Character Base

• Character Name: Venus
• Age: Never specified, aside from being slightly older than the other two girls; I'm playing her at a high school senior, recently eighteen.
• Canon (Date/Year Released)/Canon Point: We Know the Devil (2015)/True Route, around 11pm.
• Items Coming Along: The clothes on her back, a pack of cards missing a few, and her radio.
• Content Warnings for Character: Transphobia, homophobia, religious trauma, religious boot camps, child abuse, and a WHOOOOOLE LOTTA BLASPHEMY.

• Special Note: Venus is a trans woman, textually, directly, and unavoidably. At the canon point I've chosen to app her at, she is not fully aware of this yet; I'll be taking this opportunity to play out her exploration and marvelous transformation. Because of that, in keeping with the text itself, I'll be using "he" in-character and in narration until she's had a chance to define her own attachment to gender in Trench; however, I'm going to continue to refer to her with she/her throughout the app and any non-IC discussion about her.

Character Background

• History: I'm not sure the fandom wiki would do anything for this canon, or indeed if there is a canon wiki, so I'm just going to shamelessly cannibalize an old app of mine instead. Here we go!
• Core Relationships: Broken down in rough order of holiness:

• God

  God is the preacher on the radio that yells at you when you've given into sin. God is every time your parents have told you that they still love you but just wish you would be less weird, that you'd at least TRY to fit in. God is the voice of every boy you've ever been afraid of, every time your father has lost his temper and raised his voice at you, every man who's asked what's wrong with you for turning him down.
  
  Venus despises God.
  
  Is that bad to say? Maybe. It's definitely sacriligeous. But for Venus, God and his perfect systems are everything wrong with the world. Every time people trying their best are thrown aside in favor of the pastor's kid, every time people who were born good get everything and people who have tried their best are told it'll never been good enough - that's God as far as Venus is concerned. He won't be in Trench - thankfully - but even the reminder of his presence will likely color and taint every interaction she has to some extent. "The devil is the shadow of man cast by the light of god," indeed.

• Group South

  If God is the shepherd, then Group South are his sheep; if God is a pastor, Group South are his congregation. Group South are three people who work together to make Venus's life an active, living hell - bullying, lying, mocking for any perceived weakness. And Venus has a lot of weaknesses to mock. At one point, Venus says that it's easier to believe people like Group South, even when you know they're lying, because it's easier to fall into whatever they want than to make them push you and yell at you for diasgreeing. This honestly explains a lot of Venus's approach to life - at least up until she becomes unavoidably her at the end of canon.

• Group West

  Group West is the group of sinners Venus is assigned to in the Summer Scouts. At the time of this app, they're probably the closest thing she's ever had to genuine, real friends. By the end of canon, they are two of the only people that could even possibly understand her, the only people that have lived her truth alongside her, confidants and lovers and fellow monsters all in one. Even now, Venus would be relieved beyond belief to see Jupiter and Neptune here in Trench - after all, for all its dangers and cruelties, this is one place they would be free to be themselves.
  
  However, this early in her canon, things aren't quite perfect yet. There's a distance there between them, one almost entirely imposed by Venus herself. She keeps herself away from the other girls, because she doesn't think she's allowed to be near them and she doesn't think counts as girl enough to be a girl with them. This would likely ease up immensely after Venus has come to terms with her own identity - though maybe not all the way without a canon update.

• The Devil

  If God is the man in class that speaks over you, the devil is the woman who sits next to you and waits to hear your idea. If God is a father, angry at you sometimes and willing to forgive you at others, then the Devil is a mother who tells you you didn't do anything that needs forgiving in the first place. The devil is freedom. The devil is unconditional acceptance. The devil is everything Venus could dream of, and she's already reached out to her once before. All she needs now is a little push to get in touch with the devil - completely, irrevocably, and wonderfully.

Character Personality Through Key Moments

(2+) Positive Experiences:

From an early point on, we see that Venus is averse to conflict. In fact, it's almost unavoidable. She plays into the Bonfire Captain's antagonizations of her group. Every time Neptune tries to push her into saying something in self-defense, she just metaphorically rolls over and shows her belly. Even when Group South antagonizes her to her face, calling her names and all sorts of things, Venus refuses to just take their bait. It'd be easy to take this as weakness. Maybe it is, on some level. But her confession to Jupiter in the cabin closet, playing Seven Minutes in Heaven, make it all too easy to understand just what it is Venus is feeling. It's not weakness, and it's not stupidity. It's a concentrated rejection of what she sees as the role she's been assigned. "Toughen up," and "men get angry," and "boys will be boys" - Venus rejects every last part of it in a rebellious act against God.

