Diagram labeled 'Spectrum of Reaction to Holding of Small Lizard', showing about a dozen of my characters arranged on a triangular spectrum, with the points of the triangle labeled with a smiley face, a frowny face, and a neutral face. Most of the characters are placed near the smiley face, indicating they would love to hold a small lizard. Vae is placed in the neutral corner, and Claire is placed in the frowny corner. Cosmo is placed smack in the middle, and in hindsight I have no idea what that could possibly indicate, since one of the corners is neutrality. I suppose he has a deep ambivalence about the holding of small lizards.

LIVE LIZARD REACTION

One time one of my friends asked me something like "how would your character react if a small lizard were placed in her hand?" and I was like "which one?" Anyway, I had just finished making the first batch of character portraits for a character bio post over on cohost (a post I would later repurpose for the 'Characters' page on this very web site!) and I went 'wait a minute I have all these little icons ready, I can make a whole fucking chart', so I got carried away and made an entire diagram illustrating my characters' range of reactions to the holding of a small lizard.

I have no idea what it means to be placed in the center of this spectrum. I have no idea why I decided to make neutrality one of the axes. makes no sense. Anyway, most of them would respond positively to "lizard in palm of hand". And the people in the 'unhappy' corner are mostly only there for "Oh I am afraid of this thing" reasons, rather than "I genuinely dislike the lizard" reasons. Because who could hate a lizard? Come on, now.