#𝖎𝖎𝖎. *ੈ ˖ ° ⥽ you gleamed like silver in the distance... ⥼ ⅋. about

[dvaurga]

need more threads were zoya gets to use her empathy link as form of intimacy once she's less freaked out by the idea of being in someone else's head ( or worse them being in her own ) because the idea of sharing memories instead of having to find a way to vocalize them would actually help her connect with others more and help lend some insight into... well, why she is so standoffish to begin with. to be transparent though zoya's empathetic abilities can be quite volatile and she often accesses the thoughts and feelings of others unbidden so uhh just be careful what you feel and think around her i guess haha

[dvaurga]

zoya being drawn to power because she believes it's synonymous with safety. yet seeking that quality in a potential partner is precisely what leads her relationships and heart to ruin time and time again. because you can worship power... but you cannot love it and it cannot love you back. in many ways it is the very inverse of safety as the more of it one possesses the larger the target on one's back. it's why she is so kept to herself in the duology after her falling out the darkling. she did love him, even if their relationship never truly progressed past anything towards infatuation on her part. yet it is a quality she also possesses across all my verses for her and those relationships do flourish ... but only for a time. because power must be fed and no amount of love can satiate the need to grow, expand, and conquer ( although juris would argue otherwise ) thus that is when zoya finds herself at a juncture because her goal is never to possess and yet she inherently craves control and the two are not so easily disentangled from the other. which brings me back to a point i'm constantly reiterating about zoya on this blog and it is the fragile line she walks between mercy and vengeance. how given time and reason she can and may very well become someone akin to her former mentor... because are we not the altars we worship at? zoya who is saintless prays to the only god she knows and that is her power. a belief that she will be become whatever it is her people need her to be even if it is a monster and that she will find the strength and resolve to be that force.

[dvaurga]

need more threads in the zoya mind palace... in the zoya mind garden if you will. i cannot find the post that i made about it years ago for the life of me but when i said that zoya's emotive inner world takes on a metaphysical realm ( as in it becomes her empathic/psychic refuge ) it's a liminal space and also a spiritual stronghold as it is where zoya communes with past versions of the dragon. it's where she holds court over her collection of warrior ghosts in a sense!

[dvaurga]

𓂃₊ modern crime verse notes

˖࿔ work-shopping this verse legit as i write it so this will stand in place of a more formal post until i flesh everything out! also this is a modern verse but i also think i can easily translate it into a more urban fantasy setting with zoya's family business being that of illegal magic dealing and the trade of deadly spells.

zoya was adopted at the age of nine by the crime lord, juris nazyalensky. lifted from abject poverty after she was caught attempting to pick his pocket in broad daylight as a child.

juris is known as the dragon in the criminal underworld where his primary enterprise is that of illegal arms dealing which is typically paid for in precious jewels and art as collateral hence his moniker... a symbol for hoarding riches.

zoya is trained in the family business from a young age. her entire adolescence was spent enrolled in combat lessons and weapon handling as she is primed to be her father's successor. for all intents and purposes, she lived the life of a young heiress attending exclusive preparatory schools and going on to graduate from an elite university in her young adulthood.

despite her upbringing zoya was never shielded from the darker parts of her father's work. he often brought her along during negotiations and even allowed her to conduct some of her own once she was old enough.

in the present day zoya has has situated herself as an information broker willing to offer her council to highest bidder. she runs her business out of collective art space and gallery known as os alta, which also functions as a high-end lounge on the weekends (invite only). three branches currently exist as of now, one location in new york city, one is moscow, and another in shanghai but zoya has plans to expand.

trouble in paradise arises when juris is killed by a rival gang in an attempt to eliminate some competition in the arms dealing space. they plotted the murder and also had every intention to take over as the head of the family until zoya arrives with her men in tow.

chaos ensues in the wake of the murder and in order to get above the rumors zoya creates an elaborate plot where she feigns that her father is still alive. in actuality, she will be pulling the strings waiting for the right moment to reveal the truth.

the ultimate goal of this scheme: to track down everyone involved with her father’s murder to mitigate the secret of his death and allow her to control the narrative surrounding the murder. this is all damage control so people don’t perceive her family as vulnerable to a hostile takeover in the absence of their patriarch. eventually, she will break the news on her own terms once the threat of a coup is neutralized and she is in the right position to become the successor of her father’s business 

[dvaurga]

me: zoya deserves to be loved also, me: zoya is an extremely difficult person to love because she is closed off like a clam shell and is allergic to softness in both the giving and receiving sense. you have to be level 600 with her relationship wise for her to want any degree of tender intimacy that actually has feelings involved with it... as she is notoriously detached when it comes encounters that are purely sexual in nature. even with her heavily established dynamics on this blog there is a thread of antagonism that runs through all her romantic ships because she thrives in a competitive environment and that doesn't go away even when she falls for someone ( if anything it makes it 10x worse ) almost all her ships are born from some sort of feeling of jealousy or envy ( very much a case of do i want to BE them or WITH them vibes i know gay as hell thanks ) so essentially she walks a thin line between love and hate with anyone she is involved with. it is this very tension that makes the intimacy that much stronger anyways...

