The second and final (at least for now) part of my 'Vanity' series.
Oh my, I've been in love with Beckett for a while, and even nowadays while drawing this one I was smiling like crazy and feeling like some kind of yandere. XD Oh my, indeed.
The female OC here is Eirene Nikiforov, a human Lucid, undergoing the process of Awakening. Beckett is just curious about the activities at first, watching from afar as he usually does, but soon woman's ambition and her newfound powers start to threaten the world's balance and natural order of things, so he reluctantly has to step into the scene.
Unfortunately, the third party takes notice as well, thus the two get dragged into the dangerous swirl of events and now have to fight - every one for themselves, against one another and, in the end, together, side by side.
Ah, and btw, it all ends up badly for everyone! >:D
i am watching sulmatul's video on v:tmb and i have to say. i dont agree with her assessment of terese and jeanette's storyline
this isn't to say i think everyone has to like it. its a deeply upsetting backstory and how terese and jeanette talk about it isn't comfortable in the slightest. it can be very, very triggering for anyone listening. but i have played the game over and over and that was always my favorite part.
so uh. cw for: csa, DID, psychosis, murder, serious mental illness, self harm through risky behaviors, and verbal abuse. but i do wanna talk about my thoughts
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sulmatul frames it as terese was openly being portrayed as a seductress being abused by her father, jeanette openly trying to seduce him in turn, and all being done for the sake of edginess with no care for how they portray such delicate subject matter.
i can agree it is a bit edgy and some parts are unnecessary with dark humor which doesn't take the edge off like the writers probably assumed it was but only gives it a trivializing edge in some parts. but upon first play-through i already grasped what was going on and more play-throughs only confirmed it.
terese and jeanette were never two separate people physically, i dont think. the painting of them and their father as two little twin girls was likely commissioned by terese and was to throw the player off. its clearly stylized anyways and not a realistic portrait. DID is typically formed due to severe childhood trauma, after all, and consistent sexual abuse a very common source of said severe childhood trauma, unfortunately (i have met people with DID who have openly admitted to developing it in response to CSA). jeanette was always terese's alter, and was originally to protect terese. jeanette holds all the negative feelings about their abuse, and all the negative thoughts terese has about herself. jeanette is the one who snuck out of the house to sleep around, which is not jeanette "being the classic whore" but instead a form of self harm by engaging in risky behaviors. jeanette figures if she has to suffer through sex, she might as well do so on her terms. meanwhile terese has convinced herself she's actually their father's "favorite".
jeanette openly despises their father. jeanette openly resents him. she says "father always liked terese more" when trying to manipulate the player and trying to inspire pity, but she's not really broken up about his death and instead takes a sort of sick delight in it.
jeanette only really specifies sleeping with him one time in particular: the night of his death. jeanette came back from sneaking out. their father came in drunk, and jeanette was still awake. terese it seems only has partially or emotional amnesia given how quickly she knows what jeanette has done and vice versa, and always seems particularly disgusted with how much jeanette sleeps around and with who because she remembers it, even partially. their father mistook jeanette as terese, and assaulted her. terese then wakes up, climbs out of bed, gets their father's gun, and shoots him in the head for "cheating" on her in a fit of psychosis, only to then regret what she had done.
terese was never not the victim, nor is she ever portrayed as a seductress when she is the primary victim. she is not a nymphet, nor is their father portrayed sympathetically as an abuser. when jeanette calls her a whore, its to hurt terese severely. terese hates openly talking about the abuse, ashamed of it, despite how much she says "father loved me more than you" listing off all the ways jeanette's behavior upset him. but its also clear they have built up their whole identities around what the other is most insecure about but tries to hide.
terese, is an uptight, direct, serious business woman almost in direct response to jeanette's deep seated fear and insecurity of never being taken seriously. and jeanette is a seductress who simply loves sex and sleeping around, either to manipulate people or just for fun, in almost direct response to terese's deep seated fear of being seen as a whore or unclean for being sexually abused.
i don't think sulmatul had any malice with summarizing it as such. it is not a story that handles sexual abuse with kid gloves on, with clear lines of right and wrong and holds your hand through it. in real life victims are messy and complicated. some refuse to admit they were abused and claimed it was all consensual. some respond with risky behaviors, horrible attitudes, and a general lack of care that makes them unsympathetic to most. oftentimes they are pitted against one another by an abuser who distracts them with jealousy and making them tear each other down. even for those who resent their abuse, after being subjected to it for so long, you begin to hate and resent those who are given special treatment and are seen as the "favorites".
i can see anyone who doesn't like engaging with that sort of storyline having a knee jerk reaction, and i can also see someone unfamiliar with the messy, disgusting feelings and behaviors of abuse victims to equally draw the wrong conclusion. but what is to one victim triggering and offensive is to others an outlet for being seen.
every play-through i try my damnedest to keep them both alive. they do love and support each other but are twisted by old wounds that continue to feed into a cycle of self harm, personal attacks, petty jealousy, and insecurity. they have been running from their trauma for years with only each other as their confidant, and neither has emotionally healed enough to handle it. they won't heal if they lose the other. it only validates the poor coping mechanisms the surviving sister has. but god is it hard to do so.
v:tmb doesn't have a lot of deep themes, but it is overall (at least in the early parts) attempting to explore the grotesque, messy parts of society people try to look the other way from. disease (including sexually transmitted diseases), sex, abuse, murder, drugs, nightclubs, sex work, all of it without glamorizing it, and cloaking it in the imagery of bad horror movies of the time.
I have no good explanation for this one, besides that he's from Toreador clan and thus he's supposed to pose some pompous drama by default.
Yeah. Due to the severe art block I grasp at anything, literally any idea that comes into my head, even though it’s just some plotless artistic crap. T___T
Well, I guess I should really give up trying to draw World of Darkness vampires being in character, because it's getting painfully obvious that it's not working, no matter how hard I try (actually, I just can't get it - existing only for drinking blood, doing dirty politics, enjoying clans' power play and having awfully narrow circle of personal interests, without any emotions or attachments. Probably I'm too human to imagine something like this, lol.). XD Never been a fan of vampire themed media in the first place, just got kinda too attached to my character.
