#Lia Mordeaux

[lycorogue]

Meet My OCs: Lia (Part 1 - Background)

I’m so good at these self-imposed deadlines, aren’t I? Sorry about that. The weeks got away from me between trying to finish a book read before its return to the library, getting my monthly fiction writing up, prepping for Camp NaNoWriMo, socializing, Zumba classes, and a solid week of working without a day off before taking the weekend to visit family. Adding in “research Lia and type up her intro” sort of slid to the back burner. Which means I only have one post to introduce her today; the rest will come throughout the week.

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Lia was the first character I created for X-Future. She was SUPPOSED to be this flirty, rebellious, trying-out-independence teenager. She had potentially volatile powers, and I wanted to see how much damage I could make Lia cause. Basically, she was supposed to be Willow mixed with Trish....

After a week or two of player her, however, it was clear that she didn't want to be any of those things; namely flirty, rebellious, and reckless/cocky with her powers. Sure, her powers were still hard for her to manage, but they usually only got out of control whenever she was angry. Keeping her anger in check meant she became much more mild-mannered, shy, reserved, and maternal. So, I took on Willow to be everything I originally wanted to role play as Lia, and let my original X-Future gal do her own thing. Sadly, Willow, being what I initially wanted to play, soon overcame Lia as my main character on X-Future, but I tried to still keep Lia fairly active. Mostly for more angst-driven sub-plots... Poor Lia...

To find out more about her, check below the break.

I'll try to have Part 2 up tomorrow night in order to better discuss Lia's main relationships. Part 3 will then explain her story line within X-Future, and how it relates to my plan for her in Glitches. Then Part 4 will have more artwork showcasing Lia, Part 5 will have some story samples to better showcase Lia's dialect and personality, and Part 6 will have more of those cheesy WWE13 custom wrestler entrances. 

So I can get started on both my Camp NaNoWriMo project, as well as the next character I wish to introduce – Trish – I'm hoping to have most (if not all) of the other parts of Meet Lia up by Tuesday evening.

Anyway, as mentioned above, Lia's main introduction overview is below. Enjoy!

Overview:

Amelia “Lia” Joan Mordeaux (Madrox on X-Future) was a month shy of turning 15 when we first started playing – roughly 14years and 8months old when sent to the Xavier Institute – and is now just over 18 years old. She's the same height as Willow (5'4” {162.56cm}), which is probably because I'm 5'3” (160.02cm)... and that extra inch is important! Lia also has a fairly lean body, although hers is significantly more pear-shaped than Willow's. Compared to Willow, Lia has a more muscular appearance with thicker upper arms, more defined legs, and more pronounced abs. Since she feels she's constantly failing her friends/classmates/the X-Men (Glitches counterpart to 'X-Men' still needs to be named... Guardians, maybe?), Lia is constantly training to improve herself, and that includes muscle training, self-defense training, and generic hand-to-hand combat training. I'm still deciding if I want her to be some sort of novice MMA fighter. Krav Maga just seems so over-used in media right now though, so her fighting style of choice is TBD, but I'm thinking generic kickboxing is a good start. She also loves to dance, practicing a few hula, hip-hop, and Zumba routines she studied via YouTube (or a Glitches equivalent I need to come up with).

Lia, as I mentioned above, is fairly maternal, usually putting a lot of unneeded pressure on herself to protect her friends and fellow classmates. Regardless of if she's at fault – or, in truth, even in the area – if one of her friends gets hurt, she feels it's a major failure on her part. She also has a bit of an inferiority complex, constantly comparing herself to her “famous” mother (I'll talk about this more in the relationships section of Part 2). Lia is also fairly meek and tries to shy away from confrontation as much as possible. Part of this is because she's a people-pleaser, part of it is because she's fairly empathetic and would much rather try to get everyone to see things from a unified perspective, and part of it is because she fears getting angry and losing control of her powers. Because of the empathy, meekness, and maternal nature, she is the unofficial Welcoming Committee at the Institute; usually offering to escort new students/recruits around the grounds, introduce them to their fellow students, and be the recruit's main companion until they find more friends of their own.

Being a people-pleaser, meek, and constantly questioning her value as a superhero, also means she can be taken advantage of, and she puts way too much pressure on herself. For an example, please see story sample “Check the Ego” at the end of Meet Willow: Part 5 (Stories).

Further Physical Description:

Lia, in X-Future, is half-Brazilian and half-whateverCaucasionEthnicitiesJamieMadroxIs. In Glitches, however, Lia is half-Hawaiian and half-Caucasian (mostly French, but with some Welsh and Norwegian as well). Her skin-tone is a darker tan that resembles her mother's complexion more than her father's. She has deep brunette hair, and she dyes fiery-orange streaks through the underside of it; making the streaks hidden whenever her hair is down, which it usually is. When she's nervous/anxious/overly-excited, she tends to play with the locks of orange. Her hair is bone-straight, and she tends to wear it fairly long, such as mid-back. She also used to keep it tied up, but she would literally burn through the ties and melt the clips, so she rarely does anything with her hair anymore. As for her eyes, they are a honey-brown with a bit of an orange tint to them. They actually appear to have a flame-like flicker to them if one is truly looking.

Family:

Lia's mother in X-Future is the lava-controlling mutant Amara “Magma” Aquilla, and her father is the duplicate-creating mutant James “Multiple Man” Madrox. For Glitches, Lia's mother Keahi still has control of lava and other such things, which I'll get into when I introduce her, and Lia's father Cody Mordeaux is still capable of creating duplicates, but in a slightly different manner. Again, I'll discuss further when I introduce them.

For X-Future, Amara and Jamie met as kids when they became students of the Xavier Institute. We aren't given any canonical ages for them in X-Men: Evolution, but Jamie was definitely the youngest, and looked like he was about 12, maybe as old as 14 by the end of the series. Amara was older, but probably not by much. She went to the high school with the original X-Men clan – probably as a freshman – so she was probably about 13 or 14 when she first appeared on the show; maybe 15 or 16 at the end of the series.

