Bliss redesign and surprise additional lore yeyyyyy :D
OK, so this is a bit of a surprise post! I wanted to draw more ship art and doodles, but… I thought I might as well put this out while the ideas are still fresh in my head.
First things first, I made her 26. Realistically, she would not be a student at CN High. If she was a teenager when the girls were still little, and the girls are now teenagers themselves, she would be well into her 20s. So no — she’s not a student, and she’s not part of the Heroes and Villains Initiative.
Because I decided to make her an indie artist, I’m thinking maybe she’s friends with Ace. Maybe. Just a thought.
BUT ANYWAY—
So Bliss… from the 2016 reboot. She’s not exactly the most popular character, but she’s not hated either. Most of her fanart is either redesigns or rewrites, and I think people have more fun with her when they treat her like an OC rather than use her reboot lore.
And truth be told, I had no idea what to do with her. Honestly, I don’t really think she has much of a place in the story either, because a lot of this is inspired by FusionFall. So I fixed it up a little and made it so that she ended up in the Void — you know, the same one from The Amazing World of Gumball. If she escaped the Void, she’d find that the universe has basically written her out, so it’s closer to the 90s Powerpuff Girls continuity — a version where Bliss does not exist.
Seriously, her backstory contradicts everything that happened in the old continuity created by Craig McCracken. She can’t really be rewritten like Maylin or Barry, because she’s not a side character — her backstory was deliberately written to connect her to the girls. And I really doubt her creators put much effort into her backstory and design.
It’s honestly really sad, because when you compare Bliss to the characters in the CN Squad, they were created with actual care — reflections of what their creators loved — and people latched onto that authenticity. Meanwhile, Bliss is constantly handled in a way that even people who like her character often don’t enjoy her backstory because of the lack of effort behind it.
So I went with the idea that she escaped from the Void, came to terms with her own existence, and now wanders the cartoon world trying to figure herself out. Her story isn’t quite finished yet, and she’s not really that important in the grand scheme of things, but I do like to think she appears in posters and stuff as an indie artist.
