, how about we see how Willow interacts with others, shall we?

Shawn:

Shawn and Willow Image generated via doll makers designed by ChaZie.

Willow's brother is 15months older than her, and has a tumultuous relationship with his sister. For most of their childhood, neither Driver child knew their father was a mutant/glitch, due to him hiding his powers from them. Shawn and Willow played pretend that they themselves were powerful mutants/glitches, and were basically best friends until Shawn neared puberty.

Once Shawn hit 13, he thought it was too childish for him to continue playing pretend with Willow, and started to grow distant from her. One day, while the two were arguing, and Willow threw a bit of a tantrum that Shawn wouldn't play with her anymore, Willow manifested the illusion of fireballs whipping at Shawn. He was terrified, and, having felt slighted and abandoned by her brother, Willow took full advantage.

Shawn and Willow's father Jacob admitted to being a mutant/glitch, and tried to train Willow on the use and control of her powers. Meanwhile, Shawn, who didn't have powers, cowered and became closer to their mother Meryl as she tried to protect Shawn from the pranks Willow would pull. Willow loved the pranks she could pull with her new powers, using Shawn as the butt of most jokes; using him to “train” her illusionary abilities. Understandably, this made Shawn withdraw more from his kid sister. This created a downward spiral, though.

The more pranks Willow pulled on Shawn, the more he attempted to avoid her. This made Willow feel more abandoned by her first best friend, and so, instead of ceasing the pranks to make amends, she retaliated with more and more spiteful pranks and jump-scares. She acted immaturely and impulsively, but she never truly understood that she was actually tormenting and bullying her brother. She never meant to actually cause the mental torture she inflicted. This doesn't excuse her behavior or diminish the pain she caused Shawn; it simply explains her perspective of it.

In the two years after Willow discovered her powers, her mischievous use of them became increasingly mean-spirited pranks, and her anger and confusion about being the only mutant/glitch she knew outside of her father spilled over into her pulling pranks on disliked classmates as well. It was then that Meryl and Shawn were finally able to convince Jacob to send Willow to the Colossus Academy so that she could have better structure, the ability to socialize with other mutants/glitches, and receive a more refined training on her powers.

Shawn's traumatizing and humiliating torment by his kid sister's hand was finally done, and Shawn believed he finally had a breather; a means to return to a normal life. However, high school can be just as cruel. Upon realizing Shawn's sister was “sent away,” it wasn't long for people to figure out she was a mutant/glitch. Although Shawn had no powers or physical mutations, he was still relentlessly teased by his peers, causing him to hate Willow even more since he could never escape her.

Shawn closed himself off from everyone; becoming a loner with virtually no friends aside from those he could make anonymously online. It wouldn't be until he left for college did he truly start anew. No one knew him, no one knew his sister, no one made the mutant/glitch connection. He was free. He broke all ties with his family when he graduated high school, making sure he could pay his own way through college.

He didn't want his family to know where he was, having grown distant from his parents as well. His kid sister had loved teasing him, pulling pranks on him, and messing with his head. His father cared more about “staying invisible” than he cared about keeping Shawn safe from his sister by sending her away, and Jacob had only caved when she started messing with her classmates; drawing attention to their family. Shawn's mother, while routinely begging Jacob to send Willow to The Academy, never did much to rein in her daughter and/or protect her son. Shawn had grown to hate them all.

(Side Note: in X-Future my husband had Shawn be a psychopath bent on revenge against his family, but I don't think he needs that additive, and I don't think psychopaths need more violent representation to add to the stigma, it’s bad enough that Trish may be a movie-stereotyped psychopath. So, in Glitches, Shawn is just a boy pushed to the edge by a less-than-ideal, and, dare I say, abusive/neglectful childhood.)

Since Shawn is a secondary character, I haven't come up with the actual inciting incident yet, but, while Shawn was away at college, and riled up about his family for whatever reason, his own powers finally manifested. Electrical current spiraled around his forearms, coming to points just past his finger tips like drill heads. He learned he could also shoot off these electrical drill heads from his arms. Once he realized he also had powers, Shawn became more and more destructive and violent, until he was finally expelled from college.

That was when The Brotherhood found him, recruited him, and Shawn took on the “oh so clever” code name of Screwdriver (my husband's idea; he likes puns). After his training with The Brotherhood was complete, Pyro allowed Shawn to have a bit of personal “leave” from the organization. Shawn used that opportunity to try to murder his parents. He failed; barely. So barely that he believed he had accomplished his task. Jacob and Meryl only survived because a few X-Men managed to get to them in time to rescue them from the rubble Shawn tried to crush them under.

Shawn's next goal, not realizing his parents are still alive, is to find Willow to torture and kill her.

Willow is dumbfounded to discover how violent and vengeful her brother has become, and is trying desperately to repent so she can help him heal and redeem himself. It probably isn't going to end well for these two, as showcased in this song that inspired their dynamic in the first place: “What Have You Done” by Within Temptation

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It was originally going to be Willow’s feelings towards Devon, but it just worked so much better as her singing about a love of a brother than a potential romantic relationship souring.

Penumbra:

Affectionately called “Penny” by Willow, Noelle “Penumbra” Firada has the ability to teleport via shadows, and turn shadows into solid objects she can wield and attack/defend with. She was paired up with the slightly younger girl as a roommate back at Colossus Academy. Barely a day into their living arrangements, Penumbra became fast-friends with Willow. This quickly turned into an attraction to her BFF and roommate. Before the end of the semester, Penumbra knew she was in love.

Willow loved the attention, and she'd routinely flirt with Penumbra. She even had a few make-out sessions with Noelle, just for the fun of it. Willow never loved Penumbra back, though. She just enjoyed the companionship. From Willow's point of view, she wasn't doing anything wrong. Penumbra wanted a relationship, and Willow was complying... to a point.

