mariemarieohcontrary

[mariemarieohcontrary]

And if my first post for the new year is a redo of my original lineup to fit the MCs per category? What then dfougsufgsf

Again this is inspired by @cassiopeiacorvus' lineup which just seems to grow more mad respect to you omgg

I'll also do my best to explain the character design and body language I used since this is how they appear at the start of their stories!

Evangeline Marie G. (Guzman) Lakandula

I went with this very conservative style due to her being raised very sheltered and when she was younger her family always put value to how they appeared to the rest of the clan and I really wanted to make sure that it's clear that it stuck with her even after she ran away from her father and sister

White is meant to be this colour of purity but it also makes it less hot so long as the fabric isn't too thick

Body language is closed off and almost looks like she's trying to always comfort or embrace herself due to a lot of insecurities and a hard childhood

She doesn't mess with her hair at the start as she doesn't see a reason for it nor has the motivation to do anything beyond keeping her hair loose or the occasional ponytail

Flats because it's easier to use a bicycle and also since she doesn't think heels would suit her

The only constant thing I shouldn't forget to keep drawing is the necklace which I now turned into a locket. In there is a photo of her grandparents since it was her grandmother's locket before her death

Kara Urduja D. (Dimasupil) Madlangbayan

Say thank you Metro Manila Film Festival for showing The Kingdom aka a movie about an uncolonised Philippines for giving me some clues on how to work with a modernised take on something like that

So I axed off Rutherland and went with a slightly colonised part of the archipelago that reclaimed its independence before Spain fully sunk its claws into the country. Thus the small country known as Dimaapi was founded. They speak deep Tagalog and have little to no Spanish loan words but they could speak English cause it's necessary

Urduja was named after the Pangasinense princess Urduja/Udaya, and it's a name chosen by their mother to remind them of their worth. In the old stories, Urduja announced she would only marry one who is greater than her in battle and wisdom, so their mother wanted them to settle for no less than that.

Has a complicated relationship with their mother cause it feels more like they're a bargaining chip and prop for their mom's campaigns

Urduja keeps their hair short for management reasons but the first time they cut their hair it was a bit of a scandal since it's like they took away their own pride

They went to Manila once and saw modern barongs and got very fond of it that that's their go-to fashion now

Wears heels cause they like feeling tall

A bit uncomfortable with their role as First Child hence the body language and have a tendency to put their weight on one foot a lot of the time

Maya Chelidonia C. (Caacbay) dela Rosa

They actually sometimes do go on their tiptoes unconsciously, it happens as a way to think over things and they don't even notice. Mafalda learned to just accept it

Wears flats for workplace-appropriate reasons, their go-to is something respectable looking so they could be taken seriously

Ties their hair in a low bun like back in their police days back in the Philippines as something familiar but also practical

No makeup beyond a tinted lip balm their younger sister sent over to stop them from picking their lips

Likes coffee but it's more of like sweet stuff just to stay awake. Prefers Kopiko tho and black forest milktea

Delores Faustina A. (Abad) Hilario

Babie darling girl who's confident in herself and is trying her best in college

Does a lot of volunteer work back at the Philippines and is known by her old school friends to have waded through deep floods to aid very flooded areas during typhoon season

Asked her mom to dye her hair before she went to college

Rings are her comfort item and will wear a lot on different fingers (they're costume rings but it's the feeling of it that's more important)

Likes to wear skirts of varying styles unless she's told to wear pants

Emma Dolores A. (Acda) Dalit

Here's my Freshman MC all grown up and here she dyed her hair a lil bit since she liked the colour and thought it would look good on her

She stopped writing her novels and fairytales after her messy breakup with James, her grandmother's death, her leaving Hartfeld and later on her grandfather's death so she focused more on journalism after a course switch and became a political journalist

She became known as someone who interviewed King James Liam Rhys and Queen Evangeline Marie Lakandula-Rhys for a special interview

Is very work obsessed that she sleeps only four hours despite her siblings' growing concerns

