BoM/TWS Message Forum

The author-as-author says: Yes, the first face to go into a mask fixes the sex; subsequent faces modify the form but not that biological fact. It was another author who had the idea for that (I want to say it was rugal, but it might have been imaj or WordSmitty) and expressed it privately. This spot in the interactive is as good as any for getting it onto the record.

The author-as-author further says: Most of the major characters have reference photos, and to get an idea for the "blend" of faces I use a facemorpher site. (I also occasionally use it to construct or reconstruct faces, to get the original reference photos closer to what I imagine the characters to look like). In the case of Caleb and Maria, I don't have a good reference photo for Maria, so couldn't construct one. As I invented a form, though, I found it diverging from what you'd imagine a real blend to feel like. I don't know why -- my subconscious seemed to rebel at everything being quite so neat. Magic, if it is to be more than simply an obscure technology, has to retain a degree of anomalousness, I feel. So I decided to my intuitions and decided the results should not be perfectly predictable or replicable.

So how does it work in story? Shrug. Mostly you can see both people in the blending, if you know what to look for. But sometimes weird things happen because the magic gets its own ideas.