>>We need fanart!
>
>I can do that!
>
>Well, no, okay, I can't do that - I'm not an artist - but I've
>got a con coming in just under 72 hours, so post some nice detailed
>descriptions & I'll see what I can do. No promises, queues limited
>etc. you know how this goes.

Hmm.

OK, here's what I've got off the top of my head for some of the main cast. (The number of them is just to provide a range of choices, not a statement of expectation. :)

Edit: Adding other people's contributions as I come across them.

Hurricane

Hurry is a bit of a tomboy, and prefers her PE clothes to her proper uniform, which she never quite seems to be wearing correctly. She keeps her light brown hair short and unfussy and can't see the point of makeup (in part, annoyingly for her classmates, because she doesn't require the embellishment - really good bones). She usually has a look of slight mischief about her and a glint in her blue eyes, as if she's either up to something or trying to think of something to be up to. (Conversely, on the rare occasions when she gets really angry, it shows much more obviously than in most of the others; her face goes crimson, the pupils of her eyes almost disappear, the sinews of her neck and forearms show, her fingers become claws, and her teeth take on a striking resemblance to a bear trap.) She has a surprisingly delicate build for such a dedicated athlete, and (somewhat to some people's surprise) is capable of great refinement when the situation calls for it. She can wear a dress, sit with her knees together, and hold a teacup properly, and when called upon to do so, she will. It's just not her default state.

Spitfire

In contrast to Hurry, Spitfire is a tall and athletic young woman with long, slightly curly brown hair, brown eyes, and a general air of calm, contained maturity. She's very proper and reserved, and the most grown-up-looking of the main characters - she could easily pass for an adult, particularly once the tournament is fully under way and Britannia switches from school to service uniforms. Most of all, she's agonizingly, well, English, with full measures of the national gifts for cheerful stoicism in the face of discomfort, dry understatement, wry self-deprecation, and always looking perfectly tailored and put together no matter what. She can also use apology as a weapon in a way that must be witnessed to be believed.

(Spitfire has a twin sister, Seafire, who's in the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm instead of the RAF. The only visual differences between them are that Seafire's hair is even lighter, almost blonde, and she wears an RN uniform. Also, she almost always has a bandage on some part of her, as she's a bit accident-prone.)

Mosquito

As befits someone who tends to call other bombers on every team "baggage-incontinent lardarses", Mozzie's short and slender and keeps her mahogany hair ruthlessly short. The beige beret scraping it back out of her hazel eyes goes nicely with her beaten-up engineer's uniform, a light tan jumpsuit with too many pockets, most of which have either packets of biscuits or curious bits of machinery inside them. She's also by far the most tanned of the bombers, her skin the kind of wooden brown one only gets through long stays somewhere forrin an' 'ot. (When she's in such a place, she routinely ties the top of her jumpsuit around her waist by the sleeves and sports the grubby rib-knit tank top look north of her beltline.) She also tends to have on her person:

- a Box Brownie camera,
- a .455 Webley revolver that looks like it ought to break her wrist every time she fires it (which is quite often),
- yet more biscuits,
- a Lewes bomb, and
- a dirty great stabbin' knife.

Zero considers that last one undignified. Mozzie privately opines that she knows chaps who could carve their name and address on Zero's guts before she's had time to get that overgrown fish slicer of hers out of its scabbard.

Lysander

Despite her name, Lysander is very much a girl, and though she's unarmed - hell, because she's unarmed - she's among the bravest aviators Britannia has. Even Hurricane admits that Lysander's job is absolutely terrifying and she couldn't do it. On the darkest nights of the month, with no moon to reveal her, Lysa slips into occupied Europe and uses her spectacular short-field performance to land... well, virtually anywhere... so as to drop off or pick up spies, leave supplies and equipment for the resistance, and/or convey messages between various covert operatives in the field and their handlers back in London that are too sensitive to be entrusted to the radio. Slim and dark, olive-skinned, with wide guileless eyes and an air of fresh-faced, innocent charm, she speaks perfect French, Dutch, German, and Czech, and is basically the last person you - or the Gestapo - would suspect of being a British fly-girl on a secret mission to help the resistance bomb an ammo dump - and if you take your eye off her for one second, Mr. Nazi Officer, she'll shank you with your own letter opener and be out that window before you've finished bleeding out. Vive la France! Vive l'Europe libre!

