#charisma.

SPARROW. LILIANA RASMUS   —   28,  NB.

Instant Connection: make two people who have never met each other, feel a certain emotion about the other (+) works on anyone (-) they must never have met before (-) your magic ends after five minutes, but that’s usually enough time for the feelings to become real (-) does not work a second time on a person

HISTORY

cw: death, suicidal ideation

YOU LEARN TO LOVE LIKE THIS: as a bruise, as a scar that runs along your the curve of your heart. Oh Love, the great monstrous beast, how it tears at the seams of the left and right atrium to reveal the vague lifeline of a family. You tug at the thread separating them and the rest soon follows after. When your mother leaves, she does not forget you. You receive red-stamped postcards carried on the waves of Lethe that forwards an artificial display of remorse. She misses you terribly and wishes dearly to at by your side holding you at arms length as all mothers should. However, she is not yet fully recovered and requires your patience in the meantime. You know what it means, what it has always meant, that churning sliver of doubt. You, born and bred from duty, have never been enough to stay for (will never be enough to live for). And your father, sat in a whittled down chair, will wait for the day she returns and recalls nothing else. You watch as he falls and recoil at the outcome. Perhaps if you had been a better child his fate might have been escapable, but you sat and you watched, and as a result succumbed to his loneliness. It’s only in half-mourning that you adorn his legacy with pride. It may be a noose, it may be a lifeline — but it is the only thing that can set you free.  

There’s a story about the sun and its children and the way the world was remade. Sick and full of envy, it watched as the moon — that other half of being — was adored by all those who worshiped it. Its followers were unafraid of its wrath and so danced in milky waters to the rippling of its face. The story ends with the sun destroying the moon and thus killing itself. It is a terrible thing to realize that you too will be spared no choice. To you, being real starts with a gaze and ends with the turn of a head. It is a performance, and you are only as real as others make you out to be. So you cleverly craft a mask of higher judgment; postulate yourself in such a way that others seek your guidance. They do not question why love and all its forms are found in the palm of your hand or why it seems to follow you. To do so would be to question the validity of their own need, to own the bitter secrets they try and swallow. People do not need to know that love is the cruelest thing a person can ask for. In the end, the sun will never rises again. You will not let it.

CONNECTIONS

HARRIER﹒ I NEED YOU TO HATE ME MORE

cw: death

Theirs is a love you cannot conquer, cannot move like a dial on a clock. His uncle comes to you with a want in his gaze and a briefcase full of money you cannot refuse. He asks of you to find his nephew a match: a pretty little thing with pretty glittering eyes and pretty vain ambitions. The woman would need to be careless and require all of his attention so that he might drown and never resurface. This, and nothing less. You find his match in a week, connect their hearts in an instant, and you do not see HARRIER again until you are invited to attend their wedding and then her funeral. It’s a solemn affair and across the chasm where her body is laid in a casket, you see him for seemingly the first time in your life. HARRIER is a man full of sorrow, that you can understand, but what seems difficult to decipher is why his rage is pointed at you like an arrow. Vitriolic words of accusation follow in its flight and you catch every bolt with your own heart. It’s a thrilling thing to be at the receiving end of someone else’s hate, you wonder how far he would go to demonstrate it.

BLACK HERON ﹒STILL, THERE IS THIS HORROR AT BEING LEFT BEHIND

cw: suicide

Your fear of being known paralyzes your mind into action. It's embarrassment ten times the river you drown in, and far more humiliating than being saved ever could be. In that moment of resuscitation they saw you — really saw you and from then on you knew you could never bear to part with it. Like a broken bird you flock to their side in comfort, hiding beneath their wings like a distant star in the night sky. They don’t care for you but it’s easy to pretend that they could. How can it not be when they allow you to rest your head on theirs, hide your eyes from glaring light, and insist you mourn over all the life you’ve missed so far? How can you not crave their affection when they are the only one who gives it so freely? You know this promise will be broken one day, and soon they too will leave, but for the moment it’s nice to pretend that you’re wanted — that you were loved for even a second.

