As promised, the OC of the day!

I said I'd start this up again, and so far, I'm keeping my word.

Since I had the fewest of Thundercats characters, I decided to feature one of them this time.

Kalin
Project Name: Thundercats OC, used in fanfiction.
Age of Conception: 23
Inspiration: She was a character I came up with while plotting out my Thundercats story Path into the Darkness.  I created a fan-race of Lunatacs called hunters, who are native to the Third Moon jungles and have the pale whitish skin like the brute types (Amok), but have lean and toned bodies with the speed and agility of a predator.  Almost all of them have forest green hair, mostly because their racial culture is extremely exclusionary and thus, inbred.  Kalin herself was created as Grune’s love interest who helps to tempt him to the darker side of life at the prompting of her employer, Luna, who she worked for as an assassin at the time.
Fun Facts: Kalin chose to live amongst the general urban Lunatac society because of a natural curiosity rather than a desire to turn her back on the hunters’ more primitive lifestyle.  She considers living amongst the city-dwellers a personal challenge and a way to hone her skills.  She doesn’t exactly like Luna, but she does respect her, and prefers her company over that of the other Lunatacs in the group.
Picture: This is a picture of Kalin that Mittens/Fluffy drew of her and Grune back in 2000.  Just to warn you, it has non-erotic frontal female nudity. Link

OC a day meme

Back in April of 2010 I was doing an "Original Character a Day" meme on LiveJournal in which you were supposed to post a short bio of one of your original or fancharacters every day until you ran out (or ran out of steam).  Having written fics in three different fandoms for years, I had plenty of fodder for this.  Granted, these are not all "star of the story" type OCs.  That's not to say I didn't have my Mary Sue moments in my early writing days... I cringe when I think about the very first writings in which I featured Snoelle before the rewrites!  I do, however, add in a lot of supporting or background characters to flesh things out in my stories.  There isn't always a named canon character available to fill a role that's needed, you know?

Well, I got exactly 13 profiles posted before I stopped updating it.  Today it occurred to me that this blog would probably be a good place to post those, and maybe start it up again.  Perhaps not every day, but from time to time it might be nice to introduce my readers to some of my characters, especially ones who don't get a lot of text-time because the plot just doesn't call for it.

However, my LiveJournal has since been made friends-only, so I can't link you to those posts. Therefore, I decided to post the 13 profiles I did back then, and starting tomorrow, post a new one.  Don't worry, they're not that long, otherwise only the most dedicated would get more than a few done on schedule!

So without further ado... here we go!  This spans all three of my writing fandoms: Darkwing Duck, Voltron, and Thundercats.  I'll post the OCs in that order.

Darkwing Duck Fancharacters:

Heather Bushroot

Project Name: Darkwing Duck fandom OC, used in fanfic.
Age of Conception: I was 33 when I came up with this character.
Inspiration: Since I became intrigued with Bushroot's character I imagined what his family must be like and think of his mutation and criminal lifestyle since he was portrayed as this shy and introverted scientist who didn't seem like the type who would hurt anyone. I thought of him coming from a typical suburbia middle-class family with a fairly normal dynamic. Heather is the sibling I came up with for him. She is a bit like Reginald in some ways, although quite different in others.
Fun Facts: When they were younger, Reggie and Heather's parents often held Reggie up as the "good example" that she should follow because he always got better grades and was a very good student, and never got into trouble. Heather was not a bad kid, but she was more extroverted and tended to get in trouble for talking to friends or passing notes in class or putting off homework until the last minute so her grades weren't quite as good. Eventually she became a nurse because she genuinely likes to help others. She is also not into plants like Reggie or their mother, and doesn't keep any plants around except an aloe plant in her kitchen. Oh, and she's also rather clumsy. When I made a sim of her, that was one of the traits I assigned her, actually.
Picture: Here is a sketch-dump of Heather in a few different poses, and here is a lovely picture of her and Launchpad drawn by Darkwingpsycho.

