#anyway. Fina. she’s bizarre

[hana-bobo-finch]

OKAYYYY FINAL CHARACTER FROM MY LAST POLL!!! FINA!!! like I said for the last couple ramblings this one will be shorter than average cause she doesn’t have a whole lot to her (yet) but at this point I’m just repeating myself by giving that disclaimer so ON WITH THE YAPPING (bit of a tw for violence and murder in some parts bc this girl is…uhhh!!! she has a pretty high kill/attempted kill count!)

Fina my…sort of beloved. I mean I absolutely love her, but shes…interesting. Anyhoo. As I’ve said before, she’s a hybrid!! Therefore she was created in the patch. She was the first one to be made, in fact. She’s probably the most human of the hybrids, but even then she’s a whole mess of different genetic materials due to being the first made, so things were quite experimental. She has some fish in her (though not enough to be officially classified as a fish person) and also has some plant-like aspects to her. But in general she’s just a whole mess of random stuff. SOMEHOW THOUGH by some miracle her creation went alright. I do NOT know how because she was really just created on a whim which is not the best way to do things such as creating human life!!! But she turned out fiiiine, and she was named Fina (occasionally nicknamed as Tina but it’s really more just her who calls herself that). There were some unintended physical characteristics, which would inspire some of the more outlandish appearances of the later hybrids, but they didn’t hinder her at all. She also has an odd pattern of speech where she replaces the first letter of some words with the letter V, but whether or not that’s a result of her being a hybrid is unclear.

SO the first couple years of her life were pretty normal. She was raised by pumpkin daddy, who was quite pleased to have a new child now that Extra wanted nothing to do with him. She was an incredibly sweet kid, a little bit ditzy and scatterbrained but was well intentioned. Gee I hope that doesn’t change!!! Overall just very squirrely. And I mean that in the most literal sense possible, she has a lotta squirrel characteristics despite having no actual squirrel traits in her biology. She’d like, scatter up trees and stuff. And she had a real knack for training squirrels, she had a small army of squirrels with her at all times. Pumpkin daddy found it endearing, but the whiplash of having Extra who was almost unusually calm and quiet to Fina who was…Fina, was quite overwhelming at times. But she was still raised quite similarly to Extra in terms of what she was taught. She had a fascination with puppets, and pumpkin daddy gifted her a little squirrel puppet. How wonderful!!! I hope that doesn’t turn into cruel irony! She was often brought to the illegal crab restaurant in the mountains whilst pumpkin daddy would commit the horrible crime of eating crabs (PUNISHABLE BY DEATH).

Everything seemed to be going fine at first, but alas!!! During one of the trips to the crab place, she fell into a deep vat of TBYTF gel!!! I have explained the logistics of that all before but AS A QUICK SUMMARY being submerged into tbytf gel for a while is a big no no and will absolutely end up in you becoming A) forever possessed by TBYTF and essentially a physical extension of it, or B) just straight up Dead. eeeeyikes!! She was eventually gotten out, but it took a long time because you couldn’t exactly just dive in to drag her out. She seemed fine, though, some slight hypothermia but nothing concerning right?? This is obviously wrong and she was NOT fine at all but pumpkin daddy somehow didn’t notice!! Why is this man so stupid!!! Fina was, predictably, now an arm of tbytf, as it’s called, often just called an Arm. So almost any of her original self was wiped. She still had the flightiness and the odd speech patterns, but her original personality BAM gone, and now here was this husk of a girl with an army of trained squirrels. Great. Pumpkin daddy, despite being very aware of the dangers of tbytf, was completely oblivious and ignored any red flags. Oh she has a dead look in her eyes and sounds soulless when she speaks? That’s just how kids are I guess ahahah. She also had a very clear physical indication of being an Arm (the usual sign is a glazed look in the eyes but she had the Extremely Telling sign of a metal line stretching across her torso but OH WELL who knows that could be anything!!)

