#Ixchel and Seracia

[marshmallowloves]

Zelda OC #2 - Ixchel + Seracia

>> (list of posts for other OCs)

(just a forewarning - even with the read more, this one is gonna be lengthy 😂)

After being introduced more to the Zelda series by my friend, I excitedly went home and attempted to play through the few games that I owned. I got the farthest in Oracle of Seasons - or at least that's the one I played the most. I can't really remember. But, eventually I moved and was forced to change schools, so I kind of fell out of the hype that my friend instilled in me, and I didn't really touch the games for a long while.

Fast forward to… somewhere around 8th grade, when I was around 13. I couldn't pinpoint the year because to be perfectly honest, most of late middle school to early high school is a complete blank in my memory. Anyway, my mom bought me Twilight Princess for the Wii (I know, I know, put down your pitchforks, none of the local stores even sold the GC version at the time - and we weren't about to pay extra to get it shipped to our broke asses) ...and instantly, I was enamored. Now that I was older, I felt I could actually appreciate the games for their content instead of just going "oh haha hee hee, I am playing the Zelda game! I am into the Zeldas!"

I don't even think I finished the game in its entirety before I chugged out an OC, specifically for Twilight Princess. And this time I was determined to make an OC that would put the cardboard-cutout of Saria Kamia to shame. With the OC Remix "Ancient Hero" playing on repeat on my orange iPod Nano, I scurried over to a now-defunct dollmaker on DeviantArt (thanks, adobe) for ideas, and out came Ixchel and Seracia.

Unfortunately, I do not have the original screenshot from said dollmaker. I do, however, have an old notebook drawing of the first Ixchel (pronounced "EESH-tuh-shell") - she went through a major redesign, but we'll get to that.

(with my real name oh so hastily blurred out kjdhfg)

Ixchel was a name that I found while on Behind the Name - I don't remember what criteria I was searching for, but Ixchel was the name of a Mayan goddess and it supposedly means "rainbow lady." And I do love me some rainbows and names with unusual letters in them! So I wrote it down, butchered the real pronunciation, slapped it on my OC and called it a day.

Ixchel was, for all intents and purposes, a normal Hylian girl (yes I know the "race" part is blank, I know she's a Hylian though dkfjdf). Sure, I slapped on the heterochromia because I needed to make sure she wasn't too plain, but because I was so obsessed with avoiding the Mary Sue clichés, I made it a point to keep her as "regular ol' person" as possible... Well, except for the fact that I later gave her a choker that could literally paralyze people if they made eye contact with her during a very specific phase of the moon. Y'know, normal Hylian girl stuff.

I finally shipped her with Link - because what self-respecting, basic-bitch Zelda fangirl didn't want to jump into Twilight's pants after seeing the first sumo wrestling cutscene? There was no substance, though. I don't remember giving her any distinct personality, nor was there any story as to how they met - I only had daydreams and maybe one or two doodles in which she thinks about him in a romantic context but doesn't say anything. This was at a weird point in time where I kind of knew what self-shipping was, but not by name, and was coming to terms with the fact that I had a crush on a fictional character while being a whole-ass teenager, and not being 9-10 years old and innocently thinking Ash Ketchum was cute - so I think I danced around the ship with Link out of embarrassment, but it was so long ago that I can't be too sure.

Anyway, thanks to this image, I was able to redraw her several years later, looking much nicer and probably much closer to how I intended for her to look. (and here's an extremely rare occurrence - this drawing has a date on it! May 17th, 2016.)

However, this is the last we see of this version of Ixchel. After a while, I decided that she was rather basic - actually more of an "anti-sue," really - and should fit a bit more into the Zelda universe, rather than just be some normal chick with pointed ears. So I did what any loving creator would do - ditched her on the side of the road, appearance and personality and all, and created a whole separate OC with the same name.

The new and improved Ixchel was, in retrospect, hit-and-miss. This time around, my Zelda OC actually had a personality! She was a plucky young adventurer who loved exploring and testing her mettle through battle. She had a very casual attitude, and her thrill-seeking ways sometimes got her in over her head, but she was kind at heart and wouldn't hesitate to help someone who needed it. Her design wasn't bad either, I think - the cargo shorts are admittedly a bit modern, but she definitely looks like a fantasy adventurer, which is what Zelda games are supposed to be like. So this was the "hit" part!

