Name: Venus
Door:
Door Pass (submissive)
Canon: We Know the Devil
Canon Point: True End
Age:
18. Explicit ages are never given, aside from the main cast being teens in a camp for "bad kids;" I'll be playing Venus at 18, since she's canonically older than the other two.
Appearance: For most of the game, Venus appears
on the left. Finding art of her after her changes in the true end is difficult, as it's mostly described in very abstract terms and a
single background; this
commissioned piece shows her a bit more clearly.
History: I'd love to link a wiki, but the wiki gives like three sentences total, so instead have a play-by-play. Initial background: in a weird world of magical realism and magical girl transformations, Venus, along with Neptune and Jupiter, is 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.
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, and I'm not interested in including this as "one of her four traits," 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. At her current canon point, Venus has come to terms with her gender identity.
Powers and Abilities: as a human, there's some simple powers - she's actually a semi-trained fighter thanks to the odd nature of summer camp - and some weird powers that are never fully explained. She can make a radio which definitely is more like a sword or a spear, and it can curl around doorknobs and lock doors, and it can talk to God and also the Devil? It's got crystals, and wire, and incense in its circuitry? She could evidently get a transformation sequence if she weren't shitty at being a "good person?" But she's
not good, and so most of this never gets directly explained or addressed, and so the easiest way to handle it is that I just won't directly address it in-game either. (Except that maybe she'd be half-decent at figuring out radio issues if she worked at a tv station or something, since it's one of the only thing she's ever called good at in the game proper.)
But as the
devil - which she is, by this canon point - things are much different. Like the radios, the devil isn't ever explained a hundred percent, but we see more than enough to figure it out. The devil is
strong - strong enough to make Neptune lift a girl with one hand by the throat, to throw another across a room with the other hand. The devil is
resilient - beaten down with swords and radios and lightning and water, and even then leaving her host alive and breathing afterwards. And the devil brings out who they truly are, and this is the most important part of their powers. For Jupiter, the devil comes as a thousand hands to let a touch-starved girl touch; for Neptune, the devil comes as the ocean, flowing and
angry and nurturing all in one. For Venus, the devil comes in
wings and eyes and light - to let her see the world, and to light her up so the world can see
her. So the question is, how does this all translate in-game? The simplest way is this: Venus is
stronger, tougher, and generally more powerful than a human could possibly be, but is still weak enough that a one-on-one fight could go whatever direction the players wanted. This is roughly in keeping with canon, anyway: if it only takes two teenage scouts to beat the devil, clearly it's not Superman-tier. As for the wings and eyes and light, I'd request that
the eyes all over her work, and that she can
fly (inefficiently) - not effortlessly through the sky, but if she needed to get from the ground to the ceiling she could ineffectually flap her way up and completely wind herself in the process.
Also she glows like a night light. She can't turn it off and it probably looks really pretty but is also incredibly inconvenient for people who are trying to sleep.
Inventory: A galena crystal, like one used in a homemade catwhisker radio.
Samples:
[1] introspectionthread with Arcueid Brunestud, Duplicity TDM.
[2] communicationthread with Ezra Bridger, Reverie Terminal.
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wingstosee) wrote2018-10-20 02:27 pm
