#oc: Meparik

[oc-poll-tournament]

OC Poll Tournament Round 1 Poll 5

Propaganda below the cut:

Meparik (he/him) @gailynovelry: Meparik of the Frostbitten Court (he/him)

Meparik is many things! He is a feyrie, a pickpocket, a sign-language user, a voracious reader, and an accidental religious leader. He understands more of the political goings-on of his realm than most adults do, and profusely hates the gods for it. His bedraggledness is matched only by that of his best friend (unwilling messiah lesbian). Gaze upon the child, your honor. Do you feel it? The desire to feed him warm soups and wrap him up in a cozy blanket? I rest my case, your honor. I rest it well.

Nat Finch (he/him) @albatris: I'd like to submit Nat Finch! he/him, 25 years old, brand new baby vampire. he works the night shift at dodgy petrol and convenience store Stop 'N' Go, where he falls asleep on the clock and encourages shoplifting. he's schizotypal like me and he loves cats, cooking, and his friends! he's the protagonist of my campy gory horror trilogy, though he'd rather not be!

he's short and fat with red eyes and lots of freckles. his hair is long and black, often uneven and choppy in length, because he just cuts tangles out instead of untangling them ❤

he's a sweet boy, earnest boy, awkward boy; he doesn't have many friends at the start of the story due to his paranoia, psychosis, and social anxiety, but by the end of it has a whole bunch of good friends AND a kitty he adores named Grub who purrs like a faulty tractor

in this story vampirism is a sentient entity and all connected via a hivemind known as "the Garble".... it lives in the vampires' blood and can manipulate their thoughts as well as give them heightened strength and speed, claws and fangs, and night vision when they need it. it can be useful, but mostly it's a bully and an inconvenience

at the centre of the Garble hivemind lives the very first vampire, an undead rotting corpse and the god of vampires, and a few of their close friends and confidants. all life force collected by regular vampires flows to them at the centre and grants them immortality and power. it's a sweet deal for the folks at the centre, and a terrible deal for ordinary vampires like Nat who rarely reap any real benefits from their condition, but are threatened and manipulated into participating in this system regardless

Nat's story sees him struggling to solve the mystery of how and why he was turned and trying to balance his kind, caring nature with his new violent condition... and eventually leads him to, "hey, I think I'm going to hunt down and eat the rest of vampire god"

good for him!

some other Nat Facts:

huge drama queen (will play up being sad and pathetic to get what he wants)

vampires are hardwired to seek warmth and coziness so Nat is always down to snuggle 24/7

bouncy cheery overexcited lad who will grin for weeks if you say something nice to him

vegetarian, aside from eating people, which he insists does not count

speaking of eating people, primarily preys on rich pricks and abusive bosses

is too awkward to tell his neighbours he bought them a cute knitted blanket he thought they might like for their corgi because what if that's a weird thing to do. this has been going on for three weeks

is too awkward to tell his neighbours his name is Nat, not Matt. this has been going on for three years

has a giant scary monster mode full of eyes and teeth >:3

please consider voting for my boy!

[original-character-championship]

Bracket F Round 1

Poll 16

Diana "Huntress" Thompson (@vincentvalenfine) vs. Meparik of the Frostbitten Court (@gailynovelry)

351. Diana "Huntress" Thompson (@vincentvalenfine)

she/her

she's a poor little meow meow, a babygirl, a feral cat being resocialized and hating every minute of it. she has that chronic depression and is seeking revenge for her sister’s death, incidentally doing good in the process. i love her ur honor she is a study of feminine rage and identity issues and bisexuality all wrapped up in an invisibility cloak.

5'1", blue eyes and fair skin with many scars, hair that gets dyed frequently but has been seen as brown by most, too slender since she doesn't eat enough, a back covered in watercolor flower tattoos. looks chronically too tired for this shit. wears a hooded cloak and a bodysuit with a chestplate, a utility belt, and sturdy boots. always has a knife on hand.

