Bohemian Rhapsody

This was an OC created for a collaboration project on the MusicWings. I hope it's okay that I've created a separate page for this specific character of mine. Before removing/editing anything here, please contact me on my profile/message wall first! Thank you! 
 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ let's gooooooo 
\\ "Mama! Life had just begun! But now I've gone ahead and thrown it all away!" \\ 
 \\\ You can find more amazing bases by Peridots-and-hunter-slimes, here! \\\ 
 Before we begin... 
=== A Note on Mental Health ===
 I myself struggle sometimes daily with anxiety and stress. I know many others out there do as well. This character was created based on my own experiences with stress but heightened and exaggerated to a crazy amount. But of course I don't know everything. If you feel if this is in any way offensive or disrespectful, please contact me about it first and I'll do my best to edit in a way that benefits everyone. 
 Below, TW: character has strong mental health issues/challenges, anxiety, stress, fear, negative and/or self-critical thoughts 
 (owned by WikiUser2019)
=== MusicWings Bio ===
 Bohemian Rhapsody, or Rhapsody for short, is a male HiveWing, about 17 years old (DY). Rhapsody is a confused dragon. He is trapped in a societal structure he can’t find peace with and is constantly questioning his identity and sexuality. Rhapsody feels lost and at war with his own life. His anxiety gives him many different personalities—ranging from mildly confused to extremely disoriented, and everything in between. Rhapsody has strong emotions, and laments often. 
 He is genuinely a kind, good-hearted dragon, but his inner struggle has erased this almost completely, leaving only the shell of a dragon, the silhouette of the person he once was. He has forgotten the people around to support him, and feels pressured beyond the point of no return. He feels there is minimal to no hope left for him to truly figure out who he is meant to be. 
 Rhapsody feels trapped in a dark room with no escape. Some days, he spends all of his time alone, hearing voices in his head. His confusion is sometimes debilitating, causing him to spend long time periods on his back on the floor, staring up at the ceiling, feeling sorry for himself. He can stress himself out to the point of shaking, and mentally controlled paralyzation. His parents don’t speak to him anymore. 
 In his spare time, Rhapsody used to study astronomy, and was always interested in the planets and constellations around him. He was also studious in general, and although he didn’t always have the best grades, he loved to read and owned a huge selection of books on religion, culture and history. He has since burned these books. 
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=== Character Design ===
==== Overview ====
 This was super fun to do, and surprisingly easy to come up with. 
 It was also a refreshing change from regular dragon OCs. It was actually fun to fill out the info-box. Usually I hate filling out the info-boxes and almost save them for last. Cause sometimes I don't have the answers to all the questions and I have to think and rack my brain for answers that don't come easily and are probably just guesses or lies and... **deep breath through nose** and it *deeply* annoys me. 
 When I first found the MusicWings Project I happily freaked out and this was the long overdue inspiration bucket-load I needed. Thanks so much to everyone who participated and collaborated to make it what it is now! 
==== Mental/Phycological ====
 This one is the most fun to do in my opinion, so I have tons to write here. Dragons are easy characters to craft and write in my opinion because with human OCs for other fandoms and just be own worlds, they always tend to come off as incomplete. Dragons on the other hand, seem at first less 'human' and less 'realistic' and by writing them simply at first, it gives me a backdrop to paint in all the other traits and details in a very realistic way. Humans on the other hand start out with complex emotions to make them 'better characters' and by doing so I forget that the most intense, complex emotions are often very simple ones, and the details come later, not all at once. 
 Rhapsody is the perfect example of someone who has rapidly and dangerously changed themself. A genuinely good-hearted dragon, not too exuberant, not too friendly, but still, you know, enough, Rhapsody was a fully-functioning character with likes and dislikes, friends and supporters, schoolmates and relations, when he started questioning his entire life and chemistry. He began growing distant from the dragons he knew were around to help and support him, isolating himself in a world of 'discovery'. He believed it was better to know it all than be ignorant, and so his quest began. 
