O , MY SOUL

tachoniis : a portrayal of the late occtis tachonis, eighth son of a family who never loved him. centering themes of death, reanimation, and the sudden stillness of time while the world continues moving.

hello! this is an independent and mutuals-only blog for occtis tachonis from critical role campaign 4. this blog is run by albatross, who uses he/him pronouns and is 21+! i am currently up to date on critical role: aramán, and details about my portrayal are subject to change as we learn more information about the world and characters.

carrd ( rules, bio, verses, bonds ) .

main-blogroll:

@deadlettered ( fandomless oc )

@drfeelgreed ( baccano! multimuse )

@recre8ed ( cho hakkai of saiyuki )

side-blogroll:

@diicerolled ( d&d multi / sideblog to all my main blogs )

@isghouliish ( mh + eah + pixie hollow multi / sideblog to all my main blogs )

@inateliiers ( multifanfom multimuse / sideblog to all my main blogs )

i'm actually, like, deeply and debilitatingly anxious about interacting with people who are not my friends, and i'm trying to work on that. but there are times when it gets really bad, and even if i want to reply to some things i end up thinking things like "omg, i can't reply to this thread because they're going to think my characterization is bad and my writing is bad and i'm a total fraud of a roleplayer", so i end up procrastinating them. it gets worse when it's a canon character people KNOW, which is why i've been hiding out on my oc blogs and slightly-more-niche canon blogs.

so that's the real reason for my drop in activity, hahaha ~ i have been trying to take it one day at a time, and i have ALMOST finished one of many such owed replies as of writing this. but it's slow because i can usually only get through a paragraph-ish before i start freaking out really bad about revising and rewriting and going through anxious spirals again ...

anyway, it's nobody's fault but mine, but i wanted to be transparent about my silence. i'm working on it !! i really did want to come into this year making more friends and being able to chat with more people in the roleplay space, and it's not gone very well so far but i am still trying.

1. what’s a small writing quirk you have that no one would notice unless you told them? ( src. / accepting. )

i think the nature of writing quirks is usually such that the person who HAS them doesn't really notice them, and it's infinitely harder to gauge what someone else doesn't know about you, but i'll try my best. ~

i tend to use interjections a lot, especially to begin statements. like, "well," "actually," "even so," and stuff like that. and i have a massive propensity for really plainly outlining my characters' internal thoughts, which i'm trying to tone down a little bit because it can seem excessive. like, there's a lot of outright stating - "they thought one thing, but they said another" in pretty much as many words.

11. what’s your biggest muse-killer?

well, this one's my own fault, but ultimately my biggest muse-killer tends to be getting replies from particular threads i'm not actually very invested in.

i have a really hard time letting a thread drop while continuing to write my OTHER threads, and since i write chronologically most of the time i'll sometimes agree to a thread i actually don't really love the idea of. then i'll have to reply to it, and it makes all my thoughts about a muse kind of shrivel on contact, because i don't want to write that thread but also don't want to stop writing with that PERSON, you know?

aside from that ... i guess when i start plotting with a person and they make a lot of assumptions about what my muses are like and what they would do, it makes me not want to use that muse at all anymore, even if they're someone i like. but it's really difficult for me to actually lose my muse over an external event otherwise.

23. do you keep “secret” headcanons just for yourself?

it depends on the muse and also on what you'd define as a secret, but yes...?

i think mostly that fact is owed to me just feeling very awkward talking about headcanons, at times. it's not like i come up with things i intentionally keep secret, i just don't tend to post things very often when i do think of them. like, if i was asked what headcanons i had for a particular muse or a particular topic, i'd be able to answer because i have a lot of answers ready ... but i don't know how to gather the confidence to just post about them apropos of nothing. hahaha.

25. what’s your guilty pleasure genre to write in rp? ( src. / accepting )

hahaha ... well, it can really only be nsfw stuff.

i feel bad calling it a "guilty pleasure" because it's not like there's anything wrong with it, but since i joined the rpc very young compared to all the people i knew at the time, it was something i ended up being very shy about exploring when i was suddenly old enough to do so publicly.

well, i've talked about it at-length with you, so you already know the particulars. it's not like i really care about sex in real life, but i'm really fascinated by viewing and writing it through the lens of a character. i like to know how my characters would react at their most intimate levels of physical involvement with someone else, and it's fun to explore in writing!

