I don't expect many ppl following me to remember this drawing I did for Steamcember back in 2023 but I finalized some of the character designs :]
In order: Jade (They/Them), Bubbles (She/Her), and Clover (She/Her). (the bottom three renders are all the same character, just at different angles/different points in time lol).
I've said this on Discord a few times but I am desperately curious about what else was going on in different areas of the world while Dig 2/Build was happening. I decided I wanna make my own story to explore that; these are just a few of the characters that will be involved. I'm excited to get to the rest :]
Oops I'm a bit late. Starting off Steamcember with some cryptic OC art! I am nowhere near ready to being able to tell these OCs’ stories; my outlines are still horribly messy and disconnected and their designs definitely need work but. Someday™! This can count as concept art in the meantime lol
2, 4, 12, and 18 (I didn't see your reblog on the ask game or I would have sent this in sooner *sob*)
HELLO THANKS <3 These made me think quite a bit actually, good picks
Name an OC who...
2 -> ... has helped you with one of your own insecurities
This is absolutely Freya, cause she is certifiably A Lot. Like... her theme song is Second Child, Restless Child by the Oh Hellos for a reason. My loud and bouncy and excitable girl, she's quick to laugh and cry and take up space and while I'm not quite as physically hyper as she is (too tired tbh) I've found so much comfort in her. Cause I love her so much, and it's so easy to imagine her friends and family also being fond of her despite all the mess, so it's honestly helped a lot in the way I see those parts of myself. Unintentional ADHD rep babes for the win <3
4 -> ... has a phobia
I haven't really given anybody a specific phobia, now that I think about it, but if I had to pick it'd be Amelia (Freya's mom) and her cleanliness obsession. Both in the germaphobe direction and in everything having to be organised and put away because what will the neighbours think? God forbid a girl has Items.
Oh and Oscar dislikes balloons. Not a severe phobia by any means but that shit pops whenever it feels like it and if he can avoid them, he will.
12 -> ... has a certain accessory they always wear
Maria has a little gold necklace she's worn every day of her life since her and Alexei, her lovely dumbass husband, moved in together. Even her son has only seen her without it like twice in his life (once was when Freya got hot sauce on it and it had to be cleaned).
18 -> ... nobody ever believes
Ooh okay. This one is the hardest so far, because it really bounces around as the plot progresses. At first it's probably our main girl as she gradually realises things are weird and that her bestie did not, in fact, get stuck at school camp because a bus broke down. As I said she's a loud and fairly emotional girl so that's a one way ticket to "sit down, you're dramatic" town. And then she gets more and more concrete evidence but once she's believed things are deeply fucked up, in many ways that could be avoided had people taken her seriously six months earlier. Universal girlhood experience. Wait who said that. Hm.
In a much lighter sense, Alexei too. Because his Air Force stories all border on insanity and no one knows how much is exaggeration, but they love listening all the same. Airplane grandpa beloved.
im intrigued by your original works, can you ramble a bit about them :eyes: (kindsummer)
HI HELLO THIS IS 6 MONTHS OLD and I told you I'd get to it when I finished PJ but I never did so... here it is. Long overdue. Enjoy @kindsummer <3
I have several projects open in various stages of development rn including a few weird short stories and potential fics. But you did say to ramble so I'll stick to the two main ones you mentioned back then cause there's a lot to say - Project Jade and the Academy of Chaotic Arts. I'll chuck it all under the cut cause god knows I can't shut up
First we have Project Jade aka PJ, my first bigger original work and beloved firstborn child, currently standing at 132k with its first draft posted on AO3. It's a soft dystopia set in a vaguely post-apocalyptic AU of Europe, and the beating heart of it all is our main duo of best friends that has been rotating in my mind every single day for the past three years. There's Freya, bird nerd extraordinaire with zero impulse control and general menace. She usually has twelve hobbies going concurrently, hasn't sat still a day in her life, and feels everything a bit too much. And then we have her best friend Oscar. A lazy little computer nerd raised by two elderly Russians (the dry slavic sass comes with the package), will nap on any surface available and spends 90% of his time roasting Freya's life choices but secretly loving the chaos. Besties since eight years old, and our main POVs.
