#cotrk oc

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Was playing around with this picrew and made Barley’s daughter: Adder “Addie” Wasserbar. I liked the dripping blood background so much that I’m deciding she has an endowment with really horrific potential as a fun contrast to her super bright and peppy demeanor. Still figuring out what it will be since I don’t want her endowment to be any clue towards her paternity, but tbh Barley has a more harmful endowment than almost anyone in the series so she’ll be taking after them anyway.

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So I go back and forth on whether Barley has kids with Paton or Harold, but currently I am finding the kid option fun to play with. More than anything I think it’s because I really want to explore how Billy and Manfred would feel having a younger sibling.

Billy and Manfred each see Barley as their parent, but they don’t see themselves as brothers. Throw another Barley-kid into the mix though and it makes things even more complex because they each do see the new baby as their sister, and as she grows up she sees them as her brothers. The possibility that she could be Manfred’s biological half-sister is also great because it would make Manfred have to think about Harold more than he has been, given their rather estranged relationship in this timeline. And Billy would be so excited to finally not be the older one! Finally he isn’t the youngest, he has someone he can look after and protect just like the older kids looked out for him! Meanwhile Manfred is having an existential crisis about how he even can fit into a family (not a normal family admittedly, but certainly a more caring one than he grew up in) and what is he supposed to do with a younger sibling?? He hates kids and he already doesn’t like that Barley adopted Billy because he doesn’t want to share, and now there is another kid to share with? Worse still a helpless, useless, needy baby? A baby who has never hurt Barley like he has? He’s already an adult, what if (with a sparkly new baby) Barley doesn’t want to be his parent/guardian/whatever they are to each other anymore?

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New cotrk ocs that i am putting wayyy too much effort into since I doubt I’ll actually write the fic that they are for.

Character descriptions under the cut because it got long

Amil Kashani- Clairvoyant. Amil’s clairvoyance is very strong and accurate, but not very controllable. It takes a huge toll on his body, causing seizures, severe migraines, and fatigue. Because of how hard it is on his health, he doesn’t often intentionally try to use his endowment and also was on-and-off homeschooled. He knew Heather from primary school, but is 2 years older than her. No one in his immediate family is endowed, but clairvoyance and telekinesis are more common in some more distant cousins. His parents and some other relatives immigrated to the UK from Iran. He’s ace but doesn’t actually know he is, he thinks he’s just a straight guy who is bad at relationships due to being disabled. He tends to be anxious and nerdy, but Heather and Becca see him as very reliable. He is studying computer science despite looking at screens being a terrible idea with his endowment-induced disabilities. He really enjoys Asa being around because it’s bringing a lot of novelty to his life. Doesn’t like Manfred at all, but is too scared of him and too confused about Manfred and Asa’s relationship to say anything.

Rebecca Mei Forrester- Materialization and animation, specifically things depicted in art. She has the most success in terms of quality and longevity if she is animating something from art she makes herself, and her own art can be much simpler while still having good results. If she is attempting to use something created by someone else, it needs to he highly detailed and realistic, and generally from the original work (not a print). Photographs are the least effective base, she tends not to use them if she has any alternative. Becca met Heather and Bryony at Ludgarth Hall (which her father attended) and is a year older than Heather. Her father is Scottish and unendowed but from a family with many varying endowments. Her mother is endowed and second generation British Chinese, from a family which specializes in healing and telepathy. Her mother is an exceptionally talented healer and went to medical school, but doesn’t (officially) practice due to the stress of hospital environments- she is well known among the endowed though and they tend to see her as their exclusive doctor (also she went to Bloors at the same time as Paton and Harold). Becca is a talented artist in multiple mediums and studying architecture at university. She and Heather recently started dating, but have been best friends for many years. Becca is confident but also tends to be a bit rash and jumps into things very quickly. She has undiagnosed ADHD and it’s making university real rough. She tends to be resistant towards making new real friends and takes a very long time to trust people. She doesn’t super enjoy the way Asa has become the “leader” of their friend group so quickly, but also feels shame about thinking badly of him at times because she knows he doesn’t mean harm. She super does not vibe with Manfred and is the most vocally confrontational about it.

