They/She | Writer, Storyteller, librarian | I tell stories with anything that isn't nailed down | You WILL hear about my OCs | Heretic seeking the lost city of Tarshish | pfp: @crownedinmarigolds | Banner: Yukito Kishiro
A commission finished for my good friend's tremere fledgeling, Xoco Jimenez! I love them so much and am super stoked with how this reference turned out.
had to include a closeup because I just love their face
A lot of people talk about the nice indications of morality through whatever choices you make in Bloodlines, but by far my favorite has to be the Patty quest.
See, by all means her dialogue was written to get on you, the player’s nerves. I don’t know if this was different for anyone else, but for most of my playthroughs she calls me a bitch. When I tell her I know where Kent Alan Ryan is, she says “Goes to show you don’t have to be popular or care what you look like to be a cool girl!” Clearly, she was written to be Annoying Girl, The Character.
But when you think of the context, she’s a ghoul desperately trying to find her dormitor. Put yourself in those shoes for a second- you’re a ghoul, and you haven’t seen your dormitor in a LONG time. Obviously, you are blood bonded to him, so you feel a connection to him and feel you’re special to him. Surely, you think, he wouldn’t just go off and disappear without telling you, right? So a million different possibilities run through your head. What if he’s lost somewhere? What if he’s in trouble? What if he abandoned you on purpose- no, surely not. And so, you ask every single vampire you know for any sort of clue. But now, because of that, the vampires you know didn’t like how loud you were asking, and passed off the task of your execution to some fledgling. All because you wanted to find the dormitor you’re literally blood bonded to.
And sure, maybe the way Patty asked you about Kent could’ve been nicer- but obviously a ghoul going through withdrawal isn’t going to be a perfect angel. In fact, one piece of Patty’s dialogue stands out to me… she is scared she’s going to age. Now, you may laugh and think this is her being superficial, but we don’t know how long she’s been a ghoul. And who’s to say a Toreador ghoul is unfounded in her fears in looking too old for her dormitor to care about her anymore? A lot of the time, ghouls are treated like disposable tools in VTM. This IS the world of darkness, after all.
So, you have a few choices here. You can do the standard thing of luring Patty to the back of the club to kill her, and you still get your exp and rep from the Anarchs in LA. You can be particularly cruel, tell Patty you saw Kent in the Santa Monica blood bank, and leave her to get drained dry by Vandal to fill the blood bags there.
Or you can make what to me feels like the most interesting decision… you can be merciful and tell her you saw Kent in San Diego, and Patty will make her way there to get lost. And then, what happens to Patty from there? We don’t know. She will never see Kent Alan Ryan again; you later see his ashes in Grout’s mansion. Patty will never get her fix again, and now you have probably gotten her lost in a place she isn’t familiar with, STILL going through withdrawal. No matter what you do, the future doesn’t look good for Patty. Such is the fate of most ghouls!
Maybe, just maybe, she finally found a Toreador in San Diego that took pity on her and became her new dormitor. Who knows?
Patty’s future seems dismal here, and so this quest isn’t really about her. It’s about how YOU as the player react to someone down on their luck, even as they aren’t being the nicest person in the world to you. And that’s what I find so, so interesting about this quest.
ive said before people will hate bioessentialism and radfems (rightfully so, TERFs fuck off) without examining *why* their ideology is so harmful. i think mainly because they have personally been the victims of TERF/radfem ire and decided that this group of people are ontologically evil. the point is bioessentialism lol
and when you dont examine what it is about their rhetoric that is harmful, this usually winds up with people parroting it in a 180 switch and just becoming misogynistic again. or they'll try to take their hands off intersectional feminism entirely out of fear of misstepping. im like, begging these people to read an essay.
point being its not actually enough to me to hate TERFs and radfems, you need to practice solidarity as well. when someone comes to you suggesting you have misstepped, you take that L because that is coming from a place of trust. you need to love women, and black people, and disabled people, and sex workers, and fat people, and people of colour, and so on and on and on. its not enough to be motivated by hate, you're not so different than the people you claim to despise.
i think we should be ridiculing them more for this. you don't get to try and go all "queer website" when your staff likes to go on nuking sprees targeting the trans fem users
would be remiss not to mention that the rainbow notably straight up just removed the trans flag colors from it. like they’re gone. it’s the progress flag minus the trans flag colors.
Hey, I'm just a lurker, but I was wondering if you have a masterpost about your OCs? I'm so curious to know more about them. In particular, Addy and Dove? No need to answer if you don't want to. :)
omg, I don't sadly. but i can definitely talk a bit about them.
very long so under the cut
Addy Primrose Blackwood/ Dove is the bone gnawer theurge i played in the wta game i played with a bunch of friends a while ago. Shes a fiercly competitive weirdo from yorkshire England who is allergic to being vulnerable in front of people. she was training to be a klaive smith like her dad (Greg) and her oldest brother (Aldwyn) but she got injured during her first change when Aldwyn stopped her from killing a guy, and it left her with nerve/muscle damage that made it too painful to continue down that path even though it was her dream to be a klaive smith.
she wound up in arroyo with everyone because her brother who was pursuing his own apprenticeship there went missing and from there she met girlnextvore's line and fell super hard.
she also has a second brother Adler whos kin folk and works for their dads public facing scrap metal business. and their mom Hannah who travels a lot studying various wolf populations.
