#trafoct

[marsnolias]

From the master post of questions: “If someone were describing your ocs to someone who had never met them, what distinguishing features would they mention? How would one identify your ocs in a crowd?”

For TRAFOCT?

— @sapphic-story

Gregor — he's the type of person that can't spend 5 minutes in public without some kid yelling "look, mommy, it's santa!" White guy with a huge grey bushy beard and stache, paunchy belly, the whole thing. He hates the Santa comparisons, buts also hates shaving, so he tolerates it.

Charlotte — appearence wise, she's your average 50-something lady. Graying hair, on the heavy side, generally stooped posture. Her signature style is a blue dress and purple shawl, nothing too fancy but immediately recognizable to her fans.

Up close, Charlotte's most defining feature is her eyes. There might be a smile on her face, but her eyes always carry a look of annoyance at best and malice at worst. Some people who get on her bad side say her gaze is like a cold-blooded animal's.

Ant - haven't talked about him much, but he's one of the human protagonists of trafoct. He tends to stand out due to his height and weight - 6'5", 300 pounds. Ant usually avoids standing up straight to minimize this, but he's still quite obvious.

Lora — the other human protag. Instantly recognizable by her two tattoo sleeves (the classic skulls and roses in red and black) and red-framed glasses.

Gogo— but of a special case. Despite being an 8-foot cartoon dog made of gummy candy, Gogo is rarely noticed by most people. She has a sort of supernatural aura that causes onlookers' eyes to skip over her until she wills them to look directly at her. Most people who do see her often think she's someone in a mascot costume

[greylagwriting]

1, 11, and 21 for your characters of choice?

What’s the lie your character says most often?

Micah's (FtLoM) most common lie is "yes, I did my homework". Being a rich kid, he's more inclined to glide through life on his family's wealth than get educated and go into a good career (or the family business, as his dad wants).

If someone was impersonating them, what would friends / family ask or do to tell the difference?

Chekov's (RPD) biggest pastime is learning languages. She grew up on Luna 01 (a moon base) around people of all nationalities and languages, so she had to learn to speak several at a young age. Over time, she's actually invented her own coded language - essentially English, but turned backwards and with the vowels shifted. Her own name, Antonina Chekov, translates to Enonutne Vukich.

All someone would have to do is ask Chekov to speak in that coded language. If they can't it's not Chekov.

What common etiquette do they disagree with? Do they still follow it?

Gogo Gummi (TRaFoCT) just... really doesn't care about decorum, especially around her targets. Being a demon from hell, she doesn't really give a damn about properity. She very often interrupts and/or shouts down people who are trying to speak.

Gogo views herself as Chaotic Good, and certainly lives up to the "chaotic" part.

[marsnolias]

prepare yourself for more rambling about my (hopeful) nanowrimo project, The Rise and Fall of Charlotte Tann (Trafoct)

@sappic-story

Charlotte Tann herself is a 55-year-old professional con artist born in Massachusetts, USA. After her birth in 1935, Charlotte's father, Pearl, was drafted into WW2. He lost his life in Europe in 1944.

Her mother, Greta, was devastated. In an attempt to lift her spirits, Charlotte began pretending to channel Pearl's spirit. She basked in the attention she got from her mother. Soon enough, Charlotte was "channeling" other spirits. People who had lost family members in the war flocked to her, and Charlotte realized she could make an entire career out of the deception.

She began researching the spirits she pretended to communicate with, using psychological tricks to convince people she was really speaking with the dead. Charlotte called it "the fine art of telling people what they want to hear".

Though she seems like a nice, older lady on the surface, Charlotte is an angry, venomous person in her private life. She looks down on the "stupid people who believe the crap I'm feeding them about ghosts", viewing them as nothing more than a means for money and fame. She refuses to accept anything as her fault — if someone loses their life savings paying for her fraudulent services, well, they were in the wrong for believing her.

Gregor Tann is Charlotte's partner in crime and the only one who knows she's a fraud.

A mystery/thriller writer with a love for the occult, Gregor struggled to get his books published. While attending one of Charlotte's book signings, the two connected.

Charlotte drew him into her web, preying on Gregor's gullibility. She agreed to pull some strings to get his books published if he worked for her. He soon became Charlotte's agent of sorts.

Gregor found out about her fraud after they married, but is too intimidated by Charlotte to push back on it. Plus, Charlotte's daytime talk show thingy provides them with all their income, as Gregor's books aren't very popular.

Their method goes like this -

Before someone gets on the talk show, they fill out a form with a bit about themselves and the person they want to connect with. Gregor then goes and researches everything he can about said person, undercover as a newspaper columnist named George Graves.

