#turnskin

[m00n-struckk]

i don’t think i make sense as a being without being understood as a werewolf tbh.

in every sense literally and metaphorically, it does so much to explain who and what i am.

it’s integral to me and my experiences and my behaviors.

it’s… very beautiful and comforting to have found this out about myself even if there’s still so much to parse out and a lot of baggage that comes with it.

[redbourkol]

Eddie

[gameo-archive]

"Dear George and Jayden, thank you so much for doing this. MistressCha sent me this question, which I loved. Between the two of you, who do you think could play the best villain in a film/show? Also, what type of villain would either of you like to play?"

Edited to add a transcript:

J: This cameo just in from Anke to MistressCha. We just want to say thank you so, so much for requesting this cameo, and we are super, super excited to be here to answer this incredible questions you all have. We are so overwhelmed by the love and support that the show has and we have as actors, so yeah, let's get into the questions. "Dear George and Jayden, thanks again for doing this." You are so very welcome, thank you for doing this. "MistressCha sent me this question, which I loved: Between the two of you, who do you think could play the best villain in a film/show. Also, what type of villain would either of you like to play?" G: Not best villain J: What do you mean? G: Which of us do we think is gonna be the best villain J: Let's say who would be the BETTER villain G: I think we can both be villains J: Yeah G: How do I see Jayden as a villain? J: Serial killer G: Well, Jayden is naturally very charming, so that actually... if we are gonna go down that narrative... something where like, you know... everyone thinks that Jayden is this really charming guy, but...not necessarily Jayden, but the character is this really charming guy... J: [whispering] "The character" G:...but behind closed doors, yeah, there's a much darker side I could see there J: I always imagine you being a super villain with loads of people working for you... G: [whispering] love that J: ...like you're right at the top of, like, the food chain, ordering people around, sat there at your desk, everyone is like shaking when they come in, like yeah G: Just typecasting, me sat at a desk, ordering people around J: Well I know you would be good at sat at a desk AND ordering people around, so G: I do like to be sat at a desk, I'll tell you that J: Also, "what type of villain would either of you like to play?" G: One that pays J: Just one that pays? I just wanna be one that can like transform into something, like I always go back to vampires and werewolves. So being like Dracula would be pretty cool G: I, as long as...I'll do anything. [Singing:] I do anything for you... J: I think he needs to be careful what he wishes for. Listen, MistressCha, we hope you were satisfied with that answer. Anke, thank you so much for, you know, being so generous as to ask somebody else's question. We hope you guys have the best rest of your year, happy holidays and happy new year. Take care, brush your hair, Garnier

This is the Gameoden I got for MistressCha (on Twitter). They wanted to know what kind of villain Jayden and George would like to play.

Link: https://www.cameo.com/recipient/6738c858beeb7ac3a8e7703f

[beastlybardou]

Confirming Post

Well, I think I've reached a conclusion - I am a wolverine. It's been two weeks since I started active public questioning, and it had been mulling in the back of my mind for many more before that. I've watched documentaries, studied pictures and research papers, read through folklore, and done several rituals. It's all pointing towards wolverines.

With that said, werewolves are still deeply entrenched in my identity, in a way that I haven't decided to put a label on yet. It may not be the core of who I am right now, but it's still my history and my personal lore, and I will always hold space for it to come back to what it once was.

As I've mentioned a few times, I am strongly pagan, and a few rituals have helped me through this decision and processing the change. Firstly, a few days ago, I did a spirit journeying ritual with an experienced practitioner with lots of experience in shape-shifting and nonhuman identity. This ritual had the intention of finding what animal is at the core of who I am at the moment. I don't want to share too much because this is a ritual that someone else developed, and I don't know how much they are comfortable having shared. Ultimately, the visions involved led me to wolverine. I tend not to leave my identity up to meditations and spirituality, but I am accepting this as strong evidence in favor because of the fact that I was already leaning in that direction, and I didn't feel any disappointment or misdirection when the vision settled on a wolverine.

