#diddgery asks

What was the original thought that led to the creation of this character?

so in early 2022 i started reading a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fanfic called Beyond Me. It's about an adult man who winds up in the body of a school-age filly in Equestria shortly before the events of the first episode. The story is heavily focused on his struggles to cope with his new reality as a cute cartoon pony and how his personal identity is at odds with the way everyone else sees him.

inspired by that, I came up with my own "adult man who is turned into a cute little critter" concept, and that became Vixie. I took some different approaches than what was done in Beyond Me— namely, the main character of that fic was cis and thus suffers intense gender dysphoria in his new body, whereas Vixie gets euphoria from her new body despite the many problems that come with being a small magical familiar.

3. What was the first thing you decided on, the character's name, appearance, personality or their role in the story?

After that initial idea, appearance was the first thing I nailed down. I made an inspiration board and used that as a springboard to draw some concept sketches. I knew what I wanted for her general body shape from the start— squat, big round head and eyes, little hair tuft, heart-shaped dewlap— but I had some trouble figuring out things like her ears and tail.

I wound up asking a few friends and the general consensus was in favor of the top-left option, which I tweaked and refined to create the Vixie we know today! Her personality came together around the same time as I drew her in different poses, though more concrete details about her past life as Brendan Miller came later. Her name came from brainstorming with my friend Jovian, who suggested something ending in "-ixie" for the cuteness factor.

13. Do you have a voice claim for the character? What do you imagine the character sounds like?

If I could cast anyone to voice Vixie, it'd be Cassandra Lee Morris. Just listen to her as Morgana in Persona 5. That's just what Vixie sounds like in my head. I guess she'd sound a bit more world-weary and tired than Morgana's usually more energetic delivery...

19. What is your general favourite thing about the character? What is your least favourite?

She has such a strong personality and a fun design which makes it easy for me to draw her in all kinds of situations. She's a huge mess of a person, but she's also so cute... I think Vixie's almost perfect.

16. Is there any memes or running jokes associated with the character, both in- and out of universe?

I don't know about in-universe. OOC the main jokes I can think of are about her being incredibly focused on vengeance. These are jokes I make about her myself and some others have as well. Girl Who Wants To Kill The People Who Wronged Her SOOO Bad.

and album

aeiou: 1, 12 and the world's vaguest 8 since it hasn't debuted yet

Harriet: 6, 10, 20

Aeiou

What was the original thought that led to the creation of this character?

okay so in March I was participating in a TTRPG character creation jam run by my friend Courtney, and early into that jam I decided to make a character with the Masks playbook The Outsider, which is themed around being an alien. I had the idea to make a moon rabbit character for that, because I like moon rabbits conceptually and it felt like a fun idea. After I made the first one I decided to make a few more moon rabbits in different systems. While I was on this moon rabbit kick, so when NS:COI was announced I went "okay this is the perfect place to make a moon rabbit character!" So after some thought and with a little help from my friends, Aeiou was born.

12. Do you have a playlist for the character? What songs do you associate with them and why?

Not really? I do have the beginnings of a playlist, but I don't feel strongly about either of the songs on it right now. Aeiou has been a really hard character for me to pin down musically. This isn't uncommon for my OCs, honestly; I think the ones that do have playlists are the exceptions.

8. What is the origin of their personality? And let's be honest - how much of it is projecting?

For Aeiou I knew I wanted to make a Starfire-esque character who had a strong fascination for Earth but didn't entirely understand it. And as I thought about it and my ideas for moon rabbit culture, I began to bring in other sources of inspiration. Kipo from Kipo, Entrapta from She-Ra. It resulted in a character who was both very intelligent but also very sheltered, who understood facts more than people.

And, for the projecting part... look, every character I make has at least a touch of autism. I can't avoid it. And Aeiou has a lot of autistic traits. It doesn't get other people, it has trouble understanding what's wrong when it crosses boundaries or says something inappropriate, it has trouble conveying its thoughts, all of those. And just look at the characters who inspired it! I think it makes for a fun character, at least...

Harriet

6. What was the thought process behind their appearance? Did you go mostly for the aesthetic or are there other reasons they look the way they do?

Harriet came to me in a dream, and when I first drew her I was trying to capture the vibe I got in the dream. As she developed as a character I started to understand her personal sense of style more, and that led to me experimenting with different outfits. I put her in skirts a lot more earlier on than I would now. She really isn't a skirts or dresses kind of girl.

So Harriet's trademark outfit of the green hoodie and jeans is just the first thing I drew her in, and over time developed to be something she wears in part to hide her rabbit features. But also the hoodie is important to her on a personal level, in the way that having a favorite comfy piece of clothes is. Harriet's also not a very fashionable person most of the time, preferring personal comfort over aesthetics.

