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ablednt · 3 years

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Actually helpful advice for the kids on this hellsite

Once again tired of "don't make a carrd or tell people your triggers" posts going around literally telling kids it's Dangerous to set boundaries. So here's what I've learned in my teen years on how to stay safe in the hellscape that's the internet.

Identity

You don't have to link all your social media together but you can if you want to. Don't give out something that is more private (like discord account, Skype or zoom account, facebook, Snapchat etc.) publicly or to people who aren't familiar with yet though.

Use a nickname rather than your real name or birth name, an account and name change may unfortunately be necessary so if you want to keep a name safe or use it irl then don't attach it to public social media. This can be fun though! Go apeshit coming up with different aliases and names! Call yourself lizard if you want to!

The only thing you absolutely need to put somewhere on your account (or carrd) is that you're a minor. You don't have to give the exact age but I promise this is important because even if there's plenty of context clues that you're a minor if you don't indicate this somewhere clear and adults start treating you like shit you need to be able to point out that they're knowingly doing this to a minor. That has saved me from gross bullshit a lot. Yes, people should default to treating people who's ages they don't know as a minor to play it safe but the majority of people assume everyone is the same age as them so you need to make it clear you're not an adult.

Pronouns don't make you identifiable and anyone who acts like putting your pronouns in your bio is unsafe is probably transphobic lmao. You don't have to if you don't want to (and don't mind people not using/knowing your pronouns) but it's safe to put them there most of the time. (The only exception I can think of is if you're closeted and your parents may find your account but in that case you should probably stay closeted online to unless you feel safe/know they aren't likely to find your account.)

You don't have to list every privilege you have and you probably shouldn't but if you're white you probably should indicate this somewhere. This is to hold yourself accountable because yes even teenagers can be racist and underaged people of color also deserve to feel safe. If you're nonwhite and don't feel safe doing so you don't have to list your race or ethnicity.

If you're part of a system/plural or questioning you do NOT have to say your systems origins, if you have DID/OSDD, or list your headmates/alters. The system community has a lot of people in it (and singlets adjacent to parts of the community due to bullshit discourse groups welcoming them) who will target underaged systems to fakeclaim them or harass them etc. I suggest having everyone use aliases/nicknames on a system account and you only tell your origin to people you feel comfortable around and safe with. Your safety and privacy is more important than your trendy system carrd goals I promise!

You shouldn't really just list any disorders you have but it really does no harm to put marginalized identities you're proud of on a carrd or in your bio. You might get a shitty anon or two but I promise people aren't going to dox you if you say you're autistic on your carrd or something.

I personally wouldn't list any special interests that are particularly recognizable (popular media should be ok but more niche stuff may not be) or publicly share a kin list just because you never know if you'll want to switch up your identity online to feel safe and the more things are clearly tied to your current nickname and handle the harder it will be to do this. However if you feel safe doing so it's not the end of the world. Just be careful about it and don't feel pressured to give more info than you're comfortable giving.

You do NOT need to tell people your trauma in order to tell them your triggers. If you need something tagged with a tw you really should indicate this somewhere so people know to tag it (unless you intend to send every you're mutuals with an anon with what to tag which is also an option but may be difficult) but you shouldn't tell them your trauma or medical history to justify it. Your boundaries aren't up for debate and you have nothing to prove. You should only talk about your trauma if you feel safe doing so (and even then please don't give identifiable details like.names of people involved or specifics as that can cause serious problems.)

Boundaries & etiquette

DNIs are good! BYFs are good! Anyone who tells you that they're not good or useful is absolutely trying to disrespect your and other people's boundaries. You can and should make a DNI and list the people you don't want to interact with. (Generally it's better to say groups rather than specific people or names because it's easier to again not be recognized if you need to change accounts/aliases but you can do this if you have strong reasoning and absolutely have to to feel safe.)

DNIs (and also.trigger lists) don't have to all be bad things! You can put fandoms that make you uncomfortable, things that trigger you but aren't bad inherently, etc. on these lists. They're about helping you feel safe not having the hottest takes or being the most morally correct.

Some people you should put in your DNIs as a minor are proshippers/anti-antis and MAPs. Both of these groups have been proven time and time again to groom minors online so the earlier you get away from them the better.

Once you have your DNI please do be aggressive in reinforcing it! Block people who break your DNI, tell people who complain about your DNI to fuck off! Do not tolerate people trying to debate the boundaries You have set this is your corner of the internet to feel safe! They can go somewhere else! Being blocked by a kid on the internet is not the emotional blow abusers act like it is. You're not mean for having boundaries please internalize this and stand up for yourself!

If other people have a DNI you need to check that before following them this is for both your own safety and theirs. If you're unsure what something on someone's DNI means ask around to find out before following just in case.

Do NOT get involved in discourse! This doesn't mean you can't ever take part in or boost serious things. Discussing/calling out bigotry (racism, ableism, transphobia, etc.) isn't discourse. Sometimes callout posts for legitimately harmful people is necessary so that's not automatically bad. But I'm taking about the shit that's #discourse. Stay out of ace discourse. Stay away from syscourse. Don't debate with terfs or transmeds or shitty people. I know it seems like it'd be cathartic to win debates with shitty people, I know there's people who will try to bait you into the latest argument over which lgbt+ identities can say what slurs or whatever the fuck the pointless bad faith argument is, and I know you want to prove that your marginalized identity doesn't make you a bad person like bigots say it does. But as someone who's mental health was absolutely destroyed by discourse as a teen it's not worth it. By all means discuss issues as they arise, broaden your perspectives and horizons, etc. but don't engage knowingly in discourse it will save you so much trouble in the long run.

Try to avoid talking to adults 1x1 if you can avoid it! It's okay to dm with an adult you feel safe talking to sometimes and while it's certainly okay not to interact with adults at all if you don't feel.comfortable it's generally okay to do so. But if an adult is going out of their way to consistently talk to you in private needlessly that can be a red flag. If an adult tries to insinuate that they're the only adult around you can trust that's DEFINITELY a red flag. Basically talk to people in places you can easily involve others if needs be. If someone sends you a dm that makes you uncomfortable screenshot it in case you need to show someone etc.

Don't discuss NSFW things with adults, in spaces adults have easy access to (for example a discord server open to all ages), or even with other underaged people who haven't indicated they're comfortable with it. There's nothing inherently wrong with being aware of nsfw stuff or experiencing sexual attraction as a teenager but it's very important that you don't put yourself in situations that may be unsafe for you or others. Most good discord servers have rules against this for this exact reason. Now, to make it abundantly clear, if you did or do ever say something nsfw and an adult takes advantage of this or responds in a way that makes you uncomfortable this is NOT your fault! The responsibility falls on adults to act appropriately but it's still a good idea to keep youeself out of harms way.

That's basically it on a general level. Once again, posts telling you not to make DNIs or carrds or trigger lists (all used to set clear boundaries) are very suspect and either grossly misunderstand how these things work or are intentionally demonizing them in order to have more opportunity it excuse to do harm. Setting clear boundaries is good. Doing things that help you feel safe and respected is good. Just don't go and get involved in discourse or give out personal information or anything.

#online safety #internet safety #DNIs #carrd #actuallyautistic #actuallyplural #long post #grooming tw #ask to tag

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bitch-in-a-bag · 3 years

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can we talk about how the LGBT movement has changed in the past 15 years?

in the light of the events surrounding Chris chan, and people prioritizing pronouns over the rape of a woman with dementia, I think it displays just how... different things are.

i personally feel like it's been co-opted by the more loud and entitled mtfs/ males/penis-havers/whatever pc term exists for the XY chromosome'd, who go too far and aren't reasonably kept in check. I think terf no longer has meaning anymore because it's just become a word we use to silence anyone that disagrees with a trans woman. immediately you're going to call me a terf, I accept that, but please continue reading. I may suprise you. calling someone who's transgender a terf is kinda messed up anyway, and that's exactly why im writing this.

I also think that everyone else (allies, ftms, etc) have followed suit because they've written this messed up narrative that EvErYoNe iS VaLiD. except for trans penis-havers, bc they're the most oppressed and the most valid, actually, regardless of their experiences.

I never used to believe the above because it was always written off as terf shit, and ignoring it kinda benefitted me, but between seeing ftms getting bashed for refusing to follow new "TME" rules as if they aren't trans too, and seeing outrage around Chris chans pronouns, I think it's time to start saying things that may make people uncomfortable. innocent people are already getting hurt by this, and we need to do better. it's time to get uncomfortable.

I want to remind you that perception is both the relying factor, and also the downfall of newer lgbt theory. if my profile were mtf coded, maybe it currently is, you'd call me a self hating trans and I wouldn't be that big of a deal. terfs would probably target me.

if my profile was ftm coded, I would be absolutely skewered for daring to speak out about these issues, even though they do actually affect ftms disproportionately. terfs would try to convince me that being trans is a plague and a mental illness, and to just ~be a cis woman~!

and if assumed cis, I would 100% be assumed radfem terf, and everything I say would immediately be dismissed because of the genuine damage terfs have done. but terfs would still probably flock to this post and berate me for daring to validate trans people At All, because to them, being transgender is a mental illness akin to an eating disorder, and "giving in" to it is "self harm". clearly I don't believe that, so hopefully you'll give me at least some benefit of the doubt.

so, does my identity matter? i have a feeling you'll say yes, because it gives us a good idea of experiences I do and don't have expertise in, and thus room to talk about. but I refuse to directly identify what I actually am because I want the focus of any resulting conversation to be my message and not my self identification. if you read between the lines and figure it out that's just fine, but I would like to be heard first and foremost.

my profile is thus an attempt at being cis female coded, somewhat out of comfort, and that is likely what I'll be assumed to be due to the beliefs I am expressing, even though there is a substantial risk of getting misgendered and dismissed, no matter what my birth sex may actually be. i will give you a hint about my identity: I am transgender, on HRT and everything, and I have been personally affected by all of this. rest assured, this is well within my lane to speak about, and it does matter if you misgender me.

I want you to really think about that. before you respond, really think about if someone saying words on tumblr, talking about their OWN experiences and their take on recent history that applies to themself, really more worthy of being misgendered and harassed than... someone who said they transitioned so they could date lesbians, and then raped their own mother with dementia.

is that fair or just? or is this just a new way of letting people with penises do whatever they want? I personally think it's the latter. we need to hold people like Chris chan accountable without getting caught up on something as minor **in comparison** as misgendering and self identification. Is it sad and confusing that someone who self IDs as transgender became 1:1 with the most dangerous stereotypes that exist for trans women? Of course it is. But it doesn't mean that self identification is suddenly more important than a literal crime being committed.

I would normally dismiss it as a fluke or outright trolling if the evidence weren't so damning that this is in fact a real event that happened. If I hadn't seen this happen to other people, and if I didn't literally know another mtf person who used their dysphoria as an excuse for date rape on multiple occasions and never got any consequences for it.

It's not a one time thing, it's a developing problem that we need to stop before more people have their lives ruined. I can't even imagine how traumatizing and messed up it is for an FTM person to be date raped, by another transgender person no less. When I, an abuse survivor, told people of this MTFs red flags, people violently silenced me. People who didn't know I was trans called me a terf and transphobic. We, as a community, could've protected someone from getting date raped, and we didn't. Trans women can be awful, horrible fucking people, because they are people. Protecting them at all costs is wrong. Protecting them from transphobia is what we should be doing.

That being said, misgendering is still skeevy, and I haven't done anything like raped a disabled woman who is no longer able to consent, or date raped my own partner. if you give a shit about respecting my identity, please use they/them for me. if not, use visual perception and make assumptions that will most likely be incorrect, skew your own argument, and put me on the same level as a rapist, and arguably a fetishist. And I do need to remind you that calling someone transgender a rapist and a fetishist without evidence is still definitely classic transphobia, to the letter, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't do that.

as someone who is same sex attracted, I also want to bring this up as well.

in the US in the past 15 years, the movement as a whole pretty much went "YEAH BORN THIS WAY" with Lady Gaga, and then jumped ship to prioritize mostly mtfs at every angle. do mtfs need support? absolutely. but they don't need misguided toxic positivity, and that's what it's turned into.

it's gotten genuinely homophobic to the point where actually homosexual people are constantly being erased and demonized via "genital preferences are a fetish uwu", and vulva havers, especially the trans ones, are constantly being told to shut up about their experiences.

as much as you want to deny bioessentialism, its still very much well and alive with newer trans movement sentiments when we classify ftms as not worthy of speaking about their own issues with terms like "TME". it's also incredibly ignorant towards FTMs who pass, but dress feminine for comfort, and get mistaken for MTF, and treated like garbage because of it. They are not remotely exempt from misogyny, transphobia, or the intersection of the two, and it is not anyone's job to tell them they don't ever experience that when they do. Turning ftms and biological homosexuals into our enemies-- especially when the actual cause is transphobia and harmful gender stereotypes-- does nothing good or healthy for our movement.

Dont be mistaken, though, passing isn't the focus or end all be all here, it's the perception of others that ends up drastically effecting your experiences. There are words like misogyny that imply treatment via birth sex, however this too can be reliant on external perception. If an MTF individual either transitions very young, has an abundance of resources to transition, or just gets lucky and passes well, chances are she will experience a lot more misogyny than people may give credit to. inversely, someone who just started questioning yesterday, but lived as a male their whole life up until then, they genuinely cannot speak about misogyny with that much room because they simply haven't experienced it at an accurate enough angle or for enough time to understand it as a repeated and sociological force.

It works the other way as well, though; someone who's known that they're trans for a long time and haven't had the resources to transition, or do not or cannot pass in the eyes of society; these people suffer pain that we don't neccesarily have a word for yet, imo. It makes dysphoria worse and it makes living seem hopeless. And as a community, we deal with this is in a really messed up way by over-validating them instead of solving the core issue at hand. and people who suffer from this, but also acknowledge they can't claim what they haven't experienced, are left with nowhere to go.

And its important to acknowledge these things because they're integral to the over-encompassing trans experience. Instead of lying to everyone and telling everyone they pass/giving out unconditional positive regard, our focus should be making it so that it **doesn't matter if you pass**. that you're still worth respect and dignity if you're transgender, no matter what passing is or what it means to you, and no matter how you present. But also, if you do something awful, you still need to be held accountable, especially if you use yourself, your body, or your trans status to contribute to other axi of oppression.

Transphobia is a word that encompasses and addresses all of that, regardless of birth sex. "TME" shuts that down in favor of only letting MTF's speak. Which is still very bio-essentialist, and I can't help but feel like we've gone full circle.

Once upon a time you couldn't even get married if your partner had the same genitals as you. in the US, this was less than 7 years ago. and if you care about human rights activism, you know damn well that legal modification is not the end all be all. people who are genuinely homosexual are still oppressed, but the trans movement has started stepping on them to make ground we don't deserve. homosexuals are ok and valid. it's not a genital preference, and the prescence of trans people doesn't make conversion therapy sentiments ok, ever.

we've gone full circle, and it's not right.

#trans rights #homosexuality #human rights #lgbt #lgbt community #trans #tw: rape #transphobia

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twiceblackvelvet · 4 years

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forgive me for the long post, i’m still trying to gather my thoughts on this situation but i’m going to do my best to address the most common issues people bring to me because clearly my intentions are being misconstrued, have become confused for some of you and people attempted to put a lot of words into my mouth last night that i never stated.

i’m also not the best at explaining myself at times but i am going to do my best to offer my own perspective as well as insight into my thinking, so if anyone is confused by anything detailed here, you can simply ask me in a polite manner and i will talk about it with you.

tw // mentions of anxiety, transphobia, self harm, suicide, harassment

i have for a long time discussed my dislike of this community when i first joined it. i thought that the big accounts were all in cliques together, not willing to help anyone and that they just never really cared about much except issues regarding themselves. i’ve also talked about how i personally did not want to be like that as i am unable to just simply “ignore” things i see happening, in fact, i struggle to let go of them as i do tend to hyperfixate on negative situations where i’ve felt like my feelings have been hurt which is very easy for me to feel like has happened even if someone wasn’t intentionally trying to hurt me. i have felt this for a large part of my life which never really became clear to me until i realised it’s also a part of adhd or more specifically rejection sensitive dysphoria.

i feel my emotions incredibly intensely and whether someone intended to upset me or not, i will in the majority of situations i’m in convince myself that they meant to hurt me and then i’ll put myself down because of that. it’s a lot harder for me through a screen to decipher people’s intentions but i try my best not to let it bother me too much, which isn’t easy whatsoever.

i also have anxiety which makes it hard for me to deal with certain situations where increased hate is thrown around so casually because i will start to panic. it also makes it hard for me to approach others particularly when i’m already in a state of anxiety which is kind of a cruel, twisted joke by the universe when you think about it.

however, i do find issues within this community incredibly important to discuss so that people can see how others have had to deal with such things as transphobia and make people realise we can all do better to protect others or make certain changes to try and stop it from happening. so, i always try my best to do what i think is right. people are free to disagree with my methods if they wish but i don’t believe you can stamp out some of these problems by talking about it behind closed doors as no one will ever know what your thoughts on it are, you have no way of educating others and it can come across as unsupportive instead.

when i first decided to use my voice back in May to talk about what in my opinion was one of the bigger accounts within this community, i figured that i had opened the floor for conversations that needed to be discussed about cis-het people in lgbt+ spaces. instead i was met with anonymous messages telling me to harm myself, i received lesbophobic slurs and even someone attacking me based on the fact i had pronouns in my bio who assumed i was trans. this was an incredibly difficult situation for me and caused me to almost be “afraid” of my own account for months. i only began to feel comfortable again when the issue with that same person arose just a few months ago which resulted in them deactivating.

i’m aware there are people out there who are upset with me and others for what they feel is us “bullying” this person off the platform, but what i see is that lgbt+ people/accounts finally decided to keep our spaces safe and i see that people are far more comfortable now with that person gone, whether you like it or not, that is the truth of the matter. they made people feel invalidated, they encouraged violence against lgbt+ people and felt like everything they did was fine. it was not. it never was.

for some reason afterward, people began coming to me to tell me about other people within this community who perhaps didn’t address something or had been friends with that person. i personally struggle to talk to anyone who was friends with them because i know some of them saw the original issue back in May and could have spoken up to at least try and stop people sending death threats, but they didn’t. however, i don’t think these issues have a time limit for people to speak up nor do i think people should instantly go to hate anyone who doesn’t but rather ask them “hey did you see x problem, what are your thoughts?” and then base what happens next on their answer.

but i want to make something very clear, sending messages to people telling them to harm themselves etc. is never the answer. it only causes more pain and takes away the opportunity to have an educational conversation with that person to perhaps make them see that their views may be problematic.

i’m only one person, you know? do i believe that i have this “power” that anons keep telling me i do? no. i think that this community has for a long time been silent on important matters and thus me and a few other blogs being outspoken on some of the bigger accounts who either once were or still are in the community has shaken a lot of things up for people and some don’t like that. i think when addressing such issues as transphobia and reblogging posts from those who have to go through it everyday who maybe detail things they experience, some people have realised they too hold the same beliefs as those who are being called out and by default they feel called out also.

but please don’t ever compare something as dangerous, life-threatening and harmful as transphobia to me not mentioning another creator in an ask. those two are in no way comparable and dilutes the issue of transphobia massively when it has real-life consequences that i’ve personally talked about a situation close to me but also happens every single day unfortunately and we all can do far more/better to protect people who are trans.

i’ve since brought up situations where other creators have either said or done something that i feel is wrong and again, if they’re willing to share opinions that are transphobic or mocking being n/b-phobic publicly, i also think other creators around them have the right to call them out publicly. i won’t apologise for this because again, it can’t be solved behind closed doors as that furthers the silence people previously relied on in this community to avoid helping or supporting others. i think anyone who does believe these things should be discussed privately after the person made it a public issue should reflect on that a little.

as for me not mentioning a specific creator in an ask. it genuinely was not my intention to hurt them or anyone else by not mentioning them, i genuinely just don’t like to talk about people on others’ blogs but especially not if i don’t know the person and they don’t know me. i understand now how that looks bad on me, but i still stand by my choice as i genuinely do not see why it caused such a huge uproar after i had explained myself multiple times.

i have apologised to that creator personally and unfortunately there are other complications there which have made it hard for me to let this issue go, through no fault of their own but rather i just am very aware of how i have now fixated on this and i have to get myself out of that ultimately. but i want to reiterate here that there is no problem on my side toward them, i genuinely just do not like to talk about others that i don’t know. i never have liked that as i’ve had it happen to me but there’s nothing more i can do about it now. i hope they’re able to see i meant no harm whatsoever as i hope the rest of you can but i understand if not.

i’m very aware that at least one of the anons from last night is someone who has previously attacked me on multiple occasions (same language etc.) and it does scare me a little bit that there is someone essentially just watching my account and waiting for me to do or say anything so they can strike and attack me but again there’s nothing i can do about that other than block them from sending asks (tried it) but if they continue to persist i don’t know what more i can do to protect myself from that.

i’ve opened myself up a lot here and i’m very proud of that because it’s something i struggle with, however, i’m also aware people can now use those things against me. but to see that someone mentioned my own relationship last night hurt me deeply because whilst i don’t mind talking about it, i also don’t wish for anyone to feel like they’re close enough to our relationship that they have the right to bring it up so casually as a way to try and hurt either of us or that any of you are entitled to an opinion on it because none of you truly know either of us or how our relationship works, nor will you ever from me at least. ultimately, no one has that right to mention our relationship but the both of us is my point. so don’t try and pull that with me, you won’t like the outcome.

i want to end this by saying that i’m fine and reassure you all that i’ve been able to let all of this go but the truth is i’m not fine right now. i always try to find a “fix” for any problems people have because i want to help everyone but i struggle to do so when it comes to my own ultimately and i also don’t believe there is a “fix” for this but rather i just have to come to terms with the fact that my values in wanting to stand up for others (which i will continue to do) or not wanting to talk about people who i don’t know have ultimately hurt others so i have to figure out a way to bring this back to a positive state for myself. i’m just unsure how currently but i’ll figure it out.

i apologise again for not mentioning a-nxny in that ask, it was not an intentional thing and i honestly did not think or believe anyone would find offense in it and had i known i wouldn’t have done that, but i do hope people can at least see this from my perspective a little bit and then it’s up to you whether you agree or disagree, again there’s no fix for this.

i am begging all of you who read this who maybe has sent hurtful things either recently or previously to please reconsider as that is never the answer and i do not condone anything of that nature whatsoever. if in future you see me talking about certain issues or if another creator does something problematic, don’t then go and harass them with asks wishing them harm. instead either approach them from an educational point of view or dont approach them at all. i am someone who this has happened with and had to get myself out of suicidal thoughts because of people doing this back in May, so don’t do it to someone else, please.

