#IANA JUST SAID HE'D BE PART OF THE MANOSPHERE

[vulturevanity]

you have me curious about phoebus and what he did to be rejected (if you feel like talking about it)

Ok so. I didn't think this through at all because he's a character from a webcomic project that's currently in development and we don't really want to spoil the fun before the story starts. But I checked with my friend/co-writer Iana and she authorized me to share the following:

This is a story about a dragon who threatens to destroy a kingdom, a princess locked in a tower, and the prince-knight in shining armor who comes to save the day. The knight's name is Phoebus, a young adult with a charming smile and years of training in slaying magical creatures.

This is not his story. This is the dragon's story.

Codename "Misdragon" (the misadventures of the dragon princess and her emotional support boy -- working title) is a fantasy pastiche-parody romcom of medieval fairy tales with heavy inspiration from greek and roman mythology, bad (complimentary) fantasy webtoons and other things. It both celebrates and subverts the genre conventions because Iana and I are both huge fantasyheads and love playing around with these ideas.

Phoebus of Apollyon is the main antagonist in Misdragon, embodying the archetypes of Prince Charming and the White Knight. He was inspired by the greek myth of Theseus, as well as a couple other villainous characters I consider to be spoilers. The idea of his character was to get a hero archetype, completely unchanged, and reframe him to be an absolutely despicable villain. And we did that by placing him directly against our protagonist and designated Minotaur, the dragon princess Jade of Scherling Kingdom. (A lot about Jade goes into spoiler territory, but Phoebus' arrival is the worst thing to happen to her, and trust me she's gone through a lot)

Design-wise, I struggled for a bit but eventually landed on something meant to evoke both "white hair and trauma" male leads from webtoons and some JRPG heroes. He was super fun to figure out; so much of his design was dictated by what we have in his backstory which has HUGE third act spoilers so unfortunately I can't discuss it here. Instead take this exchange between me and Iana (who at this point had found Phoebus' character and what he represents so repugnant that she couldn't think about him without getting angry and had to hand him over so I'm the one to write him):

But the short of it is: i love my horrible son