#blanksford

[pqrachel]

I've been loving all the 'Friends of Jimbo' updates for Balatro and I've been wanting to make one for myself with Madi. (And now that my comic is done I can do weird challenges again.)

I think I'm gonna do two more of these and try to actually mod it into the game as a 'Friends of Rachel' mod.

[pqrachel]

OC-tober Day 5: "Redesigned OC" (Another reupload day today.)

Madi was originally just a tattoo artist for Taylor but after developing her a bit more I felt like just another white girl side character didn't fit her as much.

So I redesigned her a bit, it was mostly in her story but I like drawing her so much more now too.

The younger Madi is from a story I did with her where I started redesigning her backstory and her character overall. I started with the white teen version and played with the idea of growing up with a hurt arm, but I eventually settled on her being black and being born needing a prosthetic arm. (Both of the teen Madi drawings are super good imo). And now her latest design is one of the ones I like drawing the most, especially doing art meme with her.

[pqrachel]

For @murmurlilies, he did an ask for people to redesign his OC Maya over on bluesky and it's not a big redesign, but I still had fun with this.

[pqrachel]

Oh heck it's past midnight and I didn't do today's OC-tober. I don't have time for an art so let's do some writing. The prompt is "Future" so there's a bunch I could figure out. My Blanksford story spans a lot of years and I don't have any concrete plans for the future of the timeline even though it's technically important for the overarching story.

Well let give this a go...

It's late and I'm gonna ramble so it's probably gonna be pretty long and depending on if I keep any of it would be heavily spoiler-filled so under the cut it goes.

So with a timeline this long I've been thinking for a while that I need to kill one of my main characters at some point. Like technically I don't have to, I've already had them give up their powers so they aren't an immediate threat to the limit of 6 supers, but I do kind of want to. I just don't really know how. Cuz the last time I killed a major character in a story (I won't spoil who, but it was in my Colostle story) I kinda lost all motivation for the story and I couldn't go back on it cuz of the formatting. But this time I can think about it and if I don't like it than I can try again in a different way.

So my first idea a while back was to have Artemis go overboard and accidentally kill a super. Since she doesn't resort to killing despite her role as one of the most dangerous villains it'd be an interesting turn for her. But now with what I've set up with her and Taylor it seems less likely, though still technically possible. But it'd probably only worth it if she kills Taylor, which would be a shame since I like him so freaking much as a character so I probably won't do this.

I could also have Gabby regret giving up their powers, maybe go the vigilante route. Help out Mercury's new Super Wing fight the Y13 & Y14 villains. ...Which does actually make a lot of sense (and would probably motivate me to write some Phase 3 plot points / stories too).

Okay yeah I'll have that be a good starting point. Take the really old idea of Twin & Distress and make it less about Twin being the villain and more about Distress betraying Twin for whoever I make the Y14 villain be. Then Distress and that villain end up kinda strong, so Mercury and Splash can't handle it themselves. They turn to Gabby for help off of Gordon Wheeler's recc. Gabby has another crisis about their powers (or lack thereof this time) and gets pulled back into the drama. And then either Distress or the Y14 villain kills Gabby after they got in the way. And this overstep would definitely bring Artemis and Blank into the drama too, and I'd get a good old-fashion classic superhero war. And all those fight scenes I've been avoiding would get to happen pretty much all at once. And maybe that war takes long enough that the Y15 super emerges and creates even more for everyone to deal with.

Aeri and Gabby's sister Katie would be fucking heartbroken over Gabby's death of course. They both live together at this point and the person who connected them is gone. They'd probably stay together for a while but I imagine Aeri would quickly get overwhelmed without Gabby and leave in some way; whether that's trying to get revenge, or straight up running from D-City, or something else entirely. So Katie would turn to Madi and Taylor, and they're all friends at this point so it'd probably work out. (Assuming I don't mess with the friendship dynamics by this point with what I'm also working on with Taylor and Artemis' storylines, who knows.)

But if I was going to kill off Gabby I'd want to get some good stories in for her send off, so the Y14 villain would probably end up being the fear-based villain that I've been thinking about. For that villain's inspiration don't think Scarecrow (Batman) but more of a villainous reverse Alex Chen (Life is Strange). Although I'm not too studied on scarecrow maybe that's more his vibe than I think. But anyways I'd get to do some AU stuff that takes place in character's heads and Gabby would see some dark timelines and stuff like that.

ACTUALLY... now that I think about it Distress is kind of a weak villain (I haven't even drawn her yet despite having thought of her like 5 years ago), so maybe I skip Distress altogether let the fear villain be the Y13 super. Hell Distress works as a name for a fear villain too, so I could just rewrite my plans for Distress / Twin and I'd get to keep the few things I liked about Distress and make that work out. Cuz ditching Drake really worked out for the story maybe this could work out too.

Okay yeah that works really well! Guess it turns out that forcing yourself to think about the future of your story for an hour and a half really helps you figure out the future of your story. Weird probably could've tried that before at some point.

...now to go to sleep and let a less tired Rachel wake up tomorrow and deal with this long ramble and turn it into actual actionable story beats. Good luck <3

[pqrachel]

Treating today's OC-tober prompt of "symbolism" as an oc ask thing.

Colors: -For my main 4 Blanksford OC I definitely use colors to represent them. Gabby's orange, Aeri's yellow, Madi's pink, and Taylor's red. There's not too much symbolism about these colors in particular other than visual design though. The concept of using colors for OCs gets a bit less helpful the more you have though. I tend to use a purply-pink or a blueish-grey for side characters.

Songs: -I know some people are like crazy for OC playlists but that's just not how I usually listen to songs. I have occasionally heard a song and thought it'd be good for one of my OCs but it's super not common. The one that reminds me most of an OC for whatever reason is "Gravity Hero" by Rabbit Junk, making me think of Aeri.

Original Inspiration: -Most of my oldest OC are named after like high school college crushes of mine, but I didn't take any like character inspiration apart from name. Aeri is very Chloe Price (LiS) -coded and as a result Gabby often takes some inspiration from either Max or Rachel depending on the scene. Artemis is very much Batman inspired and I'm constantly having to remind myself her story is better when it's uniquely hers and not just Batman fanfic.

Core Traits: -When writing these characters I have a bunch of character traits that I keep in mind. For Aeri, she's always more scared than she lets on. Artemis wants to feel like she's in control, even if it means she's fooling herself. Taylor is overly trusting almost to a fault. Madi cares more for her friends than for herself. And Gabby doubts themself a lot when alone, but is easily empowered by their friends.

[pqrachel]

Today's OC-tober prompt of "Personality" seemed kinda open-ended so I just drew the Madi piece I've been neglecting for a bit and added a funny Taylor to it.

Oh oh oh!! I absolutely adore using my in-universe language's symbols to make unique emoticons.

[pqrachel]

OC-tober Day 9: "Relationships" Another reupload day today...

Gabby and Aeri are actually romantically together, but Madi and Taylor just have the queer platonic thing going on. They're all amazing characters and I love writing cute moments for them as couples.

[pqrachel]

OC-tober Day 8: "Dislikes"

For today I lined and colored an old sketch of Artemis.

Artemis really dislikes being out of the loop, and will resort to violent methods to gain missing information. Unfortunately for Taylor his powers give him knowledge of the future and Artemis has taken notice.

Note to Self: I've reformatted my Solthran Script a little bit and there's a typo in here. (Don't use this for future decoding.)