When the duo moved to the Xavier Institute, and Willow met Chayse and Devon, she realized what true infatuation - and even romance - felt like. It was then that she realized how cruel she was to Penumbra by stringing her along. She instantly stopped her flirting and sexually physical interactions with Noelle.

Shortly after, Penumbra realized that Willow wanted Chayse and/or Devon, but not her. Willow would never love Penumbra the way Penny wanted. So, Penumbra let Willow go. She moved on, and never begrudged Willow their relationship. She understood that Willow was young and stupid. Their friendship became stronger from it, but Penumbra also needed distance. So, once she was of age, Penumbra signed up to become a full-fledged X-Men (X-Man?), and volunteers to go on missions as frequently as possible to stay away from the Institute while Willow is still there studying.

William:

This is a character I won't be bringing over to Glitches, at least, not as-is. He may become part of a composite character, or be a rough skeleton to build a new original character from in the future. So, this bit of Willow's history is solely anchored to X-Future.

While at Colossus Academy and Xavier Institute, Willow continued to enjoy pulling pranks, although they weren't quite as mean-spirited as they were when she pulled them on Shawn. One of the students she loved to target was William. He was straight-laced, stuffy, a bookworm, stickler for the rules, and a 17yo that acted more like he was 80; always complaining about the immaturity of his classmates, and never joining in at social events. Willow wanted William to let loose and actually act like a kid for once, so she always tried to coax him via her illusions.

She would transform study rooms into hot spring oases, and have herself seemingly draped in just a towel as she relaxed in the water. This would get William worked up, but never in the manner that Willow intended. She misread a few glances from William as he raged about her illusions, and assumed he had a thing for her. Since she was only 15 at the time of their meeting, and he was nearing 18, she falsely assumed he was resisting the temptation of being with someone so young. She then wondered how far she could push him before he caved.

That was when she started to follow him around whenever they were out of classes, so she could try to seduce him. She created more oases, with images of her scantily clad within the illusions. She created “clones” of herself, so she could tease William while four other copies of herself crawled all over him, purring in his ear, sensually nibbling on his neck and fingers, and generally just straddling his lap.

William was never much of a fan, and routinely berated her immaturity and sensual nature.

One day, while experimenting with his teleportation powers, William accidentally teleported too high into the atmosphere, couldn't breathe, fainted, and fell to his death. Willow mourned him deeply, and helped Lia create a memorial statue of William by projecting an image of him for Lia to use as a blueprint for her sculpture.

Once alone in her room to grieve further, Willow realized she was never sexually or even romantically interested in William. Instead, the reason she had such fun teasing him was because he reminded her a little of Shawn, and she missed her brother. He had moved away to college at that point, and her parents couldn't tell her where he went. All she wanted to do was apologize to Shawn for her behavior when they were kids, and she wanted to apologize to William for tormenting him in a similar (but all-over different) manner. She will always regret never before realizing that William was like another older brother for her, and she again couldn't treat him the way he deserved.

Hedge:

The remaining brother-figure in her life, Willow was kinder to Winston, especially after her realization post-William. She tried to get him to open up to her, but in gentler ways, and without teasing him. He still mostly kept to himself, though, and this time Willow decided not to push.

Tragedy still struck when the Xavier Institute was attacked, and collapsed under an explosion. One of the students that died in the attack was Hedge, and Willow vowed to never forgive those responsible. Willow's heart broke to discover that her best friend and crush Devon was a potential suspect since he defected to The Brotherhood an hour before the attack.

Devon:

Willow saw through him fairly easily within the first few minutes of meeting each other. He was this punk kid who had lived on the streets and didn't trust anyone. He was also about as dense as steel, and only marginally more intelligent. She loved to pick on his ignorance and “tough guy” persona. However, she also saw potential in a fellow prankster. They soon started meeting up to plan pranks; usually on poor William. Willow loved the idea of Devon's shape-changing potential, although he focused mainly on his fire manipulation powers.

Devon grew a crush on Willow almost instantly, and she loved the attention. She just assumed it was like Penumbra's crush on her at first, especially since Willow had her eye on the headmistress's son Chayse at the time. However, the closer Willow got to Devon, the more they bonded and became friends, the more she realized her heart raced just a bit whenever he was around, and she would get flushed whenever she caught him staring, or could catch mental whispers of his attraction towards her. She definitely had a crush, and debated acting upon it. However, by that point Devon had become her other best friend, aside from Penumbra, and she didn't want to screw up this friendship the way she did with Penny. So she kept her crush to herself.

Shortly after realizing her romantic interest in Devon, he met a member of The Brotherhood. Pyro, to be exact, and Pyro instantly suspected that Devon could be his long-lost child. Unsure if Devon truly was his son, Pyro simply hinted that he could help Devon discover who his parents are, and who he truly is. Devon turned down the offer at first, instead asking Cyclops for answers. The veteran X-Men (X-Man? I never know what to call one X-Men member) decided to test Devon's loyalty first in a cruel and manipulative Danger Room session. He tricked Devon into presumably betraying the X-Men for The Brotherhood, and declared Devon unready to know his parentage.

This made Devon realize that perhaps he truly wasn't cut out for the X-Men, and ran off to join The Brotherhood. An hour later the Xavier Institute came crashing down in an attack. Most of the students were given enough warning to get to safety, but there were still casualties, such as Hedge.

Willow was terrified at first, because no one could find Devon. His letters of farewell and gratitude were burnt up in the attack; unread and unfound. A security tape linked to the school's version of a Black Box showed Devon running away from the school, proving he was alive, but making him a suspect in the attack.