352. Meparik of the Frostbitten Court (@gailynovelry)

he/him

He is a mute, grumpy little gremlin of a messiah who understands more of the political goings-on of his realm than most adults do, and profusely hates the gods for it! Gaze upon my child, your honor. Do you feel it? The desire to feed him warm soups and wrap him up in a cozy blanket? I rest my case, your honor. I rest it well.

Meparik is a small, lost child with pointed feyrie ears, fluffy white hair, and icy eyes. He commonly wears a little green mantle cloak thrown over a baggy sweater, both of which are repaired with mismatched cloth patches. There are bags under his eyes.

[gailynovelry]

Sketch of Mep during his trip to the Matrius' palace.

[oc-poll-tournament]

OC Poll Tournament Round 1 Character Announcement!

Thank you everyone who submitted! There are 12 characters in the running, so it will be a small tournament, but I hope to make this fun!

Here's the plan: I put the characters' names in a random wheel spinner, and whichever characters get pulled successfully will be up against each other in the first round poll! IF (and I'm totally not saying this because it happened, no way (sarcasm)) the wheel chooses two characters who are from the same writer, I'll reroll, since I don't think that's fair. I am putting the names of the characters and who they're up against down below, along with their pronouns and the blog that submitted them. If there's anything that needs to be changed, please let me know! After that, I'll work on the polls themselves, and I'll plan for them to be posted tomorrow at noon central time. They will be open for a week, so there's plenty of time to vote! If any of the participants wants to send me extra propaganda during the week, please send an ask or submit, so I can post the propaganda without comment. I think that's about it, but if anyone has any questions, please let me know!

Now, here are the characters and who they're up against!

Poll 1

Rodri (he/him) @grailfish

Crislie Crimsworth (she/her) @gailynovelry

Poll 2

Conor (he/him) @pen-of-roses

Athansios (he/him) @somealienquill

Poll 3

Levi (he/him) @abalonetea

Yuen (he/him) @grailfish

Poll 4

Valerio Álvarez (he/him) @lieutenant-amuel

Viper (she/her) @maple-writes

Poll 5

Meparik (he/him) @gailynovelry

Nat Finch (he/him) @albatris

Poll 6

Eddie Alfaro (she/her) @calicohyde

Chess (she/her) @concealeddarkness13

[gailynovelry]

Meparik thinks you should vote for Nat Finch in the OC Championship. He seems very stern about it! You should take the grumpy little feychild seriously, definitely.

@original-character-championship

[gailynovelry]

5 and 9 for Crislie? :D

5. How did you figure out your oc's identity?

In stages, slowly, over time!

I started writing Heralds of Rhimn when I was about fourteen-fifteenish, and the thing about a story you start at fifteen is that it's probably going to change a lot as you change. It's pretty wild to remember this now, but originally;

There were five main characters, all the same age.

No gods, oddly enough.

Crislie's weapon was a sword, not an ax, because she was The Mainest Character and everybody knows that's who you give the sword to in tropey YA stories.

Navaeli was a boy. (And half-dragon!)

Meparik was Crislie's love interest, not Navaeli! That's probably the weirdest thing that was going on with these early drafts.

So, Crislie started off with two base identity traits; girl (pugnacious) and boyliker (romantic).

Over time, I adapted the story and shifted things around. The extra main characters got ported over to Toybox (Saph & Vio!), Meparik aged down, Crislie & Vae aged up and subsequently paired up.

By that point, I'd wised up to the fact that i was a girlliker and that girlliking was Fine Actually. So I began to think to myself . . . was if . . . Navaeli was girl . . . and what if . . . girl kissed other girl still? And that's how Navaeli became metatextually (and textually, but that doesn't get talked about until later in the series) trans! And also how Crislie became bi.

As I started to write their relationship, I realized that they were both approaching their attraction differently. Navaeli was quietly thirsty under the surface. Meanwhile, Crislie . . . didn't have that? At first I thought I was writing the chemistry wrong.

