The Basics
[*Your name/nickname:] You'll see me as evilpizza on the cbox
[Contact information:]  best stick to pm for now
[*Your main character account:] Heliotrope LeJean

January 2012!!

Optional Questions
[Tell us a little about yourself!] I'm a storyteller. I write fiction, webcomic with video game sprites, play video games. I always like to find deep connects with my works, whether to an established lore or analytical thoughts of mine. My favorite video games are causual or easy to play and drop for long periods, like Mario Galaxy, Kirby, Phoenix Wright/Ace Attorney, Professor Layton, Ghost Trick and recently the Lego games, I can't wit to own both Lego HPs. Also, can't wait for the Phoenix Wright / Professor Layton crossover. I'm a Nintendo fan, owning the 64, Gamecube, Wii, Gameboy and DS, though I never buy the latest system when it's new.

[How long have you been role-playing and what got you into it?] I'm actually barely a year old on internet roleplay. I've done some minor stage acting. I'm a skilled improviser, like you would see on Whose Line Is It Anyways, so I don't mind open threads and I like to post as soon as I've read the thread and gotten an idea.

I started roleplaying on the Honorable Hogwarts site, part of a defunct trifecta that took placing during cannon, after cannon, and beyond the epilogue. Compared to this it is very loosey-goosey and while fun, suffers from frequent activity drought and flooding. Some of my current and future characters started on that site, but I am happy to explore different aspects of them here in a more controlled setting.

If we expand roleplaying to fan fiction, I've been doing various forms of that for ages in writing, doodles, and web comics. I post a weekly video game sprite comic (suffering from gaps as I've spent my reserves) about Shy Guys, those masked Mario enemies. I usually copy and edit sprites from the Mario or Kirby series and some of my favorite fan character creations after the Potterverse ones are the game sprite ones. A bit harder to explain if you don't know the canon of each but they're altogether different yet sometimes similar to the personalities of my AO cast.

As I writer I value both character and plot, for the eccentricities of character and the insanity or twists of plot. Character usually wins out, as I use character to inspire and write plots.

I CAN HANDLE ANY NUMBER OF ACTIVE THREADS, SO DON'T WORRY ABOUT TAXING ME!

[Do you stick to Harry Potter or enjoy other genres as well?] As mentioned, I stick to HP. I listen to the audio books when yardworking. My favorite fan projects are the HPatMethods of Rationality and the Very Potter Musicals. Those other series are defined up there.

[What inspired you to create your characters?] I'll mention each in depth as they come along:

Heliotrope started out as a crazy name, when I was thinking of crazy, wizard sounding names for a fanfic idea. The name is inspired by Terry Pratchett's Thief of Time when the Auditors of Reality took a human form. First there was Myria LeJean, "Myria" for many and "LeJean" a corruption of legion. Other Auditors took color names, like Mr. Red, Mr. Green etc.

So Heliotrope was just a witch, unfamiliar with muggle concepts, with a french sounding name. She was still skinny but she was just a background character.

The fictional "thixophilia" or touching obsession was first inspired by the bizarre mystery games Touch Detective. Touching, to me it seemed, is an often overlooked sensory. I thought of a character so obsessed with touching that running their hands over a rough stone wall or lying in a great mass of fluffy sheets and blankets would be enough to satisfy them. The aftermath of this is that they almost seem catatonic, toned down eventually for Heliotrope as a book dumbness, accounting for her low academic grades.

Being part merperson was the last thing to come to Heliotrope's character. On the other site, I thought of making Heliotrope an actual character but I wanted something more than just a mildly retarded texture obsessed witch. I finally thought of merfolk because of the water slipping powers I had been toying around with. The power (of hers on the other site) is channeling water along the skin and launching it from her hands, kinda a more contact water bending. Making her a functional merfolk was easy, equivocally making her under the permanent effects of Gillyweed yet still able to breath air. After some HP wiki searching, I found Mirabella Plunkett's chocolate frog card. If she had offspring (possible under a magic aided cross biological process) people like Heliotrope could legitimately exist. After all, there are several other half breed characters in the books.

And with that, everything seemed to fall into place. Her touching obsession is due to a life most spent underwater. On dry land, everything feels different to her. Her mother's take on Mirabella's journey causes her not only to be isolated from muggles but also modern wizarding society. Living the life of swimming as other merfolk do, she has no qualms about the future. her upbringing has caused her to be more instinctive then intellectual. Her fascinating working of a length of kelp is inspired from the Stranger Tides PoC movie. Those merfolk use it to similar effect. And if I had found this charming webcomic before my time here, Heliotrope might've had a different personality (read; ripoff). This webcomic is about a man adopting Selkie, a fish person eerily similar to Heliotrope: http://www.selkiecomic.com/

I started with Heliotrope because, I figured, if I could get her to work on this site I'd have no trouble adapting my other OCs. ((In Hindsight: ha ha, I really have a pattern when it comes to new character apps))

Sissel was inspired freshly for this site since I wanted an adult character as I was planning on following younger characters as they grew up. Seeing how the Hogwarts staff was full I started looking through the Ministry of Magic roster. What instantly stood out to me was Time Travel Investigation and Regulation under the Dept of Magical Transportation ((In Hindsight: Really it's in the Department of Mysteries. I started my thoughts under a cataloguing error)). Fitting yet seemingly an invention of fanon. What became was a few ideas of my favorite time travel components and reworkings to a new character.

The names "Sissel" and "Jowd" are taken straight from my favorite DS novel game, Ghost Trick. Sissel is the titular ghost able to manipulate objects and travel back in time to just moments before someone died to save them and overwrite history. Jowd is a central character to the plot and a former detective. While HP verse works with stable time loops, where nothing can be overwritten, Ghost Trick further inspired AO Sissel's methods of investigation using mental and memory time travel. His parents' names, Bailey and Lynne, are also from this game (and the real characters don't have this kind of relationship).

