Vanguard: Knight of Heart

step two: in your diffidence, leave many half-drunk glasses of water around your apartment

step three: your cat, who is stupider than any other mammal on earth, living or dead, starts drinking from your many abandoned water cups

step four: the cat now believes these are for her

(All art by the awesome @data2048, Characters are mine)

First off, Gabe, our principle protagonist: The Concord Grape.

Yes yes, he has purple eyes and Concord Grapes are purple. Really though, this has less to do with the color and more to do with his versatility as a person, with his general sweetness (despite what his portrait would have you think), and the fact that he looks good on a spread surrounded by green leaves is of old stock, best suited to northern climates (the guy will straight up melt in temps over 80) and clusters around wooden fences until he falls off is good at most of the things he tries. He's also kinda basic, rural, and isn't super demanding as far as crops go, and the vines of Concord Grapes serve as excellent cover for arbors, fences, gardens, walls, and trellises. Gabe is all about acts of service, and he'd be glad to be seen that way, I think.

Second off, Claire Vallais, Daughter of the Prince of House Vallais: The Dragonfruit

I could've gone with one of the million varieties of apple. I almost DID go with one of the million varieties of apple. Hell, I almost went with the GREEN apple just to be funny and ironic (I also almost went with straight ginger but that would've been too on the nose). I settled on the Dragonfruit though because--frankly--it looks unhinged, and this is the girl who causes a wholeass political crisis by being unable to hold back from throwing a punch when someone hurts her cousin. I am not saying that the Dragonfruit is quick to take offense (I am absolutely saying that), I am not saying that it is quick to anger or violence (It looks like it is both), And I am not saying that it's Royalty (I wouldn't be caught dead saying that it's not though--look at the thing!), but I am saying that it looks like a red dragon's egg, and if anyone else also has those traits, it's probably Claire.

Thirdly, Jonathan Heart, Retainer to the House of Vallais, Claire's tutor, and bodyguard: the Quince

Heart is the sort of man who when cooked goes from being sour and bitter to sweet and delectable is circumstantially appreciable. He's also someone who takes a bit to appreciate, because despite the fact that he's gay librarian hot aesthetically well put together, he's also an acquired taste and is capable of getting under the skin in a very uncomfortable way when not properly prepared. When you get to know him, however, especially in the right situation, he can be very sweet, a real treat, and noble in bearing and intention (if not descent). Heart is also very blond, and Quince are yellow. There is a theme here and it is very subtle and I am scraping the bottom of the barrel determined to stick with what I've got going for me.

Next up: Agnes the Green, fabled retainer of the Schwan Family, who is not actually going to be a green fruit: The Beet

I know I know, beets are purple, not green, and everything about Agnes is themed around the color Green, which flies in the face of the last three characters themes, but hear me out: she's an irritable baba who will put their boot so far up a jerk's ass they piss blood the next day a Russian Grandmother so beet's were approproate. On the surface level this is because beets are a key ingredient of borscht, which she's always talking about making (she's very good at it) but also because of the nature of beets themselves: they're a very hearty crop, able to withstand all sorts of seasons and able to put down roots in a lot of different places. They're hearty and very nutritious, useful in a whole bunch of different dishes and an excellent source of several things the body needs, and if you eat too many of them you'll be scared the next day that you're bleeding internally they encourage diligence in your biological movements. I also really like beets, and Agnes is a both a person who has proven herself able to survive incredible danger and hardship while managing to feed her family effectively and sustainably. That makes this the ideal pick.

And Last But Not Least, Michael Schwan, Regent of the House of Schwan: The Durian

Michael is not from the area where Durians naturally grow. He's an extremely aristocratic man of Western European descent, but I still had to pick a Durian. I picked it because he has a gooey, delicacy of a center once you get to know him, but getting to know him requires getting through an extremely tough outer layer that is literally COVERED IN SPIKES, and a socially offensive odor that would be more than enough to drive an entire crowd of people immediately of of public transit in a stampede. Michael is many things--one of the principle driving characters of the story, a staggering, accidentally dancing gay disaster of a human being, handsome, traumatized, and prone to taking root in weird places, but he's also profoundly decent and good at his core, and while the taste is acquired, once you acquire it, it's hard to shake it from your memory (hopefully in a good way, though that's not guaranteed. Also I really am serious about the man being able to drive people off public transit. After his first few chapters he probably reeks.

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"Gravity assist." "Slingshot." Of course, on a very basic and objective level, yes, we are taking advantage of forces generated by outside objects to specifically help in our goals. We're getting help from objects in the same way a river can power a mill. And of course we call it a "slingshot," because the motion is very similar (mentally at least; I can't be sure about the exact physics).

Plus, especially compared to the other sciences, the terminology for astrophysics is like, really straightforward. "Black hole?" Damn yeah it sure is. "Big bang?" It sure was. "Galactic cluster?" Buddy you're never gonna guess what this is. I think it's an effect of the fact that language is generally developed for life on earth and all the strange variances that happen on its surface, that applying it to something as alien and vast as space, general terms tend to suffice very well in a lot more places than, like... idk, botany.

But, like. "Gravity assist." I still can't get the notion out of my head that such language implies us receiving active help from our celestial neighbors. They come to our aid. We are working together. We are assisted. Jupiter and the other planets saw our little messengers coming from its pale blue molecular cousin, and we set up the physics just right, so that they could help us send them out to far stranger places than this, to tell us all about what they find out there.

We are assisted.

And there is no better way to illustrate my feelings on the matter than to just show you guys one of my favorite paintings, this 1973 NASA art by Rick Guidice to show the Pioneer probe doing this exact thing:

"... You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. ..."

Wolf with a huge chum salmon that it caught in Fish Creek, SE Alaska