( src. / accepting. )

i have gone on and on about baccano! already and the ways it's changed how i write, but i am deeply change-able by the things i've read altogether, so i think i'd be remiss if i said it was the ONLY media that's ever influenced me.

i think the second-biggest one has actually been the witcher. i think because it was really the most difficult-to-parse novel series i read after i started seriously roleplaying, the language ended up sticking with me quite a bit. whereas i'd say a lot of my character-writing came directly from baccano!, the way i tend to use exposition and include tangentially-relevant details seems very similar to the way it's done in the english translations of the witcher.

5. what’s a song you’ve overplayed while writing but still love? ( src / accepting. )

funnily enough i really don't listen to music while writing! i play it pretty much every other part of the day, like when i'm doing my job (which involves a lot of data entry) i'll usually have some manner of playlist or podcast or whatever, but ANY noise while i'm doing writing is usually bad.

i guess sometimes i listen to the witcher 3 soundtrack, so any of those instrumental songs would be the proper answer. no matter how many times i hear that soundtrack it'll still be the very best music ever made for a game, to ME.

6. what’s your “comfort trope” that you always fall back on?

oh gosh. this one took some thinking because i'm actually a fairly capricious individual when it comes to the things i like and dislike. in general there isn't a lot that's consistent about my preferences even now, but if i had to say something ...

for characters, i'd say my comfort trope is something like a traveler. when i'm feeling at my worst i have the easiest time writing characters who are sort of solitary wanderers that leave impacts on other people's lives but mostly don't stay stagnant in them. and really the whole appeal of those characters is letting them find something permanent, hahaha. if that counts as a trope. that's why despite occtis being my current go-to mainblog to lurk on, my actual longest-running main muse is over on @deadlettered.

22. what’s a piece of media that permanently changed how you write? ( src / accepting. )

hahaha, i think the biggest one that comes to mind is actually baccano!

if you've done any extensive reading of works that have been translated to english from specifically japanese but really any other language, you start to notice a lot of really peculiar ways of phrasing things that you wouldn't get from a primarily english-speaking author. and i DO read a lot of light novels, so it's inevitable that those end up impacting the way i write. they've even impacted the way i type things online. i have a lot of people say i sound google translated when i'm being a little more formal.

but i singled out baccano! because there are also just a lot of quirks about baccano! that have influenced what i tend to FOCUS on in my writing - i think a lot of the ways i tend to incorporate character thoughts into a scene are lifted directly from it, for instance. and the TYPES of characters i'm interested in writing, and how i develop them. and, well, it's hard to describe, but the general cadence of my written replies feels very baccano!-esque...

‘come in. i won’t harm you.’ (src.)

It'll probably be empty.

That was what Occtis had been told, asking tentatively but firmly where he might be able to find the medicinal supplies at Castle Torch and recieving directions to the infirmary. The storeroom attached to it, he had been told, would probably be empty.

That's why he pauses in his stride when he's greeted instead with a head of long, platinum-blond hair. That, and the first few moments of utter panic, wherein Occtis sees nothing but the color and wonders which member of his family would have been bold enough to come directly here.

But the man sorting through herbs isn't someone he recognizes, and he looks in Occtis's direction, splitting directly through his now-blank exterior and says only two short sentences.

Come in. I won’t harm you.

"Sorry," Occtis says habitually, taking that step further into the dim storeroom. He glances down at the herbs in the man's hands, then back up at him. "They told me nobody would be here."

Another flick of the eyes to the herbs, then to the contents of the room as a whole—not an especially impressive stock. Which makes sense; the Barrowguard might have more need than many for basic medical treatment, but they're not doctors or healers by nature. It's likely that the medic he'd met on the way in is one of very few on staff at Castle Torch, with just enough expertise to care for the people here in times of need.