That said, recently I have been thinking of her dressing in a more punk/goth/scene kind of way, since that fits her personality and interests really well. In TRUCK her final outfit was this fun fishnets and crop top and goth pants ensemble, and I drew her in that outfit for her human form as well. It feels like quintessential Harriet to me, just as much as her green hoodie and jeans fit does.

I don't know if I answered this question right but uhhh there you go lol

10. What is their main character arc in the story? Where do they start and how do they develop? Do they get a happy ending or is their story a tragic one?

Okay so this is a complicated one to answer because there are two versions of Harriet in my mind: the one from her original story, Lapin Lazuli, and the one I played in TRUCK and later Tributary.

Both start the same way. Harriet is a depressed webcartoonist living with her divorced dad and trying really hard to make her webcomic a success so she can move away from him and finally have a life for herself. She only has two real friends, her IRL bestie Joules (who she has a huge crush on) and her online bestie Witch (who lives on the other side of the country).

In Lapin Lazuli, Harriet starts to develop strange symptoms that eventually result in her growing long floppy rabbit ears. When she approaches her great-uncle, a retired doctor, for help, he turns out to be involved in a secretive organization known as the Consortium, and has Harriet placed in its care so that her anomaly can be studied and (maybe) cured. It's here that Harriet learns that she is transforming into some kind of large rabbit monster, and that when the transformation is finalized she'll lose her mind completely. As months pass she eventually learns that the Consortium doesn't have any desire to cure her, to the point of faking her death so that she can be kept here indefinitely. She manages to stage an escape by causing a containment breach, and once out she calls Joules for help. Shocked and relieved to learn Harriet is alive, they pick her up and take her back to their apartment.

After this, the story becomes a cross-country roadtrip as Harriet and Joules travel from Bend, Oregon to Gloucester, Massachusetts in order to meet up with Witch, who believes that Harriet's condition is a curse and that she can break it. Over the course of the story Harriet grapples with her impending transformation and her fears of losing herself and leaving the most important things in her life unaccomplished. The ending I have in mind is bittersweet. Harriet does fully transform, but she remains herself mentally, so she can still make her comic and keep her friendships despite her new form. I don't know if she tells Joules about how she feels, though, since this version of Harriet took the backseat after I was accepted into TRUCK.

In TRUCK, Harriet gets an artist alley booth at a convention in Seattle and is so stoked about it, but she dies on the way there as the result of a horrible car accident. Her soul is summoned to Calamity Kingdom in another world, where she and 16 other newly-summoned Incarnates are forced to participate in the Ritual of Mutual Sacrifice, a murder game designed to artificially empower Incarnates in hopes of defeating the Demon King. Harriet had to grapple with grieving herself while coming to grips with her new, nightmarish reality. Every day was a struggle to cope, but she tried her best.

But ultimately, it wasn't enough, and she succumbed to her worst instincts and committed murder. Notably she was the only murderer who actually had the intention of killing someone, even though the person she killed was not her intended target. She confessed to her crime at the trial, was executed horribly, and was subsequently revived as a more monstrous version of herself called a Bound. Afterwards she struggled to deal with the guilt she felt, along with the new difficulties that came with being an undying monster doomed to eventually lose her mind. That she still had any friends at all after what she did felt like an impossible bit of kindness from an unkind universe.

At the end of TRUCK, things turned out okay for Harriet, even if it ended with her fully transformed into an anthropomorphic wolpertinger. She wasn't able to entirely come to peace with her original death, or losing her chance to be with Joules, or the guilt and shame she felt over killing her friend and then losing the chance to apologize to them. Those sorts of things take a long time, and Harriet's someone who feels everything so strongly that I'm not sure if she ever will entirely accept what happened. But she had some very close friends and even a girlfriend, and was able to start living her life the way she wanted to for the first time since ever. So even if things weren't perfect, she still wound up happy. I think this is a happier ending for her than the Lapin Lazuli one, because this time she gets to exist in a setting that she herself helps shape. She doesn't have to seclude herself from the world for being a rabbit monster, she just is what she is and that's okay.

Anyway, then I apped her to a multifandom game called Tributary where she was scooped up right after TRUCK ended and forced to deal with even MORE bullshit but that's another story entirely.

20. Bonus question: share any additional thoughts, art, favourite scenes, anything you've been waiting for a chance to ramble about

i already wrote so much about her what do you want from meeee

uhhh i don't know. I love Harriet, she is one of my absolute favorite characters and is so easy and natural for me to write. I love writing her impulsive emotional ass, she is someone who struggles and suffers greatly and has so much mental anguish over the things she's done and the things she's been through, and it brings me a lot of joy when she gets to experience moments of catharsis and true happiness. I'm also someone who struggles a lot with feeling like I deserve kindness and I'm really hard on myself in the same ways Harriet is hard on herself, so it's nice to write someone who struggles in a similar (albeit very exaggerated and intense) way and see her succeed.