Anyway, using the show as our own canon, Jamie was clumsy, and Amara was very unsure of herself. They were quite the pair. After years of working together, they grew to become confident in their abilities, as well as became close friends. They started dating in their early 20s; Jamie asking Amara to Scott and Jean's wedding. After years of dating, the duo finally married when they were about 30, and retired from being X-Men. They settled into a nice home on Long Island, NY, and started their family.

For Glitches, Cody had gone to college in Hawaii, and met Keahi there. She was still struggling with a lot of anti-glitch sentimentality. Her fire-orange eyes gave her away as a glitch, plus a lot of locals knew of her powers, especially when she used them to help safely remove pressure from the Hawaiian volcanoes without ash and/or lava destroying the near-by towns. People feared the power she wielded, and waited for her to “snap” and destroy them via the volcanoes instead of rescue them from the natural disasters. While Keahi could easily go to college someplace that didn't know she was a glitch, she purposely stayed to fight for equal rights. This passion and activism really attracted Cody, meanwhile his kindness and supportive nature were what made Keahi fall for him. Shortly after college, they got married and moved to the Main Land (California). Soon – I'm not quite sure yet on the details as to how – Cody and Keahi learned about Emily's orphanage/boarding school, and how she was fighting for equality between Humans and Glitches (Emily believed glitches should take ownership of the name). They moved across country in order to help assist Emily and Ryder, but they still kept their lives separate from the school itself. They mostly focused on helping Emily and Ryder find young glitches that needed help; recruiting them to Emily's sanctuary. Eventually, Keahi had Lia, and the couple's involvement with the school waned as they focused on their daughter.

I don't recall the reasoning I had for Lia's full name to be Amelia, but she was given the middle name Joan after Jamie's mother: Joan Madrox. I think I'm going to keep it as Cody's mother's name as well so Lia can keep her canonical middle name.

Anyway, in both X-Future and Glitches, Amara/Keahi went MIA while on an ecological mission to help curb a series of natural disasters after volcanoes (in Brazil for X-Future; along the Ring of Fire in Glitches) started erupting at an alarming rate. Leaving 7-year-old Lia in the charge of one of his duplicates, Jamie/Cody spent a little over a month personally searching for his wife. He only gave up on the search when the pain of not holding his daughter became too great. Each year, on the anniversary of Amara/Keahi's disappearance, Jamie/Cody still spends two straight weeks searching for any sort of new clues around his wife's last known location.

Ever since Lia's mom disappeared, her father has almost literally never left her side. If he had to go to work, or was on his annual two-week-long search, or even if he had a doctor's appointment or had to go grocery shopping, he ALWAYS left Lia in the care of a duplicate. Or... more accurately... he'd send the duplicate to the more monotonous activities: work, grocery shopping, PTA meetings, etc. He took “helicopter parenting” and cranked it to 11. At the age of 14 – when she was sent to the Institute to train – Lia had never once even been left home alone. Twice, Lia attempted to bring a boy home to date – once when she was 12 and then nearly a year later for her middle school's winter formal – and both times Jamie created two dupes: Lia's “Uncles” Maddy (derived from their last name) and Arthur (Jamie's middle name). I have yet to decide if Cody's clones will also bear these names. Anyway, the poor boys Lia was interested in were forced to not only prove themselves to Lia's over-protective father, but also to his two “brothers” (he acted as if he were a triplet), and the triple-threat usually scared the potential suitor off. This means, in X-Future, that Chayse is Lia's first boyfriend and first kiss. More on that in the relationships section publishing next.

Powers:

Lia has the exact same powers as her mother. It's a bit of a list, but it mostly focuses on lava control and all that could entail.

-- Pyrokenesis: Not only can she create fire, but she can also control it to a minor extent. This usually manifests as a wall of fire, fire balls, or a “beam” of fire - like laser blasts - shooting from her hands. She can also propel herself through the air with fire bursts from her feet, much like the rocket flight Iron Man utilizes. She cannot manipulate the shape of fire the way Pyro (Iggy) and Devon can.

-- Geokinesis: Basically, she's an Earth Bender from Avatar: The Last Airbender/The Legend of Korra. She can break apart chunks of earth and telekinetically move them; usually these are smaller chunks of earth, about the size of a basketball, although she can break apart larger portions if she uses other means to move the land (to be explained in a moment). She can, if she concentrates hard enough, also cause or stop earthquakes, as well as re-arrange the landscape within a rough 25ft (762m) radius.

-- Geo-thermokinesis: Ability to alter the temperature – and therefore pressure – of the earth in the immediate area. This allows her to create geysers, which she typically uses as smoke screens, or as propulsion for the larger land masses she broke away from the Earth (as mentioned above), catapulting her into the air. Her geo-thermokinesis also allows her – with great concentration – to either cause or stop volcanic eruptions. Likewise, instead of creating fire with her pyrokinesis, she can rapidly melt the Earth's crust to leave molten lava wherever she wished, within roughly a 25ft (7.62m) radius. A final benefit to her geo-thermokinesis is that she can create any form of lava-rock she wished, either as a means to create statues with differing stone structures (as she did with William; please see Lia's story line in Part 3), a way to create weapons/tools, or in order to manifest armor for her companions, or any other such need. She can create these stones one of two ways: adjust the chemical structure of existing earth/stone through rapid melting into lava and re-forming into solid stone, or creating the rocks from scratch using her own lava (see next bullet).

-- Obsidian Form: With training, she's now able to do most of the above without “powering up” into her “obsidian form.” However, if she needs to push the limits of her powers, and when she was first learning how to control them, she had to “power up” into this form, which amplifies her powers and control tenfold. When she does “power up,” her entire body turns into living lava.

