[ Image description: sketchy/washy drawing from the waist up of a light-skinned man with dark hair, greying at the temples, executed mostly in greyscale with some highlighting in light cyan. He is holding a book and looking off to the viewer’s left and bears some resemblance to Vicar Max from the Outer Worlds. He’s dressed in a white shirt with a high Mandarin collar, a dark tie that is just a simple knot, a pinstriped waistcoat complete with pocket watch chain and, presumably, trousers. End ID. ]
Today’s lighting study (actually two days’ worth; many thanks to Mr. Jackal for providing hand modeling). Not as successful as the previous, methinks, but I learned a lot, which is the goal.
This is Alejandro Maximillian Peral, from a fic I’m working on for @kourumi’s Western AU.
Some more rambling about this character under the cut.
When K first asked about having Aethel make an appearance in this AU, I couldn’t figure out how to do it, as Max was already in there, and already bespoken to @damejudyhench as Pearl’s beau.
Also, as I came to get to know their characterizations of the various characters, but very specifically Max, I realized it wouldn’t have worked anyway: Pearl’s Max is not Aethel’s Max (which is a really awesome thing, as it turns out).
DJH came up with brilliant labels for the two major forms of Max you can get in The Outer Worlds (depending on if and how you pursue his companion quest): Mad Max and Potato Max.
Mad Max is the original Max, the one you meet in Edgewater and the one you get if you don’t pursue his quest line. Potato Max is who you get if you pursue it to its fullest -- the kinder, gentler Max (who is nonetheless capable of violence if he needs to be, but into the service of others rather than of his own ego). Pearl’s Max isn’t Mad Max exactly, but if I consider the Mad/Potato variants as a spectrum (which I do), then I’m like to say that the vicar of Chalcedony Grove is farther on the “Mad” side of the spectrum than the Potato.
And this delightfully and entirely resolved my inability to get Aethel into the AU: her Max is Potato Max, so he’s not Vicar Max. Instead, he’s Alejandro Maximillian Peral*, the Librarian of Amber Heights.
* In my main TOW fic, the Journeyman, I hc Max’s full name as “Maximillian Alejandro DeSoto y Peral”.
But if Alejandro is Potato Max, then there’s nothing for him to really resolve (I mean, there is, but it’s not the “who am I really?” line of thought of his companion quest in TOW). So I decided that I would swap needs: now it’s Aethel who is broken and in need of repair -- she’s the shell-shocked veteran of a particularly vicious, WWI-style fight between corporations, and has trauma from which she’s only slowly beginning to recover.
It’s been a lot of fun, and I’m eternally grateful to K and DJH for letting me roam around inside this AU for a spell. : )