Still wears pinks but stopped with the floral prints

Dyed her hair a deep red brown shade since she thinks she looks good with it

Now wears her grandmother's pink pearl necklace

While she doesn't say it, she still secretly writes short stories but she no longer talks about them

Fell out of touch with Edgar who noticed her stopping in writing

Taglist: @choicesficwriterscreations

[mariemarieohcontrary]

No but back to Reverse Au James/Evangeline, the challenges would be so different and it's not cause social season reasons. They would be feats of strength and honour and Evangeline would have to avoid her grandpa's side eye cause he's not the son of a Rajah or even foreign nobility

[mariemarieohcontrary]

So I'm trying out Do No Harm and I decided that my MC here knew Inocencia back in college granted SiaSia was an upperclassman.

Her name is Galinda Gapuz and it's cause her parents loved the 1995 book. Rip for them Galinda is not as big a fan and calls herself Lina. She likes classic novels especially the serious political social commentaries like Les Mis, El Filibusterismo, Noli Me Tangere, etc and in terms of children's books she liked the original Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Hans Christian Anderson and Christian Perrault works

God I should really draw all of my bbys in ternos and traje de mestizas

[mariemarieohcontrary]

So i watched the trailer to the kingdom and just thought of a reverse roles au four TRR

Anyway History Teacher!Liam Rhys meeting and falling for Heir Apparent Dayang!Evangeline who would actually get a different name in that AU

This will in fact live rent free in my head for awhile

[mariemarieohcontrary]

Did I miss liam appreciation week QAQ

dragon age discourse how dare u keep me occupied

[mariemarieohcontrary]

“Loving you was my crime,living without you is my life sentence”

Prince Rabbi//South African poet

[mariemarieohcontrary]

So I decided Emma and James do not get back together and now BBY sister helped me figure out my girl's future

She gonna be the MC in scandalous proposal lmao

[mariemarieohcontrary]

So first off

James what the fuck

That secret wasn't mine to tell???

[mariemarieohcontrary]

y'all do not know the nightmare of trying to figure out how to do the bell sleeves of the terno and how it makes it look like you got high shoulders

these mcs better appreciate the way I'm spoiling them (rip my historical fiction mcs tho they're not getting the traje de mestiza f in the chat for them)

[mariemarieohcontrary]

James: Is my play good?

Emma thinking of how messy and all over the place the play was plus the switching speech patterns.

Smiles through grit teeth

Emma: It's amazing babe!

[mariemarieohcontrary]

Emma is besties with Edgar too I decided. His fixation on research with Emma doing late night novel writing would go hand in hand and I could imagine them doing video calls shooting ideas and research links back and forth and Edgar introduces single player gaming to Emma since she's not good with multiplayer

he also mods games for her cause he noticed she likes cool pretty historical fashion added to her fantasy games so he looked up how to retexture stuff for her and used fashions from english eras and Filipino eras just for her to have fun (at some point she gets him to retexture stuff into a venetian masquerade it was a nightmare since they kept arguing references)

[mariemarieohcontrary]

Since I have nothing better to do and I love talking about the people who contributed to moulding Emma into who she is in the Freshman lemme show yall the face claims I have for her fam!

Her parents: Iza Calzado and Albert Martinez (hush let me have my fun)

Grandparents: Eddie Garcia and Gloria Romero (I contemplated Romualdo Valdez but Eddie Garcia had the vibe I was looking for)

[mariemarieohcontrary]

What if... CHOICES and RC MC line up but

Everyone's in filipiniana

Just what if

Sure I'll have to redraw what I already did but is it really a loss

[mariemarieohcontrary]

Y'all Emma having a grandma who was a well-beloved and rare kind math teacher means she's seen what a teacher should be like and that means her standard is to see an educator who can adapt to students' learning needs and chooses to encourage than to discourage and humiliate.

Her grandmother was always the first to raise hell when she found out about teachers abusing their power and humiliating students for failing marks or social status. Hence, Emma knew that teachers should never take advantage of students the way Vasquez was. (Of course, her mom and dad made it clear too that people don't fucken act like how Vasquez does and her grandfather made it clear that to know a person you must know the person.)

