Grayson Smith
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Grayson Smith
One of the Highest Officials of the Blind Ravens
| Physical | |
|---|---|
| Gender | male |
| Species | Human |
| Relations | |
|---|---|
| Locales | Sinister Recluse Autonomy |
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Series | Sinister Recluse |
History and origin
General description
Traits and abilities
Grayson Smith has the unique Sinister power of condensing light into physical matter, which he can then mold into any object like clay. The brighter it is in the surrounding area, the bigger he is able to make his creations. Grayson's weapon of choice is the spear because it is the simplest to forge in times of greatest need.
Personality
Grayson Smith is strict and no nonsense and extremely function over form. He cares about running everything as smoothly as it can and does not like to make mistakes or encounter setbacks. He is very formal and polite with the people he works with, except for when he gets angry, at which point, he will lose all composure and threaten them.
Relationships
Development
Inspiration and Creation
The first idea of Grayson Smith's creation was a combination of two vastly unrelated sources that Adam was a fan of at the time: Pokémon Sun and Moon and 30 Rock. The idea initially came from playing Sun and Moon and finding the character Faba interesting, notably how he always referred to himself with a noticeably long title. That's what inspired Adam to come up with the idea of a Sinister Recluse (then called Normal... and Nat Aberdeen's Incomplete Biography of Revenants Anthology (NAIBRA)) antagonist with the title, "One of the Highest Officials of the Blind Ravens" (the name of his organization changed throughout drafts, and to avoid spoilers, the current name has been redacted and replaced with its initial name: Blind Ravens). When it came to what this character would be like, Adam imagined a strict CEO type archetype, similar to Jack Donaghe from 30 Rock. As time went on, Grayson was refined into his own character.
Since Adam had not finished a full draft of any version of Sinister Recluse until the summer of 2025 (Sinister Recluse was first conceived and written in 2017), and Grayson Smith had not been planned to be introduced until later installments of the series, there has never been any official canon regarding his relation in the Sinister Recluse series, besides art of him being posted alongside other Sinister Recluse characters. Most of Grayson's canon had been stashed away in notebooks and digital documents of ideas involving scenes between him and his colleagues. It wasn't until the first complete draft of Sinister Recluse was completed that Grayson made his first canon appearance in a Sinister Recluse story (and even then, that draft has been made private as of now). Depending on where Adam wants to take the direction of Sinister Recluse, he may add Grayson and his colleagues into the Blue Scar/Snallbourg series, as he shares the theme of being a vague villain with superpowers. This addition may either be instead of or in addition to Sinister Recluse, as Snallbourg is considered the "normal" and "miscellaneous" spinoff counterpart to Sinister Recluse.
Design
Etymology
The first name Grayson is a literal and ironic reference to his choice of outfit color, as he mostly wears grey but also has several rainbow colored details in his outfit as well. His last name Smith was chosen ironically as well. As Grayson was intended to be the biggest antagonist in the Normal.../NAIBRA series, Adam thought it would be funny to give him one of the most common and therefore least intimidating names. Interestingly, in earlier drafts of Normal..., Adam made it a point to reference/foreshadow that early on well before his intended appearance, in a scene where Matt Kennett explained to his co-mayors that "[He's] known a lot of Smiths in [his] day---none of them were friendly."
Profiles
Gallery