And like all rebels at their core, Venus is idealistic - really idealistic, idealistic in the kind of way where the injustices of the world burn at the back of her mind at all times. When the other two girls become the devil, their desires are simple to understand. Jupiter wants to be told she isn't bad for who she is, for wanting to touch other girls. Neptune wants to help her friends see the happiness they could have if they only let go. Venus... wants a lot. Or, as she so aptly puts it, "I want to undo the division of day and night." Venus doesn't just want reassurance for herself. Venus wants to change the world itself so that she's not wrong in it, and that sort of externalization is a vital part of her.

Because the thing is, Venus doesn't just want things to get better for her own sake. She wants a world where everyone can be free to be who they are. She is gentle, stunningly so, in a way that transcends even her want for a better world and her refusal to hurt others if she can help it. She is the first person to check on Neptune when the black bile overtakes her; when she realizes Jupiter and Neptune have a budding crush on each other, she tries to give them space and time to spend together. Venus is rebellious, and Venus is idealistic, and even if she can be kind of a bitch without realizing it (as Neptune so aptly puts it) Venus cares so, so much about her friends.

(2+) Negative Experiences:

Of course, girls like Venus have their own problems. Rejecting God's order without understanding why just ends up falling into another role: a passive one, and one Venus falls into troublingly often. She refuses to make assumptions, outright asking Jupiter if they're really friends when Jupiter claims it; even when standing up would allow her to assert her own identity, or to help a friend out, Venus goes quiet any time conflict comes into the picture. What started as an act of active rejection turns quickly into compliant silence, and this is a dangerous thing for her to lean into - because in the end, rebellion is by necessity something that requires action.

And for all she loves her friends, she has her reasons to stay distant as well. She is envious of them, terribly so - enough so that Neptune asks her outright why on earth she'd be jealous of the shitty situation they're in. Part of this comes from being a trans woman without the words to explain it; even when Jupiter and Neptune are hurting because the world hates them for being women, Venus can't help the kneejerk dysphoria that comes alongside the world not treating her that way. She wants something, as Neptune puts it, and until she realizes what it is every kindness she offers will be full of that rotting, desperate want.

And all of these things combined, the sadness and the passivity and the horrible painful need to be something she feels she isn't, lead to a sad truth. As kind as she is, as full of love and gentle as she is, Venus is overwhelmingly, painfully resentful towards... well, everything. The world. The systems that govern that world. The people that made that system. The God those people worship. She hates all of it, so, so much. When Venus talks with Jupiter about the idea of a fair world, she says it herself:

"When someone rigs it from the start, and then says 'try your best!' doesn't that make you mad? Doesn't that make you so inconsolably mad you never want to try it at all?"

Venus isn't happy, no matter how she tries to be. Venus isn't selfless, as much as she wishes she could be. The simple fact is this: Venus is a rebel at heart, and like most rebels, she is absolutely fucking furious with the world she's been told to accept.

Deer Country Attributes

• Canon Powers: UH OH THIS SITUATION GOT LONG YOU CAN SKIP TO THE TLDR AT THE BOTTOM FOR A GENERAL IDEA???

Anyway. OH BOY HERE WE GO. So Venus is from a world where you can listen to God on the radio, where the devil sometimes reaches out and speaks to you through the radio static, and where repressed kids who go to church even though everyone there makes fun of them can be magical girls. As one of those repressed kids everyone mocks, Venus is in fact a magical girl - even if she's not aware of the "girl" part yet. Her powers, like all Scouts, come through her portable radio in a combination of holy faith, prayer manifesting the powers of the self, and crystals and wires wrapped up in an unknowably eldritch package. When she brings herself to fight, she can call the light in its burning glory; her radio, presumably a normal electronic machine, writhes and whirrs and coils like something living and organic when she fights. She can lock doors with it. She can set it as an alarm. She can pray through it and hear God's voice. And sometimes, when she's not on guard against her own worst impulses, she can speak to the devil through it.

