I am so scared of bothering you but I so wanna know more about Etienne and Mael!!First of they're like peak character design I love gnc trans men Etienne you will forever be the coolest guy ever

Also I'm deeply curious about their story bc I love swan lake (and I latch onto any character that could potentially share my culture but that's irrelevant lol)

HI!! it’s no bother at all i love to yap about my characters

re: mael’s name we mostly chose to spell it that way instead of maël since we were too lazy to type the accented e haha. but as to where in france they’re from specifically i’ve kinda gone back n forth on it

either way they’re childhood sweethearts. etienne was bullied a lot of being “odd” as a child (true changeling stuff, he didn’t know he was a fae yet, but everyone around him could tell he was “strange”). a lot of the bullying was around him not being “normal”, being very obsessed with fairytales/princesses, not very good at making friends, and being very into the idea of “true love” and developing crushes on boys easily, which led to him getting the typical asked out as a prank bullying from boys his age

mael and him became friends in grade school after etienne poured his soul into a valentine for a boy in his grade and the boy instead made fun of him and read it out to all his friends mockingly right in front of him, making etienne cry and hide under the playground during recess. in comparison to etienne who’d always been feminine, mael was kinda a tomboy from the jump and stood up for him, and followed him under the playground to comfort him and give him his own valentine

the two were inseparable after that. very classic “just friends” thing going on here for a while. lesbian couple to t4t gay couple pipeline. they were each other’s first everything. they started properly dating in highschool after mael had already come out, etienne still in the closet but teetering on a realization

etienne was in a somewhat wealthy family, well off and basically their princess. he did ballet when he was younger but had to quit in highschool due to his mental health declining. he’d learned how to sew when he was pretty young from his grandmother and kept the hobby up all this time. if the equivalent exists in france he’d be the type to have gone to those “princess schools” for children. all this to say he’d always felt very feminine but had a strange relationship to his body and gender anyways, but due to his tastes never questioned it the way mael always had

his strange nature and obsession with fairytales made him very imaginative, though. mael had always taken an interest in writing. he’d always written valentines and love letters for etienne throughout the years, and as his muse, he’d eventually take a specific interest in writing stories based off of etienne’s inherent fairytale nature even if they didn’t yet know it.

etienne would come to the realization of both his gender identity and fae nature when he was around 18, both of which led to him being disowned by his parents. now all he had was mael, his one true love - and a sudden crash course on the changeling society he was suddenly apart of.

they eloped to new orleans, where etienne met his lord/liege, baron vivien of house beaumayn, and became his squire after undergoing fosterage and learning about changeling society and his kith.

his kith is the swan maidens/swan princes - they’re a younger kith usually in central/western europe who’s obsession is with fairytales, true love, and tragic love, based off the folktale of swan maidens. swans gain their power from dreams of love and fairytales. but their kith also bears a curse of a dark fate - when a swan finds their truest love, either them or their love are doomed to meet a gruesome, inescapable fate and will start to receive visions of it.

etienne didn’t know this until after his chrysalis, when he found out he was a changeling and the curse of kith. after he’d already been in love with mael since they were children. and soon enough, mael began to be tormented by nightmares and visions of a gruesome fate. terrified of losing the only person he has left, his husband, etienne finds himself convinced that he can change this fate, no matter how impossible he’s told it is

everything past this is sort of ongoing since it’s in the oneshot (which has turned into not a oneshot) - in session 1, mael was kidnapped by a vampire from vivien’s past as leverage to make etienne do something for him at vivien’s expense - that being, give him a dress he made for him to wear at mardi gras. vivien’s agreed to do so to get his husband back, but doesn’t seem fully convinced he’s even still alive. plus some other fae, vampire, and werewolf politics going on all around that

now i wont sit here and lie and say mael is gonna be fine. because he’s not that’s the curse of the swans. but i don’t know how it’s going to happen all i know is that it will be in resemblance to swan lake

