app for balancemod

[wingstosee]

	Venus: I want feathers in my lungs and eyes on my skin. I want my heart to see and my lungs to fly. I want to undo the division of day and night.
	APP HMD DANCER KARI

Player Name: Kari
Age: 27
Contact: Karijou
Timezone: PST
Other character currently in game: n/a

Character name: Venus
Age: 18
Canon: We Know the Devil/CRAU
Canon point: True End + almost exactly six months' time on the station
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.

Three key adjectives: Resentful. Idealistic. Transgender.

Influential Events:

• Venus gets sent to a camp for bad kids

  Perhaps the most influential event is the one that kicks the game off: Venus is sent by her parents to the Summer Scouts, a camp for "bad kids." It's strange, because initially, Venus seems like the nicest person there - she's kind, caring, sweet, and about her biggest sin is that she's incredibly awkward. But the more the game goes along, the more two things become clear: Venus hates what society expects of her, and Venus hates being a boy. Venus getting sent off to camp is so influential because, for the first time, she finds two people like her - queer teens who were brought up believing something was wrong with them. It's this meeting that provides the backbone for all interactions in We Know the Devil, and it's this meeting that eventually leads to her final, powerful catharsis.

• Venus gets drunk

  This might seem like an odd thing to list, but it's a fairly big step for Venus. For her entire life leading up to this, Venus has kept her rebellions neatly compartmentalized and internal; she does what she's told, she lays down and accepts abuse from others, she even believes things she knwos are lies so that it's easiest for everyone. However, at Neptune's insistence, Venus breaks a law for the first time in her life (or at least, she sure acts like it), and suddenly the floodfates are opened. It doesn't help that she's the lightweight to end all lightweights; it barely takes a shot before she's starting to get bubbly and loose-lipped. It's drunk like this that she starts to let herself shine through instead of hiding away; using flowerly language, talking about how mad she gets sometimes, even yelling when Neptune tells her to man up and thanking Jupiter when she mentions how Venus isn't like other boys. Getting drunk isn't important because of the alcohol; it's important because it's the first time she's really let her inhibitions loose and let people see her as she is.

• Venus tears off her own arm

  No, that's not a typo. Eventually the devil comes for the girls, but instead of possessing someone - instead of transforming them into a villain for the other two to kill - all three of the girls hear her voice. Neptune and Jupiter argue over whether they should go or night, with Jupiter arguing that good girls don't do that and Neptune arguing that Satan rules, but it's Venus who takes the first step. She lets the devil into her heart fully while the other two argue, and begins the first step of her transformation before they even realize what's going on - tearing off her arm, tossing it to the ground like a bit of a broken doll, and preparing for the wing that she knows should be there. It's an obvious metaphor for her own self shining through, and it's an obviously literal change as well - she's completely rejected what society wants of her at this point. "She is the devil."

• Venus destroys the social order

  Okay, so maybe it's only at summer camp, and it's not Venus alone, but it's important either way. Venus, along with Jupiter and Neptune - "the three worst girls since Eve" - take on the entire camp of scouts waiting to fight them down. And they don't do it by hurting them, or by beating people down, or by destroying buildings - they do it by just telling them what they need to hear. That it's okay for them to be bad. That they don't have to be good in a world where good people hurt others. That no matter what they're like, why they don't fit, why their parents sent them to a Jesus camp for sinners - that's okay. This is Venus's final step in self-acceptance - turning the acknowledgment of who she is into the acknowledgment of others.

  
  
  Link to Samples: top-level + bakugou (balance tdm); jupiter (reverie terminal)
  

Previous game: Reverie Terminal
Important notes:

• Venus arrives on a space station

  With the Worst Girls in tow, Venus is rudely ripped away from her new Devil Camp and dropped off on a space station. Despite the place being more than a little inhospitable to sentient life, Venus finds herself coping oddly well! She drinks terrible booze and gets to know a bunch of people. With a body that fits her she's more open, more friendly, more able to interact normally. She confirms with Jupiter and Neptune that they are in fact girlfriends - all three of them! - and that just makes life even more handleable. For a while, life is honestly good.

• Venus loses her partners

  Life screws up pretty quickly. Neptune vanishes, and then Jupiter, leaving Venus effectively alone on the station. The other people she's met and spent time with are what save her, here; she is able to spend more time with people like Goro Akechi and Terezi and Erika Mishima, and even if it's not perfect it lets her process the pain on her own time instead of all at once. Even though it hurts, and even though she would do anything to see them again, she slowly comes to terms with having lost the two devils that understand her most.