Secondly, last night I held a ritual with a good friend of mine in the forest underneath the full blood moon. My intention was to thank the wolf for all its years as my primary identity and for everything it brought me, dedicate an item to keep on my altar to it, and then to welcome the wolverine and experience a deep shift to sort of settle that identity into my mind. I would say it was a solid success. To represent my history as a werewolf, I chose the double necklace I made for myself when I first joined the community, made of a moonstone pendant given to me as a small child, and a vial of black wolf fur. I separated the two, keeping the moonstone on myself to represent transformation and history since I have used it since I was seven, and moving the wolf fur to the altar to represent letting that part of myself go but keeping it close at hand. At that point I induced as much of a shift as I could, and donned the pieces of wolverine fur ritual wear that I have in a mirroring of the legends of shape-shifters putting on their animal skins to transform. Bittersweet, but comforting, would be a way to sum up my feelings about this ceremony.

Anyways, say hello to the new me guys!

I will be going through and updating stuff on my account soon. Though you should still expect to see plenty of werewolf stuff around, and I very much still consider myself a werebeast. I actually am really feeling connected to the term "turnskin" ever since I found it while making my server.

[madmonksandmaenads]

Ophite Gnosis: Everything is a snake.

Cainite Gnosis: Everything is a horse.

Modern Gnosis: You are a furry.

[rathologic]

Do you know "Baur-meges"? The collection of steppe legends? There is something about werewolfs. A werewolf is able to live for years with you, and then it turns when you do not notice! Then don't be surprised, when your family all at a sudden will be in the cemetery.

Pardon the weird phrasing (it's the 2006 localization; Classic HD renders this as about "turnskins" which I think is a weaker image) but this line from a boy NPC is a part of rubin world to me... we know he's familiar with Kin folklore, so it lends a bit of weight to his ability to believe that Artemy killed Isidor. as not literally about a werewolf, but a parable about failing to notice a person changing or simply holding murderous intentions

THAT SAID. clara and the shabnak are described as "steppe werewolfs" several times in this localization and By God, She Does Turn Her Family To Be In The Cemetery :-)

[krugkorien]

Happy New Year everyone! Today I want to show you my main setting: the Divine World. It’s a dark fantasy world that combines both epic (gods, monsters, magic, saving the world) and mundane (death, decay, bigotry, oppression) aspects of the genre. Worldbuilding and lore is a very important part of DW, to a point where if I could write everything I want about DW it would be one of the biggest books in the history of mankind. But this is an introductory post, so I’ll try to keep it brief!

1. While I’m not going to get into any unpleasant details here let’s still get some trigger warnings out of the way first. As I said DW is dark fantasy, and it’s so dark that Marena came up with the name Macabre Fantasy in order to emphasize how dark DW is and how the aforementioned themes of death and decay play a huge role in it, as well as many other sensitive topics. Aside from what has been already mentioned there's also a lot of cruelty & violence (both interpersonal & socio-political) and also topical problems: sexism, nazism, colonialism, etc. All of this, of course, is not for the sake of being edgy, but to make a lot of important points.

2. The inhabitants of the Divine World are appropriately called Divine Humans [1], aka Homo Mirandum. While they look a lot like regular humans, there are a lot of differences between us and them! They have horns, claws, different hair textures and skin tones, three spinal cords instead of one and are also bigger than us: it depends on a lot of factors and the shortest men are actually not that big, being only 166 cm tall, but the tallest women can go up to 350 cm! And yes, you’ve read it correctly, women are taller! Divine sexual dimorphism is somewhat flipped compared to ours and Divine women are tall, muscular and hairy, while men are short, thin and mostly hairless. Meanwhile their voices are pretty similar and androgynous, and also have a metal (as in material not music) vibe to them.

