So, Mirror Image was brought up in conversation yesterday, and my muse being what it is was all like ‘…yeah, okay, sure’, and off it went. These were actually done after working on the anniversary piece, with the thought of ‘how would I design the character now?’ Granted, since my nostalgia for everything is extremely high lately, the initial thoughts were to more or less keep everything the same with some style tweeks because it’s been twenty years, but I wasn’t thrilled with what I had come up with for Shizuka.
Callisto brought up the thought that her character has a different naming convention than her kingdom, which is Greek/Roman in nature, and for some reason, that reminded me that Shizuka’s kingdom was supposed to simply be the Asian kingdom, and in the past, was Japanese/Chinese inspired. I generally tended towards Japanese back in the day (and still more or less do), but I had the thought of what if most everything was Japanese inspired, but their clothing was Chinese inspired?
I stuck her in this just for the hell of it, and I rather like it, sadly. I know I attempted to make her outfit Chinese inspired before, but eh, I never actually did anything with it. ^^;
I also did the other three of my own characters, but I hadn’t changed them from when I did these a month ago.
The first sheet depicts Jennifer Hannigan, Shizuka, and her Guide, Ryu. Jenni and Shizuka are the same person – Jenni is who she is on Earth and Shizuka is who she is when she arrives in Melohdia with no memories of who she is or how she got there. Jenni is an archology intern who recently got invited to help out on an excavation of a Roman site in England. Her parents died in a plane crash when she was bout 2 and she was raised by her grandfather who died a year or so before the story would start. She went to England to start fresh, since she doesn’t really have anyone left in the world (which is what makes her deciding to stay in Melohdia a bit easier for her).
Shizuka is a Dragon Tamer whose ability is speed. This ability did bleed into her normal form in that Jenni was shockingly fast, but she had no interest in running or anything or that nature, so no one noticed it before. She uses a katana and the magic of being an Elecus Uni allows for her to be proficient in it without any training, and the combination of her sword skills and her speed makes her rather deadly. She’s pretty much the only one of the Uni whose rather excited about what’s going on, but this is mostly due to her general love of learning about ancient cultures, and Melohdia is full of ancient Earth cultures. Her dragon there is Tonbo, who is secretly the King of Dragons.
Ryu is also a Dragon Tamer, although he has no dragon. He has no interest in becoming a full fledged Tamer, either, because he prefers crafting things. But he comes from a long line of Tamers, and so it’s expected that he’d become one. The fact that he has no dragon at his age as sort of made him a disgrace, so when Tonbo showed some interest in him, his family pretty much threw him at the dragon. So when Tondo suddenly started traveling towards Azibo, he was forced by his family to follow the dragon, which is reluctantly agreed to. Ryu is the first person that Shizuka comes across in Melohdia, and he’s rather relieved when Tonbo choses Shizuka over him, since it means that he could focus more on his own interest. But he agrees to travel with Shizuka and become her Guide because that meeting forged a connection between the two of them, and he’s interested in seeing more of Melohdia, anyway.
The next set is of Owen Lewis, Geoffrey, and his Guide, Alden. Owen is sort of floating around at the moment, having arrived in England recently because he’s trying to distance himself from his family. He’s the younger of identical twins, and because he was born second, he’s been overlooked his entire life. Despite the fact that he does everything better than his brother, his twin is the golden child, the one who does no wrong and is the shining light of his parents’ eyes. But he’s an awful, selfish sort of person, and his parents are awful, selfish people, and he decided to just be done with them and leave it all behind. He’s doing his best to scrape by with the little that he managed to save and what little his parents threw at him because they didn’t think he’d be able to survive, but he’s worried that he might be proving them right somehow.
Geoffrey is a Pirate, and absolutely no one is sure what the hell that actually means. His ability is knowledge of weapons, meaning he can use any and all weapons without any training (whereas the others can only use one specific weapon). This bled into his normal form though his interest in all non-firearm weapons, although he never used any himself. For the most part, while he’s not thrilled and enthusiastic about what’s going on as Shizuka is, he’s going with the flow of everything, because there’s no point in fighting this. It is the first time in his life that he’s recognized and praised for his accomplishments, though, so he starts to warm up to everything fairly quickly.
Alden is a scholar, and he’s in Azibo to attend the university that’s been established there because it holds most of the knowledge of Melohdia. He, like Ryu, is the first person Geoffrey runs into upon arriving in Azibo, but he’s also the cause of him not arriving with the others right away. He finds Geoffrey annoying at first because he’s distracting and he doesn’t really want to help this stranger, but sadly, their meeting forged a connection as well. Alden doesn’t make the connection about who Geoffrey is until he hears people talk about the arrival of the Electus Uni, at which point he delivers Geoffrey to the others. He agrees to travel with the others because it figures it’s a great opportunity to gain knowledge from all over Melohdia.
(Alden actually belongs to @anijeltaventry. I'm just sort of going off what I remember of him from the original RP we did. ^^;)
The last sheet is of Dimitri Kaminski, Leilani, and his Guide, Olina. Dimitri actually came to England about two years before the story started because his ability in Melohida bleed more heavily into his real self, which is prophetic dreams. He had been dreaming about the future and more specifically Melohdia all his life, which actually out a strain on his relationship with his parents because he was branded a freak fairly early on. Because of course the ability to predict the future isn’t actually a Thing, and his obsession with it got old really quick. The visions, though, grew to a point where he eventually got fed up and left for England early, much to the relief of his family.
Leilani is a shaman, and was pulled into Melohdia two years before everyone else by the other god of the world. However, he’s the Uni of an island kingdom that has yet to be discovered by the rest of the continent, or at least not officially. So they have no clue about the Electus Uni or what’s going on. They’d just been having these people with Divine Gifts show up and have sort of started to worship them, in a way. Leilani, with no real memory of why he arrived and no proper visions of the future with the others yet, has been chilling on the island for the past two years, up until a man from Caelestis shows up and finds this guy who is very clearly one of the Uni hanging out with these clueless people. So the man decides to take Leilani with him ad claim that he’s the Uni from Caelestis, because no one would believe he’s from an island no one knows existed. (This man isn’t exactly the greatest guy, either). He takes up the name Livius and just goes along with him, because he has been having visions about this moment. But this all happens prior to the Uni actually arriving, so the fact that there’s two Uni from Caelestis sort of starts to bring doubt towards the current Uni, and they get into altercations with Leilani and the man. Leilani, still having no clue what’s going on, goes along with the man for a while with the others trying to figure out what Livius’ deal is (thinking him to be one of the natives in on the scheme). It doesn’t take too long for them to talk Leilani into joining them, though, as he quickly starts having proper visions upon meeting them.
Olina is the daughter of the village chief where Leilani ended up. Like the others, she’s the first one who come upon Leilani, and she’s been watching over him ever since. The two were inseparable on the island, and she helped him understand life there. She allows him to go with the Caelisti man only because he would talk about being taken away, so she knew it was going to happen regardless. However, she follows them off the island and keeps an eye on Leilani, mostly because she feels compelled to. She ends up joining the others before he does and she’s the one who tells everyone who Leilani actually is.
I tried to sort of make the designs a little more realistic than whatever the hell I was doing twenty years ago. I know I had originally intended the outfits to be inspired by the cultures they were representing and not making them accurate, but everyone else had a different idea, so Shizuka (Shinzui at the time) sort of stood out, lol. Its still not 100% accurate, but that is because Melohida isn’t Earth, so the fashions can be slightly different. Still, I love how everyone turned out! Which makes me hate the fact that these are completely random and nothing’s going to be done about them. ;_;