Before the inclusion of the time travel bits, Sissel started as a way to take unique characterizations from another fan character of mine that would by no means fit here: basically Johnny Depp as Cap'n Jack but dressed as Johnny Depp, raising Pygmy Puffs in a blimp that works like the Knight Bus. And he can transfigure himself into a mace. Yeah, the only relation Sissel has to that is the skilled apparation use.

Perhaps the biggest influence on Sissel's character was when I realized Michael J Fox was open on the celeb registry. You can see where this is going: I've basically made Marty McFly if he had grown up in the wizarding world. Fitting for a time traveler, I think. I tweaked his age to ensure slightly older pictures of MJF, from his Spin City days, as opposed to the teenage looking Marty. Other details of my favorite shows or movies round out his history. Sissel, like MJF, was born in Canada. Specifically in Possum Lake and grew up with an uncle that sounds like Red Green. I am not Canadian but many people in my region have an affinity for The Red Green Show. And Sissel's New England pen pal basically tells the story of Donnie Darko from a wizarding perspective. Sissel also has a hint of Doctor Who thrown into him, by personality and dress. I was vacationing in London when David Tennent became the new Doctor and I always found the shows of his I could catch interesting.

Philo has become something of an oddity for me. He was first designed to be an awkward romantic involvement for Obderedria Pienas. The name was just hashed together because of the "Ph=F" sounds. This is also the ruling as to why his family members have names that begin with F or P.

Like so many of my characters, he started as a Hufflepuff because he was interested in boring subjects such as History of Magic or Arithmancy. This also let him be in the same house as the girl he had a crush on, Obderedria. It was pitching Philo in another site's Sorting Ceremony that put him in Ravenclaw, kind of revealing. This allowed an extra barrier to overcome between him and Drea. I left his family as solid Hufflepuffs to clash with his irregular (by comparison) mindset. At the time his puzzle solving nature was downplayed. I'm a big fan of the Professor Layton series of games so I wanted to design a character like the professor. However, this Hogwarts professor/ministry worker felt kind of fake given he and Philo had so much overlap in terms of academics and approaches to magic. To redesign Philo for this site, I modeled his look after Professor Layton's young companion, Luke Triton. This matches the style of dress (Luke wears vests and a satchel bag) and personality (skilled at solving puzzles but easily flustered).

A former play by of Philo's was the youngest picture of Jay Baruchel I could find. For this site, since Philo starts younger, I chose Skander Keynes because his role of Edmund in the Chronicles of Narnia has the right look for Philo.

In various renditions of Philo he's become something of a gadget head, collecting gear and odd familiars. Arlaug, named for a Norse rune, is a Swear Frog as lifted from the Artemis Fowl series, that has Swear Toads. The pairing of a boy with an embarrassing yet in a way freeing pet provides plenty of opportunities. Also, Philo typically comes across the wild Ford Anglia in my tellings. The Flying Ford Anglia is my favorite element from the books and I was sad to see it never appeared again outside of reference. Philo's not much of a fighter, but his method of using his wits and specialized gear in a challenge is reminiscent of Usopp from the manga/anime One Piece, a cowardly slingshot wielding gadget genius in a pirate crew of super-powered badasses.

Upon reflection, Philo shares many similarities with Ron Weasley: large poor family and shadowed by the performances of his older siblings. However the different direction is what will make Philo interesting.

Casey

You might want to read up on his bio to get the full scope of this character.

Would you believe that an intersex individual was created out of indecision? The vaguest concept of Casey began when I was trying to come up with a villain character on that other site before it got boring. I was split; did I go for a Zacahrias Smith/Draco Malfoy sneering grump, or for a seductive royal b!%c# that hexed people if she couldn't charm them. I wasn't interested in making a character that had been done to death before (but then when, dear readers, do I ever?). And then the wild notion entered my head: what if these were two sides of the same coin?

And thus began much research and discussion with the curators. I took strive to keep Casey from becoming an offensive caricature. His condition brought forth a wealth of motivation. The need to prove himself, pushing harder than his weak body will allow. Confusion of starting his life with one identity and being forced by his bigoted, sexist family to be something different before schooling. He wants his past, the key to understanding what he really is, to remain unknown. Casey become a natural actor, knowing when and what to do to impress in true Slytherin fashion.

Once again, Casey started originally as a Hufflepuff (the default house!) when I was outlining a Artemis Fowl like crossover of all of my wizarding world OC's as a secret superhero group. Casey was to fill a thief type role, for in the initial days he could summon a small bit of leprechaun gold. The first rendition of the curse on the O'Dohertys was that the Leprechaun they angered left a genetic imprint on the clan (though Heliotrope is enough of a genetic anomaly for this site). This later became Casey's self taught trick of summoning money and furthered his desire to tackle more complex spell casting. When filling out the bio for this site, it was obvious he should be a Slytherin.

'Casey' was selected because it is a gender neutral name. "O'Doherty" means hurtful; Casey and the rest of the clan don't mind hurting others especially in duels. It provides possibilities for redemption of Casey's part, if he's able to turn his family reputation into something other than vile loan sharks.

As of sources of inspiration for Casey, they have been subtle but made sense after the fact. Casey sounds like a warped version of Draco Malfoy. While he is still abrasive he isn't interested in the purist/Dark Lord mindset, mostly accumulating his own power to branch away from his family. In a way he's akin to Artemis Fowl, my second favorite shlock "new modern" fantasy. Casey doesn't appear to be a teenage criminal genius but he is cunning and powerful with his own skills. Very Potter Musical fans will know that Draco Malfoy is played by the cross-cast Lauren Lopez and one of the more brilliant characters in the series. Although it's a girl playing Draco, it's never made apparent in the show since Draco acts enough like a boy and (SPOILER!) is part elf. Musical!Draco is a much more sympathetic character, and hopes for Casey is to be a more tragic, sympathetic character.