Heather Lanthorn- “Unenedowed”. Heather actually is endowed, but her endowment is so subtle, especially compared to the Lanthorns’ typical endowments, that basically no one notices anything strange is happening. Most people just think her body temp runs a bit warm and she is especially pleasant to be around, they don’t realize she is basically a human hearth. The Lanthorns are a Scottish branch of the Sparks family who specialized in making lanterns and other light sources, though Heather’s parents lived in England until moving back to Scotland so Heather and Bryony could go to Ludgarth Hall. Heather attended normal public school until it became apparent that her younger sister was endowed, and then she was sent to Ludgarth as well, though everyone still believed her to be unendowed. She knew Amil in primary school and Becca at Ludgarth. She is studying literature, but not overly committed to any particular career path. She has undiagnosed autism and is quite resistant to it as an explanation for her experiences due to comparing herself with Bryony. She is exceedingly empathetic and tends to become overly protective of those around her. This plus generally struggling to understand social relationships is very stressful, so she tends to just inherit Becca’s relationships so that she doesn’t have to make the decision herself about who is or isn’t a friend. Has actually known Manfred for A While because of where he works, but she didn’t know he was connected with Asa. She really likes Asa and thinks he is very cool and interesting (she doesn’t understand that the comfort she gets from him is because he makes decisions so she doesn’t have to). She is the most willing to accept Manfred into the group because Asa wants him there, but doesn’t know whether she likes him or dislikes him as a person (she is caught between Becca and Asa’s views).

Bryony Lanthorn- Lanthorn-specialty version of sparkling, where they are able to induce sustained light/radiation out of various materials. Bryony and Heather’s father also has this endowment, but is not as talented as Bryony (he attended Ludgarth Hall with Rebecca’s dad and the two are friends). Bryony is a bit of a prodigy and is very interested in pushing the bounds of her family’s trade and does a lot of experiments. She is four years younger than Heather and unlike her sister she was diagnosed with autism as a child, though due to stigma almost no one outside their immediate family knew. Bryony has little interest in people other than her family, exacerbated by the fact that her main special interest is their family’s endowment. She adores her older sister most of all and stays very close to Heather whenever possible, constantly trying to get Heather to look at her experiments. Asa is the first person outside their family that Bryony has ever attached to because he rescued her while in beast form [what from is tbd]. She introduced him to Heather, which is how he joined Heather’s friends. Bryony is very excited about the light aspect to Asa’s endowment and so designs him jewelry that produces enough light/the right kind so that he can control his shifting better. She has a sort of hero-worship crush on Asa and dislikes that she doesn’t get to see him while she is in school. She hasn’t actually met Manfred but hates him based on everything she has heard (and also because she’s a bit jealous of his apparent closeness with Asa).

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Since I’m probably never gonna actually write them, I’m sharing my cotrk fic ideas so everyone can stew in the concepts with me:

Rise and fall of the Bloor family as shown from the perspective of their dining table - each chapter is a meal a few years/months apart, separated by big events in the Bloor family. Looking at how just deeply unpleasant it is to be a Bloor, that all the “family” stuff is sort of just set dressing for the reality of their situation. Haunting and creepy and weird, unhappy ending. Would follow canon events/timeline as close as possible and sort of just fill in the blanks.

Post-canon, Manfred and Asa reconnect and figure out their relationship - Manfred survives and leaves the city to try and figure out what his life is going to be now that the whole Bloor family scheme has fallen through. He bounces around for a couple years and then is finally working at (insert stereotypical job here) when he runs into Asa and finds out he has landed in the same town that Asa has been living in since getting away. There’s some “are you here to kill me” on both sides, they barely start talking stuff out before deciding Absolutely Not, and Manfred sort of hopes Asa will just leave him alone forever, but Asa recognizes the change in their positions and so won’t let Manfred go. Asa has found himself a new group of endowed friends (who actually like him! for the first time in his life!) and this group has a totally different view of him than being Manfred’s Dog, so things get a bit weird when Asa drags Manfred into this group. There is a lot of tension and the group doesn’t really get Manfred, or why Asa is so attached to such a weird asshole, but one day they are all out and Asa is getting pissed at some stranger and his new friends are all nervous and uncomfortable with his aggression and then Manfred is able to recall him instantly. And the group is like oooooohhhhhh that’s it. They had only known Asa as a Man and a Beast, but now they see that (for the right person), there is also a Dog. This incident prompts Manfred and Asa to dig a little more into what happened between them and how they are going to go on.

