#edge cases

Slowly progressing from 'how do protons behave in relativistic collisions?' to 'what the heck are protons even doing when they're just sitting there?'

artist is zoanluen on Twitter!

Oh man, Derivan.

I mean, his character concept was kind of what started this whole thing, right? I like monsters - if the tags on some of my other posts haven't made it obvious - and 'living armor' pushes a lot of buttons for me. There's a lot in the idea of being othered that resonates with the queer experience, and Derivan embodies a lot of that in a lot of ways by being, uh, a suit of armor that's afraid to let other people know that he's a suit of armor?

(It turns out they knew all along. Not completely, but they figured something was up, considering he never took off his helmet. 0 of his friends were surprised when it was eventually revealed.)

Derivan spent most of his formative years in a dungeon (the video game equivalent of a dungeon, as in a 'challenging location', not someone's basement), so he's very fascinated by the world at large - which explains a lot of his connection to Vex, who loves explaining just about everything in too much detail. Unlike most people who talk to Vex, Derivan sits and listens to every word attentively.

What's sort of funny is that a lot of people assume he's ace? I do have an ace character, but that's Sev. Derivan is demisexual. I leave further thoughts on this as an exercise to the reader. (Or you can respond to this post with theories.)

Derivan represents an outside-context problem for the system in the world of Edge Cases. He's essentially an embodiment of an issue I often find in video games - that video games will often designate 'monster races' that are all enemies, despite several of them being very clearly sapient. He's meant to be commentary on that aspect of the reductiveness of video game logic, so to speak.

He's very formal and thoughtful, he uses the lights in his helmet to express most of his emotions, and is otherwise protective of his friends, who were the first people to accept him. Found family vibes baybeeeeee

Autistic man Freestone Wilson suggested in the 1990s that autistic people are functioning as the “miners’ canaries” of civilisation. When the air in the mine is poisoned we do not prevent canaries being born in case they suffer from the poison and upset us: we clean the air or close the mine.

Source: Discussion paper on eugenics and diversity

Autists are like the canary in the coal mine of…

So, this sketch comes from cosmiccroissant from when I commissioned him to do a cover for Edge Cases (which is my book and launches tomorrow). This is a WIP-stage sketch that I saved - with permission - because I mean... come on. Look at her. Misa is badass.

Edge Cases is heavily inspired by DnD, and Misa's character emerged from somewhere between my desire to exploit weird skills and protect people. I wanted a character that was a little bit rougher than the others to balance out the rest of the party; Derivan's too oblivious, Vex is too busy nerding out over magic, and Sev is too kind by half.

So Misa's thing is she can block anything. There are limitations; blocking a single attack costs 10% of her health, no matter how powerful the attack is. It's great against single, powerful attacks, and terrible against, say, a rain of arrows.

If this sounds like a setup for a shonen moment, you're right!

Misa likes fighting and proving herself, but that's less of a priority to her than protecting her friends. It's pretty much the reason she got the skill and class she did.

She's also pansexual, which comes up in like... book 3. She has a quote-unquote Tragic Past, but that's sort of a spoiler?

Same story as the last! This shot comes from WIP by cosmiccroissant that was eventually replaced with my current cover (which I apparently have not posted here, whoops).

Sev was an interesting character to write. A lot of Edge Cases, when I was initially starting to write it, was intended to be commentary on the tropes we see in a lot of isekai and progression fantasy - and it's still very much that in a lot of ways. Sev was commentary on the "typical isekai protagonist".

To go too far into that would venture into spoiler territory, but the core components of his character is that:

He's been in the world of Edge Cases for a while. The planeshift event that brought him over happened ages ago.

He doesn't actually remember anything about Earth except maybe vague elements of its technology or culture. He doesn't remember much of his past, either - he gave it up a long time ago.

He's a cleric. I was going to go for "cleric that doesn't believe in the gods", but that seemed a little too obvious, so I went for "cleric that does believe in the gods but also just kind of treats them like normal people, which is refreshing for some gods and deeply insulting for others".

He's aroace!