The TRUE Swapbook

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The TRUE Swapbook

Postby Wrenmae on March 29th, 2013, 6:18 am

Swapbook

Freaky Friday Character Swap
(Brought to you by Thursdays, Wrenmae’s Fridays)


Credit to: Philomena for the idea, Jules for the encouragement and the name


Synopsis: Swapbook is the process of writing for another character. With so many multi-faceted and interesting faces on the site, it’s only natural to MADLY FANTACIZE about being some of them. Now’s your chance. Swapbook is the game where you get to put on another face for a while and write a scene with the character. Given that this is a crazy bizarro alternate parallel dimension sorta thing, you can be pretty free-ranged with the situation you want to portray. The game only calls for a single post, but don’t let that discourage you. If the spirit takes you, write to your heart’s content. The little writer in all of us who likes to see our work appreciated probably would just dance in excitement. But, all games must have rules, so without further babbling...


1. This is the official thread for Swapbook. Those who PM me will be the pool of those who are eligible for the Swapbook challenge. Don’t see a name there that you want to write? Go ask them if they’d be willing to throw their hat in the ring!

2. You must have permission to write another character. This permission can be obtained through a PM. There will be an application form (lil thing) to fill out for a request. PM the author of the character you'd like to request to write, or PM the author you wish to write for you with the application form. When filled out, make sure it's quoted above your post before you submit it. Remember, sometimes it's just as pleasing for an author to hear you want to write their character as it is that you want them to write yours. Share the love and accolades! This is about collaborative fun.

3. There are no points. No one ‘wins’ anything persay…but if you count love and admiration as prizes than there’s plenty of those to go around. We’re a roleplay community, a collaborative writing club. We grow off of our own constant immersion in eachother’s writing. Looking at the interpretation another has for your character might be valuable in the next step you want to take.


4. Obviously, as far as content goes, we want to make sure this stays in the Mizahar world. Likewise, as part of the challenge is to write within the mind of the other character, you are encouraged not to take them too far out of how you interpret them. The writer may disagree on how you portrayed them, but do so to the best of your interpretation. As writers we are not always aware of how we are presenting our characters. If you write a character one way and the writer intended another…well, that’s valuable information for the writer to grow off of.

5. Be awesome- If someone writes for your character, consider doing them the service of writing one back. Ask writers you like to give your character a try. It feels good to know someone appreciates your work and talent, so don’t be shy about asking people to write for you.


6. Have fun. No. Seriously. Or I’ll plague you.



Sample application form.


Name: (self explanatory)
Swapper Name: (forum name or real name of the person you're requesting to write for)
Permission to write: (The character requested)
Subject Restrictions: (Anything the character author might not want to see you write about)



Example:

Name: Jules/Aidara
Swapper Name: Collin/Wremae
Permission to write: Aidara
Restricted Subjects: sexual intercourse




Swanky Swappables

Wrenmae
Philomena
Aidara
Rayage
Evalin
Andrea
Alva
Ana Sol Starris
Ayatah
Sira/Massacre/Marcus Ahysen
L'orlei
Everett
Chameleon/Quiarinox/Tia'aria
Last edited by Wrenmae on April 2nd, 2013, 3:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
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This PC has the Blight gnosis. As such, you as a player need to be aware of what that consists of. Wrenmae has an invisible aura that amplifies sickness and disease. Wounds may become infected, small sneezes may become coughing, and a slight fever may become more serious. A nuit's body will also break down faster in the presence of the Blight. These effects may not be immediate, but within the few days following your encounter, the symptoms will manifest. Some sooner than others. I cannot control your character, so creativity will be left up to you. Best wishes and stay healthy!

Special shoutout to Fallon for my new CS
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Wrenmae
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The TRUE Swapbook

Postby Philomena on March 31st, 2013, 4:08 am

Name: Ana Sol Starris
Swapper Name: Philomena
Permission to write: Ana
Restricted Subjects: None

(Author's Note: Writing Ana is an amazing challenge, and I know I've stumbled all over it. I write, normally, characters that I am like: that is characters who are in many ways, the cause of their own problems. Ana is, instead, a woman who is the solution to the problems others have forced on her, which is so much more beuatiful to me, in a lot of ways. I ahd thought to write in her style - but that would ruin half the fun, I think, for I would be a pale imitation of her masterly writing, and its fun, after all, to see your character in a style you don't expect, like reading romance novels about Don Quixote. In essence, then, I Will say, Ana is a woman who defies archetypes, being both Manipulator and Victim, Deceived and Deceived, Betrayed and Betrayer, Beloved and Lover. The only thing she always is is the one thing that is least central to her soul in my mind, she is always the shell, the mask of The Thief. So, I wrote this something like a fairy tale, to highlight the contrast between identity and reality. I hope you enjoy. And Ana: you might regret it now, but thank you, thank you, a thousand times thank you for the opportunity.)

