Answering this now because it's more of an ask than a prompt.

by InterNutter

For all the snippets involving Shayde, there hasn’t been much more than a hinted explanation of how she got to be where she is now. So, how did she arrive in the Galactic Alliance, and was it before or after other humans had made proper contact?

(Also, what does Shayde look like? I can’t find a description but I remember something about being like a living shadow so my best guess is similar to the Death in “Girl with the Skeleton Hand” or this http://strawberrydaydreams.tumblr.com/post/71572518590/thatisdebatable-merthuriscanon-my-sim)

Short answer: Close and “sort of”.

Shayde’s been inhabiting my imagination since I found a black pen and doodled her in the 80’s. And until I made my own universe, I never knew what to do to her.

Now. Keep in mind that there’s a huge list of things I can’t draw. These include:

  • hands


  • feet


  • proper anatomy


  • straight lines


  • my own characters


That said, have some lineart of Shayde pestering Rael:

You can probably tell exactly where I gave up on this and shit, I forgot the line where the nehru jacket/vest fastens. AUGH! And you know what? Fuck the bottom of Shayde’s swishy hair. Fuck it to hell. Sideways. With a pineapple.

But my hands are cramping and I may not come back to this until next week. Because I hate myself.

This is why I don’t art.

Shayde’s skin is almost literally black. Especially when she’s tired or run down. Being a shadow elemental, her skin tends to match the darkness of local shadows when she isn’t paying attention to it. Her eyes are luminescent, but they also have the horrid attribute of changing with her emotions [OC crime #5, I’m told] so her face can be an open book.

The hair is smoke-white and prone to any spare breeze.

As for the clothing: Gold nehru vest/coat, white undershirt with loose sleeves, grey pants and white gogo boots.

Rael’s skin has been described as ‘Jacaranda mauve’ and his hair is a deep blue. His eyes are also blue. The turtleneck under his rainbow-patchwork JOAT coat is Engineering Blue, and the pants are just jeans.

And yes, those are supposed to be steel-toed safety boots.

I can’t draw.

Fuck.

Sigh.

As for how she got there. It’s a very long story that I’m saving for a later book. Told in a linear fashion, it goes like this:

  1. Katie Walker (slightly magical girl) tries to solve the energy crisis by drilling a pinhole into another dimension


  2. Her professor/mentor Hackmeyer tries to make it more interesting by fucking with the machine on the day of the big demo


  3. It go boom


  4. Katie is plucked from the event by self-proclaimed gods who change her into a shadow elemental so she can meddle in assorted destinies


  5. They promise to put her back when they’re done


  6. Katie wanders universes for ten subjective years and starts calling herself 'Shayde’ because many natives mistake her for a demon [“foul shade from out the blackest pit” etc]


  7. The alleged god make the huge mistake of bringing her into their dimension to tell her that she has to die


  8. The 'gods’ narrowly escape with their lives and dump her on Amalgam Station. They may have been aiming for the Glunk and missed


Naturally, the book’s going to be way more interesting. I want to build up Amalgam as a place for things to happen in before I publish Shayde’s story, though.