Physically Divine humans are, for the lack of better word, monumental: they are strong, capable of surviving wounds that would kill a regular human ten times over, have a great memory, but are also stiff and slow, both physically & mentally, for physiological reasons as well simply because they can afford to be — their lifespans can be measured in multiple Earth centuries. However Divine humans rarely enjoy their longevity to its full extent. Outside dangers aside, their illnesses and disabilities are just as monumental as they are. For example, Divine albinism means fully transparent flesh which in turn means complete blindness and high vulnerability towards radiation (levels of which are very high on Mirabilis).

Divine souls are just as physical as anything else. They are also Aetheric in nature, and are another example of Divine sexual dimorphism: white souls belong to men and black to women (with rare exceptions). This plays a huge role in Divine society and became one of the reasons why most Divine societies are patriarchal: men, despite being physically weak, can literally mind-control women when needed. It doesn’t help that too much contact with an aether opposite to your soul can lead to death.

While Divine humans are technically the only race of Mirabilis, thanks to magic they can turn into many various creatures: Demons, Angels, Chorts (lesser Demons, roughly speaking), Bieses (lesser Chorts), Beatas, Vampires, Turnskins (Divine equivalent of werewolves), Beasts, Chimeras, Nocturnals, Urials, Cadavredaxes and so on, many of them having sub-types (for example vampires being living and undead).

4. Technology & society-wise Divine civilization can be compared to 19th century Earth: imperialism and nationalism are at their peak, proto-industrial society, recently invented trains & electricity. However Divine civilization also possesses traits more associated with our Middle Ages: religion being the most important social institute, no concept of humanism, plate armor & melee weapons still being main tools of war.

5. Like Divine humans themselves Mirabilis looks somewhat Earth-ish but is actually very different. For starters, when I say that DW is a dark and oppressive world I mean it a bit literally! Mirabilis has high atmospheric pressure (~8 higher than Earth), it’s a much colder and wetter planet, and most noticeably — it has no sun. Despite this, Mirabilis still has light and heat, even if not as much as we do, all that thanks to the White Aether (a very important magic substance) that fills the space around the planet. A Sun’s fire isn’t the only kind Mirabilis lacks — due to the low oxygen level of 15% fire simply cannot exist in normal conditions on Mirabilis.

If the word “normal” can even be used towards Mirabilis — all of the planet’s flora are technically mushrooms and much closer to the meat-side of things, so stuff like bleeding human-eating trees isn’t exactly shocking to Divine humans. Animals are technically the same as on Earth but with a huge caveat — their appearance is based on the medieval depictions of them which means animals like hyperagressive fishes with limbs, talking horses with human teeth, owls with human faces, giant non-arthropodic insects and so on.

While Mirabilis is bigger than Earth, it has only one continent that is sliced in half by the so-called Black Wall —an  impassable wall of Black Aether. The stories I write take place on the western half of the continent, and its inhabitants can’t just cross the ocean to explore the East because of the atrament — a deadly substance that fills the sea and is so dangerous only two western races out of twelve have any level of resistance to it.

The explorers of Mirabilis would be very upset about this if not for the Remnants, mysterious ruins that are both more ancient than anything they have ever seen yet more advanced than anything they could dream of. Exploring Remnants is an incredibly dangerous, often illegal job, but what’s that compared to a chance to learn more about the world? More materialistic folks are attracted by the artifacts that are capable of granting incredible miracles and, of course, even more incredible horrors.

And I think that’s pretty much it for the introductory post! From now on I’m going to repost the stuff I’ve previously posted on my Twitter before but now with all kinds of lore tidbits. There’s other projects we’ll talk about, especially Neon-23, Marena’s cyberpunk setting (that has a crossover with DW we made for fun!) but that’s it for now. Thank you for reading all this! And thanks to @goldporces & ippoteq @ Twitter for beta-reading this text!

[1] — In Russian I call them Дивнолюди, based on an archaic Russian word for “miracle” — диво. “Divine” is a very lucky translation because it sounds similar to the original word and also points at the, well, divine nature of the Divine Humans.