Me 109

Everyone expects Me 109 to be blonde, but her hair is actually dark brown (she's Bavarian, so that's not unusual). She does have blue eyes, though they are a very dark blue. She keeps her hair cut short, never wears makeup, and even her clothes that aren't her uniform look like uniforms. She's smaller than most people expect on first meeting, but holds herself very erect, though close inspection will reveal that she walks with a slight limp thanks to an injury she suffered when she was playing in Spain. (This sometimes gives her trouble with landings.) She also has the only visible battle scars of any of the main cast: one on her left cheek (which resembles, but isn't, a Heidelberg dueling scar) and a number on her back and legs (revealed only rarely, as for example in the episode where the Germania girls all go to Prora for some R&R).

Fw 190

190, on the other hand, is from Bremen and looks exactly like you would expect a German fighter girl to look - blonde, blue-eyed, buxom. (Well, she's radial-engined, after all. They've generally got a lot up front, albeit not to a ridiculous extent - it's not that kind of show.) She's the tallest of the main European characters (Do 17 is taller, but only appears occasionally). Out of uniform, she's considerably more feminine and glamorous than Me 109, but in an aggressive, show-offy kind of way that comes across as a bit forced, like she's trying too hard. Her hair is long and wavy, usually loose, but she has been known to rock the braided-pigtails Valkyrie look in combat.

Zero

Zero is tiny and delicate-looking and would probably be adorable except that she has a serious case of angry resting face; her neutral expression (and even her sleeping expression, as we occasionally see) says "Don't push me, because I will cut you, bitch." She wears her long, straight black hair loose or in a simple ponytail, except on really formal occasions, when she has the skills to go straight to town with the coiffures if necessary. On duty, she customarily wears her full Imperial Navy dress whites, gloves and all; off duty she's virtually always to be found in dojo clothes, usually gi and hakama, white over navy blue. She always carries a katana and a Nambu Type 14 pistol. She hates being dirty and will always wash up if she can, even when (for example) evading Communist guerillas after being shot down over central China. If she's ever dirty and not doing anything about it, that's an indication either that the situation is really desperate, or that she's too focused on something else to have noticed yet.

Hayabusa

Taller and tougher-looking than Zero (though the latter is an illusion), Haya has a cruel streak that's never far from the surface. Where Zero's resting face says she'll cut you if she has to, Haya's says she's hoping you give her an excuse. When she gets wound up, which she does a lot, she has an even scarier psycho face than Hurry's, because it's smiling with all those jagged triangular teeth. She's much less fastidious than her cousin, and her army uniform is often rumpled and grease-stained. Her hair is much shorter, and she does nothing with it; she doesn't care about her appearance at all. Haya is only interested in fighting, winning, and - most importantly - making sure the losers suffer, and she doesn't figure charm or style will help with any of that. If she wants anything else out of life, she figures she'll just take it, either by force or by stealth. Making nicey-nice with people is a waste of time and energy. She also doesn't carry her issue sword, considering it a pointless affectation.

Hien

This is a girl with a serious identity crisis, an oddball even by Japanese standards. She looks somewhat like her elder sibling Hayabusa, but with a shorter stature, shoulder-length glossy hair, and darker skin. And whereas Hayabusa has her features set in what seems to be a perpetual scowl, Hien has an open and friendly face, jabbering away in a German accent when she's not stuffing her mouth with fresh pasta. This has the amusing habit of leaving stains on her scarf, a necessity for the high altitudes she loves to fly at. Unfortunately, while she can beat P-40 in a match and even proves a bother for Coach LeMay's star B-29 (who Hien has affectionately dubbed "B-san"), Hien is also a bit of a sickly girl, frequently consigned to bed rest.

