User blog:DustpeltX/The Making Of: Rayne Annarosé

Hey Fanon! Dust here.

I'm sure by now you know the drill, but for those who haven't clicked on these before I'll explain myself again anyway.

These posts are one-half guide and one-half shameless self-promotion/showing off my OCs. I planned to do these as a series and to cover all of my OCs, of which there are only eight, as I re-vamp or create them and try to justify the design choices taken when writing the character. This post will be detailing the revamp and design choices of Rayne Annarosé.

Like before, you are welcome to do the same as I feel it forces critical thinking during character development.

Without further explaination, let's begin!

EXECUTE PROGRAM - SYMBOL
As I said before on the post about my other OC, Heart, I don't write self insert OCs as I feel they quickly become idealized versions of oneself rather than what is evident in reality.

Self-insert OCs are big lies, is what I'm trying to get at.

They also become too complicated and lengthy as they develop , in my opinion,  since people forget that to develop a character isn't to describe everything about them, but rather to follow a very simple set of rules I learned (of which I will never ever forget) during my highschool AP English days.

Your character is defined by:

 * 1) What other characters say about them


 * 1) What your character says about themselves

By following this simple mindset, I believe anyone can write concise characters without overloading on text.
 * 1) Your character's actions

Back to the topic at hand, team HART is my self insert OC with each member representing a core part of me. I've noted that Heart was the manifestation of my anger and passion. In the case of Rayne, she is the culmination of my religious experience.

The closest thing that can describe my religious position would be agnostic, but more acurately, I would have to say that I don't really care if there is a god or not. Rayne represented the evolution of this view through her character development.

Rayne started out as a fanatic, willing to do whatever her religious teachings told her to. It made her hate and kill based off of belief rather than on her own terms. She snapped out of her "delusion" when someone "logical" showed her mercy. In this case, it was Asher, the personification of my logic. She found it hard to comprehend why her sworn enemy would treat her with such mercy and dignity despite her hateful actions and could not admit her feelings for Asher until she admited and confronted her past sins. In Asher, she found a more physical reason to be happy.

This developement was loosely tied to my own experiences growing up as a Catholic. To be honest, I enjoyed that time. It was very comforting to think that there was always someone you could turn to to give you purpose, but it was also sometimes laced with hate.

or and even And I think it was these types of messages that weened me off of the divine path. It was simply contradictory for a religion based around acceptance and love. It was simply illogical. For a good time, I hated religion. I was angered by the hate and discrimination it caused, but over time I didn't think it was fair that I was condemning religion the same way religion condemned secularism. So I confronted that fact myself, admited I was a huge asshole for thinking that way and thought it simple best to ignore the argument all together. For me, it was simply better to find something else in life to give you direction.
 * "You must hate for yourself because some human couple of which you descendaed from several years ago did a bad thing."
 * "You must hate people who do not conform to our ideals of human love."
 * "You must hate yourself for being sexual creatures."

<p style="font-weight:normal;"> In addition, I included the quirk of her only speaking through a note pad as a consequence of her actions. It made her critical of her words as she literally had to write them down and show them.

EXECUTE PROGRAM - DESIGN


<p style="font-weight:normal;margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;">Okay getting the deep stuff out of the way, let's move on to Rayne's physical design. As you know there are two designs that share a similar base.

<p style="font-weight:normal;">I modeled her after probably one of the most interesting characters of the Monogatari Series, namely, the post incident Hanekawa Tsubasa. I seriously loved her design as it was a mix of maturity, symbolism, and cuteness so I could not pass up the opportunity. The second inspiration was that of Death Scythe of Black★Rock Shooter, namely the conservative dress and coat.

<p style="font-weight:normal;">First, let's talk about her initial Pre-Fall of Beacon design.

Clothings
<p style="font-weight:normal;">Stylistically, Rayne was designed to look well dressed and professional. I have a personal rule of not allowing any sort of emotion appear on her face. This was to go along with her "blind follower" persona and I think it worked quiet well.

<p style="font-weight:normal;">The coat was also what spawned the rest of the group she came from as I went on to develop her backstory more. This resulted in the White Truth and their practice of wearing colour coded coats.

Weaponry
<p style="font-weight:normal;">The VIPR is possibly the only weapon where I took the time to research and work out the physical mechanism of a RWBY-style weapon and in the end it told me two things. <p style="font-weight:normal;">Mainly because it had to look cool and also be viable. As cool as scythes are, I just could not bring myself to take anyone of used them seriously. I also could not think of any sort of mechanism that would allow any sort of neat folding on the level of Cresent Rose.
 * 1) I sucked at engineering
 * 2) I did not enjoy designing this weapon

<p style="font-weight:normal;">So I took a loophole instead.

<p style="font-weight:normal;">While scythes were not a viable weapon, war scythes were and were historically used by peasants during uprising. A simple weapon fashioned by modifying actual farming scythes. The war scythe was a perfect base for me to work on. Going back to the tranformation mechanism, I decided to complete ditch the idea in favour of a component based weapon. It was way easier, looked sturdier and provided more options too. It also became part of her character in the sense that Rayne was a very multi-talented fighter and the weapon was part of the reason this is so.

<p style="font-weight:normal;">However, I'm not very satisfied with this weapon looking back at it now. The reason? Tonfas.

<p style="font-weight:normal;">Tonfas have evolved from a exotic weapon to a sort of joke in this community, that and katanas, but that isn't to say they can't be done correctly. In this case, it was done wrong. Mostly because there simply is no reason for Rayne to be using tonfas in the first place considering her lethal character. It simply did not make sense.

Proto-Rayne




<p style="font-weight:normal;"> Rayne actually went through a re-design twice. The first iteration of which I will dub, Proto-Rayne.

Now, Proto's design was very similiat to Pre-Fall Rayne. The goal was to make her look ragged and battle-tested. She as a character would have ripped off the shackles that bound her to her previous live symbolized by her destroyed coat.

Well, it didn't really work. Mostly because the coat itself covered too much of her body and this detail was lost. The final design did not capture the emotions that I wanted her to feel being able to stand up by herself and moving on with the supposed "death" of Asher.

So looked back to my other characters for inspiration and one character did come to  mind, Rayne's step-sister, Alice, who is probably one of the most influential one on in this decision.

Crowned Rayne
Clothings



I'm calling this design, Crowned Rayne, and is most definitely a call back to Alice Schiess' re-design a while back. I found it fitting considering their origins in both character and gear was the same so it wouldn't be far of a stretch to have a roughly same design as her step-sister.

It's origin also doubles as a way for Rayne to reconcile with her "estranged" step-mother, Selena Schiess. In a sense, wearing a brand new version of the coat along with a new weapon symbolized that she accepts her origins but decides to use the resources from her former life to carve out her own future.

Weaponry


The new weapon was more of a challenge this time around but fit her character more. It's transformations were also a pain to completely map out but a little bit of work really did pay off. It's whole mechanism is quite simple really and you can read all about it on her page. The whole point of it was to fix and re-adjust her weapon choice.

The mask was a stylistic choice given that both characters related to her also wield masks in some shape or form so it was the extra touch to really tie her in with both Alice and Selena.

EXECUTE PROGRAM - CONCLUSION
That's all there is to it. Rayne is probably one of the more technically challenging characters to write and design for but also one of the closest to my heart.

Her journey is mine and future changes will reflect that. Until then, this is her journey for now.