A drawing I did in December of 2014 of my original characters, The Dissidents
Disclaimer: This is going to be a long one. Like, a really long one. It’s going to be about my original characters, The Dissidents. I truly will not be offended if people don’t read this one. It’s going to be extremely nerdy. So please, if you don’t feel like reading long drawn-out descriptions of the superheroes I created several years ago, know that I won’t be offended if you skip this one.
Introduction
I’ve been a comic book fan since the first time I read a comic book. The first comic book I ever read was Uncanny X-Men #277, released June of 1991. My mom bought it for me from a comic book rack at a general store in Harwich, Massachusetts, which is a little town in Cape Cod. The issue was written by Chris Claremont, who is a legendary X-Men writer, and drawn by Jim Lee, who would go on to become one of the biggest names in the comic book industry. The issue took place in the middle of a story, so I didn’t really know what was going on, but I met a cast of incredible characters, and I was instantly hooked.
I had already been drawing since the time I could hold a pencil. My mom tells stories of the ladies in church being shocked by my ability to draw animals at a really young age in the pews while mass was going on. I think those stories are maybe just to make me feel good about myself, but I’ll take it! I became known as “the artist” in my friend group and in my family.
One of my friends and I had the idea to create our own superhero team when we were really little. I drew the costumes and my friend wrote the story, and we ended up sending it to 20th Century Fox (thanks again mom!) to suggest they make a Saturday morning cartoon of it. They sent a very sweet letter saying, “thanks for the suggestion guys, we can’t do that at this time but keep coming up with ideas!” So clearly I wanted to create superheroes of my own pretty much as soon as I discovered superheroes were a thing.
The desire to make my own superhero team lasted for YEARS. I would come up with ideas, and then think they weren’t good enough. The first time I created a superhero who I really loved wasn’t until I was in high school, and other than him, my original creations fell flat. I would often draw my friends as superheroes (something I still occasionally do) and assign them powers based on their personalities or interests. At one point in college, I got really into mythology from different cultures, and came up with a “superhero” team of modern incarnations of gods and goddesses from mythology. I loved that team, but it wasn’t quite perfect for me.
In 2012, I finally came up with what was - in my opinion - the perfect ragtag group of superheroes. One of them was that first superhero I loved from high school, two of them were holdovers from the team of modern day myths, a few of them were slightly altered superhero versions of people I loved, and the rest were inspired from other sources. The team had some of the qualities I loved from the fiction I had followed up to that point: they were an odd mix of characters who you might not think belonged together, they were diverse, and they were a little messy. I must have been feeling pretty punk rock at the time I created them, because I ended up calling them The Dissidents (the Meriam Webster definition is “disagreeing especially with an established religious or political system, organization, or belief”, which … kind of fits). Sometimes I think about the name and think of how silly it is, but the name became associated with the thing I was most proud of having done in my life, so it stuck.
The rest of this blog post is going to be me talking about each of The Dissidents. You’ll see the original designs for each character, and you’ll hear what inspired the character and how they have changed and evolved in my mind since their creation. You’ll also learn about what each character represents to me. This is going to be as nerdy and neurodivergent a post as there ever was. There are 9 members of The Dissidents, so like I warned in my disclaimer, this is going to be long. If you take the time to read, you’ll probably end up learning a lot about me, who and what is important to me, and a little bit about how my mind works. I’m going to break this post into sections, so if you want to come back and read the different parts over a stretch of time, that might make a lot of sense.
Here goes …
Tadpole
A drawing of a lizard-man character named Tadpole
The superhero I created in high school was very heavily based on the idea of wanting to create my own version of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. I was feeling joyful, and was also getting inspired by the early 2000’s skateboard culture, and I also had a crush on a very skinny guy. I ended up drawing the character that became Tadpole, who is all of the things I was inspired by - a skateboarder, very skinny, and extremely joyful.
I’m not a big anime fan, but shortly after creating Tadpole and starting college, I started watching an anime called Samurai Champloo. It was essentially a mix of martial arts and hip hop. There was a character named Mugen, who was a bit grumpy and very rough around the edges, but whose fighting style seemed a lot like breakdancing. I loved the way the character moved, I loved the chaos in his energy, and I immediately associated those movements and that energy with the way Tadpole moved. I also loved the idea of Tadpole being a fan of hip hop (specifically the rapper Lupe Fiasco), and so in my head, that’s primarily what he listens to.
