In a world obsessed with automating and generating pictures, I find myself going back to books and asking the kindness of strangers to draw the people I can’t get out of my head. So with that, I’d like to introduce my children!
All art is done by the impeccable Nilus Art, who did an absolute phenomenal job. You can commission their gorgeous full color art or get these more black and white sketches via their ko-fi. All art will eventually be in the novel, but for now they’ll live on this blog.
Lore and Context: Faeries in Like A Flame come from the fictional realm of Tir Na Nog, loosely based on Tír na nÓg of Irish mythology. Faeries hailing from Tir Na Nog have two plant names, which always have a symbolic meaning. Some faeries have opted for a more “local” surname, but have kept their first plant name as a dedication to their ancestry and roots. Tir Na Nog is a separate world, accessible via portals all over the globe. They survive by being immigrants to Earth, Tir Na Nog being a dense realm of forests and no-mans-land. Living in Tir Na Nog is akin to living off of the land, surviving off its plants and creatures, with very few settlements that we would label as “urban.”
For this reason, a lot of faeries from Tir Na Nog immigrate to Earth, becoming more of a citizen of their local portal than their home world, like Basil Faraday.
With that, let’s introduce our trio!
Aspen is my darling genderfluid shipbuilder gone revolutionary and is heavily inspired by my own experiences as a genderfluid person who wants to live outside the binary in a very binary society. They start out as working at Moran Brothers’, a local shipbuilders by the pier, but soon meet a certain roguish charmer who makes them realize faeries don’t exactly have rights the way humans do.
Fancast: Vico Ortiz
Details: golden freckles, pale blue hair, icy blue dragonfly wings (loosely based on blue darners), golden jewelry, super long ears, eyebrow notch
Introducing our darling Irish roguish charmer himself, Basil is the face of the Wings For Justice, a local pro-faeries union group that wants rights. He primarily wants labor rights, but he would also like faeries to have equal rights as to a human if possible. Originally from Ireland, he immigrated to America alone as a young lad, hoping to find community and refuge away from the British Empire.
Fancast: Donal Finn and/or Jacksepticeye, Tom Waits’ voice
Details: red spotted purple butterfly wings, blue-black eyes, very dark brown hair but blue streaks in the sunlight, green suspenders, ears have a notch from a fight gone awry
Oleander is the actual leader of Wings For Justice. Like many women of her time, she has to be behind the screen to be taken seriously, using Basil as a front for her speeches and essays. She is inspired heavily by Alexander Hamilton during the writings of The Federalist Papers and every woman throughout history who had to work twice as hard as a man to be heard. Remember that Anonymous was often a woman.
Her age is something I haven’t even pinned down, choosing to make her something ethereal and beyond time. She also does not adhere to local standards of the time’s fashion, being both ahead and behind it. She is quite a bit older than Aspen and Basil, with visible crows feet lines by her eyes.
Fancast: Eartha Kitt
Details: cicada wings, ornate gray agate ring with an etched laurel wreath, black lace wrist length gloves, large stern amber eyes
Forest Hackley 
Leave a comment