Her grandfather is a literary genius of his generation from UP who teaches literature but in a way that engages and motivates his students - even having an hour-long plotting session with them on occasion when he's writing his novels - means Emma saw what a good writer and professor is like. He encouraged her fondness for literature and writing (though he writes novels in deep Tagalog and often focuses on historical fiction centred on themes of colonisation and the resilience of Filipinos while Emma mostly wrote in English and informal modern Tagalog) and even read through some of her stories that she wrote as a child. (Looking back on those moments, Emma is very much embarrassed cause she knew they were very messy and silly but he never said anything beyond asking about plot points and guiding her to finding her own endings)

All I'm saying is that James may idolise Vasquez who is a terrible writer but I decided Emma has two heroes who she idolises because everything she knew is thanks to them. Her Nana Nita (Anita Dolores Dalit) who taught her that patience, understanding and kindness are necessary when teaching others and her Tata Selo (Jose Marcelo Dalit) who showed her a world of books and stories where she found that creating stories with him was the best adventure she wanted to follow in her life. (Emma's genres are historical fiction though she often makes it fantastical, she writes in English to make Filipino-written stories global though her favourite stories aside from those written by her grandfather were Les Miserables, Bone Talk, Noli Me Tangere, El Filibusterismo, Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, Persuasion and North and South)

[mariemarieohcontrary]

So fuck Enrique Vasquez, Emma is definitely writing a tell-all book on how he disrespected her story, privacy and so much more once his shite book is out

I get using inspiration but tell me again how does copy-pasting names, personalities, etc of the person you're using as inspiration still count?

Anyway my hot take today is just the fact that Vasquez is a shit writer who can't plot a story worth the themes he wants to tell and decided to make assumptions that he could understand and know all the facets of a student who he decided to despise and call entitled from day 1 just so he could have his little story

also there's just something that grossed me out when he decided to call Emma+her friends his favourite "characters"

y'all this man does not see them as people just his little characters to manipulate as he pleases

fucking disgusting

[mariemarieohcontrary]

Got bored so here's a doodle of my Freshman MC wkfjghsjdheh

She was offered a UP scholarship plus some other universities along with an acceptance letter from Hartfeld when she applied so she went to Hartfeld cause dream school but boi she did not see the drama coming a mile away.

She's called Emma by her university friends but when she's home with family she's called Dolores or Doring. Her friends go with Dory since younger Emma told them she liked her second name better cause it was taken from her grandmother who she was close to.

She was part of the book lover's club, worked with her high school librarian as an informal student librarian, entered spelling bees and PSAP-ALAM essay contests, did book reports for fun, and was really good with the English subject. (her grandmother had to tutor her in math and she had to take Science remedial classes) She only had three local friends in the Philippines and the four of them have a group chat whose name changes with the members' whims. The four went to different unis so they each jokingly trash-talked each other during sports events when their schools were competing against each other.

The whole issue of her parents not affording her tuition became a thing due to her grandmother falling ill, so she told them to just focus their finances on her while she figured out a workaround.

She likes Chris as a friend and she thought James was very handsome. She's pretty reserved so Abbie is closer to her than Kaitlyn, she hates Becca's guts but hates Vasquez even more since he's always abusing his power to toy with her life. (She refuses to tell her parents about this though since she doesn't want them to worry especially since her grandfather had warned her not to join any sororities or be with anyone from fraternities due to him seeing them as unsafe for her)

She likes pinks and florals and finds nothing wrong with that. Will take theme days of any occasion very seriously. (Favourite themes are always Buwan ng Wika and Halloween. One cause cultural and the other cause she likes fun costumes)

[mariemarieohcontrary]

I swear each time my MC acts like she's in love with Chris I'm doing mental rewrites

also sorry y'all I'm never warming up to Becca just cause mommy and daddy doesn't pay attention to you did not mean you get to bully others