P-51

The all-American glamor girl who thinks she's all that and mostly is (but isn't usually very obnoxious about it), 51's a bit of a chameleon. She's blonde and blue-eyed like Fw 190, but slighter of build (particularly in front), and she's not as... predatory-looking. In fact, she looks very friendly and approachable, the "cool classmate" type (my mental image is not unlike Kay from Girls und Panzer). Depending on what she wears and how she does her hair, she can look like any age from 12 to 24, and pass herself off as anything from an English schoolgirl to a budding film starlet, but her default mode is to look like just what she is, an athletic and cheerful American high school girl. She and Spitfire could be (and indeed are) cousins.

P-40

P-40 looks older than she is; she's really about the same age as Me 109, but she looks like a grown woman in her mid-20s. Partly that's for the same reason that 109 seems a bit world-weary - she's seen a lot of action - but mostly it's because she's a more mature aircraft than the others, having done so much growing up that her designation actually changed (she was born P-36). She has slightly curly auburn hair which she wears shoulder-length, brown eyes, and a suntan from being outside so much, and is the ruggedest-looking (and bustiest) of the inline-engined fighters. She dresses like Indiana Jones (sans hat) in patched khakis and a much-weathered A4 jacket (with an AVG blood chit on the back whenever she's depicted in CBI, but usually not drawn that way elsewhere), but with the tails of her shirt untucked and usually tied up to bare her midriff. Rarely for a Western Allies character, she carries a sidearm, a Colt M1911A1. She's the open-honest-face type, always cheerful and unadorned, but unlike many habitually-unkempt characters, she doesn't "clean up nice" - put her in a dress (or even a proper uniform) and she just looks uncomfortable and ill-at-ease.

P-47

Much of the description for Hurry could be applied to 47 and then some. She is almost everything that comes to mind when one thinks of the classic girl off the farm: buxom, broad-shouldered, tanned, and more comfortable in jeans and a man's work shirt than she is in some girly uniform. Only her black-Irish coloration breaks the mold (the stereotypical farmgirl being blonde and all). You could draw comparisons between her and P-40 as well, as 40 did serve for a time with her elder sister (P-43, aka "Lady Not Appearing In This Film"), and the two share the same preference with getting the job done than looking good while doing it. She's also the subject of a running gag that she can carry loads that boggle the other girls' minds without the least bit of discomfort. Just don't joke about her weight where she can hear you unless you want a knuckle sandwich.

P-38

If P-51 is the refined beauty of Columbia High and P-47 the classic farm girl, then P-38 is the poster girl that guys love. Glossy blond hair, ample chested, and long legged, 38 is the kinda girl who loves the attention she gets. But like an Hollywood beauty, she's not without her flaws, being prone to getting hot under the collar and cutting people down without thinking about it. And she literally gets hot under the collar, as many are the time that she can be found sitting at her desk with her shirt partly unbuttoned and fanning herself as she complains about the heat. Of course, to combat this tendency, she usually wears a cut-down version of the school uniform, trading the skirt for a pair of shorts and a shirt with the midsection shortened.

(Out-of-band note: She physically resembles Kongō from Arpeggio of Blue Steel, but has blue eyes and a less weird hairstyle, though still with the twin-tails part. Mannerisms are also similar - she slouches fetchingly in chairs with her legs crossed at the knee like that - but her personality is quite different.)

Wildcat

The original star of the Columbia High Pacific Conference team, Wildcat is also noticeably the shortest of the girls playing for Columbia. Fittingly, she's also the oldest of the team, over a year older than P-40. But under her uniform is a wiry build, allowing her to punch above her weight and hold her own even against the infamously slippery Zero. Like the cat for which she's named, she sports tan hair cut in a simple pageboy style to fit under her flying cap, a pug nose, and sea blue eyes. It's not usual to find her sporting a bandaid or a new bruise, as while she's at home on a carrier deck, her short legs tend to make landings interesting. Wildcat continues to soldier on long into the Conference, serving on the smaller carriers while the starring role goes to...