• Venus corrupts two people

  Months later, a radio from her homeworld surfaces on the station. Radios have unique powers where Venus is from, and when she confirms it's actually reading a signal Venus is given undeniable proof that the devil is here with her. Armed with this new knowledge and a hope she hasn't felt in a while, Venus shares the greatest gift she can: she lets Goro Akechi and Erika Mishima hear the devil's voice, and offers to help them if they want to let her in. They accept, and Venus finds herself allied with two new devils - ready to talk, ready to feel, and ready to bring their gift to many others.

• Venus infects the station

  With Akechi's know-how and Erika's technical expertise, it's a simple task to let everyone on the station hear the devil's voice. Chaos erupts; some people begin to transform, while others reject this foreign intruder from their mind and body. Those still on the station begin to divide themselves and turn against each other, with devils and humans and the unlucky ones caught in between. And the changes don't stop there; working together, the new devils begin to alter the very fabric of the station into a world for them. Eyes and tongues and rooms from home knit themselves into an impossible tapestry, and the humans decide to make a stand: enough is enough. When they come to stop her, Venus realizes she's outclassed; she takes the radio back and runs.

• Venus sees the Hunger come

  The devil's voice is weak, drowned out by some outside influence. Venus runs through the corridors of the station until she finds herself at an impasse: a dead end of black nothingness, tendrils swirling through the air and grabbing whatever parts they can. With nowhere to run, and nowhere to turn back to, Venus is left hoping for some sort of miracle.
  
  And she is granted one. When the woman's voice speaks, she doesn't hesitate. With one hand clutching the radio tight, she reaches out and takes Lucretia's hand.
  
  And thus Venus arrives in the world of Faerun.

Chosen path: Dancer
3 Abilities:

1. Canon Power: Radio

   Venus will be arriving with a "weapon/item" of sorts in the form of her radio from back home. The radio's much more eldritch and unknowable than your average crystal radio, but it does bear some passing resemblances: wires, crystals, and so on. With a bit of tinkering, I'd like for Venus to incorporate it into her dancer's garb and weaponry - a galena crystal as a centerpiece of jewelry around her neck, wires coiling down her arms and looping around two daggers to ground them to it, and so on! From here, I have some ideas that I'll lay out all together (with the full knowledge that some or all of these may be denied):
   
   

   • Cosmetic: While Venus's daggers are hooked into the radio, I think it'd be neat for their blades to take on the appearance of light (in keeping with her element from back home). This is mainly for pretty "tracing patterns of light through the air" and making her weapons look closer to what she would have used back home; it wouldn't be treated as Radiant damage or anything like that. (Unless that's fine? In which case sure??)
   • Activation/Path: I'd really like for Venus to be able to activate the radio to communicate with the devil! Specifically, this would be fairly similar in concept to having a patron like a Warlock; however, where a Warlock's patron could (presumably) contact them through any means, Venus would have to stop what she was doing to open up communication herself. This would mainly be done by bringing both daggers into contact when hooked in, thus "closing the circuit" and allowing for the radio to broadcast. Other people would also be able to hear this communication.
   • (P) Corruption: The idea behind this is fairly simple! In canon, the devil is able to convince others to lay down their burdens and become something new. While full transformation is probably a little extreme for a game with defined powers and powersets, I thought it might be neat for Venus to be able to "buff people up" temporarily while broadcasting, provided that 1) they don't "reject" the devil's offer and 2) are within earshot. This could range anywhere from a temporary transformation (think a cosmetic shift, or some small willing body horror) to a small D&D buff (you feel lighter on your feet, more full, etc.).

   
   If any of these are too much, please just let me know and I'd be happy to cut back!

2. Path Action: Allure

   You can perform an action (such as a wink, a blown kiss, a dance) that will make someone mildly feel the need to listen to what you tell them to do.

3. Path Action: Break Dance

   (P) You have the ability to use a dance to force someone into momentary paralysis.

Why this path?:

I could just say that I'm vain and think Venus would be really cute as a dancer, or that she's sort of clumsy and I love that sort of gap.

And that... would be completely true. Whoops.

But there's something bigger to it, too. The truth is that Venus herself would like the idea most, once she got over the initial embarrassment. A large part of Venus's wish to the devil is to see and be seen, after all... and what easier way is there to be seen than to take the role that wants people looking at them? It's a reaffirming path for her that lets her be the center of attention, and reminds her of how much more congruent her body is with her mind now.

Plus, yeah. She'd be really cute.

blurb code by photosynthesis