#tw: anxiety #tw: harassment #tw: self harm #tw: transphobia #tw: suicide

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water--gang · 3 years

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HI LOVE IM HERE SORRY IM LATE I HAD A WEEK IF U KNOW WHAT I MEAN

LOOK ITS A HUG

LOVE YOU ALSO I HAVE ICE CREAM

Only QUALITY in this house my sweet look how Epic and Zesty these look I low key want ice cream 🥺

Also NO WORRIES ON A LATE REPLY I fully understand that ur busy and stressed, I don’t have a problem with that!!

I’m sorry life hasn’t been treating u well :(( I hope the upcoming holidays will do their part in letting you breathe and feel better!! If nothing in particular has made u smile, that’s fine!! Though it might make you feel better to start paying attention to those things, as scarce as they might be. Maybe they’ll help cheer you up at some point! I know you made me smile a lot while I was in the UK and it really helped keep me going a lot!! You matter and I’m sure that you’ll find reasons to smile soon! You better or life can catch these hands fr I’m smol and as intimidating as a swarm of butterflies bUT that shan’t stop me and it WONT

and please make sure to get rested!!! Again I hope the break will give you more opportunities for sleep and I understand how tough that can be but I’ll cheer for you anyway!

And bc you asked, I’m doing okay! My assessments got a new due date for June so I have the weeks before the second semester to get some rest myself, and my cats bc I got CATS AND THEYRE AMAZING AND I LOVE THEM have been a big comfort to me!! I love them so muc 😭😭 and while my mental health is still on the brink, I’m in a better place now- so that’s good!! I’m seeing a counselor too now! I have a session tomorrow actually!! I got him to listen to seventeen dude I can’t he’s like in his 50’s right and I got him to listen to kpop he’s so wholesome 😭

BUT THIS IS ABOUT U

I saw ur post! Thank you for taking care in letting me know! I also won’t judge u if u like dreamsmp if that’s what ur referring too, I don’t watch it myself but I can definitely see how funny it is, I love watching quackity lmao he’s in it I think lmao

I’ve been referring to you as they/them since i saw ur bio (i talk about u to my two irl friends lmao) but thank you for letting me know!! I’m happy to use ur preferred pronouns, and if they change for any reason just lemme know and I’ll respect that too!!

LOVE YOU, I HOPE YOURE DOING OKAY AND THAT YOU’LL GET BETTER SOON ❤️❤️❤️ YOU DESERVE TO FEEL BETTER AND TO GET GOOD THINGS IN LIVE LOVE, PLEASE TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF (you’ve been doing an amazing job!! Please keep it up I’m really proud of you!!) 💖💖💖

hey you never have to apologize for that yea? cause i mean look at me, i take fucken ages to respond

thank you for the hug, love!! consider me sending two right back:)) <3

ahhahaha daaaamn Three ice creams? what did I do to deserve so many

heh you say that yet you yourself apologize, let's just make a deal to not apologize for any of our late replies okay? cause we both can be stressed and busy and tired and who knows what and that's fine

i don't remember what holidays you meant but I'll go ahead and assume i was semi okay during those and then went right back to being fucked jdnfnd thank you tho:')

aww... i did? really? that's... that's really sweet. that makes me happy:') I'm glad i could do that

ahhahahaha looks like life has some hands incoming! and hey maybe life is afraid of insects and such in which case a swarm of butterflies would be terrifying, especially when it's coming straight at ya

awwwww you got cats!!!! what are their names??? awhh I'm glad you have them:'))

ohh glad to hear that! i hope your sessions have been going well and you've converted him into a proper kpop stan ahahah no but really i hope they're helping and you've managed to stay in a good place cause that's the least you deserve after enduring so much shit

you're welcome! you're my friend so I wanted you to know, yea hahah. aw what you've been talking about me to your friends??? ..... i don't know why that makes me so soft, i just.... didn't think anyone would consider me interesting enough to talk to other people about ahah thank you:') also i didn't think anyone would notice the change in my bio so the fact that you did and have been referring to me as such makes me really happy:'))) thank you so much, thank you for being so supportive and accepting <3 (fun fact, i got a haircut hehe i went from long hair to super short and honestly it feels so much more like me:') )

yep! i was in fact referring to the dream smp hahah, I'm... I'm deep in the dsmp hole jdnxkd all i know is sleep eat and watch dsmp ahahhah it's like really angsty as well tho, not just funny, i have cried multiple times watching it:)) ah yess quackity is one of the members! i recently watched his outlast vods

:')

can I just give you a big ol'

heart, since i can't give you a hug, i am very upset it can't get bigger but we gotta make do with what we got, just imagine it's much much bigger altho that wouldn't capture all my appreciation and love anyway

unfortunately I'm bad with words so just: thank you. love you. i care about you and i hope you're doing well or will be soon. i appreciate every word you tell me. thank you so much. take care of yourself as well <3 thank you

— admin

#also #ehehehe #if you'd like to keep in touch better #i uhhh have a discord:)#so tell me if you'd like to add me and maybe talk more:))#i might take a while to respond on there as well sometimes but it will be faster than on here for sure #admin posts #ask #howdoyoudocreative

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glitchrpgmain · 4 years

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congratulations SARAH! you have been accepted into underworldfm. the role of SAPPHIRE will be portrayed by CHRISTOPHER LE CHEVALIER. SEBASTIAN STAN is now taken. please submit your blog within the next 24 hours & be sure to follow the guidelines outlined in our checklist.

ic.

character. Sapphire

occupation. Head Leecher

species. Lycan

faction. Liberation

name. Christopher Le Chevalier

age. 898 (Looks 38)

gender & pronouns. cis man, He/Him

faceclaim. Sebastian Stan

BIO.

but can’t you see the sanity in my epiphany

Christopher has been a peasant, a lord, a knight, a warrior, and a prisoner. He’s seen unlikely empires rise and fall. He’d outlived great men and monsters. He’d fought beside the winners and the losers. He’d seen Notre Dame built and burned–more than once. He’d seen and lived through too much. The only thing he learned after all those years was that there was one constant: death. Everyone was supposed and everything was supposed to end, and Alexander’s time was coming. It was a matter of time, and what was a few hundred years for someone like Christopher.

It’s strange what the mind chooses to remember after years of life. To Christopher, his memories are fragments tied together with fragile silk thread. A line leading from when he was human to Lycan and then dissolved and distorted in the centuries that followed. A thread soaked in fresh blood; human, vampire and Lycan.

12th Century

– oh power, power. a hero calls. from the bottom of a bottle. watch him fall.

Christopher was born a peasant–that was more fact than memory–destined to work the land until it ate him alive. But destiny had other plans for Christopher. He was young when armored men raised his village to the ground. He must have been no older than ten when his mother carried him out of their home, lungs filled with black smoke. Ten when he watched a knight drive his sword through her heart. Ten when he watched the same fate befall his father and siblings. Ten when that same knight assumed Christopher was dead. He’d been a sickly child, frail and unassuming. Even though life did not want Christopher, he would survive. He crawled his way back to life away from where he lay on the banks of the river Styx.

He lived to adulthood by wanting it more than others, by evading sickness and death. Christopher became what he feared. With puberty came a strength reserved for those who made surviving their vengeance for an unjust world. He stole, he fought and he killed.

But death came for Christopher. He’d died. He was sure he had. He’d finally pissed off the wrong people and his life caught up to him. It had been so cold and wet. He’d felt his soul escape his body and yet, he’d woken up. Christopher found himself in a bed far too luxurious it had to be divine. In a way it was. A Lycan bishop had saved Christopher’s life, turned him.

The bishop had needed warriors, a special unit to protect Richard the First. The church educated Christopher, both in letters and in sword. He understood his role now. And when Queen Eleanor rallied her sons against their father, King Henry II, Christopher took up arms and marched with Richard. Soon, he became the personal guard of the young duke. Despite being blind to the existence of Lycans, they helped Richard earn the reputation as a great fighter and military leader. Christopher was happy to remain in the shadows.

Richard was not a good man and an even worse king. Having a front-row seat to all the debauchery of Richard I did not endear him to Christopher. He was a monster, surrounded by worse monsters. Christopher was assigned to escort Richard’s fiancee, Berengaria, and his sister, Joan, home from Messina, but a shipwreck provided an opportunity to escape for Christopher. He faked his death and disappeared into Cyprus. Years of being a peasant made it so that Christopher knew how to fade into obscurity, to become unassuming. Faking death proved to be a lot easier than surviving it. Christopher’s desertion did not save him from participating in The Crusades. He found himself among the Christian forces. His story with war continued. Christopher was once again fighting not for honor but for survival.

15th Century

– I’ll never forget that you showed me to make art. and I know the love you showed me. came from a pure and noble heart

It’s the Renaissance and Christopher experiences yet another rebirth of his own. His hands dripping with the blood of others, Christopher discovers art and love. Italy was the place to be and Florence bloomed with life. Years of war and conquering left Christopher rich in gold if nothing else, while the rest of Western Europe lay in recession. But in Florence, bankers ruled and gold meant power. Christopher no longer had to hide.

He founded a bank and bought space for himself amongst the Medici family. But Christopher had been alive for far too long to follow the advice of Machiavelli. Christopher learned to be kind, learned to be human for the first time. He became a patron of art and hosted lavish parties. He wanted to capture something that he’d been denied. He understood that the only way to live multiple lives is to reinvent yourself.

17th Century

– whispered words start revolutions. weary souls break constitutions

As the reality of immortality stood, Christopher could not remain in one location for too long. He never married or bore children, knowing that he would never again want to outlive his kin. In 1660, Christopher sailed to the new land, as though land did not exist prior to being colonized. But the world was full of atrocities and Christopher was learning to navigate despite them, learning how to find hope in the fragility of circumstances. He distanced himself from humans, knowing that there lay only heartache. He became more involved in Lycan factions, rising in leadership. He fought when they needed him to fight, protecting his people. Christopher will not bow down to a vampire.

21st Century

– all the children are insane. waiting for the summer rain. there’s danger on the edge of town

A new millennium and Christopher’s age creeps towards the 4 digit mark, yet nothing has changed. War rages between humans, between vampires, and between Lycan. Countless of Lycan are butchered in the name of what? Vampire power. They bathe in Lycan blood, enforcing oppressive law in the name of prejudice, a punishment for actions taken thousands of years ago. Christopher holds the remains of his own faction together. But this is not an end. As long as he is still breathing as long as the moon calls his name and blood runs in his veins, Christopher will not abandon the Lycan cause. It might be what finally ends him, but he will happily lie down his life for a cause he truly believes in.

This is the end, beautiful friend This is the end, my only friend The end

Personality:

Pretty face and a mean bite.

People want to see a kindness in Christopher. He has soft eyes and a sweet smile. But those characteristics are more a wish than a reality. Christopher believes in reason and in humanity. Believes that people, human and Lycan– maybe even vampire, deserve a fair shot at existence. But he does not live in a world that allows space for kindness. It’s a fallacy albeit one that Christopher continues to strive toward.

Being alive for so long hasn’t made Christopher any more aware of who he is. The frictions and abrasions of time, war, and death have not shaped him into a beautiful piece of sea-glass, but rather have left him jagged, weary, and cynical. Christopher holds strongly to what remains of his sanity and focuses it on making the world a better place, if not for everyone then for the North American Lycans. Christopher is tired, a tiredness so deep he doesn’t remember a time he has not felt it. He hides it under a gruff exterior and determination. He shows himself as the leader they need him to.

please detail any potential plots you have in mind for your character or, conversely, expand on the connections we provided in the skeleton. What do these connections mean to your character? what can you see coming out of it? use this section as a way of showing us where you are going to take this character and showcase their interactions.

#uwfmaccepted

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diveronarpg · 5 years

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Congratulations, CHARLIE! You’ve been accepted for the role of GONERIL. Admin Jen: You have no idea how happy we are that you’ll be bringing us Verona’s favorite firebrand, Charlie! Like you pointed out, it’s easy to write Grace off as just that -- a whirlwind of chaos and spite with nothing more to her other than that, but you’ve definitely succeeded in bringing her out of the shadow of that impression and exploring everything else that makes her shine. There is so much more to her than meets the eye, and your diligence and care when it comes to portraying that left us completely thrilled to have her flourish in your hands. We’re so glad to have you back, and we can’t wait to see what more you have in store for Grace! Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.

WELCOME TO THE MOB.

Out of Character

Alias | Charlie

Age | 22

Preferred Pronouns | she/her

Activity Level | 5-6/10. I’m a law student and working 20 hours per week. So it’s safe to say that my rl can be pretty stressful. In addition, I like to take my time with my replies so that I can actually be satisfied with how they turned out. I’ve found in the past that it’s the easiest and most efficient for me to do replies as inspiration strikes and queue them to post every 2-3 days which I plan to do as well. However, I’m available every day almost all day long on Tumblr and Discord to chat and plot.

Timezone | CET

How did you find the rp? | Originally, through Jen, but this time because I’ve been a part of the group before.

Current/Past RP Accounts | may I introduce you to https://ofbellos.tumblr.com/ and https://ofdupont.tumblr.com/

IN CHARACTER

Character | Grace Daly aka Goneril.

What drew you to this character? | Goneril is a character I’ve been intrigued by ever since I first stumbled across the rp. Back then, she was still a taken character so I’ve never really bothered thinking about whether I’d apply for her or not and when she was reopened, I had my fair share of characters that were keeping me busy.

Somehow this fascination I have with her has never fully gone away, though. There’s something about her, her passion, her fierceness, how unwilling she is to be anybody but herself (and to hell with everybody who has a problem with that, quite literally, you'll probably end up dead if you insult her) that just really intrigues me. I feel like it’s easy to assume that Grace is downright crazy or doesn’t think at all about the consequences her actions might have, that she might not even have the mental capability of doing so. But while she’s definitely lead by her emotions and doesn’t fully know how to control her temper (and mostly doesn’t even want to), she doesn’t act without thinking about the consequences beforehand, very often, she acts a certain way despite having thought about it before. The ‘problem’ is that, in most cases, she simply doesn’t give a damn. She lives to provoke, to toy with the line of right and wrong and to run right through the wall that exists on that line for most people simply because she enjoys it. A part of her is eager to see just how far she can go simply because the search excites her. It’s most of the time not really about the other person (except for the times somebody managed to piss her off, which, admittedly, is not the hardest thing to do) but mostly about herself and what she wants to do. Everything else is secondary. And quite frankly, there’s nothing that she hates more than being bored. She lives for the thrill, be it the thrill caused by a good old bar fight, killing somebody with your bare hands, a steaming hot fuck or a simple argument. And the power of winning the things listed before. In some way, everything’s a fight for her and the big thrill of life is in that fight and winning it. After all, Grace Daly is nothing if not a winner. Losing isn’t an option. However, despite what you might think at the first (or even second) glance, she’s not just all fun and games. There’s this blazing hot desire burning inside her to conquer and rule her own kingdom. I’m gonna stop right here because I’m gonna be exploring this aspect further in the future plot section. However, I definitely see these various facets Grace has to offer that are so unique to her in my eyes and I really want to explore those in greater detail. Grace is bold, loud, unapologetic, reckless and untamable all wrapped up in one fiery ball of chaos and she’s definitely a force to be reckoned with, not just despite but because of how unpredictable she is. It might have not gotten her where she wants to go so far, but that certainly doesn’t mean that there isn’t a certain kind of power in it.

She’s so unlike any other character I’ve ever truly played before and that’s one of the many reasons why I actually thought long and hard about whether to apply for her or not. She’ll be quite the challenge for me, I’m not ashamed to admit that, but part of the reason why I’m still so into rping after all these years is the desire to challenge myself and hopefully become a better writer in the end. Grace Daly will without a hint of a doubt be a challenge for me, but I’m so ready for that. Also, her uniqueness compared to other characters I’ve played - even characters I’ve already written here in DV - makes it possible for me to explore other plots, connections, and interactions I haven’t gotten to explore before which really excited me as well.

What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character? |

I’ve added some future plot points that are more ideas than already thought out plots which I’ve called ‘ideas’ instead of ‘plots’. For a better understanding and cohesiveness, I’ve mixed them together so that they fit contentwise, I hope it isn’t too confusing. If it is, I want to apologize in advance.

PLOT 01

The Daly Sisters own a huge space of my heart when it comes to this rp. There dynamic is so unlike any other in the rp and, quite frankly, I cannot wait to sink my claws into that. I’d really love a family face-off, especially between Regina and Grace. After all, one of the reasons why Grace joined the Montagues in the first place - even if she’d never admit it out loud - is the fact that little, boring Regina got promoted to Captain by Cosimo after spending only a blink of an eye with the Capulets. She never earned her name the way Grace did, she did nothing to deserve it. And you can be dead sure that once word got out that Regina has been promoted to the position of a hitman - and sooner or later Grace would have found out, nothing stays secret in Verona forever -, she’d have been fuming. It’s just another promotion she doesn’t deserve. And here Grace is working her ass off - Grace Daly style, obviously - and has nothing to see for it. Actually, fuming would be a nice word. So yeah, I feel like a sisterly confrontation is overdue in Grace’s eyes. If you can’t ignore an annoying bug, you have to squash it to finally get rid of it. And Regina Daly is a bug Grace has been dying to step on for quite some while now. She tried to ignore her when she was younger, forget all about her existence in the first place, but apparently, that’s not an option anymore. So yes, I can totally see a sisterly face-off happen in the near future because sneaky scheming and planning to get rid of somebody isn’t really Grace’s style. She tends to rely on sheer brutality and cruelty and wouldn’t it be quite poetic to have one last fight to finally set an end to this argument (idk if you can even call it that cause I’m pretty sure Regina doesn’t give a damn about Grace)? Grace at least would love the poetry of it.

IDEA 01

This idea is related to the first plot in some way. It’s pretty established in her bio that Grace has never been willing to give her two younger sisters the time of day and would like to forget that she’s ever shared a home, not to mention blood ties with them. However, I want to explore just how deep this disinterest goes. I know for a fact that she wouldn’t shy away from killing Regina in cold blood. However, what about Catherine? Is there some small inkling in the dark hole that is her heart that does care for her? I’m not sure, but I want to find out. At the same time, I also want to explore if there’s actually a person (apart from herself) that she cares for or rather cares enough about enough to sacrifice? I don’t know if there’s a positive answer to that question, even though Grace is only human, after all, and it’s in the human nature to want to be connected to other people, but I just want to explore this question further.

IDEA 02

If I cannot bend Heaven, I’ll raise Hell. Even though you wouldn’t necessarily suspect it, Grace is ambitious as they come. Blame it on her parents for always treasuring her like grace from God, telling her she can everything she sets her dark eyes on, but she’s always known that she’ll be a queen an empress one day. And she won’t stop at anything to get her way. So far, she’s had very little success, though. After all, despite having been involved with the mob for years now, she’s still nothing more than a soldier, a little pawn in the game of others. While I’m not sure if she’d make a good ruler (in fact, I know the opposite is the case), she’s definitely a conqueror. Or has the potential to be once she figures out how to make the best use of the anger, passion, and fire that runs through her veins. She’s smart enough to figure it out. After all, as it’s already said in her bio “Every move she made was calculated, every strike meticulously aimed”. She definitely has the mental capacities for it. I think her biggest problem is that she needs to learn how to control her emotions and not have them influence her moves and the goal of her plans as they do now. However, learning is hard (read: almost impossible) when you’re as self-conceited as Grace is. I want to explore that struggle further, this dissonance of ambition & desire and her temper & boisterousness.

PLOT 02 a

This plot is related to the second idea.

If you can’t learn how to balance out your own strengths, you either need to accept that you might never reach your goal or team up with somebody who can provide what you’re lacking. The first one is clearly no option and the second one is not exactly the first thing that comes to your mind considering we’re talking about Grace either. After all, Grace isn’t really much of a team player either for she’s too selfish for that, not to mention too unpredictable, unreliable and many other things. However, I want her to seak out a partnership nonetheless. This is not to say that she’ll suddenly turn into a team-player or people person all of a sudden - hell no. No, it’d be a play really. It’d mostly be an idea born out of an alcoholic haze, nothing that serious at first. It’d be with somebody, who’s about just as desperate as she is to get to the top, and a partnership that is already doomed for a start because she plans to get rid of them as soon as the situation improves for her. She sure as hell doesn’t plan for one second to share the spotlight, they’ll just be a tool in some way. Not because she’d be manipulating them into thinking that she sees it as a real partnership, she’s no schemer, after all. No, they’d get into this with both eyes open and be ambitious enough to do it nonetheless, probably even thinking to cut her loose the first chance they get as well.

