Well it's finally their birthday, and I'm glad to say the birthday announcement code in the blog index page worked perfectly. I watched the "Happy birthday Claire and Grey" pop up in the sidebar when the clock strike to 12am. That code really helped reminding me my OCs' birthdays, one of my greatest creations indeed.

For the OC lore drop part, I don't recall if I have mentioned them before. But on the early stages of creating them, they don't really have much lore, I guess I just find them too boring-looking, they don't have animal ears.

However, it seems at some point I added a little story behind Claire's gemstone. Apparently, they lost their parents in some tragic accident? And Claire went missing for a long time? And after finding her, Grey gave her a green gemstone because hers was broken? Man I hate how I rarely jot my OC lores down, I always forget the context after many years.

During my secondary school era, which is the time I become more angsty, I put my OCs in a school setting where stuff wasn't exactly good. While the story was dark (I will not elaborate), Grey and Claire didn't have much character developement, the most Grey got was being friends with Ruth.

There's also another idea I had for them. Because of how much Grey's full name 薄霧城·灰銘 feels connected to fog, and how Claire enjoys shiny stuff, I always view them to be connected with weather, Claire is similar to a sunny day (which is why I gave her the name Claire) and Grey is similar to a stormy day.

Claire and Grey sat in the basement of my brain for years untouched, but only when I start writing UtSS that they are remembered again. I am always fond of rewriting and redesigning characters, even though I don't have many OCs to begin with. Anyways, I needed more characters in my main cast, just Cosmos and Lavender would be too little for my taste. I decided to add Grey to the gang. Thinking of the storm and fog motifs, I gave him a purple and green color scheme, a coat and long hair because male characters with long hair is 👌.

So the concept of Grey was to find his mentor Claire, which is based of the old lore I mentioned just now. I also made him more depressed, because that's what happens when your only family member goes missing. For Claire, she was originally intended to be in a team travelling into the Voided Lands to find something to save the world, but it was already established that going there is not a good idea, so I decided to change that into just ordinary people trying to go there because they are dumb (and probably to save Grey from his worsening illness). Honestly I'm still surprised Claire and Grey was added in a team, for years I just see them being alone and such.

Another thing I kept for them is that they still lost their home, which got destroyed. But what happened before they lost their home? Perhaps Grey spent most of his childhood being sick, so his memories being there isn't a lot. For Claire, I'd imagine she had quite a happy life there learning to use magic, I really wanted to write Claire's old mentor, because I feel like they would be extremely important to the world-building.

Man I don't think I have any new lore for them x_x

Anyway, here's an art drawn for them, quite normal, but I really should draw them being happy more, they suffered too much.