Post-canon, Naren and Harold meet - Naren decides she wants to meet the rest of her family and make up her mind about them herself (not just listening to what Bartholomew says). Since Harold has left the city and she has no idea how to find him, she asks Charlie for help, and he asks Lyell. In my BarleyAU “canon”, Lyell tells Charlie to go to Barley, and Barley facilitates the meeting, but I also like it without Barley as a chance to also explore the dynamic between Harold and Lyell and choices made in order to move forward. Harold and Naren end up having an odd sort of relationship, not least because they are siblings that are 35+ years apart in age, but the outlook is optimistic because 1) Naren is just Like That and 2) Harold is more generally unpleasant than actively harmful nowadays. (Manfred is alive, he’s just not involved in this because I hc that he and Harold aren’t on good terms post-canon for quite a while, and really only ever reconnect if someone else brings them back together, such as Barley, Lyell, or Naren)

BarleyAU, Barley and Billy bonding (alliteration yay!) - Barley and Billy’s relationship is like actually quite relevant to my BarleyAU plot because Barley gets so protective of Billy so quickly, but there is also just lots of fun side scenes of them bonding over their love of animals that wouldn’t make the cut if I did ever write a whole BarleyAU. This would be fun and funny and very much for the animal nerds, with also some undertones of found family as that is the trajectory of Barley and Billy’s dynamic.

Post-canon, Emma as an older teen with PTSD, trying to figure out how to go forward - Set when they are in their final year at Bloor’s and Emma has been having a rough time as the years go on. She has a lot of guilt and shame over feeling like she is disappointing everyone around her by not moving on, or being upset, and generally feels like there is no one who can understand what she went through, and her distress affects her endowment in painful and embarrassing ways. She starts to fixate on the idea of closure, thinking that the reason she can’t just “stop having problems” is because Manfred (and Harold but mainly Manfred) left the city when she was 12, and she never got to actually confront him about it. Everyone is super against her seeking him out, but Lyell feels bad enough about not having helped her when he was the person who had the most in common with her situation to give in and help her find Manfred, and also to try and protect her as much as he can (again). There’s lots of ways that talking with Manfred could go, but what I’m most interested in exploring is Manfred having also been a kid at the time and how Lyell and Emma feel about that, putting Lyell in a situation where he has to start processing things himself and can’t just act like it’s all wrapped up, and Emma realizing that there really aren’t any answers to be found in Manfred, she has to find it in herself and the people who care about her.

1902AU - Setting the whole series just a century earlier and exploring how that setting affects the dynamics. Plot would follow the canon without too many huge differences probably, it would mainly just be focused on how characterization and setting interact.

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as a special little treat im gonna let myself finally name my cotrk oc after i finish and submit this assignment

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...ocs? 👀

I am living in oc world all day every day and tbh if i could Art it would be over for you all because you would be forced to witness them nonstop.

Two of the fandom ocs that are consuming my whole life right now:

Still Unnamed Children of the Red King OC- literally just me isekai-ed into cotrk world from a post a while back but it was so fun i have been obsessed with the idea. They kill the person who summoned them within minutes because he’s such a bitch. The summoning gives them powers to both heal and harm by physical touch, and they have to wear gloves a lot while learning to control it which is sensory hell. Neither good guys or bad guys trust them because they think that dichotomy is bullshit and constantly disregard it to uphold their own ethics. They help Julia have her gay awakening and are in relationships with Paton and Harold. They held Manfred hostage once and have now become the best parent he’s ever had and he hates it. (Shout out to @the-walls-have-many-ears for all our wonderful convos about cotrk that have been so inspiring!!)