Eddie Flood
Project Name: Darkwing Duck fandom OC, used in fanfiction. First appeared in Tension Convention.
Age of Conception: I was 33 when I first came up with this character.
Inspiration: I liked the idea of Liquidator having once had a family as Bud Flood and having had a couple of kids with his ex: one the typical clean-cut, good-grades kid type, and the other a rambunctious troublemaker. Eddie is the latter.
Fun Facts: After getting over his initial anger at his father for faking his death to assume the identity of Liquidator, Eddie thinks the idea that his dad is a super-villain is rather cool and exciting. Eddie thinks of himself as a tough badass and thinks it'd be awesome to have super-powers like his father. He's also an ace Whiffle Boy player, and not a bad shot with a laser weapon as a result of it.
Picture: This is my most recent finished attempt at drawing Eddie. 

Rill Flood
Project Name: Darkwing Duck fandom OC, used in fanfiction.
Age of Conception: 33
Inspiration: I wanted one of Liquidator's two sons to be a good and upstanding kid despite the personality flaws in his parents, and to be markedly different from his younger trouble-making brother.
Fun Facts: Rill has the good qualities of his father, such as his ambition and drive to succeed in life, but he would never intentionally cheat or take unfair advantage of anyone to get there. He does very well in school and loves to debate, and intends to join a pre-law program when he graduates high school and goes to college.
Picture: A picture I drew of Rill in 2009 is here.

Brooke Flood
Project Name: Darkwing Duck fandom OC, used in fanfiction.
Age of Conception: 33
Inspiration: I liked the idea of Liquidator having once had a family as Bud Flood, and an ex-wife that's just as bitchy and vindictive as Liqui is greedy and sleazy.
Fun Facts: Brooke and Bud had a pretty good relationship in the early years of their marriage, but over time they drifted apart, especially once the kids were born and Brooke stayed at home with them while Bud built up his business. Brooke is a snob and loves the finer things in life, which Bud's earnings from the Flood Water Company could well afford.  Small resentments and bickering built up between them over the years, utterly destroying their relationship, especially once he started cheating on her and she began acting in spiteful ways to hurt him back, like buying very expensive things without discussing it with him. When they divorced, she went for his jugular financially and secured a hefty portion of his assets as well as fat alimony and child support checks so she could continue to live in style and not have to work.
Picture: This is a drawing I made of her in 2009.

Brant Strongbill
Project Name: Darkwing Duck fandom OC, originally created for the story Tension Convention.
Age of Conception: 33
Inspiration: He was inspired by various actors of action and comic-based movies. He's built like Arnold Schwarzenegger but has more of the looks and charismatic appeal of someone like Robert Downey Jr. in his Iron Man role or Hugh Jackman as Wolverine.
Fun Facts: Brant really isn't a bad actor, although some of the movies he's been in are extremely cheesy with corny dialogue so he's been kind of typecast. Quackerjack believes he actually is Whiffle Boy, and nothing including the facts will change that.
Picture:  I haven’t drawn Brant yet.

Luna Darkfeather
Project Name: Darkwing Duck fandom OC, originally created for the story Tension Convention.
Age of Conception: 33
Inspiration: Since celebrities often have famous girlfriends/boyfriends, I made Brant's girlfriend a supermodel.
Fun Facts: Luna's actually a very sweet individual, not arrogant or conceited like some are because of celebrity status. She is, however, wrapped up in the lifestyle and the attention she gets from the paparazzi, so it does make her rather self-oriented and oblivious.
Picture:  I drew this picture of Luna last year.  I’m not happy with a lot of it (due to improvements in my drawing ability) so I may try her again sometime, but that’s a general idea of how she looks.

Ally Quackland
Project Name: Darkwing Duck OC, used in fanfiction.
Age of Conception: 34 - She came about while I was plotting my nano fic for November of 2009.
Inspiration: In order to work out plot for Nega-Quackerjack's origin, I had to work out the details of my take on normal-verse Quackerjack's origin, including individuals from his past. Ally is one such character, as his longest-term employee and head of advertising of Quackerjack Toys at the time the company went belly up.
Fun Facts: Quackerjack and Ally were fast friends in both 'verses, with a bit of one-sided attraction on Ally's side. One version of Ally betrays his trust while the other is a voice of reason that Quackerjack almost, but not quite, listens to. You'll have to read Nega-Quackerjack's part of my Origins fic, when I get to posting that part, to find out which is which.
Picture: No pictures of Ally, I'm afraid. She's a fairly plain-looking white-feathered duck with strawberry blonde hair and is a few years younger than Quackerjack. In the Negaverse she dresses in bright, attention-getting colors with lots of makeup that's bold and sparkly, and her hair is worn down in two long curls down like the girl on the far right in this picture. (Yes, it's a link to a hairstyle from Sims 3, lol). Her regular-verse self, who will eventually show up in a story that takes place sometime after Tension Convention, dresses in more classic colors and designs in a business casual kind of style. She wears her hair pulled back in a hairband.