To protect her surroundings and her companions, Lia instinctively encases her “obsidian form” with an obsidian skin (which includes obsidian nails). When she's in this form, her eyes turn into orbs of magma, her tongue is also a sheet of magma, and her hair takes on flame-like properties; flickering with her movements and the wind. Lia's obsidian skin encases her much like a ball-jointed doll, with cracks of lava showing through the flexed joints. Her teeth also become thick blocks of obsidian.

Her obsidian skin kicks in as a defense reflex. If she's ever struck by something that would otherwise puncture her skin, badly bruise it, or cause internal injuries (large falls or being slammed by/against something, for example), she instantly is encased in the obsidian. If she would be burnt by anything, she is also instantly transformed into her obsidian form. With training, she's able to actually focus this defense mechanism in order to armor certain parts of her body while keeping the rest of her flesh, blood, and bone (which makes baking fun because she never needs oven mitts anymore).

While in obsidian form, Lia can actually manifest an unknown amount of excess magma, and shoot streams of lava from the palms of her hand, much like how she can generate streams of fire in her flesh form.

Switching from flesh to Obsidian Form and back rejuvenates Lia, allowing her to heal superficial injuries such as minor cuts, bruising, sprained joints, or chipped skin (see Weaknesses below). For example: a cut along Lia's cheek would mend in obsidian form, and be healed when she transforms back into flesh. Likewise, a crack in Lia's obsidian skin (see below) would be healed by the time she's flash again. Since the rejuvenation requires Lia to convert all of her organs, muscles, tendons, and BONES into lava and then back, more significant injuries – such as broken bones or torn ligaments – can also be healed when transitioning from one form to the next, however, it is extremely draining to do so, and Lia nearly faints from exhaustion once back in her flesh form. On the flipside, more significant wounds such as punctures – being shot or run through – or lost body parts – such as cut-off fingers or busted out teeth – cannot heal via transitioning from one form to the next.

-- Body Temperature Control: To go along with her obsidian form, Lia cannot be burnt, nor can she ever freeze. She can withstand temperatures equal to molten lava (1,300-2,200 F {700-1,200 C}), basically because she herself can BECOME lava. However, anything hotter than 150-degrees Fahrenheit (~65 Celsius) – which, in and of itself, is hotter than the temperature at which normal skin starts to burn – and Lia will reflexively convert into obsidian form in order to protect herself. Likewise, her body temperature will start to rise to counter freezing temperatures; keeping her core temp at 98.6 F (37 C). However, in order to keep her core at the proper temperature, her body will automatically transform into her obsidian form once she hits external temperatures of sub-zero Fahrenheit (below -17 C). She can still bundle up, as a normal human would, in order to keep herself flesh in sub-zero temperatures. However, she really never feels the exhausting heat of summer/a desert, nor get a chill.

-- Elementally-Altered Lung Filtration and Eye Protection: Long and short on this one, her lungs are capable of filtering out the smoke, toxic fumes, and ash usually associated with fires and volcanic activity. This allows her to breathe perfectly fine while in these conditions. The lining of her throat, wind pipe, and lungs also have a higher heat tolerance so breathing in such hot air won't burn her. Her eyes also have an extra layer of protection, which allows them to stay moisturized in extreme heat/dry atmosphere, unaffected by the sting of smoke/ash in the air, and prevents her from going blind in extreme lighting. This also means things like smoke-bombs, flash-bombs, and tear-gas are all ineffective on her.

-- Weaknesses: First and foremost, Lia, much like her mother before her, is greatly affected by her proximity to the ground. If she's separated for long periods of time – such as being in the air, high up in a building, or on a ship in deep water – she develops an illness similar to seasickness/airsickness. She becomes quite weak and faint, as well as nauseated. Her powers don't work as well, or may not function at all, depending on how ill she's become. Because of this connection to the Earth, Lia tends to avoid socks and wears slip-on shoes or sandals/flip-flops. That way she can quickly kick off her shoes and actually feel the ground with her feet in order to anchor herself. She'll instantly start to feel better once she's on solid ground again, the rate of her healing dependent on how long she had been away from land.

Another great weakness of Lia's, as mentioned above, is that her powers, much like everyone’s, is largely tied to her emotions. The violent and destructive nature of her powers are closely linked to her rage/anger. This is discussed a bit more under “Power Manifestation” below, as well as in Part 3 when I discuss her story line on X-Future. Basically, she could unintentionally create an earthquake or cause volcanic activity simply by losing control of her temper and becoming unusually angry and/or aggressive.

While the obsidian skin she encases herself in is supposed to be an extra layer of protection, and obsidian is a very tough stone, it is also quite fragile if hit at the right angle. This means Lia's body is likely to not just cut and bleed, but flat out shatter if hit hard enough and at the correct angle. As discussed further in Part 3, the villain Trish nearly broke Lia's arm off at the elbow because of this flaw.

Another downside to Lia's obsidian form is that everything about her - aside from her teeth, nails, and skin – is made of magma. This means if her skin is broken in any way – the equivalent of her flesh being cut – she will “bleed” lava she can't control, so it will burn anything it touches (aside from her) just like natural lava would. Her tears/saliva are also made of lava, making her equally dangerous if she starts to cry or drool while in obsidian form. (Also, for gross thoroughness, her mucus is also made of lava, so a runny nose or bad cough is equally destructive). All of this is reason for Lia to stay outside of her obsidian form as much as possible to prevent a limb from being broken off or her bodily fluids burning through things.

Power Manifestation:

As mentioned above, Lia has to be careful to watch her anger since her control over her powers greatly dissolves whenever she's enraged. This is actually how Lia discovered her powers.

Even as an infant, Lia rarely got cold, usually running around in shorts and short-sleeves, even in the dead of winter in New York state. She didn't have the full range of her body temperature control before puberty, so she did have to wear protective clothing once the temperature had a “real feel” (includes wind chill) of about 10-degrees Fahrenheit (-12 C), and had to retreat to the shade if the “real feel” (includes humidity) was about 110-degrees F (43 C).