Liltanor/Hrávahín (lotr)- I have never spent so much time on the lore for a fandom oc, but he has taken almost two years at this point just to get satisfied with a name. I’ve wrapped them in and around the whole canon like a vine. Her mother is a Vala and her father is an elf (Vanyar), so she’s like Luthien in some ways but also I have made Luthien weirder for consistency. Both of them have shapeshifting abilities that also include ability to change sex characteristics, Luthien however chooses to always be female but Liltanor changes constantly and is gendered fluidly in universe languages (he spends lots of time as various animals too). He leaves Aman well before the Noldor (and also not on good terms) and by the time of LotR has been in Middle Earth longer than any other elf besides Cirdan. (Im skipping like. SO much there is too much lore) They are second cousins once removed with Galadriel (this wasn’t even on purpose) and more distantly related to Elrond & family. He is married to Haldir, which makes them both very happy, and many other people Unhappy because Liltanor hardcore rejects monogamy which is a fundamental aspect of elven culture (this is part of why they left Aman originally). She was lovers with Saruman in the past and would still be if he wasn’t going through his dark lord phase (Saruman is v resentful that Liltanor was so opposed to marriage back in Valinor otherwise he thinks he could have had a chance at marrying them instead and keeping them there. He is wrong). During the events of LotR Liltanor is a member of the Fellowship and forms a very close relationship with Boromir. This has consequences as they end up saving him, but in such a way that he (like them) becomes something Else and he now has to deal with immortality. As a consolation tho they also get married (yay two husbands!)

I also have a few original projects that have full casts of ocs but I’m still deciding if I might make a separate writeblr for those or what. I am also thinking about them all day every day and also making more of them like my life depends on it. My favorite hobby is to think of ways to make their relationships Worse <3

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Barley uses Malt as a nickname (because it would be very funny to me) and now I get to think about which characters would call them what.

Rambling about lots of characters under the cut

Barley doesn’t interact with the younger kids very often but does meet them all at various points; the kids call them Malt, except Olivia who thinks it’s funny that “Barley” and “Charlie” are so similar and that she has a new way to cause confusion.

Billy is the young kid they interact with most and he is most confused about how to refer to them because he thinks he should call them by some sort of title like he does other adults, but Barley 1) doesn’t like titles and 2) is nonbinary so he doesn’t know what title to use, so it takes a little bit of chatting for them to get Billy okay with just “Barley”.

Julia uses Barley because she just genuinely thinks it’s a pretty name.

Asa always calls them Barley Malt because he thinks it’s funny, it’s meant to be making fun of Malt’s name but they think his attempts are cute and childish.

Manfred initially pointedly tries to avoid using their name whenever possible and just Wasserbar if he can’t avoid it. When things improve he uses Malt.

Ezekiel doesn’t get the chance to learn their name at all, they kill him before the conversation gets to that point.

Bartholomew calls them Wasserbar (questionable if he actually knows/remembers their first name, they have a very confrontational relationship)

Most of the other adults, like Katya and Treasure and Lyell, just use Malt, except the Yewbeam sisters who call them Wasserbar or “Harold’s/that little thing” (they are deeply perplexed by and thus hate Barley, but Barley’s power and attitude make them too formidable to actually attack so instead the sisters just get really bitchy about it)

I think Paton would be torn because, canonically, he dislikes using nicknames (but apparently Charlie is fine??), but Barley is so similar to Charlie that I think he would eventually give up and use Malt to avoid any confusion. If it’s just the two of them, he will go back to using Barley though. Paton knows that Malt made up their name wholesale when they got summoned, but doesn’t know their old name(s) or feel a reason to ask.

Harold is the only other character besides Paton who know’s Malt picked their name just when they got here, but he actually does know their previous names because it was using his resources that Malt verified there wasn’t an alternate version of themself in this world. Harold is initially very judgy about Barley ditching a normal name/changing names a bunch, but it leads to lots of conversations on identity and autonomy and transitions. He would never actually tell other people these names, later because he comes to respect and care about Barley but initially just because he knows they could hurt/kill him. Barley considers letting him use one of these names as a private name just between them, but ultimately they know it would hurt too much to hear the names they were called in a world they can’t go back to. Harold usually calls them Barley when they’re around other people and Malt privately.

[happyflappymoscowbirbpleyyn]

Another ace oc and it’s one for Children of the Red King book series.