queens will play

QUEENS WILL PLAY is a roleplay hosted on tumblr, based on a post-apocalyptic world. (  )

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kazimir "kaz" boris krasnoff. twenty-six. militia. st. petersburg, russia. aidan turner. 

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” – Elie Wiesel 

An orphan left on the streets of St. Petersburg, Kazimir had no recollection of his blood parents or where he was from. He was brought up by his foster parents, who named him Kazimir, which directly meant “to destroy peace” in Russian. Growing up in a household with guardians who loathed his very existence, it was surprising to find the once quiet boy grow into a man of many talents.

Kazimir left his home after “repaying” what he owed his foster parents through a myriad of small jobs within the city, which gave him a wide range of skills that came in handy during the post-apocalyptic era. Becoming more of a vagabond upon leaving his home, Kazimir befriended a friendly stray he referred to as Albert. Despite the sudden uprising of viruses, Kaz was able to stay away from such infection and enlisted into the Russian militia.

Though not one of many words, Kazimir was never one to stay silent in an argument. He was one of cheeky remarks and conversations with heavy sarcastic undertones, which came from his twisted sense of humor. He spent years of being scorned by his parents and peers due to his name and the misfortune it seemed to bring along. Despite being hardened by his past and his profession, Kaz was sincere and held a strong sense of loyalty and hope, romanticizing of a serene future: one of peace and prosper. 

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ay yo!

so, to sort of get the ball rollin' again, we'd like to encourage you to keep on posting in the tag! if you need some inspiration, give one of these ideas a try:

give us the before and after-- a snapshot of what your character was like, you know, before the world ended, and a slice of them now that the worst may or may not have passed. (you could do literal pictures, or you could write something. or, you know, whatever. the world is your oyster.)

create a moodboard for your character. for examples of this, click the links: x x x (alternatively, create a polyvore set reflecting your character's sense of style-- before or after the crisis; whichever you prefer)

go to tv tropes and click the random button. write a drabble featuring or using the trope that comes up.

use a prompt from either this list or this one to create either a graphic or a drabble featuring your character.

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juris vilhelms lapsa. twenty-one. militia. riga, latvia. janis vilumovs. 

“i’m gonna buy a gun, and start a war. if you can tell me something worth fighting for.” — a rush of blood to  the head, coldplay.

he’s always wanted to fly, fly, fly. he was a small boy and while his sister was out yelling bang bang bang, her little hand pointed like a gun at birds, he wanted to be the birds. birds, he thought, were the greatest. they had wings, and could go wherever they wish whenever they wish. but daina could have cared less about wings. and that’s how it’s always been. 

he’s always wanted to fly, and she’s always wanted to shoot.

the thing is, she’s the only one who got what they both both wanted. 

she shoots for a living, and flies. he shoots as well, but he doesn’t fly. the one thing he’s always wanted to do, he can’t do, because his eyes don’t register certain fucking colors. he is proud of his sister, but he can’t help but contempt her for it, even after a few years. 

now, together, waging war against others, juris can see his sister growing weary despite the stone cold exterior she parades around. he protects her, and shields her, and makes fun of her, holds her close. 

the war has made his heart heavy: he was never meant to be a soldier. 

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cupid iason rosier. seventeen. group member. birmingham, england. jakob weichmann. 

“… all his faces were designed to express rage or loathing. Now that something had happened which really deserved a face, he had none to celebrate it with. As a kind of token, he made his Sex Life in Ancient Rome face.” 