For the most part, I don't see this thing's power being a huge issue in Deer Country. It's a strangely defined object, yes, but it's hardly something that makes her invulnerable or invincible; she's still a poorly trained teen, after all, no matter if she can call a sword of light through a radio antenna; and all of the neat little magical things she can do with it are for the most part things she could do with a normal key or pocketknife. The exception here is in speaking to God, and speaking to the devil. God is always at the same frequency, 109.8 FM; God will not be following her here, and as such that channel will only yield static. (I do like the idea that people who scare her or remind her of God might start to bleed through that channel, as long as both players involved consent fully.) The devil, on the other hand, can come through any bit of the static when you're least expecting it; you usually hear her in tiny bits and pieces when you're changing channels. Unlike God, the devil will be present in Deer Country, and can speak to Venus (or anyone else who might be listening to her radio), and this is for one very simple reason:

Even if she isn't aware yet, Venus is the devil.

See, the world of We Know the Devil is a complicated one, where the Scouts of the Lord defeat evildoers and get transformation sequences. We've established that much. The devil's beloved children, on the other hand, only get a whispered promise and the hope for something better: a body that fits like a glove, the freedom to touch and be touched, a world where three can coexist and one doesn't have to be forced away. Sometimes, when bad teens like Venus stray from God's teachings, the Devil reaches out to them - and sometimes, when the bad teens like Venus reach back, they become one. In We Know the Devil's true route, Venus is the first of the characters to become the devil, and this act becomes the catalyst that lets them all shed their skin and become the devil as well. What does that mean? It means freedom from God's rules, social and self and physical and universal. It means becoming a fully-actualized self, instead of a half-being reliant on God's grace. It means tearing away the eggshell of your flesh, letting your blood run stormy rings around the gravity of your love, letting the water run through your skin and organs and body until the bile of others' expectations has been washed out and you run clear as day.

But, okay. What does any of that literally mean? The answer is that it's complicated and nebulously defined and impossible to really summarize as a simple set of powers! The devil is the devil - not bound by human logic, not meant for objective evaluations of power. The devil seduces one lonely teen; two teens banding together can easily destroy the devil and drive her away; three devils can take on the entire world. Rather than try to evaluate exact powers or what that might mean, I'll just list here how I'd like to play this in Deer Country.

First of all, Venus will be arriving as a human being as mentioned in the first two paragraphs - a magical girl, still, with a radio that calls down light from the heavens and catches the whispers of the gods along with any pirated radio stations nearby, but a human one nonetheless. At some point in the first few months, she will be reach her point of self-actualization and acknowledge several things: her gender identity, her anger with God and his ineffable plans, and a desire to break free of all of it. At this point, she'll "hatch" into her true form: a being of light and feathers and eyes, tangible and intangible in equal measure.

From this point on, I'd like to play fast and loose with the definitions of "body" for her, based on whatever would be most fun for threads and CR at the time, and with the vital note that I have zero interest in powergaming using this. If it'd be cool for Venus to be a massless ball of light that embraces someone close to her, I think she should do that, and if someone wants to stab her as part of a player plot I think it should be fine for someone to just stab a ball of light and watch it literally bleed starlight. I've also got plans for her to keep the "shell" of her body she hatches from, have a CR reshape it and occasionally walk around in the new and improved version for a more "humanoid" appropriate version; this would give easy ways to have normal interactions and normal humanoid fights where CR or events dictate. All of this is true for powers as well, like her control over light, the strength of a devil, and things like that: I'm only interested in those things as far as they enable CR or interesting interactions through events and the game setting.

Besides, all of those aspects of her power are far less interesting than the final one. Remember how I mentioned earlier that the devil can reach out and help other people become the devil? Well, Venus is the devil, and all of that holds true for her as well. It's her voice that bleeds through when she changes radio stations, after all, whether she knows it or not. Because of all this, I'd like her to be able to hold that power for others as well. Specifically, either through individual agreements based on long-term CR or mod-approved sub-events, I'd like Venus to be able to help other people become the devil themselves, however that might manifest for them. On an individual person-to-person basis, this would most likely come as a result of helping other people stop struggling with the weight of the world's expectations and become the person they want to be; this is not necessarily a positive character trait, and I think it'd be good for individual players to be able to lean into whatever direction they like with that.

