Mostly this month, I’ve been utilising established characters because I had a gag in mind that I wanted to executed or I wanted to work out some hypothetical directions I could take those characters.
Today, though I decided I wanted to play around with thinking up some new characters.
New characters are hard. Especially having to think them up basically on demand…
The Simpsnos: Twentieth Television Animation and Grace Films.
Which I guess is part of why I’m leaning on previous characters as a crutch.
“Brain Chop!” Niamh exclaims, leaping from the shadows and bringing the edge of her palm down on the bandit’s head.
He promptly crumbles to the ground in a snoring heap.
Niamh glances down at the incapacitated bandit. He’s doing that things that dogs do when they’re asleep where they sort of whine and kick out with their legs.
“Cuter when a dog does it,” Niamh mutters.
Meanwhile, Niamh’s intrepid businesswoman partner rushes forward. She tucks a strand of black hair behind her ear and sets down her axe— business is, after all, a cutthroat … well, business — and kneels in front of the treasure chest the bandit was guarding.
“Junk,” Florianne declares as she begins rummages through the chest. “Junk, junk. Counterfeit. Broken. Junk. Oh, pretty!”
“That’s the necklace the Countess Dowager hired us to steal back from the bandits,” Niamh notes.
Florianne looks throughtfully at the necklace. “That means we still get paid, right?”
Niamh rolls her eyes.
“Yes, Florianne.”
Florianne hands the necklace up to Niamh before returning to the chest.
“Junk. Broken. Junk. Why is there half a sandwich in there? Gross!”
She reaches further down into the treasure chest, almost falling inside in her desperate search for more treasure.
“Finally!” she exclaims. “Those are real Archipelagian bezants! Collectors love those! Oh, and that’s a Torrean cameo!”
“I hear footsteps,” Niamh notes.
Florianne pops back out of the chest, stuffing her new finds into her pouch. She turns around to see a bandit standing in the doorway with his arms folded over his chest and a scowl on his face.
“Hurry up and Brain Chop him,” she urges Niamh. “We need to let out of here.”
“I can’t just Brain Chop him if I can’t catch him off-guard,” the Half-Goblin notes.
“What’s all this, then?” the bandit wonders aloud
He glances down at the knocked-out bandit lying in a heap beside the treasure chest.
“And what have you done to Quincy?”
“Niamh Brain Chopped him,” Florianne answers. “Now, get out of the way, or your brain’s going to get Chopped next.”
The bandit puts his hand on the hilt of his sword and steps forward.
“I’ll thank you very much to step away from our treasure, Miss Burglar,” he says. “And put down my sandwich. I was saving that for later.”
“Hey!” Florianne says hotly. “Niamh is not a burglar. She’ just like Morgan Cowl! It’s not stealing if you guys stole it first!”
“I was talking to you, you little thief!”
Florianne feels her whole body start to tremble with rage. Slowly, the world begins to turn red.
Niamh coughs nervously and slowly backs away. Florianne is quite concerned with her reputation as a perfectly legitimate businesswoman and merchant.
So, basically, Niamh’s not getting involved with this.
“Thief? You did not just say that,” she says through clenched teeth.
The bandit nods. “You’re the thiefiest thief that every thieved in all the long annals of thievery. And I’d say it again: thiefy thief thief!”
Florianne gasps in outrage and reaches for her axe.
“I! Am! A! Businesswoman!” she cries.
As it happens, Florianne owes something of a debt to Fire Emblem‘s Indisputable Best Girl Anna. Though I specifically chose a not-red hair colour for her so she isn’t exactly like Anna.
Admittedly, she doesn’t have much a personally yet beyond “Likes Money” and “Insists on Being Called a Businesswoman.”
Still, I have wanted and Intrepid Merchant character for a while now.
I’m interested to see how I flesh this all out.
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