PLOT 02 b

As it’s kind of a second part of the second plot, I wanted to split those up.

I could totally see the previously mentioned partnership turn into something of a cat and mouse kinda game. It’d actually be quite intriguing to see somebody to challenge her directly and on a personal level for a change because while the whole thing would still be somewhat mob-related, it’d be more focused on the power they’ve gathered together and that both of them wants the biggest piece of. Or rather the only piece without having to share it with the other person. It’d need to be somebody who’d be her equal, who could handle themselves around her, but then again, if they couldn’t, this partnership would have never seen the light of day in the first place. I want Grace to face a challenge/challenger she can’t get rid of that easily. I want her having to face them again and again, simply because they’re both too stubborn to die and to give up what they’ve earned.

PLOT 03

This plot goes a little hand in hand with the previous plot, but I felt it still deserved a plot point on it’s own as it’s related to her connection with Ivan Rahal in particular.

Whereas Grace is chaos come to live and craves power above all, Ivan is a master chess player who craves chaos and destruction above all. It’s an unlike combination and yet one, that causes fear and terror among Verona’s citizens unlike any other for their united in their darkness and their thirst for blood. I feel like there’s so much Grace could learn from him and his talent for strategy. She wouldn’t ever ask for help nor would she want to change, after all, she’s perfect the way she is. Nonetheless, I want her to observe Ivan more closely, to study the way he thinks and does things, to get a feel for how he operates. I highly doubt she’d be able to employ these tactics for her own goals simply because she’s disciplined enough for that, but I feel like it’d be a valuable lesson for her nonetheless?

PLOT 04

I feel like it’s only a question until her treacherous past truly catches up to her. After all, so far, she’s gotten away with turning her back on the Capulets to join the enemy’s ranks pretty easily. I mean she’s still alive and relatively unharmed which is more than most people could say in the same situation. Of course, she’s under the Montagues’ protection, but even that doesn’t have the same weight in every part of Verona. Knowing Grace’s recklessness and her tendency to live dangerously, she doesn’t shy away from Capulet territory. Probably even provokes them when she feels like it simply because she can (and because it makes her feel powerful). So it’s only a question of time until she gets into a situation where she has to pay for what she’s done. Unlike Grace, I’m not narcissistic enough to assume that she’s the Capulets’ main agenda, however, especially in combination with the connection with Vivianne provided in her bio (so I could def see Vivianne playing a role in that one way or another, maybe even assigning somebody to take care of her? Maybe even Regina which would kind of fit together nicely with Plot 01), I do think that this is still a topic worth exploring. After all, the Capulets won’t just forgive and forget.

Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | Yes. With her recklessness and ability to piss off the people around her, I feel like it’s only a question of time until Grace is killed, not a question of if.

IN DEPTH.

mentions of graphic violence tw

Carelessly she flicks the cigarette against her chair, her lips curled up into an amused smirk and her long legs draped on the table in front of her. Grace Daly has never been one to give a damn about the rules of properness and she sure as isn’t going to start now just because everybody around her does it. Just because, apparently, there some things you simply “have” to do, especially when being in a lion’s den. Idioti. No, following the rules is something reserved for sheep, people who aren’t bold enough to make decisions for themselves. And Grace Daly is most certainly not a sheep nor is she scared of anything or anybody. Fear? She laughs in the face of fear. It’s not like she’s stupid. Even though it doesn’t look like it, she’s perfectly aware of how dangerous this situation can be for her. How she might not make it out of here alive. The sheer thrill of it causes the adrenalin to rush through her veins, the smirk on her lips to grow just a little more intense. Other people might sit on the edge of their seats, all fidgety and nervous. Not just because of the fact that she’s currently meeting who’s supposed to enemy nr. one, but also because this meeting alone is enough to paint her as a traitor in the eyes of some people. But not Grace. Oh hell no. No, it takes more to get under her skin. Besides, it’s not like she asked for this meeting. No, Damiano Montague reached out to her, invited her. And well, who was she to refuse, even if meeting with him for any other reason to put a bullet between his eyes might be enough reason to some to try put a bullet between her eyes? Turning down the invitation would have been plain stupid. However, not for the reason most people might believe. No, it wasn’t fear that made her accept the invitation, It was sheer ambition. Fuck rules of decency and properness, fuck the rules of the mob if they’re getting in the way of what she wants. After all, when has she ever not taken what she wanted the instant she wanted it, no matter what it takes? Her teeth and ambitions are bared now more than ever, after having her potential ignored in favor of her younger, colorless sister. If it takes a swim to the other side, to change that situation, it’d be stupid to turn down the opportunity.

Her head slightly tilted to the right, her dark eyes are focused on the man in front of her, eying him attentively. It’s quite ironic really how he looks nothing like Cosimo Capulet and exactly like him at the same time. There’s this air of confidence - arrogance really - surrounding him, the charisma of somebody who’s used to getting what he wants, who’s demanding it really. It takes only one look at him to know he doesn’t take well to being turned down. Not that she gives a damn. If he doesn’t offer her a deal she’s interested tonight, Grace won’t feel obligated in any way. Hell, if things don’t go the way she wants (and quite frankly, expects) them to, she might just try to ram or throw the knife she always has with her, hidden in her left boot, into his trachea. If she returns to the other side of the Adige with Damiano Montague’s blood on her hands - literally -, they just have to promote her to Captain at least. Better even, kiss her ass for quite some while. The smirk already gracing her lips grows just a little bit bigger at the thought of his face slowly losing all its color, the desperate death rattle of a dying man, maybe even some pleas for mercy. Somehow this turn of events would be almost just as nice as what she actually came here to do. So whatever is going to happen next, she knows she’ll come out of this little meeting with one sort of advantage in her hands. So much for Grace Daly being incapable of having a plan b.

Without taking her eyes of the mob boss in front of her - direct eye contact is important, after all, to assert dominance and to show that she isn’t the slightest bit afraid of him-, she stubs the cigarette on the wooden table, not giving a damn whether it’d leave a burn mark or not. After all, it’s not her table, is it? “Va bene, vecchio mio, how about you go ahead and make your offer?”, she says, her lips curled into a wolfish grin, “I don’t have all day, after all. Got some disloyal couriers I need to care of.” Oh, the irony talking about disloyalty and treachery while she’s currently committing treason herself. It’s not wasted on her, that’s for sure, quite the opposite, really, it’s highly appreciated. The thought that the Capulets have no idea what might be coming for them, made this little meeting all so sweeter. Would serve them right for ignoring her potential.

___

murder tw

Leaning against the door frame, her arms crossed before her chest, she just stands there for a moment, her eyes focused on Ivan, the corners of her mouth curled up into a lazy half-smirk. “Looks like you have the luck of having the best partner possible today”, she says as she pushes herself away from the frame and heads towards him. From everybody else, these words would have been meant as a joke and yet, even though there’s a slightly amused, teasing intonation to them, she’s dead honest. She might not have been a part of the Capulets for as long as other members, but Grace still knows she’s better than a lot of them. At his slightly amused “and I assume that special one is supposed to be you”, she gives him a little smirk and shrugs her shoulders just slightly. “What can I say? It’s not arrogant if it’s true.” Not that she’d care either way. Caring about what other people think of you is something reserved for pathetic people who aren’t sure of themselves. And she most certainly doesn’t belong in that category. “Sei pronto?” The little smirk still present on her lips, she puts the hand on the gun on her left hip. As a little extra backup, there’s a knife safely stored in the right back pocket of her jeans, hidden by her leather jacket. “Sí.” She’s ready in every possible meaning, eager to, hopefully, get her hands on some real action. Sure, this mission isn’t supposed to turn violent. It’s only planned as some sort of check-up meets interrogation to find out if the rumors are true and they’ve really gone behind their back and are dealing with the enemy. But then again, you could never know how they’d react to this checkup, right? And a girl could still hope, after all.

Slowly but self-assured they head straight towards the building that, their silhouettes one with the shadows of the containers. Every now and signal horns of approaching container ships disturb the silence, but apart from that, there’s complete silence. It’s quite peaceful, actually, she can’t help but notice and at the irony, the hint of a smile sneaks onto her lips. It’s so peaceful that nobody would expect the attack that is going to happen within a few minutes. Which, frankly, makes it even more fun. There’s nothing quite like taking something wholesome and peaceful and turning it upside down. Judging from the information they got, it’s gonna be a relatively easy job from the information they got. Three people top, most likely only lightly armed. They aren’t expecting an interrogation not to mention an attack any time soon, it’ll be like taking candy from a child.

After exchanging another glance with Ivan, she kicks the door open. “Ciao, stronzi.”Charming as ever, she flashes a wolfish grin at them. If they wanted somebody who’s all polite and diplomatic, they wouldn’t have paired Ivan up with her and so she sees no need to be anybody but her usual, charming self. However, for now, she lets Ivan take charge of the conversation. It’s more his style anyway. She prefers to stand there leaning against the door - these fuckers better don’t assume they could get past her - and casually playing with her knife as not that subtle thread while she attentively observes the interaction, ready to jump into action at any howsoever small, wrong movement.

It doesn’t take long, only a few questions to realize that their source was right, these bastardi are trying to cheat them out of their profit. They realize almost as quickly that their cover has blown as Ivan and she do and pull their guns. Too bad it’s only almost. Without thinking about twice, Grace throws her knife, aiming right at the left guy’s forehead. Ivan reacts just as quickly, taking out the other guy with one unerring shot. Everything happened so quickly, that it takes her a moment to fully process what just happened. Completely collected on the outside, she stares at the dead body in front of her with some morbid curiosity. Even though she’s already seen her fair share of dead bodies ever since having joined the Capulets, it’s the first time she’s responsible for one. It’s an intriguing feeling, really. A part of her is well aware of she should feel at least some sort of regret or guilt. And yet, there’s nothing of that crap on her mind. The only thing she feels is excitement and satisfaction. It felt good to bury that knife between his eyes before he could even fully realize what was about to happen, it still does, to be honest. Slowly she steps closer to the corpse and pulls the knife out of it without flinching. She’s never been afraid of blood and she most certainly isn’t going to start that now. If anything there’s something quite satisfying about seeing your work in all its unholy glory. Is this what it feels like to be God? This rush of power of having just ended one life simply because you chose to do so? For a moment longer, her eyes are focused on the body, eying it almost thoughtfully, before she turns back around to Ivan. “Well, this didn’t exactly turn out as planned”, she says, the hint of a smile in the corners of her mouth betraying her words. “Too bad we didn’t get to question them further before blowing their brains out, though. The info whether they decided to cheat on us all of a sudden on their own or were instigated by somebody else wouldn’t have been the worst to have.” It’s not like she particularly cares about the answer, what this answer could have gotten her recognition wise is the much more interesting question. Ah well, what’s done is done. She shrugs slightly as she wipes the blood of the knife on her jeans before putting it back into the back pocket. “Let’s go check out if we can find some more information on what these idiots were up to. Maybe they were stupid enough to store some important documents here that give us a better idea of how far this whole little boycott goes and if other business partners of us are involved.” Eliminating two traitors might be useful and a nice accomplishment, but it’s not enough for her. No, she seeks something more impressive to bring back to the headquarters. After all ‘nice’ accomplishments, didn’t exactly allow you to climb higher on the mob’s hierarchy, won’t get her the recognition she deserves and craves.

___

Everett Craven - Emissary. Easton Craven - Captain. And darling Regina promoted as well. Even hours later, her fingers grab the glass of Scotch in her hands more firmly, the knuckles from the pressure she exerts, the rest of her body just as tense. Honestly, if this was one big fucking joke it wasn’t remotely funny. And despite her rather unique, wicked sense of humor she could usually see a joke for what it is. Although it had to be one - it’d be the only explanation that made some sort of sense -, she knows it’s not. It’s the fucking reality that everybody, who so much as breaths, gets a fucking promotion. Hell, even on the Montague side, promotions are a dime a dozen and everybody gets one. A dry, sarcastic laugh dies in her throat before she can get it out. Everybody but her that is. It seems like no matter what she does, it’s just not good enough. Like she’s nothing but a slightly tamed but rabid dog you can’t fully control but the perfect tool for threatening and intimidating your enemies. The one you send out to do all the dirty, bloody, disgusting work nobody else is willing to get their hands dirty on. She takes a sip of her drink, the burning sensation of the liquor running down her throat is a welcome distraction and yet, it isn’t nearly enough to burn away the frustration. And she does what they want like the good dog she, apparently, is. Does jobs nobody else would want to do if they don’t have a choice, just to prove her worth. Follows orders, even though somebody like Henry Zhang - the thought of her Captain is enough to roll her eyes - really couldn’t handle her under any other circumstances. Plays nice with men like Faron Vasilev just to get in his good graces and have him speak out for her. Even now she can still smell his cologne, the air of arrogance and entitlement surrounding men like him. It tastes sour in the back of her mouth, her. Maybe she should have tried sleeping with him while she still had the chance, seemed to have worked out perfectly for that puta Calina, after all. She even plasters a (more or less) friendly smile she plasters on her face every time Damiano walks past her and keeps her mouth shut, even when they talk bullshit. Her stomach twists and turns. They could drop dead this instant for all she cares and yet, she still plays nice.

And for what? A small part of her mind that is still capable of thinking straight knows that she might just haven’t been a part of the Montagues long enough to earn the position of Captain. Castora has been a Montague for longer than her, it’s true. But Damiano wanted her. With one loud, shrieking noise, a glass breaks into a million shards as Grace throws it against the wall, not giving a damn if its ember content ruins the wall. He invited her personally into the fold and she deigned to accept that invitation. And yet, she’s still left with nothing. Maybe she really should have slit his throat right there during that meeting that promised to be a turning point. Frowning just slightly, her lips curled up into a sneer, the drops of liquor on the wall turning into crimson red bloodstains in her mind. She could have painted the walls red with mighty Damiano’s blood. She should have. That at least ought to have earned her a promotion with the Capulets. And yet, she’d resisted, had believed the stronzo’s golden lies of how they could achieve something great together, of how he could offer her more than Cosimo ever could. She’d known that he couldn’t make her Captain right away, that wasn’t how things worked. Anybody, who’d promoted somebody who’d only just been accepted into the fold (not to mention from the opposing side) was plain stupid, Grace understood that. But hasn’t she waited long enough now? Isn’t it time for her patience and hard work to finally be rewarded? And instead, she simply gets overlooked again.

It’s not the first time she’s been overlooked, she should be used to it by now. She used to be the center of their parents’ universe, until her younger sisters - it’s an insult really, not a term of endearment -, took it away from her. After all, ever since darling Cat came into the world with her blonde locks and angelic nature, their father would choose the younger over her, dote on her instead of always on her like he used to. Memories of a little Cat, innocence come to life, run through her mind and she scowls. Her sweetness tastes like acid on her tongue, always has. And Regina took away the recognition and respect of the Capulets. The thought of her passionless, disinterested attitude alone is enough for her body to tense up and yearn for something else to punch bloody. How can somebody be so bland and yet so successful? Grace has always been fire and action and still, no matter how intense and destructive her fire, Regina’s hollowness seems to swallow it whole. If she ever felt a small flicker of sisterly love it’s long gone, she should have killed both long ago. Should have drowned them both like you did with unwanted puppies and kittens. Being overlooked is certainly nothing new so she really should be used to it by now. And yet, it hurts all the same, the sting of rejection, of not being good enough or enough, really. Whatever she does, she always gets overlooked for somebody else. For somebody who doesn’t want it nearly as much as she does. Who wouldn’t be as a great fit for the position as she would. She knows she can do better than all of them, why won’t anybody see it? Why won’t anybody see her for the potential that she has to offer?

For a time, it seemed like Damiano Montague saw it, saw her. That he would value her like the Capulets never did. And now she knows how wrong she’s been. Red painted lips twist into a sneer as she forgoes the thought of getting another glass and grabs the bottle instead. One sip, then another. She could empty the whole bottle, drink herself into oblivion and the liquor still couldn’t wash away the all-consuming feeling of humiliation cutting through her intestines like a hot burning iron. How utterly stupid she’d been. If she’s completely honest, it hurts almost just as much as the disappointment and rejection that she’s partially to blame for her misery. She should have been smart enough to see through Damiano’s empty promises. Eyes focused on the wall in front of her, she glares a hole. One rapid breath, another, her body tensing with every single one - then she punches it, only barely noticing the dull pain quickly spreading from the via the arm to her shoulder or the sting of the bloody, torn open knuckles. She should have at least thought in greater detail about how her chances at a promotion, at validation, are, if she stayed with the Capulets. After all, if colorless, hollow Regina managed to get two promotions, it should be out of the question that she would have made it to Captain during that time. She needs to believe she would have. Her stomach slumps at the mere prospect of not having made the cut either way. No, everything else is unacceptable. And yet, despite priding herself on her cleverness, she allowed herself to be blinded her own and ambition. It’d felt so good to be seen, to have your potential and talent acknowledged, to be recognized for what difference you could make if you changed the teams, that she’d gladly taken the opportunity offered to her on a silver platter. The Capulets never valued her, so why should she burden herself with them if somebody else could offer her the opportunity to finally rise to the station she knows she deserves? Her eyes fixed on the mess she just created - the shards, her bleeding knuckles, the ruined wall - she can’t hold back cynical laughter any longer. It’s too much of a representation of the rest of her life. After all, as it now turns out, neither do the Montagues really see and value her. She desperately wants to say that it’s their loss, that it’ll be their own ruin. And it probably will be. But if she’s completely honest, right now, it is her loss. She’s the one who has to deal with the humiliation of having switched sides for nothing. To have made a traitor of herself for nothing. To have started again from scratch basically for absolutely nothing.

Extras:

A Mockblog can be found here. Pls ignore the ugliness, I couldn’t be bothered to make it fancy as I’d only use it to reblog stuff from if I should get accepted anyway.

You can find a pinterest board here.

MB Type: ESTP-A - The Entrepreneur

Eneagram Type: Type 8 - The Challenger (81%) Type 3 - The Achiever (61%)

Moral Alignment: Chaotic Evil

The Four Temperaments: Choleric

Archetypes: Rebel (56%) - The Wild Woman, The Criminal & The Rebel Explorer (22%) - The Adventurer & The Explorer Royal (22%) - The Excecutive, The Bully & The Greenvy

#accepted: goneril #accepted

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one-true-houselight · 5 years

Video

youtube

It’s me, doing stand up!

I cut out the spelling of my name for privacy reasons. Also, the bit that’s cut off the the end is just me saying that I never went skiing again, and that now I just do safe things, like trying to enter the adult job market.

Transcript under the cut, and if you are so inclined, my Ko-Fi is in my bio. Thanks!

Hello everyone, I am Erika, and tonight I will be performing All Star by Smash Mouth.

I’m kidding, no one would want to hear that. I cannot sing.

(from the crowd: I would!)

(laughter) You don’t want to hear me sing, I promise you.

Alright! Hi! In actuality, I am Erika (last name, pronounced ko-kek), and you’re like ‘ooh, we get a last name now, a mystery, and you’re like it’s an interesting last name too!’ That’s probably because you’ve never seen it spelled out. Let me walk you through my last name (ko-kek), alright, are you ready for this, are you ready: [redacted spelling]. Yeah! Four Ks! That’s a lot of Ks, and they’re in a real strange order. If you- if you noticed, uh, it’s the same set of four letters twice, it’s [redacted spelling] but you may have also noticed that’s not how it’s pronounced! Cuz you know, that would make sense. This is apparently from, like, changes in immigration, that you know happen, which, this is according to my uncle. But my grandfather, who lived in the Netherlands in the 40s (yeah, those 40s), pronounces it like Ko-Kek, so I’m inclined to believe him.

Now, having a weird last name in school is always kind of a crazy existence, though I will say, most of the time when people are like ‘oh, that’s a weird last name’, it’s because people are racist, or at the very least are being like ‘oh, I’m gonna put Western Expectations on things that shouldn’t have them’, but as you see, my last name, is Dutch, as I mentioned, and Dutch white people, which I am one of, have done some incredibly awful things, so I don’t feel bad mocking it. So we continue on. So, this, so with my last name in roll call, we could change my last name to [silence] and it would sound the same. Let me, let me walk you through…Let me walk you through a roll call, so like the teacher’s up here, and they’re like ‘Alright, let’s see…we have Ferris Beuller? Oh you showed up, very good, alright. Harry Potter? Oh, you didn’t die, that’s fantastic. And then, Erika…[long silence]. And I’m just over here like ‘oh yeah that’s me, hi.’ Now sometimes, I like to speed it up, and rather than say here or present or anything, I’ll just say my last name (Ko-kek) to like, speed up the conversation so it’s not like, uh, Erika, long pause, here, oh, how do you pronounce that?, Ko-kek, it just speeds up the process. So, I’ll go, they’ll go Erika… and I’ll say (Ko-kek). The problem is they’ll get confused sometimes. They’ll look at me and they’ll go ‘Oh, is that here in Dutch?’ No. But you did your best.