Instantly, Willow went from worried to betrayed. She didn't know the face of the person/people who attacked the Institute, so it was Devon's face Willow pictured whenever she thought of revenge for Hedge. This did not bode well for Devon when he eventually made his way back to the Institute. He had initially meant to only infiltrate The Brotherhood, and then bring back intel to make up for his supposed betrayal in Cyclops' test. Devon had only stayed with The Brotherhood for two years because he learned of the attack on the Institute, assumed everyone there had been killed, and The Brotherhood promised him revenge on the school's supposed attackers: an anti-mutant group called The Purifiers.

When Devon discovered most of his friends had survived the attack, and the school was rebuilt, he attempted to return, and was promptly punched out by Willow upon his arrival.

It kept a while for Willow to forgive Devon, only for him to later be killed off by Trish. (Whoops. X-Future Spoilers...) Willow had to then grieve her friend once more, yet again unknowing that he actually is still alive and well. He was revived by another mutant unaffiliated with the X-Men or Brotherhood. However, Devon also has amnesia, his mutation gave him a new default face, and he's living in a mutant safe-house with the girl that revived him.

Chayse:

Willow almost instantly fell for Chayse. In the X-Future canon, Chayse was dating Lia when Willow transferred into the Xavier School. Willow flirted slightly, but she mostly left Chayse alone. She wasn't going to break up a relationship, which was one of the main reasons she switched focus to Devon, whom she was also attracted to, and who was single.

Alternatively, since Willow and Lia start up at Emily's school at the same time in Glitches, Chayse and Lia never actually start dating. Which means Willow and Chayse have more of a romantic relationship from the get-go, Chayse and Devon are more romantic rivals, and Willow doesn't become QUITE as close with Devon now that her attention is more equally torn between the guys.

For both X-Future and Glitches, Willow found Chayse attractive, and kind, and enjoyed that he was also more mischievous than he let on. She loved the idea of him rebelling slightly against his parents, especially when everyone expected the son of the Headmistress to be perfectly behaved and mature. She was also intrigued by Chayse. His powers of phasing and kinetic energy manipulation meant he was naturally resistant to psychic attacks. This included Willow's illusions. She could make him see or hear the illusions, but he quickly picked up that they weren't real and could dispel them. He also had to actively allow her to telepathically talk to him, as well as actively allow her illusions to work on him in order to get the sensory input of smell, taste, or touch.

Willow and Chayse were paired up for more and more X-Men missions after the attack on the school, bringing the duo closer. Willow as also no longer distracted by romantic interest in Devon. Before the duo realized what was happening, Chayse had fallen for Willow. They had promised not to act upon it while Chayse was still with Lia. When they got back from their mission, Chayse began the difficult task of breaking up with Lia. Shortly after, Chayse was visited by Penumbra, who vetted him to make sure he'd be a good boyfriend to Willow.

Seeing how much Chayse and Willow cared for each other, Penumbra surrendered her feelings, and gave the couple her blessing. It took significantly longer for Lia to also be alright with Chayse and Willow's relationship. Knowing how much their relationship would hurt Lia, they waited a month after Chayse and Lia's break-up before getting together, allowing Lia time to grieve before seeing her ex dating someone else. Chayse and Willow finally became an official couple for the Xavier Institute's prom.

Through time travel shenanigans in X-Future that will not appear in Glitches, a man named Sebastian arrived at the present from the future. The 20-something was so shocked to have traveled back in time that he didn't hide his origins nearly as well as he should have. It was quickly revealed that he was the son of Chayse and Willow; a stunning fact that was revealed only a couple weeks after Chayse and Willow began dating.

After the initial shock, things fell back into some semblance of normalcy. The next big hurtle for Willow, who is now much more mature than when she started out, is to help Chayse through his struggle with the knowledge that his best friend wishes to kill him after being tortured and brain washed (very Stucky, but without the sexual tension). Meanwhile, Willow is still dealing with the knowledge that Shawn wishes her dead, and has already attempted to torture her by nearly killing Chayse.

Lia:

There was always an awkward relationship between my two main X-Future characters. Lia was a bit shy, a goody-two-shoes, and mature for her age. She butted heads a little with the more cocky, playful, outgoing, mischievous, and relatively immature Willow. Luckily, Lia is a little dense herself, and never really picked up on Willow's attraction towards Chayse, otherwise there may have been more tension. Tension that might make its way to Glitches since both ladies will be vying for Chayse's attention at the same time.

A month or so after transferring to the Xavier Institute, Willow calmed down a bit, and Lia saw her more endearing qualities. The two became friends as Lia tried to rein Willow in a touch, and Willow helped Lia cut loose a little. They balanced each other out, and by the end of the school year, they were good friends. Things got a little shaky again when Willow was sent on a mission with Chayse after the school's collapse, and Lia was forced to stay behind to help fortify the school's foundation. When Chayse returned and continued his relationship with Lia without a hiccup at all, Lia figured her jealousy was uncalled for, and her friendship with Willow strengthened again.

They became roommates that school year, and grew closer as friends. So, when Willow realized how much she cared for Chayse, and that Chayse liked her back, she felt incredibly guilty and turned Chayse down. She couldn't be the reason he broke up with Lia. Chayse then confessed that he and Lia had just grown apart over their two-year relationship, and he was planning on breaking up with her anyway. He and Willow then agreed to not do anything until Chayse officially broke up with Lia. Even then, they’d give Lia time to grieve the relationship before she had to watch her roommate and close friend date her ex.

The unexpected hiccup in their plan was that apparently Lia didn’t see her and Chayse drifting apart as much as he did. She did NOT take the break up well. Her emotions went berserk, and she lost control of her powers, igniting herself into her lava form, but without the added obsidian skin protection she usually had. Thankfully, Chayse was able to phase Willow out of the room before anyone was injured. Chayse then used his powers to try to calm Lia back down; collapsing under the stress. Seeing Chayse faint shocked Lia back into control of her powers, and she rushed to get help while Willow watched over Chayse.

