Hey I want to hear about your OCs I think they’re cool
:DDDD tyy... this makes me so happy to hear!! ^_^ itd be my pleasure <3
(Trying to be conscise here I'll stick to four ocs (from different stories, not all of them ongoing some r still in planning stage) but i have so many we could be here all day 😭)
Firstly we have Key! They are a maid with a 'life-debt' of sorts to a count's estate and live in a fantasy kingdom called Valacia. The setting doesn't have any sort of magic system or very fleshed-out plot due to just being my attempt at creating an environment to place them in, the whole Valacia thing is mostly just a stage for Key's story
(Cws for child abuse, xenophobia and workplace abuse:) Valacia is a mostly white kingdom (veeeery loosely based off some places in medieval europe) but it is close to a country named Mékyar, which is mostly inhabited by black ppl. Mékyar has been facing a couple crisis (crisises?) in the last few generations so emmigration to nearby nations (like aforementioned Valacia) is at an all-time high- Key's father was one of those immigrants! Although they've never met him. They are biracial and were abandoned at an early age, but one of the servants at the estate was pitied and took them in.
Key feels indebted to them for that reason- even though the culture of corporal punishment & abuse is very predominant among the servants there and they did NOT have a happy childhood. They threatened to throw them out in back in the streets a bunch, too, so it's not like it was particularly stable either. That practice of violece is mostly due to the count's own principles (he thinks it's fine and appropriate to beat up your servants when they don't perform to standard or to keep them in line) & the stern hand of the head of maids but that is mostly replicated by all the other maids. Key had it particularly rough due to being (1) a child (the head of maids believes all children must be raised with an iron fist lest they become lazy- and so she was particularly hard on them since their early life education was mostly her responsability) and (2) half-mékyaran. there is a widespread notion in Valacia that Mékyarans are very slack n useless and just like inherently inferior to valacians so everybody figured they'd be tougher on Key in order to 'counter that' and raise them into a proper, hardworking servant.
Key has grown up to be very demanding of themself and they reproduce a lot of the stern principles of the head of maids (who basically raised them) and still get a lot of rough treatment but they've taught themself to 'take it with grace' and not show any weakness in front of it- they can't slack, after all.
Also crucially Key is not a girl despite the dress- Valacia's concept of transness is mostly reliant on a binary framework of gender and people who are outside that binary or somewhat odd in relation to it (ie. gnc folk, nonbinary people, even gay ppl, depending on who you ask) are referred to by 'androgynous', as in blurring and messing with the lines between the two genders. which is a pretty broad and vague category but it's what most closely describes them best and all of the definitions (gnc/gay/nb/etc) are seen as mostly similar. They also have a 'male version' of that uniform in the drawing I just like drawing maid dresses better.
They r a newer oc so I don't have much writing for them (and none of it is posted yet..) and not all of the bits are very developed (ie i still got to figure out the ins and outs of their personality n get to know them better) but I am pretty excited to play with them in a couple scenarios soon :)
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We also have Kiyini!!! They are from what I am temporarily calling the 'slave whumpee wip' (tentative title: the chronicles of sete), which is set in a world where humans and elves coexist in different countries. The human continent of Sete (loosely based around medieval europe too, but specifically the iberian peninsula) is very high up on their horse and see 'elf-like' humans or elves as inferior. Setian economy is pretty reliant on slavery & the vast majority of slaves are elves. Kiyini is one of them!
(Cws for fantasy racism & slavery mentions)
Kiyini (around 18yo) is an ex-slave who lives with seir three siblings (Ssubi, Foluke 1 and Foluke 2 (the two r headmates with each other) (they may have diff names but im still brainstorming that) ('foluke' was previously baazibumbira but ive changed some bits of their lore & ethnicity so i changed the name to better suit the culture their country of origin is inspired in)) and tries to get by in a human kingdom. Seir mom died many years ago & it was pretty traumatic so se's very protective of family and aim to do anything to keep the three of them safe and sound- even though that's a little hard. Basically people don't give freed elves very good working conditions </3 Se eventually settles a deal with a Setian noble in order to give them all a roof & stability as servants in his house in exchange of becoming said noble's magical battery. There's some magic system stuff involved in that but basically that's what se does. The noble wants to get into magical school and want a personal servant that doubles as a magic-energy-well and Kiyini suffices. The process of exchanging magical energy is pretty painful for the person who's giving it + if they resist it doesn't work, it has to be given willingly (pretty hard when giving in makes you writhe in pain) but through some gentle encouraging (/sarcasm) and strenuous practice, Kiyini gets the hang of it :)
I'm still developing a lot of the lore here as well and don't have anything posted for this either but this is a lil more ambitious than what i have going on with key so i want to give it more thought and care. Don't have everything figured out yet (there's a lot of lore im not putting here bc it'd be long as a bible lol) but i'm veeeeeeeeeery excited about it.
