Moxietale

Dear the Weasel

Bio:

Dear is a one of the late-story villains of Moxietale -- a loyal goon of the death god, Shinigami who's cold ferocity obscures a tortured mind.

Origins & Inspirations

Dear is an awkward character to talk about because as long as she has endured as one of my favorite characters from the Moxietale story, her backstory is also somewhat aged. For one, she is entirely the product of my Warrior Cats phase and my love of its ferocious and sometimes disturbed female protagonists. In early 2017 I was drawing cats non-stop, and though she's more of a sort of dire-weasel, it was just to the effect of accentuating the fluid, predatory appeal of cats. Then came her backstory, which was detailed in one of my animatics based on Burn from Hamilton (the go-to OC playlist of that era).

After her death in a fire, Shinigami approaches her and puts in her head that her caretaker and crush, a horse-creature named Nurse, left her to die there and she swears loyalty to him to seek revenge. In reality, Nurse had just been in a dire situation and unable to reach her in time, as she confesses when Dear tracks her down, but already having sacrificed her soul on the assumption and unwilling to reevaluate her pain, she deems Nurse a liar and kills her in a fit of rage. A noble attempt at some doomed yuri from my 13 year old self, but what's always been harder for me to resell was that Nurse was Dear's "caretaker" in the sense that she ran a carehome and Dear was there due to poor mental health. Which has always made Dear sort of a psycho-killer sort of villainess which sits with me worse and worse as time goes on.

But despite this, she has never ceased to be an incredibly fun character to draw and has been the source of many an awesome head-AMV of an emotional fight scene between her and the others. Her massive claws and fire-abilities (earned through the blaze which killed) her just made her very loveably badass. And that combined with her pink, pastel coat and cutesy name makes the icing on top, I do love a good evil pink character.

If I had to revisit Dear today, I would find a way to make her psychology more nuanced than what I've had for years as just "she was crazy before and even crazier after death". On the occasions I think of her again, usually triggered by songs, I think about her being externally very confident and sure but internally being in somewhat of an emotional daze - still reeling from the despair of her death and the whiplash of killing her lover. Focusing less on her being unstable because she was always mentally ill, but more of a reflection of the disorientation of death and undeath. Maybe contrasting her bright face against the white of her coat to give her the appearance of a pale zombie dolled up and reignited with fire.