Throughout it all Fina was just…confused, when she was feeling anything at all. Didn’t really have much conscious reason to do what she was doing, she just did it. Why kick that puppy? I dunno it was there and it looked kickable. Her motives aren’t clear at all, obviously she was an Arm now so she didn’t have full control over everything, but why tbytf was making her do such random petty acts? Who the hell knows!!! That’s one of the major fields of studies that was done on tbytf and nobody could ever figure it out. But yeah she was becoming a complete menace to society, but would put on a facade of naivety and sweetness. It was actually pretty convincing, most just assumed she was just this naive weird little hybrid, even pumpkin daddy thought that, but NOPE people VERY much underestimated her, that was not the case at all. Everyone just assumed everything went over her head, she was no threat at all!!!

Being a hybrid, she for the most part remained in the alcoves with the growing population of hybrids, and was generally seen as the “queen” so to speak. She was the top hybrid, they all knew that, nobody cared. She knew the ins and outs of the alcoves better than anyone else, she was one of the few allowed into the patch where the hybrids were made, every hybrid knew of her and respected her. Though some found her to be unnerving. And, being an Arm, she had a lotta weird abilities. She is overpowered (though, she can’t exactly think straight most of the time, so that’s a big buffer. If you find yourself asking “why didn’t she do xyz the answer is most likely that she very literally just did not think of it in time). Most importantly is the ability to put people in illusions. This however can be difficult to do, especially with longer or more complex illusions—doing so can drain her of energy and it takes a few days to “recharge”, so to speak. She can’t, however, create illusions that are permanent. She can also seemingly create physical embodiments of Nothing. What does that mean, I don’t know. But she can clap her hands and have a little object appear that manages to have no color at all but not be clear and make sound but no sound at all. What this actually does is unknown, it probably doesn’t actually do anything of significance other than giving her the ability to create small objects out of thin air. Missing a hair tie? No problem, clap your hands and bam ya got one made out of antimatter or something! She also has slight possession but only with inanimate objects. But hey, if you want to make a fork fly around or something, you can do that

ANYWAY as she grew older the red flags (should have) became more and more obvious. By this point she had a full on squirrel militia, and had a public broadcast show where she’d make direct and violent threats via (admittedly well crafted) puppets. But everyone just saw it as a joke because she’s oh so innocent!!! She also grew resentful of…pretty much everyone. Especially Extra and pumpkin daddy. Extra for being the “original” child she’s just a crude replacement of, and pumpkin daddy for being…well, pumpkin daddy. She did a whole bunch of shit around this time, like possessing a rancid ski glove named Hamlet and tormenting pumpkin daddy with it due to his crippling fear of gloves. (I have mentioned that before, but I don’t know if I mentioned the fact that hamlet is based on a real glove. I once found a glove while out on a walk and being the oh so normal person I am, I thought “ahaha a glove, like pumpkin daddy!” So after waiting a few weeks to see if anyone would retrieve their glove, I snatched it for myself. But when I went to admire it I got hit with the Worst fucking smell imaginable. I still don’t know what happened, if there was some nasty bacteria growing in it or what but the glove smelled like a rotting corpse to the point I started gagging by just being near it so I tossed it far away and went on with my day. Eventually I retrieved it and, after dousing it in febreze and washing it in snow, I stitched it back together, and now I have some probably-biohazardous-zombie glove on my shelf. Rant over, thought I’d mention that bc I fucking love hamlet the stinky glove, I don’t even want to know what caused that smell I’m just glad it’s gone and I’ll never have to smell it again).

MOVING ON THOOOUUUGHHH!!! So yeah she’d torment pumpkin daddy with gloves and stuff, she’d tear up any letters he tried to send. She also killed a bird that meant a lot to him (unforgivable actually, of all the horrible things my characters have done this is the single one I didn’t even want to have to write about). All whilst keeping up the appearance of “heehee idk what I’m doing heehee”. Most importantly though, she’d start tampering with the hybrids. She knew of Extra’s hatred of pumpkin daddy due to him being the cause of his whole gourd-head thing, so she figured if the hybrids, normally so happy go lucky, were screwed up, they’d blame pumpkin daddy and rebel. But despite being a master manipulator she was horrible with working with the patch and very rarely did she ever manage to succeed in fully messing them up. Her biggest success was the hybrid Mercury, who she not only messed up, but managed to turn against pumpkin daddy to the point Mercury led a whole riot to try to have him publicly executed. Yikes!!! Well at least her plan worked!!! On a slightly less deliberately malicious note, she’d sometimes head into the woods and bring along a shotgun for protection (the deer on FI are not trustworthy at all!!!) but once accidentally shot pumpkin daddy because he was wandering around in a reindeer costume (don’t ask why) (I don’t remember why). So uh. There was that, I guess.

