BAM. New character out of nowhere.
I was randomly looking through my Facebook feed, and clicked on one of those "DISNEY CHARACTERS GENDERBENT!" articles. I don't usually click on them, but this article was actually kinda cool 'cause it used the original screencaps from the movies, and edited them for the genderbend. The end result was that all the genderbend designs had faces that were pretty similar to their originals, which was surprisingly neat! I don't see many gender bend designs that take that into consideration.
BUT. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is that Snow White's genderbend design was pretty, and made me want to make a new character with that sort of appeal.
SECRETLY A SUCKER FOR PRETTY BOYS, AM I...? WHO KNOWS.
But yeah! I suddenly wanted to make a delicate and mild-mannered kind of prince character. I whipped this up last night before looking up any sort of refs for the outfit:
And then put this together this morning, using this as my main ref:
Still needs a little bit of work, but I'm feeling pretty good about this design.
Anyway, I've started thinking about some stuff for this character. >:V
First of all, I've decided he's going to replace my old character Charlotte, from the My Dear Princess cast. This also means that he's going to be in the same story as Falorin. (Idk if you remember, but I've completely decided that Falorin is a girl, now. :U Just noting for those who remember her as a boy, in case you get confused as to why I'm calling her "her," in this post.)
Second, I've decided for now that his name is Chantrey (shawn-tray)... though I kind of want to spell it Chentre, or Chentrey, or Chantre... idk yet. I like Chantre, so I'm gonna use that for the rest of this post. BUT YEAH, SHAWN-TRAY.
Since he's replacing Charlotte, he's adopted a lot of her backstory (?) and personality. I haven't really talked much about Charlotte, but here's an old profile of her's. Not all of these things are in the profile, but some things that have been passed onto Chantre from Charlotte include:
- He's mild mannered and polite, and tends to have a peaceful disposition; is meant to be viewed as the embodiment of goodness
- He specializes in healing magic (? if I decide to keep magic as a feature in this world)
- He enjoys acting and singing, as well as literature and poetry
- He's the prince of a powerful country
- He's often coddled by his parents, and as a result is innocent to a fault
- He's rather weak in stature, and cannot defend himself
- He gets abducted by Falorin, and is brought to Endergia (the country Falorin is the princess/ruler of)
Yeah. So there's some stuff. I think he's a bit more naive than the original Charlotte, even. Some other things about him is that while he's not expressionless, he tends to try to keep a mild disposition rather than expressing his emotions fully. As a result, he's hardly ever seen to be truly angry, and when he cries he usually ~*~weeps softly~*~, rather than full-out cries.
As for the healing magic, idk... I don't really know if I want magic to really exist in this world, considering the change in aesthetic direction I went with. Plus, "magic politics" or whatever are a pain to deal with. Still, I do feel a pull to keep magic in this universe... especially because Falorin and Endergia are created solely from some sort of magical reason, haha. I'll need to research different ways that magic is dealt with in fiction, before I fully decide, though.
Speaking of potential stuff for this story, a potential direction I want to go with the story between Chantre and Falorin is that Chantre, from living in Endergia with Falorin, gradually becomes corrupted without him realizing it.
Falorin and Chantre/Charlotte have always been these kind of antithesis characters in my mind, with Falorin being ~*~PURE EVIL~*~ and Chantre/Charlotte being ~*~PURE GOOD~*~. Idk if you remember, Falorin is kind of an entity that was created at her current age, summoned (?) purely for the sake of being evil. More recently, I'm thinking that while Falorin was created to be pure evil, she frequently struggles with that fact because the longer she exists, the longer she is forced to think about her actions and why she's evil--which is frustrating for her, because there is no reason; she's just evil. It's not really that she grows a conscience or anything (because I don't really think she can), it's just she faces this sort of agony from the obligation to be evil. (?? Idk, I really need to think about this more before I can be more concrete with Falorin.)
Along the same vein, Chantre exists to be a purely good character. But he's not an entity like Falorin, he's a regular human that's just been sheltered to retain his innocence. Being brought to Endergia and being forced to live with Falorin in ~*~EVIL LAND~*~ exposes him to corruption, which subsequently would have the effect of corrupting him. But he's so innocent that I don't think he even fully knows what it is to be evil or corrupted, so this process would happen in him without him even knowing it. I was thinking like a ~*~big reveal~*~ at the end would be that once people actually come to rescue him at the end, he becomes so changed from who he once was that his rescuers don't recognize him--though he himself doesn't realized he's been changed. (HAHA SPOILERS??? WHO CARES, I DOUBT I'M EVER GOING TO WRITE A COHERENT STORY WITH CHANTRE.)
Idk. I guess the main theme of the Falorin-Chantre story is supposed to be that embodiments of good and evil can't truly exist, or something.
BUT UH, IDK. The above paragraphs are just ideas I have. I thought I'd spit them out in text form just to have them for reference material. Sorry if they don't make much sense, I know it can be kinda hard to keep track of my characters and what goes on with them. xD
Clearly, I still don't really know what's going on with My Dear Princess. But I feel like I can get a bit closer to understand the Falorin arc, now that Chantre is here... Probably, the story will focus solely on Falorin and Chantre in Endergia, rather than having a HUGE CAST of rando characters doing ~*~adventures~*~. I don't really know what that means, though, considering I still don't really understand Endergia and its purpose. BUT IDK, I'LL FIGURE IT OUT ONE DAY!
...yeah.
WOW, EXCUSE THIS BUTT-LONG POST, I JUST WANTED TO GET ALL OF MY IDEAS OUT, HAHA. Maybe you'll see more of Chantre and Falorin. Maybe you won't. WHO KNOWS!
Thanks so much for reading, though, if you did. ;u;/