Dr. Warbrin Aveshine
Project Name: Darkwing Duck OC, used in fanfiction.
Age of Conception: 33
Inspiration: I first came up with Warbrin when I started writing Forget Me Not. He's a scientist that works with and shares office space with Rhoda in present, post-Bushroot-going-postal-on-his-co-workers time. Certain aspects of his character were inspired by some individuals I worked with in my time as a lab slave.
Fun Facts: Warbrin's fashion sense is worse than most, and he thinks things like day-glo shorts are just fine to wear under his lab coat. He also shoots his mouth off without thinking, but he's not a bad or mean guy, just tactless and blunt. He fails at office politics almost as badly as he does at fashion, and falls asleep in meetings, but Rhoda and him get along fairly well. The students generally like him because he has a great sense of humor. He knew Bushroot on an acquaintance level as a fellow researcher, but never worked with him directly before his dramatic exit from his career.
Picture: No pic for Warbrin, either. He's a duck, taller than average, on the thin side with skinny-stick legs even for a duck. His bill is on the large side, which many say fit him, and he has light brown hair prone to a helmet-head look even though he rarely wears a hat.


Voltron Fancharacters:

Lady Kuryaki

Project Name: Voltron fandom OC, used in fanfiction. First appeared in Happy Ever After.
Age of Conception: I was 29 when I first came up with this character.
Inspiration: She is one of the many Doomite nobles I came up with to flesh out the planet Doom side of the Voltron universe in my fics. She's Yurak's mother, and very bitter about his death at the hands of Voltron.
Fun Facts: Kuryaki has the unique position of being the only woman on Doom to have two fleet commanders in her immediate family: her deceased son Yurak, and Cossack, who she married through a mutual agreement contract with his parents, my OCs Lord Tadack and Lady Visycka.
Picture: This picture of her sitting by Yurak's grave marker was done for me by Moira several years ago. I also made this avatar of her on Second Life a few years ago. 

Lord Tadack
Project Name: Voltron fandom OC, used in fanfiction.
Age of Conception: I was 29 when I came up with this character.
Inspiration: Since the series is a blank slate in regards to Cossack's background and history, I decided to make him come from a noble family on Doom, since I imagine that fleet commanders are generally chosen from the higher echelons of society in a setting like theirs. Cossack is kind of laid back though, and I decided that his family, while noble, was not terribly military like I wrote Yurak's. House Aldar'ach (my name for them) made their fortune in the small niche of agriculture on a cloudy desolate planet like Doom... they grow "grapes of Doom" (referred to in one of the eps) owning much of the farmable land on Doom, and own the largest winery business. With how Lotor goes through the stuff, you know that's profitable. Tadack himself is a lot like Cossack in demeanor, and dear old Dad is who Cossack inherited his sense of humor from.
Fun Facts: The Aldar'ach family has a secret recipe for a peach wine with potent aphrodisiac qualities, but they don't market it and only the head of the house knows the recipe at any given time, because it's such a valuable thing to use for bribes and other purposes, basically being a lust potion. All of the Aldar'ach clan knows of it, but only Tadack knows how to make it, and he will pass down the recipe to the heir (Cossack's sister Sulestri, since Cossack married into a different house) when he gets old and near death.
Picture: I made an avatar of him on Second Life a while back. The pic was taken in a tiki bar I had on the property I owned, which is kind of fitting for him.

