I honest-to-goodness am still working on Lys Noire (I’ve redone page three about six times but it’s finally going somewhere) but then I saw that this is my very last chance to submit some Thistle Theories! If you’ve stumbled on this out of context, these are all of the character Thistle from the amazing Daughter of the Lillies by @bludragongal -- and somehow fanart for that is a big chunk of what I post on here. Anyway, I wanted to propose a few theories for what Thistle is hiding under the hood. I’m pretty sure that all of them are wrong, but I had fun drawing them anyway.
1: Pig Faced Woman
This is an old urban legend from the middle ages (there’s a great episode of Lore about it) where a girl from a rich family is cursed to look like a pig. Thistle’s flashbacks do seem to show a rich lady who could invite such a curse, and pigs do eat mushrooms I’m pretty sure-- but what really sells it is a movie based on the legend-- Penelope. Thistle is basically Penelope: Sweet, insecure, smart, covers her face, loves books and plants, and tends to cause people to run away screaming. Also, I think she’d be super cute as a pig.
2. Actual Cinnamon Roll
I can’t take credit for this; I’m pretty sure someone else already suggested it somewhere. I just decided to draw it. You’re welcome.
3. Extral
Extrals are strange aliens from the game Fortuna. Thistle is not nearly creepy enough to be an extral (so far as we can tell at this point anyway), but she could probably pull off the look.
4. Corpsedweller
This one is a bit complicated and self indulgent, so I’ll start with the short version: This is sort of a variation on the popular “Thistle is possessed by Drath or something” theory.
The long version: Back when I was in high school, I attempted to make my own webcomic. I ended up scrapping it before it was posted anywhere-- the plot had holes you could drive the Titanic through and there was some weird angsty grimdark that I got out of my system after surviving being a teenager. But there are some characters and ideas in there that were actually pretty half decent, that I’m hoping to recycle someday. This is one of those ideas.
All you need to know is that in the story, there was an evil eldritch god sort of thing who gained power by granting wishes in really messed up ways. One consequence of having your wish granted is that after you die, the Big Bad splits off a piece of his essence (which for some reason looks like a floaty mermaid shadow) and has it possess your corpse so he can control it like a puppet. One of the main characters is one such piece who got separated and developed a will and personality of her own-- but is now stuck in the body of a dead teenager, trying to pass as normal while she figures out what to do about it. Aon (the character in question) has very little in common with Thistle except for a need to keep her skin covered-- but the idea of being a piece of something evil trying to be good seems like it could work in the DOTL verse and is a vaguely plausible theory for Thistle.
Anyway, there’s my two cents. I’m super excited to see the actual reveal when it happens. Regardless of where things go, I must admit to being a huge Thistle fan-- I see so much of myself in her, both things I like and things I hate about me, that she’s incredibly relatable. Maybe having her face hidden for so long is part of that; it’s easy to project yourself onto a blank canvas. But I’m more inclined to attribute it to good writing; I think I’ll still see myself in Thistle even when we get to see her actual face at last.