Willow and Lia then had a semi-heated argument in the infirmary while waiting to hear news about Chayse. Lia admitted her wrongdoing in their argument, and the two called an uneasy truce.

Willow walked on eggshells around Lia for the next month, but eventually accepted Chayse's invite to the prom. By that point, Lia was mostly in a good spot again. She and Willow again attempted to build their friendship back up. It took some time, and they butted heads a few times yet again. Lia backslid a bit when she found out the truth about Sebastian, but then realized that she was trying to compete against “fate” so she officially gave up on her feelings for Chayse, and wished he and Willow a happy relationship.

Nearly a year later, and Lia and Willow are finally back to a good place between them. Lia is now dealing with a similar situation as Chayse: her former roommate and good friend is teamed up with Chayse's former best friend, and the duo is trying to attack the X-Men and destroy Chayse and Lia. Willow's trying her best to keep her two closest companions above water, especially after losing Devon.

Willow's Parents Jacob and Meryl:

In truth, while Jacob and Meryl have a rough and unhealthy relationship with Shawn, they have a fairly good relationship with Willow.

Meryl was a bit afraid of Willow when she would torment Shawn, and was at wit's end trying to figure out what to do with her daughter. However, since Willow was sent to Colossus Academy, and has matured and mellowed a bit, Meryl was able to have the loving Mother-Daughter relationship they had before Willow discovered her powers.

On the flipside, Willow was hurt at first to discover that Jacob had powers the whole time, but decided to hide them from his children. With their training, though, Willow began to bond with her father. She then felt abandoned and unwanted when she was sent to the Academy, but by the end of her first year there, she understood how unruly she was and why she had to be sent away. While not as close as during those two years Jacob was her sole trainer, Willow did grow a tight bond with her father again over the years.

Willow was terrified to hear of her parents’ near-death experience while she was away on a mission, and even more horrified to realize it was Shawn who had attacked them. In the X-Future canon, Willow was also pissed to find out that her parents knew of Shawn's mental illness, and hid both it and his need for drugs from Willow. While Willow was in shock to discover how violent and hate-filled Shawn was, Meryl and Jacob accepted it as who their son truly was without his medication.

Again, in the Glitches rewrite, Shawn won't be a psychopath, and so the “that's just Shawn off his meds” mentality won't show up.

Until things are resolved with Shawn, Willow's parents have sanctuary within the Xavier Institute. Willow's not the largest fan of seeing her parents daily after 4yrs of being away at boarding schools, especially since she's grown accustomed to a bit of self-parenting and autonomy. However, she also finds it nice to have access to her parents whenever she wants to see them, talk to them, or just be around them/hug them.

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Well, this post is even longer than the first one for Willow! I haven't even talked about her relationships with other characters, such as Cyclops, the villainess Agony, the new recruits Jacob and Temperance, or Devon's new love Nyssa. It's just too much to introduce the characters as well, though, so I'll have to wave the white flag here. Next up will be Meet Willow: Part 3 – Character Arc Events. For that post, I'm going to talk about the main events of X-Future that impact Willow's over-all character arc, as well as how they might show up in Glitches.

While you wait for that post to go live, feel free to check out the other posts in this series.

Who Wants To Meet My OCs? Part 1

learning how I created Gyatera and Glitches

Who Wants To Meet My OCs? Part 2

learning how I came up with the characters for Gyateara

Who Wants To Meet My OCs? Part 3a

learning how I came up with the original teenage characters for Glitches

Who Wants To Meet My OCs? Part 3b

learning how I came up with original reworks of the adult characters for Glitches

Meet Willow (Part 1 – Background)

Broad overview of Willow’s past, her powers, and her personality

#writing #LycoRogue writing #OCs #Meet My OCs #Meet Willow #long post #Glitches #Willow Driver #Willow #Willow's relationships #series post #6 of ?#updates every other Sunday #LycoRogue original

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lycorogue · 5 years

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Meet My OCs: Willow (Part 1 - Background)

Sorry this post was delayed a week. Sorry again that it’s 11pm on Sunday, so I almost missed my publication deadline AGAIN!

I really did aim to get this up for my weekly Sunday updates of this series. However, Willow proved to be a bit more detailed than I gave her credit, resulting in her introductory post taking the better part of a week to write up and edit.

Before I get further into this post, however, have you had a chance to read my intro posts? They're not needed, but they do provide added context.

Part 1: What is this “Meet My OCs” series, and what was my inspiration when creating the worlds these characters live in?

Part 2: What IRL inspiration helped me create my four main OCs for my Gyateara stories?

Part 3a: What is the X-Future play-by-post game, and what inspired the creation of the main characters for Glitches?

Part 3b: What X-Men canonical characters needed to be reworked for Glitches, and how have they changed to become more original creations?

Feel free to check those out, and then come back. Otherwise, links will also be at the end of this post for your convenience.

Now then, let's get into the true meat and potatoes of this series, starting with the character I tend to unintentionally favor. The one who has the most visual presence. The one whose introduction was so massive (over 30pgs long in a Word document) that I had to split it into 6 parts to avoid overwhelming people (this may still overwhelm, though; sorry). These Meet My OCs posts are getting beefy.... I think I’ll have to switch to every OTHER Sunday for the updates.... Anyway, be prepared for a nice 6-post dump onto your dash!

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Willow “Wisp” Driver

I was the one who watermarked that pic, BTW, to make sure Willow can't be swiped by anyone...

And, can we also give another quick shout out to @edendaphne for the beautiful commission work on my baby girl?

