On a whim, I decided to write about characters from this story I’m making, what inspired them, and how I made certain story decisions with them. Let’s get rollin’!
What few spoilers await will be marked, with links within the blog post to help you skip them.
Taipha
The leader of the bunch. Or I guess technically—because she’s a bit of a standoffish catgirl, taking time to get to know the young ladies who live in the cabin in the woods—she’s the satellite member who happens to get the rest into trouble. Saying she’s the leader is like saying Numbuh 5 is the head of the Kids Next Door, in that it’s true and yet false. She’s more like their secret weapon.
When creating her, I was thinking of Homestuck’s Nepeta Leijon, and specifically this blonde fan version of Nepeta Leijon I made up with someone in high school long ago. The original character is a little violent and bloodstained, but mainly ditzy; this fake-o fan version is a smart aleck who loves fighting games. Qualities of both, perhaps, can be observed in Taipha.
Also…I think Tifa looks cool. I’ve never played or seen Final Fantasy VII past the first few hours, and to be honest, I haven’t resonated with it much beyond the initial “WOW” of its opening’s visuals and that world’s general grunge, but you know what, when you see your new teammate and she is jumping from foot to foot, sporty and raring to go…It’s Tifa Time™.
I choose not to research any weird memes about her, but you can if you want!
The name “Taipha” is unintentionally very reminiscent of “Tifa,” and I wouldn’t have gone with it if I’d consciously realized my inspirations faster. Or maybe I would’ve because it’s funny. I used the name “Taipha” because it rolled off the tongue and didn’t remind me of any specific world languages or cultures. It also kinda looks like “tiger.” And…”taiga”? Yeah, I guess that involves wilderness. It can work!
The last major influence I can think of is Excel from Excel Saga. She has a go-getter attitude and is also remarkable unintelligent, which both fit. But perhaps her biggest point of influence is that she wears shorts.
That is her! A generally bubbly but also smart-alecky personality. Unlike all of these influences, Taipha doesn’t want to make friends…at first. I wanted that to be an arc for a good part of the story so it could more fully be about friendship and warm things like that.
Sierra
I’ve blogged at length about Sierra’s personality and why I made her relationship with Taipha so abrasive. Sierra is the goddess who forced Taipha to be reborn on a strange planet fighting monsters and making friends.
I originally wanted to name her Eli, because I love the sound of it and it has a religious connection, but then I remembered I vaguely know someone named Eli and didn’t want that to be seen as somehow psychologically probing…fat chance, but anyway, she’s Sierra now. Like the “taiga” in “Taipha,” the name suggests the wilderness. She also has brown hair, which fits because it sounds like “burnt sienna.” That’s certainly a Crayola color I grew up with.
Man, I can’t help feeling like Eli would’ve been the cooler name, but…it’s a little too late for that. Sierra is not bad at all!
She’s based somewhat on Kokonoe from BlazBlue, an older, more serious cat-eared character with glasses who commands someone on the ground behind the scenes. Except in this case, I think Kokonoe (and her dude Iron Taipha—I mean, Tager) is military? I dunno. I didn’t follow any BlazBlue cutscenes because they are all bad.
…Wait…maybe ONE BlazBlue cutscene is good?
Sierra represents cat-cleverness while Taipha represents cat-spontaneity. Doubly so in that we’re not sure Sierra is that clever. But she thinks she is.
In that way, having a name that’s more down-to-earth is maybe fitting?
Reed
Reed is the Numbuh One of the treehouse log cabin and Taipha’s first companion, the first person to be kind to her, the first one she feels kinda-sorta understands her. Judging by the “slow-burn romance” notice on the story, we can assume that Reed and Taipha will gradually fall in love. Don’t worry! It will actually come to fruition and they’ll have some time to feel out the dynamic.
Her original concept was “shy barbarian,” but she drifted from that into “vaguely a lumberjack.” From the start I really wanted her to look like Pastel from TwinBee and Natsumi from Sgt. Frog. It’s less about their personalities and more about the impression I get that they are warm…dependable…balanced. Fortunately, unlike either of them, she’s like twenty years old.
Before Catgirl System, I had been working on a comic called StarCrash!! with Jeff. It features a plucky pink girl with a huge weapon named Haley, a cynical green girl with no weapon named Olive, and a goofin’ blue enby who launches magic projectiles named Skye. Hmmmm hnrrrrgh what catgirl-related does this cast sound like hmrrrrph
Reed is named “Reed” for two reasons:
- The “ee” sounds a little like Haley.
