#transmasc-wizard

basically the whole Thing for the beginning chunk of the book where jonathan's stuck in draculaland is that he's taking on the typical role of gothic heroine, i.e. getting locked away in a crumbling castle by a weird old guy with an implicit looming sexual threat, and the text directly compares him to two well known female characters, lenore from the ballad "lenore" and scheherazade from the arabian nights. often the way this gets read is that part of the horror is supposed to come from jonathan's emasculation and the subversion of gender norms, and while that's not not true, it also overlooks that he compares himself to women a few times in an effort to self-soothe in a kind of "it makes me feel better to remember that my situation is kindred to these other situations" way, or, as I like to think of it, "god I'm miserable but at least I can imagine I'm a miserable girl. yeah phew that's better." later, when he gets back to london, mina mentions that it's an old preference of his to take on the feminine social role in courtship rituals (him holding her arm when they go out walking instead of the other way around), which she as an etiquette teacher is hyper aware of as "improper" but can't bring herself to actually mind.

(spoilers for the last like third of the book)

there's also the really interesting contrast where, on the one hand, jonathan is finally catalyzed into getting back on his active heroic masculinity game when his innocent wife is attacked and violated by an orientalized Other, an image that reinforces all kinds of conservative ideals about gender and sexuality and race and nation and so forth, but on the other hand he then swears to himself that if it gets down to it he will straight up turn gender / religion / nation traitor and reject everything he's been raised to value in favor of staying loyal to his wife and literally giving his body to her. he begins performing masculinity like a motherfucker but in a way that the other men ("the other men") in the story find unnerving, dangerous, and untrustworthy. previously in the text, jonathan makes a distinction between men and women vs vampires who look like men and women, and I feel like late-novel jonathan is all masculinity with no manhood. and yes that entendre is doubling.

BECK, I FUCKING LOVE YOU (/platonic). I also get to play dnd tomorrow (Rook's game for the first time in 5 weeks!!), and also played dnd last night. I'm going to answer for both some writing OCs and some dnd OCs, because well, that's how my brain works.

Rook would see, well, a lot of things. There's too many options. He basically gets attacked by a non-(physically)-damaging version of Phantasmal Killer every night anyways bc of the demon lord curse he has. One of the most common reoccurring ones though is his own party members hurting him. In a combat scenario, the most likely things to show up would probably be very similar to his hallucination (extreme tw for gore and maybe body horror), except they'd be physically trying to kill him instead of just berating him verbally. Another strong contender (and probably the go-to before the events of the campaign) would be Olvar, the goliath boatswain who physically enacted a lot of Rook's torture during his initial time on the Sea Snake.

Carrion, my tiefling/shifter barbarian, also has several options. He could see monstrous, mutated versions of his parents (who he hopes died when the meteor hit, rather than suffering this exact fate), transformed by the Delirium of Drakkenheim until they're barely recognizable. He could also see the same for his former mentor Theodore, but more likely he would see Theodore alive and well, prepared to kill him without mercy, calling him a monster, an abomination that needs to be purged.

As for actual writing OCs, let's get into those guys:

Before the events of ATQH, Fallon would probably see her father, Wymond. His betrayal directly resulted in the death of Fallon's mother, and she's had many nightmares about him returning to finish her off. After Act 3, of ATQH, it would more likely be Lavinia, but an unsettling version of her, ever so slightly wrong in some way.

Kristopher could see a version of the assassin who tried to kill him as a child, distorted by over 15 years and many nightmares. (Children's (And adults', tbh) memory can be very... malleable, especially when it comes to traumatic events.)

Dorian might see echoes of his own shadow magic turned against him. Made to kill as everyone so fears shadow magic's nature to be. Maybe shadowy hounds, wolf-like in nature, not so different from the ones that roamed around the tower where he was kept.

whats an oc you're thinking about a lot lately? how abt an old favourite? one that's been giving you some trouble?

omg :3

I've been thinking a lot about Nox recently because I've figured Bard's arc out so well and right now they just seem like an extra (btw these guys are all old favorites I thought of them maybe even 3 years ago now and they're still stuck to me like baby opossums). but I've been thinkin about them lately! mostly about how their city is fighting a big monster and how Nox relates A Little Too Much to the monster and how their best friend is supposed to be the figurehead of light against the monster

I also just thought of two more scenes so you get to have them shoved down your throat with some context