ALBATROSS﹒   THERE'S A THEORY THAT SAYS YOU DON'T EXIST UNLESS SOMEONE CALLS & YOU RESPOND

In all things certain there is an air of mystery to be desired. You're familiar with each other in the way opposites always are. Her strength against your charm, immovable forces that do not change despite the time in-between. Your history dates long before you meet again in Caedes Corvi; long before your father was but a whisper of a man, and your mother a creature of the air. ALBATROSS has known you since your conception and has remained a thought by your side since then. There was no stronger connection than the distance between your home, but even that is not enough for her to stay. She leaves and does not come back, but you wait for her until you too are chosen for a task. Things are different now, only childhood memories tie you together, and a tall silent wall thwarts your attempts from reaching over; it is your own pride, and you hope that one day it may be torn down at the hands of her love. Until then you’re content to be with her even as a thought.

rkcharisma starter for @siyeonrk

“siyeon unnie...” chaewon sighs with exasperation, placing the plastic-wrapped plate of cookies on the table before them. “i don’t know what to do. why do they always end up like this?”

the chocolate chip cookies look more like discs of charcoal, black and crumbly. “i followed the recipe!” chaewon pouts. “but i didn’t have enough time before dance class, so i just made it a little hotter and baked it faster... this totally goes against the laws of physics...”

charisma starter for @rkseokjin

after a long night at the cafe, organizing notecards and preparing study materials for herself and her students, it’s time for yewon to start heading home. the streets in this neighborhood can get pretty empty at night. all the more reason to be aware. yewon isn’t paranoid of stranger danger like some of her friends, but with everything that’s been in the news lately, she keeps her guard up.

as she walks toward the bus stop, she detects footsteps a few paces behind her. yewon glances over her shoulder-- it’s a guy, not a particularly threatening-looking one, but a guy all the same. she continues walking forward, thinking of what to do. probably nothing. he’s probably normal. but, that’s also what a lot of people think before something bad happens.

SWAN. ANEZKA PATRIDGE   —   29,  W.

Memory Manipulation: You can erase any memory so long as you both have a recollection of it — this includes events, people, objects, etc. (+) works on any memory you have knowledge of (+) does not have a time limit (-) abstract concepts like childhood, parents, love, etc. do not count (-)  memories must be specific (-) one memory one person (-) cannot erase the same memory from a different person (-) you also lose the memory you’ve stolen

HISTORY

cw: abusive relationship

YOU ARE BOTH CREATOR AND CREATION, a fairy tale with no end. On display is a story to unfurl, a mystery to satiate curiosity: Once there was a palace made of glass and high up along the tower’s ledge sat a girl with the wind’s voice wrapped around her neck. An iridescent window illuminated the soft contours of her face in an array of spectral light that shifted as the day revolved around her. There was no night in the realm of the dawn, no terrible accident for anyone to mourn over. The girl was kind, and as long as one did not look closely, she was content. Sunshine followed her like sycophantic baubles to collect, and as she overlooked a land made of distant sorrows she heard not the toll of bells, but a song like infinite freedom. You envy her and the way she is unmoved by time, preserved like a gossamer butterfly on display. The girl does not know of love or hate or misery or how a touch can shatter the world. She does not question, does not wonder about the way things ought to be. This dream girl does not exist, but she is yours to conquer for as long as you desire. You write about her day in macabre fascination, tending to her every desire as though she would wither without it. A question remains unanswered, the beginning of a story unwritten, what drove the girl up the tower? Could she ever come down — what would happen if she did?