 Unfortunately that is not always the case if you were never so stable in the first place. The only reason Rhapsody was happy back in the day was because of his ignorance about himself. And today, he is even worse off because he has gone down a path he should've went on with at least one other dragon to support him. 
 Now he questions everything, and believes himself to have been 'happy' back in the day, before all this. The truth? Happier, yes, but happy? No. he has confused himself about every version of his own person--the present and past, and by changing those, he is confused about his future. 
==== Physical ==== 
 I don't have that much to say here, but I imagine Rhapsody as having unusually spiky spikes, sharp horns, and a stare that could burn a hole in your mind. His personality is infectious, strange, and a combination of a great number of different things. I wanted that to be reflected in his body type, and sort of have a really extra-ordinary 'is he tall?' 'is he short?' sort of look going on, if you can imagine that. Sometimes when you look at him, it depends which angle, he appears a monster of a dragon, sometimes, barely there at all. This leads his confusion to reflect on his outward appearance, and leaves the dragons in his presence confused. 
 I would imagine he'd be good at catching things to eat. The creatures could never tell how close or far away he was from them, if he turns to the side and seems his size, therefore his 'distance' has changed. 
==== Visual ====
 I had a hard time deciding what type of dragon Rhapsody would be. Or look like, since he is a 'MusicWing'. I finally settled on a HiveWing because I liked how their sharp, intelligent nature contrasts with the aggression that normally associated with them. I also liked how they had a very complex society in place, with could be very limiting for Rhapsody. I used the aggression in a mental sort of way, and his own anger on himself. When picking his color scheme, I wondered if it was possible to make an all black HiveWing. Per say, there are some completely dark colored wasps, bees and hornets in the word, and in my head I was most notably recalling the tarantula hawk, a large shiny navy-black wasp (although it does have orange wings). I really wanted that shiny dark, brooding look for him, but I also wanted to reflect some of the pain he's going through, and the complete darkness the surrounds him is visible on his scales as well. 
 For his eye I gave him a stunning bright blue color and a tiny, dilated pupil to look as though he's petrified. 
=== History ===
 Rhapsody is 17 years old in dragon years. This is a short biography of the key events of his life, broken down into three parts, hatchling, dragonet and adult dragon.
==== Hatchling (0 DY) ====
 Rhapsody was born to HiveWing parents in the MusicWing Kingdom. They had immigrated from Pantala a few years back and were never very successful there, so they had moved to this new place in hopes of gaining some more money and maybe starting a family, too. When Rhapsody was born his parents had little wages and they raised him in a shabby home. Thankfully this didn't affect him so much as a baby, but as he grew, he began to wonder why he was given a smaller, poorer home than the other dragonets around. 
==== Dragonet (1 DY - 7 DY) ====
 Rhapsody's parents, who were his whole world once (so much can change!), applied for jobs around time while they worked on opening a bookshop. They encouraged their son to read and he became even more enthralled with books then they had expected. He soon garnered a preference for non-fiction. He became ahead of his class, so unfortunately his reading wasn't teaching him anything he was supposed to be learning at the time, in fact, it was just extra info. The more he read the more he became quiet. Eventually he barely spoke at all, only when he felt it was important.
==== Adult Dragon (7 DY - 17 DY) ====
 As a young adult dragon, Rhapsody helped his parents in the bookshop and eventually decided to become a librarian. He was worried this might hurt his mother and father because of the effort and time they had put into their own bookshop, but it was never as popular as they had hoped, and was apparently too expensive for some dragons, even the ones who appeared to have a lot of money but would rather borrow fro the library instead. So after some discussions with his parents he got his first job.
 He loved reading at the library, it was huge, and sometimes busy, but with all the books int he world it was hard to feel exposed, which was nice. There was a second floor with a telescope and a balcony, and here is where Rhapsody first started charting the stars and planets, for which he also gained an affection for. 