Overall I haven't had much luck on finding the perfect playby, so a chose this off list child actor Adam Smith just cause the role had him in a boarding school, so he came in a suit. Any ideas out there let me know.

Dingy

Ever note how House Elves on this site are mentioned in passing? Well now there's one in a secondary role! Dingy arrived late to the party on the Casey creation discussion and provides the perfect complement, especially if we view Casey and Dingy as a redemptive!-type Draco and Dobby.

This fan speculation article entitled The Servant Problem is a well supported theory of what and why House Elves are in the potterverse as we are more familiar with the extreme cases such as Dobby and Krecher, who disliked their masters; and the drama from Winky on being fired from the Crouches. In this way Dingy becomes a morality pet for Casey, as being the young Slytherin's personal assistant is an altogether less abusive role than waiting on the vile O'Dohertys hand and foot like his parents. Casey realizes how useful Dingy is and underneath it all appreciates the elf's loyalty and service.

Casey and Dingy have grown up together in the middle of things, so to speak, and relate to each other more frequently than Casey tries to relate to other people.

And Dingy allows me to bring my doodling skills to the test! He was a doodle on a school notebook when thinking of other household items house elves might dress themselves in and a pot helmet was irresistible. It gave way to the names "Dingpot" and "Dingy", with his nature of having things bounce off his helmet with a distinctive sound. He was scanned, traced, and colored by me on GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), something I use more for video game sprite comics then traditional artwork.

Obderedria

I will admit Obderedria first entered my head as an odd doodle but she has become much more precious than that. She started out as a doodle of a chubby, 5th year or later something student with thick framed glasses and polka dotted hair. The idea was, if muggles streaked their hair, witches would do something eccentric like polka dot their hair. This being a pencil sketch, her hair color could have been anything. I think it was black with red dots at first, although brown and green eventually stuck.

So Obderedria on AO is my attempt to add body diversity in a positive light to our melting pot. Making her younger then previous renditions aids with this as it made me further develop the qualities that make her human. Imagination is an important part of her character, allowing me to play with her imaginary friend...who knows how long things remain imaginary in the wizarding world? A previous playby for an older Drea was Jennifer Stone, here the playby of Winnie Oliver. Stone was my first pick solely because of an early role of hers on the medical drama "House." For AO, I found the young America's Got Talent winner Bianca Ryan who has the round face I was looking for with Drea. That added to Obderedria's musical talents (and you should listen to Bianca sometime, her voice is amazing). The picture that highlights Drea's bio is perfect for how I want to define her: slightly shy but imaginative and enthusiastic.

And how about that name? I think I justified it somehow on being corruptions of old root words that meant "obesity" and "feasting" respectively. It just sounded wizarding like, a highly unusual name. The nickname Drea came from a fellow roleplayer on another site and I'm ever the happier for it, saving Obderedria from much of the humiliation she seems set up to face.

There are many things I can identify with Drea. One being her pet, basically the kitten form of a former cat of mine. Another is being the single child of a single mother. My dad is known to me by just a name but I've never regretted not having a father. Since I was raised this way why should I see it as a problem. I have no idea who Drea's father is. That might make for some interesting stories down the road. I also got glasses and contacts at a relatively young age. This was something dropped early on with Drea, when I realized it would be hard to find the perfect playby for her to match glasses and all physical characteristics, excluding spots. I've also had an immense cast of imaginary friends, creativity which I find benefital towards becoming a writer.

I've wanted Obderedria on the site for a while but getting Heliotrope sorted out and some cast diversity became priority. I suppose not having her around has helped Philo be one of my rare quickly accepted submissions, as I didn't need to explain his origins of dealing with the issues of young love with the added bit of having a crush on Drea. This has been more to benefit, as you can see above how Philo has become his own character from an origin of "awkward love interest."

As with many of my characters, they are personal challenges to write complete dynamic characters, with some significant trait or appearance, that with a less skilled approach would become a limiting defining feature.

Anadotti

Well, can a writer say when a character is a mistake? Unlike all of my other characters, that I've used in another rpg or fan fiction or even as character concepts for the longest time, Dotty is neither. I suppose it happened when at a point I decided no more characters (I actually do have a cast limit in mind, and Anadotti is the first of the last 2.5). Somehow I was thinking "what would be the coolest animal to turn into?" and I thought squirrel, no Flying Squirrel because you could glide and climb stuff. What would this animagus be like? Well, like a squirrel, she would be incredibly nutty and sporadic and wild, maybe a criminal that's been on the run for so long and OH NO I'VE CREATED ANOTHER CHARACTER!!

So I had a tone of what this character was like but the specifics still needed to be worked out. Squiggs came first, just because it sounded like the worst name ever. Like someone is yelling "SQUIGGS!" at her when they're tired of her antics. I figured Dotty would be a fitting name for such a nutty individual and the moment I thought of justification "Anadotti" popped in there with the exact spelling.

Dotty only became a viable character option when I pitched a few things in the cbox. In initial imaginings I was thinking of a woman with brown hair and in earth tones, as if she was splattered with mud from living in the woods. Someone on the cbox that night (Thea? SJ? Thanks to whoever) was searching possible play-bys and suggested alternative model Rachel Dashae. I was shocked by the following link, black hair not being what I was thinking of, but the more I looked at Dashae's work (that was Safe for Work) the more I was taken with her gothic beauty.

This was rather a reversal in creation. Normally I outline everything to a character and then struggle to find an applicable face claim. This time I started with the tone of "criminal, nut-job, squirrel" and the appearance of Rachel Dashae to fill in the blanks. Her heart and star tattoos were added to Anadotti, and the love of unpractical shoes. Even at the zero hour of submitting her application was still adding information. Like matching Rachel's measurements: she's actually really short IRL and her voice is surprisingly sweet, as I heard on a youtube clip. Not quite so with Anadotti.

