#A donut girl with a bread stick cane

[adaines-furious-feast]

I know nobody cares but this can’t live in my head

I have an OC. I’ve never had an OC for a fandom before but this is maybe the best character I’ve ever made so I thought I’d share her here because I have nowhere else to share here. 

Dottie Cruller. This is long. I’m sorry.

Dottie, or Doughrethy Cruller, is the daughter of Lady Donetta’s younger brother. She is a person shaped doughnut. Her parents both died in a boating accident when she was six and she was adopted by her aunt and uncle – mostly because they couldn’t get her aunt’s inheritance if they abandoned her.

Dottie is 15 at the beginning of the campaign. She is a bard with a love for history and really learning about the politics of the world. Her favourite question is “how would everyone react to this”. So her bardic inspiration comes in the form of “remember in xyz battle when this thing happened”. She’s the kind of nerd that really admires the cool kids, so she really likes the princesses, but she also asks for plausible deniability when they’re up to something because Queen Caramelinda is her favourite person. She gets an acceptance from the queen that she doesn’t get from her aunt and uncle.

Dottie is disabled. She needs a walking stick and has chronic pain. It’s really a role of the dice at the start of every day as to whether that’s going to limit her movement or not.  

The original idea or trope I was playing on for Dottie was the “we must sacrifice someone pure and innocent to succeed” kind of thing. It dates back to Ancient Greece and is still used today. But what if that sweet innocent sacrifice had the strongest will to live?

I have mentally played the whole ACOC campaign with her which I know is not how this works but I tell myself stories to get to sleep and this is one of them.

So Dottie starts the campaign with very low self-esteem, mostly because she is frequently reminded that she is not part of the royal family and if she doesn’t make herself useful she will be thrown out. But as, first, her bardic inspiration is useful during the ambush – her uncle tells her explicitly to stay in the carriage but that doesn’t happen – and then in Comida where her understanding of the political map of the world comes in useful she starts to get more confident.  

She is also... very good at lying. Because she’s always thinking about what other people think, so she’s great at masking. That and she grew up in close proximity to the best liar in Candia, though didn’t realise his biggest lie until too late.  

So after the tournament, she makes a show of going to the Cathedral to pray partially because she does believe in the Bulb and wants protection, and partially because she knows how this will look to people. After her truly miraculous survival in the Cathedral ambush, she does multi-class as a cleric, though not a healer. Dottie is all about trying to understand the world and her place in it.

Dottie believes she is unlovable. Not only to her aunt and uncle – her aunt has never been cruel to her, but she’s never been loving either – but to anybody. And especially to the Bulb. Because when you’re six years old and your parents are both killed in an accident, you’re told that the Bulb needed angels, the Bulb needed them close to it, they’re in the loving embrace of the Bulb. But when you were also in that accident, and didn’t die... well, doesn’t that mean that the Bulb doesn’t love you? You’re not even good enough for the Bulb. And while, when she was six and sitting after her parents’ funeral pondering this, a very nice citrus yellow lady told her that wasn’t the case and she was lovable, that fear always been internalized in her. Then, after battle after battle where she really should have died, but didn’t, it feels more and more like not even the Bulb loves her.

Dottie’s birthday takes place during the trip back to Castle Candy, and is forgotten by everybody. Which is understandable given, you know, a war just broke out. And she doesn’t mind too much. But a Sweet Sixteen has got to be important in Candia. So when she gets back, and finds in her chambers a box with a label wishing her a happy birthday in what looks like Queen Caramelinda’s handwriting, she’s so sure this is a good thing. Except for the watersteel razor blades under the box lid. She doesn’t die, but is unable to cast magic until someone else uses a staff gifted to her by Captain Chedder – for saving the life of a cheese sailor – to do a greater restoration.  

