forgive me if you've already talked about this, but what's tala's flower? + if you had to assign her more flowers/herbs/plants for a bouquet, what would they be? lastly... what's her relationship like with the rest of the cast???
lastly lastly... I HOPE YOU'RE DOING WELL!!! 🙂↕️
I am doing well!! Thank you so much for asking!!
And honestly, thank you so much for essentially reminding me that I haven’t said jackshit about Tala other than what I’ve drawn in comics.
About her assigned flower, I had been hemming and hawing about it for some time. I had a hard time landing on one but eventually I decided that the morning glory was fitting for her. A symbol of a beautiful thing that exists for a very fleeting amount of time, especially since her entire character is me testing the idea of what happens when someone who chooses to be gentle over and over again is dropped into a city that just doesn’t give a fuck. (Totally do not look up the Victorian meaning for the flower, not foreshadowing or anything for what I’m about to do to her for her story)
As for like a bouquet for her… hmm…. I think it would be, of course, morning glory (her assigned flower), forget me nots, rosemary, and thyme. Personally I think the flower blooms of thyme is very pretty!
Now time for the longest thing I’ve ever written for her relationships with the rest of the cast *cracking my knuckles*
Kuras: I like to imagine Tala is like Kuras’s over excited lapdog. She follows him around at the clinic with utter fascination in how he treats wounds and does her best to not be totally in the way. Kuras, for the most part, finds her entertaining as Tala has a horrendous habit of not filtering her thoughts. Not that she’s spilling secrets left and right but just saying an odd thing here and there unprompted. Which just leaves more mystery as to why she said that. For her part, while she’s aware that Kuras can’t be called completely trustworthy, the fact he hasn’t tried to kill her makes her a bit more relaxed on having him around. He hasn’t made any moves that feel like a threat just yet so that makes her feel that he’s okay to follow around at a distance. Perhaps that’s a mistake she’ll have to pay for in the future but for now, she likes him and that’s enough in a city like Eridia.
Leander: After he made a grab at her in the alley she’s become extremely wary of any of his advances. She has a history of being manhandled and has a visceral response to it, ranging from actively biting assailants to going completely rigid and dissociating. Judging from what I’ve seen from Leander, such avoidant behavior only makes him pursue her more which in turn causes her to avoid him harder. I think the main reason why she had such a response to his grab at her as opposed to what you see next with Vere is that Leander posed himself as an amiable gentleman when they first met before pulling that shit. As with Vere, she knew he was full of shit the minute they met. So for Tala and Leander, think of their relationship with each other as an extreme game of cat and mouse. Except the cat may learn very soon that the mouse has teeth that can break skin.
Vere: Another grabber that she did not enjoy. Except, for some reason or another, she seems to not avoid as hard as she does Leander. Perhaps it’s the fun little jabs they send each other from time to time or the shenanigans they get each other into. To an extent, Tala is fully aware how dangerous Vere is, after all he doesn’t hide it. He exudes that energy and that may very well be why she doesn’t avoid him so much even after their first encounter. She already knows what to be cautious about in the moment, she just needs to figure out what the limit is. Not to use the cat analogy again but very much so a kitten testing the limits of what an adult cat will allow before they end up in a fight. Her proclivity for trial and error experiments may very well get her killed. For now though, Vere seems to be just as entertained.
Ais: Y’all know that image from One Punch Man where he’s pointing and saying “what’s with this sassy lost child?” Yeah, that’s the two of them. I’d say that these two have more of a brother and sister relationship than anything and not like someone wrote a sitcom brother and sister that has never had a sibling. I’m talking, arguing and bickering and name-calling which Ais sort of just lets happen because at the end of the day, he still has company even if it’s the equivalent of a small dog nipping at his heels and she’s not doing any active harm against him (or whatever Ocudeus has planned)…. Yet. She actually does enjoy Ais’ company and relaxed attitude, even if she doesn’t fully admit it.