The red flags starting becoming more and more apparent. To everyone except pumpkin daddy, of course. Even the other hybrids were becoming suspicious, but just minded their own business. Fina would have brief moments of clarity where she would realize what was going on, but have no way to really do anything about it or stop herself, and she’d eventually just fall back into the sort of dazed state. Yikes!!! That’s terrifying!!! Her most inexcusable action (aside from the bird) was killing Lucretius. Yeah, that’s right, that precious magical glove. Turns out pumpkin daddy wasn’t Completely insane when he insisted Lucretius was magic, Lucretius did have a small degree of sentience to him. But of course, the precious glove was killed by Fina. She ripped him to shreds. Horrifyingly, despite by all appearances being an ordinary nitrile glove, he bled a bright blue all over Fina’s hands. She spent hours trying to wash it off, but she never could, and her hands forever remain stained blue.

Years later, after Bellona’s death (and thusly the hybrid equivalent of her having much more of a presence due to having to essentially “replace” her), Fina was at her breaking point pretty much!!! She was at her absolute worst and her slight amount of patience and restraint was growing thin. So she joined up with the girlies!!! YEAHHHH she, Sushi, CC, Deux Souris and Sickle (have never talked about sickle before, she’s more of a side character and pretty depressing one at that lmao) joined up in a group. Maybe this will end well, now that she has a social cirlce! The original plan was to create a hybrid of Kurt, thusly why Fina was on board, but after accidentally traumatizing Deux Souris beyond repair, Fina abandoned the plan and stole one of Sushi’s weapons. She led them into the alcoves in the dead of night and went to the patch where a new batch of hybrids were being created, and completely destroyed it. The others were kinda like “alright uhhh so what’s the plan here dude” but just kinda stood off to the side. Eventually, the hybrid of Bellona, hearing the commotion, went to see what was happening and YIKES!!! YET ANOTHER DEATH OCCURRED!!! the others were horrified and immediately ran off, but Fina just acted like nothing happened and continued on with her fucking naivety facade. “oh I don’t know where she is I hope she’s ok” FINAAAA I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I. She convinced everyone she was innocent, and the blame fell on Sushi who she threw under the bus. Sushi was already in hot water for killing Kurt so this was a huge deal. She was already desperately trying and failing to redeem herself so this did NOT go over well. Tina got away scot-free.

Except she did not. Sort of. Because she failed to account for Extra, who was already skeptical of her. Despite being the most annoying, universally hated hybrids, one of those stupid little pumpkin daddy gophers, went to Extra to explain “hey, this girl is definitely gonna try and kill you next lol watch out”. So, as I said in my last long rambling post about Extra, he went to warn pumpkin daddy that hey, listen, Fina’s kinda not really that great!

At the negotiations everything was going fiiiine for Fina, she had her squirrels and nobody suspected a thing and OH NO THERE’S EXTRA. OH SHIT. it was pretty obvious he knew what was up and would probably be the only person who’d be able to get through to pumpkin daddy, so, in a last ditch effort to prevent any problems for herself, she put pumpkin daddy in a catatonic illusion and shoved him in a bathroom stall like nothing happened. She was incredibly drained from doing so, and thusly spent the next few days recuperating. Her army of squirrels, however, did not. They were roaming around everywhere, looking for any enemies. They were on the hunt for sickle, (I don’t remember why exactly, most likely to silence her? I actually don’t remember lmao) but ended up running into Gourdie instead. Gourdie was already suspicious of Fina and was never too fond of her (the only real exposure she had to her was a cryptic string of messages from pumpkin daddy where he was desperately trying to explain how tired he was of squirrel jokes), but seeing her army of bloodthirsty squirrels just confirmed it for her that something was up with Fina. The squirrels sensed that she knew, and carried her off to their leader. Fina then ordered the squirrels to violently maul Gourdie. Gourdie survived of course but the squirrels got her arms!!! EVENTUALLY pumpkin daddy broke out of his illusion and she tried to put him in another, but it wasn’t nearly as strong as before and left him more dazed more than anything. But everything would be fiiiiiine, just complete the negotiations and end the war and go back to tormenting people for no discernible reason