[dvaurga]

a time will come when the world begins to hunt dragons again. by nature of how power works in the grishaverse it's directly tied to the death of mythical beings. a collection of scales or dragon teeth can provide magic for a lifetime and more. the fact of the matter is people will want to harness zoya’s power for their own. a dragon isthe form magic takes when utterly distilled down to its rawest form. in universe it is implied she is the first and last dragon in recent history outside of juris himself. going off my own blog canon zoya does eventually abdicate the ravkan throne and leaves the country after heralding them into a period of self-governance. in this time she retreats into nature living deep in the mountains of the sikurzoi. in this period of retreating from public society is when zoya eventually bears a child ( parentage unknown and truly dependent on the verse ) this child is born a dragon and the infant itself becomes a myth akin to its mother. for the first few years of her child's life she believes they may always remain in a bestial form. words travels fast of the birth of another dragon and a frenzied pursuit begins across all borders. essentially this a big of a runaway arc rolled together with a motherhood arc. it really carries on zoya's legacy of being a protector and refuge for her loved ones.

˖࿔˖ EDIT: one last thing, it was a deliberate choice on zoya's end not to conceive a child while she sat on the throne because she didn't even want anyone to even think she was contemplating her own line of succession.

[dvaurga]

happy sunday! zoya has killed most of her partners/lovers at least once in some verse or another at some point whether out of grief/hatred/unbridled lust and that's just something we all gotta contend with here on dvaurga.tumblr.com.

[dvaurga]

i've touched on this a few times but i do believe it begs reiterating is this idea that zoya is... an old and young creature at once. her life is profoundly severed into two when she consumed juris and wears his scales. yes, she can hear the dragon's whispers and insistence within her but she also gains access to the beast's wealth of knowledge and she can become entirely immersed with visions of the past at any given moment. i have spoken at length about the capabilities of the dragon's eye. yet what this ability grants her and how it effects her state of mind and how she interacts with the world are two entirely different situations. in some ways it is an advantage as much as it is a hindrance. she speaks languages long dead, recognizes faces and names that she should otherwise not know. she feels an overwhelming nostalgia, as well as melancholy, for a legion of pasts that are her own but also are distinctly not. it is also why i am very adamant about zoya not being belittled once she fully awakens the dragon's eye because she has the knowledge of hundreds upon hundred of years stored within her. when juris died he set the task upon her to bring grisha back to their original traditions. to embrace the concept of magic and witchery over the small science which is claimed to be bastardization of what grishacraft actually is. this is all to say that the presence of the saint within zoya is less a possession and more an embodiment. you cannot separate the two entities. as time moves along the voice in zoya's head will be her own as the boundaries between personhood bleed into one another. she IS that age-old creature. she IS the warrior saint from the istorii sankt'ya. this is also why i barely write within the confines of the original trilogy because zoya is fundamentally an entirely different person post-row than she was when the series began. she has sacrificed herself, died twice, and rose again and killed her own ego to become what her people needed.

[dvaurga]

🌩️ RATE YOUR MUSE'S TRAITS 0-10 ! 𓂃₊ repost and rate your muse’s traits, then tag your followers

compassion : 2/10 ( literally if you are not family or a friend she will sell you to satan for a corn chip ) bitterness : 100000/10 ( when you break a girl's ribs for breathing near your crush ) happiness : 3/10 ( she hasn't known a life outside of war so uhh not really ) politeness : 0/10 ( maybe before she became queen she would muster a crumb for her superiors but since then nope! ) chivalry : 8/10 ( she has the knight gene in her dna she just doesn't know it yet ) pride : 100000000/10 ( unfortunately, much to her detriment ) honesty : 5/10 ( depends who you are and if you deserve it ) bravery : 10/10 ( she still has a healthy dose of fear for the right things but it never stops her from taking action ) recklessness : 2/10 ( not particularly she can be quick to react sometimes but these days she has a pretty good handle on that ) ambition : 100000/10 ( from peasant girl to queen... doesn't get more ambitious than that! ) loyalty : 10/10 ( she would die for her partners and the triumvirate ) love : 1000000/10 ( are you shocked? i'd argue her big heart is also where all her rage stems from actually ) sense of family : 9/10 ( had to dock a point because of how she disowned her actual parents but she is very good to her found family! ) attractiveness : woman so hot you fantasize about her euthanizing you/10 agility : 8/10 ( soldier training since she was wee so Obviously ) sex drive: 9/10 ( she is horny but also she can't be as free as she once was with her uhh appetites given her station )

tagged by: some inquiring minds hmmm @daylighter and @sheikage tagging: i'm fairly certain everyone and their mother has done this at this point but if you haven't just say i tagged you

