background writeup

So I'd love to link a wiki, but the existing fandom wiki gives like three sentences total? So here. Instead of that, you get a play-by-play.

SO TO BEGIN: in a weird world of magical realism and magical girl transformations, where the monster of the week is real and tangible and God speaks on the radio, three girls - Neptune, Jupiter, and Venus, who is referred to as a guy for the early part of the game - are sent to a summer camp for "bad kids." The game picks up during the last week of their stay.

• 6pm
  • After showing up late for a mandatory bonfire activity, the three are punished and told to wait in a cabin overnight for the devil. (This is both literal and metaphorical. We Know the Devil is kind of like that.) The devil is frightening, both for what it represents and for what others will think of them, but it can be exorcised out by the others - the "good" kids.
• 7pm
  • Venus, as the group's resident tinkerer, is sent to fix the warning sirens around the camp (which fire when the devil arrives). Despite getting distracted by the devil's temptations and also some assholes from Group South, Venus succeeds with Neptune's backup while Jupiter goes on ahead. The sirens are already louder than normal - the devil is on its way.
• 8pm
  • Venus and the others make it to the cabin, which is basically the worst. Venus takes a look at the broken lock alone while Jupiter and Neptune go exploring for parts to fix it.
• 9pm
  • The three of them play Truth or Dare. Venus gets dared to stop apologizing, and immediately apologizes for apologizing so much. It is basically a disaster.
• 10pm
  • The sirens are loud. The devil is getting closer. Two of them should go check the sirens... but instead, all three stay together. The devil is in the air, and they all hold each other.
• 11pm
  • Neptune managed to sneak in some booze, as is necessary in any summer camp story. Venus, after many objections - it is illegal, after all - ends up doing shots with her and promptly gets shitfaced. It's weirdly relieving, being able to say the things you want.
  • Neptune gets violently ill in the bathroom, and Venus tries to help her out. Loosened by the alcohol, the two say some things they've wanted to for a while. Venus tells Neptune that she tries too hard to be mean because she thinks it's "more honest," and Neptune tells Venus that she's nice, but she wants something, and until she figures out what it is every kindness she does will be full of that want. Then they agree not to say anything to Jupiter about it.
  • Seven minutes in heaven gets brought up, and Venus stays out of it. It's between Jupiter and Neptune, and Venus doesn't want to interfere.
• 2am
  • The sirens keep going. The three agree to try and tune in to God on the radio. The devil answers instead, with a voice like incense and honey. She tells them how much it hurts her to see them so unhappy with themselves. Venus begins to understand.
• 3am
  • The sirens go wild. The other scouts at the camp start amassing to prepare and fight a devil. Jupiter has a breakdown, Neptune tries to push her out of it, and everything comes crashing to a halt when Venus makes her decision.
    
    "I am the devil."
    
    Venus pulls off her arm with a pop, and that's that. The others see Venus smiling, talking about how much her body bothered her, and they realize none of them are alone in their decision. All three decide to go with the devil.
• 4am
  • The three girls become devils. They hold each other through their transformations, even as the scouts get nearer, and become the three worst girls since Eve.

app for prismatica

▶ PLAYER
HANDLE: Kari
CONTACT: karilotl
OVER 18? Yep.
CHARACTERS IN-GAME: Kaitos

▶ CHARACTER
NAME: Venus
CANON: We Know the Devil
CANON POINT: Post-canon; CRAU from Duplicity
AGE: 19. While no ages are canonically given, all three main characters are in the age range to be sent to Jesus camp (teens) and Venus is the oldest of the group. Given this, I apped and played her as 18, and during this time she would have turned 19.
BACKGROUND: Since the Wiki doesn't tell you anywhere near the important beats, have this writeup I've written like four times now!

As for her time in Duplicity, that's fairly simply summarized:

• Venus arrives in the city, is branded as a Submissive (the lower caste), and promptly stumbles into seven smut threads within her first forty-eight hours in the city. Whoops.
• After a disaster on a cruise ship where people turn into ghosts, Venus is propositioned by a Dominant in the city - Saturn, an extended canonmate - and the two fall into a contractual relationship.
• Venus continues truckin' and fuckin' her way through Duplicity, striking up friendships and relationships. With Saturn's encouragement, Venus takes her impulse control out back and starts living more and more impulsively.
• All Dominants and Submissives in the city are kidnapped overnight, moved to a bootcamp, and promptly made witness to a group execution of people who have failed their "responsibilities." There is a prison break, and after reconvening in the city there is some discussion of rebellion.
• Saturn vanishes before any significant progress is made. Drunk, upset, and even less prone to thought than usual, Venus does a bunch of stupid and impulsive things in succession.
• Venus recovers from her bender, comes to terms with Saturn's disappearance... and disappears shortly thereafter.

PERSONALITY:

• Ingratiating

  Venus is awkward to interact with, or even to watch, because of her ingratiating nature. The game's narration itself says that "Venus can smile and laugh nervously through anything, and the rest of us are invisible for as long as we can endure the secondhand embarassment." She believes people who lie to her, not because she thinks they're telling the truth but because it's easier than disagreeing.

• Resentful

  All of the above section is by choice and not nature. The truth of the matter is, Venus is easy to upset and holds onto that at pretty much all times. The first few times she openly engages with the other main characters on serious topics, bits of anger begin to slip out: "doesn't that make you angry? Doesn't that make you so mad you can't see straight?" Venus has lots of reasons to be angry: a world that wants to push her into a masculine box and a brain that doesn't want that for herself, being surrounded by a religion and culture that hates who she is and hates her friends... How could you not be resentful of it?

