A Look at Tad Strange - Life is a Fairytale
For a second, he stood still above the congregation-like mass, his words dripping with succulent promises of prestige. His heart bled for such poor and pitiful fools, yet only for a second.
For as soon as they pulled their swords and sharpened their loyalty to him, his pity fell, and a wicked grin replaced such doubts.
Since I was asked to share my process of creating Tad Strange in LiaFt, I thought I would write a little about him!
Tad Strange is/was a popular fan character that originated from a leak. From only his name, everyone went wild with theories with who he could be (possibly another demon?) and what roll he could play in Gravity Falls.
Of course, Tad Strange came to be nothing more than a punchline, but his fanon-self lived on even after the truth came out. Such an interesting fanon character became popular in fanfiction. Oftentimes, Tad Strange was cast as an antagonist of Bill Cipher’s and could either be “good” compared to Bill, or even more “evil” than our favorite dream demon.
Seeing these ideas played out, I decided to try and do something a wee bit different when I had Tad Strange to play with. Rather than a villain, I decided to cast him as Bill’s “brother,” and his closest comrade. From there, I decided to make Tad a sort of “foil” to Bill to balance out Bill’s shenanigans.
Whereas Bill knows nothing about the world and is trigger-happy, to say the least, Tad is a lot more cautious and knowledgeable.
However, like his brother, Tad is also a master manipulator. Unlike Bill, however, Tad rarely manipulates humans and other’s unless he severely dislikes them and needs some form of information. And while Bill lies, cheats, and will get close to someone just to betray them, Tad uses his ability to read other’s emotions to his advantage and doesn’t usually go as far as Bill does. While Bill holds himself up to be this divine and powerful being, Tad is more akin to hide his power instead and use his relatability to get what he wants. That being said, Tad is weaker than Bill.
In the old version of LiaFt, magic-users tend to gravitate toward certain elemental alignments that can color a lot of their spellcasting. For example, Bill is aligned with fire. Dipper is a bit too young of a spellcaster, but he was also going to align with fire. Meanwhile, Tad gravitated toward earth instead due to his down-to-earth and cautious nature compared to Bill. A lot of his magic appeared to be earth-based for that reason. An example of this is their teleportation; Bill had a flash of fire follow him while Tad had a whirlwind of dust. Likewise, if Tad were to make a deal, rather than fire, a crusting of mud and earth would instead cover his hand and stick to the mortal’s hand during the speaking of the deal. I haven’t completely decided whether I will be moving this mechanic to the newer version... so we’ll see! Besides that, I think I covered his powers quite nicely.
I was actually surprised with how much love Tad got in LiaFt. I was afraid most wouldn’t find him too interesting or would wish he were in a different role. But the love and support for Tad really overwhelmed me! Even when he was first introduced, a lot of people immediately told me how much they liked him! From there, I knew I wanted to play around with him more and expand on him as well!
While I tried to characterize Bill as a bit of a “dreamer;” someone who lives in his own fantasy and wishes to use his powers to bring whatever he wishes to life, Tad instead wants to mold reality to his will and use everything he has at his disposal to get what he wants.
I can’t say much on his past or background; those things will be explored deeply in the rewrite of LiaFt and are also spoilers for the OUATD as a whole.