Anyway, Willow was my second X-Future character, and quickly climbed the ranks to one of my most prominent and vocal characters of all time. Check below for Part 1 of Willow's intro, which includes a broad overview of who Willow is, and some backstory for her. In a few minutes, I'll also have up Part 2, which talks more about Willow's main relationships: her family, her friends, and her romances. Later, I'll post Part 3, which talks about her basic storyline within X-Future, and how it relates to my intended starter arc for her in Glitches. In Part 4, I showcase some more artwork of Willow, followed by some narrative scene examples in Part 5. Finally, I’ll conclude with Part 6: wrestler entrances for Hubby’s WWE13 game.

Overview:

Willow was 15 when she was first created back in 2012. She is currently 18 in our game. She's about average height at 5'4” (162.56cm), and has a fairly lean body. She's not overtly muscular, but she is sculpted due to her favorite form of exercise: parkour/free-running, an activity she started after school when she was 10 in order to help burn off extra energy. She's playful, flirty, a mischievous prankster, bubbly, and has a bit of a snarky/sarcastic attitude. She's also cunning, a bit manipulative, incredibly passionate, and surprisingly cautious and suspicious. She tends to surprise people by having a different view of life than most expect, making her playful when most might be somber, making her angered when most would be relieved, or making her harsh when most would be sympathetic. (examples of these outlooks will be in Part 5)

Further Physical Description:

Her hair is naturally a silvery-white, but that's too “grandma” and “bland” looking for her, especially with such pale Irish-American skin. So, to accent her aquamarine eye color, she routinely streaks the silver with blue. The shade of blue varies from dye to dye.

Family:

Willow's mother Meryl is a “normal” human. However, Willow's father Jacob Driver is a mutant (glitch). He has the power to “manipulate” any object so it looks like whatever he wants, as long as it's roughly the same shape, size, and weight. For instance, a chunk of cement could appear to be a large, raw ruby. A stack of blank paper can look like a first draft manuscript of a famous novel. A flashlight can look like a stick of dynamite, and children's play money can look like $100 bills. (Yes, Jacob was inspired by Hook Waters and the Shifting ability from the 2009 movie “Push,” and the categories for The GRID are also inspired by “Push”). Now, the objects aren't physically changed in any form. Instead, Jacob drapes the items within the illusionary forms he desires. His targets will 100% believe the objects are what Jacob claims, as long as they are indeed the correct size, shape, and weight; giving the items the tactile features the illusions suggest. Non-targets of Jacob's powers, however, will see the object for what it truly is. So, if someone accepts the “raw ruby” from Jacob, and takes it to a jeweler, said jeweler will simply see the original chunk of cement.

In his youth, Jacob had used his ability to manipulate items in order to swindle his way through life: making his homework appear done, his dissertation seem ingenious, his wallet always look filled with large bills, etc. He was eventually caught, and served some jail time. He was released early on good behavior, and ended up meeting Meryl, who turned him from a life of crime and swindling. (In the Glitches version, Jacob even had a bit of a playful con-artist rivalry with Ryder, and both men went legit after meeting their wives).

Now trying to stay off the radar as much as possible, Jacob resisted using his powers. He also avoided the public visibility of protesting at mutant/glitch rallies, deciding instead to silently protest mutant/glitches injustice from his home via online boards and petitions. Jacob also made a point of following the latest mutant/glitches news reports, even with his children Shawn and Willow within earshot, much to Meryl's disapproval due to the violence usually talked about in the reports. The news affected Shawn and Willow differently than Meryl originally expected, and the two would pretend to have battles using the various superpowers they heard about via the news.

Powers:

Willow has the power of illusion. To be more technical, she has the telepathic ability to make her target's brain believe an illusion so faithfully that it becomes a seemingly physical manifestation. They actually hear what Willow wants them to hear, see what she wants them to see, taste the flavors she mentally puts into their mouths, and smell the scents she coats her illusions with. Most importantly, through a secondary use of her telekinetic powers, she can have her illusions have a “physical” form to those targeted to experience them. She can lift someone off the ground to make them feel like they're flying, falling, or climbing. She can mentally push down on someone to create the feeling of weight. She can also manipulate parts of the brain so the illusions have texture. The target can feel the cool lick of water splashing against their legs, the sharpness of a needle pricking their skin, the softness of satin, the frigid cold of a snow storm, the rough texture of sandpaper, etc. For all intents and purposes, for Willow's target, the illusions are physical manifestations.

When Willow first started using her powers, she could only concentrate on the two main senses of sight and sound. If she wanted to target more than one person, or if she wanted her illusions to affect more senses, she had to shift to the psychic world of the Astral Plane, causing her to fall unconscious as her consciousness transitioned onto the other level of existence. While on the Astral Plane, she could also use her telepathy to read minds and communicate telepathically. After some practice, she was able to learn to condense the psychic energy of the Astral Plane into a weapon (psy-weapon) she could use while on that plane.

Now that Willow is 18, she has much better control of her powers. She can create fully immersive illusions targeting up to 20 people within a quarter-mile radius (402m). She can use her telepathy for communication and reconnaissance for up to 5 people within the same quarter-mile radius. She can also use telekinesis to lift a collective weight of up to 600lbs (~272kg) within a 30ft (9.14m) radius. All of this without having to shift to the Astral Plane. When she does move to the other plane of existence, her powers increase 10-fold.

One of her favorite illusions, which also truly showcases her base personally, is turning herself into her version of the Cheshire Cat. One can usually tell that Willow has a prank or other mischievous plan in mind when she manifests cat ears, a tail, and a cat-like grin.

Image generated via gen8′s Chibi Maker on deviantart.

Power Manifestation:

As mentioned above, when they were kids, Shawn and Willow would run around their backyard in San Diego, California, and pretend to use superpowers to battle either each other or an imaginary foe. They would pretend they had telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation, wings, pyrokinesis, electrokinesis, accelerated healing, energy blasts, etc. One day, when Willow was 11, she became upset that her nearly 13-year-old brother was refusing to play pretend anymore. While nagging him to play with her, she imagined herself throwing fireballs at Shawn. He then actually saw the fireballs aimed at him, as well as the fire damage the dodged balls created. Understandably, he ran, terrified, and screaming for their parents.