• Distant

  So how do you deal with being angry at all times without giving in to the destructive impulses society wants you to take? Simple - you cut it off, you force yourself to be as ingratiating and polite as possible, and when that doesn't work you just seem kind of smile blankly at people. Venus comes off as distant to the few people who try to get to know her better than "that awkward boy who's easy to bully," which honestly discourages most people from trying any further. She says things that could come across as cruel if there were any intent or thought behind them. At one point, a character who expresses happiness that they're friends gets a response of "Wait, we're friends?" It's not that she intends to do any of this - she just spends so much time on the balancing act of "don't be angry" and "be polite" that she forgets to work on "don't be a bitch" (as Neptune so eloquently puts it).

• Idealistic

  So why does Venus even bother with all this? The truth is, it's because she is idealistic to a fault. She is angry because she sees a world that hurts others; she is ingratiating because to do otherwise risks hurting others, and she can't stomach that. In a cast full of people who let in the devil for personal reasons, Venus's thoughts notably blur the lines between personal gain and changing the world itself. "I want to undo the division of day and night."

• Transgender

  Normally I'd leave this for a mod note, but the fact of the matter is that Venus's gender is an integral part of her character. It influences all her other traits, it influences the way she interacts with the world around her, and since WKTD is a game about queer teens growing up in a world that hates them, it rules her arc and in-game development. By the end of her canon, Venus has - in a very literal sense - accepted her "new self" and come to terms with her gender identity...

• (CRAU) Sinful

  ...which brings us to her time in Duplicity. Thrust into a systemically unequal world that demanded physical contact, with a body that fit right for the first time in her life, Venus flourished in some senses. Sex, drugs, out-of-body experiences with ghosts - a whole new world was suddenly open to her, and Venus was tired of holding herself back from it. She is the devil, and the devil can screw around and try out shibari and get fucked up on aphro if she wants to, right??

• (CRAU) Short-Sighted

  Unfortunately, drinking to get through the day and focusing on nothing past meeting quota for the month doesn't always play well with long-term goals. By the end of her run in Duplicity, Venus had all but given up overthrowing Duplicity's regime; in fact, she'd all but given up on a lot of things, from holding on to stable partners to even acting against her second-class citizen status.

• (CRAU) Touch-Starved

  Coming from a lifetime of repression and loneliness, Venus was already pretty desperate for contact even before arriving in BDSM-ville. But when touch becomes an everyday part of life, when physical contact is a mandate for survival, and when you find someone willing to embrace you for who you are - someone like Saturn, for Venus - you can grow to be pretty reliant on it. Thankfully, Prismatica shouldn't make that part too inconvenient!

POWERS/ABILITIES: Since WKTD is written in a very loose, metaphor-ridden style, it's a little difficult to piece together an "objective set of powers" for Venus/The Devil. But quitters never win, so we're going to do our best here!

So, Venus is "The Devil." What does that mean? Well, the devil is strong enough to lift and throw a teen across the room with one hand, and fast enough to make running meaningless - the devil is superhuman, without question. But the devil isn't invincible, or anywhere near it: all it takes is two teens willing to fight to overpower the devil, to beat it and cast it away. I don't think this should cause any real issues, especially in a narrative RP setting (where people can work out ways for even superhuman characters to lose to mundane ones).

The devil can change their body, and the world around them, to reflect themselves. Neptune brings tar and water to the world, Jupiter brings a storm of pressure, and Venus brings an unbearable light in keeping with their wishes. In-game, this would basically manifest as very localized reality warping for aesthetic reasons only - parts of Venus's apartment glowing, or angles on the interior not quite matching up, but with nothing more significant without explicit mod permission for each case.

Most importantly, the devil can bring others into their fold, and with mutual love and acceptance - both of each other and themselves - a new devil can be born. This would manifest in-game as the potential to alter characters' physical forms in ways relating to their new nature as a devil, given significant CR/development between them. This would, for obvious reasons, only happen with both IC and OOC approval of all involved parties. (I'm really attached to this, primarily because of the CR-creating opportunities - who doesn't love getting their character physical developments? - but I'm happy to workshop it if you feel it's necessary!)

Finally, Venus's physical form has its own set of notes. She is covered in eyes, as mentioned above, has two beautiful wings, and gives off a light entirely of her own. Given that these attributes relate directly to her issues and to her acceptance of herself as a transwoman, they're one of the few things I would really prefer to see completely unchanged. Her body is hers; when asked about changing it back to what it was before, she directly admits she'd die rather than take that option. In terms of power, they shouldn't really be an issue anyway? They're just... awkward wings, a shitload of eyes for looking in a hundred different directions at once, and a night light that she can't actually turn off because she's an idiot??

In summary:

• Superhuman strength/speed (but not by that much)
• Localized reality warping (for aesthetic reasons)
• Can create new devils like her (with consent, it's a metaphor for coming out of the closet/self-acceptance, etc. etc.)
• Wings and eyes which are also metaphors

SORRY THIS SECTION GOT OUT OF HAND WOW. I tried to offer reasonable balances for these but let me know if more is necessary!

INVENTORY:

• A galena crystal, similar to the ones used in a cat-whisker radio;
• A bottle of off-brand "Strawberry Heat" aphrodisiac;
• A half-empty bottle of "Sinful Smooth" lube;
• Two condoms in their wrappers;
• A rumpled note in messy handwriting, dictating that "she's using my card bcuz it gets me HORNY" signed "Saturn";
• A polaroid of her and her dom from the city laughing together, taken in a photo booth.

MOONBLESSING: Sanguis. Because giving a morally and willfully submissive person the alpha blessing is hilarious, but also because who better to handle the urge to anger and violence than the devil who's lived with it her whole life?

▶ SAMPLES

link #1 - duplicity
link #2 - tdm toplevel