Character Name: Kei Hera
Fandom: Realms of Peril & Glory: CY_BORG [Podcast]
Played By: Zack FG
Yarn Used:
Shirt/Shoes: Loops & Threads Brushed Rainbow - Black
Trousers: Loops & Threads Brushed Rainbow - Baby Breath
Skin: Loops & Threads Brushed Rainbow - White
Right Hand/Skull: Lion Brand DIY Glow - Natural
Basic pattern here.
The boy with the glowing brain—and hand! I was going to say “it’s fun to hear Zack on the other side of the table”, but CY_BORG was actually the first campaign I listened to for Realms of Peril & Glory (I think I started listening to Vael immediately after hearing the first CY_BORG episode, but I might have waited until I had listened to the second), so funnily enough, my first experience of Zack was him as a player, and I then got to pivot to listening to him as GM. I have never regretted either of these decisions.
Kei is honestly so much fun. He’s, well, a teenage boy, and as such can be a little shit at times, but his heart’s in the right place and he does genuinely care about Pyrex (and Blythe…and, in his own way, I’m pretty sure he cares about Edge too, even if it takes a near-death experience for him to come close to admitting it). And his powers are pretty freaking epic too.
He differs from the base pattern as follows:
Legs: I think I intended for his pants to not quite meet his shoes, and that to be bare skin in between, but I’m not sure if it comes across. Anyway, other than that I did them exactly the way I do for most characters with cuffed pants. What I did do that I don’t normally do, however, is that when I hit the top of the pants (i.e. the waistband), I fastened the yarn off.
Torso: Kei is always described as wearing an oversized hoodie, and I wanted to try something here. So I chained what I considered a reasonable length around for a baggy, oversized hoodie, did a row of hdc (I think it wound up being 40 sts around), joined the row into a circle, and then did about ten rounds of sc before sliding it up Kei’s hips and doing the next round through both loops of the hoodie and the front loop of the waistband. It came out actually looking pretty good, if I do say so myself! I then continued up the torso as normal, extended the neckline up an extra row, and did a row of hdc in outer loops only before fastening off, joining the skin color, and crocheting the first round of the neck into the inner loops behind the collar. I also understuffed him a little so that when you hug him, you can feel that there’s a bit of extra room in there.
Head: Kei is explicitly bald, so I didn’t have to change color for his scalp…except that I did. Because when Kei uses his Nano powers…
…his skull glows. (And so does his right hand, now.)
To kind of emphasize that the hoodie was oversized, I actually switched to a smaller hook for this part (I think I usually use an I hook and I used a G hook for his head). The neck and chin are in the regular skin color, and then I switched to the Glow yarn for just the back of the head until I got to about the top of the jaw, then started using it all the way around. I did switch back to the regular yarn for his nose so that it wouldn’t glow in the dark to give it that cool skull effect. Kei is also described as having an elongated skull, so when I got to the decreases, I added a round of straight hdc in between each one until I decided it was tall enough. I think it does exactly what I was hoping for.
Arms: I did the circle-with-magnet-inside thing I did for Mini and Pyrex, again using the G hook for the hands and wrists. Then I switched to the bigger hook, did a round of hdc with increases for the cuffs, and went up the rest of the way as normal. Again, I didn’t stuff his arms too much to emphasize the skinny nature.
I also made sure his hands were on his body in such a way that he could easily hold hands with Pyrex when either or both of them need the comfort.
Hood: I needed Kei’s hood to actually go over his head, so I looked up a pattern. I actually found a pattern here and adapted that a bit. Basically I marked where I wanted the stitches to go, attached on the yarn, did a row of increases in each stitch, and then followed Mataya’s pattern. I did end up going a bit too far, I think, and took it to a point on accident, but it worked out well overall!