- “R,” in my mind, is one of the main characters of the alphabet. I wanted to have a trio of characters whose names went A, B, and C, but I didn’t want to use a literal A. So I used the thing kinda shaped like an A. I hope that makes sense to you.
I realized like a month ago that because she is named Reed, fights with a large and vaguely Cloud Strife-like sword, and I decided she is trans even if this isn’t said in the story but it must be said in Book 4 (deep breath), there is probably unfortunate and unintended innuendo here. We can bring this around into a lesson, though. A really shitty lesson. If you have a name that deep in your heart you love and embrace, don’t let others steer you away from it. I can’t stop being Joi just because someone decided it means Jack-Off Instructions. If my mom doesn’t know the slang, it doesn’t exist.
When I was laying out ideas for the story, I decided I wanted there to be a log cabin with three characters hanging out in it, and that those characters should all have their own “zones,” their own things they do in the world that no other character does, and their own sorts of interactions they have with Taipha.
The world of the story is very small, constricted only to several acres of woodland, and the cabin is isolated, so their tasks and zones are solitary. Reed often goes away to camp out and prefers the mountains.
My hope is that this means the mountains and the campfires she sets up are part of her character and the impression people get when they think of her. Nobody else is gonna stoke that flame!
BONUS: Her full name is Reed Gnaeomi. The last name was suggested by great friend Bea Baker. To me it feels like a soft, agreeable, rounded-off name, and that fits Reed’s personality in my mind (besides resembling “Natsumi”).
Blue Girl
If you consider character names big spoilers and you haven’t finished Book 1 yet, I’m sorry, but you’re gonna have to click ahead to the end-of-article summary.
Get out now while you still can!
Alright, are they gone?
…
…
I’ll take that as a yes!
Bayce is the goofin’ blue girl of the team. She is the non-cat qualities of Blair from Soul Eater, who I absolutely hated. My mission in creating Bayce was to make a hot witch girl who loved to get under people’s skin and yet not make me hate her.
I think my personal solution was to make a character I found funny and to make her sincerely apologetic.
But actually, the bigger influence would be Urd from Oh My Goddess! (my increasingly foggy memories of it). Urd is the “team villain” but she’s often inept, and she does strange things seemingly just to be wacky, like turn small and hang out with rats. Critical side note: I really hate “harem manga,” and another mission of Catgirl System was to make a variation of that I didn’t hate. And Oh My Goddess! is the first one I didn’t hate. I thought the characters’ interplay was heartwarming and minimally creepy (I don’t like that I have to say that), and I personally liked the overriding sense I got that the main dude was destined to be with Belldandy, no cheating, no teasing. Hmmm which catgirl-related story does this begin to sound like, hmmmmm
Anyway, her name is Bayce because I thought, “What’s a really…“bad” name she could have? Oh, dude…we’ve got a musical-name motif going, let’s go three-for-three. Let’s call her ‘Bass’ but spell it in an obnoxious way.” She is ace, which is an extra obnoxious bonus, although again, if she really loves the name “Bayce,” let no one stop her. I think it’s fun.
Bayce’s zone in the world, in the great outdoors, is the place Taipha calls Mirror Pond. That’s where she occasionally goes to photograph frogs—reptiles and amphibians being her personal animals. Oh, darn, I didn’t mention they all have a loose animal connection! Well, Reed’s is mammals. If you’ve read very much of the story at all, or at least know Disgaea-style elemental color archetypes, you can probably guess what the green member Chora’s is next. (Taipha’s is apes.)
Click here to avoid minor Bayce spoilers for Book 2 onward (or just skip 1.2 paragraphs).
Her other zone is her shitty bedroom with shitty magic study stuff all over it.
In this mystical room she functions as a quest giver for Taipha, sending her on transparent lazy fetch quests so she can create her cantrips. I guess she’s also the Final Fantasy Cid of the team? As their cantrip and spell creator, they turn to her for a big chunk of her arsenal.
BONUS: Her full name is Bayce Slick. This is a dual reference to Grace Slick from the band Jefferson Airplane and to Bilious Slick, a really, really, really, incredibly too-large cosmic frog in Homestuck.
Chora
It’s about time. It’s about space. It’s about time she kicked your face.
Chora’s hairline may LOOK like StarCrash!! with Jeff‘s Jeff’s, and she may also FREQUENTLY be stoic and unflappable like Jeff, but she is not Jeff!!! She’s an Olive-Jeff. See, she’s wearing a green sports bra. Chew on that. Not literally.