And not only does my last name have enough Ks to stop a substitute teacher dead in their tracks, my first name? Erika? Also with a K. My sibling is Kat with a K, my mother is Karolyn with a K, though that’s not her fault, she kind of like, came into it and was like ‘oh, I guess this works out’. And my father…is Doug. But, but, he has a middle name that’s very strange and has a K in it so it all works out, it’s fine. So, if you’re ever like reading something, and you’re looking at it and you’re like ‘huh, there should be a K in this word’, it probably wasn’t a typo, my family just needed to name another child and just like, stole it.

So, I do have to say I’m Erika with a K a lot, because most people will assume it’s with a C. Or, more recently, two Ks. Which is kind of fun, but it’s also at the same time like ‘I’m drowning in Ks, please don’t give me more!’ But no, so I say Erika with a K a lot, which means I realized something really really cool. That rhymes with Erika with a They! These are the puns the queer community was built upon.

I do use they/them pronouns, and I even wear a little tag for it, it’s right here, it’s very nice. Um, and, it’s just kind of weird sometimes, because people will sometimes not use my pronouns, which kinda makes me sad. But I’ve realized something. I was just assuming they were reading the tag and just being rude about it. But recently, I’ve realized that they’re just not reading the tag. The way I’ve realized this is I’ll be like, walking through Target, and someone will be, like, looking around, and they’ll see me and they’ll see the tag and go ‘A ha! A worker!’ And they’ll be like ‘Do you know where the towels are?’ And this is very strange for me, mostly because I know where the towels are. So I’ll go ‘Ok, they’re over there in that corner, but I don’t work here, please.’ And, and they’re like ‘Oh, I just assumed you did because of your name tag.’ Now there’s a couple of problems with that. My ‘name tag’, as they put it, doesn’t have a name on it, which means they clearly didn’t read it. The other big problem with it is that most stores or places of business have a sense of decorum, or at least consistency in their design. My tag, on the other hand, while I love it very much, how do I put this, it doesn’t look good. It looks like if an eight year old magpie with attention issues made it at summer camp. This is basically how the making of my tag went: I’m was just sitting there and I’m like ‘Alright, I’m gonna put five shiny things on it. Wonderful, wonderful, this random piece of gaff tape? That has to go on, that’s, like, that’s key to the whole pronoun tag process. Now, for the words. And I start writing, I’m like ‘they/them and-’ oh my god. What if I could fit more shiny things on it? I’m still writing, I don’t know what I’m writing at this point, it doesn’t look good. Oh, I could put more shiny things on it, maybe I could like, steal a rock and somehow affix that to it…And then I look down and I’m like ‘oh, I finished the words, guess I’m gonna just put it on my shirt!’ And it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine. So, a lot of people don’t read the tag, but a lot of people do, and I have a lot of wonderful friends and family who support me very much.

Though, being openly trans can be, can get a little confusing sometimes. Sometimes I’ll tell stories about being in the Girl Scouts, and be like ‘Ha, that’s funny for obvious reasons!’ and people will be like, ‘oh, it’s the girl thing!’, and I’ll be like ‘no!’. Because the Girl Scouts are actually super cool about trans girls and non binary kids, which we appreciate very much, especially because it gives us a very good reason to buy Girl Scout cookies, beyond just buying something to fill the hole in your heart.

Crowd: support the gays!

Exactly! But no, the weird part about it for me is the scout part. Let me tell you a story. So one time when I was sixteen years old, I was a camp counselor for a bunch of small children, and we went to a playground one time. So I’m wandering around, like you do, like making sure the children don’t like, die, and I see two girls sitting under a tree, and they’re doing the whole, like, ‘rub two sticks together to start a fire’ thing. So I go ‘I’m gonna wander over and see how they’re doing’, and I’m like ‘How’re you doing, kids?’ And they look at me and they’re like ‘Erika? Why do you rub two sticks together to start a fire?’ and I’m like ‘Well, that’s a very interesting question, so you see, there’s a fire triangle, and the fire triangle has heat, fuel, and oxygen, and you have to have all three because fire is just adding oxygen-‘ And I just go on this like, five minute tangent about, like, talking about the science of fire, and you’re probably sitting there thinking like. Erika, explaining how fire works is like, the most scout thing you can do, and normally I would agree with you. Except. I talked for five minutes about the ins and outs of fire science, and neglected to mention fire safety. So I realize this, and I’m like ‘oh no, I’m going to start a wildfire by proxy’, so I just start yelling fire safety tips with absolutely no context. So I’m like, ‘You need a bucket of sand!’, I didn’t tell them why they needed the sand, I just said you needed one, and I’m like ‘build a circle of rocks on the ground!’, and they’re just gonna do that and go ‘I can build fires for the rest of my life, perfect!’ And then I’m sitting there, so like, another counselor is walking behind me like ‘two minutes left’, I’m like ‘Oh no, I have two minutes to like, save my entire town’, and I’m like ‘You should probably have an adult present’, and then I realize I probably should have mentioned that first, and I was like, ‘alright, just imagine I said adult present first, and just, and then put everything else, remember everything else, but remember adult first, it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine.’ So, luckily, my town has not had any reports of wildfires. But suffice it to say, I am not exactly scout material.

I am going to finish out the night by telling you a story from my scouting days. I was about eight years old, and we went on a ski trip. Now, let me tell you a little thing about eight year old Erika. You may have noticed that up here as a 20 year old, I’m a little bit lanky, my limbs do weird things as I run about the stage like an excited golden retriever. But see, I’m like, at a controllable lanky now. When I was eight, I was just gangly. My limbs just changed like, lengths every day, sometimes by multiple feet. So I’d be like, walking along, and I’d like just, kick a doorway, or like I’d be sitting and raising my hand, you know how like, you sometimes hit your hand on your desk, and you did it like, once a month? I did it twice a day. And people would be like, ‘Erika why do you keep hitting your hand on the desk?’ and I’m like ‘Cause my hand wasn’t there before! It was over here, I don’t know what’s happening!’ It was like I was living in a world of cartoon physics that I didn’t have control over. So I’m just like, ‘I guess I’m walking and my arms over here now, great!’ So my scouting troop looked at this, and was like ‘you know I think would be a great idea to do to this tiny, eight year old, whatever this is? We’re gonna stick a piece of wood, long, skinny, really slippery piece of wood on each of their feet, and then we’re gonna push them down a mountain.’ So, uh, you can probably tell where this story is going.

So, we get to the mountain, and I have my skis, we had to like, wait in a really long line, and I’m like, ‘oh, I’m so excited to go skiing’. So I’m walking around and I’m like, ‘alright, this is very exciting’, I see there’s a ski lesson about to start, and I’m like ‘I should probably do that because I want to make sure I know what’s going on’, so if you’ve never been skiing before, here’s what a skiing lesson is. You have a large group of people that want to learn how to ski, and you have a very excited person ready to tell you about skiing. So, you all go with them, you walk sideways up the mountain because you know, whatever. And the person, the very enthusiastic person, tells you a lot of really good skiing tips, and I, an eight year old with undiagnosed ADHD, sat there, and uh, kind of cycled between looking at the person, watching their mouth move, and having my audio processing like, on the ski lift, OR, I would be watching them, and a skier would go by, and I would watch the skier and be like, ‘oh, maybe I can pick up some tips from the skier’, absolutely ignoring the person that’s just giving me the tips for free. So I did not pick up a lot of good ski tips, but I did pick up one, and this is, this is, I will always remember this. He was like ‘alright, if you’re going down the mountain, and you want to slow down or stop, you make a triangle with your skis.’ And so I was like ‘alright, I’ve got it. I make a triangle with my skis to go slow, great, fantastic.’ So then, I’m like, ‘alright. I know everything there is to know about skiing. It is time to get started.’

So the first time I fell a lot, which, you know, of course you fall a lot, it’s you first time, and like, who knows what skiing is. The second time I also fell a lot and you know, I’m still getting the hang of it. Third time, also fell a lot, but you know, it’s fine. I’m just going to like, skip to the end, because I fell most of the times. It was less of me skiing down the mountain, and more of me just falling over and over again until I reached the bottom. But then, the last run of the day, I’m like ‘alright, I’m gonna do this’, I get about three quarters of the way down the mountain and I haven’t fallen once. And I’m just sitting there like ‘oh my god, I’m the skiing master. Oh my god, I’m gonna go to the Olympics. It’s gonna be great.’ So I am, I’m going down the mountain and, if don’t know if you know this about physics, because I wasn’t stopping and starting by just falling down constantly, I actually picked up a little bit of speed, which was really nice. But at this point, I was going a little bit faster than I intended to go, and I was like, ‘Huh. I kind of want to slow down now’, so I go into the little card catalogue that is my mind and I’m like ‘a ha! Triangle equals slow! Perfect!’ So I, I look down at my skis because I want to make sure I’m doing it right, and I’m like ‘alright, ready, here we go. Triangle.’ And nothing happened. Now the problem with this is, is that I was eight, and didn’t have critical thinking skills. So I looked at this situation, and I said, ‘huh. This triangle is not working. But it’s the only thing I know about skiing, and since I am a skiing master and know everything, this can be the only solution.’ So I double down on the triangle.

Now here’s the thing. I tell this story a lot, and one time I was telling it and I got to this part, and my friend looked at me and said the following: ‘You were doing the wrong kind of triangle!’ Which is a baffling thing to have yelled at you. So I was sitting there like ‘what are you ta- Was I doing an isosceles? Should I have been doing a scalene? Like, did you want me to yell the pythagorean theorem at it? I don’t know what you’re telling me!’ So she could not explain it, so we moved on. So then I told this story again, and another set of friends was like ‘Erika. She meant you had to do a triangle like this.’ And I was like, ‘oh, because that would actually stop the, oooooh.’ So now, twelve years after this story happened, I now know how to ski. So that’s cool, but back to me being eight years old.

At this point, I am going even faster than before, somehow, going much faster than any eight year old pile of limbs should ever be going, and I go ‘this is bad, I can no longer, uh, control which direction I’m going’, which is bad because I’m heading right for a circle of snowboarders. And so I’m I’m, I’m like, trying to turn and I can’t and I’m like ‘oh no’, so I just kind of look up at them, because I am approaching them at quite a speed, and I just start screaming, ‘HEY! YOU GOTTA MOVE! I CAN’T STEER!’ So they look up at just this banshee shriek from up the mountain, and they go, ‘huh. we should move,’ and they do, as well as they can, because they only have one piece of wood instead of the two that I was privileged to have. But they manage to make it out of the way, and I don’t hit anyone, and I continue down the mountain.

At this point, I literally, like, sit down on my skis and dig my hands into the snow in an attempt to stop myself, which works slightly better than the triangle, which isn’t saying much. So at this point, I have basically reached the bottom of the mountain, and I have reached, and at the bottom of the mountain there was a straight-away, and at the end of the straight-away there was a barrier of snow. Now the barrier of snow was about one, one and a half feet. The straight-away…I’m not really good with distances, but it was at least two feet, we’ll go with that. So I reach the straight-away, and I look up for this at least two foot distance. And I see this barrier of snow and I’m like ‘Ah. Here’s where my journey will come to an end.’

So I’m heading down this straight-away, I’m slowly slowing down, but I’m still going at quite a speed, and I’m like, ‘oh, it’ll be a little bit of an impact, but it’ll be fine.’ So here’s what happens. Here’s the barrier of snow, here’s me, here I go. Wheeeeee. And I hit the barrier of snow. And I go up and I go over it into the super secret special hill that they don’t show anyone, because it’s covered in bushes, and rocks, and leads to the parking lot.

So, at this point, I am now somersaulting down the hill, you know, fun times, and I’m grabbing bushes, I am desperately trying to like, not die, and at this point, I decide, I’m like ‘you know what would be a good, you know what would be good at this time? A flashback of my life.’ So my life flashes before my eyes, and it finishes I’m like ‘huh. That didn’t last as long as I thought it would.’ So I’m tumbling, and I’m just like ‘I’m gonna die! It’s fine!’ So I reach the bottom, and I kind of sit there and I take stock of everything, and I look around and I’m like, ‘Hey. I’m alive. I just wasted a life flashback, do you know how expensive that it?’ So I’m sitting there, and then I realize something. I realize that in my current state I cannot move because all of my limbs that change size all the time are tangled together. And I can’t get out of my limbs because my arm is so that like, I would have to hook it around my foot, but my foot is currently eight feet long because there’s a ski attached to it. So I’m-You know those like, Cracker Barrel things, the like, little metal puzzles that you play with for five minutes then give up because you want to play the peg game? I looked like one of those.

So I go into my mental autopsy, which you know, all eight year olds with anxiety have, and I go ‘we’re gonna just change the cause of death to…starvation.’ Which was very very silly, of course, because I would of died of thirst before I died of starvation. So I’m laying there, waiting for my eventual fate, and I look up into the parking lot I landed next to, and I see two guys walking towards me. And I go ‘huh. Interesting,’ and I go back to my mental autopsy, and I recross out starvation, and write ‘murdered in the snow, while tangled in my own limbs.’ So I’m just like, ‘there’s nothing I can do’, so I just kind of look at them, and they’re looking at me.

Luckily for me though, they were just coming over to help, because from their perspective, they had just seen a screaming ball of just, extremities, shoot over the barrier, tumble down a mountain, and then just lie there motionless for a while. So they walk over, and they’re very nice, they help me out of my skis, and they’re like ‘Do you, do you need to go into the lodge?’ and I’m like ‘Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.’ So I, so they walk me into the lodge and we find my mother who’s there, hello, hi mom, and, and she’s like ‘what happened?’ And I’m like ‘I don’t know.’

#mine #comedy #standup #standup comedy #skiing #pronouns #non binary #names #stories #LMAO IT ME #also you can literally play this video at .75 and it sounds normal #ooops

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hollowedrpg · 5 years

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CONGRATULATIONS, ROMAN! — You’ve been accepted for the role of Xenophilius Lovegood, with a face claim change to Cody Fern. I was a little worried people would struggle with the vagueness of Xeno’s affliction and how he’s been affected since he was attacked during school, but you wrote it beautifully. I also really enjoyed reading your head canons about his relationship with Pandora, and everything else about Xeno. You really brought his character to life outside of the bio, which is exactly what I’m looking for in an application.

Thank you so much for applying. Please create your account and send in the link, track the right tags, and follow everyone on the follow list. Welcome to Hollowed Souls!

ooc.

name: Roman

age: 26

preferred pronouns: they/them

timezone: EST

activity: medium to high; I’m around to answer messages and plot every day, and am usually able to do at least some replies every other day or so depending on how work is going!

are you applying for more than one character?: not at this time!

how do you feel about your character dying?: I would be comfortable with it as long as it’s discussed and I’d have a chance to pick up another character! The possibility of the death is cool to think about; having a grand ending would be satisfying, especially if it was something that was a long time coming, and contributed to the plot in a big way, which I feel it actually could with Xeno. I’m a sucker for a good slow burn with some angst!

anything else?: (questions, concerns, etc.) I did some assuming on some bits about Pandora and Xeno’s relationship that I’m definitely open to changing or revising if accepted! Also, this has nothing to do with the app, but if missing characters make an appearance later on, I would love to express my enthusiastic interest in seeing Ted Tonks!! I wrote Ted in Port Montrose and I’d LOVE to see what he’s like in this other beautiful AU!!!

ic details.

(cw throughout for ableism, vague mental illness discussion)

full name: Xenophilius Prometheus Lovegood

Xenophilius: from the Greek xenos and philia, respectively meaning strange and love; together, the love of the strange. Klaus and Else Lovegood were never going to choose an average sort of name for their child. Believing in many old practices of the wixen world, upon learning they were pregnant, they sought out a Naming Seer to learn the future of their child, and, therefore, what sort of moniker they would fit. They used what little of their savings they had left from the move for the appointment, as it was an important tradition in Else’s family. The Naming Seer projected a strange life for the child, full of wonder and mysticism, a longing for knowledge and a mind open to the belief of the other that most would reject easily. The Naming Seer suggested Edmund, for the prosperity they saw the child could achieve if encouraged, through academic success. The two laughed, thanked them, and left to do their own research. They came across the word xenophile in one of their very old muggle books about cultures of the world and knew immediately that was the name for their child. If they were going to have an open mind, their name was going to let all who heard it know so.

Prometheus: Greek mythological figure, a titan known for creating man from clay, as well as stealing fire from the gods and gifting it to humanity, starting civilization. Xeno’s parents made this choice very soon after landing on his first name. Klaus had a certain fascination with mythology, and what better than to give her child a name to encourage intelligence and creation at any cost?

Lovegood: As it sounds, a combination of the two English words love and good. This was a surname of the Lovegoods’ own creation upon their immigration to the United Kingdom during the muggle’s World War II. They had no shame in their former surnames, but wanted a blank slate to start over with good fortune. They settled on something to show the simple and true quality of their affections, that their intentions, while some might find them strange, were always good.

date of birth: January 20, 1952

Capricorn-Aquarius cusp

The definition of this contrasting cusp, Xeno is a combination of both signs, hardworking and idealistic, with the ability to view the world in strange ways that few others can, and the intention of opening the minds of those around them. The mind is constantly working, creating brilliant, exciting thoughts and ideas, but the constant flow at times makes him come off as distant or uninterested in the ordinary people and things around him. Speaking with someone born on this cusp can be jarring and intimidating, although intriguing, always prepared to discuss the most outlandish of concepts, but rarely able to stop and process the more mundane, often times forgetting about thinking of what others are feeling.

former hogwarts house: Ravenclaw

There was a brief debate, as Xenophilius approached his eleventh birthday, of whether it would be best to send him to Durmstrang, as that was where both Else and Klaus went, and consequently met each other, but that thought was quickly silenced with a visit from Dumbledore himself, offering a place at Hogwarts for the young prodigy. Xeno researched the schools obsessively during the months this debate was going on, and insisted that he had to be at Hogwarts, because he was clearly a Ravenclaw student. Upon his entrance, the hat barely touched his little blonde head before shouting just that, a self-satisfied grin on the child’s face as he joined his new classmates.

sexuality: demisexual panromantic

For all of his youth, he was much too preoccupied with researching anything that was able to hold his attention for longer than a few minutes to worry about things such as dating and sex. People are not what he truly cares about, as harsh as that sounds, and it takes a great deal for him to feel that sort of attraction to someone. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he is fairly certain part of it has to do with what he saw his parents go through as a child. He can’t remember them ever truly seeming to love each other, despite the stories of their own youths they told him. All he remembers is the shouting and the pain they caused each other, all because of the most mundane problems, as if they had forgotten who they truly were once they had a family. That made him wary of that sort of very human connection, not wanting to lose himself more than he already had. Until things changed, of course…

gender/pronouns: agender + any pronouns (primarily he/him & they/them)

He has no great attachment to any gender at large, and therefore feels the label of something closer to nothing, defying any sort of binary or spectrum, fits him better than anything else could. His being feels unexplainable and it’s something he accepted from an early age. As such, though, he doesn’t truly care what anyone calls him. In fact, a lot of the time he’d rather people just wouldn’t refer to him at all, but that has very little to do with gender.

face claim change: Cody Fern, Jason Ralph, Boyd Holbrook (If for some reason, Cody Fern isn’t approved anymore and I get accepted, I’d love to brainstorm other alternatives with you before settling on one, as Cody is very much how I envision Xeno!)

more.

1. how do you interpret this character’s personality? how will you play them? include two weaknesses & two strengths.

+ determined, idealistic, brilliant

- aloof, selfish, erratic

Perhaps if life had treated him differently, Xenophilius would be considered one of the greatest minds of his time already. If life had not beaten him into the furthest recess of his mind from the moment he was old enough to understand and question what was going on around him, perhaps that person could have existed, already fully formed, by the ripe age of thirty. But life was not so kind, and even now he can say with certainty that it comes as no real surprise, having studied so much of the world obsessively, researching what he can get his hands on of every possibility that the human mind can dream up to understand the world at large.

At an early age, he retreated into his mind as a form of coping with the outside world, even as the thunderous voices, first of his parents, then of the bullies and naysayers at school, then of everyone, tried to infiltrate his thoughts. Single-minded to the core, focused and determined to solve any question proposed, any long lost mystery left unsolved, it is still so easy for him to fall into weeks at a time of researching furiously, even disappearing for days at a time on his quests for knowledge, once an idea comes to him. Because of this, he was never quite as adept as interpersonal relationships as he might’ve been otherwise, and this only worsened after his accident, when the sounds of the voices became nearly deafening in his mind.

He would much rather spend his time researching whatever concept has caught his interest than interact with his peers, causing him to come off as distant and aloof to many. When he does deign to talk to others for an extended period of time, though, his brilliance does become clear, although so does his erraticism. Enchanted with long lost mysteries, and ideas thought only to be legend and rumor, his speech rambles and raves through dozens of topics by the you’ve caught up with the first. If landing on something he truly does care about, he could speak for hours with supreme eloquence on the matter, although what he cares about and believes in rarely lines up with those around him, and thus is often dismissed as nonsense. He believes wholeheartedly, after all, that consciousness creates and therefore nothing the human mind is able to dream up should be ruled as wholly impossible.

People have always been cruel to him, and he has long ago accepted this as a fact of his life, even if he does do his best to spread good in the form of knowledge. When faced with the negativity, the cruelty, he used to do anything he could to defend himself, including the less refined solutions. He still possesses very little respect for traditional authority, but some of his light, some of the mischief has left him in the years since the fight that left him as he is. Now, it is often times easier to accept that others’ minds aren’t nearly as expanded as his, and they do not wish to be, than to try to argue his correctness. An unwilling audience will not learn, no matter how brilliant of a teacher he might be.

