#sapphire steele

[myths-of-fantasy]

I drew Sapphire! The first is her as a cub and I tried to make her look younger- the second young adult Sapphire. I did not mean to make her that adult looking but lesson learned- use kids as references for drawing kids lol.

[myths-of-fantasy]

Like human children will suck their thumbs and arms or have a favorite blanket, there are many things common to Faunae and some faunus when they're cubs. They're sweet and cute things mostly.

Most times they're just self-soothing devices for the cubs. Many cubs will use their extended features and limbs for comfort- Snow leopards have long, thick and fluffy tails, so it's not uncommon for young snow leopards to cuddle their tails to their chests when they feel nervous or scared and no one is around to soothe them. Cat cubs will purr to themselves in an attempt at calming their hurt or scared feelings. 

While these are normal actions most everyone has done, cubs tend to grow out of it at about 13 years of age. If a Faunus doctor sees a cub 15 or older still doing some of these things, they're tempted to speak to the cub as that tends to be a subtle signal that things aren't alright at home and haven't been for a while.

The most common and repetitive acts are suckling and grooming to no one's surprise. Suckling- and also chewing, are things many young faunae do when stressed or afraid. This is dangerous because in their desire for the feeling of security, cubs tend to neglect the dangers of certain objects. They will chew or suckle on a large number of unsafe objects from electric wires, nails, weapons, ammo and even dust canisters. As a result, all of these things in Undercities are held to high standards to ensure the safety of their cubs.

Frankly this all sounds like normal children but when your child can leap 8 feet into the air and grab things previously out of reach, safety standards are, clearly, raised to ridiculous levels.

Overgrooming is a constant worry for the parents of cubs everywhere. Little cubs/chicks often default to grooming to calm themselves. Be it preening their feathers, brushing/licking their fur or even overbathing. Overgrooming is suspected to kill something of 20% of all young faunae cubs as they rub themselves raw or drown. Fatal overgrooming is mostly seen in orphaned or lonely cubs who believe they have no one to turn to. 9/10 faunae surveyed confirmed that when they overgroomed as a cub, they'd had their imprints shattered rather than faded making them feel desperate, insecure and lonely. 1 in 3 of these people confirmed they were orphans.

Overgrooming is characterized by red and raw or bleeding skin, patches of bald spots where fur/scales or feathers are missing and chipped, damaged scales. Overgrooming is easily treated in two ways:

Comforting the Cub: The entire reason any of this is happening is because they believe themselves to be completely alone and feel threatened from all directions. Letting them know they can rely on you tends to soothe these fears and with enough dedicated and repeated encouragement, the cub will leave the habit behind.

Discouragement: If you're a furred cub like poor Sapphire, then your least favourite flavor is rubbed into your fur so that if you attempt to lick, you become repulsed. Overbathers are simply placed under monitored bathtimes. 

These techniques are meant to be used alongside other techniques to slowly wean the cub from the action of overgrooming.

[myths-of-fantasy]

Character Under Construction

Name

Sapphire Ozpin-Steele

Pronouns

She/Her

Age

15

Race

Faunae (Snow Leopard)

Semblance (Primary)

Masquerade: Shift into the form of a person with their basic fighting style. This is usually accompanied by the transforming on her weapon into the other's weapon but it doesn't always happen- especially if the weapon has very close one-of-a-kind attachment or is so far distanced from the target it doesn't matter.

Semblance (Secondary)

Thief: Copy a semblance but with physical repercussions ranging from migrains to muscle strains and skeletal fractures. At mastery of a "stolen", alter a single aspect of a semblance.

Weapon

Melodic Assault: An electric violin that can become a crossbow (like the weapon) and rifle. The bow itself is capable of being used as a spear. It's blue and black and usually strapped to her back.

This idea is based on a gorgeous design by JollyJoseph on DeviantArt.

Family

Prof. Ozpin: Adopted father who found her far from home in Atlas all alone at sox years old. Deciding he couldn't just leave her there, he returned to Vale bringing her with him. He raised her as his adoptive daughter in Beacon Academy training her to defend herself from Poachers.

Friends

Ruby Rose (crush): Ruby is one of her favorite people and her crush. Not that she realizes she has a crush but yeah.

Yang Xiao Long: Yang is like an older sister to her. Especially after the Fall of Beacon. Yang noticed how she knew a lot of combat and battlezone survial skills but was naive with social interaction.

Weiss Scnhee: She and Weiss tend to bond over Atlas temperature. The two of them whine about how warm Vale is compared to Atlas. Weiss adopts an older sister view towards her and Sapphire is open to it.

Blake Belladonna: Blake is her role model. As the only other faunus she regularly comes into contact with, she's eager to learn as much about faunus history and culture that Ozpin couldn't teach her. Blake is nervous about being her main influence but takes her representation position seriously.

Velvet

Team

N/A: Being raised at Beacon, mostly she just hangs around and occasionally talks to the students. She's more of an unofficial Huntress in training until The Fall of Beacon.

Sexuality

Sapphire is lesbian. It takes her a long time to realize this even though Ozpin sees it right away. When she finally examines her happiness to see Ruby vs. her excitement to see Weiss or Blake and comes to the understanding that it's different. Yang talks her through this realization and even through her crush on Ruby.

[myths-of-fantasy]

Making a RWBY character. Sapphire Steele. Adopted daughter of Ozpin. And she's Faunae- a subclass of Faunus I made with more animal traits and less humanoid ones. Usually they have animal trait patterned skin, animaled ears, can have slightly altered facial shape and tails. They have slightly wonked proportions because of it.

Faunae are more predictable in species because they're more common if a specific kind of faunus is together for many generations in a row. Usually a 3 or 4 generations of the same kind of faunus together can result in faunae. The same kind of faunae getting together always result in that kind of faunae.

For example, Sapphire is a Snow Leopard faunae. Her parents were both Snow Leopard faunae as were her grandparents. All of her direct family were Snow Leopards for 4 generations. If Sapphire gets with a human or another kind of faunus or faunae, the child would go back to the faunus' usual randomization.

Sapphire has snow white hair and snow leopard ears. Her skin is covered in layer of silver/white fur and has spots running over her back. She has a long tail and has sharp fangs. She has retractable claws.

She's capable of purring. Much to the bewilderment of anyone who studied animals. The big cat faunae shrug it off and explain that all cat faunae or faunus can purr. Even if big cats can't. They can.

Biologists gave up.