Do any of your characters have tattoos or other body markings?
In Storge I used to have ceremonial tattoos as part of the worldbuilding for Maaren. The placement, coloring, and symbology of the shapes would tell you at a glance about a person's familial ties, career choice, military service and rank, religious order, and other status symbols.
I remember I only had the definitions for the family tattoos really figured out: a curved line like a necklace just above the collarbone for marriage. These could be embellished but a husband's and a wife's would always match. If they had children they would add dashes or dots for each son or daughter coming off of it like pendants, and then for each of their grandchildren you would keep adding dots or dashes below that like additional charms.
For siblings you had a line down each shoulder running from the neck down each arm. Older siblings had dashes on the left or dots on the right, facing towards their back to symbolize sisters or brothers they carried on their shoulders. Younger siblings had dashes or dots facing towards the front to symbolize sisters or brothers whose examples they would follow. All familial markings were a yellow gold color with black outline.
Military service or religious service was branded on the forearms I think in either red or blue respectively. Other career or guild tattoos were relative to the career you chose but they would also be placed on the forearm. Most of these were wraps and distinct enough to identify at a glance, like a badge.
I've put way too much sugar in my coffee and tea on accident this week and when I'm not caffeinated I'm drinking lemonade or lavender soda so I've just accepted that if I were an Avian I would be a hummingbird
(but your answer tells you which of my OCs you would get along with)
Shoplifted but felt guilty, so I returned it and made friends with the owner
Learned how to throw a punch at age 8 and haven't stopped picking fights since
Talked myself out of trouble and seamlessly screwed over the person punishing me
Got lost in the woods alone for weeks but got home without calling for help
I lie about my personal life (because it would hurt people to know the truth)
I lie about my personal life (for fun and crime)
Picked my name myself but I don't know what it means/chose something random
Convinced myself I'm insane despite logical explanations for my experiences
If someone ever read/destroyed my diary I would commit murder without hesitation
Parents pushed me into a career that I hated at first but ended up thriving in
Voting ended onApr 25, 2023
Click under the "read more" to learn about the character you picked! And feel free to send me an ask if you'd like to learn more about any of them! I'm turning this into a writeblr tag game too so if you want to join in on this, I'm tagging @abalonetea and @ashen-crest and @theroseempress
Option 1: Luca Laine
"It was far too lovely a day for a riot, but not even the warm morning sun or the light breeze flapping the trader's multicolored tents could keep Luca from taking advantage of the fact that there was, in fact, a riot."
The protagonist of Storge! He's a desperate kid who picks up people's trash and tries to salvage it into useful stuff for his family, but when he dares to steal a magical charm from the avian, Acheran, he's too much of a paragon to get away with it. His honestly earns him a job from the reserved shopkeeper and they end up becoming solid friends who look out for each other when their city devolves into a civil war.
Option 2: Grace Laine
"I could have killed you by now if I wanted to.
"Uh yeah, but you didn't."
Luca's younger sister! As a powerful energy sink, this kid can absorb magical energy and use it to bolster her own stamina and healing. This also means she can't use magic to fight, and so her father taught her martial arts at a very young age. As a result, this 14 year old menace is fully convinced she's indestructible and sasses assassins and terrorists with absolutely 0 negative consequences whatsoever /sarcastic
Option 3: Enne Laine
Luca and Grace's older sister! Despite being blind, she's the only sibling with common sense or self-preservation. With a lockbox memory and a lifetime of strategic thinking, she's extremely good at getting her way. While her sister is busy provoking the assassins and terrorists and keeping them distracted, she's arguing her way to freedom and sabotaging them on the way out.
Option 4: Hannah Teagan
When her younger sister, Cecelia, goes missing and all signs point to abduction by fae, Hannah promptly storms into the woods behind their house to bring her sister home. She gets more than she bargains for in the Seelie and Unseelie courts, and its up to her to find a way out of their maze and back to the world she knows.
A changeling who wants to become the Liege of Thieves. They use their various alter egos to set up a "crime ring" all reporting back to their leader Larua to make it seem like they have a stronghold on the criminal underworld in their city. They eventually recruit a real team, none of which have no idea that their rival, ally, and boss are all the same person.
Option 7: Both Tess Teagan and Weswin
(The first one's a spoiler as well.) Weswin is cursed to have a constantly shifting appearance that he can't control, meaning its impossible for him to maintain an identity or make friends. He eventually forgot his name after years of coming up with different constantly changing personas, and so he eventually settled on calling himself after the "west wind" which he follows in his wanderings.
Option 8: Sora Shiraishi
When you suppress your abilities out of fear for years, it can be terrifying when they start to forcefully manifest themselves and you don't know how to recognize them. Especially when you think you're hallucinating strange sounds and objects moving around, even though it's just the friendly spirit that your family's soul is bonded to, trying to get your attention. She only learned much later that she was experiencing a normal connection to the spirit world, and not losing her mind.
Option 9: Madelyn
Originally a very powerful mage, Madelyn lost her magic when her friend Alric betrayed and attacked her with a Relic. As she learns how to use magic from point 0 all over again, she logs her progress in her journal, and eventually learns how to cast spells from the ink and written words, binding her soul to it and becoming a Relic in her own right. It's a good thing her diary is extremely difficult to destroy as a result, but she refuses to risk losing her magic again. It wouldn't physically harm her, but she still might die of embarrassment if anyone ever read it.