Do not mistake that for him thinking the worst of the world, though. Despite it all, he truly does believe in good, and hopes that one day he can bring the hope that he does feel to others as well by expanding their minds beyond the limitations of the mundane. But he’s convinced himself that he won’t be able to do so as he is now, broken and bent, a shadow of what he could be if not plagued with such a curse.

2. how has the war affected this character, emotionally and otherwise?

Upon waking up in the hospital wing all of those years ago, his mind had become a much darker place. The war was never his, never will be, at least fully, thanks in part to his own blood status, but mostly because of how he feels. It took a long, long time until he realized, truly, what was going on, and then it was only thanks to Pandora that he began to grasp the reality, the gravity of the situation surrounding them.

In the beginning, with only whispers and quiet fights taking place as two sides divided over beliefs, he was unaware, too completely wrapped up in his own quests to set them aside and worry about another battle to fight. After all, in the beginning, he was utterly devoted to finding his own cure, whatever it might take. In a way, Xeno’s selfishness kept him blinded to what was happening, or how he might’ve helped for far longer than it should have.

But then he truly met Pandora, and he fell in love as quickly as he had fallen in love with the pursuit of knowledge to calm his mind. Even without a cure, being with her cleared some of the noise, and he could begin to understand the gravity of what was going on around him. He saw how much the carnage of the war hurt her, saw how deeply and thoroughly she cared for all of these people she didn’t even know, and that is what made him begin thinking more deeply on things.

That is when it began to hurt.

The voices seemed only to grow in volume, overlapping each other, begging for his attention at every turn as he watched his wife become more and more entrenched in a fight that should not have been happening in the first place, in his mind. As the war ragged on, and things grew worse, so did his affliction, as if whatever it was that had caused this was somehow tied to the war itself. That explanation made it feel easier, for him, anyway, even if it made everyone believe he was that much further gone, tying himself to something of such importance.

He retreated further and further into himself, his research falling by the wayside, only Pandora allowed into the true depths of his madness, witnesses the oftentimes nonsensical spurts of morbid inspiration burst from the voices of war in his mind. Among it all, there was, and still is, the underlying desire to do what his wife does, to be able to care so deeply about so many others, but his mind makes it so difficult. He cares about Pandora’s safety above all others’, and those she loves, too, now, but widely is still more concerned about the personal matters first. Still, he tries to help her when he can, would do anything in the world for her if it meant she was happy and at peace, just as she tries to do for him. And perhaps, once he finds his cure, he can do the same for others.

But how could he help now, after all, when he’s so far from whole himself?

3. Where does this character currently stand? with those who wish to hide in godric’s hollow until the war ends, with those who wish to rebuild the order and continue fighting the war, or on neither side? why?

This, all of this, it was not a choice of his own.

He could feel Pandora’s desire to fight, even before the question of what came next was out in the world. And just as it came, so did offer of retreat, of refuge. It was never an offer they could have passed up, no matter how it was spun. Pandora wished to help, to do what she could for those suffering, and prevent any more death from blooming in their midst, and he has always wanted what she wants. His own involvement with the Order had been selfish from the start, anyway, and it was clear that retreating with the Order held the most potential for the expansion of knowledge, the potential of finding a cure, even after all of these years, or even just finding a moment of peace. Just as it was clear that the longer they spent out in the world, amongst the hatred and violence, the worse his condition became, descending further and further from reason.

And so it was not a choice in the first place, and now, here they are, without much choice again.

Stuck in a village full of the memory of death, without a say.

With no personal attachment to the war, and as only an affiliate of the Order, it is hard for him to form a true feeling on what is right for all of them. He has very little desire to stay here for an extended period of time, feels trapped and static without access to the world at large for his research, but the thought of rebuilding to fight is one he’s not certain of either, when the war was never his to start and he feels in no way ready to truly help yet.

When it comes down to it, he would do whatever it is that Pandora believes is for the best for both of them, trusting her more than anyone else in the world, especially as the voices become clearer and he feels himself slipping from sense, even if that meant staying until the war ends.

But he doesn’t feel good here.

It stinks of death, of vile hatred, of curses perhaps even worse than his own. And for the first time, he’s afraid.

It’s strange, in a way, that he hasn’t felt fear like this before, after the countless fights, after waking up and learning he was missing weeks of his life, after being changed beyond his own will because of some sinister magic. Not once before has he felt this fear, but it’s settled square between his shoulders now, twisting a terrible knot of tension, keeping him from finding any true peace here. He’s convinced there’s something here that he’s been searching for. But now that he’s closer, he’s terrified of what he might find, that the answer might be there will never be a cure. That maybe he is mad after all.

4. The voices in Xenophilius’ head have only gotten louder since the war began. How are they now that he’s in Godric’s Hollow? Has anything he heard made sense, or is it just a bunch of gibberish?

There were always voices in his mind, although he had never truly considered them anything to worry about until after the that fateful night when they changed. There were always whispers of unknown sources helping him along with his research, encouraging him to expand his thinking, search out new creatures and potions. Those voices helped create new spells, craft potions no one had dreamt up before, study beasts only thought of in fairy tales.

They’re different now, though, darker, jumbled. It’s rarer that there’s anything clear, so many different voices speaking at once, constantly, but when there is, it’s not as it was, inspiring thoughts and breakthroughs. And they’re all familiar; sometimes he’ll hear his parents, sometimes he’ll hear old schoolmates, Order members.

When he became truly aware of the war, something changed. The voices seemed louder, more persistent, as if determined to hold his attention because of what was going on in the world.

Coming to here, Xeno believed that perhaps being in a place of peace would change that, that it may quiet some of the voices, take the constant dull roar down to a whisper once again, allow him to feel more like himself, allow him to focus on searching for a cure. He was wrong, though.

The voices changed upon his entrance into Godric’s Hollow.

There’s something new there, in the corner of his mind, hidden amongst all of the confusion, the hundreds of voices mixed floating around his mind. It used to be so rare to have a moment of clarity, the voices only working to a crescendo so often. It happens often now, one thought or another winning out, coming to the forefront of his mind in complete clarity and bursting forth into a shock of inspiration.

These bursts of inspiration feel almost close to violent since coming to Godric’s Hollow, taking him over completely, frenzied. He finds himself scribbling in notebook upon notebook madly, frantically flipping through pages of the books they’d brought to their tent from home, muttering to himself as if he may lose the thread of inspiration if he cannot get it out into the world fast enough. It’s exhausting, feeling so much, feeling so out of his own control at times, and he’s certain it has to do with this place.

When they calm again, when he stops from exhaustion, quill drooping in hand, and glances at the pages and pages, it scares him even more. Rarely, now, does what he writes seem to be related to his own research. It seems to be what these voices want, the thoughts made concrete.

He hears them saying names, names of those lost, those gone forever. Hears them telling him to go, then another telling him he must stay, that he is oh, so close to what he needs. He tries his hardest to keep going, but it gets so hard when in the din of voices something so clear rings out, something that seems to mean more.

The most terrifying thing was the first moment he heard Pandora’s voice in his mind, clear as day, the familiar wavering whisper as beautiful as a bird’s song to his ears, one of the first days they had come to Godric’s Hollow. She told him to stay. It shook him to his core, but he hasn’t heard her since, hopes he doesn’t. He hates the thought of his curse touching the most pure thing in his life.

So Xenophilius searches for what they’re trying to lead him to, hoping it is what he needs, that the cure might be at his fingertips, if only he opens his eyes.

extra.

pinterest board!

character tag!

if i were…

if i were a season, i’d be autumn.

if i were a time of day, i’d be dusk.

if i were a place, i’d be a hidden library of forgotten knowledge.

if i were a type of weather, i’d be a thunderstorm.

if i were a scent, i’d be patchouli.

if i were a plant, i’d be a Dirigible plum.

if i were an element, i’d be water.

if i were a color, i’d be bright, warm yellow.

if i were a song, i’d be River by Joni Mitchell

if i were an item of clothing, it’d be a worn, grey duster.

if i were an object, i’d be a moleskin notebook.

if i were one of the seven deadly sins, i’d be pride.

if i were one of the seven heavenly virtues, i’d be diligence.

if i were a god/goddess, i’d be Athena.

on pandora:

He knew. The moment she first treated him in Mungo’s, he knew that he would follow her to the ends of the earth, if she would allow him. It was a strange feeling, not entirely a pleasant one when considering that all his life he had expected never to feel that way about another human being. He wonders how he had missed her at Hogwarts, but then, he had been so entangled in himself, so focused on collecting all the knowledge that he could, that he had hardly made any friends in his own house and year, yet alone others. What mattered is that he had found her now, just in time to keep him from giving up.

After truly meeting Pandora, his single-minded obsession became learning to sign as quickly and proficiently as he could. He wasn’t as fast as he wished he would’ve been, but he learned as best he could, and kept going back to Mungo’s as he learned, an excuse to see her again and talk to her more, especially as he realized that the other healers believed him mad.

She was the first person who truly believed him when he insisted it was the boys’ attack with the dark objects that had caused this, and not a dormant mental illness whose symptoms only appeared after the event. As such, his trust and belief in her was enormous from the beginning, and has not once faltered in the years since.

One of the initial reasons he was so attracted to her was for her pure dedication to a singular cause and the pursuit of knowledge, something he believes in himself. He could see how passionate she was about healing, and how willing she was to do anything to help her patients, not limited to the confines of average healing. He admires her determination and creativity greatly.

The way she cares for people stands in stark contrast to his own ability to do so, which is another reason he loves her so much. He can hardly imagine being so open in caring about others, but he likes to think that she has helped him grow in that regard even slightly. He hopes that she’ll help him grow in that even more, once they’ve found a cure.

If it were not for Pandora, Xeno wholeheartedly believes he would have given up hope of finding a cure, or even peace, years ago. She was able to show him the light in the darkness, and she continues to be that beam of sunlight coming through the clouds of a storm with each passing moment, reminding him that there’s always reason for hope left.

The only times he finds even brief moments of something close to silence is with her. Lying in bed together as they both try to drift into troubled sleep, listening to the steady sound of her breathing, feeling her heat pressed against his, it’s nearly enough to calm the war constantly raging in his mind.

His proposal to her was neither truly romantic or at all dramatic, instead a sort of passing question in the midst of the ever rambling road of his words, his fingers moving just as fast as his lips could, by that time. A question phrased in a way that made it seem more for practicality than it truly was, because he does love her, more greatly than he thought he could ever love one person. A simple it would be easier if we were married, and then the nonchalant production of a ring from his pocket, set on the table in front of her. An amethyst and celestite woven together within a bronze band, charmed to emit a sense of pease and focus, as well as ward off Wrackspurts.

details:

His parents met at Durmstang, and then moved to Berlin, Germany after graduating, working as researchers, of sorts, for a company of like-minded wizards interested in what many would call nontraditional magic. When things began to fall apart in the non-magical world, they made the decision to move to start a family of their own in safety. They settled in London, using up most of their savings to make it there and rent a small flat in Camden.

Despite being a pureblood, Xeno holds none of the beliefs of British pureblood society, in part thanks to be raised by non-British purebloods, but mostly because he can hardly fathom how it is possible to see other humans so darkly. He appreciates what muggles have accomplished without magic, and has even studied much of muggle science and technology out of interest, as well as being interested in proving for them the existence of several of their so-called cryptids.

He has never been able to hold a full time job for long, and stopped trying to do so after years spent in his early twenties trying unsuccessfully in various fields that didn’t truly keep his interest anyway. He would miss days of work without mentioning it, was perpetually late, and rarely actually helped customers with what they actually wanted when in customer service fields. Instead, he earned his money by penning essays and articles sold to various magazines and newspapers on his strange beliefs, as well as selling his research to those who would benefit from it. He dreams of starting his own magazine, if things ever return to normal, if heever finds a cure for his affliction, but right now that task feels impossible given how full his mind is.

He’s started a small garden of strange flora for his and Pandora’s use in Godric’s Hollow. Not much of it is useful to the more ordinary needs of the residents, unless they believe in the oftentimes wild properties Xeno attributes to many of the plants, but he and his wife use many of them for potions and infusions of their own needs, and gladly share if anyone has a desire.

Xenophilius is unable to produce a corporeal Patronus at this time, and has not been able to since waking up in the hospital wing those years ago. Before that, though, his Patronus was an eagle owl.

He didn’t actually seek any healing for what the other students had done to him outside of his own attempts at healing until he was well out of school. As confident as ever, he believed that he could find a cure and do so by himself. When it started interfering not only with his life, but his work, though, he sought out help at Mungo’s. Although most of the healers believed he had gone insane, and most people still do, it was the best decision he made, as it lead him to Pandora.

He hasn’t had any contact with his parents since he graduated from Hogwarts and isn’t certain where they are now, or even if they’re still living. It isn’t that he doesn’t love them, but the childhood that they gave him took too much from him even as they fought to offer him opportunity. He still hears their voices amongst all the others, hears them arguing, only now the anger feels directed at him, not each other.

As well as now being fluent in sign language, Xeno also speaks fluent German, although most of what comes to mind easily now has to do with the cursing that his parents used to do at each other during his childhood.

Not concerned with outward appearances, Xeno very often looks like he rolled directly out of bed and walked into public. While that isn’t usually the case, he could not care less if anyone thinks it is. If he owns a brush for his hair, it has long ago been lost, and many of his clothes are either entirely inappropriate for the occasion at hand, or completely mismatched. There is a method to some of what he wears, of course; the necklaces he always wears, one with a butterbeer cork dangling from it, the other with the symbol of the Deathly Hallows.

#hp rp #rp #marauders rp #lsrpg #roleplay #accepted

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killthekvng-blog · 5 years

Text

yo YO what is up my dudes!! name’s river, pronouns are she/her, and my timezone is est. here is my trash baby, hunter reeves aka the draco skeleton. he’s honestly a complete mess, just a smidge crazy but it’s all good ... right?? anywho here is a profile/basic info type thing and underneath is a lil’ summary about his life which tbh is just the bio part of the app ( bc lbr i’m not gonna get around to writing a full on bio ) and some wanted connects and yeah!! please like this post if u wanna plot bc i’m fucking READY. be warned his backstory is Dramatic asf bc i’m extra lmaoo

tw: murder, mentions of human trafficking, drugs, weapons, and abuse

was born and raised as a single child into a very very wealthy family. i’m talking “i’m kinda bored maybe i’ll buy an island??” type rich. family was did not come from old money but his father had built his empire with his own hands … or so he said.

his father was rarely ever there and the interactions he had with hunter when hewas home was never anything good. his mother on the other hand was a saint. she had multiple charity organizations she ran and they were not only for publicity. she genuinely cared about others and wanted to help any way she could. his father humored her since this kept her out of his way and in the dark about the multiple links to crime organizations he had. his hands were dirty with things from embezzlement, human trafficking, money laundering, murder, torture, drugs and weapons transport, and much MUCH more.

the type of person who voluntarily got involved in business like this was not good to his son. multiple scars that he sports now had come from his father. he had always had a temper and that was transferred onto hunter and even his wife if she chose to stand in the way of his hand and his child.

it wasn’t until hunter was eleven that a massive fight broke out between the two of them in the middle of the night. unable to sleep, he had wandered into the hallway in search of his mother and had instead stumbled into a heated argument between his parents. his mother had figured out what her husband did and how he had come to such power and had threatened to call the police.

it was then that right before his eyes, his father moved against her. hands against her throat and with the paperweight on his desk, he drained the life out of her. of course, he didn’t want to watch, but he stood frozen in his spot, unable to move and forced to watch his mother being murdered through the small gap in the door.

that night he got into bed, his sleeping problem worse than before, and trembling he stayed up all night. the police came the next day and within a week framed a low life thug. knowing what he knows now, hunter assumes it was the underground connections his father had that helped him cover up his crime. police never questioned rome which made him even more nervous. he was now a prisoner in his own home, with information he wasn’t supposed to know, and alone with the monster who had taken his mother away.

the day he lost his mother was the day he had devoted his life into bringing his father down, through any means necessary. anything his father was capable of doing wasn’t out of the question. to catch a monster, he became exactly what his father was. the whole reason for joining the sanctum was to bring down his father. that’s the sole purpose of everything he does.

right now, he’s seen in public as the wild card. he’s the drunk playboy son of a multibillionare. he’s basically bruce wayne when the way he’s seen in public. he’s incompetent, though charming, but clueless. this is exactly the facade he needs in order for his father not to suspect anything, and he plays it well. tbh he’s basically bruce wayne in public and batman when he’s alone which is his real self lmao.

he’s basically become everything he hated his father for being, but he extracts information from murderers and scum of the earth. he’s never laid a hand on innocent people and he believes that the end justifies the means. his father is one of the biggest criminals though nobody knows, and if he’s able to take him off the streets, it would be better for everyone.

WANTED PLOTS

best friend?? singular cause bitch has major trust issues esp with what he’s doing rn so he can’t really have anyone being too close to him but this his ride or die bitch like fr fr.

enemies. now this he can have tons of. to the public he’s kind of a spoiled drunk playboy type so he probs won’t get along with many people. bring me the enemies.

frequent hook ups. now ik he’s in that like rlly nice and wholesome rls with naila/cassiopea but lbr they cant fucking stand each other and my boy got needs. doesn’t have to be a huge deal obvi cause my boy ain’t emotionally available and this needs to be kept hush hush.

love interest. idk dude some like...super angsty shit LOL. probs was super in love but had to break it off. i have maybe an idea like idk he had to break up w her cause whatever he’s doing is bound to get him or people around him hurt or maybe it was something else lets plot it out man.

someone who knows who he truly is besides his best friend. behind the charming smiles and stupid act he pulls off in public, there’s some scary shit going on, and somehow, someway, this person found out about it. we can plot out the rest of it!!

someone hurt by his dad?? his dad probs hurt a bunch of people/ruined a bunch of peoples lives and idk maybe they want hunter to pay for it?

#{ *・ﾟ✧ out of control. › ooc }#untouchable:intro

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crimsonrevolt · 5 years

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Congratulations Angela you’ve been accepted to Crimson Revolt as Amelia Bones.

↳ please refer to our character checklist

Angela! Amelia is a character that we’ve been anxiously awaiting to see for quite some time, and now it’s clear that we’ve been waiting for you! Your application blew us away, from your passion for her as a person to the explanations on how she becomes the person we know her to be in canon to how the horrors she experienced in war has impacted her. It’s clear to us that you have a strong connection and understanding of Amelia, and we can’t wait to see where you take her going forward. Welcome to the group! *Your faceclaim change to Summer Glau has been accepted.

application beneath the cut (tw: mentions of PTSD)

OUT OF CHARACTER

Introduction: Angela, 25+, she/her, CST but I work night shift which puts me more on par with GMT+11

Activity: As previously stated, I work nights and my shifts are 12 hours. On nights I work I’m usually not as active but on my days off I tend to catch up.

How did you find us? Amelia Bones tag

Anything else? n/a

IN CHARACTER

Desired character: Amelia Susan Bones

Birthday / star sign: December 29, 1957; Capricorn

Occupation: Before the kidnapping, Amelia was working for the DMLE as an Auror. Technically, she’s probably still employed. Unless someone had her officially declared dead, she hadn’t actually bothered to check that. Somehow she doubted Edgar would have given up, despite the length of her absence. That being said, there was absolutely now way the department would allow her to return to active duty, not yet anyway. Which means she’d probably shunted off into an investigation department or worse, some sort of clerical work.

Faceclaim: FC change to Summer Glau, Shelley Hennig, or Alicia Vikander

Reason for chosen character: Amelia was the first character I fell in love with writing years ago when I started RPing. Since then I’ve always had a soft spot for her, but often times the way I view Amelia and the way she is described in RP bios don’t match up. Amelia is a character driven by, but not broken by, loss. Her parents and her brother, along with his family, are canonically murdered. The things she goes through personally are not stated in canon, but for her family to be targeted the way it is, you can assume she was not passive. Especially given that she rises to the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and eventually murdered by Voldemort himself. I love strong women. She is clearly a threat to the Death Eaters and their cause and I just cannot believe that only happens after the demise of her family. She was just lucky enough to escape their fate during the first war. No one escapes war unscathed, however, and yet she continues on, becoming known as fair and a great witch. I really want to explore the path that gets her there. The struggles she goes through, the times she loses herself in trying to achieve her goals. How justice and vengeance become blurred and how she finds balance again. It’s honestly fascinating to me, especially given her circumstances in this RP.

Prior to her kidnapping, I think she probably had a lot more faith in the system. She believed that the Ministry, while not without its issues, would ultimately prevail. It was a naive viewpoint. For a year she’s been missing, tortured and brutalized, and it’s changed her. She’s struggling with a range of things including PTSD and rage and a need to regain control. She can no longer wait and hope that the Ministry or even the Order will figure out how to make things right, she has to do it herself. She KNOWS what happens to those who get captured. The lucky ones are killed, those like her who might have information…they’re not lucky. Survival is not the gift that some might thing it to be. It’s a burden. One she will do anything to make sure no one else has to carry, including things that she would not have considered before.