— from Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis.

 if he survived, it's a miracle-- the kind most would talk about with their children, and them theirs; the kind that grows and twists itself into urban legend, folklore, fairy tale. like fuckin' snow white, he might say, and the curse would always be at odds with the twist of his tongue. like snow white if she weren't a princess-- doomed by some steely-eyed queen, and chased off by what? a huntsman. no, let go by a huntsman, but not before dragging his siblings off to what may as well have been hell, not before bleeding his parents dry and swinging their lifeless bodies over his back like frozen bearskins. a huntsman with a knife in his hands and a frog in his throat (in his brain, in his lungs, in his heart), urging him to run.

it doesn't matter, he might say, with his chin held high. what he'd never tell them is that he held the decoy in his own pale hands, helped to carve it out, wrapped his spidery fingers around his father's still warm heart, and he still doesn't feel guilt. he can't. 

every war has its casualties. you cut your losses, son. you watch your steps, close.

off into the wilderness with dark-stained hands and a gun his father taught him to hold; he never tells this story because he doesn't like to share the twist, the part where he leaves his own heart out in the snow, bright red against sharp white, a splotch on the map.

you cut your losses, son.

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ira mavis jarnot. thirty-six. group member. amiens, france. noomi rapace. 

“Here I am

leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome

burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack,

my silent night, just mash your lips against me.

We are all going forward. None of us are going back.”

-- Richard Siken.

 Her mother used to say to her never to forsake what she was already given, for it was a sin.

And Ira never did. But that didn’t mean life couldn’t forsake what she already had, and in her case, beat it bloody until it lost a pulse. That was how her daughter died—or maybe the more apt word would be murdered, but she tried to avoid saying that in front of anyone who asked. At least she used to. Once the police report was filed and she was already half-way on the road to hell, she took it upon herself to make the world pay for wrongs in her life. First, her fiancé left (and turned into an infamous terrorist, I’ll have you know), then, her daughter was brutally murdered. Both caused by the same woman; the same monster.

She once sang about the tragedies of life with a bitter sweet tone, now she wasn’t afforded the luxury of looking at life through rose-coloured glasses. There were two things she was certain: she would get back the life she wanted, no matter what it took, and second, she would do it with as high a body count as necessary. 

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Firstly, if you'd like, make a plot page for your character so s/he is easier to plot with. This'll mean you have more to do!

Also, could you please make sure your replies are turned on for all your blogs. Even the secondary blogs. Thank-you!

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daina elita lapsa. twenty-five. militia. riga, latvia. julija steponaviciute. 

“Dear Shipwreck,

So what’s it feel like to have everything inside you still “intact”? That’s what I want to feel like. But I’ve actually never felt my “insides” at all—I think they’re positioned in a way that keeps them from banging around. When I was small, I would jump up and down for hours trying to make them rattle. Nothing. I am an empty rattle.

PS. Please write back.”

MATTHEW OLZMANN, FROM “FOR A RECENTLY DISCOVERED SHIPWRECK AT THE BOTTOM OF LAKE.

She was never a little girl.

Even when she was four feet high with pigtails in her hair, surrounded by toys and teacups, she was never a little girl. Her brother could vouch for that. When she was ten, she wished for a gun, and when she was twenty-three, she wished for the one in her hand to be taken away. It was safe to say she belonged where the gunfire was most prevalent—but she needed her family to be happy and innocent and free, but with her last living family member in the army with her, she doubted that would be an option. She often considered leaving just so he would leave, too. But war spread like wildfire, and options of leaving became less and less viable.

She was born with a dog tag around her neck, her dad would always say, and now that he was gone she knew that she’d die with one around her neck, too. She was a leader. But more importantly, she was a sister—and though she would never say it, that was always an undeniable truth. 

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mikhail elijah ikashev. thirty-seven. group member. penza, russia. daniel craig. 

I believe most people are inherently good. But overcoming our nature is what separates us from the animals.

Nobody ever wanted to hear the truth.

Despite people's fight for what is honest, their pretences would always come shining through. As a doctor, Mikhail Ikashev saw it all the time.  He used to joke that he was paid to give people false hope, but as time went on and the world saw its darkest days, the joke became more satirical. He wasn’t just a doctor anymore, he was a deliverer of death. There was a Russian proverb for that that his father had once told him, but if he had a penny for the amount of times he listed to his father, he would have a gold mine of approximately zero dollars.

