#tatyana cos

[dexadin]

hi! i saw your rb of the response to your strahdyana post where you mentioned in the tags that your strahd is trans masc, and i was wondering if you could talk a little more abt that? i'm a trans masc dm preparing to run cos for some friends and i've thought about idea before but it's so validating to hear it from someone else too! how did you decide on it, & how has it affected how you run/characterize him?

sometimes i sit on an ask for a month because i want to think of a good answer and then i come back to it like damn… their campaign's over fr…..but hopefully this will be of some help!!

so truthfully, I sat on this ask for so long because I was trying to put into words how my Strahd's transmasculinity affects him and could only think of concrete evidence of his transness coming up when the party gets a really good bit going. Not jokes about Strahd being a trans man, of course, but jokes that are only funny when A. Strahd is trans and B. almost all of the party is trans both ic and ooc (you may be familiar with our 'down with cis carriage' meme).

a lot of reflection with @runekept and reading of strahd metaanalysis from the CoS reddit has led me to believe that my idea of strahd actually is deeply affected by his (and my) transmasculinity. To start out, this interpretation does rely on at least some amount of passive transphobia and historically outdated gender roles. Obviously, games where trans people are immediately accepted and able to transition without any social barriers or difficulty are great, but I typically play games with a player-approved amount of social barriers because we find it cathartic, so that's where I'm coming from.

Below the cut is a lot of me playing 4D gender chess with Strahd von Zarovich, spoilers for Strahd's backstory below!

I've talked before about how I think that Strahd works best when his desire to possess Tatyana, and the metaphor for his vampirism, is a desperate attempt to cling to his bygone youth, something he was fiercely jealous of Sergei about. I think this is an interesting and humanizing angle to take any Strahd, but I think that this is particularly compelling with a trans Strahd. It shifts his desire away from vanity and entitlement, and highlights his struggle to live up to the standards of masculinity set by his neglectful father in wartime. Like, if you're trans and are in the community, you know or know of a trans guy just like that: a guy who does misogynistic, even homophobic and transphobic things in the name of being 'macho', things that he feels will earn him conditional respect in the eyes of cis male society. In doing so, he may or may not earn that conditional respect, but he does lose the respect and companionship of people who would have otherwise supported him and shared in his experiences. Strahd read so easily and so clearly to me as That Guy, and of 3/4 of my players being trans, I thought it'd be fun to interpret Strahd as trans.

In "I, Strahd," we learn that the oldest son of a family is destined for military greatness, and the youngest to be a healer. Of course, this is a lot of pressure to put on any young man, but imagine the pressure that put on baby transmasc Strahd! In transitioning, he is not just becoming a man, but the Oldest Son, a role that requires skill and violence and training. His parents are relying on him to protect their country and conquer new lands. The internalized message he learns is that for him, masculinity and respect is equal to conquest. He makes his entire identity being a war general for his parents' kingdom, and spends his entire young adult life battling for and conquering Barovia. He throws away any chance he had to make friends or find love in his formative years because it was too dangerous for a military man to let himself be swayed by emotion. By the time his young brother Sergei comes by, with all his youth and all the gentleness and charm of a cleric, Strahd is a battleworn man well into his 40s. When Tatyana chooses Sergei over Strahd, Strahd perceives it as being not necessarily because Sergei is cisgender, but specifically because of the youth, the gentleness, the humanity that Sergei posesses-- qualities that Strahd surrendered in lieu of earning respect and masculinity.

In Strahd's warped vision, everything is about conquest. He is incapable of valuing people beyond the concept of loss and victory. Having love, having a wife, is a marker of masculinity that he believes he "earned." He believes he should have "won" Tatyana because he worked so hard to be a man. This sense of conquest is also seen with his coterie of brides. They're a bunch of people he took on romantically to emulate his desire To Have a Wife without having any true attachment to them beyond being the trophies of masculinity that he believes he is entitled to. He continues to pursue Tatyana (regardless of whether you play Strahd as actually romantically interested in her) because to him, she is a prize that is always just beyond his grasp. If he had played the game a little bit better, if he had been a bit more the man his father wanted him to be, maybe he could have her. So he keeps playing the game, cursed to lose her forever, because the game was never real. His goal of being a 'real man' would never be attainable in his own eyes. Strahd cannot win.