Then it kind of hit me like a brick; Crislie does like Navaeli, she's just not thinking that much about it in a "becky lemme smash" way. So I plonked "ace" down at the end of her label, and bam. Bi ace.

And also poly now that Gildhe has entered the picture.

And also maybe not just girl now that I'm exploring the wyfwolf thing?

Gender on Rhimn is it's own neon-labeled can of trolli gummy worms, so I think I'll touch on it in the next question!

9. Are there cultural or lore specific aspects to their identity? If applicable, does their species affect it?

At the beginning, there wasn't, but now there is.

Okay, so! There are a few important things to know about how Rhimn does gender;

Rhimn is matriarchal. This was true before the Reckoning, and is still true afterward.

For "Alluari had a bad time after the Reckoning and took it out on a whole gender" reasons, conservative parts of Ullua are very strict about gender roles.

For "technically the god ruling us is a Guy, therefore let's pretend that Sexism is Solved" reasons, Gadhi generally doesn't think too hard about its gender norms, even when it should.

(TBH I think Gardhe has the same sense of gender as Nathaniel Finch, ie "it is irrelevant to me but you can call me he, sure." Diversity win, the main antagonist is agender!)

For a variety of reasons (lots of intersex fey, culture of picking their own names & genders, being seen as being below/above human social norms, etc), gender nonconformity is more accepted in feyries than humans.

Due to the influence of feyrie culture, Rhimn has four separate gender categories; male, female, ungendered, and bestial.

The categories are generally associated with he/him, she/her, they/them, and it/its pronouns respectively, but that's not universal. Most wyfwolves consider themselves bestial but use she/her, and Tincre identifies as ungendered while using it/its.

I am probably going to write some in-universe sociology papers about the gender stuff, but bestial in particular is an interesting gender!

It would probably be considered nonbinary/xenogender on Earth, along with the ungendered category, but it's actually grouped more closely with female on Rhimn. Both femininity and feral gender norms lean on aggression. Also, Lykari, the divine being most associated with this gender, is still verifiably a goddess, though not a lady about it.

(Also connects to why Meparik gets "he acts femininely how cute" comments in Ullua; Meparik doesn't necessarily identify as the bestial gender, but he doesn't identify as a human, certainly, and his pent-up aggression gets interpreted in some different ways.)

I think at some point in Book Four, Crislie's going to end up in a conversation with Tincre & some of its students about Actually We Have Four Gender and go "Huh. Kinda into this new gender, actually."

So! Bestial gender Crislie! Yeah!

[gailynovelry]

For the OC questions 1 for Meparik!

1. What is a perfectly valid fear of theirs that they think is unreasonable? Do they know the name of it?

Meparik is afraid of the ocean; this is thalassophobia. His fear mostly stems from the trouble with the very untrustworthy boat in Shadow Herald, but he’s alway had some trepidation toward large bodies of water. He can’t swim, after all. It also doesn’t help that he tends to imagine danger in places he can’t see. Like the deep, dark sea, for instance.

This is why most of his attempts to escape Talimour involved sneaking out or conquering the walls.

Well, before Crislie and Navaeli suggested leaving via the ports, and he went along with it. Partially out of a sense of “might as well try this” and partially because he’s certainly not going to tell anyone that he’s afraid of anything!

[gailynovelry]

Meparik: I have read three books on sociology and five on magi-theory in the past week and I know how to use the phrase “object permanence” in a complete sentence. I am clearly the smartest person here.

Meparik Previously: *known for shoving chalk up his nose*

Meparik Previously: Internal bleeding isn’t dangerous, right?

Meparik Previously: *pickpockets people that he really shouldn’t*

Meparik Previously: Why did I agree to fight this knight, I’m gonna die, I’m gonna diiiiiiiiie—

Meparik Previously: *responds to sea serpent attack by hissing at the serpent*

Meparik: Clearly.

[gailynovelry]

WIP List Tag

Thanks to @albatris for the tag!