He eventually become hardened to such things—working in the army with men and women who had lost their limbs and spirits could do that to a person. He had seen far too many people executed, and he had watched as the world burned right before his very eyes with nothing he could do to shield his daughter or wife from harm.

Even though his attempts were strong, they proved weak in the face of all that was happening, and before he knew it his wife was being shot in front of his eyes with his daughter gripping his leg tightly.

His whole life he had been train to save everyone, and yet he couldn’t even save the person closest to him.

With nothing but a backpack and his daughter by his side, he travelled for the first few months. The easy part for him was finding food and shelter, the hard part was having to look Sofiya in the eyes and tell her that everything was going to be okay, because he was going to protect her. This time, he didn’t want to tell the truth, even though she deserved to know the actual circumstances.

Before he knew it, he was forsaking his views and risking his life—but he owed a debt, and he owed what was left of his family security. He used to cure those who had been at the mercy of a gun, but now he was the one with the power to take a life, just as easily as he can save one. 

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avery fitcher lord. twenty-nine. vagrant. arbroath, scotland. henry cavill. 

"time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve." - henry van dyke

he was born amongst the rain and mud with earthworms below his feet. he’d always had a strange interest in them, and all of the things of this world that are hidden and that can be misconstrued and made powerful by the imagination of children. these were physical and earthly pleasures that lost their sense of wonder as he grew. and though this sense of wonder became lost to him, he did not soon forget it.

he was told at an early age, to dispel of dreams and the bright “realities” of youth. such a hard world as this, his mother would say, has no place for dreams or romance. a true statement it was, one that would leave its burning impression deep in the folds of his memory.

this desperate hope of feeling what once was trailed him like a shadow and haunted him like the ghosts of his ancestors and that of his father, long dead. despite good intentions, in such a place as he was in, and in such a time, there was no more good and the lines between right and wrong had blurred beyond recognition.

the poverty itself was maddening. the pain was almost too much to bear. petty crimes laid themselves at his feet; bribery, soliciting, thievery and, once, a horribly misconstrued case of murder. these were, to him, absolute necessities, and when law and reason came knocking, he was only ashamed that they had come so late.

it was stockholm first, and then paris, and though he spent his days behind bars, he would sometimes smile, for he had always wanted to travel. if he was good, they would let him wander the gated gardens of cement. sometimes, he would become ill, and they would throw him to the doctors with their foreign words and foreign medicines. he was content for a time, happy to take a break, but the seclusion became maddening, the fear and anger like a knife in his heart. so when people began to drop like flies, and when the lights of hope began to dim, desperation caught him in its palm and cradled him. this is your chance, it seemed to say, so take it.

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jean-claude arnaud besson. thirty-nine. group member. paris, france. javier bardem. 

Frank Costello: You do well in school?  Colin Sullivan: Yeah  Frank Costello: Good. So did I. They call that a paradox. 

-The Departed

His father used to tell him a story.

They weren’t particularly devoted Catholic Parisians, but Papa liked to pretend he was — he went to Sunday Mass, he prayed in the mornings and nights, he said Grace before he let his family eat their meals. The routine made him feel pure and holy, he said, which was, he suspected, the whole purpose of it, anyway.

Jean-Claude, eight years old, strapped unwillingly into his finest and most uncomfortable shoes, mumbled, “Then why do we need to go to Sunday school if we don’t even like God?” 

Papa grabbed him roughly around the shoulders and said, “Listen here, mon fils, while you still live and breath, you will never say that again. Not while God can hear you. They can fool you into thinking that He is a benevolent God, they can teach you that as long as you do well, He will listen, but I read the Bible, God’s word itself, and I know better. There’s a passage that tells the story of how the angels, sent by God, destroyed the city of Sodom for being filthy and reprehensible. They told Lot, and his wife, and his daughters, to flee the city while they could, but to never look back. While He was setting fire to Sodom, scorching it from the earth, Lot’s wife disobeyed the angels. She looked back. When she did, she was turned into a pillar of salt, as punishment. That, mon Claude, that is the true nature of God.”