Preferred ships // Character sexuality // Gender & Pronouns: Right now the last thing Amelia is interested in is romance. Though, that doesn’t mean she’s against the idea of blowing off steam with someone. She is damaged, that’s how she views herself now. Just…fucked up. There is a part of her that was broken during her captivity, a part of her that almost craves to be subjugated, so long as she maintains some control of the situation. It’s not a thing she likes to talk about or would acknowledge in the light of day. But when it comes to sex, she’s discovered she likes it rougher than she ever would have guessed previously. No attachments, no commitments, just… physical gratification. She has nothing outside of that to give to anyone. And honestly, she’s not that picky when it comes to gender. It’s less about who and more about the feeling she gets when she’s with them. As far as her own gender identity goes, she’s cis-female, she/her pronouns

CREATE ONE (OR MORE!) OF THE FOLLOWING FOR YOUR CHARACTER

https://weheartit.com/thebutlerdidit/collections/95404130-amelia-bones

Headcanons: – You don’t survive a year of captivity without scars. Physical, mental, emotional, etc. Amelia has all of them. She refused just about all of the treatments the Healers offered, preferring not to be touched or poked or prodded any further. Potions were provided and she takes them on occasion, but she prefers to self-medicate with alcohol and/or a good duel. Hell, even a good fist fight provides a decent catharsis. Never again will she place herself under someone’s thumb. Yes, she’s learned to enjoy being subjected to roughness in love-play, but it never goes anywhere she doesn’t expressly allow. The people she was close to before being taken are now held at arm’s length, especially if they try to discover what happened while she was gone. She’s not exactly proud of the things she had to do to survive, the things she had to allow, but in the end all that matters is that she did survive. She got out. And she’ll get revenge. – People tend to underestimate Hufflepuffs and there are probably many who believe her current state of vengeance is out of character for one of her former house. They’re wrong. Hufflepuffs are gentle until pushed to their limit, at which point they fight like hell. Beware the wrath of a person who is usually kind and gentle, because they did not become that way by accident. Kindness is not a default, it’s not a naive choice. Not always, at least. Often times it is earned out of hard fought battles and discovered when tested by fire. But when pushed beyond those limits of kindness, there are few limits to what they will do in order to survive. People who think them weak are fools. When you push a kind person beyond their limits, you won’t find brokenness on the other side, you’ll find steel and rage and power. – Amelia hasn’t talked to anyone about what she went through during the year she was missing. She tells people that she doesn’t really remember, that there were memory spells and it’s all a blur. That’s true for parts of it, but it’s not all gone. She remembers the way it felt to have the cruciatus curse rip through her body, every nerve ending screaming as the unforgivable curse burned through her. She remembers bones broken only to be reknit and broken again. Her dreams are haunted by silver masks and laughter as she was tortured for their enjoyment. There are pieces of what happened that are burned in her mind, never to be forgotten. She might not be able to name names for sure, at least not in a way that would hold up in court, but she believes she’ll recognize her captors if she’s faced with them again. Whether or not that’s true is yet to be determined. – Everything in Amelia’s life since her return is about control. She was without it for so long that now she’s not likely to give it up without a fight. It’s why she won’t take a sleeping potion. Why she won’t submit to the healers exams or the questions of the Ministry. Things will happen on her terms or they won’t fucking happen at all. Anyone who has a problem with that can get the hell out of her way.

IN CHARACTER QUESTIONNAIRE

The following section should be looked at like a survey or interview for your character. The questions may be answered in character or out of character, with or without gifs. (using gifs of a few different FCs I listed, hope that’s okay)

Do you think it is more important to be feared or loved? Which would you rather be? Honestly, I don’t give a shit. Fear me, love me, whatever. It’s of little consequence as long as you do what needs to be done. If I had to be one or the other, I guess I’d rather people love me? But honestly, I don’t need it. I’d rather people just left me alone.

What is one thing you would never want said about you? She gave up. I have not come this far, struggled so hard just to quit. I have not given up, I don’t intend to give up. I’m not going to let myself be broken. I don’t care what it takes, I’m determined to win. I am not a quitter.

If you were able to invent one spell, potion, or charm, what would it do, what would you use it for or how would you use it? Feel free to name it! I’d like to be able to read people’s thoughts and intentions. Not like veritaserum, where the person is forced to tell you what they’re thinking and feeling…I want to experience it. I want to know why and how in the moment. I suppose that some might consider that to be legilimency, and maybe that’s what I mean, but it feels different to me. I guess I don’t just want to know, I want to be able to influence what I discover. To be able to push or pull on someone’s emotions and intentions, but more subtly than the imperius curse. A nudge rather than a shove. Fuck. I don’t know. Just… control. A measure of control over what happens because of the people around you.

What kinds of decisions are the most difficult for you to make? Ones that involve trusting someone else. Things get complicated when you leave things up to other people and often times they let you down. I would rather do it myself than have to rely on someone else. There’s a reason people say if you want something done right, do it yourself, and it’s because other people let you down. They fail when you’re counting on them and everyone ends up paying the price. Better to just rely on yourself.

REACTION TO LAST EVENT DROP

Not for nothing was Amelia one of the best chasers Hufflepuff ever saw. The World Cup was a foolish endeavor, but even she could understand the reasoning behind it. People needed to blow off steam, fine. But honestly, if they were going to put an opportunity like this in front of her, she wasn’t about to ignore it. She might not play anymore, but she can still fly and god knows she can scream louder than anyone thought. (A trait she is fairly certain kept her alive during the year she was held captive. She’d screamed until her throat bled, a sound one particular captor compared to a symphony because he was a sick bastard.) The people need to know. Ignorance will get them killed. She’s been shut down, kept out of the search for her brother, but this was something she could do. The more people that knew the truth, the weaker the other side had to become. The easier it would be to find Edgar. They’d barely gotten a chance to speak, let alone reconnect before he’d been taken and no one was doing a goddamned thing about it. Amelia had to fight hard against her own guilt – a Bones set free, another taken…was it her fault? She tried not to think about it that way but it was hard. Worse is the knowledge that comes with having been in his position before. Amelia doesn’t have to imagine what he’s going through, she experienced it first hand.

WRITING SAMPLE

She awoke slowly, arms tied above her head and her feet barely scraping the floor of the dimly lit room. She shifted to stand on her tip toes to relieve the ache in her arms; they’d been supporting her weight while she was unconscious. Before she could truly survey her surroundings a whispered curse hit her in the back, shocking her into crying out. The stinging hex spread angry welts over her skin.

“Welcome back, Ms. Bones.”

Amelia turned, trying to look over her shoulder to see who was speaking, but her assailant remained in the shadows. She didn’t recognize his voice, though there were clearly spells in place to disguise it. She grit her teeth and didn’t respond.

“Nothing to say?” the unknown person asked. “You’re usually so vocal. Standing up and shouting for anyone who’ll listen how you plan to bring justice to the wizarding world. You and I both know true justice isn’t an option.”

It took every ounce of her will power to stay still and silent. Whoever had grabbed her was clearly baiting her. She couldn’t remember how long it’d been, but surely the aurors were looking for her. She was hardly the most important member of the department, but they watched out for her own. She couldn’t remember the specifics of the attack but it had been her own damn fault for letting herself get distracted. There was a rustling behind her as the figure moved closer. She could feel him behind her, wishing more than anything for a chance to get the drop on him.

“Your brother was louder. Begged. Said we could do whatever we wanted to him, so long as we spared his wife and children."

Her blood ran cold. Edgar. "You don’t have him.”

“Don’t I? Perhaps not. Maybe he’s dead. Shall I tell you how we laid them out? Presented each of their bodies in a perfect tableau for you to find. I wanted to kill the dog, too. Little shit wouldn’t stop barking.”

She was shaking now and despite all her scolding, all her training at hiding her emotions she couldn’t stop herself from reacting. “I’ll kill you,” she promised in a low voice.

He laughed.

Amelia thrashed in her restraints, wild with hatred. She was only hurting herself, he was too far away for her to reach and she didn’t have her wand. Despite her efforts, she’d never mastered a wandless attack. She could do simple spells, but nothing more.

“Calm down, Ms. Bones. You’ll snap your little wrists and I won’t mend them.”

He moved behind her again until she could feel his breath on the back of her neck. She threw her head back, barely clipping his chin with the top of her head as he moved away. Probably hurt her a lot more than it hurt him.

“Do you enjoy hurting people?” she growled.

He finally moved in front of her, silver mask gleaming as it reflected the single lamp. His wand was raised, pointed directly at her. Even without being able to see his face, she was certain he was smiling at her.

“Yes.”

—

Another example from a previous blog, but it fits along with the theme (though another talented writer contributed quite a bit.) TW for torture - Amelia was kidnapped briefly and tortured by Evan Rosier - http://hardasbones.tumblr.com/tagged/mister-sandman/chrono

#accepted app #amelia bones

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elysiumrp · 7 years

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Congratulations BRITT! You have been accepted as Tereza Castelo. Please go through the checklist and send in your account within 24 hours. If you need more time, make sure you send a message to the main.

Now I hate to be the person that picks favorites, but I have to admit that Tereza was one of my favorite new characters out of this huge batch that we wrote. She was the first one I wrote actually, and I’m not sure that any of the other ones truly lived up to the ideas and inspiration I had when writing her bio. To receive an application so early on for Tereza of all people made my day, and to be able to accept her is even better. I can’t wait to see how Tereza reacts to so many supernaturals that she’s never met coming back into the city, and I also am excited to see how the Resistance and her involvement in it goes down. There is so much that could happen to Tereza and so many different ways that she could rise or fall. I’m sure she’s in for quite the adventure, and I look forward to seeing it unfold. Welcome to Elysium!!

OOC INFO

Name: Britt Age: 19 Timezone: CST Preferred Pronouns: She/Her Previous RP Experience: [RFP] Activity Level: 8/10. I only have one class a day for summer courses and other than that I’m free. Anything Else: N/A

IC INFO

Character Name: Tereza Castelo Why did you choose this character:

I honestly love everything about the character. From her fc to the information you wrote about her. Tereza has gone through so much heartache. From what I gathered she did not grow up in a loving household because who would marry their daughter off so young? She also had to leave her child with a husband she never wanted to marry. Imagine what she must have gone through, unable to see her son despite being alive and him being so close. There is honestly just so much I can get into with self paras or things I could push into threads. After living 700 years, she must have a ton of stories like men she fell in love with, people she’s saved, forming close friendships, being hunted when people found out she was a vamp, etc. And despite everything, she stays so kind. Tereza appreciates life and companionship. I don’t know how anyone can’t love this girl.

Describe your plan for them:

I definitely want to see her take action. I want her to help the Resistance flourish and grow through the rp. I see her as such an important piece of the puzzle. Another thing I want to see is her form connections with not just the ones I see on her bio, but ones out of it as well. Tereza is a kind person, but strong and badass. There are so many things I can see come out of that, because I’m sure people will either be threatened or end up liking her. Tereza is like an onion. She has so many layers and I want to dive into all of them through my writing. I hope if I’m accepted, I can truly show you how much I love this character and how much I want to pay attention to every aspect of her.

Describe your character’s feelings and reactions to the initial reveal of the supernatural world:

Well, before Tereza was changed by a Vampire, she did not know of supernaturals. She lived in naivety due to her parents because in their eyes they saw her as a weak child. It was rare for her to venture too far out of her manor, and the servants who walked around her home were mostly her friends. The moment she found out was when a Vampire saved her after she tried to kill herself. Of course when she woke up after being turned, fear and shock was the first thing she felt. Her senses were stronger than ever and she definitely did not feel human… She felt stronger and more herself than she ever has. As a human she was so weak and followed everyone’s commands. That’s all she did her entire human life, but now she was free. Becoming a vampire was probably one of the best things that could happen to her. It literally saved her life.

Describe your character’s feelings and reactions to the current state of the world, and how it impacts them as an individual:

Tereza has always hated the idea of species hating one another. Becoming a Supernatural to her was one of the best things, and she assumed everyone felt that way. Not until she realized that different species hated or feared each other did she know how divided the world truly was. It hurt her that people could hate another because of who they were. Of course this revelation only made her stronger and more passionate about joining the Resistance. Maybe one day everyone can live in peace, but until then, she would fight for it until a stake was driven right through her heart.

Para Sample:

(suicide tw)

Tereza could no longer handle the pain within her heart. She could no longer hide the subtle tremble of hands while she brushed her hair, or the sleepless night which left bags beneath her eyes, or never being able to decide anything for herself or her child. The husband which she was forced to marry was not a loving one. He hurt her and used her, treating her as if she were only a pet. What love she did receive was from her son, but even that was very rarely. She use to believe that it was her, that she was the reason for never having any friends or a family to care for her. She believed that something was wrong with her, when really, it was the life she had been given. If only she could have been born to another family would she have been happy.

So with trembling legs, her back hit the wall and she slid down as the heat intensified. Smoke filled her lungs with each inhale and she welcomed death like an old friend- until the image of her son flashed through her vision. The beautiful little boy whom she loved with all her heart. The little boy who would have to grow up without a mother and possibly live the same life as she did. A surge of energy rushed through her and she screamed. Screamed until all she could see was a grey haze of toxic smoke, and the dangerous flickering of fire. Tears ran down her cheeks when she realized it was too late for her. What came after death? Would it really be better than living on the beautiful Earth? The world begin to fade just as a powerful figure took her into their arms and the cool outside surrounded her, but it was far too late. Her heart began to slow just as something sharp bit into the side of her neck.

The next thing she remembered was waking up on a soft bed. Feeling extraordinarily renewed as if she had been reborn. When she sat up, her eyes adjusted to the dark as if it were still daylight. Then a hungry thirst caused her to gasp, holding a small hand to her throat when a slightly familiar male walked in with bags filled with a red liquid that smelled oh so wonderful. “Hola.” He spoke, a kind smile on his lips as he continued to walk closer. Tereza could only look at the bags though, and he noticed. Without anymore time, he placed them on the nightstand beside the bed and walked back out. In a flash, the girl has sunk her fangs into the thin material, letting out a feral growl that she would have noticed if she wasn’t so entranced on the delicious red liquid. Once she had finished, she sat back down in a confused haze, not realizing how much her life was about to change.

Any questions/concerns/things you’d like to change: (siblings to add, pronouns, sexuality you’d like to specify, personality, face claim, history, etc., etc.)

N/A. I love everything.

#accepted #vampire rp #vampire rpg #vampire roleplay #magic rpg

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penumbra-rp · 5 years

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Congratulations Ricci, you have been accepted for the role of Marlene Mckinnon!

Thirty’s a dirty word for a young woman. Simultaneously, she’s failed to grow up yet succeeds in decaying. Grief doesn’t die, and nor does guilt, but kinder feelings perish slowly, driving Marlene to sigh through Order meetings, feeling hope’s rotting carrion reek a new stench of cynicism. She admits to nobody that she doesn’t believe in any of it. Still, she tries to cling to their ideals, praying that she might earn something for herself as a witness to the sincerity of their hope, waiting for a spark of life to reawaken amidst their earnestness of their idealism.

Admin Becky: Marlene has shaken off her past and shed the weight of perfectionism like a creature determined to find a new, more comfortable skin to grow into. Her stubborn cynicism will undoubtedly help keep the Order grounded, whilst those who dream of cutting corruption out of society may provide her with sparks of hope to alight the kindling of blind rebellion in her chest. I adore how she has formed a sense of maternal kinship towards all those looking to do the same, turning her into something of a figurehead, a beacon, for all those who are lost in the world as she had once been. It makes her so perfect for the Leaky Bucket, her sharpness enough to defend a place that is much a home to some people as it is a refuge.

Please check out our checklist for joining Penumbra.

01. Out of Character

NAME: Ricci

AGE: 20

YOUR BIRTHDAY: 01/25/99

PRONOUNS: she/her

TIMEZONE: GMT+8

02. In Character

CHARACTER: Marlene McKinnon

CHARACTER’S PRONOUNS: she/her

FACECLAIM: I’d like to play Sonoya Mizuno because having no titties is integral to Marlene as a person.

CHARACTER’S BIRTHDAY: 05/27/89

PERSONALITY:

[ + ] Diligent - Though most may assume such based on the careless with which she carries herself, Marlene isn’t lazy, just selective about what matters to her. When she finds something she cares about, she puts her all into making it work. Seeing the fruit of heartful labor is incredibly rewarding for her.

[ + ] Understanding - An unexpectedly sharp mind accompanies a secretly tender heart, and the combination allows Marlene to easily see situations through the eyes of others… when she wants to.

[ + ] Maternal - Deny it she may, but behind her mask of recklessness and flippancy is a woman that cares deeply about the people in her life. She notices that Order members are getting younger and younger and is overwhelmed with the desire to protect them, wanting to save them from suffering from the same cynicism she regards the world with.

[ + ] Bold - Whether it’s feigned or not is up to debate, but Marlene carries herself with a certain kind of confidence, unwilling to expose her vulnerabilities to anybody she isn’t close to. She isn’t afraid to take risks if it’s for something she cares about or believes in.

[ + ] Self-destructive - Her past history with family deaths and abandonment has left residues of self-loathing within her. Though not explicitly self-hating, Marlene occasionally regards her life with very little care, preferring thrill and adrenaline over her own welfare and safety.

[ + ] Hedonistic - When the working day is done: girls – they wanna have fun. Girls just wanna have fun. That’s all they really want.

[ + ] Irresponsible - It’s the first thing anybody notices. Laid-back and free-spirited as she is, Marlene prefers not to take herself, or life, seriously, preferring to face the tragedies of the world with a sharp wit and a strange, vulgar sense of humor. If life’s a joke, be the first to laugh, she says.

[ + ] Turbulent - Though never easily angered, Marlene is prone to bouts of mania and sadness, her emotions as ever-shifting as the earth’s climate ( thank you, Carrow energies ). She is driven less by ambitions and more by impulses, riding the next new wave of excitement whenever it comes.

BRIEF BULLET POINT BIO:

- Marlene McKinnon is twenty-six years old when her mother takes her own life. Midori, she says, nervous fingers flicking the corners of a page she has yet to read as her gaze lifts to meet the pairs of eyes stare, with scrutiny or with pity, at the newly-orphaned woman standing behind the funeral parlor podium. It should be easy to talk about a woman so many had loved (West End loses its angel to heaven, the obituary had said,) — but Marlene knows her mother has never been one for platitudes. So she tries harder. Midori was a great woman. A great mother. A pause. A breath. There was this time, when I was a kid, I remember — she starts, and doesn’t finish, because in the precise moment Marlene scours her mind for a happy memory, she comes up empty.

- After half a lifetime of striving to crawl out of her mother’s shadow, it is ironic that death makes Midori’s already pervasive presence near inescapable. Tabloid writers and so-called journalists hound Marlene with questions and interview requests in some futile attempt at digging up whatever was left of the story her mother failed to bury. Marlene denies them any answers. The facts they pry out of less trustworthy sources are somehow mostly correct: Her husband’s death years ago had devastated her, but the marriage was tumultuous. She has not spoken to her daughter in more than five years. She left her with nothing.

- Nothing material. That much is true. The pain of abandonment stings but the blow hardly hurts her financially. In fact, she’s proud to say that in half a decade of estrangement, Marlene has built herself a place she could call her own. London isn’t the kindest to neophyte businesswomen, yet the Leaky Bucket has only blossomed under Marlene’s management, slowly growing into a home for scrappy university students and young adult delinquents, far rowdier than the upper class crowd her mother once surrounded herself with. It’s chaos, but it’s hers. Sometimes, her self-made success bears fruit to kinder daydreams. In the best of her imagination, she gets to greet Midori’s disgusted scowl with a grin and a sardonic, “Love me yet, ma?” In her worst, it’s Midori that smiles. The woman’s expression softens at the sight of her daughter’s work, her small lips forming words she would never have spoken outside of this contrived daydream: Marlene, I’m so proud of you.

- Midori leaves no will, no note. But all mothers, in some way or another, leave their daughters an inheritance of scars.

- What is hard to love is even harder to grieve. If the world remembers Midori for her voice, Marlene remembers her for her silence. Wide-eyed and love-starved, a child Marlene had begged for her mother’s affection in the only language the woman seemed to speak: achievements. Thus began a childhood of ballet and piano and voice lessons she hardly enjoyed but felt she needed to pursue, insatiate heart seizing whatever scraps of love she might find in her mother’s smallest of smiles. The harder she tried, the harder it got, because the more she strove to become her mother, the more she learned to accept the impossibility of growing into her mother’s insufferable perfection. The child will spend ballet recitals staring at two empty seats, silently praying for an audience she knows will not come. When Midori does come home, exhausted from hours upon hours of theatre rehearsals, Marlene will have her Clair de Lune rendition be dismissed with a cold frown and the words: You can do better. Outside her family, she will receive more appreciation, but her efforts will no doubt invite the disappointed gazes of her mother’s peers, matched with hushed remarks that the demons lurking within Marlene’s mind will later on replay: not as talented, not as charming, not as electric, not as beautiful, not as poised — she’s not her mother.

- Grief, complicated and disquieting, writhes within her bones. “My ma’ named me after Marlene Dietrich,” the present Marlene half laughs as she addresses the funeral visitors. “Guess she knew I was gonna grow up wanting to wear suits and fight Nazis.” This is the the truth, but not the one her gut feels it needs to spit out. Family, she thinks, is synonymous with fracture. Once, she was content with neglecting the word’s brokenness, but death shatters it past the point of repair. Stammering out a eulogy feels like choking on the shards of whatever it was she failed to fix. Inside, the fragments wound her. Later on, the tabloids will speculate the reason behind Midori McKinnon’s death and come to ill-founded conclusions that a self-loathing Marlene will find herself agreeing with: It was her daughter’s fault.