Tadpole’s personality is defined by his youthful energy. He is always smiling, always having fun, and always a bit goofy. It’s sort of sad that all of these years after creating the character, that kind of youthfulness feels very distant. But when I draw Tadpole or think about him, it rekindles that spark of youth in me. I can’t help but smile a little whenever the character pops into my head. And while I ended up dating that very skinny boy and it ended messily, drawing Tadpole helps me remember the excitement of my first real crush and the kind of innocent joy that comes from that.
By the way, I don’t know why the character’s name is Tadpole. He obviously looks a lot more like a salamander than a tadpole, and so the name has always felt like a mismatch for his appearance in my head. Despite that, I know the name “Tadpole” is perfect for him. The idea that tadpoles are so young and are basically still very much in development as creatures aligns with the youth of the character.
Sedna
A drawing of Sedna, the Inuit goddess of death and the sea
The next character, Sedna, could not possibly be more different from Tadpole. I mentioned in my introduction that I went through a period of time in college when I was a bit obsessed with mythology from different cultures. During that time, I learned about Sedna, the Inuit goddess of the sea and marine animals. Please do yourself a favor and click on that linked text to go to the Wikipedia page on the myth of Sedna, both because it’s fascinating and because it gives a lot of context as to why this myth was so captivating to me.
I always loved when superhero teams at Marvel and DC had mythological characters on their rosters. The Avengers had Thor and Hercules, and the Justice League had Wonder Woman. And so even after I had moved on from having a team of all modern day incarnations of deities, I wanted to keep a couple of them on The Dissidents. Sedna seemed so different from The Avengers’ Thor character. She had a darkness, a sadness, and a seriousness that I felt strongly pulled towards. She discovered her power after being severely mistreated. I think everyone knows what it’s like to feel mistreated sometimes, and I loved the idea of a goddess whose mistreatment led to her becoming ruler of the sea and the underworld.
I have talked about The Dissidents with different therapists over the years. At one point, I told a therapist that I think of Sedna as the manifestation of my depression, and that including her on the team was a way of me trying to make peace with that depression. That therapist suggested trying to reframe her in my mind - maybe she wasn’t my depression, but my wisdom born of hardship. I really liked that reframing, and so while Tadpole is the character of youthful innocence, Sedna is the character of mature wisdom.
You’ll find that each of The Dissidents is associated with a musician or band for me. I associate Sedna with the band Our Lady Peace. I was a huge fan of Our Lady Peace in high school, and for some reason, the sound and tone of their music really fits who Sedna is in my heart. Maybe I should come up with a Dissidents playlist.
I like drawing Sedna as a fuller figured person. Superhero comics have always placed a focus on “perfect” or “sexy” bodies. I liked the idea of one of the most powerful characters on my team being a bigger person. In the original design you see above, she’s not all that big, although she’s certainly fuller figured than most women you see in superhero comics. As the years have gone on, I’ve tended to draw Sedna as larger than she is in that original design. One of the themes of The Dissidents is seeing diversity in all its forms. Sedna doesn’t have fingers (did you read that Wikipedia link?!), and she’s a large woman, and she’s Native. I think you’ll continue to see diversity of gender, orientation, body type, skin color, and neurotype as you read the rest of this post.
Nate
A drawing of a satyr character named Nate, or The Natural
Continuing with the theme of mythological characters, this one is named Nate. The story of the character’s name is pretty convoluted itself. Originally, in that team of mythological characters I mentioned, this character was just the Greek god Pan. I always loved the look of satyr/faun characters, and even before my foray into mythology in college, I had a special fondness for Greek mythology, dating back to childhood. Pan was a god who I was always fascinated with, so it was only logical that he’d be on my mythological team. But the more I read about Pan in college, the more problematic I realized he was. Let’s just say he had a tendency to not worry about consent. And so when I decided to include him in The Dissidents, I decided this character would be Pan’s cousin Dan. I thought it was kind of funny to use a rhyming name for a character who embodied all of the good qualities of Pan and none of the bad, and I thought it was also kind of funny (if a bit on the nose) to make a character who was an aspect of my personality have a shortened version of my name. Unfortunately, I hate the nickname “Dan” for “Daniel”, and so I would cringe every time I thought of the character, which was not the reaction I wanted to have. Then I realized that the powers I wanted this character to have were so similar to The Doctor from the comic series The Authority, so maybe I would give him a similar name - The Natural, reflecting the essentiality of his connection to the natural world. But then that name felt clunky and pretentious, so I simply shortened it to Nate, and somehow that name felt like it fit. It took a long time, but this character found his name.