Maman appeared at their side, said, “Oh, mon cher, what are you telling him now? He’s just a child, you know. He’ll have time for this later in life.” Soon after, she ushered Claude away, but that night, he had a nightmare of a burning desert city, clouded by billows of black smoke. A sign from above, perhaps.

And he never forgot that God was cruel.

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anja katerina isacova. twenty-seven. group member. rivne, rivnens’ka oblast, ukraine. billie turnbull. 

“you have your way. i have my way. as for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.” – friedrich nietzsche

the fire was so intense, sometimes she still thinks she can feel it on her face. that fire. the one she set to murder eight of her family members. she climbed up high. high into the trees when the police sirens began to blare from three streets down. anja stared down at her handiwork with a peaceful smile. because that’s what it was: peace. she only thought it was strange for a second that she should feel peace by robbing someone else of it—forever. but quickly she realized she was not robbing anyone of anything. she was simply taking back what was hers. the embers sizzled and the wood crackled; a cacophony of noise and lights that shook anja down to the very bone. she threw her head back, mouth wide open and breathed so full and deep her lungs should burst. the feeling was a rush; it was like getting high or the after-glow of a good, hard fuck. her fingers trembled against the bark as her short-cropped nails cracked and bled as they scratched the rough bumps.

“papa, are you looking?” she whispered underneath her breath. she knew he wouldn’t. he was burningburningburned. the police flashed a harsh light in her eyes. they arrested her, questioned her, beat her and all the while she smiled. smiled and thought of her fire. brighter than any star she’d seen, laying down on city benches as she rode out a high or struggled to fall asleep.

that was five years ago.

anja did fairly well in prison. her constant, unsettling smile, measured tone and unapologetic, masochistic quality deterred many of the other inmates from bothering her. when the virus hit, and she made her escape, her firs reaction was to laugh. for two years she’d rotted in a cell, only to find that that had been one of the best places to be. she celebrated her escape on the roof of a building with her cell mate. later that night, anja choked her with her own bare hands, got up, and left. the world, without so many people, was a much more beautiful place. fire, she figured, fire like the one she’d set that night would probably make it even more wonderful.

“i want to watch the world burn,” she says to herself.

smiling.

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seraphine soleil kirouac. thirty-four. group member. versailles, france. berenice marlohe. 

“i will give this wretched world the queen it deserves.”

daddy is a politician, mommy is a warrior, what more could a little princess want? power from a young age can do terrible things, and wonderful things. seraphine landed somewhere in between those two points, spoiled but tactful. ruthless, but motherly. a human being capable of so, so much and more. 

she’s a commander, shaped by the misfortunes she’d experienced, just as everyone else. father killed by her mother, her mother killed by her — seraphine can’t ever bring herself to hurt anyone herself. to her, the blood on her hands is quite enough. 

avoiding putting her finger on a trigger of a gun is something she’s rather good at, along with manipulating others to do so for her. seraphine, an unbroken, steely eyed woman, sits on her empire of shit and gold, the men around her willing to act her will out. she protects her new family with an unparalleled fierceness. comparing her a lioness would be an understatement. she has no time to be sympathetic to the needs of others: that has only served to be detrimental. 

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errol samson davis. twenty-five. group member. bristol, england. bo develius. 

“my hands are of your color, but i shame to wear a heart so white.” - macbeth, shakespeare. 

five years ago, he beat a boy to death with a pipe.

they arrested him an hour later, as he was puffing a smoke, blood still sprayed across his front like a jackson pollock.

in prison, they learn not to mess with his explosive temper. “y’wanna piece of this? huh? y’wanna piece of me?” they restrain him with muscle and metal, and when that’s not enough, medical tranquilizers. he holds the record at HMP bristol for the most times thrown in solitary confinement, a fact that most would not be proud of, but he wears it on his chest like an army badge. 

