H O N E Y, I love you so much right now, fucking YES you can ask me about my original writing.  Original writing is everything to me, and my ridiculous gay revolutionaries are just…I love them a lot.  Also the best part is that I’m the author, fuck the man, my headcanons are fucking CANON.  OKAY.  This got HELLA LONG, I’m so sorry, I ramble about this shit.  Let this be a lesson about asking writers about their original characters: it leads to LENGTHY responses.

• Max, my Smol Wrathful Technopath
  
• Max isn’t her real name and she’s not telling what her real name IS, but Max is what she called herself when she met Seb for the first time (he found her and brought her to Polaris like he’d been followed home by a puppy) and he calls her Maxima, Latin for greatest, because he’s a nerd and it makes her smile.
• Max leads Mercury squad, responsible for collecting intel and general espionage.  It consists of Mercury Prime (Max, the technopath and combat/tactics specialist), Two (Elijah, her aromantic and explosives-happy second-in-command), Three (Zara, extraction specialist and really dangerous driver), and Four (Miles, the only straight male character I’ve included so far and the actual spy).  She adores them all.
• Max is Bi As Fuck.  She has standards for who she sleeps with, but she also grew up in Polaris, which is…fairly free and easy with sex, as long as you’re smart about it.  She’s much more reserved emotionally than physically–she likes to touch her people, make sure they’re there and all right, and yeah, that translates into a decently long list of partners, although nothing dazzling.  She’d be shocked beyond belief to hear how many people in Polaris have a terrible crush on her (kind of a “she had her arm through mine and called me ‘buddy’, what are we” kind of thing).
• Max feels like the world has personally wronged her by giving her technopathy.  She doesn’t dislike her powers by any stretch of the imagination, but they make her more useful off the front lines.  And Max really, really prefers the front lines–she doesn’t sit still well, hates feeling useless, likes to be able to do stuff.  She would very much have preferred to be invulnerable (kid names Harrison) or be able to throw lightning (Lessa).

• Lessa, my Tol Lesbian Electrokinetic
  
• Lessa is the daughter of the somewhat despotic definitely-not-at-all-an-extrapolation-of-Trump guy in charge.  She is also really, really gay.  That…is pretty much the summary of the conflict that lands her in Polaris.  She breaks Max out of a holding cell and Max falls in love on the spot, and then she watches Max break someone’s neck while in handcuffs and she’s like “h o l y f u c k” and that’s pretty much their relationship.  Lots of heart-eyes and competency kink and Lessa kind of getting off on the fact that her (short) girlfriend could probably bench press her.
• Lessa’s electrokinetic abilities have their limits.  She can generate more than household current (actually her potential amperage is somewhere in the several-thousands range), but lightning is way more than that.  The issue with that is that Lessa conducts electricity like whoa, the logical downside of her powers, and that means that she can’t really be outside during a storm without risking getting struck.  She’s only been struck once, but it was severe, and she still has scars that coil up her throat and down her right arm and across part of her chest.  She’s very self-conscious about them (her mother used to make her cover them up obsessively).  Max thinks they look like artwork and makes a point to kiss them a lot.
• Lessa is a top-notch sniper, they discover pretty darn quick.  She spends so much time accomodating the random motion of the electrity she throws that making the adjustments for wind and bullet movement is a snap.  She becomes Mercury Five, their outside backup.  
• Lessa is Tol (about 5′11″) and Max is Smol (5′4″) and that’s not really a headcanon so much as it is…something very important about their relationship.  Like.  Height difference.  With ladies.  *jazz hands*  

• Marshal Ade North, the boss of everyone
  
• The love of my life.  No, seriously.  The love of everyone’s life.  A little bit General Organa, a little bit Stacker Pentecost, a little bit Allison Blake, add morals and honor and steel backbone, mix vigorously.  Spice with Captain Kathrine Janeway to taste.  Dress in army surplus jacket, turn loose on oppressive regime of your choice.  Rebel organization not included.
• ‘Ade’ means ‘crown’ (said ‘ah-DAY’).  Her only concession to really taking care of herself is braiding her hair like her mother used to, in a tidy crown around her head.  Her mother used to call her little queen and the crown always made her feel strong.  It takes time, but she’s gotten good at doing it herself, and she doesn’t want to cut it off.
• She was a US Marshal before everything went to shit (everyone is stubborn about keeping the title) and being a queer black woman became a threat to life and limb, and she and half a dozen other people (including Seb and Junli) formed the core of Polaris.  She was not involved with naming the thing after the North Star, and remains a bit exasperated about it.
  
• The name Polaris is actually from her wife Rose.  Rose named it and left.  She loves Ade with her whole heart, and tried to convince her to leave the country.  Better to live, and all that.  Ade couldn’t do it, and Rose couldn’t make herself stay, so…that’s the grand tragedy in this novel (there’s always at least one, in my writing).  They really do love each other, but…what’s the line? “I wish we’d met before they convinced you life is war” or something like that.

• Aaaaand Glare, because I love him even though he’s not a major player
  
• Glare isn’t his legal name either, it was his hacker handle, but his legal name is Marissa and he’s…not a girl, so that wasn’t working for him.  And also being trans isn’t technically illegal in this future, but it’s functionally illegal, you feel me, so he was like “Well, might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb.”  He was so in the habit of using Glare that he forgot to pick a different name and now everyone calls him Glare.  He’s good with this.
• Glare would like to remind everyone that HE is actually the one in charge of the hacker division, not Max.  It doesn’t matter that he takes her orders, he’s in charge, and everyone can just shut up.  (And when Max isn’t in the room, he actually is the boss, but her special circumstances place her outside the chain of command and kind of require everyone to do as she says.  He gets it, he just doesn’t like it.  He likes Max, though, they have a weird sort of insult-based friendship.)
• Polaris has their own fully-fledged slang system, and they call significant others ‘binaries’ (as in binary stars, which…like, fuck reading love poetry, binary stars appeal more to my inner Romantic than anything).  Glare has two binaries, his girlfriend Zara (Mercury Three) and his boyfriend Damien (who works with the kids even though he looks like he should be out playing commando) and they’re all disgustingly cute with each other.  Zara’s pretty small so she makes Damien give her piggyback rides and wheedles him into carrying Glare around bridal style.  Also when Glare has bad days (he isn’t permitted to wear his binder if he has rib injuries, so that’s usually a bad week or two) they make a show of kidnapping him from the hacker headquarters for meals and stuff.
• Glare’s one indulgence is red lipstick.  They try to keep morale up in Polaris by making sure everyone can have one material indulgence when possible (hair dye is extremely popular and first pick is generally chosen with trial by combat), and Glare likes being able to leave perfectly shaped lipstick prints on Zara and Damien’s cheeks.