But then he coughed on the fucking cake

For whatever reason the simple act of pumpkin daddy coughing on a cake while grabbing a piece was what completely broke her, after years of barely restrained anger and violence. He coughed on the fucking cake. There was something SPECIAL about that cake, that’s for sure, and don’t you dare ask me what because I don’t remember. But Fina was bound to snap eventually, and I guess it was the cake that did it. She threatened to kill him, and nearly did. She was stopped, of course, and then………..uhhhhhhhh

that is. where things get fuzzy. I don’t really know. I don’t think I ever had a set ending for her. One will come eventually. But as for what I have right now, she just kinda disappeared, most likely going to live out the rest of her life in the mountains. But genuinely I do not know. whoops. I hate writing all this out just to have no idea what the actual end is but uhhhhhh yeahhh it’s a work in progress. I’ll come up with something. Eventually. Maybe. Probably not. BUT INSTEAD OF A PROPER ENDING HERE IS SOME TRIVIA YIPPEEEEEEEEE

• SHE ACTUALLY WAS NOT GOING TO BE EVIL AT FIRST. LIKE AT ALL. She started off just as naive she appeared to be and it was Sushi who actually destroyed the patch and stuff. But as I was forming that part of the plot I listened to That Fucking Song (cant catch me now) for the first time and the like “bet you thought I’d never do it, thought it’d go over my head” hit me like a truck and I thought OH WAIT. WHAT IF IT WAS FINA AND EVERYONE JUST THOUGHT SHE WAS TOO STUPID TO DO IT

• her name was supposed to just be a placeholder but I cant get myself to change it lmao whoops (this is the case for SO many characters. Especially Gourdie)

• THE REASON THAT THERE’S A HUGE FUCKING GAP IN HER PLOTLINE IS BECAUSE THERE WAS A HUGE FUCKING GAP IN THE SOURCE MATERIAL!!! OOPS!!! You guys don’t understand I formed PDBC VERY closely to the OG, everything I say you could probably find the origin to in the actual comic. But because I was missing a huge chunk by the end, my version ended up having a very rushed ending!!! But now that I have the missing pages that will be remedied soon!!! Hopefully !! I’m Really fucking scared of trying to figure that mess out, I laid out the groundwork like 11 months ago and now I gotta come back to it to clean it up, wish me luck because I’m gonna screw it up so bad oh no oh no oh

• HER NICKNAME IS MISSGHETTI

anyway that is all goodnight. I feel like I’m forgetting something about her but oh well screw it (I DID. REMEMBERED JUST AS I WAS ABOUT TO HIT POST. SHE PLAYS THE ORGAN!!! SHE WANTED ORGANS (LIKE HUMAN ORGANS) FOR CHRISTMAS BUT PUMPKIN DADDY MISUNDERSTOOD AND GOT HER AN ORGAN BUT SHE JUST ROLLED WITH IT. CANT BELIEVE I FORGOT THAT WHEN I LITERALLY THINK OF HER EVERY TIME I HEAR AN ORGAN SHAME ON ME!!!)

[thisisthepartwhereyou]