The "miss" part comes in the fact that she once again has a fairy - wait a minute, that's the bitch from the last post!! No, wait, this one is orange, and her name is spelled differently… Those things might have changed, but hoo boy, Seracia (shortened to Sera) did not change her bitchy ways. Still snarky, still sassy, and still insufferable, to the point where Ixchel would regularly put her in glass time-out just to get her to cut the sass - and that still didn't work.

Not only that, but Ixchel also had a pet wolf named Olive. Whether it was because I was in the throes of my teenage years and wolves were cool and edgy, or because I was just that in love with Wolf Link's whole schtick, I wanted a piece of that action too, so I gave Ixchel a rideable wolf that I never drew because to this day I cannot draw animals to save my life. Nevermind that apparently in TP (which Ixchel was made for) everyone in Hyrule shits themselves at the sight of an oversized puppy - Ixchel could literally waltz into Castle town on the back of her giant danger dog and nobody would bat an eye. In fact, that was the opening scene to a story I began writing with another friend at the time - but discussing that story at length would require its own post.

Ixchel's weapons were interesting as well. The idea for them came from (hilariously) Jenna's Phoenix Circles in the infamous Zelda badfic My Inner Life - which themselves are vaguely based on real-life chakram. Here, I called them "Dream Rings" and then later renamed them to "Razorings." They had retractable blades and could be carried on Ixchel's shoulder when not in use.

And lastly, a part that is both hit and miss - I shipped her with Twilight Link as well. At first it was admittedly self-indulgent - there's a picture of them smooching somewhere in my folders. However, I later decided to change it so that Ixchel's love was unrequited. Whether I was, again, embarrassed to crush on a fictional boy at that age or if I was just pants-shittingly afraid of falling into the "loves Link" cliché that many Mary Sues did, at the end of it all, Link fuckin' friendzones her and honestly, that's actually great. It's about time Link successfully escaped the thirsty fangirl.

[marshmallowloves]

Zelda OC #3 - Iphenia + Naida (sometimes)

>> (list of posts for other OCs)

(Heads up, this one is a bit long too, so just be prepared!)

I replayed Twilight Princess many times since that first time. I consider it to be my first real Zelda game because, as I said in the previous post, I was old enough to actually appreciate it as a game, rather than just have vague memories of holding a Zelda game in my hand. During some of these many replays, I thought about Ixchel, and I thought about Seracia, and then I thought... "Huh. These guys... kind of suck."

Between the fairy present with no explanation, said fairy literally just being a recolor of the first terrible fairy, the pet freakin' wolf, and the simping for Link... Ixchel did kind of suck. But some parts didn't! I was fond of her weapons, and I did love having characters that were bold and ready for action - probably because I was an awkward, sheltered nerd and lived vicariously through my OCs and their adventures. So I figured I'd refine Ixchel and Seracia once more, still keeping them for the Twilight Princess universe (because I will never not love that game), and before long I had my first iterations of Iphenia and Naida.

At first, Iphenia looked very similar to Ixchel, just with different colors and not so many belts and straps - and it made sense, since she was supposed to be a "refined" Ixchel. Like I said, I enjoyed the bold, adventurous personalities on my OCs, so she had about the same personality as Ixchel as well. I also still liked the idea of her name starting with an "I", because you don't really see too many of those. I don't exactly remember how I found it, but I eventually discovered the name "Iphigenia" - a princess in Greek mythology and a saint in Christian tradition. I didn't want to take the name directly, so I just deleted the "ig" and was left with Iphenia, which I felt sounded a little more "Zelda."

Iphenia also has a white fairy named Naida - the difference here is that Naida has an origin! It's a bullshit origin, but one nonetheless. At the time, a friend of mine had created an OC who was a goddess in the Zelda universe, and she blessed Iphenia with a protector in the form of a fairy. Like I said, kind of bullshit, but it's way better than Seracia just... being there. 😂

I used this version of Iphenia in a few drawings and stories, but eventually I decided that she was a little too similar to Ixchel. She needed to be more different, more independent! So, I gave her a bit of an overhaul, and to this day I still use this design - and Iphenia as a character (which I'll get to!)

She gained new clothes and lost the fairy! Not only that, but this is where I really started to flesh her out. Go figure that I develop her more as a character, now that she doesn't have to rely on someone else to constantly bounce off of. Naida was cool and all, but it was time for Iphenia to venture into a different realm... or rather, two different realms.

It was around this time that I finally got around to playing Skyward Sword, one of my top 3 favorite titles to this day. And with a new game, a new favorite character - and inevitably, a new ship - was bound to manifest at some point. Out of all the lovely characters in SS, nobody in particular caught my eye right away (shoo, Ghirahim, not now - you'll be in the next post). However, after finishing the story and completing a particular sidequest, a certain blue-haired boy of stout stature paved the way to a thinly-veiled self-ship with Iphenia as the vessel.