Her main power-set unlocked when she was 13. Her date to her middle school winter formal was just “scared off” by Jamie/Cody and his two “brothers.” Realizing it was her father's fault that her date cancelled on her, Lia threw a massive tantrum. She screamed at her father about his “helicopter parenting” and his constant babying of her; not allowing her to grow up. She yelled about her lack of independence, and stormed out of the house and onto their back porch. The moment she was outside, the ground began to tremor. The angrier Lia got, the more the property shook. Realizing what was going on, and fearful of the destruction Lia could cause with her mother's powers, Jamie/Cody tried to usher her back inside and up to the second story of their home; away from the ground.

Breaking away from her father, Lia raced off the porch and into their backyard. Nearly the instant her bare feet touched the grass, a small crack rippled through the ground, cutting the back yard in half. A few feet in front of Lia, a frisbee-sized geyser opened up, and exploded pressurized water from the town's underground stream.

Frightened by what just happened, Lia's anger instantly retreated, and she rushed to her father's embrace. He directed her to run to the attic and focus on staying calm until he can get to her later that night. He then got to work in duplicating himself so he could rush to repair the lawn before any neighbors noticed the improvised early-December hot spring that popped up in his yard. It only kept about two hours for Jamie/Cody to mend the property and go to Lia. He then reminded her of her mother's powers, and promised to help train her to control them.

He then became even MORE protective of Lia, both to keep her from anti-mutant/glitch attacks, as well as protect her classmates/teachers/neighbors from Lia's accidental activation of her powers. Jamie/Cody almost instantly knew that he wasn't cut out to train Lia, and wished Amara/Keahi was around to show Lia how to use her powers. Jamie/Cody was determined to have Lia finish middle school before getting uprooted. So the two of them worked closely on private training for the next half-year; struggling to keep it hidden from everyone that Lia was a mutant/glitch.  

Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters:

After Lia's middle school graduation, her father confessed that she would probably be safer, and receive better training for her powers, if she went to the Xavier Institute (Glitches alternative name TBD). It was hard at first for Lia to part from the only home she knew, but the realization that she'd be going to a boarding school all but convinced her to go; her chance to finally get out from under her father's thumb.

Lia celebrated Independence Day with her father with an extra layer of meaning; she was to start at the Institute the next day. She spent the rest of July and all of August reveling in living away from her father for the first time. She had some lonely moments where Jamie's/Cody's absence was painfully noticeable, but for the most part she loved the new-found independence. She prepared herself to start high school as a 'new woman' and excitedly looked forward to the school year.

The excitement quickly died during the back-to-school mixer the school held the Saturday before classes were to start. In the X-Future timeline, things were going great as Lia was approached by her crush Chayse. He asked her for a dance, only for both of them to be surprised by Jamie. Lia demanded to know why her father was there, only to find out that he missed her too much, so he signed up to be part of the faculty. Lia, embarrassed, enraged, and deflated to lose her new-found independence so soon after receiving it, stormed off into the yard. She became so overwhelmed that she accidentally switched to obsidian form; burning away the outfit she was wearing. She then had to find a way to discreetly sneak back into the building and up to her dorm room while technically naked...

Thankfully, life got a bit better as she started making lots of friends around the school, unofficially making herself the “mama” of the students. This has its downsides as well as she overburdens herself with responsibility for her fellow students. For more on this, check back in with Part 3: X-Future timeline.

Lia's Style:

When I first came up with Lia, I had her dressing more like Willow, but with a few cover shirts and leggings to be a touch more modest. Almost like she was rebelling with sexier clothes – showing off her mid-drift, her cleavage, bare shoulders, mini-skirts showing off her legs, etc – and then her “Daddy's little girl” persona would kick in and have her cover up with a cover shirt or leggings.

In truth, she still is a touch like this, but she has a bit more innocence in her initial wardrobe than I originally planned. Her outfits also used to mostly consist of grays and oranges, but over the years she's trended more towards reds, charcoal grays, and blacks, with orange and/or yellow as more accent colors to give that lava-like feel to her. Her hair, as mentioned above, is usually bone-straight, mid-back length, and hung loose. When she was younger – about 14/15 – she would wear hair clips to pin part of her hair out of her face, but they kept melting whenever she switched to obsidian. Soon she figured she looked more mature without the clips anyway, and now only puts up her hair for special occasions, such as the prom.

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Aaaand, that's Lia! In a nutshell, at least. Sorry about this being a day late, and only being one part of a 6-part mini-series about her. I'll try to get the others up ASAP so I can also work on my next OC: Trish.

While you are waiting for Part 2, you can use this time to catch up on the other parts of my Meet My OCs series, in case you're new to them.

I started off with a “Who Wants to Meet My OCs?” introductory mini-series:

Part 1: Why I wanted to do this series, and the real-world inspirations for my main two worlds:

Gyateara – a high fantasy world that will, presumably, house many self-contained series that may or may not interconnect beyond all taking place on the same planet

Glitches – a pseudo-cyberpunk future AU of Earth where mutated humans – known as Glitches – must fight for equality, and even survival, while also dealing with the normal dramas of puberty.

In Part 2 of my series, I explained the real-world inspiration for my four main Gyateara OCs: Amara Yori, Jolene Crisslebalm, Natalie, and Connor.

Part 3 of this series went a bit long, so it was broken down into its own two-parter. In Part 3a, I talked about the creation of the four main characters of Glitches: Chayse, Lia, Willow, and Trish. As I mentioned above, I'm working on Lia now, Willow was two weeks ago, and Trish is next. I'll be finishing up with my husband's OC Chayse by the end of July.

For Part 3b of this series, I explained the canonical character origins of my adult Glitches, and how they’ve been reworked to create my still-evolving adult support characters for Glitches: Matteo, Emily, Ryder, Keahi, Cody, and Iggy.

