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toothwalker · 23 days ago

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I've made some fairly far-reaching changes to the Infinisea world recently (most obviously: increasing the amount of meat the morgwin need to eat, decreasing their level of industrial development, and changing the name of the mermaid people to the Keshiramarutikah) and that requires updating eeeevery character profile. no guarantees I won't do it again in a few months either!

I don't think many people read these (please feel free to prove me wrong though!!), but they help me get my ideas about the characters and their relationships sorted out. words in italics are not english words, so don't worry if you don't understand them.

I drew a picture too, which turned out more depressing-looking than I realised it would. oh well.

Character profile: Bronwen ("Bron") Griffiths

Summary

Osian’s intelligent but socially unengaged younger sister. She idolises the epics of keshiramutika former eras and spends much of her time wishing she was elsewhere, elsewhen, and in a different body.

Personality

Bron’s (short for Bronwen) most obvious attribute is that she is very intelligent, in many aspects. She excels academically and is especially talented at languages (like most of the characters she was raised bilingual, but also speaks two other extant and one extinct language fairly fluently by age 17.) She finds communication fascinating, perhaps more so for its often mysterious nature - she is fundamentally confused by social convention in many aspects and often ignores completely the opinions of those she does not respect, which is most people. Bron always likes to understand things thoroughly before she offers an opinion and has a tendency to pedantry that often irritates those around her, though she has far more tact than she did when she was a child. She is analytical and has good observation skills, often spotting things that adults in particular were trying to keep secret. In addition to this she is principled, often defiant in the face of authority, and absolutely despises her bullies: she has no secret desire to be like them or liked by them.

That she had bullies was more or less inevitable when she had so little in common with the fishing families’ children who were her only age-mates in school until age twelve, when she began boarding at a more distant school with a larger student body. While she failed completely to make friends her own age, she was not socially isolated, as she spent all the time she could with her older brother Osian and his friends Morgan and Myfanwy. People sometimes assume that her somewhat prickly and independent mindset means she has no need for social interaction - actually, while she is quite happy and comfortable with solitude, she loves her chosen friends and family and enjoys their company a lot. In fact a major contribution to her resentment of adults and authority is that she objects to being kept away from her closest friends by the demands of the school system.

Bron is a great reader of heroic literature, particularly that of the keshiramutika “Sendira Keshira” culture that preceded the God War and their current age of post-apocalyptic resurgence. She admires this classical keshiramutika culture, with its emphasis on beautiful language and elegant behaviour. She considers herself “civilised” and feels surrounded by barbarism, not just at school but in the wider world. Full of longing for the distant horizon, as well as the distant past, she feels constantly out of place and time.

Story

Bron was born into a family who ran a small sheep farm on Ynys Goleudy, the same island where Morgan and Myfanwy lived. Her older brother Osian was best friends with the twins, and Bron, who was ostracised and bullied by her age-mates, spent most of her free time following the three older children around. The three didn't always wish to involve someone three years younger in their games, so Bron spent a lot of time reading or playing on her own within their earshot. Her favourite subject to read about was the mysterious keshiramutikah, who occupied the ocean territory next door to her own species, the morgwin. The era of peace and prosperity that had preceded the God War had produced a wealth of stories of grand scope and infectious imagination and Bron lapped them up, originally in a “child-friendly” bowdlerised translation but then as she aged in more faithful versions and (eventually) in one of the original languages. Bron's favourite stories were the colourful and surreal adventures of the heroine Kalpana in the land of the gods. The political allegory of these tales was, of course, completely opaque to a foreign child but the strangeness was enchanting to her.

Starting at age twelve, her three older companions left the island during the week to board at their secondary school on the larger island of Ynys Caerderwen. This made things very difficult for nine year old Bron as, while her bullies were too scared of Osian's fury to physically harm her, they stepped up their isolation tactics. Bron had to spend the majority of her day with people who were doing their best to ignore her existence completely, for three years. This very lonely time changed her personality and she went from always speaking whatever was on her mind to staying silent and judging things without communicating her thoughts to those around her. This made her seem much more laid back and cool than she had been before. When she finally got to secondary school herself she found that she had much more street cred than she expected, although she disdained to work her way into the school's popularity mill and ended up hanging out with people regarded as weirdos and outsiders.