[unhonestlymirror]

In the Belaruthian language and in some Northern Ukrainian dialects, перевертень/пярэварацень - "a turnskin/a werewolf" - is a synonym for a very cunning person who quickly adapts and easily changes his morals and behaviour for the sake of his subordinates as well as his own benefit, a hypocrite but rather with a positive connotation. Often found in descriptions of famous rulers such as Usiasłaŭ the Sorcerer and different Lithuanian Dukes, such a word carries a double, ironic meaning in addition to the usual "he was feared and respected".

[bestworstcase]

Does/Will tdt Cinder practice Khime?

no. although hellebore’s crossing itself is a very mixed community—like a third or so of its full-time population are fauni, many of whom practice khimerism—so cinder is a lot more familiar with what khimancy is than the average human. (one of the people in her contact list in burnt roses ch1 is a turnskin.) which isn’t to say she knows very much in detail, ’cause it’s a closed tradition, but she could define it accurately.

this is also why she recognizes the white fang safety mark on roin’s truck in ch5, since sable rescued her from the glass unicorn situation she’s grown up in an environment where it’s safe for fauni and specifically khimeric culture to just exist openly around their human neighbors. which translates into knowing how to signal that she’s a Safe Person.

lonán is a practicing khimancer (albeit one with no formal training); roscoe march and raymond altansarnai are as well (both formally trained); rue has khime for religious rite-of-passage reason, but she’s secular and not really interested in pursuing the art itself. the other fauni students in the spring class (bella marshal, garth saille, scar tybalt) don’t have khime. roscoe is REALLY GOOD bc he learned from his mom, who’s a turnskin.

cinder’s religious Situation is smth called strigism by like. religious scholars. it doesn’t have a name though, the people who practice it just refer to it as ‘our way’ or similar turns of phrase—it originated in the vitrine peninsula (where hellebore’s crossing is) and is more or less only practiced there.

and then oak is a kairoist—which is the dominant religion in anima, although a plurality of mistral’s urban population are draconites in some form, kairoism is Much Older (as in, predates ozma’s first reincarnation by a couple thousand years). [pyrrha is not in burnt roses because she is eleven but kairoism is conceptually just an elaborate riff on the mantra she uses to unlock jaune’s aura in canon, to give a sense of the vibe]

gretchen’s religion is folk draconism (<- the brother-cult) pejoratively called sanctimony by normative draconites because it is WILDLY HERETICAL and revolves around worship of various ‘saints,’ largely regional folk heroes syncretized into draconism as sacred heroes who inherited or otherwise obtained slivers of divine power after the dragon-brothers, who became mortal through the act of creating the world, died. (WILDLY. HERETICAL.) (fretting abt folk draconism keeps ozpin up at night.)

larkspur and rani both grew up reform draconites (<- aka the lucent church. reforms happened under king osiander and mainly involved imposing a separation between the valean aristocracy and the church and pushing a much greater theological emphasis on peace and inclusion. this got him briefly excommunicated but proved so popular with the common people that the church had to walk that back to save face. orthodox draconism is the radiant church. the vermeils were the only noble family to support the reforms and that was partly a political move to empower themselves over rivals and partly because the winter maiden at the time was a vermeil.)

filemot is an indifferent madagian (<- worship of the four maidens) which means he attends services on the equinoxes and solstices and that’s basically it.

and sacnicte practices ixtuan ancestor worship, which is very funny for her for reasons that we’ll get to Later. :)

[defectivegembrain]

Trick or treat!

A little guy made of twizzlers walks up to you and says:

There was a word between 1831-1871 "turnskin" meaning a werewolf!