Thinking about the character of Nate and what he means to me has helped me do a lot of healing. Nate was supposed to be unapologetically sexy. He’s wearing a Utilikilt, which is a type of unbifurcated garment I think is incredibly sexy. He never has a shirt on. He’s a mythological figure who is unencumbered by the Puritanical “Christian” nonsense around sexuality. Calling him “The Natural” made something click in my brain around how incredibly natural and healthy it is to be a sexual being. There is nothing salacious or perverted about him - he owns his sexuality, he expresses his sexuality, and it is a good and healthy thing for him. Thinking about this character and his relationship to his sexuality helped me to undo some of the damage of what I was taught about sex and sexuality.
The music I associate with Nate is Aaron Copeland’s “Appalachian Spring”. The kind of folky, epic, sweeping, powerful sounds of that piece fit him perfectly.
Joan
A drawing of Joan, a warrior woman character
I mentioned in my introduction that I have, throughout the years, drawn friends as superheroes. While all of The Dissidents represent aspects of me and my personality, this character and the next one I’ll write about were directly inspired by people in my life.
Joan was inspired by my husband Russ. Russ is, if you did not know, a very Catholic individual. He has a Master’s of Divinity, and all of his career has been involved in Catholic churches or organizations. He is by far the smartest person I know, and he does not have any trouble reconciling being gay and being a feminist with his Catholic identity.
Joan is the middle child of three sisters (Russ is the middle child of three brothers). Joan’s sisters were always interested in traditionally feminine things, while Joan was always more interested in sports and athleticism (Russ’s brothers have always been interested in traditionally masculine things, while Russ has always been more interested in the arts). Joan is even from Lakewood Ohio, Russ’s hometown. Joan is a lesbian, who moved to Boston to pursue a graduate degree in Catholic theology from a progressive Jesuit school (literally Russ’s life).
I’ve always aspired to be like Russ in reconciling my Catholic identity with my being queer. The character of Joan helps me to make peace with those two aspects of me, in the same way that being married to Russ helps me make peace with those two things.
The character of Joan is kind of like the mythological characters above, in that she’s supposed to be a Joan of Arc type character - breaking gender norms by being a warrior who is motivated by her Catholic faith. The actual historical figure of Joan of Arc is a little … complicated … but my idea behind the character of Joan is that she is given the powers of an archangel in order to fight evil. There was something significant to me about God choosing a lesbian to be Their chosen warrior on Earth.
Russ can very easily be quite serious and intellectual, and then be quite goofy and light-hearted. I like to think Joan has that personality too. That’s why the band CHVRCHES is associated with the character of Joan in my head. Russ likes to make up silly dances to CHVRCHES songs, and I like the idea of this strong, feminist, scholarly character also being able to let loose and dance to some indie-pop.
Francis
A drawing of Francis, a man wearing dark clothes and sunglasses
In 2006, I spent a semester abroad in Galway, Ireland. It was one of the most incredible times of my life. While I was there, I met the most interesting person I have ever encountered, and they became one of my best friends. That person’s name is Sweeney, and they were an androgynous half-Chinese/half-Irish queer singer-songwriter who did fire poi. It was like meeting a real-life superhero, and the fact that they liked me and wanted to be my friend was so exciting. We hung out all the time while I was there.
I was so inspired by Sweeney that I created a superhero who was just like them - Francis. When I met Sweeney, they had not yet come out as trans non-binary, but I guess a part of me sensed that about them, because the character inspired by Sweeney is a trans man. While most of the other characters in The Dissidents have superpowers, this character - Francis - didn’t seem to need any. Francis became like my Batman. On the Justice League, you have all of these immensely powerful characters who can do all sorts of crazy things, but the League always seems to know that Batman, who has no powers, is possibly the most capable of them all. I wanted Francis to be that character.
Despite being so heavily inspired by Sweeney, Francis ended up taking on a life and personality of his own in my head. He started to become the character who represented my righteous anger, which eventually just morphed into him being the character who represents my passion. He is the character for whom the term “dissident” is most applicable. He will not conform to what you expect from him, he will not apologize for being who he is, he is going to say what he wants to say and love who he wants to love, and he will always be 100% himself. He’s also never blinded by his passion, because I liked the idea that a person could be so heavily influenced by his gut and what feels authentic to him and not fall into the trope of becoming unintelligent because of that passion. I think that’s why I associate Francis with the band The Julie Ruin. In particular, the song “Ha ha ha” by The Julie Ruin really captures Francis’s energy for me.