(Also! It is common that elven slaves and elves descended of slaves in sete have a 'setian name'- something that is less 'elven' and more 'appropriate'. kiyini's setian name is isaías but kiyini was the name seir mother gave them, so se's very attached to it. se is not a rare case, either! elves to seek/keep traditionally elven names (usually as a way to reclaim their culture) exist in bulk and those elf-ish names are often called 'bondnames'; a bond to the land you came from that can't be taken from you.)
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Next up is evangeline! :D cws for child abuse & 'lab rat' type situation & suicidal ideation (?). i'm currently revamping some of their lore but basically in their world (more modern alternate earth kind of setting) some people have superpowers and theirs is coming back from the dead. Her older sister and parental figure, eliah, is the villain and the leader of a certain powerful association who is also very interested in superpower research. this kind of 'magic' is fairly new to the setting so there's still a lot to be found out about it and eliah wants to be the first in that. She is a renowed name in superpower-related academia as well and she conducts a lot of her... research, by inhumane and borderline-torture-y methods on subjects that may have a range of varying willingness to participe. She does have the means! She is a very influential person and has a whole team working for her. Evangeline is basically her personal science project
Ev's power of undying was named Osiris' Law (in reference to the undead egyptian god of the underworld) and they are pretty isolated from like. everything. They love their older sister and really want to make her proud (even when it hurts. a lot) so they try to play along everytime they get strapped to the lab table and cut open until organ failure. Again. Ev is sort of 'used to it' by now because they've been at it for literal several years and they're honestly pretty deppressed </3 their coming-back-from-death thing also leaves a residual phantom pain when they come back (the most painful it was when they died the worse it is) but it can get overwritten if they die again in a painless way. which doesn't really help in like. She is very flippant about her own well-being and her life in general and she has a freakish pain tolerance on account of the Everything. I would call them suicidal but does it count if you know you can't actually die u_u
^Unfinished sketches but this is my current best ref of the sisters :) Ev is like 13-14 and a lil tomboyish and although they don't have a lot of ways to express their autonomy eliah plays 'nice' and lets them do whatever they want with their hair and clothes. I'm playing with the idea of making evangeline black purely because i think it'd look nice but that's up in the air for now and as such they're the resident white whumpee lol
Ev is really dysfunctional and they often neglect their bodily survival needs (like eating and sleeping) when in a deppressive episode (which eliah calls 'acting out') and have probably actually died like that at least once or twice. They try to colaborate with Eliah's team most of the time (#god's favorite sacrificial lamb) but sometimes it gets too much even for them and they go to radical lengths to avoid their predictament. She doesn't mean to "be bad" but she can't stop herself from fleeing and hiding in a corner when someone comes to get her for her weekly dose of... painful dying. They also don't have many chances of being a normal kid and are pretty sheltered. they have no friends beside eliah n eliah's personal assistant (she's been around for a while her name is huy and ev sees her as kind of a second sister) and she has zero support network and zero people to look at it and be like. hey that's fucked up actually your sister shouldn't make you go through all that...? so alas. eventually eliah hires a 'nurse' (a young 'boy' (nonbinary but they dont know that yet. egg nurse) called ariel (later renames themself imos)) to watch over them and imos is around their age so they eventually get along and imos becomes a very positive influence in their life but for now they are alone...
They were originally part of a specific story but i haven't worked on the rest of it in a while and it has gotten out of hand so for now she's stolen the spotlight lol. Ev is also kinda genderqueer about the whole 'girl thing' which Eliah is honestly pretty fine and supportive of so yay I guess?
Anyways! I do have an Evangeline masterlist with some writing and art, here it is. And here is a drabble with them i particularly like :)
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FINALLY, we have the darling that's arguably my main oc: Espa!
cws for child abuse, institutional abuse, kidnapping, indocrination & child assassin stuff
(pictured: espa (the one with the afro and darker skin) and her friend gisele (the one with the lighter skin and looser curls).)
