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Description
Tinker Bell is one damn fine piece of ass. I'd actually never seen the Disney adaptation of J.M. Barrie's 1904 work until working on this D&D one off for my little brother, and now I know that wow, the little lesbian in me sure was missing out growing up. Wait, what were we talking about?

Oh yeah, the character's original literary history. Ah man, that's way less sexy. Oh well, so Tinker Bell is one of the more recognizable side characters featured in Scottish author J.M. Barrie's 1904 play Peter and Wendy, as well as the 1911 novel of the same name. This is in no small part thanks to the 1953 Disney adaptation, in which, again, Tinker Bell is one hot mamma. She's also blatantly evil. Like damn, you always get the impression from popular culture that fairies are all whimsical and nice and play among the rainbows and gumdrops. But no, Tinker Bell unapologetically tries to have Wendy murdered out of jealousy for Peter. She's introduced when Peter enters the Darling household to get his shadow back, gets stuck in a drawer, and awakens something in every growing boy and little lesbian. Meanwhile, Peter is out there chatting it up with his new girlfriend Wendy and asks her to come be the mother for his tribe of Lost Boys in Neverland who never grow up. Tinker Bell is absolutely pissed at this proposition, flies ahead of them, and convinces the Lost Boys that the approaching Wendy is a bird they should shoot down. The assassination attempt fails, but Tink has no regrets. Damn bitch, that's cold. Barrie explains this as fairies are just too small to hold any more than one emotion at a time, so for Tink, jealousy and murderous rage are basically the same thing.

Tink kinda redeems herself later on in the play. After the dreaded Captain Hook kidnaps all of Peter's friends to draw him out, he also poisons the medicine which Wendy had been trying to force Peter to take. When Tinker Bell wakes Peter and warns him of the plot, the kid gets all mopey at the loss of his girlfriend and decides fine, he'll finally take his medicine, for Wendy's sake. Tink tries to tell Peter no dude it's poisoned but he's like oh come on Tink surely if Captain Hook wanted to kill me he would've just stabbed me while he snuck in here to kidnap my friends. Which… yeah actually why didn't he? Oh well, Tink is unable to stop Peter, so she rushes up and chugs all the medicine down herself. In the play, this leads into a big scene where a desperate Peter begs the audience to clap their hands if they believe in fairies, as this is the only thing that can save Tink's life. It's a little ironic given how after Peter defeats Hook, returns Wendy to London, and returns to Neverland, Tinker Bell dies within a year because apparently fairies just don't live that long. Peter, never growing up and thus being stuck in a time loop, completely forgets about Tink's existence, as well as that of Wendy and Hook. It's actually quite a melancholy lesson about how refusing to face the future makes us devalue the past too.

Design notes, this one was actually pretty obnoxious to design. I know I made Peter Pan's characters out to be pretty easy to design in yesterday's blurb, since it was a modern play with costume sheets and photographs. This hits a bit of a snag with Tinker Bell, though. See, Tinker Bell was never played by a human actress in the original performance. Instead, she was represented on stage by a little dot of light redirected through a lense. Basically, Tink was played by a laser pointer. She didn't even have any speaking roles, instead a little jingle bell was rung to simulate her voice (hence her name). Thankfully, she is portrayed by a human actress in the 1924 silent film adaptation, so that costume ended up becoming my baseline. I also took a little inspiration from the modeling photographs of Margaret Kerry used as reference for the Disney animators, as well as the illustrations for Barrie's novelization done by Anne Grahame Johnstone and Roy Best. Her biological components, meanwhile, are mostly of my own design. Fairies are kinda new to me, but I like the idea of making them a little insectoid. Her wings are kind of these gross flaps of skin which extend out into something of a translucent insect wing. I specifically referenced the glasswing butterfly for the patterning, though obviously the transparent nature doesn't really come across on a white background like this. It's not perfect, but I think this was a successful first experiment with designing a basic fairy.