Then, two weeks ago, I switched over to the main portion of this series: “Meet My OCs” starting with my 6-part “Meet Willow” mini-series.

Part 1: Willow's Overview and Background

Part 2: Willow's Relationships

Part 3: Willow's Character Arc Events

Part 4: The Images of Willow

Part 5: Story Samples of Willow

Part 6: Two Cheesy WWE13 Video Game Custom Wrestler Entrances

Again, sorry for the delay on Lia; life got complicated. Look for Part 2 (and maybe more) tomorrow!

[lycorogue]

Who Wants to Meet My OCs? (Part 3a – Glitches Originals)

Look at me, following my plan and actually having the next part of this series posted on a Sunday! Whoot!

As I have mentioned before, I've wanted to do this series since November, so I'm excited I'm able to actually follow through with it finally. If you're just getting into this series, the long-and-short of it is that I want to introduce you fine people with all of my main OCs. They will each get their own Sunday bio post to introduce them individually, but in the meantime, I wanted to give insight on how I came up with them.

In Part 1, I had given a broad overview of the whole Meet My OCs series, as well as some generic IRL background to the inspiration and creation of my two main worlds:

Gyateara

Glitches

In Part 2, I talked specifically about the IRL inspiration for my main Gyateara OCs:

Amara Yori 

Natalie [Last Name TBD] 

Connor [Last Name TBD] 

Jolene Crisslebalm

Now, in this third part for the series, it's time to talk about my IRL inspiration and creation for my Glitches OCs. This list of characters is MUCH longer than what I have for Gyateara, so this may take a bit. In fact, there were so many characters - this post was 9 pages in Word - I had to split up this part into two more parts. So this first part (3a) focuses mostly on the Original Characters that are characters from the role play game X-Future. The next part (3b) - which will be published in a few minutes - will focus on the characters that started off as X-Men canonical characters, and how I reworked them into originals.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, feel free to keep reading below the break. If you'd rather just skip on ahead to the character bios themselves, my first one should be up next Sunday.

First, I should probably explain how characters are supposed to be formed in the game that birthed Glitches. As I mentioned in Part 1, Glitches started its life as an X-Men role play on a message board/internet forum in a Play-By-Post style. The role play game is called X-Future, and I loved the story we were telling so much that I wanted to re-tell it to the world. However, the more I build Glitches, and the more I try to make the story an original work, the more I realize that only a small portion of the characters and overall role played plot can truly transition over.

Regardless, the way characters are created for X-Future is as follows:

My husband has a lineage chart set up on the forum. There are two lists of available X-Men comic book canonical characters: list of usually male and usually female characters. I say “usually” because there are characters like Mystique, who is usually recognized as a female character, but is technically gender fluid, and has had long canonical runs as a male character.

The players get to choose ONE of the listed characters; therefore choosing either their character's father or mother. This allows the players to have a connection to at least one canonical character of their choice, and/or the potential for a power set they'd like to have for their character.

Hubby then rolls on the other chart to determine the other parent. Therefore, if a player chooses a female character for their parent, Hubby rolls on the male list to find the OC's father. There is also a “Sinister Shenanigans” option where the X-Men character Mr. Sinister created you as a clone of two mutants, in which case your “parents” could be both male or both female as well as the standard “a male and a female.” There is also a chance – again using Mystique as an example – for your character to have “same-sex” parents biologically, since Mystique could also be someone's “father.”

Once parentage is figured out – and Hubby posts the second biological parent on the boards – he then rolls on another chart to determine the character's power set. He does this because it keeps the players on their toes, evolution is weird, and real life is random, so why can't games be? Options he uses for a character's powers include:  --> Character inherits powers from both parents in equal amounts  --> Character inherits powers from both parents, but favors the father's powers with only hints of the mother's powers  --> Character inherits powers from both parents, but favors the mother's powers with only hints of the father's powers   --> Character inherits a variant of both parents' powers  --> Character's powers are a mesh of both parents' powers (for instance, a fire manipulator and a rock manipulator could produce a lava manipulator)   --> Character inherits father's powers  --> Character inherits mother's powers  --> Character inherits a variant of father's powers  --> Character inherits a variant of mother's powers  --> Character inherits neither parents' powers, and instead forms their own powers (I think that's all of the options he uses...)

Once Hubby figures out the mutation the character has, he posts it on the boards. After that, the player then gets (mostly) free rein to create their character. Some other restrictions include the starting age of the character being high-school-age unless special permission was given, the backstory of the character must not counter other character's backstories or the already established history of our Marvel continuity, the character has to be an Xavier Institute student or Brotherhood of Mutants member, and Hubby needs to double check character profiles for any potential issues before they can be posted. (It's rare that Hubby doesn't approve of the profile)

So, those are the basic 5-easy-steps to creating an X-Future character, which comes into play with 2 of the characters I'll introduce today. Speaking of, let’s get to them, huh?

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Chayse LeBeau [Last Name to be Changed]

Ironically, I'm going to start off with a character that isn't mine. Chayse is my husband's character, but he gave me full permission to use him in Glitches. Mostly because he trusts my treatment of his character – most of my Miraculous Ladybug readers will tell you I'm very good at keeping characters True-to-Canon – and because Hubby knows that I'll probably talk about nearly every single one of Chayse's lines and actions with him, just to make sure I'm keeping him in character.

Chayse, being my husband's character, was the first character ever made for X-Future. Hubby's favorite X-Men of all time is Remy “Gambit” LeBeau, so naturally Hubby chose him as Chayse's father. When Hubby rolled onto Kitty “Shadowcat” Pryde as Chayse's mother, we had to do some quick continuity work to figure out HOW that relationship happened. We are HARD CORE Gambit/Rogue shippers. They are by FAR our OTP (with Shadowcat/Colossus as a close second). If Gambit was with anyone other than Rogue, we needed a reason for Rogue to not be in the picture; not a possibility at all. Hubby created an event called The Reaping where Professor Charles Xavier, Jean Grey, Magneto, Mastermind, and Rogue all die in battle. There may have been some other casualties, but those are the main ones I remember...

