Blaire (*pause to scream again*) is probably one of my favorite characters from my wip comic, Mortalis (and that's a high bar because I love Finnian and Cassian very much). He's a major side character, who helps Finn and Cassian in their attempts to find Cassian's father. Blaire owns a flower shop in the town where the pair of protagonists live, and will be a recurring character, although he hasn't appeared yet.

Most of Blaire's time is spent with plants (and very little of it is spent around people). His botanical knowledge is extensive, but his social skills... not so much. He's polite, but awkward; quiet, but friendly. He's usually smiling, just a slight, absent smile, like his mind is somewhere else entirely. Give him a chance to talk about plants, though, and good luck getting him to stop. He knows all about flowers, houseplants, deadly natural poisons, trees- and with such a large collection of plants to care for, that's what he spends most of his time doing- tending to them, curating orders for clients (just completely normal, innocent clients 100% of the time I promise 😀).

Also, although Blaire canonically is just a cis guy with he/him pronouns, his design is (unintentionally) very androgynous and honestly he probably doesn't care that much about what pronouns you use. Nonbinary/agender/gender apathetic but in a time period where it's much easier to just be cis (especially for a guy who probably already deals with racism, classism, and general hatred for his slightly off-putting demeanor; he's almost definitely neurodivergent, but again, this is a time period where there isn't a lot of language for that).

He's very level-headed and practical, but in a softspoken, doesn't blink quite as often as a normal person sort of way. He's friendly, but a little unsettling and I absolutely love him. And there's absolutely NO REASON to be scared of him so don't even worry about it :D

He is solidly on the same side of the protagonists, and is devoted to helping Cassian and Finn. Although he doesn't have many friends, Blaire does have connections that can come in handy, and his botanical knowledge is more useful than you might think. He's honest if asked a question, but doesn't tend to offer up information without being prompted, and sometimes his answers seem intentionally vague. He's clearly a man with secrets (secrets I won't disclose yet bc spoilers).

All you need to know is he likes plants, he's traumatized, and he only gets more traumatized over the course of the comic :)

Unlike the main two characters, Blaire is a human, but - fun fact! - early versions of him weren't! In the universe of the comic, there are angels from heaven, demons from hell, and necromancers, whose souls gets recycled rather than sent to an afterlife- but there's also a middleground section of the afterlife, and Blaire was originally meant to be a being from this middleground, but that idea got scrapped. It did affect his general moral standing (he's very morally grey and not very judgemental of people who do bad things) and help him become the character he is today, but I think him being full-blooded human is even more interesting and fits a lot better with the plot (+ helped me work out some design stuff). His early iterations were giving me so much trouble that I almost scrapped Blaire entirely, but my cousin/writing partner convinced me not to, and I'm so glad she did because I now absolutely adore Blaire soooo much.

SERIOUSLY HE'S ONE OF MY FAVORITE CHARACTERS YHLFÖHFZÖDZLFÖZXLHFLH THANK YOU FOR ASKING ABOUT HIM AHHHHH

Another fun fact, Blaire ends up working for Cassian part time, just coming over every so often to tend to the (often forgotten or neglected) house plants in Cassian's mansion, and it's a totally normal business arrangement and not a cover for anything else so don't even worry about it.

Other info:

Blaire is 5'9", which is a bit taller than Cassian, but still a fair few inches shorter than Finn (who is canonically over 6 feet tall and built like a toothpick in an earthquake; keep him inside at all times because a slight breeze might just steal him away; he's got the side profile of a piece of paper. Finn being thin to an unhealthy degree actually has plot relevence; Cassian has a sturdy but not muscular build with a thinner waist than most of the women in the comic (although that's probably because I have failed to add a single woman to this comic so far; I swear I'll fix it), and Blaire is on the chubbier side because he's an absolute teddy bear and I will not apologize for it.)

Fun little design details:

• funky glasses. They're big circular glasses both because it fits the character and, more importantly, because they're probably the easiest glasses for me to draw. I've drawn him without them ONCE and it looked very wrong.

• floating hair pieces. Not realistic but you can see that in many of my drawings of him, there are two little hair pieces just.. floating there. They're shapes like leaves :)

• rounder face. Because he's a soft little bean and actually has some meat on his bones unlike Finn the walking skeleton.

• I always shade in his upper lip. Making one lip more obvious/visible is a trick I often use for female characters, but even in his earliest versions, I decided Blaire's lips would be more prominent and I shaded one in because it just helped the face look more complete. For Cassian and Finn, I only draw the mouth line and give little to no indication of the lips at all. Just a fun little artistic quirk there.

• Blaire has a jacket with the name of his flower shop on it. It's technically part of his uniform, but he pretty much always wears it, even if he isn't at work.