There was a time when you would have died for love — now, you can’t stand to write it. She destroyed you, capitalized on every breath of want, and stole all that was worth taking. Even now you feel the phantom brush of her lips, the mundane certainty that life would not be worth narrating without her hand around your neck. In the end you unravel yourself, make fiction out of truth and immortalize that which had never been tangible before. You sting string sentences together like daisy chains, redefine what tragedy outght to be, and in a second forget what it means to be nothing. Still, the strain in your hand reminds you that some stories are meant to end, some genres never returned to. When you renter the land of the written, you do not require a former legacy to survive. Pen in hand, you know that the world would crumble with a word, a suggestion, a thought  — all it would take is a dedicated hand to begin. All stories require an end, and you will be the author of yours.

CONNECTIONS

PEACOCK  ﹒  I WOULD NOT HAVE IT OTHERWISE

You’ve paged through his life in search of an error, watched countless pallid interviews to understand him, and even in your spectral study of his miserable existence you’ve found nothing worthy in examination. Outside he is unremarkable, unbearable, undeserving of his acolytes — undeserving of your story. What makes man great is not his aptitude for tragedy, but his submission to the sublime. PEACOCK cannot see beyond the veil of his own understanding and as such threatens to make a mockery of yours. So be it then. He will come to understand your position or else you will ruin his art in the same way he would ruin yours.

MAGPIE  ﹒  THERE WAS NO GOD, THERE WAS ONLY WHAT YOU WANTED

There is a strange desire in his mouth, desperation as a need to love something so lovely. He is an acolyte to your new religion of disclosure, and would chase the world if it meant an end to your ever idle impulse. He does not tell you how or why he found you, the reason for his endless devotion to your cause, but you have taken a liking to all things pitiful and lonely and MAGPIE is no exception. You had never seen a creature as wretched as he was the day you found him. Alone, he has become your most devoted attendant. You offer him the praise he expects and sleep well knowing that in this life, he would follow you to your solitary end, you need only ever ask.

PEREGRINE FALCON  ﹒  I NEED YOUR TEETH IN ME, SLOW AND VICIOUS

It feels like love. You know it’s not. Her fist connects to the man’s solar plexus and the actor flies across the room in a spectacular show of strength. Sweat gathers like a lake and gleams like starlight under studio spotlights and it feels as though a lifetime might pass if you continue to watch someone else wipe at the spot you would have liked to skim. You are nothing to her, and that perhaps is the reason why you care. PEREGRINE FALCON’S disinterest is another form of hate without her knowing it. It cuts your ego in half and leaves you without strings to tether a heart to your body. But the terrible truth is: if your love had been enough, she wouldn’t have been for you.

SNOW OWL. NOUR   —   26+,  W.

Camouflage: Whomever you dress, they can blend into their surroundings (+) works on an infinite amount of people (-) the magic does not work on people who already know the person being hidden (-) illusion is broken if outfit is torn, ripped, or taken off (-) outfit must match the setting/occupation

HISTORY

YOU’RE A FOREIGNER IN THE GARDEN OF ETERNITY. You’re told to tread lightly, to suffocate your nauseous identity so that you might come apart more easily; you’re tasked with contorting yourself into shapes no one has seen before, with swallowing pride that would expose you. You learn to lie until there is no other truth than your narrative. You’re a foreigner in the land of the rising sun — you’re not made to withstand such bleary warmth and it melts you until there is little left of the person you knew before. Attention seeks not you, but the product you are capable of making. You are a singular stitch within a narrow tapestry and it’s maddening to create for those who do not appreciate the clarity of your vision. Your genius is made for the stars and celestial bodies alike, you are not meant to bow your head in submission and sew someone else’s dream. You could have the world as a thread on your spindle if you’d like, but you are a foreigner and your voice is lost under its oppressive heat. So you stay quiet, become malleable until you are certain there is nothing left of you to blur. Adorned in silk and cashmere, you kill yourself in order to become.

Your undoing was a lie: you could never forget yourself. If change is the nature of man, then what is the nature of woman? Solitary, infinite, a cosmic occurrence — it was never in your nature to be anything less than consuming. So you distance yourself, find solace in bleeding hearts that can melt memories into something more manageable. There is no room for the blistering heat, the warmth of some affection you once thought you knew. No, at the end of the night when stars are snuffed out and the world has gone to sleep, only you will remain. It is a self-made prison but at least it is a confinement you believe yourself worthy of. The past is a thing not to be admired but to be annihilated — to be replaced by a bleak midwinter. This is the consequence of all things star-touched: one day you will swallow yourself and no one will be there to watch it happen.

