(Note that for the purposes of making the amount of Fiona used reasonable, the original Fiona will be referred to as PP!Fiona (PunkPunk, the first human OC versions), the adapted Fiona will be referred to as TB!Fiona (TreBoot, the newer story))
(Also note that Gwen is referred to using they/them pronouns, the gender exploration for them is still happening but they’re at a confident she/they starting out)
One thing I focused on when creating the characters and setting for my TreBoot story is to honour everything I had created before it, the mix of fantasy (The Original MLP OCs), contemporary (PunkPunk, the human reinvention), and dystopian future (FuturePunk, the decedents) in a time crash type world with the original OCs (Haloes, Peter, and Wendy, all created in 2013/2014).
The thing is that further down the line, I didn’t know what to do with Fiona, I mean, I’d always wanted to do some silly concept doodles of her but I didn’t know if I would draw just the existing version in the TreBoot world or make a version that would fit the differences within the world. I pondered for a while before I had a thought, why not both?
First I created TB!Fiona, she looks like PP!Fiona but has the big twist of being a polar opposite, like injected her with Oliver Twist or something, twists all around! The reason for her existing is magic, not like I don’t have a reason but during a rather intense moment, her father, Peter Colour, warped reality in a panic and accidentally created her, fully formed as a teenager. Her personality is a mix of PP!Fiona as well as the people Peter was actually trying to save in his reality warp, this is indicated visually by the thread she uses to repair her clothes matching the characters.
- PP!Fiona’s Shockingly optimistic outlook and ability to instantly to instantly charm anyone she meets
- Haloes’ desire to help those in need no matter the personal cost
- Peter’s smarts, the desire to learn and teach what has been learned
- Wendy’s guts, to throw herself at anything that comes at her
- Mapel’s (Note, new character for this story), instinct to put everything on her own back
And while she has PP!Fiona’s identity, her backstory is completely different, she grew up on the streets, learning the ways of the world from probably really shady homeless guys but being inspired to be a guiding light for those who had dealt with the world as she had. She makes her own network, earning money and food in exchange for helping out locals (mainly stopping thieves for free food) and taking care of the local little kids that don’t have their own home and teaching them life skills as well as the usual education skills. Despite all that, she can still somehow put an outfit together from discarded clothes and a sewing kit, like her outfit is one of the best I’ve drawn, no version of Fiona can possibly look bad, ever.
So, if Fiona already exists in this story because magic, what the heck happens when Peter has another kid?! Well you get Guinevere Colour, but everyone calls her Gwen, as a point on the name, Gwen and Fiona have similar meanings but I chose Guinevere as she is a push away from the almost purely good image, the Guinevere of legend being portrayed as both a noble lady and completely villainous, while the meaning of Gwen isn’t too dissimilar to Fiona so ya know, similar and different!
So Gwen, they carry most of the history of PP!Fiona, the family, the love and care of a couple of parents really doing their best in a stable environment, the tales of adventure from her father and uncle, the fearless aunt that will charge into anything, the caring older sibling that will always have their back (not the same sibling but close enough). But they have a different identity completely, kinda a ying and yang thing going on with these two.
But one factor that influences Gwen is a different character, from a different age. One thing about Gwen is that her story primarily takes place in the cyberpunk part of the world and well there’s one direct decedent of PP!Fiona that fits the mark, Conner Colour.
Conner is the protagonist of my FuturePunk story, set 200 years in the future of PP!Fiona’s time, he usually quite chill but the moment events start to touch on the place he calls home, he charges in, he cares a lot and is repeatedly punched into the dirt for it but in the end he ends up as a larger than life hero in a world where heroes have been extinct for a long time. By the time he gets his big break, he’s been traumatised and punished for pushing back.
Now unlike most of my major characters and unlike Conner, one thing I want to make clear is that Gwen is a street level character, her family might have been fighting gods and the like but she is on the streets of the city doing jobs. This is like going from Avengers to Daredevil, which is a good transition into something I wanted to highlight, Gwen has a disability, a bit over a year before the story starts, her right foot is lost in a car accident. Gwen took a cybernetic foot over just healing it up (her aunt is a cleric with god and anime on her side so it would have been simple to heal) however, Gwen has the unique weakness that lightning and electrical attacks short out her cyber foot, this happens to her aunt Wendy as well but Wendy has magic and can just zap her cybernetics to start them back up, Gwen’s foot has to do a full self repair cycle before being usable again. In universe this weakness is believed to be due to her father’s side of the family having magical blood so she channels the zap and it strikes the foot. Having a cybernetic is similar to Conner but for him, it’s just a way to hit harder, for Gwen, it is a concern and a real weakness, if her foot goes down, she has a backup stand she can deploy from her foot connector but it throws off her balance and she loses her big damage dealer in a brawl. She does learn to handle herself without her foot but there’s a difference between handling herself and getting the job done.
A more easy comparison between Conner and Gwen is that they both express their gender outside of the norm. Conner is a strange case that I jokingly describe as “The only cis man in a gender fluid world”, he’s part alien (blame PP!Fiona for this, she’s the one that had babies with an alien) shapeshifter, most of the aliens are either agender or genderfluid (note, there are human non-binary characters in this story) but Conner rejects this norm to the point that he completely forgoes shapeshifting, even when it would be good for him. Gwen is similar, being Demi and exploring being more masculine some days, she figured something was wrong when she asked a group about having days where being a woman just sounded like forced effort and got a bunch of confused stares back, not really rebellion but just wanting to feel comfortable in their own skin, even without having a real guiding light on what they are or feeling in the moment. They also have a stubborn pride to take help even when they need it. The only real freebees they take are the cybernetic foot itself and the training from aunt Wendy to learn how to use it, they even take living in a cramped apartment with 5 others over just asking for help from their family. Conner being stubborn in his ideals, pushing forward or taking the impact himself, even when it’s a terrible idea is reflected in Gwen, whereas someone like PP!Fiona would call for help, Gwen and Conner take whatever it is head on without regrets.
I will say that the Fionas and Conner are some of my fav characters of mine and I hope that Gwen is at least as good as those that have inspired me to make them, if not better! I didn’t even touch on how Gwen fights, that’s because she fights less like her sorcerer family and more of a multistance brawler!