Rules: Share a list of the stories you’re currently working on, regardless of whether or not you have introduced them to writeblr before. I’m going to apologize to you beforehand because all of these are going to long. They are also queer. I do not apologize for that.

Heralds of Rhimn: A YA Dark Fantasy and my oldest project. The first book in the series is Shadow Herald;

“Few gods remain on the world of Rhimn, and the ones that do use special servants known as Heralds as pawns in the conflict between themselves. And not every Herald is happy with their role…

As Navaeli the Shadow Herald comes clashing with the dual threats of the Irongardhe knights and her own vengeful goddess, she finds romance in a handsome hooligan girl and friendship in a young feyrie thief — and with them, the courage to fight back against the injustices of her world.

But can Navaeli break free from the chains of her duty, or will she be the first casualty in the oncoming war between the gods?“

In essence, Navaeli is a dark messiah lesbian who Does Not Want To Be A Protagonist Please, Crislie is a love interest who decides to put her brawling problem to work protecting Navaeli, and Meparik is baby, but baby with many issues. In the time you’ve taken to read these character descriptions, he has probably already stolen your wallet.

The series as a whole involves some good wlw rapid-yearning-to-mutually-protective-girlfriends, REVOLUTION, a new take on fairies and a big ol’ middle-fingered subversion to the Oppressed Mage trope, and eventually some good ol’ fashioned god-killing.

The first book is going to come out May 20th this year! I have made a pretty cover for it, and also for the sequel! I am very proud of this!

Mindhive: A NA dystopia and the first project I’ve written where my characters are explicitly allowed to say “fuck.” They very much need to use this word, given the world I’ve built for them to inhabit.

“Dead-broke and dead-set on paying off his student loans before he’s forty, Nathaniel Emersin signed up as a paid test subject for ReGene, a genetics company with a mysterious new invention that they promise will change the world; the Worker Bee Implant.

But Nathaniel has one little secret that didn’t make it onto paper…

He’s also been hired by ReGene’s rival company, Future Body, to sabotage the trial and steal the mysterious new technology that ReGene’s been working on.”

Complications arise due to the presence of a very amicable security AI and the fact that Nathaniel gets attached to the two other lab rats he gets assigned to for the trial. And by “attached” I mean “develops mutual deep crushes on both Lucine and Avery, has a few cover-compromising panic attacks over it, and eventually reveals to them that he’s being hired to be a secret agent guy doing secret agent things.”

So he sort of decides to run away with his new girlfriend and datemate to an activist group who could a) remove the implant possibly and b) sue ReGene?

Needless to say, ReGene nor Future Body are happy with this turn of events, and decide that they should probably stop him before they experience consequences for the human experimentation and corporate sabotage.

Also, they take the AI with them. His name is Vertigo and he would like for someone to explain to him what a Vocaloid is.

Galactic Empress: This story is me indulging in my very specific need to write a royalty space opera political thriller. It is very high up on the Maslow’s chart of needs for me. It showed up one day and did not leave my brain.

“After the unresolved assassination of her mother, sweet but politically-savvy Princess Glissandrah Ayamarak — known better as Gliss — ascends to Galactic Empress earlier than she’d ever wanted to.

With her mother’s murderer still at large, Glissandrah turns to outsiders to protect her while she figures out just what game is being played in the Galactic Quorum. And it turns out that turning three hardened mercenaries into loyal royal bodyguards is harder than she first thought… but when anyone inside the Quorum could be after the crown, what other choice does she have?”

The hot and slightly controversial bodyguard team in question consists of Li-ah-li, a polite and slightly tired space furry, Yuukmi, a plantperson gunslinger with a space blaster in each of xer four hands, and Jennifer, a gruff human mercenary with a protective streak for her two alien comrades. This story is also polyamorous!

The Ghosts of Grimmigkeit Manor: I literally started working on this one again yesterday; it’s a reworking of a VERY old fully-OC pokemon fanfiction I wrote when I was fourteen, which has been subsequently lost to time. The genre is uhhhhhh paranormal shenanigans with semi-mystery vibes and a strong dose of snark. Probably NA.

