November 11, 2024
Trinket
It was quite a month, last October! It's been a big year, actually. Some of this, I want to save for next time, but still, I'm reinventing myself. The persona of "Pewter" was too tied to the old version of us that tried to be one person, so they're making something new. The other three aren't changing anything at the moment, but they're Mira now. I guess Pewter is still a fun character who will stick around, so maybe I'll keep the website name too? I have a lot to talk about with that, but I want to give the spotlight to the other thing that happened: we had the money and opportunity to get a character reference for Trinket.
(Thanks to Saucy for drawing its ref!)
I can't really even begin to explain how much she means to all of us. To us. She doesn't get the chance to put her own feelings down very often because she fronts-- takes control of our body, if you didn't know-- very infrequently. When she feels like it, once or twice a week, she'll step out for a few hours, but she just lacks the stamina to keep it up longer than that. Even exercising or walking around, she gets tired. That's with the same heart and lungs and muscles as the rest of us. Pretty unfair, huh?
But she's like a ray of sunshine. I could talk again about the ways she helps the rest of us out, steps in when we have panic attacks, always encourages us, and she wouldn't be unhappy about that. She likes being useful. But she's more than that. We really don't think she came out to play at all in the time before we were self-aware, aside from those big emergencies. Once we were, she started trying. Even if she can't last long, she loves us and our friends and getting to know people and everything. She pokes fun at as and loves mischief but she's just so full of kindness and positivity. Can you understand that? To not just know a wonderful new person but to be them?
Doll characters have been getting popular recently, and we were thinking about them quite a bit in the runup to our awareness. It wasn't only Trinket who was interested, but once she was able to think as herself... it felt right. She feels a little detached from emotions and bodily existence pretty often. It's her strength and her struggle. None of us feels particularly human, and being an object was her particular form of it. Sort of a genderless girl, she likes a feminine shape but isn't especially attached to being a "woman" or even a really living thing. We had been writing something with a doll girl character and we came up with the name Trinket for that, but there was just a moment when she made it very clear from the background: "That's my name. I'm taking that." It was a name for a small and pretty and beloved possession.
So, our precious Trinket was a doll. Viper's design ended up taking precedence just because he's out more often, and then there was the job loss and such, so we had plenty of time to consider things. She eventually decided she wanted an animal shape just to fit in with the rest of us, since she wasn't especially attached to being human-shaped or anything, really. Her first guess was a fox, but a friend pointed out her mustelid energy and we spent a bunch of time trying to decide on one. Actually, mink was at the top of the list for a while, and the main thing that put us on ferret was simply the ear shape and placement being a little more distinct. Besides that, the more common domestic creature feels more correct for a doll. We ended up looking at a lot of ferret videos and such and falling more in love with them as a result, so it's all good. Highly recommend cute animal pictures and videos.
Next came the specifics. Pink was a must, of course. She loves pink. It was a little difficult to conceive of how she should look and fit together on a physical level, and Saucy had a lot of good ideas about it when the time came. We had some thoughts about swappable parts, and even considered going with more of a robot for a bit. There's a lot of overlap of course, but robot people are usually really into the internals of the robots. The mechanical construction of the thing. That's not our Trinket's style. She's just magical. The heart-shaped core is a nod to that. It's sort of the center of her being. Early on, we'd also thought about giving her some kind of logo representing our system, but besides how hard it was to design that (we still might at some point), she eventually decided that it felt a bit too much like she was mass-produced or corporate-made. We toyed with the thought of some jewelry or something using the colors of the rest of us, too, but she's become more individual and independent as she's grown out of her shell, and so we axed it, too, at least in a way that made her out to be something of ours.
She is one of Ours, though. We're all part of Us. Friend, family, lover, protector and protected. Getting to know her, to see her emerge so fully, has been such a pleasure for the rest of us, and for Trinket herself! What we want is for others to see her as she wants to be seen, and get to know her as well. It's not the easiest thing to do, but you're our friend, know that she loves you completely. That's just how she is.