I have a liking for fictional short women who can do martial arts and take it very seriously. Characters like Bleach‘s Soi Fon and the titular Battle Angel Alita are mostly here to come in, kick, and leave.
Why is she named Chora? The main reason is, it works with the musical theme that I used for three names and three names only.
In the very VERY beginning, I had personal random generators that I used for like 0.5 days, which would help me lay out the world, seed random events, and determine what people’s names were, and other stuff like that. There was a dice-rolling system for determining weather, another for storylines, there was one hundred-entry one for times when I wanted to decide if a character was a princess, a robot, a slime, et cetera…
One of the tables determined what motif a character name aligned with.
In the end, what I actually did was take inspiration from my favorite entries among the list of tables and just use those for brainstorming. Writing while leaving THIS much up to chance was both stifling and unexciting for me. If I simplified things, maybe I’d feel differently, but…no…not like this.
The important part for this discussion is, the table includes the name categories Angelic, Music, Place, Flower, Tree, and Fungi. I happened to especially like the categories Angelic and Music (which is also where we get the minor character Sephene).
Angelic and Music converge with Chora’s name, and that’s referenced in the chapter title “Cue the Angelic Chorus” which gives her a spotlight. Or a dubious spotlight, because she’s a jerk in it. They all are…they all are.
Click here to avoid minor Book 2 spoilers!
Chora has two zones in the cabin, conjoined: her bedroom and the roof, where she trains every morning. Her zones in the outside world are the mansion infested with magpies (hint hint towards her destiny animal) (did you get the hint yet!?) and the nearby village of Outlast. But she only goes here because she’s determined to do right by Taipha.
Another way in which I tried to differentiate all three “cabinmates” is by very consciously giving them different ways of initially getting to know her. Reed immediately sees her as an equal, not in an animal-to-potential-pet way but as just a fellow animal, which is why Taipha almost immediately respects her and cottons to her soonest. Bayce sees her more as a pet and target of scritches; then she makes her her toady and gives her errands to complete. Chora feels religiously duty-bound to help her, suspecting that she’s a powerful spirit. Again, the journeys Taipha goes on with one (or for one) aren’t the quests she’d take with another!
BONUS: Her full name is Chora Chressen. The reason: it’s alliterative, I think it looks kinda funny written out, and it sounds nice. It came to me really fast.
Heidschi
A mysterious shepherd appears in the wood and helps Taipha at a time when she needs confidence and a bit of a hand. At the outset of making Catgirl System, I wanted the woods to feel nearly empty of humans yet have a traffic of strangers coming and going, Heidschi being one of them.
Their name and their overall character are based on an interaction with my dad that I thought was kind of funny. Sometimes I look back on it and think “okay, it wasn’t funny enough for ALL THIS,” but hey, you be the judge:
I was listening to crusty 60s and 70s German pop songs and talking to my dad about them, asking if there were any he knew. Growing up, he was apparently subjected to a lot of interminably dull easy listening. As we talked, he dusted off more of his disturbing memories, then said, “None of them are as bad as that ‘heidschi bumbeidschi boom boom’ song.” The sounds coming out of his mouth sounded so inane to him that he almost didn’t believe they were real. Then we had to look it up.
He was remembering a rendition of a nursery rhyme called “Heidschi Bumbeidschi” by child star Heintje. I don’t think it’s that bad! But I have a high tolerance for slow easy listening that I wasn’t forced to listen to on family radios for eons.
Anyway, I don’t remember this song having anything to do with shepherds or sheep, but nursery rhymes are just associated with soft woolly animals and Little Bo Peep in my mind, probably, and I had drawn a random picture of StarCrash Haley as a shepherd thinking it was an endearing fantasy character jumping-off point.
So Heidschi was taking shape as a soft wandering shepherd. Lastly I decided that “bum bum,” the worst lyrics of all time to my father, would be their magic power. They always keep a drum with them, using it bard-style to encourage their sheep troops, protect them, or help them calm down after a long day.
Is there any particular fictional character that inspired Heidschi besides pictures of Bo Peep? Um, not really. I think they’re more a personality intersection between Reed and Bayce. Like the softness of the former (amplified) but an outgoing edge from the latter. They just live an epic life and don’t pay rent.
BONUS: Their full name is Heidschi Opus. It mostly sounds nice and quickly came to me—but also, “Opus” is an art word, and has something to do with music and nursery rhymes. This means Heidschi’s initials spell HO, which Bayce will make fun of them for.
The Sapphire Queen
This last character has pretty huge spoilers, so please click here if you haven’t learned this character’s identity!