Lady Visycka
Project Name: Voltron fandom OC, used in fanfiction.
Age of Conception: I was 29 when I came up with this character.
Inspiration: Lady Visycka is Cossack's mother and Tadack's wife. I wanted her to have a bit more social smoothness than Cossack or her husband, but still be a bit of a personality. She's a first class schmoozer and rather shrewd despite being a heavy drinker.
Fun Facts: While Tadack is good with running the winery and overseeing operations, Visycka is the socialite and the deal-maker. She's got a very good mind for numbers and a knack for brokering good deals, from everything to the winery business to her children's marriage contracts. When she and Tadack were first arranged to be married, she couldn't stand him. She still finds him annoying at times, but because she can tolerate his crude sense of humor with a buzz, she just drinks a lot, even for a Doomite. After over thirty years of marriage she loves Tadack, but he does drive her nuts. Oh, and Cossack's unruly hair was inherited from her side.
Picture: Here is an avatar I made of her on Second Life several years ago.

Thundercats Fancharacters:

Torlei

Project Name: Thundercats fandom OC, primarily used in fanfic. She was first seen in my story Evil's Bride.
Age of Conception: Let's see, I have to do math for this. The first draft of that was written in the fall of 1997, so I guess that means I was 22. Holy crap, I've been posting fanfic online for a long time!
Inspiration: I love pairing up characters in dysfunctional or crazy relationships, so I wanted to pair Mumm-Ra the Ever-Living off to an equally vicious bitch. Since I also was really into the Lunatacs and had the notion of Alluro once having had a sister who could do telekinetics, it connected in my brain that it'd make for some wacky drama to make it be Alluro's sister who was the undead nightmare.
Fun Facts: When I was writing Path Into the Darkness I had a lot of sub-arcs that didn't focus on WilyKit or Grune, the main characters. Mumm-Ra and Torlei, the unhappy undead couple, were also stirring the pot, and bits of Torlei's past were revealed in the midst of it. I decided to make one of the things that made her such a cold and spiteful individual be that as a teenager she was caught by a deranged hunter Lunatac (a Lunatac race I created for my universe), raped, and forced to bear his child, which she then abandoned to the hunter clan. I didn't write this to make her seem sympathetic (because really, there's nothing that could excuse the horrible things she did and tried), but to show why she was such a bitter and twisted bitch to begin with, and why her brother Alluro was the only individual she was at all vulnerable toward. The hate and weakness she felt was what led her to seek the knowledge of black magic and sell her soul to the service of the Ancient Spirits of Evil. She wanted to be so powerful that she could crush and destroy anything at will, because the thing she fears most is anything being able to do that to her.

A good artistic rendition of her can be found here on my site. This was drawn by request for me years ago by an artist in the fandom who went by the name of Mittens/Fluffy.

Snoelle
Project Name: Thundercats fandom OC, used in fanfiction. She first appeared in Revival.
Age of Conception: I was 22 when I came up with this character.
Inspiration: Snow leopards were one of the cat types not represented among the canon characters, so I thought a snow leopard character made a good choice to add to the crew. I also thought Panthro needed a love interest, but none of the canon characters seemed a good fit for it, so I created one for him.
Fun Facts: Snoelle isn't the first snow leopard character I came up with. Way back when I was a kid and wrote stories about the cartoons I liked, long before the internet or ever hearing the term "fanfiction,” my friend Jenny and I made up two twin snow leopard kids to be the friends and eventual boyfriend/girlfriend to the Thunderkittens. The boy was Sno-Lee and the girl was Snolei. When I got around to planning and writing Revival many years later, I remembered those characters but even though I didn't know what a Mary Sue was, I knew that they were way too silly and contrived to use in a serious fic. Plus "Snolei" was too close in name to another OC of mine, Torlei, so I didn't want to recycle the name. I named my snow leopard Thundercat Snoelle because it sounded more regal and fitting with her background as a snow leopard Thundercat noble from the generation she was born in, the ruler that preceded Lord Claudus.
Picture: I tried to draw Snoelle back in the day, but it's really embarrassing to me now, so I'm not going to link to it. Instead I'll link you to the picture Lady Bast drew for me of Snoelle and Panthro back in 1998.

Citrus Taste Progress

I mentioned in my last post that I should think about my progress on the Citrus Taste challenge.  It has fifty prompts and I've only done a handful.  Here's a reference list, including the ones that are completed.  The struck out ones are ones that I've finished with the title of the finished fic and the pairing(s) involved next to them.