CONNECTIONS

BLUE JAY﹒ WE LINGER AT THE EDGE OF A GREAT AND INFINITE NOTHINGNESS, ALONE, TOGETHER

You found him hidden in the house with no windows. After all the rest had deserted your wayward sanctuary and there was nothing left but dust and shoe prints in the dirt, it was just the two of you. Aimless and lost at the edges of a borderless map. You used to savor the freedom of being nowhere, alone, before and behind you either eternity or nothingness. The look on his face, the blink of thousand-yard eyes, struck something loose in you. Dug its fingernails beneath the frayed edge of a hem, beckoned to you with a solemn stare made for smokescreens. You’ve worn a hundred faces in your time, fashioned your silhouette into a dozen lies and guises and deceptions. Convincing yourself that being alone was better than suffering with company has been your greatest feat of all. In BLUE JAY, you see a reflection of the self you thought you’d abandoned beneath starless skies. You see how loneliness wears on the body, and how profound a thing it can be to find a friend at the end of the world.

PEREGRINE FALCON﹒ YOU LOOKED AT ME AS IF TO SAY, HOW DARE YOU SWALLOW MY HEART?

She laughed once, mouth against your pulse, fingers tangled through the strands of your hair, the strings of your soul, and promised to steal the sun for you if only you’d ask. Anything, everything — whatever you could dream, she would make it yours. Every time she touched you, unraveled undiscovered territories within you and without, it was like an act of invention. A new language formed between teeth and skin, a code of bruising longing that only her trigger-calloused hands could speak. You always knew it would end in catastrophe. A love like yours could only end in death or cataclysmic disaster — hers or yours, it never really mattered. Except now you’ve fallen into your own labyrinth, plunging back into the same, familiar rhythms and intricate contraptions. In some ways, you’ll forever be one step ahead of her. You know that the only way out is mutually assured destruction. 

BLACK HERON﹒ YOU APPEAR IN ME, I IN YOU, WE HIDE IN EACH OTHER.

Through the many spiraling paths and winding threads of your story, they have remained a constant. A shade flickering in and out of view, just out of frame. They were reckless then, rough-hewn and yet unforged by the trials of time and consequence. A child hovering on the cusp of some greater purpose or perilous fate. You showed them the unseen layer of the world beneath the world, a way to live smarter, sharper, to harden the cut of their own shadow so they could become any shape or form they needed to truly disappear into the dark. Even in your own metamorphosis, the familiarity of them was the only thing you could never abandon. The comfort of an echo, the sound of well-worn footsteps falling into step beside you, is almost a homecoming. Whenever you step forth from the light and into the darkness, you will find them there, waiting with their smile etched from starlight and the thrill of the hunt glinting in their teeth. 

NIGHTINGALE. ISABELE ÀUREA DE AZEVEDO   —   28,  W.

Hypnosis: cause heightened focus and suggestibility (+) people are more prone to giving you whatever you desire (+) works for as long as you maintain eye contact (-) will not work on a person who has ill feelings toward you (-) effect is strongest on people you already have made a positive impression on.

HISTORY

cw: death

IN THE END, YOU WERE THE ONLY ONE LEFT TO SAVE. Seared in your mind are their faces, twisted into grotesque imitations of your family; their voices, calling through the rain and yourself frozen in fear having feigned ever hearing them at all. In the morning after the destruction, you’re held in the arms of a distant relative. They smooth the edges of your hair and take your hand in theirs — they called you their miracle. To them and many others you were an idol of hope. The sound of your sorrow carried itself across an ocean and made a name for itself in honor of your misery. Your voice was captivating and dark and unraveled the tangled heart strings of men. You were naive then, conflating purpose with importance, genius for luck. A poster girl for the new dawn, death was worth the price of admission. It seemed imminent then that when the faceless came for you, extended an offer in gratitude, knelt on the ground you sauntered so assuredly on, the line between martyrdom and godhood blurred. The world would be changed for the better once you were finished with it. This was your first mistake, the second would come just as easily.

