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Description
My sister designed Great Eastern’s human form ages ago, but wasn’t satisfied with her look (which I was very relieved about because I’d said something like “her look doesn’t exactly scream Great Eastern” while I was trying to draw her in a Victorian dress and immediately felt terrible because it was so rude…) so because I was wanting to draw her anyway we decided to do a sort of collab design! I built on the original, keeping certain aspects unchanged as per my sister’s request (or, in cases like the heels, because I just wanted to keep them), and came up with this; the idea is that my sister will then take this design and modify it as she sees fit. Who knows - the final design may not look anything like this!

For reference, Great Eastern’s overall sexy look in both designs is because of her nickname, Great Babe. My sister says that in her time, babe would have still referred to a literal baby, but the idea of using the more modern romantic meaning was too good to pass up and provided lots of inspiration. I’m pretty much taking her word for this because she knows a lot more about the 1850s-1860s period than I do.

In my boat profile google doc, I’ve described Eastern’s personality as follows:
“Great Eastern is flirty and seductive, shockingly so for a woman of her time, and she uses this to offset her reputation for being unprofitable and unlucky. Despite her history of misfortune, she’s confident and outgoing, unafraid to go against social norms, and she’s embraced her flirtatious side quite a bit since becoming a human. She’s also surprisingly intelligent and cunning!”
Now, in all honesty I don’t know how perfectly this matches up with my sister’s vision for her, as some aspects such as her motivations and overall intelligence are based on my interpretation of what my sister has written about her already. What’s concrete is that she’s very flirty (as in, she’ll flirt with anyone) and also quite clumsy; I’ve sort of interpreted this as her using her sexuality to assert some degree of control over her life, which was plagued by misfortune after misfortune, so I see her as intelligent/cunning in that regard because it implies that she knows how to adapt to bad situations and find ways to thrive regardless, which fits her history of surviving various accidents and being successful as a cable ship. My sister may have a different interpretation, though, and since she’s the one who did the original design and wrote Great Eastern as a character her word is more canon than mine.

Original design by Matlock26th - redesigned with permission
(although I really hope I didn’t accidentally pressure her into it…)

Description
My sister designed Great Eastern’s human form ages ago, but wasn’t satisfied with her look (which I was very relieved about because I’d said something like “her look doesn’t exactly scream Great Eastern” while I was trying to draw her in a Victorian dress and immediately felt terrible because it was so rude…) so because I was wanting to draw her anyway we decided to do a sort of collab design! I built on the original, keeping certain aspects unchanged as per my sister’s request (or, in cases like the heels, because I just wanted to keep them), and came up with this; the idea is that my sister will then take this design and modify it as she sees fit. Who knows - the final design may not look anything like this!

For reference, Great Eastern’s overall sexy look in both designs is because of her nickname, Great Babe. My sister says that in her time, babe would have still referred to a literal baby, but the idea of using the more modern romantic meaning was too good to pass up and provided lots of inspiration. I’m pretty much taking her word for this because she knows a lot more about the 1850s-1860s period than I do.

In my boat profile google doc, I’ve described Eastern’s personality as follows:
“Great Eastern is flirty and seductive, shockingly so for a woman of her time, and she uses this to offset her reputation for being unprofitable and unlucky. Despite her history of misfortune, she’s confident and outgoing, unafraid to go against social norms, and she’s embraced her flirtatious side quite a bit since becoming a human. She’s also surprisingly intelligent and cunning!”
Now, in all honesty I don’t know how perfectly this matches up with my sister’s vision for her, as some aspects such as her motivations and overall intelligence are based on my interpretation of what my sister has written about her already. What’s concrete is that she’s very flirty (as in, she’ll flirt with anyone) and also quite clumsy; I’ve sort of interpreted this as her using her sexuality to assert some degree of control over her life, which was plagued by misfortune after misfortune, so I see her as intelligent/cunning in that regard because it implies that she knows how to adapt to bad situations and find ways to thrive regardless, which fits her history of surviving various accidents and being successful as a cable ship. My sister may have a different interpretation, though, and since she’s the one who did the original design and wrote Great Eastern as a character her word is more canon than mine.

Original design by Matlock26th - redesigned with permission
(although I really hope I didn’t accidentally pressure her into it…)