Despite her admiration for keshiramutika culture, Bron does not have any close keshiramutika friends. This is not in itself surprising, as there are not many of them on the internet (which is much more primitive than ours); and also Bron is nervous about how to present herself to them and whether they will accept an outsider. However, there is a keshiramutika in her close social circle - Neha, Myfanwy's friend. Bron is very interested in anything Myfanwy shares about her, which is as little as possible, as Myfanwy dislikes that Bron is so greedy for details about her friend. Bron realises that Myfanwy doesn’t like sharing and tries to get more information out of her in roundabout ways, which often work. When she does discover new things, she often finds herself dismayed by the way Neha's society, idolised by Bron, seems to hurt and abuse the innocent Neha. Even mode disturbingly, this rot seems to go beyond the current situation, and into the Sendira Keshira culture that she had daydreamed about so often. This makes her very uncomfortable, and (very unusually for her) she tries to avoid thinking too much about it. This state of wilful ignorance is not sustainable, but events soon occur which give her much more immediate worries…

Relationships

Osian

Bron loves and admires her older brother deeply. She thinks of him as the kindest and most honourable person she knows (which is in fact rather accurate as an assessment) and would follow him off a cliff if he was going. Osian seems to dote on his little sister more than ever now she is taller than him, and any sibling squabbles are only in jest - nowadays. However, Osian and Bron used to fight a lot more when Bron was younger and living as a boy. Bron misses this a little, because she feels he took her more seriously then, but Osian is ashamed of his past behaviour. She also finds his tendency (since she started transitioning) to chivalrous behaviour towards her annoying, and mildly dysphoria-inducing. Osian knows this and honestly does try to avoid it but doesn't do very well.

Myfanwy

Myfanwy and Bron always got on very well in Bron’s early years, with Myfanwy being Bron’s second favourite person after Osian. Unfortunately Bron became more critical as she got older and as she always had the advantage of being able to avoid the mistakes Myfanwy had previously made at any age (due to witnessing them), she developed a lower opinion of Myfanwy’s common sense and intelligence than was fair. She doesn't know that this is obvious to Myfanwy, and would be ashamed if she did realise, as she still admires many of Myfanwy’s other qualities very much and has no wish to hurt her. Bron’s greediness for information about Neha also causes Myfanwy discomfort.

Morgan

Bron hugely admires Morgan’s creativity and therefore has always done him the honour of offering her honest opinion on it, including any way it could be improved. This has sometimes offended Morgan who is used to Myfanwy’s more tactful manner. Bron is insightful and her criticism is usually helpful, but until recently tact was something she rather sneered at. The two had been getting along much more easily in the last few years before Morgan’s disappearance, and Morgan had even incorporated some of Bron's ideas into his TTRPG project, Sea of Salt (something he is a bit precious about). Bron is one of the few people who is certain Morgan did not intentionally drown himself.

Design Notes

Physical

Bron is 180 cm tall, which is very tall for the Ynysoedd y Ddraig, and skinny. This is mostly due to being a picky eater who doesn’t really like the taste of either sheep meat or many of the types of fish available. (Morgwin must get 65-70% of their nutrients from animal protein of some sort.)

She is a trans woman, and is not opposed to hormonal transition, once she is able to afford it without jumping through bureaucratic hoops.

She has a blue-grey tint to the fur on her head, though the fur on her body is more reddish

Demeanor

Bron has a firm, carrying voice, and tends to sound emphatic when she talks

She has a very loose-limbed way of slouching everywhere that infuriates some teachers and worries her mother

Style

Bron would not be interested in fashion even if she could afford to be, and wears the same outfit many days in a row

Her styling is typically masculine and subdued, without any jewellery or ornamentation.

She doesn't feel the cold much, so she wears few layers except in the depths of winter

Trivia

Bron’s relationship to gender is that she chose to be a girl because it pleases her, rather than feeling innately female

“Bronwen” means “white breast” and is the name of a bird she is particularly fond of.

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