Hellcat

The undisputed queen of the flattops, Hellcat is everything her older sister Wildcat was and more. While both share the same sturdy build, Hellcat is taller and her figure more filled out. She still has the same pug nose and blue eyes, but her own tan hair is lighter and longer, usually kept in a ponytail except when she flies, when it's rolled into a bun under her cap. Where Wildcat held her own against Zero, Hellcat routinely mops the floor with her, causing no small amount of grief for the little samurai. By the end of the Pacific Conference, Hellcat has gotten her feet dirty, routinely joining her cousin Corsair in bombing missions on island targets.

Corsair

Corsair looks like a cross between Hellcat and P-47; she has the latter's build (and great thunderous voice), but her coloration is more like the former's, except her hair is on the other side of the nebulous borderline between light brown and dirty blonde. She's a Marine and (like most Marines) proud of it, sporting the globe-and-anchor tattooed prominently on her right biceps (which is usually on show, as she either rolls up her sleeves as high as they'll go or just doesn't wear an overshirt) and the buzzcut regulations don't actually specify for women. She chain-smokes cigars and might be even more foul-mouthed than P-40. In the manga, a running gag is for her to occasionally utter speech balloons that are entirely blacked out except for words like "and", "of", and "the". Her secret shame is that, for all that she totally loves being a Marine now, she really only transferred to the Corps in the first place because she gets seasick on carriers.

Yak-9

When the average Westerner pictured a Russian airplane or a Russian woman in 1940, the first word that sprang to mind was probably "tractor". Yak-9 is... not like that. She's not glamorous - almost aggressively not so, with her black hair chopped short and slicked back, her ill-tailored Soviet Air Force uniform, and her complete lack of cosmetics - but she's got those great Slavic cheekbones and big grey eyes so intense they look like they could see through three feet of lead. She's also extremely sophisticated, with a taste for classical music and opera - but very guarded about it, as a child of the now-all-but-extinct Muscovite intelligentsia. Too many of her father's friends have gone to the gulag for no reason other than being more cultured than Stalin. Out of the cockpit, she carries a Nagant revolver and a certain readiness to use it on the nearest Hitlerite bandit. About the only people she hates more than them are the craven opportunists of the NKVD.

Il-2

Ilyusha looks as tough as she is, and she's tough enough to survive on the Eastern Front in a job that involves constant exposure to some of the world's heaviest and most accurate ground fire, so what does that tell you? Ilyusha is hard, in every sense of the word. There's no decorative padding on her anywhere, physically or psychologically - she seems to be made of little more than tanned skin stretched taut over 150 pounds or so of bone and muscle and quiet determination. She keeps her dark brown hair back in a French braid and takes the sleeves off her flightsuits because they just get in the way. She always dresses exactly the same way, come rain, shine, sleet, or general inspection. She is completely indifferent to heat, cold, pain, danger, and rank. "If you haven't destroyed a tank today, Comrade General, then I fail to see what you and I could possibly have to talk about." She does have a lighter side, but her aerial colleagues rarely see it, as she generally only unwinds in the company of the infantrymen and tankers whom she supports from the air. And their vodka. Those guys practically worship her, so she's never got an empty glass when she's hanging with them.

P-39

More Russian than the Russians, Kobrastochka looks so at home in her uniform it almost seems improbable. She's like the one person in the Soviet Air Force whose uniform fits properly. It's just fate. Even though she doesn't look particularly Slavic - she's distantly related to P-40 and there's a bit of a resemblance, and her red hair and unusual height both stand out like flags in your average crowd of Soviet citizens - she inhabits the role so well that people don't really think about it. She always wears a pair of aviator goggles, but rarely actually puts them on properly; they're almost always up on her forehead. Oddly for an aviator, she carries a Mosin-Nagant Model 1938 carbine. Some people used to joke it was so she'd have something to fight with when she got shot down and joined the infantry, until she demonstrated what a crack shot she is with it a few times and those people got tired of scrounging up replacement hats.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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