I was just musing on the characters yesterday evening and scribbling them. A bit of commentary on these:
- I am a huge fan of the sort of relationship dynamic where one character is very attuned to emotional cues and the other Knows Nothing. In romantic relationships it makes for some extremely fun writing. Anyway Vesper hasn’t figured out that Marcia is head over heels, water is wet, more at 9.
- Felix probably dresses like this in Adelaide’s world. Despite the way he was raised, he’s open to trying different things presentation-wise. Spoilers for chapter 48: I imagine Adelaide left behind her night market purchases in the hotel room when the CIA dragged her back home and Felix kept the cat keychain (which is hanging from his pocket in the pic). If you think about it, he is the solar powered lucky cat.
- Artur and Hong Yi have (to me) a deeply entertaining dynamic. There is a very strong surface-level personality clash that continues to have an effect even as they get to know each other better and recognise some points of connection. Orobelle always puts them in the same room when she’s the one determining lodgings; she’s like, “let’s group them by gender…I think that’s how things are done.”
- Dorian cooking a fish (Chapter 45) while Orobelle naps next door. I still laugh about that mini scene sometimes. He’s never cooked a fish in his life (his homeland doesn’t have much in the way of bodies of water) so he definitely overestimates how much heat they take to cook through. I think Orobelle sleeping while he does favours for everyone else is pretty indicative of their dynamic.
- Adelaide with butterflies…the idea of butterflies emerging from cocoons was always, in my mind, an apt parallel for her departure from the lab room after years inside it, imagining how the world beyond has changed while also being changed irreversibly by it. I imagine she’s the sort of person who could sit there watching living things interact for hours (…relatable…)
- Vesper using her powers. In her original character concept, like from when RD was conceptualised as a fighting game with world-switching mechanics, she was the “circuit completer,” and even now I almost always portray the electricity moving from one hand to the other or from her hand to the ground, because that’s how I picture her powers working. It’s really just based on lightning—cloud-to-cloud or cloud-to-ground.