I could be here all day about Espa and the others ocs in their story, but basically: They are 16ish, their pronouns are they/she/it (the it is part internalized dehumanization and part a gender thing, it's complicated) and they were raised by a criminal organization as a child assassin :) Very self-indulgent lore. The organization (known as 'the dove' due to their signature symbol) snatches ups kids from the streets or from vulnerable families who won't show up in the news, etc, to turn them into faithful assets and ruthless living weapons. All 'weapons' are renamed with actual weapon names, with 'Espa' being nickname for Espada, which means 'sword' in portuguese (the story is set in brazil). The name their long-forgotten mother and father gave them as a child was actually "Isabel" but they do not remember either. Sad.
Espa is known for being a pretty 'well-behaved' and effective weapon (there is an internal ranking systems based off birds, since they're 'the dove', and espa is on the higher end of it); they follow orders without a fuss and will deal the blow without hesitating. Their assigned primary handler (a mf called Ann) is the bitchiest person alive and is constantly dissatisfied with its performance, despite Espa trying very hard to be 'good enough'. They strive to be the heartless monster that the dove wants them to be, all for the sake of 'being what its 'family' needs' even though they actually got a pretty kind heart. It's a little of an odd contrast combined with their casual attitude around violence (they've grown up surrounded by it and are as much a perpetrator of it as they are a victim) and complete lack of morals (killing and stealing and torturing = fine, failing a mission/disappointing a handler = :( wait thats fucked up...) but they can be very attentive and a good friend to people it hasn't labelled as 'disposable targets'. It's not like Espa doesn't have any empathy- they do, they are actually very good at reading people (while keeping themself as being very hard to read under a neutral-faced facade), it's just that they justify ignoring it when it's convenient for following their orders. Espa knows what it's like to feel pain and knows you're going to feel it. It's just taught itself to not care.
(^my current espa masterpiece <3 best ref i have of them so far)
It's also pretty stoic and has a lot of practice in concealing its emotions so its face always holds a carefully neutral expression like 99.9% of the time. They are very touch-averse (trauma reasons) but try not to let it show how utterly terrible it feels for them when a loved one pulls them in for a hug (they're very good at hiding it when something hurts them) but when they're having a bad day (often) it might lowkey just trigger a full-blown panic attack. They are utterly repulsed by the idea of allowing themself some slack (of being 'spoiled' and accepting 'undeserved' rewards, like soft bedding or good food) and hate having their back turned to people; they feel vulnerable. Espa also has a bright yellow cape (high-ranked weapons are allowed personal clothes and a few possessions) that was a gift from a handler or something years ago and they are very strongly attached to it. It helps ground it, it helps it feel safe. It's also aroace, but it rationalizes that as 'well, weapons are not supposed to have feelings so it's only natural romance/sexual desire doesn't register as a concept to me that's a thing Other (Normal) People do'. It dislikes being vulnerable and making other people worry for it and it also has a very good relationship with some of the other weapons, whom it thinks of as its siblings.
I do have a whole ass series for them :D it's titled Espada after their name, and i'm currently wrestling with my outline in order to manage writing arc ii, and it's the first story i've managed to write and release so much of so i'm quite proud of it :)
Here is an extra fic that's not a part of the main story but is one of my favorite pieces to this day. Set during Espa's childhood and early weapon days :) There is also another one set when they're even younger and it's a pretty short drabble, just a lil scene.
Espa also prefers kind-of modest clothing and doesn't like showing a lot of skin (forearms are in the clear but thats IT). Most of their wardrobe is black in order to hide bloodstains + They usually wear that blue bandana over their forehead as well! It's partly to keep loose strands out of the way and partly because they're just kind of fond of it. They're better at hands-on combat + short-ranged weapons + stealth and are terrible at making plans and have a chronic problem of just improvising the hell out of it when they're in trouble in a fight. Though they do have a lot of practice and very good reflexes so it usually plays out in the end! Usually. Also, the Dove hasn't taught it to read (it was snatched up shortly before getting a change to attend first grade) so Espa is currently illiterate. It can recognize its own name when written down tho.
Espa's storyline is headed in the direction of them meeting a couple people (namely Ciça and Gisele) that eventually lead them to running away and having a recovery arc of sorts :) im struggling to get there bc arc i ended and the transition from arc i to ii is being a lil hard on me but i cant wait to get to that part honestly
sorry if this is too long <3 asdfg i got excited. i'm glad you found my ocs cool :)))))) tysm!!!!!