Jacob, still trying to stay as far off-radar as possible, avoided sending Willow to a “Mutant Only” school, and instead tried to train her to control herself and her powers. It was tricky, though, since she showcased different powers on any given day, making it hard to know what her abilities actually were. Her imagination also expanded with her powers, and she soon reveled in the thrill of pulling pranks with her ability, usually resulting in terrorizing Shawn. After two years of Willow “playfully” tormenting her brother – as well as some classmates – Jacob finally caved, and sent Willow to the Colossus Academy; a sister location to the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters.

It was at the Academy that a telepath was able to finally figure out Willow's power of illusion and manipulation, and helped start Willow's training. While Willow continued to pull pranks, they weren't nearly as mean spirited as they were towards her brother.

In the Glitches rework, Emily’s school on the east coast is the only place Willow is sent. I’m still reworking the timeframe of everything now that I don’t have those 2 extra years between Willow discovering her powers and going to the school. I do know that Willow is sent to Emily’s school because of Jacob’s connection with her husband Ryder.

Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters:

In X-Future, Willow originally went to the west coast branch of the Xavier Institute: Colossus Academy, appropriately run by Piotr “Colossus” Rasputin. Willow stayed at the Academy from age 13 through 15; grades 8 and 9. While at the Academy, she became best friends with her roommate Noelle “Penumbra” Firada. She also became close with Marjory “Lookout” Allodis, the girl tasked to keep her safe whenever Willow went into the Astral Plane, leaving her lifeless body defenseless. A young boy named Winston “Hedge” Michaels became a bit of an unwanted tag-along. He was only two years younger than Willow, but the introverted and awkward boy with virtually no social skills latched onto her as an unwanted and bothersome younger brother figure.

When Willow was 15 and nearing the conclusion of her second year at the Academy, Colossus and his wife Jubilee were needed for a crucial X-Men-related mission. Neither of them returned home. Delegates from the Xavier Institute were sent to the Colossus Academy so the students could finish their school year, as well as figure out where to go next. Then, once summer hit, the Academy was shut down. A lot of the students were sent to the east coast and the Institute. Once there, Willow originally stuck with her core group of Noelle (Penny), Marjory (Marge), and Winston. Willow's a friendly enough person, outgoing and inviting, so it didn't take long for her to make friends with Devon, Chayse, and Lia, as well as create a playful rivalry with a classmate named William.

For more about these relationships, check out Part 2 of Meet Willow.

Willow's Style:

Her base style started off a bit punk/rocker/scene, similar to the early 2000's fashion Rogue and Boom-Boom wore in X-Men: Evolution. Over the past 7yrs since I created Willow, her style toned down a little bit. She still wears fairly form-fitting outfits and short skirts, though. Her main color scheme trends towards blue and white, to match her hair.

Willow's a borderline exhibitionist, always teetering on that line between showing off enough to excite onlookers, and leaving JUUUUUST enough to the imagination. She has budding curves, and she's perfectly fine showing them off to everyone. In fact, much like Trish, Willow has an unofficial theme song herself: “I Get Off” by Halestorm

youtube

Willow doesn’t really care who you are when she flirts and teases. All she cares about is if she's getting your blood pumping, if you end up desiring her, and if she's riling you up somehow. She's just turned on by someone else getting turned on by her. She's much more modest than she lets on, though, and rarely follows through with any sexual acts. Instead, she uses her powers of illusion to create a copy of herself, and lets the copy continue along with the act, should the other person wish to go along still. She's so used to deceit and manipulation, thanks to her powers and how she uses them, that it's actually hard for her to find full trust in others. As much as she teases that sex is all well-and-good fun, deep down she knows she, personally, would regret participating with her own body unless she fully trusted her partner.

Her desire to get others riled up and turned on even extends to using her illusions to try to draw other couples together. Especially with a bunch of “Will they; won't they”, she has fun having an illusion of one trying to seduce the other, just to see where the snag in their “will they” might be. Plus, she loves watching her classmates blush.

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Welp, there’s your broad introduction to Willow. Now to move on to Part 2, where I’ll talk a bit more about her main relationships.

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While waiting for Part 2, you can also check out my introductory posts for this over-all Meet My OCs series.

Quick recap this series thus far, in Part 1 I talked about why I wanted to do this series in a bit more depth than I did above, and I talk about the real world inspiration for creating my two main worlds:

Gyateara – a high fantasy world that will, presumably, house many self-contained series that may or may not interconnect beyond all taking place on the same planet

Glitches – a pseudo-cyberpunk future AU of Earth where mutated humans – known as Glitches – must fight for equality, and even survival, while also dealing with the normal dramas of puberty.

In Part 2 of my series, I explained the real-world inspiration for my four main Gyateara OCs:

Amara Yori

Jolene Crisslebalm

Natalie

Connor

Part 3 of this series went a bit long, so it was broken down into its own two-parter. In Part 3a, I talked about the creation of the four main characters of Glitches:

Chayse

Lia

Willow

Trish

For Part 3b of this series, I explained the canonical character origins of my adult Glitches, and how they've been reworked to create my still-evolving adult support characters for Glitches:

Matteo

Emily

Ryder

Keahi

Cody

Iggy

Alright, this long post is becoming more epic, so I'll catch you guys in Meet Willow Part 2 in a few minutes!

