This time it's about your character Cyrus from Children of the Time War.
First, I wanted to tell you again that I thought he was an absolutely FANTASTIC villain. Like, it's pretty hard to write a consistent nemesis for a character like the Doctor, who's basically like some sort of a God. Especially a villain that's clever, resourceful enough, and also enough of a cockroach to last us a whole franchise. But you did it brilliantly. He was, in all honesty, terrifying and like very stressful and frustrating lol
Now, my question might seem trivial, but I was wondering, did you have a specific face in mind when you wrote Cyrus? I don't wanna call it a faceclaim, cause that's not really what I mean, but did an actor (or an actress or celebrity, singer, or even someone you know) inspire the making of this character, physically speaking? If so, I'd be curious to know who!!
If not (but, like, you can still answer this even if you do have an existing person in mind), how would you describe his style, his features, in detail?
And do you have anecdotes about what inspired you to write this villain, his arc, and his personality (like people, places, happenstance, events, music, films, art in general...)?
I'm sorry, I guess this is probably pretty difficult to answer, but I'd be happy with anything I can learn, really ;) He really was a cool villain (I hated him, but I also didn't, cause he made sense)
HI HELLO YES IVE BEEN LOOKING FOR AN EXCUSE TO TALK ABOUT CYRUS
Cyrus came about in kind of an interesting way because at first he was kind of reverse engineered out of the concept of Aldora and the time lock splitting it in half, and he was basically a series of "Okay what kind of person would end up in this situation" sorts of questions.
Then when I was coming up with his name he kind of accidentally became an adapted version of one of my original characters Cyrus Merrick, who is only similar in personality and kind of appearance (COTTW Cyrus had to be retooled slightly to fit with how I envisioned Aldorians). My OC Cyrus ran an underground fighting ring that he would kidnap people and force them to participate in. He ended up getting on the bad side of a guy named Rictus, who is basically if time was a person and that person was insane and also the most annoying person you know. He ended up cursing Cyrus with time-related abilities that destroyed his sanity.
The Cyrus in Children of the Time War has slightly longer hair, white streaks in his hair, silver eyes, and he actually has both of his eyes (OC!Cyrus lost one to one of the creatures he kidnapped). COTTW!Cyrus also doesnt have any of the scarring or tattoos that OC!Cyrus does. Both of them like dressing like they have money and power, and COTTW!Cyrus is in his senate robes if I remember, which are vaguely similar to Time Lord CIA robes but a bit more elaborate.
OC!Cyrus does end up with a silvery-golden eye after Rictus gets to him.
As for his personality, COTTW!Cyrus definitely took a lot of inspiration from both my OC Cyrus and from Rictus. A lot of him toying with Ten and Donna came from Rictus (Rictus sticks people in time loops for fun), and a lot of his power-hungry moral grayness, especially in his backstory, came directly from OC!Cyrus.
Very, very early in brainstorming for that whole story I had actually considered just using Rictus as the villain but then I ended up tying everything to the Time War and the consequences of it and Aldora sprang into being, which eventually led to Cyrus.
I also wanted a character who did genuinely have valid reasons to be upset at the Doctor, but was absolutely morally reprehensible enough to pull the shit he did, and I think Cyrus fills that role pretty well.