I don't know if any of this is immediately apparent when I play him. But it gives him a bit of depth when you're considering his reactions to the party. In ATSBB, his pursuit of Vanya (an explicitly trans character) is made richer when you consider Strahd's own relationship to gender. In @runekept's word's. their relationship has "an agonizingly tragic edge of you're like me, you understand me, we understand each other in a way no one else can because we're both different and that means I cannot let you go." It is this desperate pursuit to cling onto something he feels only missed because of his dedication to Winning Masculinity. Strahd is the portrait of a man who led himself to ruin because of how badly he craved approval that he would never get where he sought it, but he could have gotten easily if he'd looked anywhere else. He lost his chance to be a human in his pursuit of being his father's son. This makes him no less evil, but makes him pitiful--a picture perfect gothic villain.

I hope that any of this was even mildly coherent. Unfortunately, the times I notice Strahd being trans most is when we say that Strahd could fix Vallaki if he outlawed being cisgender. Feel free to let me know if there's anything you think I missed and I will try to answer in a more timely manner LOL

[anae-art]

Looking through the files I found an old drawing of our sweet Ireena. I still love it! Just like the wonderful Ireena who was our companion during the campaign

[mincemeat-the-warforged]

Family Portait

(artfight attack for @eeriethacus of their dnd character in our curse of strahd campaign, antares kolyanovich)

[prototype-ten]

I am so normal about these three

[raviollies]

Legacy

[adurna0-art]

Tatyana Federovna, who deserved the world and got… well.

[vanhelsingapologist]

I tell you how you kill me in my dreams.

—

Dima was visited by the local vampire. She will bite him back, next time. Alt version under the cut.

[beetlebabby]

my piece for the memento mori zine! you can get your free download here @mementomoristrahdzine !!!

[qusok]

The polls are getting progressively weirder, because I run out of ideas

[turgid-cucumber]

Strahd and Tatyana

In the actual Curse of Strahd module, Strahd has the hots for Tatyana, and Tatyana likes Sergei, Strahd's brother.

This is boring to me.

In CoS: The Golden Thread, Strahd and Tayana were childhood best friends and platonic soulmates. They grew up together, they ruled together, they loved each other... until the end.

Tatyana died young, leaving Strahd mad with grief and vulnerable to manipulation by the Dark Powers.

And then, 800 years later, four adventurers get drawn into Barovia, each holding a fragment of Tatyana's soul, linked to one another by a golden thread.

[eeriethacus]

Pov you interrupted their conversation

Small sketch of Antares (my dnd character) and his brother Ismark for a Curse of Strahd campaign I'm currently playing in! Art block is still kicking it

[anakinsthesis]

since people still think ireena’s art is “ambiguous”, here’s a reminder that her denizens of barovia mini is brown.

so let’s stop whitewashing ireena / tatyana in 2024 please 💖

[theravenloftwanderers]

The star crossed lovers Sergei Von Zarovich and Tatyana Federovna

I'm going back and re-rendering old artworks cause I think they deserve upgrades. Will gradually delete the old stuff.

[tantaliart]

I, Strahd (1993)

[prototype-ten]

Finally! I animated the first part on June of last year and then took quite a break before finally finish it; I didn’t want to give up on this animation, I actually couldn’t wait to finish it, but things kept coming up and I just kept pushing it back. It is here at last, thought! I am very happy with the result, even if the scenes are a bit inconsistent because of the hiatus in the middle, lol.

[flyingkitesatnight]

Art of femStrahd and Tatyana I drew for our game.