Anyway, once we realized Rogue had to be dead for Gambit to be with anyone else significantly enough to have a kid with them, we then went back to “X-Men: Evolution”; the show that inspired Hubby to create X-Future. In the TV series, Kitty and Rogue were besties, and so Hubby and I decided that Kitty and Gambit were comforting each other in their grief over losing Rogue. That grew into a tight friendship, and eventually a romance blossomed. The two got married, and Chayse was born.

Chayse is basically my husband without the anxiety and terrible knees. If Hubby could be as athletic and outgoing as he wished he could be, he'd be Chayse.

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Amelia “Lia” Mordeaux [Last Name Still Workshopping]

Lia was my first-ever character for X-Future. Since Rogue is clearly my favorite X-Men – I mean... check the handle and icon – I really wanted to chose her as my character's parent. However, after Hubby and I jointly determined that Rogue had been dead for nearly two decades, I struggled to figure out who else to choose. So many different power sets and great characters. However, in the end I ended up going with Amara “Magma” Aquilla. I am a bit of a fire freak – something that will come up later – so the idea of my character being able to manipulate magma seemed fun to try. In truth, though, the deciding factor – aside from how adorable Magma was in “X-Men: Evolution” - is the fact that her name is Amara.... like my Gyateara character; my oldest OC.

Rolling on the chart, Hubby landed on Jamie “Multiple Man” Madrox. Based on the personality we saw in “X-Men: Evolution,” and ignoring that poor Jamie was only about 12 or 13 when depicted on the show, I lamented at how “lame” Lia's father was going to be. In the end, I did sprinkle in a touch of the badassness Jamie showcases in the comics, as well as whenever he's shown – usually as a villain *sigh* - in the cartoons. However, he's still LARGELY a nerd still for X-Future, and became a bit of a neurotic helicopter parent.

Lia ended up with her mother's powers exactly. The only difference is that instead of just a magma form, Lia encases herself within obsidian skin. I even designed her to look like Amara did in Evolution, with the straight brown hair and Brazilian skin. (It was easier for Evolution to just have Amara be Brazilian than trying to explain the existence of Neo Roma within the Brazilian rain forest so she could remain White with blonde hair and blue eyes) Lia being basically a carbon-copy of her mother – something I headcanon as Jamie's duplication DNA accidentally turning Amara's egg into a clone of her – meant my next struggle was trying to figure out why Lia was at the Xavier Institute. I didn't want her to have been raised there, but why couldn't Amara just train her daughter on how to control identical powers?

In the end, I decided that Amara has to go. Hubby and I came up with a mission where Amara went MIA. She is perceived dead, but isn't confirmed dead, along with Storm, who went missing on a similar mission a few years prior. Without his wife to help train their daughter, and having NO CLUE how to handle a 14yo blowing up his yard with geysers, Jamie sent Lia to the Institute, and promptly signed up as a faculty member so he could still be close to and keep an eye on his daughter: the last family he has left, and a reminder of his wife.

For Glitches, I did end up shifting Lia's race to Hawaiian (Polynesian? Should I specify?). Having her be part Native Hawaiian just felt more fitting with the lava-focused powers. Yes, there are volcanoes in Brazil, there is also one in Washington state. Still, you wouldn't necessarily equate Washington state with lava as much as you would equate lava with Hawaii.

Lia was SUPPOSED to be my naive rebel; a 14yo who was getting her first taste of freedom at the Institute. She was going to wear less-conservative outfits, be flirty, and maybe break a few rules: curfew, being in the guys' wing of the dorms, skipping a class or two, etc. She even started off like that... for about a game session or two. She instantly fell into her main personality though: reserved, shy, maternal, and unsure of herself. While I do love this character and who she is, she also wasn't who I initially wanted to play. Enter: Willow.

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Willow Driver

Originally, we had about a dozen players, which was fantastic. However, Hubby still wanted to “fill out” the school. He wanted a few NPC students the players could interact with when the other players weren't available. He had a small list of NPCs, some of which will make their way to Glitches as background characters. On this list was Willow. Hubby actually created her, designed her, and was all set to role play as her. Then we got to talking about how I loved Lia, but was a bit disappointed that she didn't turn out the character I was aiming for. Hubby knew that Willow was indeed much more like who I wanted to play, so he passed her over to me.

Soon enough, Willow went from an NPC I ran to my secondary character. Since she was the character I wanted to play the whole time, she quickly surpassed poor Lia as my preferred character. In fact, a lot of my “companion stories” that I have written for X-Future center around Willow. Specifically, Willow and my friend Ronoxym's character Devon. They have a.... complicated relationship. Willow is just a much more fun character to write. She's playful, manipulative, unsure, confident, loyal... she's just a walking ball of contradictions as she's trying to figure herself out.

If Chayse is who Hubby wishes he could be, then Willow is me with virtually no inhibitions. She's my playfulness, my confidence, my lust, my impulsiveness, my spontaneity, and the athletic prowess I wish I had.

In contrast, Lia is basically everything keeping me from being Willow: my caution, my fear of disappointing my parents (both the one who passed and the one who raised me), my maternal instincts, my reservations, my critical thinking, my constant knowledge of potential consequences, and my insecurity that I'm ever going to be the best version of myself.

There's one more side of me though. That's where Trish comes in.

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Patricia “Trish” Morrison

Trish did NOT turn out remotely close to who she was in my head. Heck, she even refused to be properly formed while I still was picturing her in her first incarnation. Trish truly did create herself.

