In an effort to try and get my constantly-ballooning cast at least slightly in-check, I devised a means of organizing a smaller central group, a collection of characters that I can put a better focus into developing and getting artwork of and still largely encapsulates my sometimes very diverse range of moods. After struggling to narrow things down for a while, the idea popped up to relate my web of character organization to something that most folks may remember from second grade art class: the color-mixing wheel! Grab your finger-paints and I'll give y'all a little refresher course.

The color wheel begins with the three primary colors: Red, Blue, and Yellow. By mixing any two of those colors together you get the secondary colors: Purple, Green, and Orange. The permutations of these six colors, along with tints and shades (white and black), are how you mix whatever other various colors you want when painting or the like. You get brown by combining two colors that rest at exact opposite points on the wheel (i.e. mixing red and green). So, how does all of this relate back to my cast? Here goes:

You can see that the chart is sectioned off into two groups. Those present inside the Inner Circle are my most canon-critical characters. It all begins with the three "primary colors," three main characters equal of balance: Snowe, Doveland, and Karther. Situated around them are the secondary colors. Within the inner circle, characters are organized by having positive associations with the characters directly next to them (aka, they mix well, in color terms) and being opposed to the character directly across from them.
Moving beyond the dividing ring, we come to the Outer Circle characters. These are the characters that help to flesh out my setting and play to some of my more obscure interests. The rules for organizing the outer circle folks is similar to that of the inner circle, but without the adversarial aspect. For these characters, the closest relationships are formed with the characters beside them on the wheel as well as the two Inner Circle characters that they're in contact with. So taking Sunny for instance, she's in closest contact with Sierre and Bailey, as well as Snowe and Reyers, this is what makes up her closest social circle.

So, makes sense I hope? Some of the characters on this list have gotten more exposure than others, and several of them haven't received any mention prior to now. See anything intriguing on here so far? Who might your favorites be?

(by the way, just because a character isn't on this chart doesn't mean that they are removed from my canon, it just means that they aren't being centrally focused on for some reason or another. I still have plenty of other characters that will still show up in various things, it just won't be as often or by request.)