apheliocentric

you are the girls that mothers warn their sons about
you have battered knuckles, kiss-bruised lips, eyes
that have seen too much but they say you know too
little about. you are the girls that were told there is no
way out but you found one and you are the girls who
the gods envy. you are the girls that find courage when
all signs say 'abandon all hope ye who enter' because
there is no place more like home than a place you were
told no, you aren't good enough;

but you are. you always have been.

ASTRID PATENAUDE
twenty ▪ female ▪ panromantic demisexual ▪ commoner ▪ jack of all trades

according to her parents, astrid's a good little church girl that's lost her way somewhere along the line. a commoner borne to equally faithful parents and the second of three children. she has an ax to grind with the pseudo-parliament that has been established and even more so with the magicians that have claimed aristocratic roles while grinding the working man into dust. although sardonic at best with her religion, she is surprisingly virtuous. she preaches of injustice and will go to great lengths to defend and protect those that she believes has been wronged by the opposing parties present in paris. she believes in the goodness of people and forgives, though she never forgets. astrid lives for her family and the few friends that she has to her name.

PLOT IDEAS ▪ employers, religious individuals, acquaintances (of varying backgrounds), other members of the resistance that may/may not answer to her directly, family members, informants, her spine, her lungs, her heart.

OPHELIA
fifty ▪ female ▪ demiromantic asexual ▪ strigoi ▪ diviner

she sees all or so her claims may run. ophelia has seen more things than she has ever wanted to see in her life. a visionless prophet. a touch out of focus with her own kind, she finds great interest in the realm above the catacombs and departs to the surface on the occasion. she can be polite to a fault and has a great dislike for most, but that is not to say that it is impossible to hold a conversation. she is the type to care for humanity as a whole rather than as an individual and it shows in the way she carries herself. she considers herself to be a queen but is a far cry from one. self-destructive and vicious, it's difficult to tell which parts of her are truly her and which parts of her were created as an alter ego. her greatest desire is to be genuinely wanted by someone else.

PLOT IDEAS ▪ customers, her 'saved', other strigoi that may or may not find her laughable, predominantly enemies, her eyes and ears.

you are the boys that fathers of daughters resent 
you have battered knuckles, bloody noses, eyes
that have seen too much but they say you know 
too little about. you are the boys that have been 
told that it is not okay to be afraid in the face of 
danger but you are and you are the boys that 
soldiers envy. you are the boys who shed your
coats of armor and stand in the eye of a hurricane
swallowing thunder and spitting out lightning

because there has never been any shame in being fragile.

MIN LI
twenty-one ▪ male ▪ panromantic asexual ▪ commoner ▪ livestock

min has never done so much as spoken more than one word since he became a ward of the state. a commoner borne to a single mother in the gilded ghetto of chinatown and the first and only product of an unwanted marriage. min has never had a choice in the life that he was given. he cannot make decisions on his own and relies on the support of other people to forge even the slightest outlines of his own identity. he can sometimes be cold even without making gestures and frequently avoids both large and small gatherings alike. despite this, min is hopelessly lonely and seeks out companionship when it is made available to him. he has no strong opinions or beliefs and despite knowing that he wants freedom? he doesn't know what he'll do when he does have it.

PLOT IDEAS ▪ other livestock, the strigoi in possession of him, liberator, any repeatable contact with the outside world (a penpal, maybe).

CALDERA
four-hundred ▪ male ▪ aromantic pansexual ▪ dijin ▪ uncontracted

caldera is a far cry from the normal, but that much is obvious even in his disposition. he speaks in cryptic riddles and repeats things that he hears more like a parrot than anything else. while he finds no interest in his own kind, he also finds no interest in the human world and would much rather find interest in eating them than much else. not that he often gets away with such things since people have a nasty habit of getting their nose into places they should not be. he's a dijin that had been trapped during the rift and is teetering on the very edge of sanity and insanity every split second. a monster? perhaps. but he'd argue that mm, not quite yet.

PLOT IDEAS ▪ dijinni acquaintances, a contractor, 'playthings', past contractors, dijinni (old friends, old enemies; anyone who would have a faint recollection of who he was prior to the rift).