(context: Bard is supposed to be a religious hero for the city but he doesn't believe in the god he's supposed to represent. he has light powers but that's just a thing he's been able to do his whole life but now everyone is calling him the Lightbringer and thinking he's the icon of Lady Light and when he doesn't know what to do he starts actually praying to her and becomes more devout. also he's like. 16)

but anyway. Bard goes to battle against the monster (he doesn't really do anything his job is purely symbolic) and at some point gets face-to-face with the thing who had seeked him out and totally overwhelms him (but doesn't do anything to him something something understanding being made into something you're not) and the people hell bent on protecting their icon beat the monster back (who lets them) and Bard was terrified out of his mind but Nox saw what the monster did and after that starts doing research and maybe tries to find the monster and talks to it

and then later in the story we have a parallel scene where Bard goes to find the monster and be face-to-face with it in battle and uses light against it (aided by Lady Light, his light on its own is not that powerful) which works but at this point the reader has followed Nox and understands the monster more and maybe doesn't want it to die? and that scene either ends with Nox pulling him back (thus committing heresy) or the monster killing Bard I haven't decided yet I just thought about it. I don't think Bard's arc is advanced enough for him to die yet (he hasn't started loving himself again) [plaintext: "he hasn't started loving himself again"].

to preface: on scale, it really wasn't any worse than your average fandom, it just A) got Very popular over a short period and B) that period was during a time of particularly high stress where many people suddenly could only experience a social life online. tma is also a fairly political and progressive work, which inevitably leads to certain kinds of Takes. it also got Very popular right at the point where the episodes were reaching their peak of explicit social commentary and sustained morbid tone, which, especially combined with point B from above, drew out some really visceral reactions from a lot of people. nothing was actually inherently rancid about 2020-2021 tma fandom, there was just a bit of a perfect storm of factors.

having said that. some common discourse themes:

the perennial shipping discourse. georgie is the only one of our leads to have never killed a person, but really, I pinky promise that your ship between two unrepentant serial killers is 100x more problematic than my ship between two unrepentant serial killers.

asexuality: how dangerous is it? on a scale of 1-5, with 1 being "mostly" to 5 being "completely," how humiliating is it to be asexual? what is the singular true asexual experience that is unproblematic to write about?

wow, jonny was so out of line for writing this episode, what gives him the right to--oh he said it's directly based on personal experiences? so sorry, my bad, I'll learn for next time. wow, jonny was so out of line for writing this epi--

I did not like this episode. this is obviously a direct act of violence against me. why would an episode be Not Good when there is, in the world, Sadness?

hello, I have sorted all of the characters into a simple chart that clearly delineates which of them are completely irredeemable monsters with no interiority or motives and which of them are perfect angel victims who have only ever been nice and never hurt anyone, ever (and if they did hurt someone then that person deserved it). if I see you adding nuance to any of my rulings, I will kill you. this also extends to the podcast writers. #ilovebinaries.

the characters... are queer... and maybe even other marginalized identities as well... and yet, they do bad things? there's not even a single completely morally innocent character? by god, did they not think about the implications this might have!

Hi Beck!!! Thanks for the ask! 💖

5. What are some of your OCs biggest fears?

Fallon's biggest fear is losing someone she loves, again. She's lost her mother, any chance she had at her father being a good man, she loses Lavinia over the course of the story... She's terrified of losing any of the precious few people who make her feel happy and safe. Kristopher's biggest fear is that he'll never escape his family, never get to live his own life, never get to be happy. By extension, he fears being sent back to Oryn against his will. Rook's biggest fear is his friends getting hurt because of him, again. This is actually going to come up next session, but he feels as though he's to blame for a lot of pain and suffering the people he loves have experienced. On top of that, he fears not being able to protect his friends. He would gladly give his life for any of them, and the idea of being helpless to protect them is terrifying. Oh, and he also has claustrophobia. Carrion fears being seen as a monster. He fears someone seeing his transformation and killing him for it. He's already lived through perhaps his worst fear (the people he loved and who loved him turning on him and leaving him for dead, calling him a monster), so he's not sure it's possible for worse to happen. He's avoided getting close to people for years to avoid the chance of it happening again. He also fears being used as an experiment, a lab rat, a test subject to study the effects of Delirium. The Knights tried a dozen ways to cure him, and now that he's come to see his transformations as a part of himself, he sees anyone who wants to take them away as a threat to him, no matter how pure their intentions. (And he's not wrong...)

6. Do you have any OCs without stories? Will you ever create one for them?

Not really. I have potential dnd characters who do not have a home campaign yet, but when it comes to actual writing ocs, they usually come along with a project. I usually either get the idea first and then the characters, or the characters and idea come hand-in-hand. My favorite of the dnd character concepts, though, is a Archfey Warlock / Glamour Bard who got Pied Piper'd into the Feywild as a child and has no memory of any of it. As far as they're concerned, their life started the moment they appeared in the woods on the Material Plane with no memories at all. They named themself after the first thing they saw (an aspen tree), and went on from there. Their patron, the god of death, is manipulating them from a distance, guiding their path with a "broken" compass that hangs around their neck. I love them so much, and I really hope the campaign they were meant to be a part of happens someday.

16. What was you first major project? How far along is it?