Moonbeam: A Timeline series companion

character development go brrrr

ok so when i was developing all the darkclear kids, i basically just shoved a bunch of their parents traits in a vitamix blender until i got something i liked. idk if it's obvious, but here's a list of traits i decided to combine and spin out into their own things, because explaining my writing is fun:

shadowhunter: canon darkstalkers overconfidence and desire for power and control mixed with clearsight's anxiety, and fear of being controlled by others. basically canon darkstalker's angry teenager vibes + a splash of trauma and anxiety. canon clearsight's desire to protect her family and those she loves in general with her life, even if she never says so out loud. a general tendency in both of them to get super fixated on things. her killing vigilance was meant to be a huge legends callback, her whole character is lowkey just a legends callback tbh

eclipse: clearsight's moral compass, both her parents people skills, darkstalkers big picture thinking (of the non murderous variety) and both her parents intelligence + reasoning skills, her fathers creativity and knack for problem solving.

way: canon darkstalkers melodrama and general ridiculousness + desire to fit into nightwing society and be seen as superior, mixed with clearsight's anxiety and "nerdy kid who eats lunch in the library" vibes.

idk if you can tell, but i really love juxtaposing opposing traits from dark and clear and shoving them into one person, it's very fun

bonus round of character headcanons/changes i made to dark and clear as they got older:

darkstalker:

* having kids made him a lot more cautious, i feel like a good half of his personality in legends was "angry teenager" and getting older and becoming responsible for a little kids safety really made him rethink his worldview. he strikes me as the type to be very protective of his kids, despite having been super reckless before becoming a parent.

* i think he just matured as a person too, and as he got older got a lot less egotistical, as one does. (and in my timeline also never got worse than "overpowered teenager")

* going thru all he did with the war also scarred him in a lot of ways, in general made him less likely to go on a killing spree lol

* ironically, seeing how bad vigilance was probably also set in stone the whole "being a dictator is bad, actually" thing

clearsight:

*she's much more self loathing in this au because she spent years getting constantly degraded and shouted at by her boss all day long and made to feel horrible, which kinda gradually wore her self esteem down to nothing.

*i also feel like just being famous and in the spotlight so much was really hard for her. like darkstalker was very good at figuring out what people wanted and giving it to them, but she really got criticized for just existing, you either love or hate her. just the sheer level of attention she got was overwhelming, and she was surrounded it from a very young age on too. she would, like, breathe, and someone would be like "CLEARSIGHT PREGNANT???? CLEARSIGHT CHEATING??? CLEARSIGHT SECRETLY AN UNDEAD CORPSE???" and it was a lot to deal with. (especially how idolized she was by everybody, which to her would have felt like a huge responsibility.)

*she's also learned to integrate herself a lot more into court life tho, her and darkstalker never got the stupid big house, but she does know what all the different forks are called and stays on top of fashion trends lol

*i made her parents shitty because i have no idea how to write healthy family dynamics and this whole series was lowkey just me learning how to do that. also they disowned her bc i had too many characters and needed them out of the picture for a bit, and hurting clearsight is fun. (they do come back in this book tho 😉)

*having kids, opposite of darkstalker, made her much more defensive and willing to do anything to protect her them, even take crazy risks, a theme that, uh, comes back later