"I'm a fan of darkness. It just appeals to me. As old Norman would often say: people really become themselves when they're hidden in shadow. That creepy guy always had a story to tell about this place. But I think I've found a few narrow passages even he didn't know about. I can watch. I can listen. I can even steal! And no one ever sees me. I'm just a ghost, living in the walls, peering from the darkness." -Grace Conway.
-Return to the Studio AU-
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I made this sketch sometime in October and I thought about coloring it and then posting it either on Halloween or 1 day before, but that was The Cage week, and my brain was elsewhere, so I didn't finish it in time. Putting it as a WIP because this is the first attempt to put this design on paper in its entirety. Previously I had made some very small doodles of parts of the design or the silhouette, but never of the whole design. And who knows, maybe I can still change some things later. So yeah, work in progress. Not 100% finished.
The only reason I left this sketch colored and well edited is because I just wanted to.
A while ago I said that I would like to see Grace being developed more and have a counterpart in the Ink Realm in the games, and since the games haven't done something like that (yet), I thought it would be a good time to start developing this idea in my AU.
'The Spectre'. Because 'The Ghost' doesn't sound as good.
For me, it was always obvious that if she were in the Ink Realm, she would be some kind of ghost (refer to above), and even though I had an idea of what 'her ghost' would be like within the Realm, the addition of one of the Phantoms of the Machine in one of the August updates for BSOTM inspired me to go in a different direction.
The basis of the design is inspired by the ghost in Secrets, but I decided to make her more "distorted" to differentiate her from a common ghost. In my mind, she is one of the oldest phantoms on the Ink Realm - which results in her current appearance (and perhaps that of other specters). Alternatively, I thought that whatever happened to her in the real world before she died manifested in the form she currently has in the Ink Realm. Although, I don't know exactly where to take this specific idea and ngl I think I vibe with the former idea more than the latter.
I also thought that her "home" could be the Sewers. The only audio log we have of her is there, and more specifically, you find it in front of a blocked door, which I always thought was an interesting detail. But that doesn't mean she doesn't like to leave her lair to cause chaos in other parts of the studio. I like to imagine her passing through The Pit from time to time. That's where the ghosts live, after all.
In the end, she brings as much fear as she brings chaos wherever she goes. One of several pandemonium-causers that exist in the studio, all for the sake of entertaining her (she'll cause mass fear in Lost Harbor for fun) Whether it's Audrey in the Sewers or Henry in the Pit, it will be a special kind of nightmare for anyone who tries a close confrontation with the Spectre.