- The desire to become worse than the bad daughter her parents seemed to believe her to be exacerbated during her college years, ignited by the unexpected invitation to a selective extra-curricular club headed by a certain Albus Dumbledore. Eighteen years old and already far too jaded to fully believe in their fanciful ideals of change, Marlene accepted the invitation half-heartedly, less for their causes and more for the new warmth of knowing she belonged somewhere. Still, in their presence, she found herself braver. The long stirring spark of anger finally turned flame, triggering a new pattern of explosive dinner rows with her father, which pushes an already silent Midori deeper and deeper into her shell. The Order of the Phoenix brought about a new era of rebellions: against corporate giants, against her family, against expectations.

- Mostly, she rebelled against herself. Graffitied a body that failed to be perfect, needling ink stains over skin she always loathed wearing, singed her insides with liquor and passed-around party pills. Here is the revolution against the girl who got it all wrong. Staring at the mirror, she made peace with the woman behind the glass — an unwanted daughter who will make herself repulsive if the only alternative was accepting that she was unlovable. Michaelangelo said: I saw an angel in the marble in and carved until I set him free. With the new knowledge that she was not made of marble and possessed no inner angel, Marlene stopped carving herself in her mother’s shape.

- Too many scandals. Too many arrests. They told her she couldn’t come home anymore. She wanted to tell them it never felt like a home anyway, but her anger was quieter than her grief. The stammering of her heart and her eyes’ threat of tears reminded her later that the daughter who craved their love hadn’t died in a revolution fire as she suspected. She just became quieter. The urge to beg for their acceptance was too loud to ignore, but she willed herself to forget it, and with a pocket full of too much borrowed money and her sights on a burnt wreckage, she set off to carve herself a place of her own.

-Only years into adulthood does Marlene learn to blame herself less. It happens sometimes. Some people are built with their atoms all wrong, their fuses too short, their gears too rusty. Brilliant as the public claimed her mind was, to those close to her, it seemed Midori’s brain was short of the ability to process happiness, to register hope. Perhaps it’s merely genetics, or the high stress of nightly West End performances, or perhaps her mother, and her mother’s mother, and every mother that preceded, had all starved their daughters of love — this is their heirloom, this absence — and none of them learned to give what they never received.

- The child Marlene’s dream of becoming her mother sees fruit later on, albeit in all the worst ways. Her eyes are her mother’s. The way they see the world in sepia tones. Her heart is her mother’s. The way it feels bone-hollow and restless in its hunger for colour. Her exhaustion. Her cynicism. Her loneliness. When she hears the news of her mother’s passing, all she can think of is that college summer spent driving a breaknecking Volvo down vacant roads if only to have that adrenaline-roused daydream of collision burst against all her empty.

- Thirty’s a dirty word for a young woman. Simultaneously, she’s failed to grow up yet succeeds in decaying. Grief doesn’t die, and nor does guilt, but kinder feelings perish slowly, driving Marlene to sigh through Order meetings, feeling hope’s rotting carrion reek a new stench of cynicism. She admits to nobody that she doesn’t believe in any of it. Still, she tries to cling to their ideals, praying that she might earn something for herself as a witness to the sincerity of their hope, waiting for a spark of life to reawaken amidst their earnestness of their idealism.

- The younger Order members, with willingness to throw their lives away for impossible ambitions, terrify her to no end. But they awaken something in her, a new protective instinct, a maternal spark. She wants to save them from her fate, defend their youthful optimism from whatever threatens it. Family, she has always believed, is synonymous with fracture. As the Leaky Bucket bustles with the liveliness of young rebels, they sweep up the shards of old and construct a new definition, one that allows hope to blossom, slowly and organically, within Marlene. If she cannot save the world, she will protect every bold soul that has the audacity to try.

INTERVIEW

i. How do you feel about your current occupation?

Marlene lays her back against the wall of the Leaky Bucket’s storefront, offering a wide grin to the video camera in front of her. Turning away, she crosses one leg, plucks a cigarette out of a pack tucked in the small pocket of ripped black jeans, and sets the tail end ablaze with a lighter, less because she feels like having a drag and more because it might look cool on video.

Perhaps it doesn’t, but the inhale of smoke feels good anyway. “I feel incredibly lucky. Enjoying what you do isn’t a privilege everyone is afforded.” Marlene folds her arms, letting her cigarette dangle between two fingers. “My Ma’ used to say that life in late capitalism is like a Japanese claw machine. All the opportunities are laid out in front of you, seemingly within reach, but the chances of getting anything are actually slim to fuckin’ none.” Her mother never actually said that, but the metaphor was too good to go to waste, and attributing her own words to somebody else makes her seem far less pretentious than she feels at the moment. A knife of a smile cuts through her face. “So let’s fuck up all the claw machines, yeah?”

ii. What song would you say describes yourself?

The drums come first. Then, a single chord. Then, the abrupt, unwanted stab of truth — MY GOD, I’M SO LONELY, SO I OPEN THE —

“Off the top of my head?” Marlene laughs a little, a flippant shrug rolling off her shoulders. “No Scrubs?”

Despite her words, a different song plays in her mind without her warranting, echoing from the memory of having it on repeat weeks earlier, a day before her monthly cycle was due. In her hormone-induced despair, Marlene had drowned herself in cheap wine and the honesty of an annoyingly catchy pop song, all at the expense of any perceived rationality. No, she forces her mind to sing, I don’t want your number, no— nobody, nobody, nobody — I ain’t gonna give you mine and no — NOBODY, NOBODY, NOBODY —

The Marlene of memory sang along as she stared at the bathroom mirror, dragging cotton pads over the streaks of mascara running down her cheeks. Through her tears, she laughed about the melodrama of it all — the runny makeup, the snot on her nose, her being alone, her naked reflection, her illogical emotions — angry and amused when the more practical side of her mind had made an unglamorous acknowledgment of Maybelline eyeliner’s waterproof quality and interrupted the movie-worthiness of her misery, all while she adjusted the seriousness of her expression to validate herself to a nonexistent voyeur that might have found something poetic in her PMS. “I’ve been big and small,” she blubbered through snot and laughs and half-breaths, “And big and small… and big and small… again and…” And still, nobody wants me. Still, nobody… wants… me… “Give me one good movie kiss… and I’ll be…”

NOBODY! NOBODY! NOBODY! NOBODY! NOBODY! NOBODY! NOBODY! NOBODY! NOBODY! NOBODY! NOBODY! NOBODY!

The Marlene of present tilts her head, leaning back to take a long drag of her cigarette. “Nothing comes to mind, really.”

iii. Does reputation matter to you?

The chorus of tiny Mitskis fall silent in her mind as a new thought interrupts their melody, prompting her fingers to click against her skin with one abrupt snap. “Bad Reputation!” she says, grin falling open in excitement. “Joan Jett. What a fuckin’ banger. Bit cliche,” she adds, dismissing the notion of her own predictability with an expression of mild disdain and a noncommittal wave of her free hand, “but succinct enough to answer both questions. You could say it’s two birds with one Joan.” Marlene punctuates her sentence with a laugh that rings hollower by the second, ever mortified by her own cheesiness, then raises her chin to greet the camera with a wide, self-loathing grin. “Edit that out or I’ll stab somebody.”

iii. …Does reputation matter to you?

The breath she inhales comes out through her nose as a quiet chuckle. “What a unique question. Genuinely.” Her palm strikes her chest, above her heart. “I don’t think I’ve ever been asked this before.”

Marlene’s smile fades as she presses the tip of her cigarette to her lips. After one long drag, she exhales, letting a now pensive gaze rest on the wisps of dissipating smoke.

It’s hard to be honest when it comes at the risk of being known. Past the smoke tendrils, Marlene’s brown eyes linger on the camerawoman in front of her. Small ashes rain from the tail end of her cigarette. An expression of uncharacteristic earnestness sweeps over her features. “It’s a bit…” she trails, biting her lip. “Complicated.”

If thirty years of life taught Marlene anything, it’s that most women spent their existences doing less growing, and more outgrowing. It’s a hasty generalization that she draws from the narrow pool of her own experiences, but sometimes, she thinks it’s true. Sometimes she looks at women and tries to guess what they hate about themselves. What they like, too. The camera operator is pudgy and small and square-jawed, but she carries herself with confidence behind the lens, as if she knows she belongs there. The girl is beautiful. Marlene wonders if she can tell it to herself without doubt.

She thinks of a younger Marlene, sixteen and tightening a belt around her waist as far as it could go to create proportions that would distract from the absence in her chest. This younger Marlene is overcritical of her reflection: narrow eyes, a flat nose, small lips. Reputations, Marlene thinks, stem from appearances, and appearances are all any girl is ever taught to care about. I think all women grow up hating themselves, she doesn’t say.

“The world we live in carries far too much prejudice,” she says instead, though she wonders if serious words carry any weight if they are said by a person that seems to never take anything seriously. Marlene furrows her eyebrows. “I’m a woman of colour and a lesbian. You get things like catcalling, sexism, homophobia, microaggressions. Not all the time, obviously — people aren’t as bad as we make them out to be — but you have all these unpleasant experiences scattered throughout your existence.”

The younger Marlene doesn’t look anyone in the eye. She keeps her head down, afraid that if anyone looks close enough, they’ll discover the dirty secret lurking in her gaze. In the rare occasions where one does find it, it’s not bad, because they’re ecstatic to unearth a glimpse the same irreverence reflected in somebody else’s. The younger Marlene lets another girl slip a hand under her Catholic school uniform and finds that her touch makes her hate herself less, but the thought of being seen sucks the air out of her lungs harder than a belt tied too tightly around her waist.

“Women like me,” she says, drawing her words out slowly as not to let any useless emotions spill out, “all we have to do is exist, and people of more small-minded worlds automatically draw their own conclusions.” Feeling a new load weighing down her shoulders, Marlene shrugs. “We’re born with bad reputations.”

She doesn’t know what she can do for the world. She doesn’t know how to pry the hatred out of women. How to help them outgrow the unnecessary need to be beautiful. She thinks of other, younger, smaller Marlenes out there, wants to teach them to laugh at the absence of mass on their chests and point instead to the pulse heaving against it — there, she will tell them. That’s the most beautiful part of you.

And she thinks of the Marlenes who are afraid of this pulse and what it wants to love. Her heart swells with the urge to save them, but she doesn’t know how. If she could build a world where love was easier, she would. “Does it matter to me? I like to pretend it doesn’t. But I know —“ she pauses, nervous, afraid of being misconstrued, and wills every bit of sincerity to leak through her words. “I know I don’t want anybody else to suffer. So it matters.”

iv. What is your relationship with your parents like?

With a scoff of relief, Marlene decides that her quota for serious answers has been met. “My Da’s Catholic. My Ma’s Asian. I’m a clinically depressed raging homosexual with sixteen tattoos, five piercings, two terminated pregnancies, three previous arrests, zero university diplomas, an alcohol business, a nicotine problem, and a mild to mildly severe addiction to being a little bit of a cunt.” The corner of her mouth curls into a small smirk. Marlene turns to the camera, shooting a wink that brims with both impishness and affection. “Naturally, I’m their pride and joy.”

v. What languages can you speak?

A length of sleek black hair falls over her face as Marlene throws her head down, hand hovering above her mouth to conceal the quiet laugh of a scoff that escapes her throat. “Trickiest question that’s been asked thus far.” Leaning back, Marlene raises an eyebrow, mouth quirked into a flippant smile. “Because I’m getting this sinking feeling there’s a secretly correct answer, and if I don’t give it, the Duolingo Owl will find my address and set my house on fire.”

vi. If your home was on fire and you could only save one item, what would you choose?

Brown eyes widen in mild horror. “…Russian For Beginners.”

vii. Which Hogwarts University faculty did you study at? The Gryffindor School of Applied Science, the Ravenclaw School of Humanities, the Slytherin School of Social Science, or the Hufflepuff School of Art?

“When I was younger, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, just that I wanted to do something good. So Environmental Science.” The fact that Marlene McKinnon studied in Gryffindor surprises a lot of people. The fact that she never finished the course surprises less. “It’s funny, because I think I did a lot more harm than good. In my second year I ended up dating someone in the non-renewable energy industry. I cheated on her — not my best moment — and it pissed her off — understandably so — and long story short, I guess it’s half my fault that there’s now a hole in the ozone layer in the shape of my pussy.”

vix. What is your social media username?

“I don’t want strangers on my personal accounts but —“ Marlene pauses to snag a slip of paper from her pocket, reading off a spiel she had prepared moments ago. “‘Follow The Leaky Bucket on Instagram at Instagram-Dot-Com-Slash-Capital-T-The-Dot-Capital-L-Leaky-Capital-B-Bucket for a chance to access our secret menu.’” Throwing her hand to her forehead in one lazy salute, Marlene turns to the camera and offers a smile and one last farewell wink. “And review us on Yelp, while you’re at it.”

#accepted

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diveronarpg · 6 years

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Congratulations, KAITLIN! You’ve been accepted for the role of LAERTES with an approved FC change to KENDRICK SAMPSON. Admin Rosey: Ladies, gents, and all other mob members I am so incredibly happy to announce that we finally have our BAERTES (this is the one and only time I will condone the usage of that nickname). Kaitlin, I am just so incredibly happy that you have brought to us our golden, flawed boy who will likely be the reckoning of us all. You captured the smallest moments so well, where the nuances of his voice crept in and destroyed us all. Verona has longed for the boy with the broken crown who carries the weight of a dead legacy on his shoulders. Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.

WELCOME TO THE MOB.

Out of Character

Alias | Kaitlin.

Age | 21.

Preferred Pronouns | She/her.

Activity Level | You guys should be pretty familiar with my activity by this point, but long story short I tend to wait a few days and then write replies in one fell swoop when they collect! But it definitely varies on my mood.

Timezone | EST.

Current/Past RP Accounts | La principessa, in case you forgot. ;)

In Character

Character | Laertes; Lawrence Federico Vernon. I’d love to use Kendrick Sampson as his FC, but I can roll with Michael if you guys prefer!

What drew you to this character? |

I was really completely head over heels in love with Lawrence the first time I gave his biography a true and proper read through, but the more and more times I’ve read it, I kind of think that I had him all wrong when I first fell in love. Which, I think, is kind of the entire the point. For the sake of avoiding onion metaphors, I’ll just leave it at saying Lawrence is a character with a lot of surprising layers that I didn’t really see the first time around. I think it’s really easy to kind of take him at face value (which to be fair, I think he probably uses his name a lot to make people take him as a god immediately and then uses that preconception of him to bolster his status as a god even further, but that’s besides the point) and say that he’s the golden boy son who was made in his father’s image and is now out for blood because his father has been murdered. That’s the cut and dry of it, and it’s easy to love Lawrence for the cut and the dry. He’s miraculous in that way, sun-haloed and dripping gold, with a tongue like honey and blood like fire, but for all that he was made by his father he is not actually made from his father’s image. He’s been molded and crafted into this kind of Alvise-adjacent sculpture that’s just as clever, just as much a general and a tactician, a politician in every way except for the personal willingness to spill blood for his own cause. I think, if it were his own glory that Lawrence was fighting for, he’s never spill a drop of the stuff. But he is responsible for the ichor that flows in the Montague’s veins, and in his eyes, responsible for the well being of Verona by proxy. And I think it’s kind of easy to miss this disjuncture between him being his father son, and wanting nothing more than to be his father’s son, with the man that he actually is in his marrow. A chaotic good fighting with a lawful good, if you will. And I’m nothing if not a sucker for characters who suffer heavy internal conflict, even if they’re unaware of it, so, here we are.

What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character? |

GOLD-COLORED BOY. I am just, first and foremost, super interested in connecting Lawrence with an array of people. He is such a people person, entirely someone who has defined himself and his self worth on the things that he can make other people think about him, the ways he can force himself into their lives by making them be unable to stop thinking about him. He’s got this haloed-in-gold and holier-than-thou thing going on, but you kind of have to wonder how much of that is what other people put on him and what he actually projects himself. Obviously it’s some degree of both, but Lawrence has built himself upon other people, upon the things he inspires other people to do. There’s no malintent in his own actions, only this desperate need to embody the tactician that his father is, and so he plays off of others, molds himself into what situations need of him. But there’s this struggle between who he is, the lionheart, and who his father is, the red hand to Damiano’s bloodied crown. So many of the connections that he’s made over the years have been positive in nature where they can be, and violent and fear-driven only where they absolutely must be. An international agent, he is no vagabond, but he is someone who gets restless, and yet? Never reckless. Part of this is conditioning from his father, knowing that anything reckless would result in Alvise’s intervention and likely his call back to the homefront. Part of it though has to just be who Lawrence is. He’s got this unshakeable commitment to doing what he thinks is right, and I’m really interested to see how his commitment to his vision is going to shift now that his father has died and his motivations will have to shift from finding pride to finding revenge. We’re already starting to see the devolution of his rationality with his investment in Cyrus as an informant. His father would tell him that it’s foolish to trust the Capulet’s princeling, that Lawrence should take anything the boy says and assume that near-on the opposite is true, and yet here he is recruiting him anyways. I’m definitely someone who tends to be a lot more intrigued by devolution in my characters than I am in positive revolution, and I’d love to watch some of Lawrence’s long-fought and hard-won connections start to crumble because they start to feel like he isn’t the same man that they met once upon a time.

ORIGINAL SIN. Mistakes certainly take their toll on our characters, but they make writing them all the more fun for us writers, and I am nothing if not in love with writing characters who are riddled with flaws and who allow those flaws to befall them at inopportune moments. For this reason, as much as it might injure Lawrence, I would love nothing more than for him to take his vengeance upon the wrong person. I mean, Lawrence’s soul is bound in gold and honor. What happens to an honor-bound soul when it commits an unforgivable act? When it does something that in the eyes of God and his people can only been seen as dishonorable? I would love for the death of his father to cause this burning need for vengeance in his soul. One of the constant threads though his biography is fire, with him carrying the ‘torch’ of his name and his wanting to “raze” the city to ash for the sake of finding his father’s murderer. He is through and through someone who has been raised to be okay with the committing the dishonorable for the sake of bolstering another family’s name, but at his core he’s very much the golden ‘Lionheart’ character that you all have named him. The first sentence of his bio, after all, is that he was raised to be so much more than he was. Lawrence was born to be the physical embodiment of legacy, of glory, something holy in its unholiness. Like you said, he’s spent his life taking direction from his father, conditioning himself into being the man that his father needs him to be, and without the sort of guiding hand constantly reminding him that there’s honor to be found in the dishonorable, in deceit and betrayal, that fire and glory go hand in hand, I can’t wait to see how this dishonor takes hold in his heart. Like you said, when all is said and done, funeral pyres and prayers will be the only thing to keep Verona warm when he is through with it–does this not apply to himself? Will he not have to hold a funeral for the man his father turned him into? Or will, in this loss, he find himself turning into Alvise himself? Lose himself in his loss and his grief and his need to have his father as his guiding light?

O’ DESSA, MY DESSA. Those Vernon’s. Their hearts on on their sleeves, in their eyes, in their throats—choking them to death. They use their hearts like weapons, wield their passions like anger and teach their love to feed their wrath, spit venom from their left ventricles and use aorta to pump cunning through to each vein. I’m fascinated by them, almost as equally as they are both fascinated with human hearts. What makes them beat. What makes them break. What can they use against their enemies that might allow those Vernon’s to sink their canines through a left atrium into the right. They both know the strength of the human heart, know how it has defined their own lives, and I think that makes them uniquely capable of using other people’s own hearts against them. But Lawrence doesn’t really see this, no matter its truth. They are both wracked with grief, but both of them know how to use their emotions to their own advantage, and I’d love to see them working together to do just that. Lawrence is so blinded by his heart right now, so completely slave to its angers and its passions and I’m interested to see how that will color his interactions with Odessa. He’s got this ‘my sister, my responsibility’ thing that I’m a total sucker for, but Odessa has no need for his protection, has a heart in her chest that beats as strongly as his own. They are made of the same marrow, yet where he could see cunning, instead he sees softness. Firstly, I can’t imagine Odessa really allowing him to feel this way, can’t imagine her allowing him to keep her small any longer. For God’s sake, he’s been gone for months now, gone traveling to build and bolster relationships and he left her behind. The rational part of him knows that she is capable, knows that she can take care of herself, but I think a big part of him feels like he’s just lost his father and the thought of Odessa putting herself in harm’s way to avenge their father is something he cannot even begin to fathom. And yet—I want nothing more than for Lawrence to overcome his misconceptions, to let go of those wings he’s tried to clip and give them back to her. Better yet, make her snatch them from his grasp and make him see his sister’s heart is equally as much a force of nature as he is.

Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | Bitch…. I might be. (Honestly tho, like, give the guy a break!!!)

In Depth

In-Character Interview: I wrote a para sample, so I’ve only done two of these, but if y’all want more since my para sample isn’t modern, then you’re more than welcome to tell my ass to stop being lazy and ask for them. Anyways!!!

Curled around him like a vine, Lawrence runs his hand through the tips of the girls hair and revels in the quiet moment of after-sex, in the warmth of having another human in his bed. There’s nothing like it, the soft moments of the after, the tender calming moments that come with having shared your body with someone else.

“Tell me about yourself,” she says, and ruins everything. “What do you do all day when you’re not meeting with my uncle?”

Lawrence sighs at the girl’s question, wishes that he hadn’t let her curl herself into his side, but there was something about the human contact that he hadn’t been able to deny. With her head resting on the juncture between his arm and his shoulder, he can feel her breath warm on his skin, and feel strands of her brown hair tickling the skin at the base of his neck. What only moment ago had felt like such a comfort suddenly feels like suffocation, feels like something that should make him run.