Looking back, Dotty reminds me of another social deviant character in a few of my original works. Tilly, a punk-like neon orange and blue haired girl with a mile long sarcastic streak, few morals and a shoulder bag filled with cans of soda. Dotty is much more delinquent.

There's also some parallels to HP and AO canon. Dotty makes me think of Bellatrix LeStrange but not as single minded or just anyone's lap dog. And Dotty is similar to Heliotrope in a way, very natural and animalistic in motives, though Helio is coming from a merperson learning about being human whereas Dotty is a human transformed into an animal.

So even if the character is unexpected, who's to say we can't still have fun?

Mace

Allow me to quote myself:

Before the inclusion of the time travel bits, Sissel started as a way to take unique characterizations from another fan character of mine that would by no means fit here: basically Johnny Depp as Cap'n Jack but dressed as Johnny Depp, raising Pygmy Puffs in a blimp that works like the Knight Bus. And he can transfigure himself into a mace. Yeah, the only relation Sissel has to that is the skilled apparation use.

Well, I guess he fit in after-all.

Milton "Mace" Steinbeck is a newly christened former character of mine named "Masher" Steinbeck, that guy raising pygmy puffs in a blimp. And that's all you need to know, he was a Cap'n Jack like wild card with an usual ability developed at the former site he was at, being able to transform part of his body into a weapon. Mostly inspired as the idea was pitched, the name Masher came from mace wielding enemy in the Kirby games, as Steinbeck's signature weapon was a mace, the ol' spiked ball and chain. Ironically Masher is a nickname in baseball, something added as I expanded his profile, but nowadays in slang that can demoralize anything "Masher" has unnaturally violent undertones not all a part of Mr. Steinbeck's personality (curse you Urban Dictionary!!). Steinbeck was lifted from John Steinbeck, who famously wrote Of Mice and Men (the idea of a character liking soft little animals was a subconscious connection, I think, when M.B. was first designed).

The path to expand upon Mace was a familiar one explored whenever I recycle a character. With the anticipation of the TWT I was mostly worried about including a staff member. At the knowledge of the how the two TWT slots worked for characters I thought of adding a student. The question of who was just that, I figured it would be American...and like I've done before, I dropped the character's age to make Mace a graduating student. I wasn't sure if I could still use Johnny Depp as a PB or not, it looks like he's been used a few times in past characters on AO. He was off the list when I submitted Mace's bio, so good al around, as I found pictures of younger Depp in the 80s with and without facial hair.

Rebuilding Mace, I emphasized his choice of alternative interests, a good student but slacking academics in favor of unusual skills that would only get by at SWIM. Proto-Steinbeck went to Durmstrang but that would never fly at the AO telling of the school: Mace would be sitting contentedly at the bottom of the Strata. At SWIM his oddball nature is more accepted.

Mace is also a rarity in characters of mine, one without major plans for future plots or a certain direction to head. I'm interested to see how his goofiness comes out on the site.

Gerard was a character I was never sure if I would make or not. No single character was the first inspiration, rather a tone. I've always had a minor interest in psychology though I never made a major of it. A long, long time ago I was wondering of ever having a healer character, and the thought was doing the magical world's take on the Mind. I collected many canon or fanon sources of mind, mood or memory alteration; those Cheering Charms, Sleeping Draughts, Sanus and Legillimency had to be put to good use to somewhere, right? The character was still very vague, and perhaps Belgian, owing to a lot of David Suchet Hercule Poirot mysteries I was watching at the time. And perhaps, he lost himself in helping others to escape his own past.

Still, sometimes a character isn't a character until you can visualize what they look like in your head. I had no clue who this 'Gerard' would be until watching Liam Neeson's Unknown and being blown away by the film's twist, which I won't spoil but it rang true to those thoughts above.

After thinking in terms of Mr. Neeson, more of Gerard Gries came together. I think I first made to call him Jerald but I kept spelling it with a G. Gerard was shunted off to the side, though, never becoming a priority for a new character. Until the talk of the TWT came along. With some not as long ago but still time past discussions with a few curators, I knew the option for creating characters in each school's delegation would open at some point, so I prepared Gerard behind the scenes. Even before Mace, who I only adapted after the official TWT character opens were made.

Gerard has gone through many changes as I sought the right tone for him. Early history had his wife and child's death during Voldemort's takeover of the Ministry, as that Gerard was a England resident and worked in the Thoughts Chamber. However, to change him for the TWT it would be a point of contention to have the story play out thus, especially if Gerard was to be trusted to work at Beauxbatons for changing his citizenship. As for what his role would be, during our Beauxbatons pre-discussions it became apparent that a different support staff would be needed for the test heavy exemplarily education, so Gerard became an Academic Advisor. While he likely won't be used for medical-type stories, I wanted to give the impression of a very powerful wizard self-restrained with dedication and ethics.

Ligeia

Whether recycled from elsewhere (Helio, Drea, Philo, Mace) or created fresh for AO (Sissel, Casey, Dingy, Dotty, Gerard) all of my characters previous to this point have one thing in common: from the outset of their conceptualization, they were always meant to be Potterverse fanon characters. Ligeia is different, something from a personal work I've developed long before AO but given new life to bring her to the site.

