#pheres things

PHERES DYSSEU | 18 | fuchsia-maroon  cusp

   ”Pheres, darling, you couldn’t have gotten closer if you bled me.” She smiles at you, then, and the jewels overlaying her fangs glisten. You’ve never been a fan of things so ostentatious as this, for yourself, but you’ve never had the teeth to pull it off: hers are a curling snarl of daggers, thick and heavy enough that even the sight of them makes your neck prick.

   But it’s not a personal sort of threat. You haven’t done anything: she just wants you to be spooked, and so you acquiesce, bobbing your head down low, spreading your hands in front of you. The thin skin of your wrist glows red under the harsh light, and when you peer over your glasses at her through your lashes, dare to make eye contact -

   “You make them look lovelier than I thought, miss -”

Pheres and Sipara are both heavily inspired by Elizabeth Wein’s THE SUNBIRD, which is a fucking amazing book that I demand everyone reads immediately: Pheres pulls primarily from Telemakos’s curiousity, his initial difficulties with empathy, and the fact he is a child who gets pulled into political adventures far above his level and his paygrade, and suffers the price for his relative’s actions.

In addition, Pheres’s a good chunk of ANCHORHEAD, a piece of interactive fiction from the 90′s, specifically in Michael and his horrifying relationship with his ancestor:

I have been hoping that the terrible dreams would prove to be stress-related, that they would fade once the move was behind us and we had finally settled in – but that has not turned out to be the case. They’re stronger than ever. Red-rimmed eyes pursuing me through strange corridors, and the voice – the whisperer who tells me I am not who I am. The whisperer tells me secrets of this house, secrets of those who lived here – they are my blood, and he tells me he always returns to his blood. He tells me of secret keys and combinations; I don’t know what they open yet but I have an idea –

Tomorrow I must go down to the cellar. I must see if the things revealed to me in that terrible book are true.

I know she is worried about me. I want to tell her, but –

This is mostly seen in aspects of Pheres that he himself will never bring up in play, but that feature in drabbles and shape a large part of his character: he has memories from Rmeros, his current personality is entirely shaped by the fact he was steadily manipulated/abused into fitting into the mold that Rmeros wanted, and a consistent fear for both him and Sipara was that he died at the river, and the only person left, functionally speaking, is someone who thinks he’s Pheres.

It also features in the fact the Dysseu bloodline, after the first, essentially is doomed to feed off of each other! They always return for their blood. The “terrible book” of the Dysseu lineage is Medeia’s journal, which inspired Rmeros to try and steal Pheres’s body: in the future, Medeia’s journal will serve as a lure to draw out her descendants in space, and any that actually make it there will risk having their ancestor prey on them.

If Riccin’s overall theme is examining how a character can be steadily exploited by the majority of people in their life, and still go on to try and draw other people into that same cycle with them, then Pheres’s overall theme is an exploration of the lasting effects of this - he was very intentionally set up in a way that if you change even one detail about his past, then he would be an intensely different person.

Pheres was made to be an example of the fact that characters can suffer through a great deal of trauma, and still come out the other end defined by it without being broken by it: although he’s had to deal with Rmeros, with Sipara, with Trieua/Malaya/Khaneh, and although all of them have done harm against him, trauma isn’t something that’s ultimately damaged him so much as that it’s shaped him into something that he otherwise wouldn’t be.

Tonight’s NPC: Zvezda Cosmos! Design adopted from the lovely @spicecookies.

She’s the fourth employee of Pheres and Sipara’s shop! She lives in the building next door, and acts as cashier, groundskeeper and general face-of-the-business when everyone else is gone. She’s very laidback and naturally inclined towards being mild-mannered, which hides her natural propensity towards the absurd: her pelicanspider lusus has left her with slightly unusual standards towards normal behaviours, and the social acceptability of things like eating live fish.

Videos that Pheres has undoubtedly harassed everyone on his friendslist with.

Alter the placement of another fellow’s bookmark. You will rejoice when the disoriented chap finds himself lost in an unfamiliar passage!

Steal another fellow’s handkerchief. The poor chap will be forced to wipe his nostrils with a disposable tissue, like a runny-nosed nitwit!

Put pebbles in another fellow’s slippers. When he slips them on first thing in the morning, the poor chap’s day will be off to a rocky start!

Snip off another fellow’s forelock. You will delight in the poor chap’s sorrow as he grieves for the loss of his loveliest curl!

Put bedsheets with a slightly lower thread count on another fellow’s bed. You will delight in the addled fellow’s fitful slumbers.

Rub dirt on another fellow’s necktie, and before he has a chance to clean it, announce that he has soiled his ascot!