I have more to say about Francis and how he relates to one of the other characters on the team, but I think I’ll get to that later.
Lycanna
Two drawings of a woman named Lycanna, one in her human form on the left, the other in her werewolf form in the upper right
Eventually I decided that, like all superhero teams, The Dissidents needed a leader. Every superhero team I read in comic books had a team leader - Cyclops or Storm for the X-Men, Captain America (usually) for the Avengers, Nightwing for the Teen Titans, etc.. I wanted the leader of The Dissidents to be interesting, complex, and the kind of character who would inspire loyalty and admiration in her team.
But I’ve also always loved contradictions. I like the idea of an unlikely leader. “What if a savage character like Wolverine was the leader of the X-Men?”, I would think. “What would need to change about Wolverine that would make the team follow him?”
When it came time to create a leader for The Dissidents, I knew I wanted the leader to be a black woman. As much as I was embracing diversity when creating the team, I had yet to create a black character, and it occurred to me that some of the strongest, most capable people I have ever encountered have been black women. As soon as the idea hit me, it just made sense.
But characters like Storm or Superman or Captain America make sense as leaders because of the way their powers complement the standard demeanor of a leader. So the idea was, what if the leader of The Dissidents was the one with the most savage powers?
That train of thought led to the development of Anna’s whole character. She would be a religious black woman raised in the Bible Belt, but the religion of her family would be Wicca. She would be mouthy and rough around the edges, while also being one of the most respected lawyers in the country. She was the kind of person who seemed dignified and sophisticated, while also not being afraid to throw down. She would be the embodiment of all sorts of contradictions while also being the one everyone wanted to follow and the member of the team everyone respects most.
I wrote up origin stories for all of The Dissidents a long time ago, and Anna’s was that she was infected by werewolves, who in my universe would completely lose their willpower against the force of their murderous urges during the full moon. But Anna was the exception - she mastered her lycanthropy (her code name comes from the combination of the word “lycanthropy”, which is the fancy way of saying “becoming a werewolf”, and her first name, Anna) and was able to transform into a werewolf at will instead of just during the full moon. She was so strong of mind and of willpower that even the untameable state of becoming a werewolf was controllable for her.
The music I always think of when I think of Lycanna is the album “Dirty Computer” by Janelle Monae. That album is a perfect album in my opinion, but also an album that wouldn’t immediately pop into most people’s minds if you said, “Think of a perfect album.” It just fits who she is so well.
Gabriela
A drawing of a bespectacled punky kid named Gabriela
I love kids, even though I don’t have any. I’ve always gotten along well with kids, and I really loved being a camp counselor during the summers in college. I especially love sassy kids, the precocious kids who are way smarter than they have a right to be and have the attitude to match their intelligence. This is probably why I would have a hard time being a parent - when a kid cops an attitude, more often than not, it makes me smile. So when I was creating The Dissidents, I really wanted a sassy genius kid on the team.
The character of Gabriela sort of started out as an effort to make a statement. I originally conceived of Gabriela as an adopted Mexican kid, born HIV-positive and into poverty, who had three doctorates in STEM by the age of 12. I had never seen an HIV-positive superhero, and it seemed way past time for there to be one, especially an HIV-positive superhero who is incredibly accomplished and lovable. I also originally thought of Gabriela as female - I wanted to challenge the assumption that the most successful people in STEM were cisgender white men. I loved the idea of a little girl speaking bluntly and assertively and sassily to older men, and always being right in what she said.
But Gabriela ended up being a character who truly evolved by leaps and bounds as I reflected on who the character was. And what I didn’t expect was that Gabriela became one of the two characters who is a true reflection of me and who I feel I am in the world.
I now understand that Gabriela is non-binary and uses “they/them” pronouns. I know that Gabriela is autistic. I know that Gabriela can see patterns and reasons in interactions and other things that most people can’t. I know that when Gabriela says things exactly as they observe them, they are usually not being sassy (although they definitely sometimes are!), but instead just speaking authentically. Gabriela’s special interest is robotics (more on that in the next character blurb), and the passion they feel about the world of technology brings them such immense joy and light. Gabriela is still a lot of the things that I first imagined for them - Mexican-American, adopted, HIV-positive, and a genius - but they are so much more than those components. They are one of the most complex characters on the team, and they have the biggest heart of anyone on the team.
