#refactoring

13. Are any of your ocs enemies? If so, why are they opposed to one another?

there are a lot of adversarial relationships in refactoring to be honest its hard to pick just one to elaborate on so i will elaborate ☝️ on two. maybe more if i get a 13 again. mavis & lea - sonic & metal sonic adjacent aka lea has a lot of strengths and capabilities that outdo mavis by far but mavis has that ONE THING that lea doesnt and it drives her completely crazy. mavis is an anomaly so she has all of these reality bending powers that lea kind of wishes she could have anyways and tries to achieve through "lesser means" in a sense. lea also acts as sort of a twisted mentor kind of to mavis (whiplash adjacent trying to push mavis to her limits) for one of the arcs in the story because she has a scientific fascination with mavis and wants to witness what shes capable of. the bonus is that lea is rebounding from trinity hard so its fascinating to watch her sort out her feelings via mavis sometimes while mavis is kind of just like "what are we. also whats wrong with you." catriona & vladimir - vladimir lived with catriona & silas briefly when they were younger. because of that he gained this kind of secondhand over the shoulder access to a bunch of stuff that the average civilian wouldnt know about when it comes to the code guardianship etc etc. an entire 8 YEARS LATER he continues to have beef with her because she said no one time (told him that he isnt allowed to access the code and also told him that shes gay. yeah he sucks). for those familiar they have a very similar enemyship to lyreni & vergas. both catriona and vladimir have ""similar"" methods on the surface (both have issued with control, both seek conduction of the code for their own purposes) but the further you dig into each character the more you realize these overlaps stem from very different places.

7. Which of your ocs has the most tragic backstory and why?

5. Do you ever put your ocs into alternative universes/settings? If you do, tell us about one of them!

answered ^_^

8. Which one of your ocs would you consider the weirdest, and why?

trinity. mavis + catriona + silas + kirabo all find them kind of strange and unpleasant upon first meeting them. there are a lot of trials and tribulations that happen before trinity is accepted into this group. they already have a hard time expressing themself (autism and very traumatized) and have this like. acidity that i think just makes it... difficult. sometimes. to socialize with them. they say a lot of Weird Shit. to be fair its hard to blame trinity for this entirely when theyre being tortured with horrific visions of the future from beyond the veil via their cool bionic eye and they have some stupid bitch (vlad) on their trail at any given point in time. #MYTRINITY

3. What is a fact about one of your ocs that you've never gotten to share with someone before?

funfact #2 ive never said publicly i dont think but i made and named trinity before ever watching the matrix so all similarities are completely accidental. trinity (matrix) is on the trinity (refactoring) kin onion though absolutely.

5. Do you ever put your ocs into alternative universes/settings? If you do, tell us about one of them!

3. What is a fact about one of your ocs that you've never gotten to share with someone before?

going to go with some of my smaller fun facts for this one so im not completely spoiling the fuck out of my story. im sure ive mentioned on here probably that mavis is from my hometown in michigan but idk its one of my self indulgent little tidbits. i thought it would be fun to throw in there and i think it adds to aspects of her character the fact that she lived in this small shitty town where very few people understood her for like several reasons

9 & 10. Which of your ocs do you think you would get along with best in real life? | Which one of your ocs do you think you would dislike the most in real life?

get along with? probably mavis and silas. i think we all have similar senses of humor. dislike? vlad quite obviously i think i would kill myself if i had to be in a room with him for an extended period of time.

14. Have any of your ocs been re-written? If so, what did their old version look like vs their new one?

14. Have any of your ocs been re-written? If so, what did their old version look like vs their new one?

i think the base concepts behind the characters are still there but surrounding factors changed a lot over the course of 7 years. growing as a person and writer / expanding on worldbuilding / personal taste / whatnot has helped a lot. most of the designs have stayed roughly in the same ballpark with tweaks here and there whenever ive said to myself "why the fuck did i ever decide on that" when something didnt fit the character or was just kind of stupid in hindsight. leas role in the story has changed the most out of everyones and honestly its made her one of the characters of all time to me. lea herself is very principled, but she has lofty sometimes selfish sometimes kind of deranged goals. she wants to break through the simulated reality of vitium and this fucked up scientific curiosity / all consuming pursuit for forbidden knowledge leads her to mingle with the wrong people or make decisions that dont really reflect who she is / what she believes in since its all for the sake of that breakthrough. ends justify the means boiling frog etc these are very important for Getting her character she wants what she wants and she will do whatever it takes to get it even if it wraps around to hurting her in the end its fun to parallel her with trinity who like, unwillingly sees beyond the veil, has a lot of misplaced morals, is very tunnel-visioned and stubborn yet ultimately believes theyre "on the good side" and that theyre "doing the right thing". but the actions they take are just as damaging and cause just as many if not more problems. they match each others freak in a very special way <3 lea rebounds from trinity and tries to have a similar crazy ass situationship with mavis but it doesnt work out. its not the same.

15. [FREE SPACE] - Introduce us to one of your ocs!

i will talk about CATRIONA :) she is a character i feel strongly about shes so awesome. catriona has faced a lot of loss with the death of her parents and the destruction of her city, she desperately clings to what is familiar continues to live in the past and refuses to lose ever again, which causes a lot of internal conflict whenever she is shown that she and the world both must undergo a lot of transformation for the sake of positive growth. shes born into guardianship and is shoved into the role early on, ever since her childhood she has been raised and educated to help maintain the programming that upholds vitiums simulated reality. her peers underestimate and subtly mock her because they dont believe shes capable of restoring what was left in the wreckage, civilians have lost faith in her because everything has fallen apart, she is trying to reconstruct a city that has just faced a natural disaster with old tools that dont do the job anymore. she has to learn to ask for help that she has refused to take because shes convinced herself that shes the only one who can do these things the correct way and wants to have that control over preventing further tragedy. she has to listen to new ideas that feel very intimidating to her + finally meet with her grief and give it space to breathe VS what shes been doing this whole time which is shoving it all in a box and never meaningfully acknowledging it for the sake of her duties. the depth of that anguish is what drives everything she does but she cannot for the life of her bear to look it in the eyes for the longest time. love her she is literally my fucking sweetiepie lala. look at her in this cute outfit holding a beach ball ok? (this art is old)

11. Do you have an oc "type?" (AKA, are there any design or characterization trends that you notice popping up amongst your characters?)

design-wise: i am always giving my characters this cowlick shit. probably because my hair does this naturally too. this is just in the main cast like 3 of my minor characters have it as well characterization-wise: hmmm i feel like my answer is pretty boring. i write trios (catriona + silas + kirabo aka side A | lea + trinity + vladimir aka side B) often, and characters who are cursed with some level of higher knowledge frequently as well. i guess aside from that its very rare that i write characters who are earnest, i think the most honest characters i have are silas and kirabo... but even then things get obfuscated with those two as well. to be honest that was something i wanted to work on after writing cataclysmalbound because cataclysmalbound felt pretty....... lacking in conflict. interactions were overall very straightforward and always collaborative aside from vergas being there (which comes with being a teenage writer who had a lot of moral ocd about how my writing would be interpreted by other people. a lot of the CB characters were worse before i put out the comic, crylus was a prince at one point and rivian was more morally gray imo. i had fun with who they became in the end still but if i were writing CB now i would probably do it much differently)

2. Which one of your ocs *actually* dresses the most similarly to you?