#captain's scribbles

for you sales, a particular buff pirate we know and love!!!! >:D happy halloween!!!

now ETHO. this is one I like to ponder

etho is one of those fae that really.... isn't even sure what he is. it's pretty evident that she's fae, I mean she's the most faeish arguably out of maybe All of the hermits. but it's hard to tell exactly what's going on with him

the one thing that's pretty clear is her court, very obviously winter. he does very much connect to the autumnal love of games, but this easily passes into the winter area, especially where winter court generally surrounds the mind's ability to manipulate the heart. etho is highly calculating, but it's all with emotion and laughter and well-used fear in mind. he is the perfect player of games, but she also taps into the spring love of art in how he thinks so deeply about color and contrast and all these things in his builds, she really loves getting deep into thought about the less concrete, the emotional

the thing that's less clear is his exact typing of fae. there's been an idea floated around that he could be a spriggan, (along with false, wels, and perhaps gem and hypno,) a kind of protector fae associated with great strength. however, this role is one that's... elusive to her. he certainly possesses a strange and complicated relationship with the desire to protect, and has the enhanced senses and physical prowess/awareness notable of spriggans, but it is rare for spriggans to be so mystical in their power. they're often grounded, forceful, and straight-forward, and etho is simply too shifty and mischevious, especially in his magics, to not have at least a bit of dissonance with the idea. he uses illusory magic typical of winter fae with extreme proficiency, and it's known that her masking is often magical instead of physical. many fae have supernatural connections to word and lies, and etho seems to have one of the most convoluted relationships, spinning strange tales in one moment and seeming unable to lie about the tiniest of things in the next. she's just confusing, honestly. and so it's far more likely to hear etho simply referred to as "trickster," opposed to any more specific type of fae. it's really pretty futile to try to pin her down, and definitely not all that helpful if you want to understand him

tango!!!!!! so I mean. I would be Shocked if anyone follows me and hasn't heard of phoenix tango LMAO, but I headcanon tango as an autumn court phoenix!

tango is kinda the autumn fae of autumn court fae, in that autumn fae are often thought of as the fae of Games. within my court system, it is simplified to say that summer fae are mind fae, winter are heart, and spring/autumn are in between, but this cuts all the nuance that's important to me in that it is a cycle. summer fae aren't just about the mind, they're also about how the heart can be used to overpower the mind, and spring/autum fae are in turn about how this shift in power between mind/heart can come to play. all of this to say, autumn fae are about mind based stimuli to feed the heart, which is typically expressed through games!!! and tango epitomized this in how he obsesses over mental challenges, but is also extremely passionate and loves to throw himself fully into whatever emotions arise from his mental work. this is what autumn fae is all about, and so he actually leans into what are considered the most powerful of autumn fae, generally referred to as spirit fae

spirit fae is just a general way of referring to autumn fae who have more individual power, since most autumn fae will primarily have just a deviant form of winter power, and same for spring/summer, but instead of falling more into the illusory power typical of the winter court, tango has touches of the spirit divination! it's not very strong for him compared to more focused spirit fae, and he still has strong use of illusion magics, but he does have a kind of connection to things like omens, prophecy, all that! might remind you of a certain canary we know <3

PEARLY POP so tbh pearl might be one I'm gonna pay extra attention to in my tweaking of the fae system, because she was originally listed in my masterlist as harpy/watcher, winter/moon. now let's dissect that

I still feel confident in harpy and winter for her primary classification and court. it becomes pretty evident in this assignment that I'd connected her as a mirror of grian, which I'm not sure how much I wanna keep, but the two of them are definitely both harpies, and I see pearl as an owl harpy! this makes her a naturally winged player, and just. yknow. captures her prankster silly vibe <3

within her court, I'm Definitely still confident on winter classification, since it is centered on the heart. especially considering traffic pearl, this connection is really important to me (and I know important to you ozzie <3). winter court fae primarily deal in illusion magic, which I certainly think pearl uses to enhance her work in cleaning places up (cleaning lady pearl ily) and generally making places nicer to be in, just kinda giving it an extra sparkle yknow? I love pearl with that kind of classic moon face, magician aesthetic, with yellow stars and dark blue backdrops, her fae magic would be kinda like that to me <3

the moon/watcher connections are really the parts I'm not sure about, since I've never been a huge watcher person but I thought there could be interesting ways to connect it to fae, and moon/sun court connections I never fleshed out. I thought about them loosely in terms of deviant forms of the winter/summer courts, especially in terms of being somewhat similar to my thoughts on extreme spring/autum court connections? but that's something for another post, I've got a pearlie doodle for ya <3 I love her crescent owl face