It is the fate of all people to want what they cannot possess — to desire an end and a completion. You are restless, plagued by the worry of an ever decaying legacy that anoints your name. It was a mistake, your desire, and you are beset by the misfortune that has become you. That is, if man so easily died for the idea of you, then men would kill to have you. In this you have become a reason for their end, the only thing worth dying for. This is the prophecy you have been made to fulfill: a songstress touched by the muses to wane man’s heart from the myth of the world, to remind them of some higher destiny they must one day fall prey to. No one will escape their fate, but you could make the journey so much easier, you would become a temptation beyond resistance. In your voice, your touch, your glance, there’s a calling of languid intoxication and it lingers like loathing. Most tragic of all is the way your existence has become synonymous with the finality of others, as though your desire was never enough to fill the body alone.

CONNECTIONS

LYREBIRD﹒ BUT I’LL CUT OFF MY HAND BEFORE I EVER REACH FOR YOU AGAIN.

There is a structure to all things holy and LYREBIRD has desecrated every pillar on which it stands. It begins with a poem, an innocuous piece of paper you tuck away behind your ear where it will never see the light of day. It is your soul made transparent, and as you unfurl it for LYREBIRD to understand you do not notice the way their eyes seem to gleam; the way their hand takes it from yours so gently before they press it to their lips. You should have known. You have always been a means to an end, a way to extract purpose without ever having to take accountability. Still, you did not expect betrayal to come so quickly nor from the only one you have have trusted to see you. It’s only when the sound of your soul is distorted by someone else’s voice that you realize they did not know you at all.

FALCONET﹒  YOU CAN BE NOTHING AND STILL BREATHING

Is good a thing you inherit, or a thing you are? All your life you’ve strived to be virtuous, to do what no person has done before, and perhaps in another life this might have been possible. Here though, you are doomed by your fatal encounter. LYREBIRD might have been the one to shove you in a coffin, but it is FALCONET you have to blame for burying you alive. It’s his insistence, his willingness to help burn bridges that has you toeing the line between good and evil — wrong and right. He shatters the world for you and the first act of revenge is done on your behalf. It was a mistake trusting him, to believe that his way of solving things might be better than yours, and now you pay the price for this decision. His impersonation of someone repentant is despicable, his apologies even more so. You know he wants your forgiveness, would do most anything to earn it back, you will not give it to him.

STARLING ﹒ INSIDE ME, SOMETHING SEETHES

Of all the dark and dangerous things which follow you, STARLING is by far the worst of them. Her cruelty is not violent or treacherous, it is the secret smothering of your own morals. A whisper in your ear, the reflection of your own face — she turns you away from the light in order to see better in the dark. It is an impossible task to deny her, an even more difficult thing to do when you are stuck in your own indecision; and while you hate the thing you’ve become she makes the fall feel so easy. GOLDEN PHEASANT warned you about the devastation that follows her, but all shadows have their temptations and to you it offers a muse you had all but forgotten. STARLING reaches out her hand, invites you to join her down the rabbit hole. The only thing left to do is jump.

NPC PEACOCK. NAME   —   28+,  M.

Attention: Wherever you go, people can’t help but look at you (+) can transfer the center of attention to another person for one minute (-) cannot be turned off, but can be muted by covering your eyes with sunglasses  (-) this works only if they’re within a twenty-five foot radius of you.

