Soleil
Non-Binary Illustrator
Soleil is an accomplished aro-ace illustrator who creates fan art on Instagram. They love to draw and read, especially about their favorite characters. Soleil found fandom by looking through fan art of Rick Riordan’s juvenile series, Percy Jackson, and the Olympians, and began drawing his characters in their own style. For a while, Soleil never posted their illustrations, drawing these characters only for themselves. But in 2022, after reading Maggie Stiefvater's YA series The Raven Cycle Soleil began posting their fan art on Instagram as theonlysoi.
The Raven Cycle follows a group of teenagers on a quest to find the grave of a medieval Welsh king. They must fight to survive their quest while balancing family, life, school, and work–– all the quirks of growing up. Being a part of the Raven Cycle has given Soleil a whole new perspective on literary fiction, something they are really grateful for. Soleil was drawn to Stiefvater's characters and embraced them as a muse, drawing them in a way that keeps these characters alive after the story’s ending.
Soleil takes creative liberties in drawing their favorite characters, conveying their image of the characters' personalities from their head to paper. Aside from drawing characters from Stiefvater's Raven Cycle series, Soleil felt a similar connection to Leigh Bardugo’s New York Times bestselling duology Six of Crows. In the shared fictional universe of the Grisha-verse fandom, she feels a strong connection with Kaz Brekker, one of the story's protagonists, who even among the magical characters struggles with physical disability and mental disorders such as PTSD. Both these series feature the found family trope, a device in literature where a group of characters finds themselves united in a family bond based on shared experiences, and mutual understandings. Soleil values friends and the close bonds that can be formed with those who are not blood relatives. Being a part of these fandoms has given Soleil a place where they can find their own family, which has been difficult to come by.
