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Behold:

MY WIFE.

I may call a lot of characters wives, but that's usually because my character in an RPG married them. This character though? This is, in words of an undying classic, my personal sort of heroine. Pun intended.

Name: Eugenia (Zhenya) Luneva.
Age: apprx. 23? Fifth year university student.
Sign: Virgo
Likes: animals; vanilla ice-cream; going on long runs on icy mornings
Dislikes: bullies; dresses; being mistaken for a man
Where from?: A comic called Exlibrium (can only buy from a Russian publisher but I read it way back when, so here we go)
Speciality: A bookwizard, a support mage, water magic wielder.

[ Oh but Tarr isn't she like younger than y-- Shut up she's been my fictional crush since 2016 it's not my fault I'm AGING ]

Appearance:

I am not kidding you when I say that I've never seen a character seemingly tailored to my specific tastes in women since, like, middle school. The height (She's like. Somewhere between 6'6 - 6'8. About 2m. SHE'S TALL). The lanky build. The shoulders. The short hair. THE FRECKLES. THE EVERYTHINGGG. I kid you not it's been years and I would still hyperventilate whenever she showed up on a page. I might be hyperventilating while making this page and editing all the pictures.

She used to be an athlete btw. Competitive running. Not that she wanted to, but her parents put her in that sport. I'm glad she's out of there now but I'm also respectfully trying not to think about her legs.

[ I am asexual so take all the alleged hornyposting on this page with the disclaimer that it's purely theoretical. Aesthetical? Sensual? Fictosexual? I WANT TO HUG HER AND NEVER MOVE. I'm small I'd be like a backpack. ]

Personality:

The most cinnamon roll to ever cinnamon. A lot of it is due to trauma so that's always fun. I'm gonna stick my hand inside a comic page and strangle everyone responsible.

✧ One of the eldest children in a family with six kids. Older sister complex to the max. Cannot stop being the mom friend to everyone even if she tried (which she doesn't).

✧ Most of her life lived for her family first, everything else second and is happy to finally get out, but also feels so guilty for that happiness and for not living up to her parent's expectations that she literally spends most of her free time overworking herself with side jobs to send them some help money. Very honorable. Someone get my girl some therapy.

✧ Was heavily bullied her whole life for being covered in freckles, for being the tallest in her class and for being 'built like a boy'. And had no friends ever. Did I mention punching people inside a comic? (Oh and her parents and little sisters hardly helped with their attempts to 'help her be girlier'...)

✧ CONSEQUENTLY experiences crippling self-doubt and is stuck believing that she's only worth something for her acts of service and subsequently can't fucking say "no" to anyone asking for anything. Which is self-destructing and the girl needs some fucking boundaries.

This may sound like I'm liking a traumatized character for being traumatized and, huh, no. Therapy. Please. She won't be getting that 'cause she's a character in a story where the world, of course, tries to end at some point, so the traumas are, naturally, getting worse. UGH.

Personality v2: What I actually love.

✧ If we throw the self-destructive and unhealthy parts of it aside for a second, there's nothing wrong with being kind and helping people. In fact, a lot of times it takes more strength and courage to be kind than to be angry. It keeps you vulnerable. It keeps you seeing the world as a place worth being kind to. I admire it a lot. I just wish it didn't come from a place of self-sacrificing and trauma.

✧ She's kind and patient and she's a support mage (not a healer, but more of a buff/recon type)... But she can also absolutely wreck your shit up if you get her to the boiling point. I love kind characters who are kind by virtue of choosing to be kind while being more than capable of violence.

I've seen her throw a guy over her shoulder for bullying her all her life. I've seen her punch a guy repeatedly for being cruel to a little dog. I've seen her hold down raging monsters with her bare hands. I've seen her burn her own arm down for the sake of the mission. I've seen her conjure ice spears out of thin air and nail an enemy to the ground.

She's more than capable of doing damage.

And yet she chooses to smile and stay caring and kind.

Her whole thing is "When you can't do what's good, do what's right".

I love her.

✧ She secretly wants to work at an animal sanctuary instead of whatever she's doing and I hope she gets that wish one day.

✧ Despite all the issues and the lack of boundaries, she's hardly a pushover or a fragile flower. She can be stern, she can be sarcastic and she grew a considerable armor against bullying, so you'd be hard pressed to get under her skin. Not to mention that the whole 'older sister/mom friend' thing means that she will not tolerate your bullshit. Which I also, apparently, love.

Okay wait-wait, what was that about magic??

