Alright now that I’m emotionally attached to the design I need to justify why Gren’s hair is that long. Baldur’s Gate 3 player character mostly but also his original design. Because at this point it’s not a design choice it’s a commitment. Mostly my hair is now as long as I draw his canon design and I’m realising that I can no longer believe it as a design element.
Bhaalist Grendel’s hair is that long, from the perspective of me designing a guy to look at, to match Orin. His loose hair is about the same length as her braided hair, and they complement each other while representing their respective styles as Chosen— Orin’s hair is decorated and braided up as she’s an individual who cares greatly about artistry and appearances, while Grendel’s hair is loose and dirty as someone who treats the domain of Bhaal as something raw and natural. Orin’s hair moves like a fifth limb or maybe a flail, like her own goals in life to scheme towards a goal. Gren’s hair is loose like his own sort of lack of direction and lack of any scheming plots, he has his Bhaalists around the city doing their lord’s work and that is the end of it for him. In-world it feels justifiable because he has Sceleritas to take care of his physical needs and brush his hair for him. Sceleritas consistently cares much more about Gren’s appearances than he does and I think it suits them. Grendel himself allows it because he simply does not care. He defers to his butler on this sort of thing.
It’s cut at some point between Orin’s betrayal and his waking up on the Nautiloid but jury is out on exactly when. On one hand Orin could cut it as she cuts him off from his position and underlings and that would be deep and meaningful. On the other hand Kressa could cut it when she needs to out of sheer annoyance and not caring as she cuts him up. I am leaning heavy towards Kressa and the insult of it being done by someone who is only thinking of it as an obstacle and not even getting any satisfaction from a metaphor.
Then throughout his main quest he just doesn’t cut his hair anymore. I am losing the ability to justify this. Part of me wants to say “because he doesn’t want to” and end it at that but he also hates doing up his hair. My hair personally is long for convenience because I find it easier to deal with when I don’t have to think about it but that wouldn’t be the case for him. It’d be in his face constantly. He doesn’t have his butler. He’s not going to let the companions get close enough to him to do his hair. And he wouldn’t know at this point that he once had really long hair. And it’s not like he has hair goals he has a mind flayer tadpole. He has other things on his mind. Maybe something like his mind is fucked up and he doesn’t believe that it’s something that he is actually able to do. He sees the companions changing their hair of course and they can get haircuts but that’s because they’re people. He doesn’t see the dogs or livestock getting haircuts so he doesn’t associate it with something that whatever he is can do. That’s not solid but it’s something.
And of course to canon Grendel, the thing on my mind initially with his design with respect to hair was simply that I wanted him to have it. I have retroactively justified this with the fact that one of the few facts about his appearance is that he has hair and necessarily enough of it for an adult human (I think reasonably implied to be above average sized) to get a good grip on it. Guess in the dark that’s like minimally 4-5 inches? Pre-fuckass decapitation bob, probably. My in-world justification for his initial hair design, which was just barely to his shoulders, was just that it was a fine minimal maintenance thing between the lengths where he’d need to be taking too much care of it and where he’d need to be cutting it back with consistency. My source for this was having that hairstyle in middle school and not brushing my hair. Now I am going to say that his mom does his hair and treats him like a person when nobody else does. She’s also someone who cares more about appearances, both in-world and me as person making design choices, and her place as an inverted Heorot complete with the performance of social roles to an audience who doesn’t care. It’s my narrative choice and her in-world sort of keeping herself sane. She does her son’s hair because if she doesn’t treat him like a person she’ll not recognise him. And she can’t have that for the sake of her king pretend-play and her own sanity.
My Beowulf hair headcanons are simpler to justify. His hair is loose and a bit of a mess constantly because he simply does not care about his appearance. He can dress right and say the right words in the right order to pass among high places but his first love is fucking off to fight monsters. He can put on his noble persona just long enough to get his best access to the worst monsters. Maybe contentious opinion alert but he doesn’t care about being a praiseable hero or a noble or an actual warrior enough to make it an integral part of his appearance, ex. doing his hair right. Or dressing right.
And my Unferth has long hair because it fucks