"Some Say the World Will End In Fire"
Summer 36, 519 AV
------------------------------------------

The skies over The City Which Swallows were light today, only a mewlish grey instead of the black that her citizens had come to expect of High Summer. The People sighed with relief - the wheat was thin and spindly, pale yellow-leaved, thirsty for the sun. A Grey Day spoke tales in the people's ears of perhaps the chance of fuller bellies in the cold, bright winters. A pack of the weak-legged people, and the wild, tatter-robed monks gathered at The Last Bridge, pouring thanks down to the Aperture for slowing her smoky breath for a few days - for the only Alvidas left to thank was the Wheat Lady. And few cared to come and look upon her in her glass-topped casket, now, to see her strange, livid eyes and the cold death of her cheek, or the rotten fullness of her swollen womb. She lived, the people thanked her for this, for the last thin strands of wheat she forced forth from the earth. But to be grateful was not the same as wanting to look into the wastrel face of a fading goddess.

The Thief, perhaps, was the only one who cursed the grey-pale sky. Her belly cursed her empty lips as thoroughly as the The People's bellies cursed theirs, but then, there are degrees of pain, even as one approaches a singularity point - and after all, the closer they grow to the infinite, the more the body gnaws at each possible degree of relief. And while the belly gnawed, the heart's teeth were sharper, colder, and nearer the jugular. And the heart called to her, called out from it's grave.

The Thief looked out across the soot-deep square - it was too early for the Tender-wives to have come forth with the shovels, throwing paths in the ash fall of the previous night. This was her time, time her cinder sallow-white face and soot-grey cloak and ash-black soft boots could dance over the surface of the ash. There was, still even now, something beautiful about the dove-grey, feathery heaps, to her, just barely firm enough to cradle her narrow feet, before they dissolved into darker footfalls behind her. Walking over the ash in her soft boots was more like dancing than walking.

She leapt, then, from her perch above the Thirsty Ground - the hollow broken quarters of the dead Alvidas. It was a one story leap, but the ash was so thick the only sound was a drifting hiss of fading ash. Her breast ached with the empty hole where she knew, but could not remember, the hand of The Usurper reaching in the night before. She almost felt the scrape of his wild sharp fingernails into her breast. The felt the Dira-threads about her hands pull at her, until she stood and felt the red-chain burning in her breast, and felt the sudden unshakable thirst, that came like a hissing in her ears.

"Rise, Thief, Rise! Rise and Live! Rise, Thief, Rise! Rise and Serve the Land!"

And the hiss, and the groaning of the Aperture, murmuring up shibboleths that the sky could not interpret, and the hissing tap of feet on ash, all threaded close together, to a song, a song her feet could sing, to let her dance along. The keening whistle-cry of the Tower of the Old Doctor rose, the sympathetic shiver of stone to the screams of The Old Doctor herself, hunched over the north ends of the Thirsty Ground, beyond where The Thief, or even The Usurper ever ventured - at least she believed so. The Old Doctor was up late this morning. She was usually asleep by now, the Thousand Books shut until the next night, for they could only be read, it was whispered, by the light of tallow-fat.

In the early days of the Burning Times, The Thief had looked out over the morning, and could see the gutter of those flames, sometimes, in the window, The Tower Maiden stepping exhaustedly out to sweep the ash from the windows, with her pale face, and desperate eyes. The eyes were not visible from so far, just a white blur, and a red blur, and the clouds of ash. But The Thief recalled the eyes from the Last Days. And from long before, from when they both were children at The Old Doctor's house, before the Tower rose, before the City, before The Usurper earned his name.

Almost, almost… the Thief could taste Name on her lips. Almost she could speak name.

There was no time for that, no time for dreaming. The names were gone from the over-city, she could hear them only in the Aperture, only as faint echoes of the times of her own voice.

She danced on across the ash-heaps, to The Last Bridge. The Last Bridge, it was always clear. The Thief stepped on it, to its center, and looked down, and there, there as every morning, lay the Two Martyrs. Their faces blank, their bodies still and slowly being pecked apart by the last of the Birds of the City. Only the eyes lived. And every day the eyes looked harder at The Thief as she reached the center of The Last Bridge. And every day, she stopped, and looked down at them, hanging in their leather sling the two, hand in hand, the ice shards projecting from their necks.

The smoke burbled, flying round the bridge, a jet struck Ana… and she was Ana again, for the moment, and those two were Revy and Zandelia. She looked at them, and felt a terrible sickness in her stomach.

"Oh Gods… Oh Gods, my Zand… oh petch…"

And she started to scramble over the side of the bridge to lower herself down to the Harnesses, her hand reaching, reaching, her hand near the ice shard at Zandelia's neck.

But she stopped.

She was Ana, for the moment, until the smoke ceased crawling through her eyes… but she did not cease to be The Thief. And she felt the gentle tugging of the Red Chain, and the call of the Heart.

For always, always, that was the quarry of The Thief. The Thief must take the heart. And if she took the shards of ice out now, yes, yes, Zandelia would awake, Revy would awake, the birds would disperse. But the heart would not be stolen back.