The worldbuilding and political situation is a bit of a mess (the main thing I need to fix in the edit), but the general idea is that after a major accident some time back, the mainland Europe countries temporarily united into one to help with damage control and the remnants of that big thing are where we are set. There's also an element of mandatory genetic testing for folks wanting to have babies but I won't get too spoilery about it in here, just very present in both plot and general setting.
For main themes I'll be a cliche bitch and say found family. Runners up are hopepunk and slight thriller/mystery vibes at certain parts but my bio says 'bestieism and siblingism enthusiast' for a reason. There's a million configurations of platonicity in this thing. From the main besties who were an absolute joy to write to some younger kids who I also love, and both the MCs' families play huge roles in this as well (so Freya's parents and older sister, and his adoptive parents). There's also one arc that ended up being so much more important and intricate than planned, and I once again won't spoil too much but let me just say I got annoyed at authors putting their fictional kids through absolutely horrific shit and the consequences just getting brushed off two chapters later, so there will be no brushing it off here. And so much of that didn't even make it into the final story. But yeah major mental health themes (issues and ultimately treatment as well), and if I end up going into psych nursing after graduating it would quite literally be this imaginary kid's fault.
Lastly I'll just give a bit of a timeline for my PJ-related plans, cause you did say to ramble. I'm fully aware that in its current state it's nowhere near ready to go out into the world - it's my first bigger thing and I learned so much about what it takes to craft a story through it - so I want to do a thorough edit and revision sometime soon. Then I also have three sets of individual scenes planned outside the main story - a trio of moments before the story (like a prequel), a trio for the besties' uni era and a trio for when they're older. Will probably get to those after the edit, except for one of them that I deliriously wrote while driving across Norwegian fjords. And I think that would be it for PJ? Needless to say if you have literally any questions or thoughts about if please drop in anytime, I am going mental here
Next up: The Academy of Chaotic Arts aka the ACA <3 Newer project, born out of my mom calling me an agent of chaos so many times that I made a WIP about folks who actually do it for a living. Set in London with the occasional detour. No supernatural elements in here, the main concept is the chaos-order balance (the COB), which is a tangible thing that can be measured with complex social science-y methods and which the agents are tasked with maintaining. The premise is that the world is skewing more and more into the order side - everyone plans everything, we do the same things the same way every day, etc - so the work consists mostly of interventions for chaos distribution.
First, the future agents have to be picked out by scouts who scope out schools, and then if they agree to join it's a two level training program before they can start working. High school aged kids called Firsts have some normal subjects and some ACA-specific ones (chaos theory, distribution techniques, chaosology 101, the benevolence parameter, the cultural and mythological frameworks of chaos...). Then we have Seconds, which are college aged students and here is where specialisations are picked for the six major branches of chaos distribution - verbal, narrative, environmental, digital, pediatric and mass chaos. All have their own subjects and lots of practical work. Lastly there's also Thirds, which are rarer and only pop up when a specific student is a good fit for learning a more niche branch of chaos after graduation and they study it under one mentor until they're ready. And the way all levels are taught is also suitably deranged, and meant to keep everybody on their toes. Think a class full of birds that steal supplies, school bells ringing at different times each day, professors inexplicably coming in and giving a lecture on ancient Egypt and never mentioning it again, the list goes on. It's fun.
There's vague inklings of a plot for this one right now (I think it'll end up being a trilogy) and I have quite a bit of backstory for the ACA and its main faculty. Subjects and other technical bits are also mostly done, as is the way the agents operate in the world and general society. Oddly enough the MCs are still missing (PJ began with the besties and the plot/setting came after, here it's apparently going to be the exact opposite) so I'll focus on that when I get a second to breathe from school. And then it's onto writing, I guess. This one did seem like a thing for a younger audience at first but now it's shaping up to be just a slightly goofier core concept but still with YA/adult themes and characters. As for the dynamics, lots of platonicity can be expected because the target audience is, yet again, myself. Also there's a cat.
And that is where I'd wrap up given that it's almost 2am and I don't want to completely die at uni tomorrow. But yeah thanks so much for the ask, I genuinely love yapping about all this and sorry I made you wait so long!!