 And then there was reading, and learning, and knowing. And so he read, learned and knew. And the more he did these things, the more he became confused, overwhelmed and stressed. Knowledge, his life-long companion, had turned against him. He could no longer decide who he was, or what he was even alive for. 
 After a huge argument with his parents, (read in depth in the relationship section below) Rhapsody started to lose control of mental health and realized... nothing really mattered to him. 
=== Relationships ===
 Rhapsody has since blocked himself off from the rest of the world, considering himself unable to function. He feared what will happen if he asked for help, he feared nothing will help, and eventually he forgot all about other dragons. This relationship section is special because it will be divided into two parts, one for the current relationship and one for the past relationship of him and each dragon(s) mentioned. 
==== Unnamed Students ====
 As a student, Rhapsody was always the odd one out in the crowd and never truly felt he fit in with any of the groups, really. He didn't speak much with the other clawmates or teachers. He just read a lot, and did okay on his schoolwork. He got graded pretty much average and that was it.
 He was never bullied, merely picked on occasionally. Same as any other kid, really. But he couldn't 'change his personality' to fit in like the other dragonets--it always showed through, leaving him at times feeling very vulnerable and/or uncomfortable. He was never popular, and was the bookworm of every class and session. He brought his books and scrolls everywhere; they not only represented his parent's expectations but also his shield to the rest of the world. 
Growing up, Rhapsody didn't really keep in touch with any of his other clawmates or teachers, although some did follow him into the field of reading, it was more literature than just any books. He at times sees them around town and pretends not to know them. 
==== Unnamed parents ====
 Rhapsody never had the best relationship with his parents but over the years it's most certainly gotten worse. He felt they pressured him to no end, bothering him with news upcoming exams, and urging him to get on with his life in the way they believed was right, and to get a job and contribute to his MusicWing community. Whilst he just wanted to learn and read, this may have been merely a seed planted in his mind by his parents, who were proud of him in some ways--his studious nature, and his conformity to the rules.
 Rhapsody eventually moved out to live on his own and became librarian so he could further his knowledge and read every day. However, the more he read the more he understood, or didn't understand, and the more information clouded his brain and caused him to think outside of the box. He got more and more confused, and felt very lost in all this knowledge. They say knowledge is power, but for Rhapsody it was beginning to feel like more of a nightmare than anything. A big change from his normal, previous life, when he went along with anything, and just did as he was told. 
 When Rhapsody began questioning his identity, his parents did not support him and viewed it as merely a waste of time, and that nothing would become of it. However it did not go away, and he kept this up for years. Rhapsody's parents eventually became angry and told him to quit this behaviour or not only would he never get ahead in life, that they could disown him. 
 This scared Rhapsody to no end. He had always viewed his mother and father as the pinnacle of knowledge, the pillar he could fall back on, and even though his relationship with them had been rocky from the start, them saying this to him was still a huge shocker. This is when his mental health started to really deteriorate, and the troubles began. 
 Since then, he and his parents do not speak to each other. 
=== Trivia === 
* Bohemian Rhapsody is a character based off of the song by Queen of the same name 
* A Rhapsody is by definition an exalted or excessively enthusiastic expression of feeling 
* Rhapsody's design was based mainly off of that of a Tarantula Hawk 
* Rhapsody has two nicknames, and the other one is Bo 
* Rhapsody used to love astronomy and the study of planets. This is because Queen's head singer was known as Freddie Mercury, and Mercury is a planet, so, well, yeah... :) 
* Rhapsody's confusion about his identity is partly based on what people speculate the real song is about 
* Rhapsody eventually becoming openly gay is a parody of how Freddie Mercury himself was openly gay 
* A legendary song, made by legendary people, go listen to it: Bohemian Rhapsody 
Category:Characters
Category:Work in Progress
Category:Males
Category:HiveWings
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Category:Occupation (Archivist)
Category:LGBT+
Category:Mature Content
Category:Status (Commoner)