BEASTARS MINI-STORY #3: “The Pitfalls of Thin Walls pt. 4″ (Final Part) by JCL

Legosi, who has now changed into a new t-shirt and sweatpants, stares at something with a deadpan look in his eyes. HARU: "So... How do I look?" We see that Haru has changed clothes too: She is wearing a pink blazer over a pink shirt and a pink skirt, basically looking like a rabbit-version of Jackie Kennedy. Legosi continues to stare at her. Then he begins to go pffffft as he fails to contain his laughter. Haru on the other hand looks anything but amused. LEGOSI: "I'm sorry, but it's so not your style!" HARU: "Damn straight it's not my style, none of this is mine to begin with!" (That woman next door...!) -- We see a flashback, where an apolagetic Sebun is standing in the doorway of Legosi's apartment. HARU: (It was nice enough of her to apologize for making such a ruckus and even borrow me some of her own to me in the meantime, while she is having mine and Legosi's clothes washed) A yakisoba-covered Legosi and Haru stares at her as she talks. Legosi looks neutral, while Haru looks pissed. -- Back in the present, Haru looks down at her borrowed outfit and adjusts the skirt, all the while Legosi is doing his best to keep from laughing out loud. HARU: (I am grateful we have about the same size, though what is up with all this PINK? Is she part flamingo or something? Plus, if it hadn't been for her...!) She thinks back to when she and Legosi were about to kiss in the last part and gets a melancholic expression. Anime-tears of frustration begins to run down her cheeks. HARU: (DAMN! We were so close!) Legosi, who seems to have tapped out with all the laughter, points at Haru's clothes and tries to cheer her up. LEGOSI: "On the plus-side, it does make you look more mature." HARU: "Oh yeah? Well," -- We are now in Sebun's apartment, where we see that Sebun has joined the rest of the gang with a glass of her own pressed against the wall. HARU: "-who wouldn't look like an old spinster in these clothes?" This comment seems to hit Sebun like a brick. Her offended expression gets covered by a dark aura of self-conscious depression as she begins to mutter through clenched teeth: SEBUN: "OLD SPINSTER...!" A textbox with an arrow pointing at Sebun appears. TEXT: 29, SINGLE AND OVERLY SELF-CONSCIOUS ABOUT IT Ebisu gives her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder, though like the rest of the gang, he can't help but to find the situation humorous. EBISU: "There, there..." -- Back in Legosi's apartment, Haru exhales. HARU: "My folks are going to have a laugh, that's for certain." Legosi smiles and puts his hands in the pockets of the sweatpants. LEGOSI: "Probably... It's been a pretty strange day, hasn't it?" HARU: "Eventful, though not that strange." Haru begins to count up the general events of their  dinner-date with the help of her fingers. HARU: "I mean we had dinner, I got drunk, we (kind of) went to second base, had some coffee, sat in the wok and played dress up. I'd say it was a pretty fun dinner-date. Generally speaking, I'd say it was pretty normal too." Legosi looks surprised, then cocks a brow. LEGOSI: "You really think so?" HARU: "Well, maybe you shouldn't take my word for it, I mean I didn't exactly do dinner-dates before we met. Or even date for that matter." LEGOSI: "Really?" HARU: "Really-really. I was a tramp, remember?" Haru's blunt acknowledgement to her past prompts Legosi to adopt a thoughtful expression. HARU: "Though maybe we should avoid contact with liquor from now on, I mean I don't want to nurse a hangover each time afterwards." Legosi walks up to Haru with a determined look in his eye. He stops, and looks down at her, like he wants to tell her something important. LEGOSI: "Haru... " HARU: "Yes?" LEGOSI: "I..." Legosi bites down on his lip, like he's struggling with what he's trying to say. Haru looks a little confused. HARU: "What?" Though, we see in Legosi's background that he is thinking about his mother, his father and his grandfather. This morphs into uglier details of his family history, including the last time he met his mother, his father walking away and disappearing and how badly treated his grandfather has been on account of his species. We can see in Legosi's face that he struggles to process all of this, like he wants to share it with Haru, but just can't. His arm suddenly shoots back and points at the terrarium. LEGOSI: "You know, I haven't named that beetle yet." HARU: "Huh?" LEGOSI: "I was thinking about calling him Smoochy, you know, after that movie with the pink rhino, but..." Haru blinks and notes with a deadpan voice: HARU: "That is a terrible name." Legosi nods and fidgets with his fingers. LEGOSI: "Exactly. I've always been bad at naming things, and back when you talked about us having a daughter, you said a lot of good ones. So... I wonder if you'd like to name him for me?" Haru