How did you come up with the core personalities of rune and malachi?
// I guess it just kinda happened that way! To begin with I already like a grouch/bubbly dynamic (so much so I realized I accidentally made the same dynamic, just switched, for a secret original project I'm working on, haha). I think it allows for some fun banter when one character can speak their mind freely while the other is able to let those comments bounce straight off of them. Though as a result, it does appear to some readers that Rune is genuinely bullying Malachi... I promise that's not the intent! She'll know when to reel it in if she strikes a nerve.
There were definitely growing pains in creating this dynamic, though! For that I point to the preboot of On Borrowed Time, where Rune and the then-called Kodali frequently got in fights due to their dynamic, and it really wasn't very fun to write and I don't imagine it was fun to read, either. In that iteration of the comic, I wanted to make Rune into a genuinely bad person- and the comic would have ended with her dying. Hence the "on borrowed time" phrase used for the title!
Meanwhile, Kodali (who later magical girl transformed into Malachi in the reboot) was experiencing a sort of dependent relationship on this iteration of Rune, and was subjecting himself to get hurt by her over and over and over again. Maybe if I had some more self-awareness at the time I could have spun the story into one about toxic relationships? But experiencing many of those myself at the time, I didn't recognize this is what I was accidentally writing. So these iterations of the characters never found their way out of this cycle, and just kept repeating it without any reflection. Which uh, sounds really depressing when I put it that way! But it's part of the comic's history, so it's worth mentioning.
Modern Rune and Malachi takes this dynamic and resets it back to zero- after all, if we're gonna be stuck with this duo for the majority of the story, and if I want a generally happier tone, they should probably get along a lot better! So taking them back to their roots, Malachi still looks to Rune for an (initially) one-sided relationship... But instead of taking the route of manipulating him, she instead deflects obvious issues regarding his attachment towards her and tries to set the pace for how quickly they get to know each other. Of course, she's not fully aware this is what she's doing, and she definitely needed practice on her delivery.
But when he finally slowed down to form a genuine connection with her rather than just jumping to conclusion after conclusion, she was much more willing to open up to him.
And this isn't to say this analysis is what I intended from the start... I think it's pretty rare to write a story with specific purposes for character interactions in mind! This is just kind of how the story ended up evolving as I wrote it. I quite like their dynamic now, and I'm excited for you all to see how their friendship grows and develops in the coming chapters!
