Checking In, Updates, and Such

All I really have for you tonight is a blog post, but a blog post with the promise of more to come.  I have tomorrow off, and used my morning to get myself ready to do lots of stuff tomorrow.  So keep an eye out on my YouTube channel, expect some character sketches and drafts on G+(Alturiigo), and hopefully including a surprise from some of my archived(piled in closet or drawer) Visceroth Cluster material.

NaNoWriMo is happening, and while I don't think I'll finish a novel, I've had a story on the backburner and this is as good an excuse as any to work on it.  And work on it I have, through a couple thought-drafts and some sketches(the ones to be on G+).  Anaira Valencia is decidedly the character cast across Aldrin Gant in the story I'm calling "Finding the Sky" as a working title.  This is the "steampunk" story I've been wanting to work on.  The story follows Aldrin Gant, and is told from more or less a limited third-person... I guess you could kind of imagine like a third-person game.

Anaira is a character originally cast in the Visceroth Cluster, as a citizen of the planet Nevus, living in the city of Kinstyr.  She was met in a campaign on the jungle planet of Mure, where she was investigating a company called Pyrcill, which she suspected of producing bioweapons which had caused the local outbreaks.  Upon resolving the investigation of the facility and her goal, she helps the player locate their quest location, and also(can) joins the player's crew.  In the campaign, she also plays a role as a scribe or narrator of sorts, following the player as they uncover... trouble.  Any more than that and you should just play it.

When I started thinking about this story, I wanted a really cool woman to be right there in the main cast, embodying something awesome.  Sorry, I just find that really awesome.  So, not really sorry.  I wasn't sure though how I wanted her to be as a character fully, but I had some ideas.  The phrase "well behaved women rarely make history" is probably well-suited to this character's personality(as a history-maker(writer?)).  I wrote a short bit a while ago as a demo for myself, and was having these thoughts that she might be a journalist or in maybe another way of putting it, a truth-seeker.  Whether she funds herself, has money, works for someone, I'm not fully certain, though, I'm strongly leaning towards freelance.  I realized that this character strongly resembled many of the ideas of Anaira Valencia.

It's not just a recasting of the same character, they rarely ever are, but the inspirations and comparisons I find to be helpful in discovering this character as a new Anaira Valencia.  She has the same beauty mark and they wear their hair similarily, being two examples of inspirations drawn from the design.  In both castings, Anaira wears pants.  I find this especially character driven in this Steampunk casting, since it tends to draws from an older time setting, when it was kind of a big deal for a woman to be a pants-wearer.  I'm not pretending I'm going to write some feminist icon, but I really like this character and she's been fun to get to know and develop.

I'll stop myself here and bid you adieu and good night

Trot On Everypony,

Alturiigo