There is this one novel I hope to publish someday, a mild fantasy centered around a 13-year old named L_____. L- is the albinistic spoiled noble's daughter, a very gloomy individual who considers her role in society to be pointless and considers herself a failure to her parents because she has to shy away from the light and isn't a traditional beauty. Now in this fantasy, there really isn't magic. Some people are said to lead charmed lives but there is none of the 'wands and lights' magic in HP. Then L- is 'adopted' by a vulture she calls Buzzard and develops the ability to interact with the dead. Like discovering a sarcastic severed head in the garden, seeing the ghost of a woman trapped in a mirror, tracking an invisible poltergeist that possesses objects, bringing dead plants back to life, hearing a walled-up skeleton rattling inside a closet. She eventually runs away from home to see if she can do something more, as there are reports of an army of the 'undead' headed by a warlock, and she runs into a battalion captained by a strategy genius her age looking to defeat this evil wizard. It's not as it appears, as the 'magic' between L-, the captain prince and the warlock is an innate control over different aspects of the life and death cycle.

As L- stands in this novel, she's like an odd mix of Drea and Casey, an unusual looking individual looking for some kind of purpose. The attraction to write characters like L- or Ligeia is to create respectable heroic characters with albinism, when the idea of the "evil albino" has become such a horrid cliche. I've done my research on the condition for L- and the same holds true for Ligeia.

So where did Ligeia begin? Just when I thought I had my content cast size, all the characters I could possible plan already planned out, several things lined up at once: Halloween, catching the Addams Family movies on TV, Poe and the Romantic unit in American Literature. I think it was Madeline (Mary Beth, the Wards, etc.) that said there should be a Salem's character like the Addams Family in the cbox after I was gushing about seeing the movies for the first time in full, I'd only ever seen the tv sitcom. Sadly Mace and Gerard were already in but I liked the notion. And then, bizarrest of bizarre thoughts while looking back through my digital archives, I remembered my ghostly white girl L- up there. Cue maniacal laughter! I wasn't convinced that I could adapt L- in if I wanted to have that novel stand on it's own accord, so her personality and name needed to be changed.

That's when Poe fell across my lap and the name Ligeia was so sweet sounding. Because my previous students were so young, I wanted Ligeia to be older. It also made sense for her to be a pureblood, since a half-blood or muggle born wouldn't as likely have her aesthetic and antiquity. So I sought out fellow authors if there was a way to add Ligeia to their families instead of adding a new Pureblood name to the pile. I give the sincerest thanks to Thea for working with me on this and adding "Polly Esther" Ligeia Canterbury to Griffon Manley's extended family. Ligeia simply exploded off the page when I siphoned her off from L- becoming the Addams-esque Perky Goth student I cannot wait to post with. To keep her from being a bad, Dark interested individual, I made her Ravenclaw though Gryffindor was also compelling. I find I like exploring the other houses more since we've seen so much of the Gryffindor perspective in the canon works.

But another challenge to overcome: what to do for a playby? I prefer to have some kind of real world representation, even when I just pick some random child star that had the 'look' for Casey at my wit's end. Finding an albinistic woman for Ligeia seemed even more impossible. Some odd google and wiki searching lead me to Connie Chiu, a woman to be admired. She's a Chinese albinistic model whose family moved to Sweden for better weather to suit her condition. She has some very stunning pictures and while in some you can distinctively tell her Asian heritage, I found the most fitting ones to use for Ligeia's pictures. After all, I use minimal shots of Helio's and Casey's playbys on the site.

As it is with many writers, each of my characters is very dear to me, as I like to create many characters in my fictions, never satisfied with anything flat or static even if they are a one time use character. So, in this swan song of my Character Origins thread, I thank the curators and authors of AO for being an awesome place to write and allowing me to take an almost forgotten character and christen in a new light.

Beverly

Ligeia was my last primary character. I didn't say anything about secondaries! ((Excluding Mr. Professional Quidditch only Foster Falkin. As he's only used for one singular venue, I see him more as an expended NPC, since it made the most sense to use a family member of Philo I had developed.))

So you all might be thinking 'just where did Beverly come from?' It was, dear reader, inspiration of the theatrical kind. When I first started role playing as Obderedria on another site, I attended a production of Harvey at my local community college. I had never seen the play before and was instantly taken with it. Now, the play does reference the traditional púca but calls it 'pooka' and for the comedic purposes of the play changes the trickster to an 'invisible giant rabbit.' The story is written, in part, based off of púca encounter tales but the main focus is the human and obviously visible cast. We'll get more into authenticity later.

It the play, pooka are suggested to be drawn to social misfits or eccentrics. And I just so happened to have an unsure of herself Hufflepuff. And in an instant, Drea was going to be befriended by a pooka. After all, on this site I was at anything goes so Beverly...just showed up out of the blue, giant invisible anthropomorphized rabbit. I didn't really have a reason for her to be there except that she liked Drea and she would be the external motivator pushing the Hufflepuff girl outside of her comfort zone.

Now, even back then I looked more into púca legends. Much of the celtic mythos is very detailed and fascinating, even more so than the 'distilled and dressed up' versions that JKR came up with for her comprehensive world. Say Selkies, for instance...Heliotrope should technically be quarter seal. Selkies are half women, half seal like the centaur version of an aquatic mammal. By Potterverse standards, Selkies are grey skinned mermaids with green or purple hair. Púca, as nature spirits, can take the form of any animal but are originally horses and are both feared and revered in different tales.

So in my early months here, I knew I couldn't have Beverly show up right off the bat with Drea. I didn't want to, in fact. But the idea of her was still there all along. As I worked to create more depth to Drea I also did to Beverly. That Beverly was Drea's 'imaginary pen pal' and maybe, or maybe not, Beverly was an actual púca somewhere. I've spent over 3/4ths of a year IRL leaving hints that there might be something more to Beverly. Drea's letters that serve as journals, her first thread on site in the Owlery. I initially threw in a 'response from Beverly' for fun when I saw the Charms final used invisible messages. But all of those, I've fit seamlessly into Beverly's recent history. You want to talk bookends? Beverly is the second character of mine to appear onsite, and I never planned it! Kat, when she included Dilly in Heliotrope's first thread, suggested that there was a kelpie in the lake. Cue a plot that went nowhere on where this mysterious kelpie came from. But now, as I revised and nailed down Beverly and Drea's history, the material was there for the 'kelpie' to be Beverly, as traditional kelpies and púca, being fairy water horses, have some close similarities (like púca generally refrain from eating their passenger after dumping them into the water, not so with the kelpie).