Description
Tinker Bell is one damn fine piece of ass. I'd actually never seen the Disney adaptation of J.M. Barrie's 1904 work until working on this D&D one off for my little brother, and now I know that wow, the little lesbian in me sure was missing out growing up. Wait, what were we talking about?

Oh yeah, the character's original literary history. Ah man, that's way less sexy. Oh well, so Tinker Bell is one of the more recognizable side characters featured in Scottish author J.M. Barrie's 1904 play Peter and Wendy, as well as the 1911 novel of the same name. This is in no small part thanks to the 1953 Disney adaptation, in which, again, Tinker Bell is one hot mamma. She's also blatantly evil. Like damn, you always get the impression from popular culture that fairies are all whimsical and nice and play among the rainbows and gumdrops. But no, Tinker Bell unapologetically tries to have Wendy murdered out of jealousy for Peter. She's introduced when Peter enters the Darling household to get his shadow back, gets stuck in a drawer, and awakens something in every growing boy and little lesbian. Meanwhile, Peter is out there chatting it up with his new girlfriend Wendy and asks her to come be the mother for his tribe of Lost Boys in Neverland who never grow up. Tinker Bell is absolutely pissed at this proposition, flies ahead of them, and convinces the Lost Boys that the approaching Wendy is a bird they should shoot down. The assassination attempt fails, but Tink has no regrets. Damn bitch, that's cold. Barrie explains this as fairies are just too small to hold any more than one emotion at a time, so for Tink, jealousy and murderous rage are basically the same thing.

Tink kinda redeems herself later on in the play. After the dreaded Captain Hook kidnaps all of Peter's friends to draw him out, he also poisons the medicine which Wendy had been trying to force Peter to take. When Tinker Bell wakes Peter and warns him of the plot, the kid gets all mopey at the loss of his girlfriend and decides fine, he'll finally take his medicine, for Wendy's sake. Tink tries to tell Peter no dude it's poisoned but he's like oh come on Tink surely if Captain Hook wanted to kill me he would've just stabbed me while he snuck in here to kidnap my friends. Which… yeah actually why didn't he? Oh well, Tink is unable to stop Peter, so she rushes up and chugs all the medicine down herself. In the play, this leads into a big scene where a desperate Peter begs the audience to clap their hands if they believe in fairies, as this is the only thing that can save Tink's life. It's a little ironic given how after Peter defeats Hook, returns Wendy to London, and returns to Neverland, Tinker Bell dies within a year because apparently fairies just don't live that long. Peter, never growing up and thus being stuck in a time loop, completely forgets about Tink's existence, as well as that of Wendy and Hook. It's actually quite a melancholy lesson about how refusing to face the future makes us devalue the past too.

Design notes, this one was actually pretty obnoxious to design. I know I made Peter Pan's characters out to be pretty easy to design in yesterday's blurb, since it was a modern play with costume sheets and photographs. This hits a bit of a snag with Tinker Bell, though. See, Tinker Bell was never played by a human actress in the original performance. Instead, she was represented on stage by a little dot of light redirected through a lense. Basically, Tink was played by a laser pointer. She didn't even have any speaking roles, instead a little jingle bell was rung to simulate her voice (hence her name). Thankfully, she is portrayed by a human actress in the 1924 silent film adaptation, so that costume ended up becoming my baseline. I also took a little inspiration from the modeling photographs of Margaret Kerry used as reference for the Disney animators, as well as the illustrations for Barrie's novelization done by Anne Grahame Johnstone and Roy Best. Her biological components, meanwhile, are mostly of my own design. Fairies are kinda new to me, but I like the idea of making them a little insectoid. Her wings are kind of these gross flaps of skin which extend out into something of a translucent insect wing. I specifically referenced the glasswing butterfly for the patterning, though obviously the transparent nature doesn't really come across on a white background like this. It's not perfect, but I think this was a successful first experiment with designing a basic fairy.