[OUTSIDE IMMERSION FILE]
Author’s note: This was written in one sitting, and I am refusing myself the option to read back over it and change it BECAUSE it’s honest. I don’t want to dilute that by watering down my words or chopping down my signature run-on sentences.
Anyway, enjoy.
What is Gleam, really?
That’s a short question with a long answer.
She started as an original character in a shared “on-line open roleplay” setting. It was very much anything goes, so far as quality and originality went, but I held myself to certain standards. I played in a more structured tabletop roleplaying game on the weekends, and so I knew a little more about how it was supposed to work. Add to that my high-school freshman drama/improv class, my habit for reading anything I could get my hands on about anything I was interested in, and my burgeoning internet access and freedom, and you have a recipe for an armchair expert in roleplaying.
To my credit, I didn’t boast so much as *show off*. And even then, a lot of what I did stayed behind the scenes. The first thing I did when I made Gleam was make her a world of darkness werewolf the apocalypse character sheet, to sketch out her abilities. I’ve since made call of cthulhu sheets (both of her and a human version of her and a cat version of her), a monsters and other childish things slash one-big-roll engine sheet, D&D 3.5 and 5e sheets, a beyond the supernatural character sheet, and a few other reference documents. I have yet to publish unexpurgated versions of her various character sheets, and I lament that some have been lost to time and will need to be recreated, though I do relish the opportunity to further refine those sheets when I have time. From memory, in order.
1>Werecat, some sort of stealthy magical killer archetype (it has been too long).
Starting Details:
Orange Sun-dress with jack’o’lantern face.
Eyes gradient from yellow to green irises.
Sharp teeth.
Three braids, three tails.
Orange and black hair/fur.
One tail orange, one black, one striped.
Starting Capabilities:
Stealth
Drive(this was a power fantasy back then whaddaya want)
Spiritual Thermokinesis - Okay so that’s a mouthful; lemme break that down ya: Spiritual (uses spirits as a medium) Thermo(temperature aka heat but without the fire association of “pyro” because even back then I was smart enough to know cold was the absence of heat, and ALSO I had read about Maxwell’s Demon. Normal kasha in Japanese lore, from what I knew then, were able to manipulate flames, so I just built on that)kinesis(moving around. Specifically MOVING. She had three spirit orbs(her own previous lives), which she could use to super-efficiently transmit thermal energy from one orb’s proximity to another, and the third was able to store excess. The black orb absorbed, white expelled, and silver stored. I was following black hole white hole logic plus shiny silvery grey is in between and she has a three-theme.) Got all that? Cool.
Shooting a crossbow.
Expert with stiletto knife.
Climbing walls and assorted acrobatics.
Minor Enchantments (of objects, usually small fetishes or talismans)
Around this time I wrote her first story, set in a (then modern) environment. It began with her entering a library, booting a public-access computer from a flash drive (yes I knew about this then but that’s another story) and logging on to advertise her services as a “pest(ass) removal(ass) expert(in)”. I think you see the irony, no?
2>D&D 3.5e “catfolk” (variant wood-elf with only aesthetic changes) rogue.
Updates:
None notable, but she was much weaker in this “form” as many of the abilities I’d given her for the roleplaying online were to say the least “unbalanced” for a D&D character. Never actually got to play this character and didn’t feel like writing a weaker version of her so not much developed here.3>Beyond the Supernatural and Call of Cthulhu - Basically just a human criminal-turned-investigator inspired by Gleam with the same aesthetic and (where available) skillset.
Around this time I wrote a story of her taking a job to assassinate a lich via liberating him of his phylactery. I characterized her as being hesitant because she doesn’t want to be seen as a cat burglar. The pun would be unbearable. This is around when I commissioned the first artwork I ever got of her, from scorci, as a reference sheet, hoping to someday be able to hire someone to do… something with it. Honestly based foresight. Scorci introduced the detail of her ears being other-than-human even in human form and I adored that so I stuck with it.
Art by: Scorci
4>One Big Roll Engine:
And now we are in modern times. I’ve got a vtuber model of her in the works, and I’ve written two stories about her and one almost about her.
Developments: She’s completely changed in origin story as a result of these stories and where they went.
Her “species” now is “weird cat.” Due to various influences, most notably nisioisin’s monogatari series, nitro+’s demonbane, and digital extreme’s warframe mmo, her concept is a lot more, well, conceptual.
She exists to fit a niche in her own story that I carved a her-shaped niche into.
Circular, but bear with me - her *in-universe* existence is *as a mythical being* which is a being which only exists so long as there is a *myth* of it and *exists* as what that myth says it is.
In other words, she lives in a theoretical world where I am the only law. But, here come those standards again, just like laws of nature. And so I am ruled by my own opinions of my creations. It’s meta all the way up.
So “Gleam Fushigami” is the embodiment of the urban legend called “Gleam Fushigami” and also any other urban legend, myth, or cryptid she could reasonably be the explanation of.
She’s every unexplained meow, every confusing cat-like shadow, just beyond any and every corner.
She’s a WEIRD CAT.
But she’s also a Vtuber(and Vstreamer). What’s up with that?
These developments, canonically, take place after everything I’ve written prior about her. So she’s had quite a few experiences and influences on her path. And it eventually came to be that the world she was in couldn’t support her anymore. There wasn’t a niche in that world’s story for anything mythical anymore. So she escaped. Used all the stored energy she had to create and maintain a tiny world of her own, floating in an undifferentiated sea of static.
Right now, everyone there is someone I’ve written, and there isn’t much action going on, so the energy of the island itself is low. Remember the lore than things like her feed on belief and investment and devotion. Lucky for her she has my functionally delusional self deeply invested and devoted, but there’s only so far that can stretch.
I really love this character, for more reasons than I can remember at any one time. Like that friend who sometimes says something that totally shocks you while at once completely fitting who they are and only then you remember that that’s one of the reasons too.
So, as her creator, or producer, if you will, I want her to keep developing, keep having adventures, and have fun.
And the most she ever developed was when she was in a crowd.
So we’re building a city, she and I.
Read more »Labels: author's notes, backstory, Gleam Fushigami, immersion breaking, journal entry, lore, meta-writing, self-reflection, setting info, vtuber backstory