The morning was drawing on, now, and she heard The Tatter-Robed Monks at the edge of the aperture, singing, singing, the hymns of The Two Martyrs that she had taken from the Aperture, and that they sang now in fear of her. The fear of The Thief was so great, that the love of her, she knew, had worn thin in The People. The did not stop her on The Last Bridge. But they did not relish knowing what she did. She, too, was like the Wheat Lady, rotten through, and living still, and hideous and still a part of the last creaking circulations of the machine of The City Which Swallows.

And so, hanging on the rope of the harnesses, she stared hungrily at Zandelia's face, as she had many times before, hungry to pull the shard, staring into those eyes, which still, in the cruel irony of the Aperture's magic, blinked and swiveled, and looked hard and deep and haunted into Ana's own.

But as with every other morning, The Thief closed her eyes and kissed the air just above the forehead of the First Martyr, careful not to touch the skin. And let go her hands, and wrapped her cloak around her, and fell, fell fell.

------------------

The Aperture, in the throes of her madness, was both apt and strange in how it spoke to one. Today it came to The Theif in the slit of The Second Martyr's throat. For when she landed, the figure of The Second Martyr lay there, just as it had hung in the harness, but clean and fresh, and bare-skinned, the scars of years of Mercenary work, and the Great Scar on her belly shining faintly in the hall.

There was a part of her that knew Name. That knew if for The Second Martyr, for both of The Two Martyrs. IT rested just behind the part that remembered the Dancing Time before The Burning Time, that reminded terror and revulsion and resentment, and the way her brand had healed so slowly, with the urgent thirst for love, for hands, for gentle words, that all had felt in the Dancing Time, but that of all the City, The Thief had been felt most keenly, for it was the color of her heart since long before the time of The City. She was The One Without A Name before all of the city lost its name. She was The One The Gods Spit Upon, before the Gods threw fire upon the entire City. She had keened out fear and pain long before The Old Doctor, she had know the deep aching of fear and self-revulsion before the whole earth had begun to devour itself at the mouth of the Aperture.

And so, as the flapping wound of The Second Martyr's throat began to flap slowly up and down, to form the letters of speech, it spoke nothing of these things. IT spoke what the Aperture always spoke.

"You are a Thief. Is it you who has stolen our names?"

"You are named the Aperture."

"That is not a name."

"But it must be. I have tucked your true name away, for if it were known, then all names would be. And the Tower would fall, and the Wheat Lady would close her eyes, and all things would end. And, so, I name you Aperture. And I name me The Thief. And I name the two that hang above use, whose blood you feed on, I name them The Two Martyrs. The People are they who sing their hymns, and The Usurper is he who tries to trick your name from you in the night. And The Tower Maiden and The Doctor read The Thousand Books. I am seeking the heart," and she waited. Each night the wait for the Aperture to accept its saining. Each night, she felt it growing more impatient, and she knew that her own confidence that any of this, that any scrap of it, would do any good, faded. She felt sick with it, felt her gullet rise with the force of her own self-doubt.

"Walk on, then. He is there, with it. And I have burned his wakefulness from him. For tonight."

And on she walked, and there was nothing. There were days when the passage at the bottom of the aperture was heavy with the smell of him, where the walls held shadows of her sins, where saw the pulsing face of her father, her brother. Her sister. Her mother. Of all those she betrayed. Of all those she still betrayed.

But today, the hall was empty. She had no sin before her but herself, and the Great Thievery.

And there lay The Usurper, and she longed to roll him over, stick a knife into his neck, to rub the flowing lifeblood into the Vayt-mark on his back, and spit on it, and make all of this over. But what then? She would have the heart alone. And The Thief knew this: that she, with the heart and with no balance, she would become as wicked as the Mad God had been. And so, instead she took her dagger, snicked the stitches in the breastbone of the usurper, and pulled his chest open with shaking hands. She drew the heart out then, and opened up the cloak, unbuttoned her blouse, and pressed the heart into the hole between her breasts, stitching it in, felt the sickening thrill of Godhood fall not her shoulders again.

"Neilles… Oh Neilles. So many days you have come to take it from me. And every night, I take it back. You must grow tired of this game."

Nielles turned her goddess eyes and looked upon the Usurper, who smirked with exhaustion at her, his breastbone flayed open, hise veins pulsing in search of a heart.

"Wrenmae, Egyptus, whatever you are now…"

"I have no name anymore. I have given all of them up. They are gone, all but the name of that heart."

"Go to sleep, Usurper. That too is still your name."

And she turned and walked down the floor of the aperture, back to float back to the bridge, her hands so filled with power that she could not touch The Two Martyrs anymore, her voice so filled with power, she could not speak without shattering the foundation of The Tower. She drifted through the cowering crowd of The People, instead, and to the Yard of the Sleeping Goddess.

She placed her hand then on the casket-lid, and the sleeping goddess woke, and smiled, the same sad smile.

"Today, Wheat Lady?"

"No… not yet, today. I cannot, not yet. My child… I cannot let from my womb. Not yet. Soon… soon… soon."

And The Thief sighed, nodded heavily, and drifted across the last broken remnants of the city, to the Thirsty Ground, and lay down, heavy with the weight of omnipotence, and slept, and slept, and slept, and waited for the knife to come.
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