I’m bored, was drawing Merodi for an hour (finishing tomorrow) and one of her namesake songs (shhh don’t ask) came on earlier so.. Info dump! Uhm mentions of trauma and me not liking draft #1 I added music. Poke the flag. 1st is CartoonGirl by Kanaria (I started drawing humans to do fanart for this song when it was fresh out- I love it like crazy and they edited captions so they’re neater than originally! <3) 2nd is BEEP BEEP from Hoshimatic Project girlies because A I love it and B There’s some English- don’t knock it before you try it! Trust- and ignore the background noise on that one please.. focus on Suisei vocals at the very start, she’s epic.. I totally didn’t just turn on FLOW GLOW because my phone won’t let me hear anything on projects <//3 pray that works Mkay so back to the info dump part! I think I should tell yall about some of the original plans for the yuri, right? I memorized the date and hour when I started writing it, why I wrote it, and some other random junk that doesn’t matter- Kay so let’s start with that! And then I’ll talk about naming and how Reine changed! And then other junk! <3 So I started writing the yuri January 10th like after 10 PM for my friend who wanted unhealthy girl love. She and another friend were my OG proofreaders, she would devour it and the other friend would very reluctantly read it. I was up at 2 AM the next morning just writing it in our messages and then copying it down into Pages the next morning to show them, both approved <3 uhm she had other stuff to say as well I just forget.. Okay so the girls! When I was originally naming them I had no idea what to. Around this time I think we were still on our winter break, and that was when I was wandering into Hololive Indonesia (since I did my Moona fanart before we started break) and still listening to Kanaria and Ado a lot. At some point I got the word Melody (probably from CartoonGirl tbh) and was like “Wow! I really don’t like this name!!” so I went and looked at some romanized song lyrics and lucky for me, “merodī” was used as a loanword there. Almost the same word. Just a better version. So I took it and we have Merodi <3 In the original draft it opens with Merodi being fired from a job and basically curling up and being miserable in a corner, then Reine comes in and helps her out. Speaking of Reine, in the original draft she was very different! In the OG she had shoulder length black hair that is as straight as a wire and was shorter than Merodi. She also had a different name, Reyi, that just makes me itchy to say now because it’s awkward and weird.. anyway I don’t like that draft I really don’t like that draft let’s not talk about that draft please- So canonically Reine is interested in anatomy and psychology. I haven’t actually picked her a job yet but right now I’m resting on therapist. In the current draft, I’ve written her studying some psychology-based study, and there’s actually some interesting psychology at play I cannot explain without giving a lore dump that I am not dumping(haha sorry). Merodi is unemployed, but she’s good at drawing and memorizing things, and draws out her stress. For example, in a more recent scene, she’s curled up and stressed about having a crush so she draws Reine, and when Reine comes over she turns to drawing her first crush, because she’s remembering how that ended and worried about it happening again if she expresses her emotions. Another thing- this about Merodi’s scar. So I mention this a few times but I only really settled on it in this draft, with a reason for it. So her scar is a result of her nightmares. I believe I’ve already said this is a fantasy setting, but the quirk I’m working on is that everyone has some little effect on the world around them, and that “power” is influenced by their emotions and intentions. Merodi’s is plant-related. In this draft, one of the early scenes, Reine gives her a waterlily. She loves it, immediately, and wants it to stay as it is so she can keep the memory. So her power sustained it for a little while before it wilted. She has softer, happier emotions that aren’t as sharp and simpler intentions, so the effect isn’t as strong. Now, say she’s.. ah.. say there’s a wolf or smth running at her because she lives in a forest and for some reason there’s wolves there. Her intent upon being run at by a wolf would be to get the wolf away from her, and shock and fear are strong emotions. So any plant she can touch might have a sudden increase in growth, enough to scare something away. It’s all how the intent is interpreted and carried out. Someone else’s (nope I’m not naming them haha) allows them to operate a “shadow” of themself. This person is also a ghost. This shadow still exists and is referred to as a demon multiple times. However, without the conscious mind behind it, it exists in the emotions of the person before they passed. Eh how much can I get away with.. this person didn’t particularly like Merodi, so [+]
cont. hihihi read the rest up above before this mkay?? )) [+] of course this shadow is going to seek her out and express its emotions. Now, when someone is sleeping, their mind is more relaxed. Naturally this is when the demon can step into thoughts and interact. The thing about a being consisting, in this case, of raw and aggressive emotion, is that its touch is burning, even in a dream, and it’s a corporeal being when it wants to be. So in short the demon accidentally brushes her in one of these dreams—haven’t pinned it down yet—and she gets the scar. Since these nightmares are repetitive and it’s constantly talking to her about things she should feel guilty about that I will not be getting into, she associates her scar with unpleasant things, things she thought she left behind two years ago but hasn’t. Nope. Still there. Uhm so I lost my train of thought I guess I’m done tbh.. Ima go do some Gens stuff then maybe sleep. Anyway tell me what you think of the music please <3