[rinarin-karimel]

I was thinking that if we looked at the story from Mizuha’s point of view, without the first part of the manga, it would turn out to be a classic shojo with cliches that everyone is tired of: there is an ordinary ordinary high school student girl, who is suddenly chased by a handsome turnskin-boy with divine forces, and who began to bring her dresses and shoes, and fulfill her whims and all her desires, make sure that nothing happens to her, stalk her, save her all season, and the audience would shout: “How long can you go on?” I don’t believe it’s like this out of the blue?” And then this ordinary schoolgirl girl would turn out to be the receptacle of the local Alien Queen* and the reincarnation of their “Saint” and the viewers/readers would have their lower back burned from this cliche....

[m00n-struckk]

my friends are very accepting of me being nonhuman (some of them are too) but sometimes i listen to their jokes about me being a dog and just feel… sad?? misunderstood??

they keep comparing me to domestic dogs, especially labradors, and idk how to explain to them i feel like a wolf mistaken for a dog and forced to grow up and live in captivity away from the wild, my natural habitat, creatures like me.

or like a wolfdog, my nature constantly struggling against itself and my environment.

either way, i’m out of place, i’m lonely, i can’t read the cues of other dogs around me and i’ve been punished for it, for something outside of my control, for something thrust upon me when i should be anywhere else

idk… the dog jokes are funny and sometimes really affirming but i wish i could explain to them i’m not a lab. i’m something worse…

[redbourkol]

EDDIE SKETCHES

[ainlifun]

Malal and Beastmen

Beastmen are largely loathe to interact with the forces of Malal, be that his mortals or his daemons. They are chaos by nature, leaning towards perhaps one god or another, therefore Malal's creed is anathema to their entire existence. Commonly enough, the Daemons of Malal and Beasts of Chaos battle over supremacy of the Forests of Men. Malalians have the power, but the Beastmen by far outnumber them as well as have a natural knowledge of the wilds that Malalians do not.

However, when Beastmen do take the fifth path, it is almost always the lowest among them who turn: Brays, Turnskins, and Ungors. Because of this, and on top of their general weakness and lack of horns, these particular beastmen are relegated to the bottom of the pecking order where any treachery is the least damaging.

These Lesser Gors occasionally tire of the abuse heaped on them by the Gors of the tribe and strike out on their own into brayherds made of only their own kind, with the strongest of the Un-gors, called a Half Horn, leading them. However, these spitefully splintered groups rarely last long. Does tend to pair off with the strongest of beastmen for protection's sake, and so even un-gor does are loath to join their brethren. The original herd will inevitably go seeking this rebellious splinter group, forcibly beating them back in line and killing any leaders. If not them, then another herd-- the dexterity of the Ungor makes them invaluable to Brayherds as they are the only ones who can fashion armor and weapons.

Thusly, ever Half Horn Chieftain knows that he lives on borrowed time and that if, or more like when, the original herd catches up to him his fate will be grisly indeed. In order to avoid reprisal from the mother-herd, some Half-Horns will call upon the Hierarch, forsaking the Dark Gods. And sometimes, Malal will answer: he will send a Champion to lead the Herd or perhaps even mutate the current Ungor Beastlord and some of his warriors into a powerful creature of Chaos in order to fend off the aggression of Beastkin who search for them.

He marks his chosen with fur of solid black, solid white, or black and white patterns.

[beastlybardou]

Hello! Wolf here!

I am wondering if you believe that deity worship can lead to shifts?

So, deities aren't really a part of my belief system, at least not in the traditional sense. For that reason, I don't quite have any thoughts from personal experience about this. However, if deity work is important to you and your beliefs, I don't see any reason that working with your deities couldn't strengthen your shifts. I would expect this to be especially strong when working with deities associated with shape-shifting, acts of self transformation, wilderness, wildness, or journey work.

[madmonksandmaenads]

The Northern Witch of the Quadriga: *Scowling* You're really wearing that to the Witch's Sabbat?

The Western Witch: 👀

The Southern Witch: 🤭

Me, dressed in a fursuit, that is now covered in leaves and twigs from the hike out to the Blood Acre: Well, excuse me, I thought we were exalting the mysteries of the Turnskin.