Obviously this section ended up being, uhh. Huge? Sorry about that! If there are any questions, or more direct specifics are needed on anything, I'm happy to provide.

tl,dr; I'd like to keep her weird and nebulous powers as weird and nebulous as they are in canon, with her as a "magical girl of light" with a radio that ends up becoming a weird devil, with the acknowledgment that I have zero interest in powergaming or "winning" anything and am more interested in enabling options for people - such as becoming devils themselves - or providing interesting threads for people.

• Blood Type: Paleblood
• Omen: A winged serpent, resembling a saw-scale viper. (The snake part. Not the winged part. The winged part is feathery.)
• Blessed Day: 7/7
• Patron Pthumerian: The Reckoning - and Venus will hate every second of it. Unfortunately, even if the Reckoning and Venus have more in common than she'd like to admit, she'll view her patron as far too close to the absolutist decrees of God back home.
• Blood Power Manifestation: Most of Venus's powers will be centered on her existing powerset, with her Paleblood abilities taking a more supplemental role. Initially, this would mostly function as a form of telepathy, and a telepathy centered around her radio in particular - hearing others' emotions and thoughts through blood magic "prayer," and reaching out to contact others from a distance with it as well. As her powers develop, I'd like the Paleblood to allow her to interface with others' dreams, most specifically for themselves. Essentially, this would act as a way to let her both display the possibility of a person's future for them and to see the potential person they could be.

Writing Samples

One: TDM with Lucifer
Two: TDM with Anna

The Player

• Player Name: Kari
• Player Age: Well over eighteen.
• Player Contact: beelzebae / beelzebae#2319
• Permissions: Here.

PLAYER
» HANDLE: Kari
» CONTACT: Karijou / Karijou#2319 @ discord
» AGE: 27
» CHARACTER(S) IN-GAME: n/a

CHARACTER
» NAME: Venus
» CANON: We Know the Devil
» CANON POINT: True End
» AGE: 18

» SETTING: Pages for We Know the Devil and Venus specifically. The official page for the game gives the following blurb:

Anyone can kill the devil; that’s why they always make teens the vampire slayers, the magical girls. But some kids can’t even get that right; and that’s why meangirl Neptune, tomboy Jupiter, and shy shy Venus have to endure one more week of summer camp and each other, singing boring songs about jesus, doing busywork for adults, and hoping god’s radio can’t hear them.

Before they can leave the summer scouts, they’ve got to spend twelve hours in the loneliest cabin in the woods and wait for the devil to come and live through the night--or not. You know.

» SHORT DESCRIPTION:

• 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 kids 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.

• 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."

» 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.

  
  » FIT: Venus is from a canon where kids sometimes die at summer camp, vampires might be real and the devil comes to take your friends in the night. Venus has fought the devil head on, in some routes, and she's won. Venus has felt the weight of a thousand hands pushing her down, and felt the blackness of demon's sludge choking her and constricting her throat, and still managed to hold onto who she is. What I'm getting at here is that Venus has seen some shit, and she hasn't compromised herself one bit for it. If Satan and God themselves can't stop her, how could a space station be any different?
  
  » POWERS: 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, and it can 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 we just won't directly address it in-game either. (Except that maybe she'd be half-decent at figuring out radio issues on the station, 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 and it probably looks really pretty but is also incredibly inconvenient for people who are trying to sleep.
  
  » NOTES: Since this is the space to talk about inhuman characters, I'm here to request that Venus look humanoid, but retain a decent chunk of her characteristics as the devil. This actually isn't for power-wankery reasons, or anything like it - even if all powers were necessary to be removed, I'd still request that physically she resemble what she used to be. The reason for this is fairly simple: her transformation into the devil coincides with her acknowledging her gender and her dysphoria. It's a pretty clear transition metaphor, right down to the part where she openly says she'd kill herself if she had to go back. In order to stick away from that (and keep Venus playable), my only hard limit is that she'd need to be immediately recognizable as inhuman - even if she's mostly humanoid. I hope this is workable!
  
  » SAMPLES: Network sample (with Terezi Pyrope, Reverie TDM) and 3rd person sample (with Neptune, Quiet Place TDM). The latter sample has courier text due to the mechanics of The Quiet Place, where talking is not allowed; however, the thread turns largely into action, so I thought it would work. If it's unacceptable, I can link another!