That's the magic of AO right there. A random suggestion from someone can spark one of the most interweaving plots.

But still, what to do about Beverly? While the Harvey-style was her inspiration and a source of her personality, it's tough and at times too distracting or overpowered to pull off. It works if you think púca, being shape-shifters, can transform into anything based on natural animals, which was my initial thought. But having Beverly 'selectively invisible' really limits the playability of her.  And I still wanted to emulate more of the old legends than cartoony antics, even if the latter served nicely if Beverly was a guardian to Drea. I thank Mai for a lot of pointers and insights. After much mulling and brainstorming, I happened upon an arrangement that would let me keep the Harvey view of púca I had long been visualizing for Beverly but remain true to original mythos. The fact that Beverly IS NOT a giant rabbit but Drea falsely SEES her as one. An inversion, nay a deconstruction of the Harvey pooka yet still able to create a similar plot.

For the longest time I wanted the IC and OOC revelation of Beverly to occur at the same moment. This is quite the folly, as having Beverly as an NPC for most of the school year when I want certain antics out of her is very hard to pull off with other authors. So Beverly is an unassuming regular looking black rabbit. Or moth. Or horse, for others to interact with.

---

With the last piece of my entire cast pulling things together, this really is the last post you'll be seeing in this Character Origins thread. With this full spectrum I will continue to entertain, delight, support, and make AO even more awesome.

Feel free to slap me if I ever talk about another character 

Feel free to slap me if I ever talk about another character 

Hold off on that dozen-year slap until I get to an actual new character.

---

Adopting Gloria
If I had written this closer to my college years, it would be a lot more accurate. This shall be to the best of my recollection. To talk about why I adopted Gloria, I first have to mention what my cast of characters became outside of AO.

By the time I settled into a Creative Writing degree, I was attending Hamline University in St. Paul, MN. I could never take to poetry and creative non-fiction was uninteresting to me at the time. The archetypes of my cast were used in new ways during some of my course projects, along with original works at the time:

• In Middle Grade fiction, a starting concept became a term project that sees an overweight, easily bullied girl (“Drea”) befriend an androgynous kid (“Hexy”) and in revisions, a spacey natural athlete (“Helio”) over a shared dreaded swimming unit in gym class. Exploring issues of self-esteem, body image, bullying, and standing up for others even if you don’t know their identifiers.
• In Young Adult fiction, a teenager affected by albinism (“Ligeia”) and unusual family dynamics was taken far more dramatically. In something of a semi-rural, magical realism mystery involving the death of a popular high school student. Besides a reputation of being ‘new age carnival freaks’ at their trailer park given her aged father retired from the circus, she also feels isolated from being a conduit to interact with the dead, a sort of necromancer.

In the Middle Grade course, many were surprised how fully I went into the mindset of a 6th grade girl. I explained the years of writing collaborative fan-fiction on a role-play site had given me plenty of writing practice. Rebecca (Becky) was a classmate intrigued by this as we shared a few fandom interests including Harry Potter. She started writing Gloria in the then 4th year for the Class of '13.

With our university work we didn't have the time to plan for anything specific on Absit Omen, but I'd let her know of new threads or highlight something she'd written that I found fun. As the guy with half-a-billion plot notes, seeing what she was doing with Gloria was a breath of fresh air. Rebecca just wanted to write with Gloria and see what happened.

She was a fan of the Chronicles of Narnia, as it had been some years since 2010's Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Lucy Pevensie was her favorite character, so the Gerogie Henley influence was strong even then. I joked that AO had a lot of face claims from the 2000s films; I had settled on young Will Poulter for Casey, Skander Keyenes for Philo, Liam Neeson voiced Aslan (and my friend Gemini had an animagus lion!); furthermore, Nuri's Ira Almasy used Tilda Swinton (the White Witch) and William Moseley (Peter Pevensie) was used by somebody. Can't remember if Anna Poppelwell or Ben Barnes have been referenced here.

I'm actually quite the Narnia fan. I read the books with my grandmother as a kid and my most cherished set of my VHS collection is the 1988-90 BBC TV series when I was growing up. And one of my favorite actors, Warwick Davis, played roles in both cinematic Narnia interpretations besides his roles in the Potter films, among others.

Rebecca and I didn't share any other courses after Middle Grade fiction, although we'd see each other in the building sometimes besides the brief AO connection. My biggest regret is not staying in touch with her, along with others in our writing circle from other fiction classes. There was a Lydia, a single mother with a fun nickname (Devo?), two guys, one named Chris and one obsessed with the novel "House of Leaves" (if not the same guy).

One of the last times we talked, I was trying to get active on AO again. It had been a fun experiment for Rebecca writing Gloria but she was no longer interested. I offered to adopt her to carry on the legacy. Because there's a lot in her original bio (kept linked in her signature) that I found clever.

Gloria is as spunky as any in Gryffindor yet the potential emotional extremes for her between friends and enemies sounded fun. She's tried almost every elective course and club at school trying to find what interested her. She babbles and blurts out what's on her mind before her raised hand is called upon in class. She somehow stumbles into a lot of allusions to other fiction for someone magically raised (Slitheen-erins and Keymasters/Gatekeepers in Divination) whether or not her muggle friends tell her about television. And the Gibbon name, borrowed from a background Death Eater, is brilliant yet under-utilized for linking a fan character to canon.

