Karijou

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.

• 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."

• 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!