YUP, WE'RE TALKIN' ABOUT CAWLIN'S CHUNKY ASS

I'm not gonna lie - to this day, I love the dynamic between Iphenia and Cawlin. Since Iphenia (who gained the nickname Feeny for the rest of forever) still retained that bold and active personality, she doesn't take any of Cawlin's shit - instead, she sees right through it and finds an awkward Jerk With a Heart of Gold™ who's honestly just trying his best. On the other end, we have Cawlin, who finds that he can't intimidate this one into doing his bidding - but dang it, he still tries, and vehemently denies that he finds her natural intolerance for his BS... kind of refreshing actually. For a long while, he's completely oblivious to the fact that she likes him, but after his sidequest (where I feel the "proper" ending is the one where he's rejected by Karane), he stops looking through Karane-colored glasses and starts to come around to Feeny's advances.

I really do like these two together! Don't ask how in the world Feeny has blended seamlessly into the tiny, tight-knit community of Skyloft, but only just now acknowledged Cawlin's existence. I still don't have an explanation for that one kdjfhg.

But we're not quite done yet - fast forward a little bit, where I get my hands on Majora 3D (it's worth mentioning that I get these games relatively late after their release - way too expensive to buy them at launch). I'm just coming off the trail of OOT 3D, and am eager to finally see what the darkest game in the series has to offer, given that nobody in my family ever owned an N64. I play through, see the weird stuff that Ben Drowned has desensitized me to...

And then I step into Mayor Dotour's office. And for some reason that to this day I cannot figure out for the life of me, my eyes are glued to the Clock Town Corps Recruiter shouting at the oblivious carpenter. Was it the delivery of the one singular voice clip he has? Was it the fact that he's one of the only people in the town who is capable of common sense and wants to evacuate? Whatever it was, I'd finally done it. I'd fallen for a ridiculously obscure NPC. ...Or rather, Iphenia had fallen for the ridiculously obscure NPC.

In order to hide my shame for lowering the bar into hell, I came up with a legitimate, thought-out origin story - at least, as good an origin story as you can make in a game where the world is heavily implied to just be a giant fever dream. In this iteration, Iphenia is a young woman caring for her ill mother, and in order to make money for medicine, she enlists herself in the Clock Town guard. Though she remains headstrong in her motivations, she can't help but take interest in her superior, Captain Viscen, who proves to be incredibly serious about his job. He can't deny that she's physically strong, but her blatant disregard for her own safety for the sake of thrill-seeking and her weird need to bug him all the time forces him to keep a close eye on her, on top of all the people in Clock Town.

This time around, the dynamic is Feeny's "sweet but will absolutely get herself killed someday" to Viscen's "guy who keeps her from getting herself killed." And it, uh, happens a lot. Like the time Feeny found a Pictobox on the ground...

And Viscen's subsequent scolding of her wanting to do it again...

Okay at this point I might just be making excuses to show off old art of these two that I've never gotten to share before jdhfgjf. But, Feeny has gone through quite a bit of change, and I'm proud of where she is now! I even recently drew her with a bit of armor to show her place in the guard (one day I'll give her a proper suit! djfhg)

One more thing to note - during all of this, her weapons are largely the same as Ixchel's - the difference here being that there is only one blade on the rings now, with both the edge and the point being used to attack. She also carried a cloth around to clean them, as well as a pouch of literal rocks to sharpen them.

However, I eventually decided that these would be impractical - especially for her Majora iteration. So I settled on something else with both an edge and a point that would fit much better as a guard - a halberd! ...that I have not drawn yet. But I know it'll look similar to Viscen's spear, having the tassels and all. I'll add it to my drawing list!

[marshmallowloves]

A history of marshmalleaux’s Zelda OCs

I wasn’t really sure which blog to put this on, but I figured since these were all self-indulgent to a degree, I’d start with putting it here~

So anyway! I was looking through some old drawings, reminiscing about my old art and thinking of how much has changed... and I thought it might be fun to talk about the evolution of my small handful of Zelda OCs!

Because of how many images I plan to post about this, I’ll separate it into multiple posts by OC. You’re by no means obligated to follow these posts, but I just thought it’d be neat to see how far I’ve come with my OCs~

List of OCs/Self inserts:

Kamia + Serachiiya

Ixchel + Seracia

Iphenia + Naida

Tesni

Koci + Rina

Sepria