After Jet’s funeral, Caramelinda reminds her quite bluntly that Dottie’s not her daughter. A conversation with Jack is the first time since her parent’s funeral that she’s said aloud that the Bulb doesn’t love her. At this point, Dottie doesn’t know if her aunt is alive or not. She’s assuming the worst because everything else is the worst. At that moment, her entire family is dead. The only family she has by law is an uncle who is a traitor and has told her for the past 10 years she doesn’t matter and the royal family will just throw her away. And while her head knows that’s wrong, she’s now wondering if maybe he knew more than she did. She knows the Rocks are hurting, but now she’s wondering if maybe she doesn’t matter as much as she thought she did after all.

When it comes to Saccarina, Dottie doesn’t immediately flip to her side, but given she feels distant to the Rocks and is trained to be a political advisor, she happily sees a role for herself beside the new queen and accepts her as the queen. Dottie also doesn’t feel like she would stand out as being “broken” in Saccarina’s court. It wasn’t that the Rocks were abelist, but she didn’t see people like her there. She does in Saccarina’s marudas. However, Dottie doesn’t spend much time with Saccarina, as she’s captured in Buzzybrook. She’s unable to move fast enough to get back to the portal.

She finds out that her uncle has told everyone that she was kidnapped by the Rocks, and he is very worried about her. She begs Grissini not to take her back there, and actually manages to win him over when she saves his life during an ambush that is quickly foiled, but there’s not much he can do. At Castle Candy, Calroy plays the role of worried guardian for all of five minutes, long enough for Grissini to leave, before placing Dottie in the care of the church, where she’ll be an assurance for them that he plays his part of the bargain.  

Dottie has not spent the past 10 years learning how important it is to be two faced to fail on the final exam. She dutifully plays the part, and actually manages to get the nuns fooled long enough to catch some gossip, that her uncle may be trying to sweeten the deal – no pun intended – with a certain gluten-filled emperor with a marriage. Dottie considers going along with it. She hasn’t heard anything about Saccarina in this time and for all she knows they’re all dead. Being close to the emperor wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. She sends a Sending spell to Grissini, disguised as a prayer to the Bulb, asking for advice. His advice comes on the night of the siege on Castle Candy, before the Rocks troops have been spotted, when he comes into the tent where she is being held and tells her in no uncertain terms that this would be terrible and while that loaf of bread is a war hero he would be a terrible person to have to spend any amount of time with.

Dottie wouldn’t play a major role in the siege. She is one person – two with Grissini. But she does take Grissini out of the fight against the Rocks, so that’s good. The only grudge she really has at this point is against her fucking uncle, but confronting him doesn’t go so well and he manages to escape. At least until the King finds him.

This is the first time Dottie learns about Cinnamon, and is horrified. She becomes even more horrified when she learns about how Cinnamon got so big, mostly because this is going to be pretty hard to smooth over politically. But Dottie still pledges herself to Saccarina after the battle. The Queen is going to needs someone who knows how to sweet talk people and, while she doesn’t intend to be quite as deceitful as her uncle, she learned how to be manipulative from the best. If you’re going to upend an entire religious system, you’re going to need someone who knows how to talk good.  

Does Dottie ever get over her belief that she is unlovable? Yes, because Grissini shows her that isn’t true. He is the first fatherly figure she has had since she was six and, even though she’s almost an adult now, she welcomes having that fatherly figure in her life.  

She also gets the title of Marquesa of Muffinfield when her aunt is found dead (whether the wound is self inflicted literally or just metaphorically is never determined). It’s something that Dottie held at great importance after the escape from the castle because she was not going to let her fucking uncle take her birthright. That anger at him was the only thing that kept her going.

Anyway, that’s Dottie. Nobody has read this long, I know, but if someone has, I hope you like it. I love her, she’s the best character I’ve ever written. I love the idea of having a character who is every part the trope of “innocent sacrifice” who keeps living and is convinced that god hates her because she keeps living. I also love Grissini’s character, and mourn the alternate universe where he ends up an ally, because I think it could have happened.