#tl;dr - claudia gave me emotional strength during a time when i really REALLY needed it so yeah it'll probably

[spacymuses]

ツ?

Munday asks || Accepting 

ツ Who has been your favorite muse to play so far? Why?

Buckle in kids, this shit’s getting hashtag-personal!

Out of this blog? It’s really hard to pick a favorite of my babs, it’s a little like picking your favorite child lmao.

But I think if I had to narrow it down to one character that I always find my way back to, it’s always been Claudia, and it’ll always be Claudia. She’s grown so much over the past decade of writing her, from a sheltered, spoiled young queen in her very first storyline ever, and gradually, somehow, in a slow evolution from AU to AU, becoming a vigilante hero with a lonely, gentle spirit, whose heart aches at suffering and rages at injustice. 

I’ve mentioned before that I created all of these characters with my ex-wife. And like, that was a really personal thing to us. Some of these characters we came up with passing a notebook back and forth together in chemistry class when we were sixteen. Claudia was a little later in coming around, when we were in college–but I do very vividly remember the two of us brainstorming out her first love interest as I was driving the moving van from our hometown to Chicago, right after we graduated. There’s a lot of memories attached to her early development, albeit now kind of bittersweet.

One boundary that my ex wanted to establish was that I didn’t write these characters with anybody else. So I didn’t–but Claudia still had a way of creeping into my creative space in other ways. She’s been my D&D main forever (I’m actually joining a new campaign with her next week), and every time I’d start up in a video game where you could create your own character, I’d end up making Claudia. She was always the character I had the most fun getting into the headspace of, and her voice and her mannerisms all just felt very clearly defined in my head.

Then my wife and I got divorced late last year, and it was–traumatic??? To say the least. I feel embarrassed bringing it up now, since like, everyone who followed me over from my previous blog knows this already! But like, divorce is difficult shit, and brings out all the ugliest parts of both yourself and the person you were married to. One night and one conversation, and suddenly I had lost my best friend, my home, my sense of stability, and a life that I hadn’t been happy with, but still had been my life. I was at an emotional low for a very, very long time, and only recently started dragging myself out of that rut.

I knew early on that I wanted to set up a multimuse for these guys, but I kept putting it off. I didn’t feel like I was ready, I didn’t know if anyone would like these characters, I didn’t know if people would think they were stupid or boring. But the one I wanted to write most, and the driving muse that got me to set up the blog in the end, was Claudia. 

Claudia was a character I drew strength from during those long, hard months, as I was slowly putting my life back together again. I deleted a lot of my old RP transcripts with my ex, but the ones I still had with Claudia, I read over again and again. I think there was just something reassuring in getting lost in the story of someone who could be so resilient and strong, but still have this great vulnerability and capacity for love. She’s someone who adapts–sometimes awkwardly–and always finds a home in the end. She feels alienated and isolated at times from the people around her, but always strives to choose compassion and understand people better. She showed me as her writer the ways in which a person can evolve and change–the way anyone can choose to try and use their strength to do right by people. 

That was just really reassuring, during the absolute worst moments of my life. 

And in the end, it’s always gonna be Claudia. Because in her steady evolution into becoming a hero, she became mine.