when it ends, the end is brutal. a guard gets sick, a prisoner gets sick, then another, and the disease gets passed on like a game of hot potato. the prisoners rage. there’s a near riot. “we’re not gonna go like this!” they shouted, pounding on the bars. “we’re not gonna go like a bunch of chained dogs, trapped in cages!”

it’s chaos. the number of guard dwindle, either from sickness or from resignation. someone devises a way to get a key off an unsuspecting guard, and they get out. errol beats one into the ground as they try to restrain him. blood, teeth, rearranged face, all splattered out on the cement for god to see. he takes one last look, one last look behind him — inmates busting out of cells, the guards trying to hold them back — before he takes a step forward and runs.

freedom comes, but with a cost. society is broken. there isn’t a system any longer, and with no rules to break, he’s just a wanderer. useless. he breaks into convenience stores to steal what he needs and lives like a beggar, what a fucking joke.

he steals a gun, finds bullets. he shoots a child. he cries, for the first time in a long time.

someone approaches him with a proposition. “you,” long drawl, long emphasis on the oouuu, ”you’re a wild animal. it’s dangerous to keep someone like you restrained. imagine keeping a lion starved, injured, chained in the back of a cell — how would you feel? no — you keep that lion groomed and sparkling, claws and teeth sharpened to a point. but the one thing you do not do is — you do not feed him. you keep him hungry.”

oh, he is hungry, and he is raring for fresh meat.

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yu jin choi mei hua song. eighteen. group member. jixian, china. young gi hong. 

“if you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get neither comfort nor truth, only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.”

— c.s. lewis.

it was a pleasant day spent laughing and talking with her best friend. at that time, mei hua hoped to have many more days like that. that hope was destroyed when the bombs reached jixian; only words of hope and reassurance were left in her mind before tze jun’s form was swallowed up in the smoke of disaster. keeping those few words close to her heart, she set off for home only to find her parents sitting in the rubble of their former house. her family soon moved to live underground where her grandfather eventually died from malnutrition and the conditions they lived in. people left and came daily, some to find food and others to move on to “better places”. one of such people returned to bring news that government wards were being set up in st. petersburg, russia. her family hastily decided to move there to survive. “no, tze jun .. he told me to wait for him. i have to be here when he comes back !” she pleads to her father, attempting to ignore her voice cracking. he doesn’t falter in his approach though. “that boy is dead ! our family is dead ! … it is time to move on, mei hua.” his words begin to sink as she gazes around her. faces full of despair and anguish stare back at her. she suddenly realizes how pitiful these words are, how desperate they sound to find some normality in this hopeless world, and so she says no more. it is indeed time to move on. they arrive in russia by april of the next year, but it is too late. the government wards are filled up and tension is high as many frightened citizens have turned to killing anyone in sight, infected or not. the first mistake occured when mei hua’s group was spotted by one of the more violent groups. “chinese ! the chinese are the bastards who started all of this … kill `em !” just like that, mei hua and her group were beaten to death. her grandmother and father were shot down along with several other members of their group. after the attackers ran out of bullets, they beat mei-hua and her cousin until they were thought to be dead. they awaken to a small cottage where other survivors had taken them in. “who are you .. ?” mei had quickly learned her lesson and hesitantly responded with the first excuse she could think of. “yu jin.” that was her first lie since the apocalypse began and with that lie began her new life.

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ryota lee tze jun. eighteen. vagrant. jixian, china. jung joon young. 

“no matter how much you think you love somebody, you’ll step back when the pool of their blood edges up too close.” — chuck palahniuk, invisible monsters.

the first year, he’s fourteen and still fresh meat to the world. he drops his sister off at the house so that he can spend time with a girl. two hours later, the bombing starts and the blast reaches jixian. the house collapses on his parents and his sister, killing them instantaneously. (“i should have brought her along. i shouldn’t have left her behind. she would still be alive.”) he’s separated from his best friend. with all the panic and between the clouds of dark, deadening gray, he loses her. in that desperate second, he shouts out something dramatic, anything to make her fight for survival. he tells her he will find her. “wait for me! i’ll find you!” he’s not even sure if she heard above the screaming. (“man, i’ve been watching too many dramas. don’t you know it doesn’t work like that in the real world?”)

