#sniles.

8. Someone shows your character a photograph of themselves when they were five. How do they react? What is the picture like?

The photo is of a child with large, doe-like eyes, wavy hair, pale skin. Very much a figure straight out of a Renaissance painting. Their expression is...haunted. One gets the impression, looking at this child, that something is terribly wrong.

Santiago wouldn't like it. At all. He'll make jokes about his past from time to time, but mostly he bottles it up as tight as he can to avoid facing the fact that he was deeply traumatized by having been used as an indentured servant from virtually the time he could walk and talk. If he could, he would throw the photo in a fire.

13. How would your character react if they learned they're immortal? (if they are, how do they feel about it?)

For a brief moment relief, because it means he won't be abandoned as an afterthought. But then panic, because he doesn't know how he could live without his loved ones. If he could not reverse his own immortality, he would do anything, no matter how immoral, to make his loved ones immortal too.

[ID: A headshot of Norman Bates and John Vasilyev (an original character). Norman has a stoic expression, and is looking up and away from John, who smiles at him weakly. Norman is labeled, “touch averse” and John is “physically affectionate.” End ID.]

3. What was the first thing you decided on, the character's name, appearance, personality or their role in the story?

I don't remember Most of these things (except personality, which took longer to develop) came together around the same time, but I think his role in the story was the first - specifically his role as a partner for and equal to Salazar, and what his fate would end up being.

14. Do you have any quotes tied to the character, either from the story itself or from another source that fit them?

I don't have any quotes from the story that have been published yet...some of the upcoming chapter titles (all verses from Lope de Vega's poetry) were chosen specifically for him, so you'll see them soon...eventually... but other than that, I do have a few that fit him from elsewhere...

Your eyes reveal nothing but themselves: cold as a pair of brooches made with gold inlaid with steel. - Charles Baudelaire

Do you know one day I will kill you? I won't kill you because I have stopped loving you or because I am jealous of you, but simply because I sometimes want to devour you. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Were I to shed forty coats//Or forty layers of this skin//I'd stay an intruder in myself//At a crossroads in a storm. - Stewart Stafford

19. What is your general favourite thing about the character? What is your least favourite?

My favourite thing about Santiago is just how much he's grown and developed as a character! I love how ocs can become living, breathing things that can develop alongside your own ability to imagine their world.