I've tried to keep as much original flavor Gloria adapting her in the modern setting. The most I've honed is the occupations of her parents and relation to her DE uncle. And that they found faith when hiding during the Second War, Christian if leaning to a magical/Narnia-esque interpretation given their background for how Gloria’s beliefs come across. Runes was a temptation for her career although her dynamics in Arithmancy classes showed promise, as it’s somewhat unexpected to have become a better class for her.

And this openness to her character has made her the easiest to write in this new era of AO. Unlike the revisions or pitfalls as I update my cast. It's also why I haven't established who Gloria's younger siblings are. The invitation for anyone who would like to join in this story is as open as the invitation to write her that Gloria's original author gave me.

*SLAP!*
And with that out of the way...

J. Harlan Gregory Vemulakonda

Harlan has quite the lengthy origin. During the latter half of our time at Absit Omen, my friend Gemini and I were developing a fanfic epic based on both the Potterverse and the Persona series. Ever since Gemini introduced me to the series, I’ve been keen on finding the tarot arcana motifs that best fit my characters’ personalities and storylines.

This “Persona: Hogwarts” was centered on Gemini’s rendition of Ted Lupin as a Gryffindor, written before anything of Fantastic Beasts or Persona 5 was even hinted at. In fact, we found that Ted’s canon entry to Hogwarts in 2009 overlaps part of the calendar used in Persona 3. The basic gist of these plots sees Japanese high school students battle symbolic representations of humanity’s worst traits, or Shadows, in some sort of other realm. Each game since Persona 3 sees the protagonist transfer to a new school and recruit others able to combat Shadows, while the day by day gameplay sees them confront various mysteries alongside life at the school they attend. Furthering your relationships with both party members and side characters directly affect the combat sections of the game.

We had about three quarters of the saga outlined over various google docs before we slowly drifted away from it. In combining our casts, we found that a few more key characters were needed. We had even reached out to past member Amara, who wrote the Báthory sisters Amara and Emilia (NPC). Emilia was made to be Ted’s age, and I added “Harlan Gregory” to complete the trio. The three were thrust into a strange adventure supported by several older students, basically all our shared characters. Milton Steinbeck and Taryn Dickinson, from Salem’s, were revamped into Gryffindors at NEWT level, contemporary with Ligeia; Helio Drea and Philo were third years; Casey and Alvis Norling were 5th years. Sissel Jowd and Eha Farro were the team’s handlers. “Team Evil” included a villain manipulating/directing the likes of Anadotti, Gemini’s Darius Gabor, family of Dione Sayer and even some of Amara’s characters.

The Tarot Motifs of the Game/Fanfic:

• 0 - The Fool: Ted Lupin, the Wildcard of the story
• I - The Magician: Philo Falkin, the first abductee in the main plot of student disappearances
• II - The Priestess: Dione Sayer, peer to Ted & co
• III - The Empress: there was a false path with the villainess of the piece, related to Dione. The true path was with Headmistress Minerva McGonagall
• IV - The Emperor: the Woodward cousins Felinus and Silas
• V - The Hierophant: This was given to Sissel given his role as History professor with Dept of Mysteries related insights. Ideally I would have given it to Gerard, but there was no good way of fitting him into the narrative
• VI - The Lovers: Victoire Weasley. Our cheeky nod to the canon epilogue. Ted wrote letters to Victoire, who was too young to attend school
• VII - The Chariot: a werewolf student wizard made unwitting pawn of Team Evil, although I'd say this is Sissel's actual arcana
• VIII - Strength: Taryn Dickenson, part of Sissel's original group exploring forgotten areas in Hogwarts, early party member
• IX - The Hermit: Alvis Norling, third abductee of the main plot
• X - The Wheel of Fortune: Heliotrope LeJean, surprise early party member, then fourth abductee of the main plot
• XI - Justice: Harlan Gregory, Ted's friend and initial party member along with Emilia
• XII - The Hanged Man: Casey O'Doherty/Hexy, the two aliases are met independently until things come to a head during Casey's chapter, being the seventh student abduction and last party member recruited this way
• XIII - Death, sometimes the nameless card: a miserable witch who is a friend of Ligeia's, the ninth abductee and tied to major spoilers
• XIV - Temperance: Milton "Mace" Steinbeck, part of Sissel's old group and early party member like Taryn
• XV - The Devil: a contemporary witch of the NEWT generation, a troublemaker who gets an ego check from encounters with Anadotti Squiggs (who becomes one of the first adult abductees late in the year, tenth overall)
• XVI - The Tower: Eha Farro, a young auror on the castle's protection detail who reluctantly trains the student party members. Her past with Darius Gabor comes to a point during his abduction, the eleventh in the main plot
• XVII - The Star: Ligeia Canterbury, has narrative ties to the original team with Taryn and Mace but isn't a party member until after her abduction, the sixth in the main plot
• XVIII - The Moon: Obderedria Pienas, the second student abduction in the main plot
• XIX - The Sun: Emilia Báthory, Ted's friend and initial party member along with Harlan; her sister Amara becomes the eighth abductee in the main plot
• XX - Aeon (The Thoth deck): a ghost haunting the castle that Ted befriends. Also tied to major spoilers, as this arcana is "outside context" card of different interpretations of the commonly seen arcana in this slot, Judgement
• XXI - The World: an endgame arcana tied to mastering the journey, usually unlocked in the true ending path. We had it represent the perfected resolve of the main party, usually seen as the Judgement arcana in Persona games

Early on, I knew Harlan was British Indian. He very much fit the ‘lancer’ role seen in both Harry’s friends and the initial trios of the Persona games. Usually, the first companion the Protagonist meets will eventually have a story beat about feeling second banana to the heroic efforts of the MC. There was a similar format to Ted Lupin, Emilia Báthory and Harlan Gregory in this fanfic. His battle gimmick, if this were an RPG, was that he didn’t begin with access to the advanced magic the rest of the party used. He would fight the Shadow enemies with a backpack of experimental fireworks lent to him by George Weasley. Feeling jealous of Ted’s natural abilities, he’d have a brief falling out with him a third to halfway through the story. Getting over these grievances would give him the opportunity to use the magic the rest of the party could access.