continues to stare at Legosi, like she's thinking 'this is what he had such a hard time saying?' LEGOSI: "It could be your housewarming gift." Haru looks past Legosi and onto the rhinoceros beetle. HARU: "... Josuke." Legosi blinks. LEGOSI: "Josuke? Why?" Haru puts her hand in front of her forehead and extends a single finger from it, imitiating a horn. In her background, as an illustration, we see a wolf-version of Josuke Higashikata from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. HARU: "His horn makes me think of the hairdo of a character from a manga I used to read, named Josuke." Legosi looks happy, like an enthused kid and turns to greet his freshly named pet. LEGOSI: "Josuke huh? Oi, Josuke!" Haru rolls her eyes and proceeds to open the door. HARU: "Anyway, I think I should be leaving now. So... Bye." She begins to walk out into the corridor. Legosi however quickly turns and catches up to her in the doorway. LEGOSI: "Wait." Haru stops and turns around. Legosi goes down on one knee so that they are on the same eye level. LEGOSI: "Look, I want to be honest and upfront to you about my family... But I'm sorry, I just can't tell you about all of that right now. I can tell you about my grandpa though. He practically raised me all on his own. He is a good person; probably the friendliest and most considerate person one can meet." As he talks, Haru's expression gradually softens. LEGOSI: "He is strong, honest and would go to hell and back to protect his loved ones. You two are the ones I care about the most... And I want you to meet him some day." HARU: (Strong and honest... So that's where you get it from?) "I would love that." Then, straight out of nowhere, Haru darts forward and plants a kiss on Legosi's lips. Legosi's eyes widen, though before he can react further, Haru pulls back with a grin. HARU: "See ya." She then begins to skip down the corridor. Legosi seems like he hasn't quite processed what just happened, and stands frozen in the same position like a statue for a second or two. Then his face goes completely red and he bolts back with a flabbergasted face. As he begins to compute that he's had his first real kiss with Haru, he gets to his feet and calls to Haru. LEGOSI: "HEY! Haru!" Haru stops, turns around and gives him a sneaky look. HARU: "What? You can surprise me with dinner and I can't surprise you with a kiss? Get real! When you're with me, there'll be plenty more surprises!" She then disappears out of sight down the stairs. Legosi touches his lips with his fingers and then gives off a little laugh. Then a sudden crash is heard nearby. Legosi turns his head to see what caused it. What he sees is that the gang in Sebun's apartment, including Sebun herself, has fallen out through the door. They're now piled on top of each other, looking awkward as Legosi stares at them. The only exception is Zaguan, who is standing in the doorway and giving Legosi a little wave. ZAGUAN: "Hello Legosi!" LEGOSI: "What are you doing?" Sebun, who is at the bottom of the pile, sweatdrops. SEBUN: (I forgot to close the door again...) -- EPILOGUE #1 Haru is now back at her parents house. She is taking off her shoes in the hall when her father comes out, holding a cup of coffee. HARU'S DAD: "Hey honey, did you have fu-" He gives her an odd look as he notices what she's wearing. Then he begins to go pfffft and proceeds to laugh out loud. Haru shoots him an annoyed look and begins to stomp away to her room. HARU: "Grrrr....!" She passes her mom, who looks after her with a questioning look. She then turns to her husband. HARU'S MOM: "Who was that lady just now?" Haru's dad can't stop laughing. -- EPILOGUE #2 We see that Sebun is now at her job, sitting behind her desk and working a computer. She is wearing dark pink jeans and a light pink turtleneck with her sleeves rolled up. She looks a bit uncomfortable though, as she is gaining the attention of at least five male co-workers.   HYENA CO-WORKER: "Whoa! New outfit huh?" COUGAR CO-WORKER: "Looking good in the new duds Sebun-chan!" COYOTE CO-WORKER: "Pink is a good color on you!" SEBUN: "Uh, thank you..." (I've worn these clothes before though!) -- EPILOGUE #3 We see Raika, with Fina on his shoulder like usual, walking back to their apartment. He scratches the back of his head and gives Fina a look. RAIKA: "Um, no reason in particular for bringing this up, but if it hadn't been for scale and proportion, you'd actually consider dating me?" Fina gives her roomate an ugly look. FINA: "No. Comment." -- EPILOGUE #4 We see that some time later, Legosi has regained his and Haru's clothes from Sebun. He is currently inspecting his t-shirt. LEGOSI: (The clothes are nice and clean again) He then looks confused as he holds up yet another copy of Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. LEGOSI: (Though why did Sebun give me a copy of Harold and Kumar too?) -- THE END