The story follows three protagonists. Firstly is Eustace, a coroner who is doing a terrible job of divorcing himself from his family’s slightly goth business and reputation. Secondly is his triplet sister Alison, who is currently being The Responsible One running the family business of selling funeral caskets and who maybe should stop breaking the maids’ hearts in her free time. Thirdly is Dirk, the other triplet, who looks up to Eustace quite a bit and would really like it if his siblings got along more and maybe relaxed enough to let him leave the manor to go to college?

Anyway, during Eustace’s yearly Christmas visit to the family manor, it turns out that Eustace and Dirk can both see ghosts! This phases Eustace significantly more than Dirk, since Dirk has schizophrenia and didn’t realize at first that the ghosts were separate from his usual hallucinations.

The story at large involves family secrets, intimidating and quirky relatives, a murder that happened a quarter of a century ago, and this one really terrible ghost who needs to STOP MAKING THE WALLS BLEED BLOOD and who maybe is the triplets’ father. They have to figure out how to yeet him into the afterlife so that he stops causing problems.

Also, a different and more chill ghost owes Uncle Freddie money.

Misc: I have a dozen other ideas that I float around but Deliberately Wait To Work On because my stories are stews and they need some time to simmer in the crock pot that is my brain. Among these are a mermaid/selkie wlw romance, a mlm post-apoc ??? story, and various wlw Eragon ripoffs where there’s dragons being ridden and cool things happening.

[gailynovelry]

Happy STS! :D What would your OCs dress up as for Halloween? Alternative/BQ: In a supernatural/witch/sorcerer/etc. au, would any of your OCs have a familiar?

Oooh! I really have no idea for Halloween costumes, but the Shadow Herald trio would have really obvious familiars. Crislie would have a wolf, Navaeli would have either a corvid of some kind or a cat, and Meparik very specifically would have a leucistic crow.

No I didn’t just xerox Crislie and Meparik’s familiars from canon, what’re you talking about, : P

[gailynovelry]

Happy STS! :D What would a good vacation for your OCs be? Where would they want to go? Would they resist the idea of a vacation?

Answering late, but thanks for asking! <3

All three of Shadow Herald‘s protagonists deserves a vacation, honestly. They need a break after everything they’re about to go through.

Meparik would suggest that everyone go on a road trip to the Ulluan Matrius’ library. Crislie would agree, because she loves traveling and road trips. As for Navaeli, she’d enjoy the chance to see Ullua again, and might suggest fun detours. There’s a lot of places on her meticulously-drawn maps that she’s wanted to visit for herself.

[gailynovelry]

Happy STS! :D If you had to move your OCs to another wip (yours or maybe to a published book, show, etc.), which one would they like the most?

I misread the question, oops, so this ended up being less “which WIP would my OCs like best” and moreso “if I swap OCs between WIPs, what’d they like about the other WIP” but...

If moved to the Facility of Mindhive, Shadow Herald’s cast would be overwhelmed by the sheer calm of the environment around them. Navaeli would definitely enjoy the cafeteria, and having a bed to fall asleep in at night. Mep would love the library. Crislie would like... ReGene’s choice of gold as its branding color, begrudgingly.

If moved into the world of Rhimn, Mindhive’s case would be pretty shocked by the world’s relatively untouched natural beauty, and having their freedom back. Avery would be pleased to discover that Rhimn hasn’t grasped how to use electricity yet, and would set about becoming a reknowned inventor. Luce’s pretty social, so she’d enjoy getting to meet bunches of new people in a port-city like Talimour. Nathaniel, like Meparik, would be most interested in the literature.

Overall, I think everyone would prefer Rhimn, just because it’s prettier and because the problems inherent to it’s dark fantasy societies are less claustrophobic than the ones inherent to Mindhive’s future dystopia.

Thanks for the ask!