1. One Wild Night Mutants on the Prowl (Liquidator/Bushroot/Camille)
2. I'm the King/Queen of the Sheets
3. Vampire Loving
4. All About the Games You Play Tag (Megavolt/Quackerjack)
5. Blanket Hog
6. Reenacting My Favorite Fantasy
7. Romantic Night
8. A Little Quickie Behind the Doors Door Number One (Bushroot/Liquidator)
9. No More Teasing, Baby
10. Come to Me
11. Jezebel
12. To Live Without, is Death
13. Nice and Rough, Or Gentle and Tender
14. Play House
15. Switching Roles
16. Can't Stop Watching You
17. When the Lights Go Out, the Lovers Play
18. Shake That Thing
19. Impatient Nympho
20. No Humor In My Tone
21. Phone Fun
22. Intoxicated With Your Taste
23. Dreams Do Come True When I Think Of You
24. My Fairytale
25. One More Time Sanctuary (Negaduck/Malicia)
26. There's wicked thoughts behind your eyes
27. Under the Roses
28. Memories of Love Your Wildest Dreams (Bushroot/Rhoda)
29. The sound of your breath on my cheek
30. Until There's Nothing Left of Us
31. Last Chance
32. You won't be turned away
33. To Touch the Devil
34. Virtue was not convenient
35. The Back of Your Hand
36. Graceful ends
37. Do you ever think you'd rather be with me instead?
38. You Got Lucky
39. He always smiles
40. Only to deceive your senses
41. Because it is my name.
42. It's a way of expressing our humanity
43. I'm the whore of Babylon
44. The Chase is On
45. Silken Threads of Fate
46. A whisper, sacred & profound
47. So I could find God between your legs tonight.
48. Meet Me in the Back
49. Think of all the things your hands could make
50. Wildcard!

The last finished fic I posted for this challenge was in the fall of 2009, so I'm really behind.  It probably seems like an abandoned project, but there really are more I'd like to do.  I have some others started, but I either didn't like how they were progressing, or ran out of steam with the idea.

For instance, I have about 670 words written for prompt #33, "To Touch the Devil," as a Lotor/Allura Voltron fic.  The premise was that Allura was captured by Lotor, and he's trying to seduce her.  She's not having it, of course, being that he's an evil bastard, even if he is a handsome one.  (Yeah, DWD fans, Bushroot/Rhoda isn't my only bad-boy/good-girl pairing of choice.  Except Lotor and Allura are even more on opposite ends of the spectrum since Lotor is anything but misunderstood.)

I also have well over 3000 words inspired by prompt #31, "Last Chance," but I was hoping to write an angsty Bushroot/Darkwing fic (mostly to see if I could write that pairing at all with all of its inherent challenges) and instead it came out as angsty gen.  There's no sexual vibe at all; at best it's working toward an uneasy friendship.  Sadly, I like what I have of this fic, but I can't rightly call it a Citrus Taste story because even if the prompt did inspire it, the whole point of Citrus Taste is sexy fic.  Not gen.

For prompt #13, "Nice and Rough, Or Gentle and Tender," I have the start of a Bushroot/Liquidator scene taking place in the sewers.  It got kind of funny on me when I decided to inject humor into the PWP by deciding to have Darkwing tracking them (it takes place after a crime) and walk in on them at the absolute wrong moment. I have about 2000 words of that done.

Prompt #12 ("To Live Without, is Death") was also started as another Bushroot/Liquidator fic to fit in with the Like Earth and Water stories.  It takes place in the aftermath of Tension Convention and deals with Bushroot trying to cope with crushing loneliness and missing him while Liquidator is in jail. I have just under 1000 words of that done so far.

The last two I have started are prompt #10 ("Come to Me") and prompt #38 ("You Got Lucky").  #10 is an exploration of pairing the Negaverse versions of Bushroot and Liquidator and how they might wind up together, and #38 was an attempt at seeing if I could write decent femmeslash of Rhoda Dendron and Sarah Bellum.  It opened with them meeting in the aftermath of "Beauty and the Beet" where Darkwing took Rhoda to S.H.U.S.H. to have their researchers and medical staff make sure she wasn't going to suffer any lasting effects from Bushroot's machinery after he tried to transform her.  Sarah was one of the ones assigned to her case.  It didn't get very far, though.