But he’s a general. And general’s don’t run.

“Your uncle’s not the only man I work with, you know,” he responds carefully, avoiding her question. He has no desire to discuss his daily routine with the family of one of his clients; even if they aren’t an enemy but an ally, it’s always better to keep your life safeguarded from prying eyes. “Besides, I’d so much rather talk about what you do with those beautiful hands of yours all day than the many tedious business meetings I attend.”

He blushes, and it pulls at something in his abdomen.

He distracts her with stars, makes them shine behind her eyes until he draws that blush across her whole body.

–

Lawrence has just finished securing a new client on the Eastern Russian coast when the client asks him the unholy question, dares to cross a line that he doesn’t yet have the right to cross.

“Tell me, son,” and Lawrence pretends that being called son doesn’t set his teeth on edge; he is not this man’s blood, and he has no interest in being as such. “This war between you and your, how you say, fellow Veronesi brothers, what do you think of it?”

Lawrence can’t help but pause for a moment when the client asks this, partly because he has dared to ask it, and more so because he can feel himself wanting to shiver at the thought of a Capulet being called his brother. Lawrence is surprised by the question, to be sure, but he tightens his jaw the way that his father taught him so many years ago and looks his clients dead in the eyes. “I assure you, генеральный, you have nothing to worry about from my home front. They won’t touch you.”

“I don’t need to be assured you won’t let them get their hands on my business, gonfaloniere. If I had doubts, I would not agree to work with you.” Lawrence resists the urge to furrow his brows together, presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth to keep his face free of confusion and anger alike. “I asked how you feel about your war.”

Lawrence considering silence in the way of an answer, but something makes him want to reply.

“War is not the word I would use for it, just the Capulets wishing they had the kind of reach that we Montague’s do and being angry that they do not. There’s a reason you’re here talking to me and not some Capulet принцесса. I avoid paying the Capulets any mind; they are not worth my time. I hope that is answer enough for you.”

The general raises his glass in answer, and Lawrence answers him in kind.

They both drink to their dishonesty.

(the two russian words used here are general and princess, respectively.)

In-Character Para Sample;

Lawrence Vernon is sixteen the first time he becomes aware that his father will stop at no one when it comes to manipulation, not even his own son.

He is playing a game of football with some boys from school, an unorganized team that is mostly made up of boys with too much time on their hands and too little to do with them, boys with restless hearts and reckless souls who want nothing more than to find approval in every glance that gets cast their way, who want nothing more than for people to tell them that they are great–some, in spite of it all. It’s Alvise’s idea his son join, encourages him one afternoon when he gets home to eat dinner with his children, tells him over a bowl of bolognese that he saw a group of boys his age playing and he should think about joining them next time.

Lawrence, never wanting to disappoint, joins the next day.

The boys in his class always loved him, revered him like a god walking, each and every person in Verona knowing in their heart of hearts that the Vernon boy was someone you want in your corner. Among them is a boy with golden hair and a heart like steel, and at first meeting Lawrence dislikes him with a kind of vehemence that he can’t understand. Lionhearts do not call to other lionhearts, and their souls were made of the same. Alvise disapproves the first time that Lawrence complains about the other.

The Cesari boy? His father asks him, and when Lawrence nods yes, his father speaks again. You are as powerful as who you surround yourself with, he says, and smiles something otherworldly when Lawrence’s chest swells with shame. Even if you dislike him, do not discredit him.

The boy was the son of a wealthy man who owned vineyards across northern Italy. Everyone knew it, knew about the gold that lined their pockets and the glory that belonged in their bones, every if they were still new money and Verona was built on something ancient. Lawrence decides to give the golden hair boy another chance, and when he does he finds that somehow their golden halos can come together into something miraculous, something like being understood.

One night, they sneak out of their houses and go for drinks at a local bar, and both are leaning on each other by the end of the night, spilling secrets and fears and other things that would make them anything less than gods.

“We’re broke,” the boy says, leaning his head back against the metal fence the pair of them are propped up against.

“No way,” Lawrence replies, turning to look at his friend. The other boy just closes his eyes and nods his head. “No way.”

“My father he just…” the boy trails off for a moment and shakes his head. “Made some bad calls, bought some new lands, and they turned out to be duds. The wine? Terrible. Thirteen year olds wouldn’t even buy the shit those grapes produced.”

“Yeah, but the other vineyards are still producing, right?”

“Yeah, but profits from those paid for the new land, and then he took out debts looking for more new land that would offset those bad purchases, and now he’s just saving face and praying no one at the banks notices what deep shit he’s in before he can figure out a way to make back the money he took out. He thought maybe this harvest season would help, but,” the boy hiccups, and swallows before going on again. “But there’s some competitor I guess who’s edging him out and my dad can barely afford to keep himself afloat, much less ward off competition.”

Lawrence is silent.

“So, we’re fucked,” the boy says finally, then laughs. “Fucked. Such an American curse. It tastes so good.”

Lawrence brings a hand to cover his mouth, almost wants to hang his head for feeling for his friend.

“And your dad couldn’t use the land he bought for anything else?” He asks, lifting his head to look at the other boy.

He just smiles at Lawrence, shakes his head and then waves him off with a fling of his left hand.

“We’ll figure something out,” then a short pause. “We have to.”

They go back to laughing after that, to discussing their team’s win against another local one, to pushing and shoving each other about the pretty redhead that had stopped to watch their game, arguing over who she was really staring at.

The next day Alvise Vernon calls his son into his office before dinner, and Lawrence walks in casually, not apprehensive in the way he should be. He strides into the office without announcement, his shoulders straight and his smile wide.

“You wanted to see me, Father?”

Looking up from the documents before him, Alvise actually looks happy to see his son. It makes something like pride dance across Lawrence’s skin, and he knows that he would do anything he asked of him.

“I hear that you’ve made a new friend,” his father says, and Lawrence laughs, unimpeded.

“Yes, I suppose I have,” he replies, raising his eyebrows. “But how did you hear about it?”

“When you earn the right to know my sources, then I’ll tell you,” Alvise says, a wolf’s grin painted across his face. “Now, I thought you said that you disliked the Cesari boy. You said he was, I believe your direct words were, a ‘pompous ass.’”

Something about seeing his father use air quotes around ‘pompous ass’ sends Lawrence into a fit of laughter.

“I guess I did say that, yes,” he says, still laughing, a hand pressed against his stomach. “And I stand by it. Cesari is a righteous little shit, but now I know he’s a righteous little shit who’s terrified of the future, and that makes me feel better about the whole thing.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Just something he said about his dad.”

“His father? Why would his father make him fearful of the future?” Alvise asks, the tone of their conversation sobering slightly as his brows furrow. “He owns one of the most successful new conglomerates of wineries in Northern Italy.”

Lawrence pauses only a moment before answering. “They’re bankrupt,” he says, pressing his lips together and tilting his head to the side as he raises his shoulders as if to say what can you do?

“How?”

“He made some bad investments, took out loans to pay off the investments thinking his current properties would turn enough profit to pay them off, but I guess the harvest wasn’t great and there’s a new guy on the market selling better product or something. Ergo, bankruptcy. They’re trying to hide it from the bankers and the papers long enough to pay off the debts, but like I said, Cesari’s terrified.”

Alvise purses his lips, then stands up from behind his desk, slowly walking around the edge of it.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” he says, and comes to stand before his son. “I’m glad he had you to listen to.”

He walks away before Lawrence can respond, and though the sentiment brings a slight smile to his cheeks, he can’t help but feel something twist in the bottom of his stomach at the way his father said it.

He doesn’t realize until two days later that he should have listened to his gut.

CESARI EMPIRE CRUMBLES read the headlines, and the shiner Lawrence wears on his cheek, courtesy of a boy who was once his friend and could be no longer, feels like a brand when he storms into the Capital Library in search of one Alvise Vernon, feels like a brand that he deserves.

“You used me!” he shouts, pushing open the door to his father’s second office, caring little for the soldier seated across the desk. A single glance from Alvise is enough to send the young woman running from the room, but Lawrence barely looks at her, honor and loyalty battling for dominance in his chest. He cannot believe that his father would use him in this way, would compromise his son’s honor in such a way, but there’s a part of Lawrence that can never question Alvise, a part of him that would just nod his head if his father were to telling him that murder is no sin.

“Elio Cesari and his money were gaining power,” Alvise starts, leaning back in his chair and placing his elbows on the armrests, the picture of ease. “Perhaps you don’t understand this yet, but power isn’t an unlimited resource, and his posed a threat to some of our allies. Yes, I encouraged you to befriend his son in the hopes that he might give you the information we needed to remove him from the playing field, but Cesari’s misfortunes are self-inflicted. I did not have a hand in his poor investments; it’s not my fault if the man doesn’t have a head for business and just got lucky with his first few. Beginner’s luck has no place at our table.”

“And what about my honor, father? You’ve made my word worthless with this, my friendship worthless,” Lawrence starts, feeling like something inside of him is cracking apart with every word. It goes against everything he has ever known to question his father in such a way.

“Oh, stop that,” Alvise says sharply, shaking his head. “This isn’t about you.”

Lawrence opens his mouth to reply, but Alvise shoots him a look that silences him.

“This is about something much bigger than you,” he says, knitting his hands together before him. Lawrence is still standing, but he can feel some of the tension easing from his shoulders, some of the fight in him dying. The longer he is here, the longer he looks at his father and listens, the less able he is to think of him as the enemy.

Alvise Vernon always had been, and always would be, his version of a savior.

“This is about what was right for Verona, Lawrence, about what Damiano and all the other Montague’s needed. Don’t you understand that yet? This is what we are made for, for doing bad things to ensure that something else good can happen. Verona can’t afford to be led by men who cannot handle their own businesses, and that’s what would have happened had we allowed the Cesari’s to continue lying about their profits.”

Lawrence sits down finally in the chair across from his father, the one that had previously been occupied by a young woman terrified of the man before her. Lawrence could only find awe, awe and terror. And is not that we are afraid of not also beautiful? Does it not also captivate?

“It’s hurt you, to sacrifice the Cesari boy’s friendship, but know that it was done for the good of our people. I’m proud of you for that.”

And that’s when Lawrence crumbles finally, lets go of all of his anger and his hurt and his feelings of betrayal. It’s then that he finally understands.

“Legacies are what make families great, boy,” Alvise Vernon says to his son, staring at the young man from behind the mahogany desk. His gaze is hard, nothing soft or conciliatory about it. He rules Verona with iron in his heart and in his fists and he rules his children the same way. “They are bigger than men, far bigger than any individual. The Vernon name has been alive since long before you or I, and if you lead our family in the ways I teach you in the coming years, then it shall be around long after you or I as well. What happened to the Cesari’s is one lesson I hope you will remember.”

And Lawrence never forgets.

Extras:

Mockblog

A disorganized collection of headcanons.

i. Once there was a young boy, a slight and thin thing that begged for a nickname, begged for something, anything, that might be less of a mouthful than Lawrence. Every time that he tried to slip out of his name and into something else though his father would give him a hard look that spoke more volumes than the young boy ever wanted to interpret. The best he ever came up with was Wren, and for weeks at scuola primaria he got away with it, but then his teacher sent a letter home about ‘Wren’ hitting another student and that was the last straw.

The boy father sat his son down and stared at him hard in the eyes, not for the first time and certainly not the last, and said something that would stay with the young boy for the rest of his life.

“Perception is power, Lawrence. Do you not know that? Have I not taught you this well enough yet?”

“But Papá, it’s just a name–” the young boy starts, but is interrupted by his father immediately.

“There’s weight in a name, son. I named you Lawrence for a reason–don’t ever let anyone make you something you are not, including yourself. Our lives are built on our name; they define who we are, who we might become. The names we surround ourselves with are equally as important. You, my son? You are named for the Saint Laurence of Rome, who refused to turn over gold and riches to the Pope and instead presented him with the people who the Church had been instructed to help–the poor and the disabled, the faithful who had lost faith. To bear your name means that you understand your purpose, sometimes better even than the people who have given you this purpose. We Vernons are the hands used to defend our chosen people. The Montagues lead this city, and it is our God-given mission to stand beside them and make their rule possible. If you must choose a nickname, then be called Vernon, for nothing else would do you justice.”

The young boy could only look at his father with wide eyes, but his shoulders stay straight. The father puts his hands on either of the young boy’s shoulders and bends down so that they are at eye level.

“What’s your name?” the father asks, after a long pause.

“Lawrence Vernon.”

The father smiles then, a half-life thing that paints only the left side of his face in warmth, like even with his child he cannot afford to show kindness, to show softness. The boy doesn’t understand this now, but later, when the father is gone, he will. He places a cold palm on his son’s cheek, pats it gently and says “Good.”

And with that he takes his leave.

ii. Lawrence has three different degrees, two from Oxford and one from Cambridge, just for some balance, all of which he did residencies abroad for and completed on accelerated timelines. One he did in Berlin, while he was studying Organizational Psychology. The second was in France, for while he was studying Political Science. The last, and his favorite, was being abroad in Tokyo while he studied Economics. During all of these pursuits of higher education, Lawrence was simultaneously courting and securing new clients across the globe, and reassuring and reaffirming relationship with clients they already had at the same time.

iii. Lawrence’s sense of dress and style was always a point of contention between him and Alvise, who frequently and loudly disapproved of the garb Lawrence chose to don, but it was the singular thing he constantly held his own ground on. He has a strange affinity for hawaiian shirts and other strange forms of decadence, like the gold necklace with a tiny version of the hands from The Creation of Adam painting he sometimes hangs around his neck, or the ornate guns with paintings of saints on them that he loves to buy even though they usually less accurate than the high-grade weapons the mob buys (what his gun lacks, he decides to make up for in personal skill, call it a challenge). He puts on a suit when he must, but it’s usually Gucci or highly stylized Dolce & Gabbana. He likes texture and the ornate, and he won’t let anyone take that away from him.

iv. Her name grows unimportant with time, but the way she lingers in Lawrence’s bones does not change. He is eighteen and on his first solo mission abroad, with war and strategy in his marrow but youth in his blood, when what should be a standard check in with foreign clients in France turns into a month long stay for fear of losing them to a local distributor. He wears the weight of expectation heavy on his broad shoulders and has never once bowed to it, never once stumbled beneath its weight, but for the first and last time a girl will make him question his name.

A girl with her head in the clouds and her feet securely on the ground beneath her feet, she smiles like the sun and it makes his heart sing, blinds him every moment that he stumbles across her path. They meet when he finds out that one of his new enemies is the husband of a local artist and he goes into the man’s studio only to stop dead in his tracks at the sight of a woman sitting in the center of the room, a white sheet covering some parts of her, but many not, and when she looks at him it feels like a fire has ignited in his blood, slowly burning away the expectation and the name in his marrow.

They fuck in the room the artist rents to her above the studio that night, and Lawrence stops caring about the world of wars that feels a million miles away, like it’s in another country, in another time, in another life.

Alvise sends men to help Lawrence secure their clients wallets once and for all when he goes silent for over a week, but they report that his strategist son has fallen for a peasant girl. Alvise bids them pay her weight in gold, and Lawrence Vernon comes home, his heart left behind in France where a peasant girl hadn’t even bothered to kiss him goodbye.

Once upon a time there was a girl who he would give away his name for; there never was again.

#accepted: laertes #accepted

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crimsonrevolt · 7 years

Photo

Congratulations Katie you’ve been accepted to Crimson Revolt as Rita Skeeter!

↳ please refer to our character checklist

There was something so beautiful in the way you explored the layers that a character like Rita presents, and we adored reading through your reasons for choosing her, and seeing what you could potentially bring to a character that is often portrayed one way. Both your aesthetic and your moodboard (alongside the content you had on your blog) were gorgeous, and absolutely gave us a sense of how you view her and are hoping to portray Rita’s complexities. And your para sample through her into our roleplay and the trouble she could stir up for characters! We’re really excited to see her on the dash!

application beneath the cut

OUT OF CHARACTER

INTRODUCTION

Katie, 26, she/her, pst

ACTIVITY

Around a 6, mostly active in the evenings, occasionally in the mornings but at least once a day for a few hours.

TRIGGERS

*removed for privacy

HOW DID YOU FIND US?

I believe it was the RPG tag, if not that then the LSRPG tag

WHAT HARRY POTTER CHARACTER DO YOU IDENTIFY WITH MOST?

Hermione was always my favorite as she was a strong female for me to identify with at an early age. She was intelligent and capable of anything she put her mind to. Plus, her loyalty to those who’s morals she aligned with is something that all should use as a role model.

ANYTHING ELSE?

Nope!

IN CHARACTER

DESIRED CHARACTER

Rita Skeeter

FACE CLAIM

Carlson Young

REASON FOR CHOSEN CHARACTER

Rita is a character that I’ve honestly usually stayed away from strictly because of how she is portrayed in the books as basically being an eavesdropping, mudslinging bitch. Yet, after reading the few short lines of her bio, I realized that she doesn’t have to be just those two adjectives. Instead, she can be someone who simply knows what they want and will do what they need to get it. She has the ability to be sweet and charming if it will get her one step closer to the top, otherwise all hell lets loose and leaves the person who had crossed her wondering what they were thinking in doing so. She’s a character that everyone would assume to be placed in Slytherin based on her initial layer, however when you really dig deep you start to see the intelligence and wit that had her placed in Ravenclaw. My goal is to pull back the layers of Rita as well as let her stir up a little bit of trouble with her natural tendency to overhear things, always on accident of course.

PREFERRED SHIPS // CHARACTER SEXUALITY // GENDER & PRONOUNS

Rita identifies as she/her and is very proud of being a female. She takes it to the extreme by flaunting her femininity. Her closet is bursting at the seems, and in need of another enlarging charm, filled with clothes that are either tight fitting and cling to her in all the right places, or flowing and revealing in all the right places. Her vanity is covered with makeup of all kinds, and she knows that just the right perfume can make anyone spill their secrets. As for her sexuality, Rita is heterosexual and is more than willing to move from one bed to the other throughout the week.

CREATE ONE (OR MORE!) OF THE FOLLOWING FOR YOUR CHARACTER:

Blog tag

Moodboard

Aesthetic

IN CHARACTER QUESTIONNAIRE

♔ If you were able to invent one spell, potion, or charm, what would it do, what would you use it for or how would you use it? Feel free to name it:

An Eavesdropping spell. It’s so hard to be somewhere and everywhere all at once. This would allow for me to overhear anything that I might be missing.

♔ You have to venture deep into the Forbidden Forest one night. Pick one other character and one object (muggle or magical), besides your wand, that you’d want with you

Remus Lupin, it seems like he spends an awful lot of time there already so he might be the best option to get around after dark. And then for one object, does a house elf count? Because if so, I’d bring that since I could use them as bait.

♔ What kinds of decisions are the most difficult for you to make?

Ones that are close the heart and my family. Even though I might seem like an ice queen, there are still things that warm my chest and I wouldn’t be able to stand seeing them hurt.

♔ What is one thing you would never want said about you?

That I lived a boring life.

WRITING SAMPLE

“It’s just not like him!”

The shrieking voice trembled before it was hushed and both woman looked Rita’s way. Raising an eyebrow, the blonde shook her head at the two of them before pretending to focus on her notes for a story. She knew why they looked at her, they were causing a scene and it appeared like everyone who worked for the Daily Prophet knew better than to cause a scene in front of Rita Skeeter. If only that worked.

“He’s just become so violent, so wrapped up in the war, so…” the woman who was near hysterics paused, and Rita had to force herself to not actually lean forward in an attempt to get the woman to finish the statement. Last thing she wanted was for them to realize was that she was still listening, “Passive.”

Scoffing slightly, Rita rolled her eyes and stood up from her desk letting the noise of her heels send everyone scattering farther into the depths of the office. Handing off her notes to a house elf she threw her jacket on and stepped out into the freezing cold wind. She could apparate home, but with the way things had been going lately she knew she would get a better story if she walked.

It had never been her intent to make the other members of the Daily Prophet hate or fear her words. She had simply just been trying to make a career. When she had fallen into the gossip columnist job, the last thing she had wanted was to make it stick. She had a goal to get through her required time in the station and then move on quickly and easily to something new. However, she had failed in that aspect in would seem. Instead of getting praise, a raise and a new title, she got praise, raise, and her own office. One far away from the desks of her co workers who had apparently complained about their affairs ending up on page 8 of the Prophet for their spouses to read. And now, with the war getting more and more intense it seemed as if her job was never ending when it came to revealing who worked on what side. She knew that she was at fault for a few auror raids as well death eater attacks, but it’s not her fault entirely. It never was. She just always happened to be in the know of a death eater who had betrayed their Lord, and as for the death eater attacks? Well, the weak don’t need to survive, and in her mind those not on the same side as her were always weaker.

Sighing softly, she paused in front of a coffee shop on Diagon Alley and listened to the couple standing outside. Simply a lovers quarrel. Nothing she needed to know about. But as she rounded a corner it was the word on the ground that made her stop in her tracks and cock her head to the side. Aversio.

She had heard it mentioned here or there and of course had made note of it, but this was her first time seeing it in person. Pulling out a quill and a notebook, Rita quickly noted the names of the lover’s nearby and the location. She had a story, and the ability to write a little bit and ruin some lives. Without having a second thought, she put the names next to the word on the paper and soon, a paragraph was wrote that could lead to two people being dead in the morning.

#rita skeeter #hp rp #lsrpg #mature rp #skeleton rp #accepted app

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