#🪐 svetlana

[singthesongsofsin]

Question for the dash: for any muses (or muns) from outside Canada/the US, what does your version of Sesame Street's Big Bird look like? I'm from Canada so I just had the yellow Big Bird.

Svetlana had Zeliboba who is not a bird at all, and is the personification of the Russian Dvorovoi, or spirit of the courtyard.

[singthesongsofsin]

📃/ for any of your muses that want to interact with Kitty! :o

@kttybot | If you slip in a little 📃 I will discuss one scenario that had been living in my head rent free

Svetlana and Hellaina are probably the easiest to start with!

Svetlana: Svetlana makes her living in Pentagram City through poker, and gambling, and pool. Who knew that growing up in a post-Soviet Russia so often controlled by the mob, would lead to some interesting talents? And pool is largely applied physics, which she needed. She makes enough not to wind up at the feet of an Overlord, and works the sort of weird, inconsistent hours that make it easy to research escaping Hell.

Valentino almost certainly has some sort of club that, at least doubles, as a casino of sorts. She doesn't realize at first that the robot that works there has a personality! And Kitty is interesting, from a scientific standpoint alone, she seems so deceptively alive, compared to anything Svetlana's dealt with, and certainly more than most of the people who frequent the club. She starts to come to Val's more often just to talk to Kitty, because if she's going to go out anyway, she might as well go somewhere with a extra benefit or two!

Hellaina gets two:

The first one is sort of an expansion of this idea, and the right one of these pictures. Hellaina hates Valentino, especially now. It's been a few decades since her early fall, and she's searching out some loophole that lets her out of this contract. She's less the favourite than Angel, and plays less nice, but popular enough. She's always been good at biding her time and playing in the shadows which in this case means saving the majority of her bitter commentary for where Valentino can't hear her.

And then Kitty comes along, and Valentino has a new toy of sorts. She's less breakable than a real person, and she and Hellaina end up put in a lot of the same scenes and spaces. (Enough people complained about being bitten by her hair, and eventually they found ways for that not to pose a problem).

The second idea is probably lighter!

Vox has precisely zero faith in Valentino's ability to give Kitty the maintenance she needs. She's a complicated combination of hardware and software, and purpose aside, fluids do not play nicely with electronics, she needs more TLC than the average cellphone.

But also, he is busy and cannot always do that himself, and Hellaina is increasingly the person in charge of both making sure Kitty gets back and forth without incident, and watching the tech in charge of her repairs to make sure nothing untoward happens. That, and she's been told to study the schematics, and thus knows enough to say if something has been forgotten or done improperly. They start to talk!

[singthesongsofsin]

Muses

Hellaina

With a soul technically belonging to her boss, Hellaina is the second most powerful person in Vogitek.

Bio

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Astaroth

Deals, nightmares, and sloth, Tara is one of the original fallen Angels who started Hell.

Bio

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Belphegor

Prince of Sloth, and ruler of the Sloth ring, Belphegor is one of the single most powerful people in Hell... provided you can keep him awake long enough.

Bio

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Adelard

The kindly uncle to all of Hell, Adelard is the closest thing Pentagram city has to a librarian... and library. A former plague doctor, Adelard is probably the oldest sinner most people interact with.

Bio

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Dia F. Hyde

Cannibal, pathologist, and loving wife to Vox's PA. Dia is one of the regulars at the Cannibal colony.

Bio

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Svetlana Leonidovna

Russian cosmonaut who got lost in space. Now she's made of the fabric of it, and trying to find her way home.

Bio

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Metatron

The Voice of God-- Metatron is the first creation, and older and more powerful than that. Right now is is also a false God.

Bio

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Jayden

Velvette's PA-- he's pretty sure it's mostly for the joke, but that's alright. He's been dead for about a year and a half and has not stopped screaming yet.

Bio

[singthesongsofsin]

So the quality here is... bad, but it's the only one I could find with English subtitles, but I present the Soviet Winnie the Pooh! Things Svetlana had as a child! I can just imagine her as a very tiny small curled up watching it on an old boxy television. When she thinks animated bear cartoon, it's this brown bear with no legs, just feet, the coloured backgrounds, and what can sometimes be quite haunted eyes (and she loves him dearly).

[singthesongsofsin]

🪐🪐| Svetlana's parents did their best to shield her from the worst of the Yeltsin era shortages and economic hardships. She knew that her father went to work, and came home, and was, all things considered, a remarkably good father. They never said as much, but she can guess he was, at least partially, on the payroll of the mafia.

She also knows the skills she inherited from him aren't what most people would consider such. He taught her the basics of pool, and instead of playing card games like go fish and crazy eights, he taught her how to play poker and how to bluff. He taught her to play chess, and was the first person to encourage her fascination for space and her intelligence.

He was so proud when she went to Moscow, and despite everything suggesting otherwise, he's still alive.

[singthesongsofsin]

👗 + Svetlana's running errands and being a functional person, clothes.

@novinare | Svetlana usually wears gloves, in part for other people because she is so cold. Also, if you notice is she wears a lot of white, you would be correct! She likes this sort of softer, cozy style.

[singthesongsofsin]

🪐 | Home

When Svetlana thinks of home, it is not, and has never been the great onion-domes of cathedrals, or the imposing red of Red Square, but a small town where the sun never set in the summer, and never rose in the winter. She thinks of a church that in her memories, is perpetually dusted in snow, and it seemed like everyone in the town knew her parents.

Her eyelashes would freeze together when she went to her dance classes, and the snow was, for most of the year, too dry to do more than wade through, with no hope of snowmen. But at the same time, she thinks of leaping from the roofs into the piles of snow, and it sinking up to her chest, and her father plucking her from it.