Option 10: Seth
The child of high ranking dignitaries in Maaren, Seth was trained for the noble political life from the moment he learned how to talk. He resented this at first, not really knowing what he wanted to do with his life, but not wanting to be associated with his family's legacy. But after his family's power collapses and he escapes Maaren as a refugee, he realizes he's still really good at politics and rallying people behind a common cause, and uses his training as a force for good in the world.
💭 THOUGHT BALLOON — what is your oc's MBTI, enneagram, and/or other personality aspects (if known/interested in)?
oh god I was so obsessed with the MBTI when I was in high school, let me dig out my character profiles for the Storge cast... I even broke these down into cognitve functions, what a nerd.
Luca: ENFJ. Fe: he's empathetic and tries his best to seem friendly and likable and connect with people, even complete strangers, Ni: He's got goals and work towards them, works off intuition and seeing the bigger picture instead of getting lost in the logistics, Se: quick to act when he sees that action must be taken, Ti: he can be analytical and logical when he needs to be and he's good at problem solving which allows him to connect with Acheran.
Acheran: ISTP. Ti: His main focus in life is problem solving and trying to take things apart and figure out why they work, very analytical, scientific character. Se: highly observant of his world, he's not the absentminded professor, he's always watching his surroundings and making catalouges in his mind. Ni: great at pattern recognition, tends to jump around in his logic and thought process instead of thinking linearly, conceptualizes things abstractly, Fe: He's very sympathetic to Luca and cares deeply about humanitarian crises happening in the city but he's also so so awkward.
Enne: ISFJ. Si: Really good memory for her past experiences, organizes and catalogues everything with a staggering degree of accuracy and likes clear systems of rules, very black and white, does not like messy situations. Fe: Very perceptive of other people's emotional states and good at communicating and talking her way out of situations. Ti: Cares deeply about truths and facts and wants to make sure she has all the relevant information before making decisions. Ne: She appreciates new experiences but it takes her a while to get comfortable with them.
Grace: ENFP. Ne: Very creative, forms connections quickly to get a grasp on a situation and overflowing with ideas and solutions of dubious practicality. Fi: Extremely passionate, strong sense of justice and protective of the people she loves. Te. Whenever she makes a decision she's very decisive about it, likes efficiency. Si: Eager to gain new experiences and learn about herself, though she's not especially organized about it.
💯 HUNDRED POINTS SYMBOL — share three random facts about your oc that others may not know.
ooooo I'll go with Acheran then for this one
He was trained in construction work as a teenager but got bored with it and depressed and so his mom staged an intervention and got him his apprenticeship with the charm shop, which eventually inherited
Chara is four years younger than him but she's always been the bossier more confident one and he admires her a lot
He's an adamant pacifist and refuses to make weapons even though the Avian city needs to protect themselves and Chara orders him to help.
Can enne-body find meeeeeee? somebody to-oo loooooove
Is this enne-thing
Enne!
This is from last year but I still like how the colors turned out, she looks so peaceful... I might redo it, I've learned so much about digital art since then sdlfkjdf.
Have you ever been inspired with your writing by a saint?
yes!!!
In Runways, Lady Brigid is just... St Brigid.
She's one of the first patron saints of Ireland, along with St. Patrick and founded several monasteries, and so I thought it would make sense for her in-story to have established the religious order special unit of Powers - the group that takes in humans who are blessed with the gifts of the Holy Spirit magical abilities and trains them to fight the demons unseele that plague humanity. She shares a name with (but isn't literally) a mythological figure in Irish history, which lends to her association with the fae.
Also!!! In The Laoche Chronicles and Storge, Madleyn and Luca eventually receive the power over life and death itself from the Artist to work miracles of healing and regrowth, basically becoming Saints but this is fantasy land and so I can't use that word and so they become Relics. And the objects they carry - the journal and staff respectively - serve the function of IRL relics, as physical remains of a holy person and the things they touched, capable of working miracles in their own right, and are venerated in the same way!
It's blorbsday. If your ocs are participating in a group project, how helpful are they? Who takes charge? Who does the bulk of the work, who has ideas, who shirks, etc.?
Chara single-handedly runs the entire operation and this is canon
She the Magistra of Trade which means its her whole job to handle relations with Maaren when a tyrant queen starts imposing decrees that are going to starve the Avian city. Her brother, Acheran, is less than helpful and takes a lot of wheedling and desperate situations to contribute towards her efforts, and the Laine family has their own Hot Nonsense going on, so the survival of the Avians mostly falls on her shoulders.
He very seldom gets cold because his magic is like a furnace inside of his chest. Whenever Grace absorbs his magic, he feels a chill.
His magic also gives him a lot of extra energy so he's very fidgety. Usually this manifests as tapping out rhythms on whatever he can find (when he's in a good mood) or tracing his glowing scars (when he's feeling angsty)
His freckles also glow! He can wear long sleeves but theres nothing he can do about that
Enne is still taller than him by an inch much to his chagrin. He was really counting on that teenage growth spurt but nope. She'll always be his big sister.
He's got a number of friends who are singers and musicians in the Church of the Artist, which is great, because he's just a little bit tone deaf. This does not stop him from belting enthusiastically with Alex.