#writing #LycoRogue writing #OCs #Meet My OCs #Meet Willow #long post #Glitches #Willow Driver #Willow #Willow overview #Willow powers #Willow history #series post #5 out of ?#updates every other Sunday #LycoRogue original

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lycorogue · 5 years

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Who Wants to Meet My OCs? (Part 3b – Glitches Reworks)

Who’s ready for part two (er... of part 3...)?

If you’ve missed it, I’m doing a series to introduce everyone to my main OCs (and no, I’m TOOOOOTALLY not doing this to procrastinate on writing my fanfics... why do you ask?)

In Part 1, I introduced the series, what I wanted to do with it, and gave some insight on the real world inspiration for my two worlds:

Gyateara

Glitches

Then, in Part 2, I talked about the IRL inspiration for my Gyateara characters:

Amara Yori

Natalie

Connor

Jolene Crisslebalm

The first half of this third part of the series - Part 3a - I talked about how characters are created for the Play-by-Post RP X-Future; the game that birthed Glitches. I also talked about the inspiration for my main four truly original characters: my husband’s character Chayse, and My Girls: Lia, Willow, and Trish.

In this final part of the introduction series, I’m going to talk about the adult characters of Glitches, the X-Men/Marvel canonical characters they were derived from, and how I have started altering them to create original variants to use for Glitches.

If this sort of thing strikes your fancy, feel free to read about these characters below the break. If you’re more interested in the actual individual character bios, the first one will be up next Sunday. Catch ya then!

Marvel Canon Reworks:

The next series of characters were all originally canon characters for the X-Men comics. They are all significant for the X-Future characters, and therefore would need an original counterpart for Glitches. I have yet to figure out anyone’s last names....

Matteo

Emily

Ryder

Keahi

Cody

Ignatius “Iggy”

Ready to find out who they were originally?

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Matteo

In X-Future, after Xavier dies in The Reaping, Kitty (Pryde) LeBeau and James “Logan” Howlett take over as the headmistress and headmaster of the school. Wolverine has a strong presence in X-Future because of that, and also because of family created by some of the players. Now, I don't have the IP for any of Wolverine's children/grandchildren/clone's children... (it gets complicated...), but I like the idea of Wolverine being Kitty's foil. A sort of Magneto to Kitty's Professor X. So Wolvie needed an overhaul.

Matteo is half-Puerto Rican, half-African American. His Latino features are more dominant though. And, honestly, the only real reason I thought of including the half-African American part was because it was a suggestion of a friend. His character Lucas is the son of Wolverine's clone X-23. Back when I was first thinking of creating Glitches, this friend was very much involved in helping me figure out what parts of X-Future should make the cut. We jointly reworked Lucas slightly so that he is instead a kid whom Matteo rescued from government experimentation. Lucas was Black, and so my friend thought having Matteo be at least half-Black would help Lucas see a connection that would lead him to trust Matteo and bond with him. A sort of Bruce Wayne/Dick Grayson sort of dynamic.

Said friend of mine sort of went radio-silent after moving a few states away, and so I no longer feel comfortable using Lucas in Glitches. Therefore, I'm not sure if I should just revert Matteo back to full Puerto Rican. It's still up in the air.

I needed him to have the feral personality and physical durability that Wolverine has, but he's now gruff and hardened less because of what had been done to him, but because his younger sister was killed in government experimentation. He is NOT a fan of humans and Glitches (my word for mutants) cohabiting. He no longer has the claws, but takes Logan's begrudging paternal personality and cranks it up a few notches.

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Emily

Kitty “Shadowcat” Pryde, as mentioned above, is the headmistress of the Institute, and she's Chayse's very involved mother. I couldn't leave her out if Chayse was transitioning into Glitches. So, she became Emily. Since Chayse has both parents' powers in equal parts, it was a touch easier to manipulate both Shadowcat and Gambit so that Chayse still had the same power set, but the Glitches version of his parents SHOULD be different enough not not be blatant rip-offs.

I started off by giving Emily Gambit's powers, sorta. Instead of Gambit's ability to create kinetic energy, Emily can MANIPULATE kinetic energy. Not only can she build up or create kinetic energy out of potential, she can also instantly pull kinetic energy out of an object in order to drop it back into potential energy. This means, for instance, if she were to catch a ball, she wouldn't need to follow through with her arm; it moving with the kinetic energy transferred from the ball once it's stopped in her hand. Instead, her skin simply absorbs the kinetic energy and the ball stops instantly, as if it were gently lobbed over to her. Likewise, if she concentrates, she can make her skin impenetrable: instantly withdrawing the kinetic energy from things such as bullets, cars, blades, etc., before it can puncture or otherwise injure her skin. No skin injuries also tends to mean no internal injuries.

Of course, the main use of this kinetic manipulation is the way Gambit uses it: adding or building up kinetic energy in an object. This can be used to add force to an object, such as hitting harder with a bat or bo staff without added effort, jumping higher or running faster, or building up enough energy the object explodes. Emily and Chayse also figure out how to use the kinetic energy very similarly to The Flash from the DC comics. Namely, build up enough kinetic energy within their own cells that they vibrate fast enough to pass through other particles. This makes them intangible and capable of phasing through solid objects. It takes a LOT of practice to keep their feet particles on top of the ones that make up the floor/ground. Even more practice allows for “air steps” where they can actually climb the particles that make up the air itself. This brings things back full-circle to Kitty's phasing powers.

I have been so focused on Emily's backstory, ideals, and new powers, so I don't really have a mental image of her that is vastly different than Kitty Pryde's. I still need to work on that. The only real big thing is that Emily has eyes similar to Gambit: unnatural colored irises and sclera. Normally, Emily has the naturally occurring white sclera, and magenta irises. When she's using her powers, however, the magenta bleeds into her sclera. That's it. That's all the physical description I have thus far...

Personality wise, however, she is much more stern and focused than Kitty is shown in most canonical iterations.

