#smooks

banger ask. I'm going to do this for All of my guys

C) Did you have trouble figuring out where they fit in their own story?

Gingull: Both yes and no. "Yes" in that she's the main character, or at least, the story would be from her point of view and revolve around her. "No" in that I've been struggling to pinpoint exactly how her personality is and how she interacts with everyone else. I want to make relationship dynamics interesting. Maybe I'll make a chart.

Alfin: He's very much a designated "support character" in that he's Gingull's sibling and is the closest to her, but other than that I feel like he doesn't have too much of an active role other than being a presence and a part of Gingull's world. I'll have to workshop him a little more because admittedly he's the character that I'm least invested in.

King: As a parental figure for Gingull, how he plays off on her is pretty important on understanding her decisions and general worldview and etc. I think she has an overall positive relationship with him, which is a little different than my personal experience, so I'd like to explore how to make this more complex and how King influences her arc. He's in the same boat as Alfin where he individually probably won't drive the story forward but is an integral part to Gingull.

Moberry: This is where things get more interesting, Moberry possibly plays one of the most active roles in the "plot" of slug city in that their dynamic with the city's leader, Maika, affects nearly every other character on various ways. I'm particularly really into the results of these interpersonal interactions and dynamics having consequences. I love The Consequences. Maika is a character that doesn't appear much physically in the context of the story and the city in-universe, so Moberry serves as the bridge between him and the "outer world" through their personal experience with him. They also serve as the leader of the hidden underground, so there's a parallel going on between them and Maika.

Smooks: I love smooks so much. Easily one of my favorite characters and designs. Her role in the story is less "plot related" and more "worldbuilding and imagery" related, if that makes sense? The main tower, many buildings, and the vehicles are all mainly designed by her, so I want to play around with the implications from that. Is transportation useful and convenient, or is it disabling? Was this from Maika's influence? Her own internal concepts? Much to think about. She plays an interesting role in the background for sure and I think would be a fun adult figure for Gingull to look up to.

Dr. Walworth: Her current role is "character who worked closely with Moberry and also has guilt about her involvement with Maika" and is also a therapist for Delta. There's some implications with her role that I feel like I need to flesh out more, for example, if therapy isn't a "licensed practice" due to the nature of the city's organization being so aggressively anti-mental health, is it hidden? Does she make her services known to the general public? There's a lot of questions I have to jump off from there, including the fact that she herself is autistic and therefore was unknowingly contributing to the detriment of citizens like her. Like Moberry, she's actively trying to make up for the damage done, and I like exploring that sort of character arc.

Delta: She's probably my favorite character to think about. Initially, she was the "soldier with ptsd" archetype that I kind of wanted to stray from and develop more, and then eventually brought in the idea that she was responsible for bringing Gingull in to their machines, and then turning around and rescuing her when the machine malfunctions. As far as Gingull is concerned, Delta is part of an oppressive and violent force and wants nothing to do with her, the flip side is that Delta has been seeking an Out from the military and feeling increasingly trapped by it, and the machine malfunctioning was her breaking point for her to actively rebel. Gingull doesn't know any of this, and even when she does, there's no forgiveness involved with it. I'm like. so interested in her arc in that she is both a victim and perpetrator in her system. the tension of it. it's so juicy to me. There's so much that I want to think about for Delta. Any other character, if put into her position, might have done the same, or at least understood why she kept under wraps for so long. What are you supposed to do when you feel like you have no choice in what you can do, no impact on the circumstances, and knowing that what you are doing is ultimately wrong?

Oster and Co: Oster and his alters are very much side characters, similar to how Alfin in there to give Gingull relationships. Oster is there to flesh out the underground city community on Moberry, Dr. Walworth, and Smook's side. He's also there to be a friend to Gingull, someone who is a little older but still a kid, so there's solidarity there and also as an example/contrast for living with some kind of accommodation. Alka, Kaola, and Teris (alters) I'm not entirely sure how they fit in, but at the very least they're going to switch fairly nonchalantly. I'm wanting him to have a more major(?) role in the story but I haven't thought about this character in depth enough for that.

Eidwinn: He's pretty much stayed the same as I was thinking about his role initially; someone who isn't connected to any of the other characters personally except for Gingull, and the brief moments that they share end up having a profound impact on both of them. I talked about this a little more in the previous ask, but I'm really attached to Eidwinn, so I don't mind that his role in the story is fairly small. Something about the contrast between Eidwinn and Gingull (young and old, someone who still has their life ahead of them vs someone who's lived through much) works so well with how they are fundamentally very similar people and were both impacted by Maika's project. I love having parallels.

Maika: Very obviously the Main Antagonist, responsible for everything that's I've talked about regarding the previous characters. Originally, I had him as a more flamboyant, appealing villain character, and stepped down from that because it really didn't seems to fit in with his goals and role as the city's leader and opted for a more serious, cold, cutthroat character. The thing to understand about Maika and that I want to come across is that his desire to do good for the citizens is guided by a misunderstanding of what people actually need, going off of his own idea of what's best, and what was once a genuine effort to make a great city was overtaken by his curiosity about like. Conditions. and what he could do to fix them. I'm wanting to dig a little more into his motivations and in the context of slug city's world as a whole, culturally. I might have typed this out in a different post or just forgot but I want to think about if his mindset is a product of other dominant schools of thought in slug city society, or if there was any particular event that set off this obsession and whatnot. I'm wanting to steer clear from "this guy is completely irredeemable" or imply that he's intrinsically "evil", not to deny that he fucking sucks and that his actions have consequences on Everybody. I think the dynamic between him and Gingull is interesting, in that to him, Gingull is fairly unremarkable and he isn't aware of her until much later when she ends up breaking into the tower and seeing him in person. To Gingull, it's extremely personal, he's the man who built up(or at the very least, enforced) the system that she's suffered under.

I) Do you prefer to keep them in their canon universe?

Yes, but also I drew them as splatoons just for funsies

I have a tendency to just draw existing characters as species or crossover from other media, so there's like a nonzero chance that I'll draw the cast as Something sometime down the line. It's definitely not going to be any fully fledged AU that I think hard about conceptually (who knows. I might be lying. I'll never know)