HISTORY

IT SHOULD BE ENOUGH — IT ISN’T. The humility of it all begins with a promise. It is the sacred meeting of two people under the guise of sincerity. The two players share a look of concern, a mutual angst of the morbid, and they watch as they mirror each other’s disgust. Transformed, distorted, I could never bear to part with you, they parrot. This is a lie, the truth of the matter is much more plebeian than you would like, much more mundane. There is nothing innocent in their tender gaze, it is an artifice crafted carefully for the masses that gawk. Cameras flash a burst of radiant displays of light, and the sunglasses do nothing to conceal the veiled contempt of a couple in paradise. You extend your hand to them, offer a finger and bind your hands in a complex web of intimacy. It feels catastrophic, but not in the way it should feel, not like it would if you two had met in some other lifetime. Instead, you force from them an acquiescence of another meeting. They concur, as was rehearsed from that morning, and you lower your guard for the public to acknowledge. Their breath is hot on your neck, and whether it is from the attention or the soured mood, you cannot tell, but you excuse yourself from the meeting with a shy glance thrown their way. You do not let yourself retch until you are confined in the safety of your apartment.

Your life was made in motion picture, tainted by the garish display of technicolor. There was a time when dizzying displays of cinema had been a dream of disproportionate talent. When soft illuminations in a dark room were a comfort, and not a chore, and the world felt unfathomably large. You would sneak into theaters then, buried within the tall beige coats of men much more grandiose than you. Few tried to stop you, even fewer succeeded. And when the movie came to an end, when the protagonist was held lovingly in the arms of some other, you would stare into the darkened spot and imagine yourself as the invisible hand that moved life to motion. You did not care for the spotlight yourself, preferring instead to puppet that which could never be perfected. And in your mind each character fell to the same tragic fate of some cyclical nature. Even then it was of no consequence whether they lived or died: what mattered is if they bleed.

CONNECTIONS

GOLDEN PHEASANT﹒  I ONLY WANT SOMEONE ELSE TO BLEED

You could not have orchestrated a more devastating death than the wound GOLDEN PHEASANT injured upon herself. It was perfection, her slow descent to rage and you lament only having caught the tail end of it. How would her eyes have burned against the dying light, framed by your lens? How would she have looked at the moment of self-resignation with your hand to guide it? Her physical beauty is trivial in comparison to the rest of her; had she remained in perfect stasis, doll-like in her maneuvers, she would have been but another pretty face in the passing of time. What she can give you, what you may offer her, is the immortalization of your art within the epoch of history. You should have known desire was never enough to fill you, what you want now can only be taken by a hand, with a fist, with the devotion of all that you are to the craft.

SWAN ﹒  OH, I WILL BE CRUEL TO YOU

What you did to SWAN’S screenplay was nothing less than charity, it was the slaying of something pitiful that needed to be put down. The world might think her a saint, the next divine being, but you know what lies beyond the tale of the girl in the tower: it is a woman too afraid to come down, hurt by some creature she made for herself.  She hides is a prison of her own design, and you destroy her esteem because it is the only thing that makes her worth reading. In truth, she should be thanking you, congratulating you. To learn from the best is an opportunity most would not take lightly, but you give it to her without asking for much. Under your tutelage you think she could be better than good, perhaps less than great; she need only shed her pride for the world to be given.

LYREBIRD﹒  LOVERS DISCOVER EACH OTHER ONLY IN MUTUAL LACERATION

Once, there was recognition of the same destiny, a regard for the artistic and all the things a person must do for perfection. Once, you had regarded them as a friend, now, they have become an obstacle you cannot surmount. It starts with an agreement, a silent contract to play the role of your lover in an attempt to ward off prying eyes and cunning infatuations, but what lives and dies between your muse is of no concern to the plastic half of your whole. You find their interest in GOLDEN PHEASANT to be inexplicably deranged, an intrusion to all things sacred. You thought them better than the soulless others, the last pretty thing with meaning; but you were wrong about them, just as they were wrong about you. A vow of love is made under the guise of affection, a solemn oath never to be broken, “What stand in front of us is the end of life itself.” What LYREBIRD does not understand is how much of a liability they have become, what departure truly means.