the second year, he runs from china and heads for europe. with his lank frame, he can hide and take cover in the shadows. but there’s one thing he forgets, that some people still blame the chinese for what’s happened. he’s kicked out of shelter, left to die, when they find out where he’s from. afterwards, he changes his name to ryota. (“just ryota. from japan. everything else is none of your business.”)

the third year, he kills his first man at age of sixteen. he holds the gun in two hands, wrists trembling violently as he watches the man drop to his knees. i didn’t mean to, he nearly says, but there’s no point in saying it to a lifeless body. he threatened me, he justifies it. he slumps against the wall, shaken. (“i wonder how many more men i’ll end up killing before i find her …”)

the fourth year comes and he’s killed at least three men, two of which he was sure was infected (so that’s okay, right? right?). he’s more ruthless, more uncaring, more cold, impossibly more pessimistic than the time he left her first. in a way, he almost feels guilty; he can’t remember the person he used to be, the person she used to know, and became friends with. (“but four years in a quiet world can really change a person for the worst.”)

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 tristan david fenwick. twenty-three. government ward. bordeaux, france. francois arnaud. 

“relax, they’re not going to kill us. they’re going to try and kill us, and that is a very different thing.” — steve voake.

there was once a time when tristan never had a minute to himself.

“come, tristan. your father needs your help.”

“dad, this has got to be the third time today,” tristan groaned, picking up his feet to follow his dad. he was sixteen at the time, inexperienced to the world but put a wrench or a screwdriver in his hands with a couple of nails and bolts, and he turns into a mechanical genius. sometimes his father teased him about being a robot himself (“oh, good. i knew i wasn’t related to any of you.”). he never missed out a detail; he must have gotten that from his father because the latter didn’t miss the minuscule frown on his son’s face. “i have a date tonight,” he said in response to the questioning look.

“i need you to look after briar and gracie tonight while your mother and i are out for our dinner party.”

“daaaaad.” a second groan, followed by a short bang as his forehead met the wall.i’m never going to have time for myself. 

then whoever heard his prayers sent the apocalypse, or so it would seem, because tristan fenwick now has all the time of the world and he’s never wished harder for someone to take it all back. if he thought he had too much responsibility before, he now feels like atlas with the weight of the world on his shoulders, taking care of his family the way his father would have wanted him to. sometimes he hears the ghost of his father’s voice reverberating off invisible walls, ”come, tristan. your father needs your help.”

only this time he doesn’t complain, and never will again.

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agnes galenka kaminski. nineteen. group member. moscow, russia. taylor warren.

“I lost my virginity to the apocalypse.”

-- Scott Westerfeld.

she’s not daddy’s little girl anymore. 

she’s cracked, broken, hurt, hungry, weak, pale, dying and alone—but she’s not daddy’s little girl. despite all those years she fought for her independence, now she wishes more than anything she was back at her mansion, sitting at the dinner table drinking a glass of wine after dinner. but she’s not, and it would never be like that again. 

agnes had some of her worst memories back in moscow (from an eating disorder to having to tell her parents that she not only liked boys, she also girls), but she also had her best memories there (there were too many of them to count). now that she thinks back, the piano lessons every saturday morning weren’t so bad, the obligatory family breakfast and lunch not so time-consuming, the tutoring two nights a week not so redundant, and the clichéd, expensive social events not so ridiculous (even though they left her no time for her own social life—but her father always believed building as a family was more important). now everyone, everything, tying her to that life was gone, either dead or dying. 

anyone who saw her now wouldn’t believe it. her nails all broken, her clothes red with blood and dirt, her eyes sunken, and most heartbreakingly, her spirit dead. she once slept in lavish sheets with silk blankets, now the only thing she rests her head on is a backpack, nothing but hope keeping her warm.