The music I associate with Gabriela is the music of my all-time favorite band, Paramore. It makes sense that the character who feels like the one with the biggest heart is also the character I align with the band whose music makes my heart the fullest. When I received my formal autism diagnosis, the report mentioned the band Paramore as one of my special interests. How funny is it that my special interest band is the band I associate with my autistic character? Even writing this blurb about Gabriela has made my heart feel full.
Eddy
A drawing of my robot character, Eddy
Interestingly enough, The Dissidents came together shortly before the Disney/Marvel movie Big Hero 6, so the similarities between Hiro and Baymax from that film and Gabriela and this character, Eddy, were unintentional. That said, among the myriad of comics I’ve read in my life, I probably did read the Big Hero 6 comic series that inspired the movie at some point, and so it’s totally possible I ripped the idea for Gabriela and Eddy off from the characters of Hiro and Baymax. But I’m kind of okay with that, since all of The Dissidents have inspiration from stories I’ve read, or are actually established mythological figures like Sedna. Anyways, all of that is to say that if you’ve seen Big Hero 6, you probably have a solid sense of the connection between the previous character, Gabriela, and this character, Eddy.
I loved the idea of the tech-genius kid on the team creating a bodyguard-type robot character. Then that robot character came to life in my head, and I realized he was going to be the father figure of this team. Technically, he’s the youngest on the team, having been built by the next youngest character, Gabriela, some time in the middle of her childhood. But he’s also the wisest character, and when it came to his personality, I was inspired by characters like Alfred Pennyworth, Rupert Giles, Gandalf, and Yoda. As much as I love smart-ass kids like Gabriela, I also love heroic, wise, old characters, especially when they’re as mischievous or witty as the four I mentioned.
At the time The Dissidents came to be, I was working as a house manager at a group home for adults with developmental disabilities. One of the adults in the house was an older man named Eddy. I loved Eddy so much that I wanted his name to be the name of my older man character so that I would always think of him when I thought of the character. For a while I tried to come up with a clever acronym to make the letters in the name “Eddy” to stand for something, but I was never able to, and I was not willing to ditch the name in order to come up with some cool acronym name.
When it comes to powers, the Eddy character is a lot like a mix of Vision and Cable from Marvel Comics. I like the idea of leaning into the fact that he’s a robot in terms of what he can do physically, while simultaneously leaning into the fact that he’s probably the most soulful of the team in a very human way. I love that Gabriela and Eddy - the two most technological and “artificial” characters - are the heart and soul of the team.
I’ve always vacillated when it comes to the music I associate with Eddy. Sometimes I associate him with the band Linkin Park, probably because of the songs they did for the Transformers movies, and because of how action-packed I picture the character being in a battle, and how much I would love to see a movie with Eddy fighting set to Linkin Park’s music. But other times I associate him with Chopin, mostly because Chopin’s music seems to fit the personality of the character best - soulful, dignified, and thoughtful. Funny how the robot character can be so multi-dimensional.
Scott/Ursa Major
A drawing of a gay bear superhero, Ursa Major
The final character in The Dissidents is Scott. I saved him for last because he is the character who is the most like me. When I thought about this character, the thought was, “What if Superman was a gay bear?” I loved the idea of the most iconic and heroic character on the team being a husky, hairy gay man.
When I was writing the origins of The Dissidents, Scott’s origin was that he grew up in an abusive household and was kicked out and disowned when his parents found out he was gay. But instead of becoming bitter and angry about it, Scott was inspired to become a counselor for other LGBTQIA+ people. He moved to Toronto, put himself through college and graduate school, and volunteered with homeless LGBTQIA+ youth until the organization hired him full time to be a counselor.
One of my favorite things about Scott was that I imagined a lot about his chosen family. When he was kicked out, he was taken in by an older, queeny gay couple who treated him like their own son. When he gets his powers (flight, super strength, and invulnerability) after an encounter with a benevolent alien, the queeny gay couple encourages him to become a superhero, gives him the code name Ursa Major (because he got his powers “from the stars”, and so they named him after the bear constellation), and went to work designing his costume. This couple who takes him in is a lot like Robin Williams and Nathan Lane in The Birdcage. I love the idea of Scott having a very gay found family.