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Ryder

Gambit is just as much of an involved parent as Kitty, so it's only natural that if Kitty has to become Emily, then Remy becomes Ryder. My biggest problem, though, was how to make a suave, Cajun, con-man with powers NOT feel like THE Cajun: Remy “Gambit” LeBeau himself. Granted, not having the ability to blow things up helps, but there's so much more to Gambit than just that.

I wanted to keep him suave, a reformed con-man, White with a non-American accent, and have a love of play cards. That's just TOO Gambit to not include. At the same time... it's SOOOOO Gambit to NOT be recognizable. So, I started off by changing the Cajun accent to one I find equally sexy: Australian. Next, Ryder is more a con-artist than a con-man. More of a manipulator than a thief. He still loves his cards, but he's more likely to play Three Card Monty with them than blow you up with them.

One of the side-effects to Gambit's kinetic powers is the “accidental telepathic manipulation.” He may not even realize he does this, but Gambit can mess with the kinetic energy WITHIN SOMEONE'S BRAIN! He can make certain parts of the brain fire off, making his target much more susceptible to believing his lies, manipulation, and over-all charm. Gambit also always has a kinetic shield around him that continuously shifts erratically. This makes it extremely difficult for telepaths to break through the kinetic field and attack Gambit's mind. Effectively making him highly resistant to telepathic attacks and/or manipulation/suggestion.

So, I figured I'd take this commonly overlooked part of Gambit's powers, and make it Ryder's main mutation. He has a “silver tongue” and has the telepathic ability of verbal suggestion, manipulation, and hypnosis.

Ryder looks like a normal human, albeit a gorgeous one. He has brunette hair instead of Gambit's usually auburn, and he has intense “baby blues” that helps him hold eye contact, which elevates his powers. I don't have much more by way of physical description.

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Keahi

On the one hand, Keahi is a major rework of her canon counterpart. In the comics, Amara “Magma” Aquilla is a blonde haired, blue eyed, White girl from the Roman-like society of Neo Roma. They wear togas still and everything. The Amara from X-Future is the version we see in “X-Men: Evolution” in which she's just a typical Brazilian girl of tan skin and brown hair and eyes. I shifted her again so that Keahi is Hawaiian. A bit of a change.

On the flip-side, you can only do so much with “woman who can manipulate tectonic plates and magma, can create fireballs, is immune to fire/lava/breathing in ash, and transforms into a humanoid walking ball of magma.” Lia has all of those powers, so her mother has to have them. Which means I can't really do much with Amara's powers to alter them for Keahi.

Since Keahi doesn't actually show up all that much in Glitches – ya know, since she's MIA – I didn't spend terribly too much time on her. I still need to sit down and figure her out a bit.

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Cody

Jamie “Multiple Man” Madrox is too much of a helicopter parent to not have him follow Lia over into the Glitches rework. The main reason he could be a helicopter parent to such an extreme is his ability to create duplicates. That way he can literally always be with Lia, except for when she needs privacy, such as when she's in the bathroom and/or changing.

In Glitches, Jamie is now Cody, a man who can still create clones of himself out of fresh drops of his own blood. Slightly different than Jamie's impact-created duplicates. The funny thing, though, is for someone whose powers requires bleeding, he's as Edge Lord as a middle-aged man with diabetes. Cody gets viciously protective of those he loves, so he can get some of that badassery his comic counterpart has, but... it's not wholly evident.

In order to use his power, I had Keahi design a special wedding band for her husband. It's similar to (Spoiler alert?) Annie's ring from “Attack on Titan.”

It has a spike hidden inside it that Cody can flick out to puncture or slash his skin whenever he needs blood in a hurry. Normally, he does keep a sleeve of sterilized sewing needles in his pocket, and pricks his fingers on those, but the wedding band is used in a pinch, and has helped him in the past.

Cody still needs some more work as well, but his build is mostly “generic over-protective dad.”

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Ignatius “Iggy”

Iggy started his life as St. John “Pyro” Allerdyce, aka: Devon's father. I was actually largely inspired to create Iggy after watching the anime “K.” Specifically, Iggy is largely designed after the Red King Suoh Mikoto. I mean, look at this guy!

(Sorry, I no longer have the artist credit after my computer crashed. If you know who put this together, please let me know.)

(Same deal; the file I had that listed where I found this fanart got corrupted when my computer crashed. Please let me know if you recognize the artist)

(There's just something about a fit man juuuuuuuust barely showing off his stomach that is just so yummy for me.)

Anyway... Throw in a little Billy Idol and flame-ombre hair, and you have the basic aesthetic for Iggy.

Iggy's personality is more manic than Pyro's. He can be calm and calculated, but also be enraged out of nowhere and go on a rampage; the same qualities his protégé Trish possesses. I wanted Iggy to have a “sexy British-derived accent” still, and with the red hair, I figured: go Irish. So Iggy is an Irish immigrant. The Brotherhood is now a street gang that Iggy turned into a terrorist group. So... again, semi-inspired by Suoh from “K.”

He still has the power to manipulate flame, without the ability to create it. However, there are so many fire manipulators/pyrokinetics throughout pop culture that I'm hoping Iggy doesn't feel like a Discount Bin Pyro.

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In the end, there's not much that I've really done with these character re-works yet, but you'll get to meet them further in later posts.

Until then, thank you for taking this time to see a broad look at my character creation process. If you have any notes on how I can make these characters more distinct from their canon counterparts, feel free to drop me a DM or something.

Thank you, and I’ll see you guys again next week for the first of my individual character profiles. I’m going to start with the “most vocal”: Willow.

#writing #LycoRogue writing #OCs #Meet My OCs #character creation #IRL character inspiration #writing process #long post #Glitches #Matteo #Emily #Ryder #Keahi #Cody #Iggy #series post #4 of 18?#LycoRogue original

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