I am so scared of bothering you but I so wanna know more about Etienne and Mael!!First of they're like peak character design I love gnc trans men Etienne you will forever be the coolest guy ever

Also I'm deeply curious about their story bc I love swan lake (and I latch onto any character that could potentially share my culture but that's irrelevant lol)

HI!! it’s no bother at all i love to yap about my characters

re: mael’s name we mostly chose to spell it that way instead of maël since we were too lazy to type the accented e haha. but as to where in france they’re from specifically i’ve kinda gone back n forth on it

either way they’re childhood sweethearts. etienne was bullied a lot of being “odd” as a child (true changeling stuff, he didn’t know he was a fae yet, but everyone around him could tell he was “strange”). a lot of the bullying was around him not being “normal”, being very obsessed with fairytales/princesses, not very good at making friends, and being very into the idea of “true love” and developing crushes on boys easily, which led to him getting the typical asked out as a prank bullying from boys his age

mael and him became friends in grade school after etienne poured his soul into a valentine for a boy in his grade and the boy instead made fun of him and read it out to all his friends mockingly right in front of him, making etienne cry and hide under the playground during recess. in comparison to etienne who’d always been feminine, mael was kinda a tomboy from the jump and stood up for him, and followed him under the playground to comfort him and give him his own valentine

the two were inseparable after that. very classic “just friends” thing going on here for a while. lesbian couple to t4t gay couple pipeline. they were each other’s first everything. they started properly dating in highschool after mael had already come out, etienne still in the closet but teetering on a realization

etienne was in a somewhat wealthy family, well off and basically their princess. he did ballet when he was younger but had to quit in highschool due to his mental health declining. he’d learned how to sew when he was pretty young from his grandmother and kept the hobby up all this time. if the equivalent exists in france he’d be the type to have gone to those “princess schools” for children. all this to say he’d always felt very feminine but had a strange relationship to his body and gender anyways, but due to his tastes never questioned it the way mael always had

his strange nature and obsession with fairytales made him very imaginative, though. mael had always taken an interest in writing. he’d always written valentines and love letters for etienne throughout the years, and as his muse, he’d eventually take a specific interest in writing stories based off of etienne’s inherent fairytale nature even if they didn’t yet know it.

etienne would come to the realization of both his gender identity and fae nature when he was around 18, both of which led to him being disowned by his parents. now all he had was mael, his one true love - and a sudden crash course on the changeling society he was suddenly apart of.

they eloped to new orleans, where etienne met his lord/liege, baron vivien of house beaumayn, and became his squire after undergoing fosterage and learning about changeling society and his kith.

his kith is the swan maidens/swan princes - they’re a younger kith usually in central/western europe who’s obsession is with fairytales, true love, and tragic love, based off the folktale of swan maidens. swans gain their power from dreams of love and fairytales. but their kith also bears a curse of a dark fate - when a swan finds their truest love, either them or their love are doomed to meet a gruesome, inescapable fate and will start to receive visions of it.

etienne didn’t know this until after his chrysalis, when he found out he was a changeling and the curse of kith. after he’d already been in love with mael since they were children. and soon enough, mael began to be tormented by nightmares and visions of a gruesome fate. terrified of losing the only person he has left, his husband, etienne finds himself convinced that he can change this fate, no matter how impossible he’s told it is

everything past this is sort of ongoing since it’s in the oneshot (which has turned into not a oneshot) - in session 1, mael was kidnapped by a vampire from vivien’s past as leverage to make etienne do something for him at vivien’s expense - that being, give him a dress he made for him to wear at mardi gras. vivien’s agreed to do so to get his husband back, but doesn’t seem fully convinced he’s even still alive. plus some other fae, vampire, and werewolf politics going on all around that

now i wont sit here and lie and say mael is gonna be fine. because he’s not that’s the curse of the swans. but i don’t know how it’s going to happen all i know is that it will be in resemblance to swan lake