Charlotte Webster is a quiet, thoughtful drider with the upper body of a young woman and the lower body of a giant tarantula. There isn't a curse to break or an ancient transformation to explain. Charlotte comes from an ordinary drider family and grew up dealing with the same basic problem driders everywhere eventually encounter: most of the world was designed by people who apparently stopped counting legs at two.

Fortunately, Charlotte has always been good at making things fit. She works as a seamstress and costume maker, doing alterations and custom work while occasionally taking commissions from local theatre productions and historical reenactors. Her unusual anatomy made her interested in clothing construction early, particularly the challenge of designing garments for bodies that conventional patterns simply weren't created to accommodate. She has become very good at it. She's happiest with a mug of coffee nearby, several projects underway, and enough thread, fabric, knitting needles and notions scattered around her workspace to make organization theoretically possible but practically unlikely.

Like all driders, Charlotte produces silk, an instinct her distant ancestors presumably found useful for considerably more predatory purposes. Charlotte knits with hers. Properly prepared, the silk is remarkably strong and versatile, and she turns it into ropes, blankets, hammocks, scarves, decorations and occasionally pieces of clothing. Friends have learned that admiring something handmade in Charlotte's apartment carries a substantial risk of receiving one of their own several weeks later.

Charlotte also loves renaissance fairs and belongs to a local amateur drama troupe, although she has complicated feelings about the latter's medieval productions. She enjoys costumes, sets and historical pageantry enormously. She enjoys considerably less the remarkable frequency with which directors look at the resident drider and announce that they've found their monster. Charlotte will play one occasionally, provided the role is interesting. She just wishes somebody would cast her as the accountant once.

She's well aware that her appearance can trigger a genuine phobic response in some people and tries not to take an instinctive flinch personally. Usually she succeeds. Sometimes it still hurts. Charlotte doesn't want anyone forced to be comfortable around spiders; she'd simply prefer people take the extra moment necessary to notice that she isn't one. Once they do, they generally discover a gentle, dry-witted woman who likes coffee, knitting, theatre, and quiet evenings with friends.

And yes, she's heard the “web developer” joke. No, yours isn't new. 🕸️🕷️❤️