#byce

[fivepebble]

so often when i drew bryce in love or being sweet especially compared to liam it's rarely happy or joyous it's like. hopelessness. lost. tired. like he's already calculating how it could go wrong. someone help him

[blondebrainpowered]

The geometric timber pendant vault in Henry VIII's Chapel Royal at Hampton Court Palace, from the 1530s. The shade of blue was called "byce" in the 16th c. The ceiling was carved sectionally and transported down the Thames before being assembled onsite. Fixed onto "great spykes of irne".

[fivepebble]

I haven't talked about my ocs in a while just because of [gestures] but there's so many little things about them i never got to show the world and it kills me!!!

like, bycepony. he is one of my favorite ocs cause i put so much work into developing his story from start to finish and fleshing out as many corners of it as i possibly could.

one detail i wanna talk about is the world lore; Changelings are basically cryptids with some ponies choosing not to believe they're real at all. there is no national military, individual villages are fairly dependent and as such usually need to unify to deal with threats, the forest fire scene in Scotland is one that i wish I had been able to deal with more than just an establishing shot and a shot of Bryce's reaction cause a decent few viewers didn't fully interpret what it meant. Changelings were spotted locally and the culture of this particular village and the civilization surrounding it were incredibly paranoid of changelings and the mythos evolved with that paranoia; Bryce was born in a hive underneath a nearby mountain. Ponies at the time did not know where changelings came from or where their hives were located, instead believing they lived and reproduced primarily in forests similar to Fey mythos.

Bryce replicated Brie's injury and said a changeling attacked him and the village responded by burning the entire forest. Not only did the space where he had spent most of his time after escaping his hive and playing with Brie get destroyed, but one of his first introductions to pony society was a grand, terrifying display of how much they hated what he was.

Changelings living in forests and being sensitive to fire wasn't one of the only myths, though. Another myth (this one might be canon to the show but I can't quite remember, maybe just implied) was that a changeling feeding off of someone long enough would eventually kill them no matter what as the love is essentially just the conduit that transfers life force. I remember that the way Bryce finds out about this myth is when he's watching basically a horror film about changelings with Liam (which were common--horror in media tends to reflect real world societal fears in the era it was made.) It actually distresses him so greatly that he starts to convince himself that he is somehow responsible for Stella's death, "What if she crashed because she was fatigued from being drained of love" essentially.

Another important thing to mention before I forget: Changelings can either passively absorb love (I.e, Thorax's wings getting healthy and shiny just from him being around people who care about him) or actively drain it (I.e, Chrysalis.) The latter definitely *can* result in death, and has--namely one of Bryce's biological siblings from earlier in the story (a prequel that I have yet to illustrate and talk about much. Changelings themselves have an inherent love that can be drained and likewise killed.) But passive absorption is essentially given freely. Bryce doesn't know this, because he escaped at a young age and knows absolutely nothing about how his body works. His biology education was horror films, books, and local fear-fuelled mythos. He eventually learned to fear his own body and his needs for fear they would hurt others (is it obvious this story is an analogy for several different personal struggles yet)

I was always really fascinated with various changeling-centric fanfictions that used the idea: "loving a changeling for who they are gives them all the love they need to survive at no cost." it felt weird that it was never given attention in the show as it seems like a no-brainer of an idea for what changelings were. a "kiss of true love breaks the curse" type deal. This is obviously implemented in Bryce's story, but he doesn't know that. Bryce loves Liam, doesn't want to hurt him, and knows that there's nothing he can do to keep Liam from loving him and assumedly being subsequently drained to death (also an analogy for a personal struggle: As my own biggest hater, the fucked up dark side to finally allowing yourself to accept that someone loves you is worrying that love will end up hurting them in some way.) so he locks himself away and tries to let himself starve to death. Of course it doesn't work.

There is never a reveal in the story that "true love breaks the curse." There's no way to prove or disprove something like that. Bryce continues avoiding Liam throughout the story, sought out and found regardless, despite even at one point going to an offshoot hive and allowing a rogue group of deserter changelings to attempt to force him into a metamorphosis so he can directly challenge chrysalis (at this point in the story, Bryce is a husk being toted around by whoever gets their hands on him, and this situation is probably one of the more safe ones and the deserters actually have overall 'greater good' intentions. it doesn't work of course because Bryce is too old and his growth into a proper queen is permanently stunted.) and even in short reluctant interactions manages to provide enough love to sustain him just that much longer.

I've been thinking of the way this story reaches its climax and resolution. Bryce directly fighting Chrysalis and the rest of his hive is one of them. In one version of the story, drained love and given love are shown to be two significantly different types of magic that can be honed and funneled into pure magic energy--which allows Bryce his own 'metamorphosis', which is just him shapeshifting into a form that is fuelled by that surplus of energy. though I have gotten less fond of endings where Chrysalis dies due to some feedback from friends about a lack of nuance towards her character in this story. I didn't like Chrysalis' flamboyantly evil and prideful attitude in the show. In this story she was always represented as being not evil, not bad, but just wholly hollow, unfeeling, and a haunting force of twisted nature as i feel a creature like her deserved to be represented. To me, the queen of Changelings' fatal flaw shouldn't be "I do this because I love myself so much and I want all of the power so that i will be above everyone else." It should be "I am doing this to survive, I have to make sure that I'm in power so that I survive anything, I don't care about anything else." others are not so fond of this version of her and I find myself wondering how I can improve upon her while still preserving her role in Bryce's story as an ultimate threat.

well I'm done rambling and i gotta go to bed. hope this was entertaining for at least one person lol

[fivepebble]

Do your ocs have birthdays or symbolic flowers?

I don't usually consider my character's birthdays but I do have Laz and Charlie's.

Laz's birthday is April 2nd, and Charlie's birthday is November 18th.

Charlie's flower is a simple red rose. It's the only flower I've thought of for a character, but I do like flower symbolism so I thought up a couple more:

Laz: Purple Crocus

Val: Rain Lily

Tripp: Peony

Trist: Forget-me-not

Shii: Lily of the Valley

Byce: Lotus

[fivepebble]

picked colors manually for once

[fivepebble]

tried adding vocals to my music for the first time... help

[fivepebble]

he's high as fuck

[fivepebble]