Remember my friend Ronoxym's character Devon I mentioned a few paragraphs up? Well, he's the son of two Brotherhood of Mutants characters. In other words, he's the son of villains. He was orphaned as an infant, and when he was a teen at the Xavier Institute he ran into his father Pyro. The man suspected that Devon could be his long-lost son, and hinted that if Devon joined the Brotherhood then Pyro could help Devon figure out who he was. Devon eventually took the bait, and left to join the Brotherhood and discover who his parents were.

At the time, The Brotherhood was just made up of the Marvel canon characters; no one there for Ron to role play against aside from NPCs. I decided to create Trish so he would have a player character to role play off of. Originally, Trish was supposed to be a potential love interest for him.

Trish.... was not a fan. I actually had mental images of Trish gagging at the thought of her destined romance with Devon. Even when I tried picturing her flirting with Devon for the sole purpose of getting close enough to stab him or slit his throat: a sort of Black Widow character. She still gagged and REFUSED to let me have her show Devon anything other than disdain. He became her number 1 rival; her arch nemesis. She was actually in love with Pyro, and hated that Pyro's attention was now torn between her and his long-lost son. Her goal in life, aside from making Pyro fall in love with her; age be damned, was to murder Devon.

She then became more psychotic the more I wrote her. She has the power to create fire, and is completely fireproof herself. She loved playing with her fire, and became a pyrophile; getting highly aroused around flame. She had the stereotypical serial killer childhood of fulfilling her early bloodlust by torturing and killing animals. When she got caught by her twin sister, and her parents threatened to call the Mutant Police to collect her, Trish burnt everyone alive in their family home. She then lived on the streets, killing anyone who got in her way of survival. Eventually, she got taken in by The Brotherhood and Pyro, where her murderous tendencies were aimed at anti-mutant groups like The Purifiers.

If each of my main X-Future/Glitches characters (jointly named simply My Girls) is a part of my personality, then Trish is my anger, my love of fire, my dark desire to be an arson (ya know, if it didn't cause terrible destruction and harm), my ability to hold grudges, and my aggression. I wanted her to be fairly on-par with Azula from “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” but with her manic end-game personality making more of an appearance. I wanted her to be like Minatsuki Takami from “Deadman Wonderland”, or Tanya Degurechaff from “The Saga of Tanya the Evil.” In other words: tiny and unassuming, but terrifying and intimidating if her true self is ever seen.

I don't know if I never played her correctly, or if Ron just couldn't picture a character I run as THAT intimidating, because Devon was always quite unfazed by Trish and her threats...

EDIT: Holy smokes! How did I completely forget that Trish has theme music!? The main reason Trish is yet ANOTHER fire user, when we already have so many in X-Future, is because of her theme song. See, I was fairly obsessed with Fall Out Boy’s song “My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light Em Up)” when it first came out. I would spend days just listening to it and “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons on repeat.

One day I was rocking out to MSKWYDITD for probably the 4th time in a row or something, and I lamented Lia being so mild mannered. I would have loved to have had a chaotic fire user that would follow the destructive high energy I felt whenever I heard that song. Someone who would as much fun as those women in the music video. I mean, just watch them. I wanted a character with their energy and vibe: 

I wanted another fire user, and Devon had JUST defected to The Brotherhood on X-Future, so I figured it would be perfect to make that more chaotic fire user as a Brotherhood member. THAT was when I figured “She could be a good foil for Devon; two fire users, one more chaotic than the other”... and THAT was when Trish went “Fire yes; Devon fuck no!”

I haven’t been able to control her since...

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So, there you have it, the truly original characters that make up the core cast of Glitches. Next up, as in a few minutes, will be the adult cast of my story: the characters reworked from their X-Men canonical origins. Stay tuned!

[lycorogue]

Who Wants to Meet My OCs? (Part 1 - Creating Worlds)

Okay, so I wanted to do this for months now, but was always too lazy to just sit down and do it. Well, I’m feeling motivated now, so let’s give it a whirl.

I’d like to introduce each of you to my OCs with their own individual posts. You are more than welcome to AMA about them or send me asks requesting for a specific character to answer. I want YOU to know more about them, because that helps ME learn more about them. :D The thing, though, is I’d also like to let you guys know the IRL background for each character. I’d LOVE to let you guys in on the process of how I came up with these OCs in the first place. So I’m starting my Meet My OCs series with exactly that: a break-down on how I came up with them. I’ll be posting a new one every Sunday for the next few months. It became quite lengthy though, which is why I’m splitting them up into a mini-series. However, if you really don’t care, and wish to just jump to the info posts for the characters themselves, you can check out my first character intro: Willow Driver If you ARE interested in my character creation process, feel free to check below the break, and thank you for indulging me. :) 

My main OCs come from one of two places, both of which includes role playing. I guess that means I can’t discover a character for a full-length story unless I’ve ran around in their skin for a few months...

For this first part of the series, I’m going to start large: introducing the main Inspiration Spring for my OCs and the worlds they live in.

Those two worlds/stories are: 

1) Gyateara

2) Glitches

The second part of my series will talk more about the IRL origins for my Gyateara characters. And the third part will explain where my Glitches characters came from.

Then I’ll get into the actual character intros.

But first: the worlds!

Gyateara

The characters for Gyateara are (mostly) from D&D campaigns. This original world of mine (of which I’m still painfully building) is your classic High Fantasy/Tolkien-esque/D&D setting. However, Gyateara itself refers to the world a series of not-necessarily-interconnecting stories will take place on. There may even be multiple book series written within the overall Gyateara universe. Much like how Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind are all the Ender Series, meanwhile Ender’s Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, and Shadow of the Giant are all the Shadow Series (following Bean), but they are both series within the overall Enderverse. Buuuuut, I’ll have to FINISH CREATING THE WORLD before I think of anything that in-depth.

