Name changes

Yoooo first post with the new design

I feel like I should probably come up with some excuse for the fact that I said that I was going to change the website a bit and instead not only changed it entirely but also changed the whole story it was originally for, but… there isn’t really any. It’s just that things happened. It’s been nearly a year since I started this, hasn’t it? Think of that.

Anyway. I feel like I should talk about name changes in this post, because, well, there’s a lot of them. I’ll present them in a list format, and then maybe add some new art.

• Johann Faust -> Ernst Johann Leitner
• Leonard Mephisto -> Leonard Arthur William Tateley, 16th duke of Calitern
• Sylvia Sapping -> Sylvia Pernet
• Richard Golson -> Richard Asadi
• Ishmael Samuel “Monty” Carter -> Francis Samuel “Monty” Beckett Carter
• Lavinia Avnas -> Lavinia “Vinney” More
• Janson (as in, the last name, so that’s for everyone with this last name) -> Glines

Name changes were made for various reasons. For Tateley it was made to be less overt with his character, as well as making him sound more British, for Sylvia it was purely to give her a French surname, for Monty it was because I had brainrot from media I recently consumed, for Ernst it was because I just kinda felt like it, etc.

Also! I’ve renamed the story that formerly was Pact multiple times in the past few days, first it was Leitner, then I changed it to some other things, currently it’s called Living Ghosts, which is… mostly metaphorical… but also possibly literal as I get further into writing it idk. A lot has been happening so tbh it could change at any time.

To get into setting changes:

• The story now takes place in 1807. That’s the biggest one, I guess, going from Victorian to “the middle of the Napoleonic Wars.” What inspired this change? There isn’t anything in particular, but I started reading too much literature from the time and also became an expert on a poet from the period. I guess I wanted to change it to match more with my current interests and because I find the setting of “Napoleonic Wars” really interesting.
• It’s now 100% set in the UK. There’s a few flashbacks etc to France, America, and Germany (Sylvia, Monty, and Ernst respectively) but nothing more than that.

And now on to plot changes….

• It’s going to be… more or less the same plot… with the same general “Ernst sells his soul to an English lord for knowledge and It All Goes Downhill From There” thing. However, there’s far more 1. politics 2. mystery and 3. ambiguity. There’s less of 1. outright supernatural happenings 2. Just Hanging Around and 3. Richard. He’s much less of a major character in this version. Sorry!
• Check the page for the rest of the changes!

And now for the art of Monty which I’m using as my icon now:

Based on this scene, which is one of his first in the rewrite, which has him appearing much earlier (content warning for a drug mention):

Monty was smoking, as usual, when he came to come with Sylvia and Deirdre to meet the doctor upstairs. He knew the man somehow, Sylvia wasn’t sure how exactly, and he was willing to introduce them. She had intended him to come later in the day, but it was hardly past dawn when she awoke and went into the kitchen to find him sitting on their table.

“Good morning, Monty,” Sylvia said.

“Good morning, Ms Pernet.” He had oily dark brown hair, spiked downward with sweat and natural grease, and a long, tired, cheerful face. His gray eyes were darkly shadowed, and he was at present clenching a cigar between two long pale fingers gloved in grimy wool. As usual, he wore a long oiled seaman’s coat, acquired while at sea, and a mess of sweaters and waistcoats and probably more than one shirt underneath to keep warm. His socks would be the same, layered because however nice his boots were at one point, they were now scuffed and thin and kept for mere practicality, because they were free of holes. 

“Right.”

“Right.”

“What did you do last night, Monty?”

“What did you do last night, Sylvia?”

“I helped to rob a grave.”

“I wandered around the docks for a bit high on auntie.”

He meant opium. “Asadi said he thought he saw you in the graveyard the other day in the middle of the night. Alone.”

“Probably. I was trying to stay up all night by chewing coca.”

“That only works the first few times. I’ve tried it.”

“I’ve been thinking I could have Leitner distill it somehow for me.”

“What were you doing in the graveyard?”

“Oh I don’t know. I like to go there sometimes. I walk about the graves and look at the birds. I like the scavengers.”

“Why?”

“I suppose they appeal to my sense of drama. Did you know that I chose my name from a graveyard?”

“You did?”

“From the family plot. Monty Samuel Carter, a son of the family’s original settlers. Died 1684. Same year I was born two hundred years later.”

So that’s today! Thank you for reading and for putting up with the big changes!