[vrenaewrites]

Naming Your Characters.

Cliche alert: your characters are your babies.

At least mine are. I put way too much thought into the name of each and every character in my series.

But, ideally, these people are going to live on bookshelves forever.

And, REALLY ideally, you’re going to talk about these people with others. And if you cringe when you say their name, you’re not going to want to talk about them.

Which means, others probably won’t either. So you want their names to be...good. Like, indicative of their personality and background and maybe ethnicity, if you roll that way. (I do.)

I always like to see how people name their characters. So I wanted to show y’all the evolution of the names of Thistlewolf. (Which has basically always been Thistlewolf, by the way. Names of places are also important. Another blog for another day.)

We’ll start with River and Fina. Because well, those are the main characters.

River Silas Matthews used to be Riley Matthews, way back when. And then a little show called Girl Meets World came out. And we had to go back to square one.

Right about then was when I discovered my love for River Phoenix, and with that, his bizarre childhood growing up in the Children of God cult, where he and all his siblings had wild nature names.

Boom.

River Matthews was born.

Why didn’t I just change his last name? Because his last name just was Matthews. Plus, it had to start with an M. Why? Later.

So Barton Heights is made up of mostly nature names, with the occasional biblical name thrown in.

River, Nova Grace, Willow, Sparrow, Autumn, Ivy, Micah, Clay, Forrest, Noah, Ephraim, Sarah, Abel.

In the beginning, it wasn’t like that at all. Sparrow, Nova, Abel, Sarah, Ephraim, Willow, and Micah were always the same. Autumn used to be Summer, but I hate the name Autumn and Autumn is someone you like to hate, so I named her something I didn’t like.

That’s the only time I recommend that.

Ivy got her name from “poison Ivy” because, like the plant, she SUCKS.

(If you ask my MCs. I find her to be misunderstood.)

But Ivy used to be Charli. Forrest was Mitchell. Clay was Ethan. There was an Eric somewhere.

But as I wrote, I realized the importance of unified names with a place like Barton Heights.

The reader needs to understand right away how tight-knit, solitary, and united they are. Giving them names with the same theme helps with this. It also helps to identify those who weren’t born in but joined as adults, like Autumn’s mom, Lindsey.

Onto the Camejos. Who used to be the Calderons by the way. Calderon comes from caldera, Spanish for cauldron, because I AM SUBTLE.

Fina is short for Josefina. Josefina Teresita Camejo, specifically. Her name used to be Jessenia, Jess for short. Before I started leaning on her roots, she was Jessamine. Jess for short.

And then I realized I hated this one girl named Jess, so why would I name my book baby after someone I disliked?

Axe Jess.

Also, talk about basic. How many Jess/Jessi’s do you know? Tons. Anyway.

Josefina. Mexican girl from California. Indicative of her heritage and, above all, it just fit her better. I don’t know how I ever had her named something else. That is her name.

Sometimes you just know.

Her family, though all adopted, is all Hispanic: half from Spain, half from North America with Latin roots. And half of them have always had the same name.

Elian is still Elian all the way back. Bernardo and Carmen are, too. (Although Carmen’s character used to be a guy named Armando, and then I axed Carmen and gave Armando Carmen’s name, and it’s all very confusing. Just take my word for it.)

Dia is the most recent change. She was Vanessa for a really long time until, you guessed it, I met someone I disliked with that name. She was Anita before that (thanks West Side Story, but I can’t have an Anita and a Bernardo be siblings). I wanted to name her after my sister, but my sister’s name is spelled weird and when I try to spell it the “traditional” way, it looks wrong. So I borrowed from real life. I worked with a girl named Elydia, and I loved the name (and the girl). Vanessa became Elydia, Dia for short.

I like nicknames.

Ofelia got her name from a play I did in 2013 called Anna in the Tropics. Ofelia means helper. I loved saying the name. It just sounded like a comforting, motherly name. So Natalie became Ofelia and, once again, it just fit.

Plus I’m a Shakespeare nerd and, hello, Ophelia, Hamlet, duh.

Speaking of.

Why did River have to have a last name beginning with M? Same reason Fina had to have the initials JC.

(Not because she is a Christ allegory. It’s not that deep.)

Because Civil Blood is a Romeo and Juliet themed story. Surprise! The title is from the play’s prologue.

Romeo Montague = River Matthews and Juliet Capulet = Josefina Camejo.

I know, pick your jaw up off the floor. I’m a fucking literary genius. Two years of community college really put me ahead of the curve.

No, but I really like Shakespeare. I liked dropping Easter eggs in Civil Blood for people who like Shakespeare, too. I needed my MC’s names to have weight. To mean something. And to connect them to the ultimate tragedy of hasty young love is weighty, considering what happens to them.