Aldwyn Blackwood is Addys oldest brother and a galliard. hes more of a mischief maker than his siblings and makes industrial music. unlike Addy who always feels the need to prove herself, he isnt really competitive and doesn't like being on the front lines of a fight. he prefers making things as his first change kinda spooked him. hhe and his siblings broke into a warehouse to do their usual highschool mischief and it turned south when it turned out to be a front, he had his change, lost control and in addition to killing many of the guards attacking also wound up hunting his siblings.
Caelin Lyall is a Philadox from Scotland and his sister, Alexia's ghoul. he had his first change and wound up killing a bunch of people harassing him about being gay and in a paniced state went to his older sibling who helped him flee the country with her.
their mother was also a werewolf but neither of them ever learned of her or the organization she worked for.
Alexia/ Lexi was later embraced as a gangrel and briefly moved with a coterie in new mexico developing a grudge against one member named Amelia who killed several people close to her. so she chose to leave new Mexico eventually finding her place amongst the anarchs in Toronto led by Taiga.
Taiga Tirell was a former ww2 nurse who moved to Chicago to drown herself in alcohol and jazz after losing her husband and daughter in the war. she quickly became entangled with the mafia and was embraced against her will after she got caught up in a shoot out. this didn't really help her temper as her sire was a brujah and led her down a bitter revenge quest. and left her miserable when it didn't solve anything.
later she met a salubri named James who made a deal with her to help him hide his bloodline and protect him in exchange for helping her manage her temper and supporting her ambitions. they married a few years after and moved to join the Toronto camarilla befriending a Nosferatu named Emile who had become disillusioned with the camarilla. they split off from the camarilla shortly before the sabbat rolled in and demolished all but a handful of the camarilla. and organized the scattered unaffiliated kindred forming Torontos anarchs. among them were lexi and her brother cael.
later they stoked a large unhappy population of shovel heads into a full blown rebellion helping them evict the sabbat from the city.
Keenan Viese is a former brujah shovelhead who earned his place as taigas adopted childe by escaping the sabbat a few years prior to the shovelhead revolt much to the displeasure of taigas actual childe. he attempted to escape Toronto by heading to Montreal. and while he escaped the city he ran into a hunter who held Keenan captive in the basement of his church along with his wife who had been revenge embraced as a thin blood.
through that experience he met the hunters daughter Solaire who was secretly feeding her mother Chickens when her father was away. she made a desperate deal with him to release him if he helped her and her mother escape. he agreed killing her father. in the process solaire was injured by her father and lost her eye and her mother took her life leaving solaire with Keenan who took her in refusing to kill a child. he returned to Toronto with her in hopes that he could get taigas help with her. she agreed as solaire reminded her of her dead daughter.
Solaire Lachapelle is a toreador who hates Toreadors. shes my bloodlines girl and did not get embraced willingly. as she wound up in la after leaving Toronto with Keenan to avoid the shovelhead revolt. they traveled a lot until Keenan sent her off on her own to la for college.
when he returned to her in la after bloodlines he found her in a spiral of anger and self destruction that only got worse as time passed. until she was evicted from the City for breaking the masquerade in an attempt to take her own life. they returned to Toronto for a bit where solaire was pushed to pursue music which helped. though due to her past attempts on her life keenan would often kick her out of the city to go on tour whenever something that might set her off happened without explaining.
and she met Mouse on one of those trips. and became enthralled with his abandoned angry shelter dog demeanor.
Mouse/ Tobias Devorak was a dude with anger issues in bc who could not keep a stable job or housing situation to keep his life. while working at a bar he got into a fight with a ghoul belonging to Amelia beating him into the pavement and unknoingly catching her eye in the process. she proceeded to kill her ghoul and frame him for the murder toying with him as he struggled to prove his innocence. while out on bail he returned home to find her in his house where she embraced him. leaving him with only a note telling him not to get caught in the sun and her van. mouse bolted. taking to the road not sure what he was or what to do about it. he quickly fell into a cycle of not eating for as long as he could and frenzying until eventually huters picked up on his trail.
when he was finally cornered solaire found and saved him teaching him the ropes. at first he hated her, not trusting her motives. but it didn't last and they are now in a relationship and mutually blood bonded to each other.
shortly after fleeing bc his place was found trashed and covered in his blood. and he was presumed dead by sheer amount of it all over his apartment. and shortly after that his name was cleared when footage of Amelia killing her ghoul was found.
Jelly is a bastet kitten mouse found stuck in a jam jar on a trip where Amelia forced him to help her hunt a salubri. at the time he thought she was a normal albeit large kitten. he was told later that it was not the case.
she believes everyone loves her and is at war with the Lobster mafia.
Mirabel Lapina an ananke malkavian painter from 1600s france drawn to places where mass death will occur. she paints self fulfilling prophecies and will do anything in her power to enforce them.
Marie an ananke malkavian with the same sire as mirabel who likes to diablerize anyone she believes she loves.
Sonnie a tzimisce who fleshcrafts living weapons for the sabbat.
Fiore a lasombra weapons dealer attempting to claim sonnies position in the sabbat.
theres more... but i think ill leave things at this i think.
the thing about my version of Toronto is its hard to talk about a Toronto oc without the lore and theres so so so much. like taiga... it is impossible to talk about taiga without talking about what she did. bc she used a werewolf (and his connections), some shovelheads, a small group of her people, and the necropolis that is bleeding into the city to evict the sabbat and claim her city. like significant things she did was removing the entrenched sabbat presence. and found the citys anarchs.
I know Sometimes Nasima will kiss Morning glory and then say "you can smack me if you hate it" and then turns on majesty so Morning glory can infact NOT Smack her
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