#mild fallen london spoilers ig | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

grimm-the-tiger · 3 months ago

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My FL main went through some really weird, organic development over the...oh god, I think it's been five years since I started playing now.

So my main is named Skadi Larkin. They are a little bastard. They started out extremely 2D; I named them after my favorite Norse goddess and the protagonist of the book I was reading at the time. I originally wanted to make them female like both of their namesakes, but the second I saw the third-gender option, I thought it was too good to pass up. This is where they got their primary base characterization as a mad scientist who wanted to Cause Problems.

Then I started the Nemesis ambition and forgot which option I'd chosen for who I was trying to avenge, so they lost both their lover and their older brother under tragic circumstances (only the lover was killed by Nemesis's antagonist, though).

Then I got an Exceptional Friendship and had to give my tragic backstory in order to gain entry to the House of Chimes. Skadi pulled said tragic backstory (orphaned in a hansom accident) more or less out of their ass, but it did establish that their parents are dead.

Somewhere down the line, I realized that technically Skadi is a linguist, since the Correspondence is a language, and I made that their profession on the Surface as well.

Around this time, I started working on character designs for my fan comic. I got really into messing around with skin tone, and somewhere along the line thought it would be fun to draw Skadi (who was originally white) with darker skin, and it stuck.

Then I abruptly realized I was taking a lot of options that increased my Melancholy, and almost all of them were based on the Surface. So now Skadi has a longing for the Surface.

I left the game for a few years, but somewhere during this stretch of time, and I don't know how this happened, but I decided Skadi was now Native American; specifically, Metis. I changed their design to incorporate a sash woven in a style characteristic of the Metis, which also added a bit of color to their design (which was mostly black or grey at this point).

During this time, I started incorporating Skadi into my fan comic. This would eventually lead me to actually flesh out their backstory in greater detail. When I started playing the game again, I also created my first alt by total accident (long story), and I decided to weave her backstory with Skadi's.

So Skadi is in the interesting position of being an Indigenous person who is what we'd probably consider Two-Spirit today but they'd just call "Bollocks to that gender crap". They never belonged on the Surface, since the Metis are in a bit of a liminal space compared to other tribes due to their interesting background (the Metis are the descendants of French settlers and Indigenous inhabitants, mostly Cree), and Skadi exists in a liminal space within that liminal space due to only being half-Metis and raised primarily in white culture, although they still maintained a connection to it through their late mother. They also never belonged because no one else on the Surface outside of the communities they already felt isolated from would ever accept them for their gender. London gave them a chance to express one of those, but not both, and despite knowing that the Surface hates them just for existing, they still long to return.

#fallen london #fallen london oc #mild fallen london spoilers ig #there's a really interesting dichotomy with all of my fl characters honestly #skadi's is just probably the most blatant #umbra belacqua (my shadowy alt) is someone who both loves very fiercely and is capable of immense cruelty at the same time #in her backstory she had the husband of her ex-fiancee (who left her at the altar) murdered because she couldn't let go of her ex's betraya #said ex is my persuasive alt and is both very socially gregarious and extremely withdrawn #he probably won't ever get a spouse just because he can't bring himself to love someone else after what happened the last time #and he had very good reason for leaving umbra because he could never love her the way she wanted #and he felt that the sympathy she would receive from his family would more than make up for the heartbreak #since umbra is obsessed with gaining power and prestige and he came from an influential family #and knew that running away with the person he really loved would get him disowned #(he doesn't know umbra killed his husband btw)#my dangerous alt is my persuasive alt's sister #she's trans and badly overcompensating for it by refusing to wear anything except feminine clothing #because it hasn't quite gotten through to her yet that no one in Fallen London particularly cares about her gender expression #and she feels like the only way she can be seriously considered a woman is if she does everything she can to look like one #which causes her a good few problems because her one true passion is violence and that's not usually considered a very feminine hobby #then their younger brother (my watchful alt) is someone ironically very disinclined to violence who resorts to it anyways #the only people he's actually going to try to kill are the ones he has to kill for his ambition #and he's not very happy about it but he doesn't have much of a choice #because while he might not like bloodshed his murdered spouse was an anarchist who definitely did #and he's determined to do right by his memory by...killing a lot of people apparently #he is not a terribly mentally stable man and when i finally get around to making his account #he's going to have a massive nightmares problem that he refuses to deal with and keeps ending up in the royal beth for it #tl;dr all my fallen london characters are going through it and have overly long and complicated backstories #my main just happens to have the most overly long and complicated of them all

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