Compared to any other character invented for this saga, Harlan was a central character and thus the most interesting. Minimal was known about his family as it was distant to the school’s setting. His father was a diplomat, with possible turmoil in career affecting Harlan’s time at school. So I delved deeper into his initial traits and the themes of the Justice Arcana to submit him to the site as a new character. As to why he likes fireworks so much, looking into the origins of Diwali and its many variations in traditions gave me some more material to work with into his background.

I also wished to keep Harlan as his name yet he should also have an Indian name. And while the naming convention for him and his sister is unconventional, I do have some real world inspiration. I have an extended cousin who grew up in the Midwest before she married an Indian Christian pastor. Their timezone is shared with Kolkata when I program my world clock. They run an orphanage in India but each of their own children have a ‘Christian’ name for their middle name. Harlan preferring to go by this name touches upon his central conflict as a child with dual citizenship growing up in different societies. Still very much a supportive friend and jokester, yet often sticking on first impressions to the point of folly.

Karan Brar was found as a play by because some of his younger roles matched artwork Gemini had made for the Persona: Hogwarts project. I seem to be finding actors from an era of the Disney Channel I've never followed, like Kenton Duty for Casey's new masculine FC as an adult joining Quinn Shephard as the feminine FC. Harlan is aged up from his 1st year origins and obviously is now of a very different generation than the cast he was part of. So while he's been unknown in regards to Absit Omen, I feel its fitting to use Harlan as a new character upon my return.

I tend to hold off on roleplaying characters until they become fully realized people in my head. Not just a character in a narrative. Harlan's always meant to come here, perhaps, because he belonged here even though I didn't let him. There's plenty story for him even removed from a series fusion fan fic. While Gemini and I had some plot parallels to stories we had been a part of at AO, it wasn't only to recycle ideas. Absit Omen has THE greatest community of writers, past and present, of fandom roleplaying sites I've seen anywhere. The longevity of the site, yet still being welcoming to new writers as stories take on new forms, is a real blessing.

A blessing I wouldn't want to take for granted.

Ursula S

Ursula is the youngest of my new cast, yet ironically the oldest character concept. Twice in the mid Twenty-Teens various AO members of the time tried to come together to sketch out a large family of numerous siblings attending Hogwarts. These never did pan out but whenever the topic came around I had the idea to use one of my wacky student prompts.

I had an ideal cast size in mind as of Ligeia’s introduction. Back when there were limits on accounts such secondary characters, something of a precursor to the NPC accounts. As mentioned previously Milton and Gerard were designed for the Tournament arc, while Dinghee, Beverly and Martin extended from Casey and Obderedria’s stories. When thinking of a new student for the big family talks I had several of my prompts that were tempting: the COLLECTOR, a beak nosed girl whose family ran a luggage company so she saved everything to the point of hoarding; the GUMSHOE, a self styled private eye whose monologues were typed on an enchanted typewriter; or the DEBUTANTE, a ludicrously wealthy heiress with extravagant desires for luxury. Even the TRAVELER has a few elements that have now blended into Harlan.

Yet for the proposed ‘baby of the bunch’ I kept coming back to The Hag. Toned down to be briefly captured by hags as a toddler, when she lost her arm, but loving the affection from all her older siblings. I only had her nickname, ‘Gnarfang,’ as no family names had been decided yet, and the possible FC of Mara Wilson via her role as Matilda. And she was either related by blood or adoption to her siblings, it was immaterial at the time.

Returning to the site in 2024, ‘Gnarfang’ remained prevalent enough to be considered for a new student. I was still unsure on a name, Agatha was another possibility because of the obvious pun given her fascination with hags. I was working on her and Harlan’s applications at the same time. I put out early feelers if anybody had an opening in their AO families to place her, like I had done for Ligeia with Thea’s blessing. Then one of the nights I was looking at the blank sections of her bio, with her unknown origins, and I thought: what if that’s the core focus of her story?

Cue some patented “Will nonsense” to set up the mystery for Ursula’s origins being somewhat ambiguous In Character. That her physical appearance and cultural background don’t mix. Czechia was selected for where she was discovered to honor my late grandmother, as our family is Czech from her immigrant parents. I’ve visited twice, hosted by our closest relative, including a family trip during my original years at AO. When looking for an FC Ariel Gade was a flash in the pan child actress with a mix of cute and mischievous looks I could use as Ursula ages. Much like former child actress Brooklynn Proulx represented young Heliotrope.

And now we have come full circle. Ursula could be considered a remix of several elements from the characters I originally introduced as students wrapped up in a new package. She’s also a thematic bookend to starting my cast with Heliotrope because of a few inspirational pieces of media. Ursula borrowing the name of Strougler from the chocolate frog card for Edgar Strougler, Sneakoscope inventor, is from the same collection that gave us Mirabella Plunkett, the witch who fell in love with a merman from Loch Lomond a century before Helio’s mother Danielle. Both are from the Chamber of Secrets games from the 2000s, and the GameCube/Playstation 2 versions are the best paced of the canonical spin-off games in my opinion.

This also extends to one of my favorite webcomics, Selkie, which I first read before Heliotrope was introduced on the site. The main character being a girl of the deep like my Hufflepuff is a clear comparison. But Ursula’s story as a foster kid mirrors those in the comic. We see not only Selkie adapt to her family, but some of her origins teased out over the years along with the families found by other kids from her orphanage.

It’s for this reason that Ursula will be the last student character I design for the site, a fitting end. I’ll likely andopt others into my NPC account but she’ll be the last I design from whole cloth.