So as you can see, I haven't totally ignored these fics.  I just haven't made a whole heap of progress on them.  I have a few other vague ideas on what to do with the remaining prompts.  "Intoxicated With Your Taste," for instance, just screams Bushroot/Liquidator to me, and for "Under the Roses" I have a vague idea for another Bushroot/Rhoda one-shot (possibly a follow-up to Your Wildest Dreams, which is not in the same continuity as Forget Me Not).

There are other pairings I've thought I'd like to try on a one-shot basis.  I need to ponder some of the prompts more and see if any new inspiration comes to me.

A fic blog?

So, I've been inspired to create a blog to discuss my fanfic projects by Zebeckras (of The Weblog Chronicles fame) and now Fies (with her Blooming Perennials blog for her works).

As a short introduction, I've written extensively in three fandoms: first Thundercats, then Voltron, and most recently, Darkwing Duck.  At the moment I'm only really active in the Darkwing Duck fandom.  It's where the lion's share (duck's share?) of my inspiration has been the last couple of years.  I don't consider my primary projects from the other fandoms abandoned, exactly, but they are on hiatus.

Still, I might discuss them here from time to time, as I do sometimes get the urge to tinker with them.  That's one of the reasons I don't call them abandoned.  Inspiration can come back at any time.  I've left my oldest epic-length fic, Path into the Darkness, untouched once from 2001 to 2003 (and this fic was originally started in 1998), and then left the storyline alone from 2003 to 2008. (I was primarily writing Voltron fanfiction at this time, most prominently my Chronicles of a Dark Planet series.) I never did get back to Path, but in 2008 I went back into the Thundercats fandom long enough to rewrite and revamp the works that take place before it (Evil's Bride, Spellbound, and Revival) as well as write its prequel, Dawn of Peace, for that year's NaNoWriMo. 

I've been wanting to put the 300 or so pages done of Path itself up on Archive of Our Own, but since that writing is 2003-era compared to the 2008-era, there's a noticeable quality difference, so I'd have to do some revamping of it first.  It'll be a huge project, so it's been sitting on the back burner, especially since I'm more motivated to work on Darkwing Duck stuff now.

My attention in that has been somewhat splintered.  I have a primary story-verse that progresses from Thankless Season to Tension Convention, to eventually include more fics.  The Like Earth and Water series is a subset of that, only it's exclusively Bushroot/Liquidator shippy stuff.  I prefer to keep the main continuity stuff as having more of a gen feel, at least in that while pairings are mentioned, they aren't the primary focus.  At least not yet.  As things progress, that will change, since the DW/Morgana relationship will become more prominent, I have plans to pair Launchpad up with an OC, and Bushroot/Liquidator will become a stronger theme as well.  Still, I don't intend to ever take my main continuity fics beyond a T rating, so any mature stuff for any pairing will be written in separate fics.  I figure that keeps everyone happy, since 'ships are something that are such personal taste for many readers.

In a completely different universe (well, except that it also counts the events and backstory for Bushroot in Thankless Season) I'm writing Bushroot/Rhoda.  I like both Bushroot/Liquidator and Bushroot/Rhoda too much to choose between them, so I'm just writing two different universes.  I have a lot of ideas I'd like to implement beyond Forget Me Not once I get it finished, so I'm hoping to turn this into a full alternate story arc.

Then there's the Origins of the Friendly Four story.  Because it's based in the Negaverse it doesn't really get classified as falling into either of the above, except that I also use my backstory of Bushroot in it.  Nega-Reggie certainly won't ever make up with Nega-Rhoda given what's played out so far, but I don't really see anything happening like a parallel to my other fics, either.  Therefore I consider it its own little continuity.

Last but not least are the Citrus Taste fics.  Most of these were written as one-shots to fill a prompt, so they don't fall into any continuity, aside from Door Number One, which is a Like Earth and Water story. I still have a load of prompts left for this, but haven't filled any lately.  Hmm.  I should probably rectify that one of these days. ;)