My original inspiration for Gyateara was the Xbox game Fable, way back in 2005. I sort of took the world build around the country of Albion in that game, added in some Hyrule from the Legend of Zelda franchise, sprinkled in Feudal Japan as presented in the anime InuYasha, and finished off with a dash of Gaea from the anime The Vision of Escaflowne. Once I mixed that hodge-podge pot of environments and world-builds together, I poured it out into the half-baked cake that became The Northern Isles. This was the main setting for my failed first NaNoWriMo attempt: The Race for Destiny. (The story is so bad, you guys! TT^TT) 

As years crawled along, I got introduced to the webcomic Order of the Stick (which is excellent and still going, btw). Strip #273 started a mini-series called The Crayons of Time, which told the world creation story. It also discussed the four main pantheons; which were typically the Main Four that D&D players use if they don’t want to put in the effort to create their own gods. The Northern Gods are the Norse pantheon, Eastern Gods are the Greek pantheon, Southern Gods are the Chinese Zodiac, and Western Gods are the ones created for D&D and presented in the Player’s Handbook. The gods battled each other frequently, and so they went to the four directions, promised not to really intervene with the other regions, and kind of ignored each other.

I LOVED this concept, and wove it into my world, where there are multiple pantheons, much like there was IRL, except, Gyateara’s gods are KNOWN to be real, but they don’t intervene outside their region of rule, so it’s rare for non-travelers to even know of the other gods/pantheons.

I’ll have to dedicate time to go more in-depth with Gyateara and it’s build in the future.

Glitches

While Gyateara refers to the world, and not the intended stories themselves, Glitches very much refers to one intended series/saga. I envision it as a large-cast project I’d love to one day create as a webcomic. Sadly, I can barely draw stick figures, and I have yet to accomplish the task of writing a comic script. I’ve written movie scripts before, but not comic scripts. I did debate waving the white flag and just going with my trusty skill as an amateur novelist, but Glitches just seems like such a visual story to me. Which is probably why I have multiple character images for Glitches, but not so much for my Gyateara characters.

Glitches actually originated as a message board play-by-post role play game.

Back in 2012, my husband and I rewatched the TV series X-Men: Evolution. Hubby loved how the show re-imagined a lot of the canonical X-Men characters, and decided he wanted to host a role play game using that universe. Hubby wondered what the Evolution characters would be like as adults in this universe. More importantly, he wondered what THEIR CHILDREN would be like. So he started up the game we titled X-Future. 

In the RP, each player got to pick a parent off of a list Hubby provided and regularly updated. Then, because life is random, Hubby rolled on a chart to determine the second parent for the player’s character. Once that’s figured out, Hubby rolled on yet another chart to see what powers the character inherited. The player then had fairly free-rein to create from that moment on. Sadly, most of the parental pairings were suuuuuper random, and the players not THAT creative, and so we had a LOT of “one night stand souvenir” kids. Regardless, the actual character creations, development, and interactions were fairly good.

In fact, after a solid year or so of playing on X-Future, I realized I loved our overall story so much that I wanted more than just our players to experience it. At first, I attempted to just rewrite our game sessions as story chapters. It... got long and messy, especially when I tried to go back and re-organize the order of the posts. We... didn’t focus on continuity and timelines as much as we should have in those early sessions.... Nearly 70,000 words and 14 chapters in, and I had only recapped the first couple months of the game. 

Perhaps someday I’ll attempt to continue (and complete) the project, but for right now it’s just too much for me to work on with everything else.

Eventually, while working on my rewrite project, I realized I wanted to polish things up, tweak others, and kind of just go down my own storytelling road. That’s when I decided I wanted to take some of the more prominent characters from X-Future and drop them in an original, non-X-Men-related, story.

For whatever reason, I pictured X-Future as being a sort of baby cyberpunk environment. Not as extreme as say Ghost in the Shell, or Blade Runner, or Johnny Mnemonic, or Æon Flux or anything like that. It’s more like the cusp of cyberpunk, like the world just as it’s transitioning into a cyberpunk one. Because of this, I thought that instead of “mutants”, my characters would be called “glitches.”

I talked a bit more about the world of Glitches in three posts back in November:

Generic History of the World

Explaining The GRID: Part 1

Explaining The GRID: Part 2

The Characters

Alright, now that you know a bit about the worlds and the IRL inspiration for them, how about the characters I’ll be introducing you to in this series?

From Gyateara:

Amara Yori

Jolene Crisslebalm

Natalie [last name TBD]

Connor [last name TBD]

From Glitches:

Willow Driver

Amelia “Lia” Mordeaux [last name not set]

Patricia “Trish” Morrison

Chayse LeBeau [last name TBD]

Matteo [last name TBD]

Emily [last name TBD]

Ryder [last name TBD]

Keahi [last name TBD]

Cody [last name TBD]

Ignatius “Iggy” [last name TBD]

I’d also like for you guys to meet Devon St. James from Glitches, but he’s actually my friend’s OC for X-Future, and I haven’t received permission to officially include him in Glitches yet. Likewise, I would LOOOOOOVE to include the characters Lucas and Lincoln from X-Future, but the player who created them specifically requested that he is the only one who writes them. So, sadly, they will not be making the transition into Glitches. 

Also, all of those “Last name to be determined” for Glitches is because they all still have their Marvel Canon last names right now. I still have to tweak those.

Matteo, Emily, Ryder, Keahi, Cody, and Ignatius were all originally Marvel-owned X-Men canon characters that were parents and/or mentors for the characters within X-Future. While I reworked their looks, personalities, backstory, and even their powers a bit, I only focused on new first names. Eventually I’ll figure out their last names...

Chayse and Lia have their fathers’ last names, and their fathers are X-Men canon characters, and so I still have to tweak their last names as well.

As for the “Last name to be determined” for those two Gyateara characters? Well, they’re from “The Race for Destiny”. That failed NaNo project I talked about above. One of the failures was that I never really put in the effort to come up with last names for them... so I’ll need to work on that as well.

Phew... that... was a lot. Thank you so much for reading through it all!

Next up, further IRL creation stories for my Gyateara characters.