Merope and Friends

Finally, I can stay awake from work long enough to post! Here he is, my big ambitious project, Cygnus!

 

C: "It's good to feel more like myself now. But ... why am I bald?"

Beeeeecause at the time I couldn't find a suitable enough wig to match your glorious head of hair now LET'S GET TO BUSINESS.

 

So, a bit of backstory. Cygnus isn't really an OC of mine per se -- he's an NPC from Gaia Online (I know, right) that I've been a fan of for a while. He was originally introduced in a lottery item with little to no backstory, but I loved his look and I was kinda... smitten? lmao. In a way, he sort of inspired Flash into being, as she actually started life as a Gaia avatar before I decided to flesh out her backstory to write fanfiction about them together. However, once the site started using him as a full-fledged shopkeeper NPC I didn't like the direction they were taking his character in, so the Cygnus in my fanfictions (and this doll, by extension) are an AU version. Think of it as like Joss Whedon's vs. Taika Waititi's interpretations of Loki in the Marvel movies. xD

Technically in Gaia 'canon' he's known simply as a dark star, but after reading about Cygnus X-1 I thought the idea of a sentient black hole with gravity manipulation powers was much more fun to work with!

 

tl;dr I'm a big loser.

 

ANYWAY!! The dye job was done with Rit DyeMore for Synthetics -- specifically the Ultra Violet formula. Bless Pantone for making this color of the year, it helps a lot. :') Each piece took between 40 seconds - 1 minute to get to the desired shade. You can sort of see the unevenness of the chest piece in the above picture, too. Afterwards, I touched up the default faceup with some thicker eyebrows, and added in some tattoos (although I think I'm going to redo those with acrylics -- I didn't have dark enough paint and watercolor pencil is iffy-looking, I notice.)

 

 

The joints. Not sure if it's because of the different plastic or simply because I didn't leave them in as long as the soft vinyl. Maybe I'll grab another bottle of purple and try again on them sometime! His default outfit in canon actually has elbow thingies and wrist / ankle wraps, though, so maybe I can fudge it until then? :'D

 

As for how the girls reacted to his presence, well...

 

Cygnus: "!!!" (DEATH HUGGED)

Flash: "OOOOHHHHH MY GOD YOU'RE HERE!! ♥ ♥ ♥ YOUREHEREYOUREHEREYOUREHERE.........."

C: "...?"

F: "........ WHY ARE YOU BALD?"

The wig came in! So now Cygnus is pretty much complete (until I can touch up his joints and tats, that is.)

It's a bit big on him, so I'll need to stabilize it with some Velcro on the underside or something since a silicone cap alone isn't doing the trick, but otherwise it was easy to style c:

 

 

 

And now he and Flash are free to be the gross cutesy lovebirds they were destined to be. ♥