[dvaurga]

there is a subtle shift in zoya's personality when she takes on the form of a dragon as opposed to a human. the nature of the dragon's eye is defined by how "close" zoya allows the dragon aspect to her heart and to her sense of self. one could say zoya is at her most honest and is acting at her most candid when she transforms. during zoya's first transformation juris implores zoya to "open the door" and zoya remarks it is love on the other end of this awakening. this of course can mean many things ( self-acceptance, permission for vulnerability, but also permission for ruthlessness, for brutality for the sake of defending one's heart and loved ones ) essentially, all zoya denies before eventually accepting her merger with the saint. outside of the internal implications of this shift there is a tonal aspect to this metamorphosis. juris and zoya's personalities bleed into one another when she appears as the dragon. i often joke about zoya being in "old man" mode when she is in this incarnation of herself and it is based in some truth. she is more blunt, gruffer than usual but not in the cutting way she typically implores. she seems largely more disinterested in matters at hand and has an air of nonchalance to her that is almost unheard of in her position as queen. i supposed the best way to describe her is unbothered. it's extremely hard to rattle her, while she is always self-assured she acts with a quiet sort of dignity. this is opposed to her more brash and combative retorts we see often in canon.

˖࿔. yes i am about to make this about gender again but it's to be expected because without a "female form" zoya is freed from performing her gender in more overt ways. don't get me wrong she still manages a sort of sibilant sensuality as a beastie because this is a safe place for those of the monstrous persuasion. but she employs these flirtations differently as her body is no longer an aid to her in the same way. as i said previous, it isn't a night and day change truly but when one changes their physicality it is only natural that they start acting different.

[dvaurga]

pachina being zoya's hometown and not being marked on any map of ravka we're given will be my villain origin story. all the info we are given is that it was a very small village, "a hovel" in zoya's own words., that wasn't much to look at. also, that it's close enough to udova for her to agree with nikolai that the area is somewhat of a dump. what we do know based on these limited comments is that zoya grew up by the sea. which i would say is why she holds no fondness for the ocean and is pretty miserable whenever he see her traveling by ship with sturmhond and his crew lol it reminds her too much of home and stirs up memories of childhood that rather leave in the past.

[dvaurga]

˖࿔ . WHAT GOD ARE YOU THE DEITY OF?

weather & calamity 𓂃₊ !

tempestuous and fearsome. your moods are hard to read and you strike on a whim. not a soul can avoid you as disasters strike across the land. you have your own standards for what makes sense and what you value and if anyone dares challenge you there will be nowhere for them to run.

tagged by: @vipier my snek tagging: @areito, @thedelian, @vtriol, @sheikage, @goetiya ( for jean! ), @bluemns, @darkdevour, @compunctions, @umbralsun ( for 2B ! )

[dvaurga]

before i go i did make a post about this a little while ago but the bride of ravka mythology surrounding zoya after she takes the throne is SO personal to me. not only is she the first non-lantsov to sit the throne in recent history but she is also the first woman to rule the nation without an official consort or even acting as regent in place of a male heir until they come of age. because of this zoya does lean into gendered binaries to actually sidestep a political marriage. she claims she is married to ravka and because of that she cannot take the hand of another because it will distract her from her true purpose. the people EAT this up because not only does it fully show her commitment to her station of queen it also easily translates into theatric iconography. there is nothing the ravkan people enjoy more than a good story and fodder for legends. often she wears all white with the ceremonial red accents, either in ribbons tied throughout her gowns or even sometimes woven into her hair. she is in possession of the titanium dragon-winged crown she was given post-war. but is, as i've stated, a crown for a war-time monarch and ravka is being ushered into an era of peace. more often she will be seen wearing old-fashioned kokoshniks, woven with silver and pearls that is customary of a ravkan bride. i view this also as a way for zoya to reclaim her whole trauma surrounding marriage as a whole, given her own experience as a child bride. she essentially gets to take the whole concept of a wedding and use it to further her own political agenda.

