#I'll never live down the Lucienne thing really

[outeremissary]

✨ How did you come up with the OC’s name? For Balthazar (Seriously curious because I love that name and have had a stuffed animal named it for years)

Siren, I fear you (and Cassy, who asked as well) are about to get far more than you may have anticipated for this and it will be very silly. Balthazar is probably second only to Carmen (who is a much older character) in terms of convoluted meta histories that get long winded answers.

[prompt list]

✨- How did you come up with the OC’s name?

Okay, so there's a bit of necessary background here. Balthazar is loosely derived from a character conceptualized in 2016 who never had a real, settled name (mostly a series of titles; at this point the most consistent have been Herald and Three-Horned Devil). The project this character was made for was mostly to entertain me and keep me sane during the first year of university. At some point in the front half of 2017 I began learning 5e. A part of the process for this was getting a feel for the scope of characters and limits of character creation by making a bunch of character sheets with different concepts. To expedite this process, I used OCs from stagnant or abandoned projects as the basis for concepts; Caina and Balthazar were pulled from the same one (although it's possible that Balthazar actually had a 3.5 sheet first- he was a recurring character in my 3.5 campaign and I don't remember if he was introduced in spring or fall).

So Balthazar at this point did not have a name, and I needed to make a "traditional fantasy" name appropriate for what was then a half-elf sheet. The class, sorcerer, had already been determined, as had the first of several concepts for the adapted version of the Herald. My goal was to make a name with an occult sound to suit this ambitious Vecna cultist and to honor the Herald's whole evil god thing. And my other, more specific goal? To work in at least one demon name to amuse myself. I hate coming up with names so I have a bad habit of the joke name that sticks.

Anyway. I started with the demon names. The first and most obvious point to me was Ba'al. I was familiar with Ba'al as god king and god of storms from the Ba'al cycle and some related Urgaritic texts, but as I recall Ba'al was a title meaning "lord" attached to a number of regional deities (some variants of that Ba'al). In Jewish and Christian texts Ba'al appears as a false god and force of emnity. Ba'al also provides the root of "Beelzebub," and eventually becomes absorbed into the roster of demons in many traditions (I'm most aware of medieval Christian here) before washing back up in horror flicks as a stock name for a demonic force. The aspect of transformation was appropriate, I felt: a messy polytheistic deity who was also now known as a menacing demon. This worked well for the Herald. I was especially attracted to the "false god" aspect. So I wanted a name that could incorporate that name and ideally might naturally produce something functionally like Ba'al as a nickname. I chose Balthazar. It was a real name, which felt especially grounded, and it had an archaic sound due to having fallen out of style in the region I live in long, long ago, which gave it a certain mysterious flair.

From how that story went you may already have guessed about Lucienne. And you would be correct. That famous angel Lucifer was the over the top element used to round things out- partly because it's very easy to find other derivations from lux. It's also true that Lucian was a given name I'd considered for the character before discarding for being too trite (although Lucian Balen would become a recurring tongue in cheek alias for NPC Balthazar cameos in oneshots). I decided to push for a French sound because in my mind - and don't ask why, I have no fucking idea - French was an especially alchemical sounding language. Now some of you reading this may know some things about French, and may perhaps speak it yourselves. If this is you, you've probably caught the thing I wouldn't realize until two or three years too late, which is that Lucienne is not a French sounding name. It is an actual French given name of the feminine gender, the feminine equivalent of Lucien and the French version of Lucia. Whoops. At that point I was in too deep to change it and I just pretend I do not see it. Maybe it's endearing in a quirky JRPG way. French doesn't exist in most fantasy settings anyway despite the prevalence of Latin out there. It's fine. At this point the in story origin of the name is that he made it up himself anyway, so who knows. Maybe that 12 Int just produced the same mistake as me.

[neil-gaiman]

Hello,

I have no idea if you will see this or not, but I figured I’d give it a shot. I’ve debated writing this for a long time, but I thought it might be interesting to hear.

I developed a sudden and extreme disability when I was 14 years old. Out of the blue, I was unable to leave my house because of pain and only for doctors appointments/ER visits. I lost a lot of friends, and I never really attended high school. By the time I was able to leave my house again and mostly function four years later, covid struck and I was back to being completely isolated.

This was really hard for me because I saw my friends living their lives, changing, going off to college, going through relationships, and I was in a lot of ways the same as when I was 14, and I went from being completely healthy to more health issues than most people face in their entire lifetimes.

I brought this up to different therapists and doctors and expressed that I was sad and wondering ‘what if’ a lot, but they all told me it was fruitless to look at what could have been and to stop thinking about the past, that I needed to let it go. I understand their point, but it still hurt to hear, sort of like they were saying that my feelings weren’t justified or valid, or that I was being ‘bad’ by wondering.

The reason I bring this up is because in the show, Unity Kincaid is shown to be searching for what could have been, especially when she looks in the library of dreams and meets Lucienne. She talks about wondering what could have happened if she hadn’t succumb to the sleep sickness, what life she would have led. And Lucienne doesn’t treat her differently or look down upon her for that question.

I know this was a relatively small scene in the show, but it really struck a chord with me. It felt like my feelings were validated and that it’s okay to wonder if things would’ve gone differently if your life had not been so drastically altered.

I cannot express how much that means to me. It felt a lot like saying that yes it is sad that your life is different, and you can wonder, but also that your life can still have meaning. You still have time left and that matters.

It was really portrayed beautifully, and I wish someone had treated me the way Lucienne treated Unity, but in a way, seeing that through them on screen was just as amazing.

So thank you to you, to the writers, to Vivienne Archeampong and Sandra James-Young, who helped share that message, and to everyone involved in creating such an incredible show.

I'll pass that along to them all. I'm so glad it helped.