#c: william rearden

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Scheming plotting and so on

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Rearden waiting for a contact while dressed in god's least restrained Ourple outfit ft. an urban background at last and graffiti which I swear says ÇA IRA and not the other thing

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Rearden my bestfriend Rearden

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Decided to take that 1 post about how it's great when people draw their characters in the hyperspecific place they live in to heart by drawing Rearden & Whittaker with ice cream which, trust me, is from my favourite modern ice cream place 👍

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Rearden in the gay little french revolution sash/hat combo after this 1898 depiction of Lazare Carnot where will he go

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Finally FINALLY found time to draw today and did some Wm. Rearden sketches

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Girls when they plot to overthrow the British government

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TOP IMAGE: the very first time I drew my ocs Maria Whittaker + William Rearden in autumn 2022

BOTTOM IMAGE: the same image redrawn with their current designs as of spring 2024

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Here’s the first two of the character intros I was promising. sooooo much that this does not say about these two but it’s a fair quick summary of their backstories

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Thinking I will go ahead with Rearden Redesign™️ (pictured above), partially because I want to and this is my blog and also crucially because the direction his character is going in where his plotline is largely about exploring the factors which drive someone to insane terrorism would make it, imo, in poor taste for him to be the main narrator of colour. to balance this, however, + to keep some of the questions he originally raised about empire &c I am now upgrading Franklin to main character status, something I've been thinking about doing for a while but only just committed to. also included in rrl update 1.2.4 or whatever this one is is the fact that the Durhams have several new neighbours, none of whom I have depictions of yet, but who I will draw up some sort of directory for in the coming days ☝️

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Some design notes for Frederick, Lazarus, Rearden, Lady Durham, and Seamy from RRL and adjacent stories

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Saw this template + thought it was funny + did it for 2 (of many) of the RRL pairs of people who spend most of their time trying to ruin each others' lives

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Ginkgo for the tree ask game!

Gingko: What part of your story is the oldest, has stuck around from that original idea?

For RRL I think probably I would have to say the oldest part is Maria Whittaker's backstory, which is that her parents were English Catholic Jacobite aristocrats exiled from their lands soon after the '45, who were really really awful parents due to a combination of the whole impoverished as a result of having all of their stuff taken away and being exiled situation + the fact that they were very ill-suited for each other in the first place and I think probably didn't even want children, and who Whittaker eventually ran away from with her sister after her mother, the better of the two, died, to make her way in the world with nothing but her wits. That's from the very very first incarnation of any of these characters, which was when Whittaker, Rearden, and Whittaker's sister Lizzie (all largely the same in personality, though Rearden's backstory and family were completely different and imo less interesting) + Rearden's United Irish colleague Iain (inexplicably a landed aristocrat in England with a stake in a merchant company and a large family in this incarnation. not sure how he goes from UI ye olde bomb tech to apolitical landlord in the north of England though I actually do think I still want that to canonically be his endgame) + a weird adult version of Seamy (under a different name and he was a British soldier fighting in the Peninsular War rather than a small boy who can see ghosts) all appeared as side characters in a Jane Austen-style English regency romance story I wrote to entertain my friend a few years ago. The oldest part from the first story that was actually recognisable as RRL in its current form is the scene where Rearden shoots the magistrate Brown dead for having sent his friend Perry to the prison where he (Perry) died in front of him (Rearden) through his (Brown's) front window while Brown is sitting and having a glass of port inside. It's the very first scene I wrote for RRL and it's remained largely the same throughout everything, though the circumstances are much altered in the current version of RRL and it's no longer the very first scene.

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image in the middle my art, all others except for that of the belfast 14th july celebrations from pinterest

WIP Reintro: Red and Riotous Light

Status: seven morbillionth draft

Genre: historical fiction, gothic horror

Content warnings: gore, death, cannibalism, place & time typical bigotry, &c

The year is 1796 and the island of Ireland, once considered peaceable, is awash with sedition. In Belfast, the arrival of a mysterious Englishwoman whose defection to the French makes her a target of both curiosity and suspicion brings with her tidings of a prospective deal between a local United Irish cell and the French government: guns, and ammunition, sold at a premium price, delivered by a French ship. The only problem? The ship is arriving at the opposite side of the country, and these would-be insurgents need it where they are -- and the French said nothing about transport. Additionally, the committee seems to have had a suspicious number of brushes with authority lately. More than they used to. Hopefully someone isn't getting cold feet...