You can keep reading even if you haven’t read that far.
It’s okay. I won’t tell anyone.
Mostly because I won’t know either way.
…
…
Okay, Logy is the real name of the perennially irritating Sapphire Queen. Like “Taipha,” it’s mainly her name because I think it seems fun. The official pronunciation in my head rhymes with “pierogi,” but I made a conscious decision not to make that clear in the text as both a kinda-joke and encouragement for us all to use the one we like best.
I wanted it to start with an “L” because Logy is a lepidot, or butterflygirl. “Logy” also brings to mind logic, which she would definitely say she plentifully has.
Her design is based on the subgroup of black/purple-haired mysterious anime girls and women. I think the one I was most thinking of was the woman who appears in Uta Kata, who, as I look it up right now, I learn is named Saya. Whatever. Uta Kata is part of that massive category of anime that I’m only interested in for its aesthetics, and am really disappointed by otherwise.
The other big conscious inspiration is this girl Ucchi from No Matter How I Look at It, It’s You Guys’ Fault I’m Not Popular!, who I only know vaguely and by osmosis. Her eyes are unlike any other characters and, according to this fanwiki I’m just now reading, led to her being dubbed “Emoji-face” by her peers.
But the ENORMOUS UNCONSCIOUS inspiration is Alluka Zoldyck from Hunter x Hunter, who has similar hair AND gets scary black voids of death for eyes when she grants a wish.
As a character, Logy is a strange observer-slash-rival who we don’t know what her deal is. (If you haven’t gotten to the part where the story reveals what her deal is, you may click here.)
The explanation is in some ways the shittiest thing ever (it was all a misunderstanding!) but I wanted it to be this way so that in the end, she’d become Taipha’s friend (and we could all clown on the fact that it was a “hilarious misunderstanding” that almost got them all killed). Does it work? Does it…not work? You tell me!
The real Challenge of Logy is becoming her friend. If Taipha befriending Reed and Heidschi was difficulty F, and Chora and Bayce were D and C, then befriending Logy is, like, a B+. She’s a really loyal friend after that, though. I swear!!!
Her other character function is to be someone who shares a different kind of commonality with Taipha. Both of them are reincarnated beings, and animalized women wriggling eerily to boot. Therefore, Taipha has interactions with her she’d never have with anyone else. Also, I just loved the idea of there being a bug girl in the story because then we can get her speaking from a strange bug perspective.
BONUS: Could Logy’s last name be “IRL”?
There are more than six characters in the story, and some of them even have names and design processes…but they’re not as extensive or as interesting as the ones above, and some of them I’ve talked about online before.
- Donovan was originally supposed to do more. He doesn’t. Murder the condor is all you need.
- Sephene’s here because we gotta have wolf action. Cat stories need their dogs, yo.
- Norton the dragon god was originally named Saihanort, but this seemed too similar to Sierra. After tweaking, I gave up and just used a deliberately bland name. Also, Norton is the Jeff of the story, not Chora, for those wondering.
- Chi was Z’Chi for style points, but I can’t pronounce that.
- Teague is named Teague because, yes, it sounds like Reed. Also, “T” was not taken.
- DeGalle dmAge is most likely going to endure an impending name change to Egalle dmAge, because while that change is painful in some ways, I cannot stress enough how unrelated she is to Charles Degaule. (The more I mention it, the more hilariously desperate the statement becomes, so I better stop saying it.) She is a more serious version of Ragnorre Rock from The Demon Lord is Apathetic, which is why she uses her fists. The driving force behind her design, which I may never actually draw in a finalized form, was “anime character with most obnoxious hair that nobody would want to draw fanart of.” Originally her hair was also her gauntlets and boots.
Oh, and she was originally named ReGalle dmAge (for regality), but I kind of didn’t like that (for horning in on that Reed name territory).
Here are some sketches!
- A minor character is named after Robin Gibb and based on his album “Secret Agent.”
There you have it.
Why’d I write all of this? Uh, for fun. I really sincerely enjoyed writing out all my thoughts. And at some future date, I’ll remember that once upon a time I wrote a story I thought was very fun called Catgirl System, and read it thinking, “Wow, I forgot all about that!”
I really enjoy reading about people’s thought processes with stories and art, so I must put into the world what I like getting out of it…!
Thank you for reading, and Patrons, thank you for Patreonning.
For more lighthearted reading fun, try this review of Logan’s Run, or a trip through Super Sentai theme songs. Or for something more sedate? Life keeps moving, baby.