A brief rundown of the comic premise: characters of literary books are able to break out of their stories into our real world. Generally those are characters of unhappy stories or those going through many hardships, because their desire to escape the never ending cycle (as the plot is always repeating itself as it's written) gets so strong they literally, well, escape. Contact with our world and going against their predetermined plot, however, causes them to lose their minds and mutate into monsters. And contact with people through any kind of fluid (it's usually blood, but it's not unheard of it to be because of kissing) causes said people become infected with magic ink. Those people then have to go through the initiation ritual. If they don't get put through the ritual in time — the ink consumes them and they turn into a nameless ink blob, or a "shadow". If they fail the ritual — they also turn into a shadow. And if they pass the ritual — the ink in their blood becomes of a certain color. The color is determined by the person's personality, and it itself determines magic powers this person gets. Warm specter (reds, oranges and yellows) gets attack magic, and cold specter (blues, light blues and greens) gets support magic. Don't ask about black, white and purple.

Zhenya's ink is darker blue, which gets her water magic. As mentioned above, it's mostly about buffs. Another blue mage on the team can turn invisible (transparent), but Zhenya's signature ability is unknown to this date. Which I am absolutely not salty about. Signature abilities are those that can be performed without any input. Everything else is conjured through special signs on special paper or special magic quills. Quills are also unique to each bookwizard annnd yes Zhenya's is also still unknown. :)

The ice spear spell was a welcomed surprise, however. As I mentioned, I love a calm and collected character casually showing that they're capable of murdering you if they wanted to.

The eye.

A mild spoiler territory here, but I'm operating on presumption that you're not exactly going to read the whole comic any time soon.

Due to certain rather tragic plot events Zhenya got a literal, non-magic bullet to the head...and survived it. Medical particularities escape me here, plus healing magic definitely helped, but she lost an eye and a considerable area of her face around said eye. Totally "awesome" for a character who already suffers from self-consciousness (one I disagree with mind you)due to her appearance. Which is evident by her growing out her bangs to cover up the prosthetic. Allegedly said prosthetic is somewhat magical allows her to still see lights and shadows with the fake eye.

I think that she's beautiful with it, by the way. They say that women love scars, well, this dyke here(me) is not an exception.

As a cherry on top, though, when the plot forced her to work together with that shooter later, she got to punch her in the face. Hard.

After which she ultimately realized that it doesn't help to ease her pain or anger, so there was no revenge murder committed that day, but the punch itself? So satisfying.

Did I mention that calm and kind characters briefly snapping is the best?

[ By the way, I totally headcanon her as a lesbian. Part of it is wishful thinking, part of it is her never showing any interest in boys, and part of it is shipping reasons. Stereotypes have absolutely nothing to do with it, although short hair and an occasional plaid shirt are a fun coincidence. ]

[ And there's this. It's her casting a spell, but. Woof. (And the artist totally knew what she was doing, she admitted as much on Twitter) ]

More facts.

✧ I literally have a "Do It For Her" meme with Zhenya's pics hanging on my wall. It was supposed to help me get my shit together back when I had university exams, 'cause I would not want to disappoint her ever. And then I just never took it down.

✧ I have a literal little shrine to her in my room. Well, it's a bookshelf. There isn't any official merch of her (yay for not being a main character :/), but I got:

✧ A plush I stitched myself from start to finish. Mind you I don't know shit about sewing, so this was A Fit Of Love. I adore it.

✧ A figurine my friend commissioned for me. This might be the most memorable birthday gift I've ever gotten so far, 'cause you just don't expect something that doesn't to your knowledge exist.

✧ Another figurine which said friend made herself. With water made out of glue. It's adorable.

✧ And another plush doll, also by the same friend. This one was the first in my collection, actually.

Do you ship her with anyone in the story?

I do, actually. And very strongly. It's that "marry me! wait, no, marry them!" type of a situation. Also it's very appropriate that I ship her with her best friend and dorm roommate (oh ma gad they were roommates) who will absolutely bite your face off for her. It's what she deserves. (Said roommate is also appropriately a red ink/fire magic gal. Blue and red, fire and water, you know. Even more appropriately she's also my second favorite character. So the ship, while being totally grounded in some canon chemistry, also ended up being the 'character you like x character you relate to' type of a situation. Whoops.)

I will not comment on what happened or did not happen to them, that's way too deep into realm of spoilers.

Okay, so, when you say 'wife', do you literally self-ship?

Somewhat. And by 'somewhat' I mean I had a couple of fanarts of us drawn by some fandom friends at the time, both of whose social media I kinda lost by this point.

I figured, if there's any place to be "cringe" (cringe is dead.) about it, then it's my own website. So yes, of course, we're married, haven't you heard?