Deaton (dee-ton)His eyes are heavy-lidded and too big for his face. They sink in above sharp cheekbones and full lips, shadowed by black curls he grows far beyond what regulations allow; they'll come off again at the end of vacation. For now, though, it's summer, and he sheds his uniform in favor of khaki shorts and very little else. Golden-brown skin threatens to burn without a shirt, plains of lean muscles left out in the sun. Pink and gold scales shimmer across his cheeks and shoulders, outlining his waist and running down the his legs in uneven streaks, circling his neck, patches cropping up seemingly randomly across the rest of his body. He tips his head sideways and laughs, a smooth, low sound, just a little higher than his usual voice. The skin on his neck ruffles slightly, lacy frills of gills rippling in amusement. His arms fold across his chest, long fingers locking over elbows, and, still with that smile stretching from ear to ear, and shakes his head slowly. A glance around shows he is not the tallest in the room, but only by maybe two inches; he still towers over everyone standing near him.

Yay~! Thank you sweetheart~!Celane (seal-ain)He's damp. He's always damp, wet if he can be; he never did like leaving the water. But now, now he's damp, and his dark hair curls as it dries, settling about his head like a halo. He folds his hands in his lap, arms stiff with the effort not to wring and knead them, to let the bruises on his wrists and knuckles heal before he goes and worries them black and blue all over again. A borrowed sweater, woolen, and drying slower than he is, hangs off his frame, its grey shapelessness suggesting an aunt with a fondness for yarn and not much talent. It pools around his waist, settling atop the thick black tentacles that curl beneath him, tying themselves in knots while his attention is locked on his hands. Mers are usually tall, but he folds in, shrinking in his seat until the impression is more that of a child than a man in his twenties. The stink of his sweater has all but smothered his normal salty oder, but he doesn't seem aware of it... Perhaps his nose is only good underwater, or else whatever flattened it as far as it is ruined its ability to do more than breathe. His smile quivers slightly, fading in and out, and his eyes--silvery, and brighter than any human--flicker around the room, dismissing every item they land on as fast as they spot them, and he twitches as though his pale, thin skin was as tight as the sweater was loose and the difference was becoming rapidly uncomfortable.

Celane's World is a modern setting, mostly America though I do plan to branch out. Monsters are just other kinds of human, and all the story circle around cross-breeds of some kind. The story that gives it its tag features Celane, an octo-merman, and Deaton, who is 1/4 mer on his grandmother's side. He is an agent working with the government to help keep hate crimes and prejudice against "supes." It also has another story, about a brother and sister bounty hunting team, Luke and Abigail("Abby") Quail. Abby's a were-hyena, and Luke is technically a mix too, but most people just assume he's a brownie, because that's how his genetics happen to represent. It annoys him no end.Can you tell I took a lot of inspiration from Supernatural with this one? I swear, I got Deaton's name out of a random generator.

Celane's World and 2ghostly are modern, American-based settings, Celane's World featuring more nomadic and small-town types of settings (a-la Supernatural,) while 2ghostly is set in a medium-sized/more-on-the-small-side city. Silver Spells is a vaguely medieval-tech-level fantasy world, roasting hot on one end and freezing cold on the other. Radon is high-tech underground, low-tech above ground, and pretty damn barren at first glance.

Oh, it happens a lot. I, um, actually was doing an RP with someone once, bought a book about a week into it, and discovered that my main characters were practically identical to those main characters, right down to the godsdamned setting! The key, I think, is to find a difference and flesh it out. I actually have a character who is directly based off of Dean from Supernatural, but Deaton is part mer, and has three sisters. Focusing on how that changed his childhood, and, by extension, his character, has made Dee very different from Dean, although the similarities are still there if you look.Every idea's been done before, and we're always going to wind up doing something similar to someone else. Our as writers job is to make it new and interesting enough that the readers don't think of the other thing until AFTER they put the book down, hopefully in an in-depth meta that makes it seem more like you're paying homage than ripping someone else off (although, it is rather hard to tell where one ends and the other begins, isn't it?)

I just... I want someone to ask questions so I can gush and explain things to them, about magic and science and characters and society and stuff, but I get that everyone's busy with Hannibal, and I just never know where to start gushing on my own.