Aglaea x Hephaestus

His clothes are the most.. different out of everyone else with one of his sacred animals just plastered on it instead of incorporating it in a more creative way, but honestly I was so frustrated making his design.. He's the most likely to get changed for better detail (like on his belt I just blanked and moved on until adding that heart lock, but I'll get to that). Same for his prosthetic leg. I just had to get something down on the canvas or else I'd be stuck. But I'll be redoing that too to be better.

For starters, if you're wondering why he ain't in an apron or any blacksmithing attire it's because I like to think Hephaestus is so comfortable and used to forging that he wouldn't see a need to change. If he gets the job done, does it matter what he wears? (my real answer is because I didn't want to because I had.. like no inspiration to-) He gets his clothes dirty and covered in dust, so I imagine Algaea making him promise to wear an apron more often. He will probably have goggles in the future too, but right now he doesn't.

Giving him an arm made of magma and rock was not my idea, but it is such a sick idea. I'm not surprised to see others take the same approach because honestly it's incredibly cool. Hephaestus is described as lame because of his leg(s) or apparently his face (???), which the latter I never understood when younger. Idk if that's a newer thing or not, but it just didn't make sense to me, and still kinda doesn't. When asked if I wanted to go with the prosthetic or an ugly face, I went with the prior because I didn't want to do anything to his face, but ended up making half of his face magma so- I interpret it as, after being thrown off Olympus, he lands on his face so hard it breaks (do the gods have bones..??) his skull. That gets hardened & fixed by magma, while the surface skin remains just plain magma (idk how it stays in okay-). His other leg being made of magma and rock was another idea I thought of, and saw when looking for refs, so I thought it'd be cool to have that with his arm.

Gave him a beard. Plan was to have him be bald, but stars, I am a sucker for a man bun so he has that now- also told that since he likes to make jewelry, I should deck him out in it. Obviously he is not decked out in it- again, no ideas in my brain, and with all the magma, he was getting cluttered as it was. And jeez this is going on long- why does he and Algaea have the most symbolism rn?-

Moving onto Algaea, the youngest Kharities out of the three, which I never remember for the life of me, I always think she's the oldest. Probably because alphabetically.. Anyway, I was suggested to give her a fuller body and make her have accent purple. Also was suggested to give her blonde hair in a braid, but I went for ombre instead as I imaged her hair to be brown. Why not mix the two? I also wanted her hair to be up in a bun (higher up than Hera and Athena's) and added braids in that.

Also side headcanon that I plan to give all the Kharities (those outside of the main three as well) flowers on the side of their heads (because Antheia has em, so I thought why not)

However the flowers she and her two sisters are going to have are poppies of different colors, and be part antelope. The Kharities (at least when I tried looking, but I also could've not looked hard enough) had no sacred animal or plant that I could find, so I got creative.. anemones, or Poppies, are sacred flowers to Aphrodite (due to the whole Adonis thing), so I'm giving it to the three Kharities just by that association. And I added the antelope because it symbolizes grace & beauty, just like they do. Because Algaea is the youngest, I gave her the shortest horns (and plan for Euphrosyne to have those boomerang-shaped horns & Thalia to have the spiral ones). She has three heart clips on her person as an attendant to Aphrodite & being the third daughter. And she's in jewelry of course, though the patterns on her clothes will likely change to be better.

Final thing: the heart lock & key. I wanted to add something to Algaea, and an open spot was her neck, so I was going to give her a necklace with a key on it. But I went to look up how keys looked in Ancient Greece, and well, it's too big to be a neckpiece lol, but I did find images of Roman keys and decided to use that. Problem was, I didn't like how it looked, so I moved it. To her bracelet. Originally in its place was a donkey, but I put the key there and thought it would be cool if the key was like a spare key to Hephaestus's forge. It's tucked into the bracelet and no one would be the wiser (good on you Hephaestus). And I gave him a heart lock because, c'mon- (I needed to fill the space on his belt it's so gosh darn bland I can'tttttt! I want to fix it so bad but I'm so OVER HIM RIGHT NOW) whatever I'll get to it.