#heartbreak and death and aging and lost friendships and all the other inescapable parts of life

[thegollux]

this is off topic to that other post so i’m not adding it there but i just want to add...

if it took agony to make you great, I wish you had stayed mediocre. if it took surviving others hatred to make you funny, I wish you had had the chance to stay boring. there is no art so beautiful that i would not trade it in an instant for setting the artist free from cruelty. But I don’t think any of that suffering gave you your moments of genius; it was inside you all along.

it’s true that many people DO create beauty out of their own pain, and i applaud them for it. I just wish they lived in a society that let them create beauty out of joy, instead.

And mostly I can’t help but think of all the people whose greatness, genius, art, and beauty was instead snuffed out by the world before it got a chance to shine

[corinthbayrpg]

NAME. Kasandra Rosales AGE & BIRTH DATE. 255 & October 26th, 1765 GENDER & PRONOUNS. Female & She / Her SPECIES. Succubus OCCUPATION. Owner of Styx Nightclub FACE CLAIM. Priscilla Quintana

BIOGRAPHY

( tw: homophobia, death, murder ) True love is perhaps the most devastatingly ephemeral adventure that one can have in their lifetime, made all the more precious by a looming expiration date in the form of death. Yet as a child, Kasandra Rosales never fathomed the inevitable winding down of her own life. How could she? It had only just begun and from the moment of her first breath upon the earth, the fates assigned a particular path upon which she would travel.

Born in Veracruz, Mexico during the height of trade between Mexico and Spain in the late eighteenth century, Kasandra’s birth family were penniless and destitute beyond reason. Her parents floundered over their multitude of children with waiting mouths and by the time she reached two years of age, most of her family had been lost to starvation or disease. Orphaned and without much hope of surviving in this world, Kasandra tasted the first inklings of fate when she became adopted by a wealth hidalgo and his young wife visiting the port city for business. Both were devoutly Catholic practitioners and already had three other children when their youngest joined the family. They praised their God for his blessing of a beautiful new daughter and began to curate the idyllic family construct once they returned to Spain as a complete family. Two sons staged to learn their father’s business and now two daughters destined to become homemakers.

They never hid the child’s origins from anyone within their household, nor did they grant her leeway in their expectations for her future. Yet with each season that passed and every handsome young fellow pointed out by her mother, Kasandra became unable to even fathom their features. Nor could she venture the opposite when shown the other young women with splendid dresses and intricate braids, the young girl never considered them in the light of an unbearably poignant ache reserved for another. Only one person held her attention from childhood onward, a creature rarely viewed beyond the gated courtyard of a similarly well off family. You see, her mother’s best friend had a daughter of her own, a mere seven months older: Marina.

What began innocently enough as a pair of children introduced amidst their mothers’ socialization, it soon blossomed into a rather natural friendship. Neither girl wished to be parted from the other, their bond as soulful as that of women four times their age with only a fraction of the lifespan. Spending time with one another began to extend beyond the visits between aristocratic women and by early adolescence, Kasandra could be discovered waiting eagerly at those same courtyard gates for the person she adored most. They read a myriad of books together on warm summer afternoons, burnt paella in the Rosales’ kitchen at least twice, and escaped into starlit evenings with their families none the wiser. As their teenage years drew to a close, an ardent shift resounded between the young women. Where they once spilled innocent secrets while wandering the vineyards, they now whispered unholy confessions that would surely have them cast out by the church and families. Thus, with no possible means to be joined under their current circumstances, Kasandra and Marina retreated to their dutiful lives awaiting the inescapable match of husbands who would never truly know their hearts.

Eventually those days came some time in their mid-twenties. First for Marina who married a handsome heir to the vineyard they strolled about as children, then for Kasandra whose courtship with a young academic had now been transposed into engagement. It became a wedding which only drew out despondence and anxiety each time she met her betrothed, culminating to a breaking point as she rapped on her oldest friend’s door late one moonlit night. Improper, tactless, and not an hour at which any noble woman should be observed wandering the streets, still Kasandra implored her first love to meet her at the docks before first light. They had no children and no tethers to this world, only forced marriages and she could not stomach the one impending for her. Not to mention the deal which had already been made for them.

Mere hours prior, in a mental haze as she sat within the confines of her own courtyard, the bride-to-be once again implored with the heavens to provide her an escape from this path. She offered anything short of pleading with the devil himself, only to be interrupted by another young woman in the entry way of her homestead. Gloriously stunning in a manner which almost felt ostentatious at the immaculate sculpting of her face, Kasandra quite certainly failed to hear the terms which were being offered at her feet. A lifetime of true love so long as she promised to initiate a favor at the end of it, the cost of her own soul… Still bewildered over this woman’s appearance and lamenting the conditions of her life, she accepted without hesitation or thought to consequence.

From that moment onward her present appeared to accelerate as every joyous fantasy came to fruition, almost as if another held the marionette strings in her favor. Marina agreed instantly to pack some items and leave before dawn, both women stowing away aboard a merchant ship with a crew who seemed to not mind their presence at all. They landed in southern Italy and from there were offered horses to travel into the Tuscan countryside, wherein they discovered a small village to settle down and that Italian culture provided far more opportunities for unwed women. Their lives were peaceful and serene from that point onward. No one arrived to hunt them down for their transgressions, and each twilight they would meander through their own vineyard with freedom between their clasped palms.

Bliss existed for decades, but every story holds a final chapter and Kasandra’s closed within the furthest stage of an elderly, well worn life. Marina herself followed only days later of a broken heart and thus they were meant for reunion in the afterlife, but it never came. While Kasandra stood on the banks of the river Styx, a far cry from heaven’s pearly gates as Charon’s greedy palm reached forward to beckon for a coin she did not possess, the mysterious woman from her youth appeared. With explanation provided for her inability to cross over, the goddess revealed herself as Aphrodite and stated that her end of the bargain was complete, the favor must be collected.

From there the memory distorts to an inky blackness and Kasandra can only recall awakening to harsh sunlight, an insatiable hunger clawing at her throat and the realization of what she had become now paramount. A succubus. Eternally youthful once more, but a damned creature with one singular purpose that did not even belong to herself. Aphrodite, angered by those that created a mockery of love, instilled her with a cause to protect its sanctity against everyone who wished to taint her element. To become the physical embodiment of a reminder to adulterers, heartbreakers, and womanizers alike.

Now, two centuries removed from her initial rebirth, Kasandra exists within the borders of Corinth Bay as a figment of the imagination to most. Aphrodite has cared for her well enough, provided a sustainable livelihood and even an adequate hunting ground, but a vacant hollowness embedded itself where even a goddess cannot touch. Only descending upon the city dwellers to feed or enact her creator’s revenge as necessary, she ebbs and flows through the sands of time which carry her along whether she desires it or not. All the while remembering a beautiful woman from a former life that she will never walk the vineyards with again.

PERSONALITY

+ loyal, intuitive, cerebral - resigned, morbid, secretive

PLAYED BY MARTY. PST. She/Her.