Meanwhile, in the isolated townland of Áth Síomóin, the arrival of a hapless new schoolmaster sparks the powder-keg the two sides of the area's sectarian divide have long been sitting on and leads, inadvertently, to the death of a Catholic of some consequence -- and, crucially, does not lead to the punishment of his killer. The resulting crackdown on Defender activity, facilitated by the arrival of another English visitor, is to be expected at first. However, as the situation deteriorates, it becomes clear that local agrarian resistance leaders have neither intent nor indeed means to capitulate, and all sides begin to adopt increasingly extreme measures in an attempt to win the seemingly endless feud. And there's also something off about some of the local children -- hearing voices, saying funny things. It can't be good for them, after all. All this bloodshed.

Ask to be +/- from the taglist + main characters under the cut

William Hughes Rearden - an extremely driven and neurotic member of the Belfast United Irishmen hellbent on getting French arms for his men. he/him

Lady Maria Whittaker - an English reformer who defected to the French; Rearden's close friend. Her mission is to arm the UI and she doesn't care what she has to do to accomplish it. she/her; first name pronounced "mariah"

Seamus "Seamy" Breen - a small, unhappy Irish Catholic boy who, after he witnesses the death of a schoolmate, develops the ability to speak to the dead. he/him; nickname pronounced "shaymie"

Eoin O'Donnell - a womanising Defender leader in Áth Síomóin who has decided that he will also be taking and using some of these French arms, actually. he/him; first name pronounced "owen"

Sarah Connolly - a nihilistic Catholic peasant woman trapped in an unhappy relationship with an abusive boyfriend, who knows much more than she lets on. she/her

Edward "Lazarus" McClure - the loyalist owner of a rural inn who has lately betrayed his principles for a Catholic boyfriend who he seems disturbingly devoted to. he/him

Elizabeth "Eliza" Durham - the heiress to the fortune of an Anglo-Irish landowning family who runs her family's estate like it's the navy and suffers little dissent. she/her

Anthony Franklin - an actor, committed abolitionist, philosophy enthusiast, and London Corresponding Society delegate originally from the West Indies. he/him

Charles Nathaniel Maurice Irving-Hamilton, Lord Drenning - a foppish English soldier brought over by Eliza to help quell agrarian disturbances. Really really bad at his job. he/him

Eleanor "Ellie" Gage - a waif of uncertain background who lives with the Presbyterian minister in a neighbouring townland and works unofficially for the local regiment. she/her

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Rainbow main RRL fictional United Irish committee part 2 of 2... wall of lore text on the lineup under the cut

Part 1

Captain James "Jim" Wilkes - the leader of a military cell (UI cell within the army -- these really existed and the government was very worried about them), a devoted reformer who offered to form a UI cell from interested parties among his men roughly two hours after his regiment was stationed on Lord Durham's land. Useful for providing information about what nonsense the forces of law and order are going to pull next

Edward Perry - deceased narrative haunter of a dead leader of a cell which focused on assassination. He was Rearden's close friend before dying of The Fever while awaiting trial in prison and Rearden is still obsessed with him

William Rearden - former British Army rifleman and the committee's main tactician. Like his friend Whittaker, he lets others do his dirty work for him, but he also trains UI who wish to learn how to imitate, at least, his terrifying skill with a rifle. He owns a linen company, &c

Lady Maria Whittaker - an Englishwoman who clawed her way up from being the impoverished daughter of a Jacobite exile to being an information broker who terrorises reformers and reactionaries indiscriminately. Whether or not she's even loyal to this committee in particular is up for debate. She is a Gentlewoman™️

Devi Chandrasekhar - young linguist from what is today Tamil Nadu, on a tour of Europe in order to learn several more languages. Naturally, she does translations and negotiations, having been absorbed into the committee by virtue of boarding with the Hoyles during her stay in Ireland

Patrick Dolan - another Defender leader, a sort of godfather to Eoin O'Donnell's Defender lodge. He acts as another mediator between the Defenders and the committee, though he stays more in the background than Breen does. He makes his money being a slightly more well off tenant farmer

Samuel "Sammy" Gowan - proud member of the growing urban Catholic middle class originally from Co. Armagh. He's a good lad but no one is actually sure where his money comes from and he's been spending a weird amount of time around the army barracks lately... and what was that the barman at the Medusa said about seeing him coming in with that fencible fella to point out other UI? It's just not like him -- I'm sure it's nothing, though :)