When she is older, home means endless rows of Khrushchevka stretching high above, and temperatures just as cold as home. There was a small play ground outside their apartment block, and she spent hours on it, crossing the monkey bars with increasing skill until she was too tall for it. As a teenager, pulling herself to sit on top with her legs dangling down to read her textbooks.

During the winter, between the trees covered in frost or seemingly drained of their colour, and the overcast sky, she remembers watching the sunrise with hands pressed to the glass of her window.

She was in her very early 20s when she left Siberia for the first time, and Moscow never felt as much like home.

When she was in space, she would look first for Moscow, and it's sprawling lights, and then try to guess where home was, not that she could ever see it.

She never returned to Saskylakh, and to Yakutsk only twice. In many ways, she is eternally homesick, even if there are many aspects of Pentagram City that remind her of Russia. In others, she has no home to return to-- after all, she doesn't want to return to her childhood home, but space. That is, after all the thing that stands out in all those memories. It is looking up in at the infinite dark, and to the sides where the horizon faded into white, and thinking she wanted to go out there.

In every place she lived, she would track the path of the moon across the sky, and locate the constellations as touchstones.

[singthesongsofsin]

Which of the muses is most likely to consume (in some form or another) marijuana?

Hellaina: Not her drug of choice-- she is more likely to go for uppers of some sort. But even then, not something she uses much of.

Dia: Nope! Was a medical student for too long.

Tara: Has, but doesn't usually. If she does, it's more of a social thing.

Belphegor: No, it would just put him to sleep, and he has enough trouble staying awake as is.

Adelard: Surprisingly yes. He grows it, like a lot of other plants. it was being used and cultivated in Medieval Europe, so it's hardly some new foreign thing. He was using it in life too.

Svetlana: Nope, like with Dia, she's too aware of the effects on the body. She was training to be a cosmonaut that she didn't go near a lot of sugars and fats much less drugs!

Metatron: Could probably benefit from some occasionally, but no.

Jayden: Yes, but in the sort of awkward giggly way of someone for whom it was a crime for most of their life.

[singthesongsofsin]

[singthesongsofsin]

Svetlana’s Career in Hell

While Svetlana’s ultimate goal is very much to see if there is anything beyond the skies of Pentagram City, and a return to her beloved cosmos, dreams don’t pay the bills or keep you off an Overlord’s payroll. She’s well aware that if she were to end up signing a contract she can wish her dreams goodbye.

She tends to keep relatively to herself, but she has a small apartment she pays for through a combination of poker and pool.

She is a common enough figure at the various casinos around the city, and she tends to do well. She has a knack for poker, and an uncanny ability to bluff. (And her talent for math means she’s rather adept at counting cards). She’s good at other card games as well, but she stays pointedly away from games of chance.

Pool is arguably more fun, but less lucrative. She’s a trained physicist— the science behind it is second nature: momentum, impact, angles. What is it but a real world application of her education?

[singthesongsofsin]

So Svetlana might have a human face??? I mean it's not concrete and it very well might change but for now I think I'll use Anzhela Zhirkova (Green Apelsin), a Sakha singer. If anyone wants to hear some of her music, here's the album I know some of the songs from.

[singthesongsofsin]

Svetlana Leonidovna Tarasova

   first  -  patronymic  -  last

Names, in order of familiarity/intimacy

Svetlana Leonidovna : very formal, not in common use.

Svetlana Tarasova: what the media calls her, or when she's in a professional setting, or when a close friend or family member is very very angry!

Svetlana: for acquaintances, the media; or if she's having a minor argument with a friend that usually calls her Sveta.

Svetya/Lana: common use for friends and family. She is more likely to use Lana nowadays, because most people do not speak Russian, and it tends to be what they would default to!

Svetka: if they’re alone, very close, and very comfortable with each other. Svetlana has very few people in her life that would use this name, especially in Hell.

Svetusha: pet names, used by only the closest people in her life, and only at the right moment.

[singthesongsofsin]

how many languages can your muse speak?

*Belphegor and Astaroth don’t count because their answer is “all”

Hellaina: 2! English and Spanish. She took it in high school, and then in university. She’s not perfectly fluent but she’s capable of holding a conversation.

Dia: 1, English.

Jayden: 1, also only English.

Svetlana: 4, Evenki and Yakutsk (two of the indigenous Siberian languages), Russian, and English which is her last language.

Adelard: 4*. He speaks Latin and Greek because of his education with the clergy of the time. It was expected. Also French (even if it’s millennia old French!) and English which is where the complications come in. Technically he speaks some three variations of English. Does Old English count alongside modern English? It’s grammar was completely different and it does need to be translated.

[singthesongsofsin]

Where does your muse fall on seeing Barbenheimer?

Hellaina: Oppenheimer, with Vox, and then Barbie with Dia. Has not dressed in theme.

Dia: Sees both! Dresses up for both. Oppenheimer first.

Adelard: Confused by the whole thing, if he hears about it at all. Sees neither.

Jayden: BARBIE!!! He’s dressed in full Ken getup.

Svetlana: Goes to neither, will probably end up watching them on her own with Russian subtitles.

Belphegor: They arrive later to Sloth. He sees both, but Barbie is the hit on the ring. He sees it first.

Astaroth: She and Mephistopheles go on Earth, but in opposite order. They both dress up, if not as dramatically as some do! She sees Barbie first, and then steals his period accurate coat as the main point of her second outfit.

[singthesongsofsin]

✨✨| For anyone wondering, the answer 'when have you gone too far' into your research is in fact, sometime beyond where I am, but my new character gave me the chance to go back to my class notes from last summer. I always knew some good would come out of hanging onto them! So if you want a cosmonaut who died in space, and misses it... and is actively taking steps to return to it, may I introduce you all to Svetlana? (The art is a work in progress, she'll get something less terrifying later on!)