[dvaurga]

the intrigue/interest and point of zoya's beauty is not found in the simplicity of vanity alone but actually how it is a means for subterfuge. it is how her appearance will always lead others to misconstrue her. it makes her an object of fantasy ( and i use the word object very deliberately here ) a vessel for others to impart their desires onto.

beauty as a whole, is a narrative theme that plays its part in the main trilogy story outside of just zoya herself. between genya's allure being described as her "armor" and of course the way alina grows into her saintly title not just in power but in appearance as well. all of these are examples of divisive beauty. in zoya's case specifically her beauty isn't armor or even a weapon but actually a shield to hide behind. it makes people perceive her bitterness as disguised sweetness. when she is angry she is simply seen as misunderstood. when she is defiant she is simply a pretty little girl throwing a tantrum with no mind for strategy or politics. which i suppose could be knife in a way... but a very underhanded one at that.

˖࿔. i want to be clear zoya ISN'T an actress in any capacity. it is actually remarked on by nikolai and nina ( both of whom assume different identities throughout the novels and fully embody these roles ) how awful she is at playing a part.

thus, she can never quite get away from herself which makes these desires and accusations imparted upon her based on her physicality THAT much more incendiary. it also means when she begins her metamorphosis into becoming the dragon she has a lot to reckon with in terms of her more bestial features becoming more apparent and outshining her "conventional" attractiveness.

not only is joining herself with juris an act of depersonalization by the simple of act of it being a melding between two minds and souls ... but on a very surface level. skin deep if you will. she no longer is afforded the illusory magic her beauty once held. it is a part of her history she has to morn but in turn it also sets her free from all expectation. which is ultimately the message juris intended to teach her upon his deathbed.

˖࿔. she chooses the dragon. she chooses herself. the truth of what she is, which has always been some kind of magnificent monster.

[dvaurga]

q... as a mother, how would zoya advise her children on marriage? would she be apprehensive given her own past or no? - someone nosy.

been sitting on this bad boy for a hot minute because there are many layers to this cake. zoya obviously has a very warped idea when it comes to marriage based on her childhood. first with witnessing the dwindling of love between her own parents. sabina and suhm got married based on love and nothing else. they did not consider the differences between their two cultures or even think about how they would support a child when neither were very well off and in a position to properly care for one. that being said, a lot of these factors were out of their hands neither were born into money. but at least in the case of zoya's father being suli, they have a very village-based approach to childrearing. sabina considered such help to be a hand-out or born out of pity so zoya was barred from being raised by uncles, aunts, and other cousins and the like. so she was at home forced to contend with growing tensions between her two parents which shaped her idea of love ( which in turn shapes her view on marriage ) that it was not enough to build a life on and it was not enough to feed or sustain a family much less the two people in the relationship itself!

the next component to this is very blatantly the case of zoya herself nearly becoming a child bride. sabina's willingness to sell off zoya's virtue and hand to the highest bidder did less to warp her view of love and more to warp her view on marriage. quite simply she has never witnessed a healthy partnership OR courtship up until this point. she quickly begins to learn that for girls like her marriage is not about love it is a sentencing. either to a life spend slaving away at home or even, in more dire cases, death during child-birth ( which was quite common in her village with little access to medical care ) she even says quite plainly... at around twelve years-old mind you, that she rather die on a battlefield than birthing child and for the case of many girls in pachina those were the only two options; enlist in the army or become a wife.

with age i do think she has less animosity towards the concept of marriage but it is very much a case of; it is is the right fit for others but never me. as i've said before on this blog though when she becomes queen herself and even finds love she softens to the idea of courtship. even contemplating a marriage that is born out affection and not duty in the case of nikolai. i also stand by the idea that zoya NEVER marries or has children while she sits the ravkan throne because she refuses to bring a child into the world as a political pawn to be played. she wants more for her children than an allegiance to a country that does not have the capacity nor will to love them back. an arranged marriage for her daughters SPECIFICALLY would sicken her to no end and deeply trigger her emotionally.

SOOO to answer you question she would be incredibly apprehensive about marriage when it comes to her children. specifically because she knows just how divisive a union of that kind can be. how many use a ring as a form of control and ownership as rather a symbol of commitment to one another. there is also the simple fact that zoya's children will inherit her abilities and that would make them a target for those who wish to exploit that power. that being said, she would not deny her children the right to a wedding especially because she herself has probably had an official one at that point. but it would be a long and arduous journey of her children convincing her that their partners are with them for the right reasons.

[dvaurga]

this passage IS zoya many years into her immortality ! i need you all to understand how she will eventually abdicate the throne once she sets up ravka for their best shot at democracy and then she will promptly be disappearing into the mountains after it is all said and done!!