#probably the longest 'in development' oc i've ever had lol

[pink-pone]

"Name's Ruby Cutlass, and I hereby declare that whatever yer ship's hauling belongs to me & my crew as of...right now. Brave enough to disagree? Well now, I wasn't planning on feeding the sharks today but it seems I have no other choice, now do I?"

[binarybitex]

OC development spotlight: Mr. Andrei Wright

with the release of Boss Babysitter, I thought it'd be fun to show Andrei's progression as a character!!

below, i share some notes and old drawings of him and his creation that are spoiler free... enjoy!

some fun facts about Andrei through the ages:

i don't recall if Andrei was the owner of the Resort when I first started coming up with the series. he has always been the General Manager, as far as I know.

originally he was going to be Russian! i dropped that pretty early on though, however his name would remain as "Andrei"

his last name is a play on the popular phrase "Mr. Right" (similarly to how most of the other characters have some sort of "love core" or similar name.)

for a brief time, a mutual and I had written in a sister for Andrei. she played as a very strict and hard-headed head chef at the Hotel. that character and the active kitchen are now both scrapped.

the earliest written mention i have of Andrei within the story is from the very first arc list. there's no specific date, but my best guess is late 2018 to early 2019. I had originally made him a pretty hardcore drug addict, but later opted for hard liquors and the occasional muscle relaxer.

the earliest art of Andrei I have - actually, he is one of the earliest characters I created for the series! again, this is probably around late 2018-early 2019. there's a lot of things that have stayed the exact same about his appearance.... his gold chain is a homage to one of my favorite gravity falls bits

i fell into a pretty severe art slump mid 2019, finally finding my way back to creating in mid 2021. i did all these turn arounds for the characters while i was learning to draw again. (lol, since when was kara 5'6? oh how times have changed)

here are some iterations of him from 2022, when i first started the comic. can you tell i absolutely hated drawing him? most of these are the same pose traced over.

an old "meet the character" sheet for Andrei. this was the art i used the longest to reference him. also, side note, he is actually in his early 60s. I noticed he loses his gold watch here.... he just doesn't care that much to wear a watch these days.

Andrei's presence within "Monster Sized Mystery" from the comic. actually, this may be the first time I ever actually doodled him. also shown is a bit of dialogue as the core four decide who this mystery item belongs to. lew's comment at the bottom made me giggle

an early drawing of Andrei in his 20s. there's some notes on his character back before he was hardened into the man he is today. the way I directly draw Martin Mertens as an inspiration to his younger self is very interesting. now that I've fleshed out his backstory, i'm not sure if he'd actively be bad talking the Hotel in his younger years.

more art of younger Andrei. here he is with Hana Yang, his previous general manager during the Hotel & Resort's swing back in the 80s.

aside from the core four, I think I've drawn the most adult content of Andrei. if you're interested in viewing the two colored ones, they're currently up on my twitter. links to: left & right. enjoy! i haven't posted the middle one.... sowwy

anyways! that is about it for Andrei Wright's development :-) I think I've really solidified his character while writing Book One. in the comics and before, I don't think I had a very concrete idea for him.

[pricklepicklepie]

It might be hard to ask for faves… so who is the oc you’ve had the longest?

OH EVAN, thank you bless you i love you. Let's open this can of worms together -

(forgive me, this got LONG. I mean LONG. It should be a simple answer but NO)

So, my oldest OCs, I didn't even post yesterday. This is a group of some of my oldest. I'm sure there are older ones, but these are the ones I remember/have images of. Lucis is probably the oldest with Katey being the second. There were piles more with this crew. Pretty much anytime I drew anything that wasn't transformers fanart, I added them to this "world". Which was nothing special, none of these guys ever had solid backstories or even interests or jobs. They were just designs that I returned to. Zoi and Lucis eventually got a little more developed (but not a lot lol) and got pushed into my "second gen" OCs. I don't really draw these guys anymore accept occasionally or when I want to make something new, sometimes I revamp an old OC and insert them into whatever story I'm making. Here are some of their more recent designs. I think these are all I've drawn of them in like, ten years or more lol.

Eventually, I made Zoi an office worker who plays bass in a band with Lucis and another OC, Elliot. SPEAKING OF ELLIOT

Elliot is kind of my oldest OC with a 'story'. SORT OF. First, I had all those loose OCs, not in a story, not doing anything. Then one day I make Elliot and Adrien and I decide they're going to be in this angels and demons type story where Elliot dies and comes back to life and they encounter evil angels, etc etc. Joel was a villain, Lucy was like, 'the girl', lol.

This whole plot didn't stick and I eventually just made Adrien human and now they sort of exist in a nebulous, melancholy, dreamy, sorta real-world setting. Elliot is roommates with Zoi and Lucis and the three of them are in a band. Adrien is a guy who just happens to be at their show. Some of my other OCs are in the background of this world, but I don't really think about them lol.

Here's kind of the transition period between the original, fantasy-type story, and the normal world story.

This was late in high school/college that I started calling Elliot's story Elliot's Sword. And it was going to be like Elliot going into a fantasy world from the real world and becoming a god-like figure. But after college, I made them the normal, real-world story. Here are some drawings from the modern era of Elliot and Adrien

It's hard for me to even find drawings of them bc I don't draw them so much, which is a shame! I really like the way they had become. I want to do a story with them where they meet at a show (or reunite since they went to college together) and Elliot eventually helps Adrien through the loss of his Grandmother who is his family's matriarch. And this brings up a lot of feelings for Elliot about his mother who died when he was a child. And together, they sort of explore this half-waking/half-dreaming world of grief. I had this idea that Elliot is like, a dream hopper and goes into people's dreams. And it's a story I really want to write one day, but ALAS. time will tell.