He then compiles everything about the deceased into a document, which he reads backstage. Onstage, Charlotte wears a headset through which Gregor feeds information.

Usually, this goes smoothly. But there was one huge blunder at the height of Charlotte's career.

Her guest at the time was one Jackie House, who was looking to connect to his sister, Jenny, who'd died of pneumonia.

However, the obituary Gregor had perused contained a mistake and stated Jenny had died in a car accident.

This led to Charlotte spouting off entirely incorrect information on live TV, leading to a huge embarrassment for her — which turned into wrath towards Gregor.

Over the next few days, Charlotte chewed Greogr out, and insisted that they needed to be absolutely sure they were getting the correct details, as any discrepancy in Charlotte's readings could negatively impact her career.

Together, they come up with a crazy idea that just might work: kidnap the child of a high-profile, upper-middle class family for ransom. Charlotte will use her "psychic abilities" to locate the kidnapping victim, taking advantage of the ensuing media storm...

[greylagwriting]

Got a bucket of random lego for christmas and there's a minifig covered in zodiac symbols in it. I looked it up and apparently it's Zodiac Master, a Batman villain. From a wiki:

"The Zodiac Master is a masked supervillain who made his presence known in Gotham City by accurately predicting a series of disasters, all of which he secretly orchestrated. Having duped most of the city, he then offered his services as an underworld consultant, using his supposed astrological skills to foretell the outcome of various proposed crimes."

...I swear to God I had never heard of this character before creating Charlotte Tann (who basically has the same idea, but she's a medium instead of a tarot reader)

[greylagwriting]

The more I think about it, the more I like Roger as a character. Some things about him:

He was originally born close to the Texas-Mexico border. Growing up, he mostly did odd jobs around town, but realized that the local population - and their faith - could be easily exploited. Roger began posing as a Catholic priest, performing various rituals and holy dealings. It wasn't long before the locals caught on to him, and he moved to Georgia. He met his wife, Juanita, there.

Now, in the US, you need to have passed certain exams and become licensed/ordained to become a pastor. Roger... did not do that. He just showed up in Oaktown's Baptist church and started preaching. Mike Curry (the actual pastor at the time) didn't quite know what to make of him, but eventually decided that God must have sent Roger to the pulpit for some reason. Plus, the congregation liked him, so Roger stayed.

It was around this time that Lora was born.

All of this happened in the late 70's. During the early 80's, the Satanic panic was in full swing and Roger found that many of his congregation were... well, panicking. He got with the times and turned his sermons from general Christian stuff to literally screaming about how everything was Satanism. Swept up in the tide, Roger started to believe some (but not all) of his own rhetoric.

It was at this point that Juanita left him, as Roger had become nearly maniacal on both the pulpit and in private life. He even started doing "excorcisms", both staged events and ones with people who genuinely thought they or their houses were possessed.

During the course of the story, Charlotte becomes involved with Roger (in a business way) after Gogo appears.

[greylagwriting]

How to Summon a Demon - A Guide by Lora O'Nutting (in the TRaFoCT universe)

Dim the lights.

If there is a fireplace, light a fire. If not, light candles.

Ensure you are alone.

Prepare a vessel - something for the demon to inhabit when it arrives in the physical world.

Draw or place a ring around the vessel. This could be anything from a complex pentagram to a hula hoop.

Pick up your telephone and dial 666-616-HELL. (Long-distance fees may apply).

Give them your name and location, and tell them which variety of demon you'd like to summon. (Terms and conditions may apply).

Hang up and wait.

[greylagwriting]

A thing about Roger is that he doesn't 100% belive or practices what he preaches (which is that pretty much everything invented after 1970 is satanic in some way). He knows his congregation believes it, though, and the best way to appeal to religious fanatics is to reinforce their beliefs.

In a way, Roger and Charlotte have something in common in the way they tell people what they want to hear, rather than providing contrasting opinions.

[greylagwriting]

Charlotte, 2, 3

2. Charlotte doesn't have friends. There's no real way to cross the threshold of "friend". She has acquaintances, fans, and subordinates, and that's it. She feigns interest in the people she does readings for and can get chummy with people in power, but stays far away from any sort of healthy relationship (platonic or otherwise).

She's used to thinking about other people in terms of what they can give her, and not the other way around.

3. Charlotte's true emotions are only ever shown when she is around one (1) other person - namely, somebody she can bully. As far as writing goes, we get to see a stark contrast between how Charlotte presents herself (a kindly older lady wanting to help people connect with passed loved ones) and how her internal monologue is (a con artist who wrings money out of annoying but vulnerable people).

I like to compare her to a volcano that looks dormant and harmless from the outside, but is full of seething magma on the inside.