Scott’s personality is aspirational for me. If there was one word to sum him up, it would be “sweet”. He is sensitive, loving, affectionate, and always tells the people in his life how much he cares about them. His powers may be tough and hard, but he is soft and kind. I love that you can always count on Superman to do the right thing, even in situations where the right thing is hard to identify, and that Superman always thinks of the little guy. Scott is the same way - he puts the needs of the most vulnerable first, and his heart guides him to always do the thing that is most just and fair. I want to be like Scott, and I think of him as the character who (along with Gabriela) is the most “me” on The Dissidents.
In my imagination, Scott was in a relationship with Nate at the beginning of developing The Dissidents. I liked the idea of the sexy character being in love with the fat, sweet, sensitive character. But as time went on, I realized I needed to reconcile my sensitivity to my righteous anger. I don’t know exactly how or when it happened, but it became obvious to me that Scott is actually in a relationship with Francis. At some point they became a married couple in my head. I think of them as very much balancing each other out. And the associations I have with them - Scott being so sweet that he can sometimes be overly generous to his own detriment, and Francis being so passionate and assertive that he refuses to be a doormat to anyone - really helps me balance myself out too.
Because Scott is the aspirational character in The Dissidents, it makes sense that the musician I associate with Scott is the one whose honesty, authenticity, and pure beauty in her work inspires me to be authentic and beautiful in all that I do - Sara Bareilles. I love Sara Bareilles just as much as I love Paramore, and the way she can be so vulnerable while also making such profound and perfect music blows my mind. I can picture Scott sitting with his headphones on and listening to Sara Bareilles and feeling the emotion of the music with his whole being.
Conclusion
I’m not a good storyteller, in the sense that I have a hard time imagining a plot and a sequence of events. I’m still not sure how The Dissidents come together as a team. When I developed them in 2012, I was pretty fascinated by the 2012 phenomenon, and thought it would be cool if The Dissidents came together to deal with some transformative or cataclysmic world event that took place at that time. I also was pretty interested in the idea of them coming together to fight some corrupt authority (think government or world religion), especially given their team name, “The Dissidents”. But a story of how they came together never quite materialized.
I also never was able to come up with villains for them. I think The Dissidents spend so much time in my head, with my imagination allowing them to grow and develop into unique, complex characters, that I was afraid of what spending that kind of mental energy on a villain would do to me. Thinking about The Dissidents and their stories and their personalities and their interactions brings me such joy and satisfaction, I wouldn’t want to mess that up by spending a lot of mental energy imagining the life of a villain I created. So I just never did create one.
The Dissidents have been drawn MANY times over the years. I commissioned two different artists to do their takes on the team at various points, and have loved the results of those commissions, but - maybe because they’re mine and they feel so personal to me - I always end up preferring my renditions of the team. Which is pretty cool, because most of the time I think everyone does everything better than I do!
I have two Dissidents tattoos now. One of them is a take on the Marvel Comics corner boxes, which I always loved growing up.
A drawing of The Dissidents' heads that was used as reference for my tattoo.
A tattoo of The Dissidents' heads on my right thigh in the style of the comic book corner boxes
A little bit after I got that tattoo, I did slight design tweaks to The Dissidents. I tried to make Eddy look sleeker, I changed Scott’s haircut, I gave Lycanna an actual costume, I redesigned Joan’s costume and gave her short hair, etc.. Here’s that drawing:
A pencil and ink drawing of The Dissidents standing together as a team
I was really proud of that drawing, so I decided to get it as my second Dissidents tattoo - coincidentally 7 years ago today! That tattoo is on my right forearm as a half sleeve. I was a little bummed that the artist felt he had to rearrange the configuration of the characters to fit my arm, but I still love the tattoo.
A collage of photos of my Dissidents tattoo on my right forearm.
Other than my marriage to my husband, creating The Dissidents is the thing I am most proud of in my life. Like I said, I have always loved superheroes, but creating my own team of superheroes and letting my creativity run wild enough that those characters can become interesting, complex, lovable characters has been such a joy. I think adults are not generally encouraged to let our imaginations run wild, and the amount of happiness and pride I feel about what my imagination has accomplished with The Dissidents is almost indescribable.
This blog post has been the most fun I’ve ever had writing. I really just info-dumped everything about these characters, and it has been so joyful to spend the time doing this. If you took the time to read all of this, I really appreciate it. I’d be really interested to hear what you think of The Dissidents, or if you have any brilliant ideas for how they came together or who their villains are. I also hope that you take the time to let your imagination run a little wild sometimes. Because sometimes, it pays off.