The Oldest Oc I posted about last night, is Puck! OOOHH BOY DO I LOVE PUCK. BUCKLE IN.

These are some of my first drawings of Puck, along with Richard and some other OCs in her setting. I made Puck for a character design class in college. I think my Junior year. She and Richard were basically Fallout rip-off OCs - they came from a post-apocalyptic world with Puck from the country and Richard from a large settlement. They were kind of 'Prince and the Pauper'. And I had this whole thing where they meet, dislike each other at first, have to work together to rebuild Puck's hometown, grow to love each other, adopt a girl named Tommy and raise her in the town, and eventually, Richard does something to betray Puck's trust when they're in their late 50s and they spend the rest of their lives in this bitter divorce arc. Here are some comic pages I made for various college assignments. This was a story I called The Town of Shilo.

Their story now is a little different than it used to be. Now, the idea is Puck comes to this large, sci-fi-ish city and meets Richard and all these other people and helps them maintain their little community by keeping robotic police off their turf. Puck's mother and sister are the CEOs of this large pharmaceutical-turned-weapons company, (though she has been sort of cut off from them and is their unknowing test subject, so she's not involved in whatever they've been up to). And Richard is the son of some politian and is trying to play double agent and use what he finds out from his nepotism job to inform his friends. There is SO MUCH MORE to it that I need to write down and nail down. But that is the basic idea.

These are all the OCs I think about who aren't DnD related. So I kind of have two worlds (elliot's and puck's) that I revisit from time to time and fuss with. The thing is, I never write anything down and never try to world-build or nail anything down. I just draw them with non-specific ideas in mind lol, which definitely has to change. With DnD ocs, it's just so much easier to make a quick guy who has a flaw and then his story is just figuring out that flaw and you get to do that with your friends and it's EASY. But I have a hard time getting back into my other OCs bc I can never settle on a story for them. But I do have dreams of making comics of them, so who knows, hopefully soon I will actually build out their worlds and be able to be more specific about what they can do/what happens to them. lol. BUT I UH NEVER GET TO TALK ABOUT THEM REALLY SO I SORTA TOOK THIS CHANCE TO SAY EVERYTHING EVER ABOUT THEM. HOPE THAT'S ALRIGHT??

tldr: I have this OC, Lucis, who is probably my oldest Oc who I don't draw anymore LOL

[deathbecomesnerds]

20 questions for fic writers

Thanks for the tag @supermarine-silvally! Sorry for taking so long on this!

How many works do you have on ao3?

I have an impressive 81 works.

2. What's your total ao3 word count?

*checks A03* Holy Banana Nut Muffins...a whopping 664,798 words. That's impressive, Liz! Thanks, Liz!

3. What fandoms do you write for?

So, I currently write mainly for the Guy Ritchie universe? But I focus on 'The Gentlemen' but that doesn't mean some characters from any of his other works don't creep in.

I write also for 'Control', it's my favorite video game. Everyone should play it.

Sometimes, depending, I do write the occasional Stranger Things fic.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Trouble (The Man From U.N.C.L.E): 240 Down, But Not Out (The Man From U.N.C.L.E): 189 Little Girl/Old Man (Stranger Things): 151 Mess (The Gentlemen): 125 Til Death Do Us Part (Stranger Things): 110

5. Do you respond to comments?

Sometimes. It depends on what is said. I like to let comments/reviews be, but every so often they'll say something or ask a question and I feel compelled to answer.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Ooff. Umm...The Imposter? Maybe? I don't know. I like to make sure all of my work has happy endings for the most part.

7. What is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

'The Unfortunate Reunion'. All the shit went sideways, people died, and a pregnancy was lost. But the bad guys were killed, and there was peace and love...

8. Do you get hate on fics?

No.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yes. I do. I guess I write all kinds of smut? Idk, it's smut! What more do you want? lol.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

Sometimes? But not really. I like to keep all my dollhouses separated.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yes! A long, long time ago...and it was translated into Spanish, too!!

12. What's the longest you've spent working on one fic? And the shortest?

I guess my ongoing one, Bark Like A God. I'm going on two years with it and I've still got a long ways to go.

My shortest? I'm not sure. I do write a lot of one shot/stand alones. But if you are talking about something with multiple chapters, probably 'The Unfortunate Reunion', or "...And Baby Makes 3', I wrote them both in two months.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nope.

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

I prefer to write OC's, and like to pair them with characters.

BUTTTTTT...I am a sucker for Jesse Faden/Dr. Casper Darling (Control) and you can fucking fight me on that one!

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

There is this one fic, "Did You Hear About Jackie?', it's a Castle Rock fic, I've gotten 3 chapters in and then dropped it for my current fic spiral of 'The Gentlemen'. I'd love to get back to it and finish but I doubt it. It's been like, 3 years.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I'm not sure. Character development? Dialogue?

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Run-on sentences and paragraphs. Like...I go full blown Stephen King with describing things sometimes.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I wish that I knew other languages so I could very openly do that. I do use Google Translate, or if I happen to know someone who speaks the particular language, I'd ask them.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Okay, hear me out...CSI: Vegas. I was in middle school. Greg Sanders/OC. The fics I still have on my A03 & FF.Net accounts. They're horrible written. Lol.

20. Favorite fic you've written?

Y'know what, I am so proud of 'New Daddy', it's a smut that I literally spent a whole year writing. Nobody really paid it any mind, but I don't care. I put so much time and energy into it. I fucking love it.

I guess I'll ask @rayslittlekitten @kesskirata @autumnleaves1991-blog @spacegoldilocks