Modification A love for all the ages: Cyborg girl and her nature spirit girlfriend

Who here has read this is how you lose the time war?

probably nobody, but I’m here today because that book punched me in the heart a bunch of times, and I need to recreate some inhuman time travelling secret agent lesbians to be able to see my beloved Red and Blue take shape. Also because I want to surprise my girlfriend, who got me into Time War with them. Not as gifts, but just as dolls that live in our house with us.

Here’s the rub: Red and Blue are described intermittently, but it’s usually vague, and it’s never in full detail. Their appearances also change when they go under cover in different eras, but the core descriptors of them are that Blue is from Garden, and as such, is a nature spirit looking entity, and Red is from The Agency, and is a futuristic cyborg looking lady. In a later post, I’m going to reread the book and write down every physical descriptor we get of them, but I’m not above fudging things to make them work with the dolls I have available to me.

reference: the fanart on these stickers is gong to be highly referenced in my designs for them, but I’ll also be doing my own thing.

For Blue:
Blue is going to use the base of a Dream Valley Belinda head, on a feeple60 Sircca dragon body with, naturally, blue legs. I’m going to mod Belinda’s wings into her back, mod a flower over one eye (red, naturally), and dye all her human parts deep navy blue. Blue finishes with iridescent silvery blue vine tattoos on her arms and torso, and red lips, for spoiler reasons. Thinking her wig will be blue felted locs, with flowers and leaves beaded in, all naturally in blue.

Blue board by Indifferent Red, on Flickr

this is the inspiration gallery for Blue!

Now onto Red:
Red is going to be an amadiz Virginia head (already dyed red) modded to have a groove in her cheeks like her skull flips open, lips painted blue, she’s going to have robot eyes, and/or double iris eyes. Arm wings made of what looks a little like fan blades. She’ll be on a serenade doll artificial bird body that I’ve had since 2020 and not painted, with the bird in her chest painted blue. I’m going to mod a damaged spare head into a cyber helmet for her, and give the artificial bird body metal plated looking armour inspired by D.lace’s ex machina girls, and I’m going to have Serenade’s Charlotte.SP mechanical hooves as feet for her (thank goodness I grabbed them when they were available separate!). Her human head is also going to get an undercut wig made of red wires of a small enough gage they look vaguely hairlike!

Red, my beloved by Indifferent Red, on Flickr

Red’s inspiration gallery

So, where is our project at now?

Blue:
-Resin: obtained, on order
-dye job: not done
-back modded to take wings: not yet
-eye modded with flower: not yet
-wings painted: not yet
-tattoos painted: not yet
-faceup: not yet
-wig made: not yet
-clothing figured out??? Not yet

Red:
-head dyed: yes
-head modded: not yet
-cyber helmet head modded: not yet
-body dyed: not yet
-armour modded onto body: not yet
-robot eyes made: not yet
-body painted (including bird): not yet
-wig made: not yet
-wings made: not yet
-faceup: not yet
-clothing figured out: not yet

Once the project really kicks off, I’ll have post numbers on all the things that are done on this list, for easy reading—until then, enjoy yourselves looking at my weird little inspiration boards I drafted together on Freeform!

edit: you can see the photos if you click reply—I don’t know why they don’t show!

 

Oh eeeeee!! Someone else who’s read it!!! My girlfriend read me time war every even big before we went to bed, and the ending made us stay up until like 2am because we had to find out if Blue was okay. I plan on doing a deep dive into the book to find what specific cybernetics Red has, and then integrate what I feasibly can, and fudge that the rest was lost when she blew out all her weaponry escaping garden/while she was a prisoner at the Agency, so there might be differences now! Looking forward to getting to skim the book for all of the descriptions I can get—I know Red hides the seeds of Blue’s letter behind her eye, which is why I’m making her head look like it opens up, so that it seems like she could access it.

As for the parts of them in each other, there are hints—the flower-eye is going to be modeled after the horrible plant that was Red’s fatal letter, and Blue’s lips being red is going to be an outward representation of the antidote in Red’s blood that she planted on her in Garden when she infiltrated. I wanted Red’s lips to be blue as a bit of symmetry between her and Blue’s designs, and a representation of how she had to become blue to get in, and so is the blue bird in the chest hollow of the body she’ll be on (or maybe a blue one and a red one, to mirror the book cover!). Debating if I want any other signs—like modelling Red’s wings to look like Blue’s since I have to make them from scratch, so I have a lot of control over how they look!

Costuming them is going to be a blast too. I know I need to make them dresses they can get Victorian era tea in for sure. Costumes for when they’re embedded that hide some of their nonhuman traits, and costumes that don’t. Costumes that mix the colours for once they’ve run away together. I’ve got no knowledge of how to sew, so we’ll see how far sheer audacity can carry me!

I’ve been thinking about making these two as dolls since I finished the book, and today, I looked at what I had on order, and something just clicked into place. Blue’s body is supposed to ship today, and theoretically I have all of Red waiting to be assembled and played with. And wouldn’t it be cool if Red’s helmet lit up? A friend of mine does cosplay stuff with LED’s that I could perhaps borrow some knowledge from…

 

Ohhhh tattering Red’s wings is narratively delicious. I will be doing that! Still working out what I’d like to do for Materials to make them. If I go for something like the spiked metal angel-ish design, I could use a bunch of clock hands, and then build some kind of bracket that holds them. I also cannot wait to do Blue’s Agency disguise as well—it’ll be cool to see how she’d simulate the agency’s tech wear! And then of course, I’d have to do some kind of costume/extra parts to show how Red melds her body and Blue’s to get into Garden. I could really work on these two forever!!

I’m also genuinely excited to look for patterns. I’ve got a few bookmarked, and a friend who cosplays ready to show me how to create my own when I can’t find what I need!