“She knew herself, how she had slowly over, over the years, become a cat, a wolf, a snake, anything but a girl. How she had wrung out her girlhood like death.”
- DEATHLESS, Catherynne M. Valente
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she knew herself ⸻ how she had , over the years , become a cat , a wolf , snake ... anything but a girl . how she'd wrung out her girlhood like death . ❞
# GLIMMUHR : an independent and mutually exclusive writing blog featuring glimmer from the hunger games . heavily based upon the admin's own headcanons and interpretations of the character . runs at low to moderate activity with a heavy preference for plotted interactions and dynamics . penned by freya [ 23, she/they, cst ]
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She knew herself, how she had slowly, over years, become a cat, a wolf, a snake, anything but a girl. How she had wrung out her girlhood like death.
Catherynne M. Valente
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She knew herself, how she had slowly, over years, become a cat, a wolf, a snake, anything but a girl. How she had wrung out her girlhood like death
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“She knew herself, how she had slowly, over years, become a cat, a wolf, a snake, anything but a girl. How she had wrung out her girlhood like a death.”
Character name: Camille Nabi Park
Age: thirty-six
Gender & sexuality: cisfemale | she/they | queer
Residential area: Downtown Vancouver
Birthplace: Paris, France
Occupation: Artist
Length of time in Vancouver: twenty-ish years
Positive Traits
(+) inquisitive (+) creative (+) intelligent (+) sociable (+) particular
Negative Traits
(-) abrasive (-) argumentative (-) chaotic (-) judgmental (-) selfish
detailed biography / pinterest board
Details
⤖ If the confidence of a mediocre white cisman could exist inside a petite French-Korean woman, that’s Camille. She’s extremely self-assured, argumentative for fun when she likes someone, flirtatious and generally pleasant if she doesn’t find you boring.
⤖ Camille dresses like a character on the OG Gossip Girl and is a Fancy Lady, even though she’s an artist by craft. She isn’t too fond of commissions but will sell her work around the city.
⤖ Although she was born and raised in France, she likes to think that Vancouver is the city that raised her — or where she raised herself, she would like to say. She’s lived there since she moved to Canada for boarding school in ninth grade.
⤖ She is extremely independent and can be cold, but she is also a social animal and enjoys scintillating company.
⤖ The human embodiment of girlboss gatekeep gatecrash.
⤖ ALSO, she is very divorced (around a decade). She married and procreated young and it just didn’t work out. Her daughter is twelve now and their relationship is difficult, in part because her dad has primary custody.
Suggested Connections
LOCALS who have lived in Vancouver for a long time and would likely know each other.
PEOPLE IN THE ART SCENE, whether they are other art people or consumers, she would probably know them because she has been working as an artist for years.
POSSIBLE HALF-SIBLINGS & COUSINS especially from her father’s side.
NEIGHBOURS who live in the Downtown Vancouver area.
FUCK BUDDIES, DRINKING PALS, ETC because Camille loves herself a good time and people to share that with.
OLD FRIENDS from school, university, rich old families, proximity, etc.
EX-HUSBAND who she divorced nearly ten years ago; he’s likely also in his late-30s and has probably lived away from Vancouver for a few years until recently.
& MORE...
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( amita suman. she & they. demi woman. ) the courts of veritas welcome CHAINIKA GIRI! it’s been said that the 26 year old SIREN is known to be CONFIDENT and SADISTIC. when NIKA isn’t working as a SPECIALIST AT HELPING FINS, they can be found participating in PLOTTING OTHERS’ DEMISE. if you visit their home in ECHO COVE, it may remind you of the thorns hidden in rose bushes, broken mirror shards, long stiletto nails, liking animals more than people, names crossed angrily off a list, the feeling of a shadow over your shoulder, those tiktoks about “feminine rage”, having nothing to lose. they may be your best friend or your greatest enemy.
she knew herself
how she had slowly, over years
become a cat
a wolf
a snake
anything but a girl.
how she had wrung out her girlhood like death.
trigger warnings ;; death, grief (explicit) murder (implied)
CHARACTER BASICS
Full Name: chainika devna giri
Nickname: nika
Age: 26
Gender: demi woman
Pronouns: she & they
Ethnicity: nepali-caucasian
Nationality: veritean
Education: schooling on the island
Occupation: specialist at helping fins
Hometown: echo cove
Current location: echo cove
Species: nika is a siren, a subspecies of merfolk
Written Aesthetics: the thorns hidden in rose bushes, broken mirror shards, long stiletto nails, liking animals more than people, names crossed angrily off a list, the feeling of a shadow over your shoulder, those tiktoks about “feminine rage”, having nothing to lose
CHARACTER APPEARANCE
Face Claim: amita suman
Height: 5'6
Hair Colour: black
Eye Colour: brown
Dominant Hand: right
Distinguishing Features: her impressively long hair, bioluminescent skin, and deep purple merfolk features
SUPERNATURAL EXTRAS
Abilities: vocal mimicry, bioluminescence, tactile hypnosis
Weaknesses: bronze daggers dipped in victims blood, heightened emotions, magical boundaries
Have you always been aware of your abilities?: yes, nika was born knowing, and has practiced controlling it since.
Favorite Magical Items: nika and their sister had matching necklaces, each with one shell from the same clam. the necklace could control their siren abilities, making it safe to live their lives as they wanted. she now wears both necklaces at all times.
What supernatural creature is your character most scared of?: wixen.
Who or what would they die for? justice. revenge.
Does your character fight or flee? fight and fight and fight.
PERSONALITY
Positive Traits: confident, driven, analytical
Negative Traits: sadistic, short-sighted, closed-off
Neutral Traits: powerful, independent, seductive
Goals/desires: making the people who killed her sister pay.
Fears: she's gotten to be pretty fearless. the worst thing that could happen to them has already happened. what's left to fear?
Hobbies: plotting others demise? but also - reading.
Habits: combing their fingers through the ends of her hair, chewing on her tongue.
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT Q’S
your answers to these questions do not have to be in depth, though of course they can be! they’re just here to help you grasp your character a little more, as well as for me to get an understanding !
QUESTION ONE: were you born on the island, if so, what kind of curiosities do you have about the world beyond? if you weren’t, what do you miss about the world outside veritas isles?
nika was born on the island, but she also travelled a lot after losing her sister. because of this, they don't particularly miss anything about either world. having lived on a deserted island for a few years as an escape from their own grief, she missed people, but now that chainika's back in veritas, they can't help but long for the solitude again.
QUESTION TWO: what is your favorite part about the island?
currently? nothing. previously? the jaw-dropping beauty of her surroundings.
QUESTION THREE: if your character is supernatural, do they fear humans? if human, do they fear the supernatural?
they are supernatural, but chainika doesn't fear humans. in fact, for the time they spent on a deserted island, many humans fell prey to her siren abilities.
QUESTION FOUR: share a fun headcanon or fact about your character! this doesn’t have to be long, just something to introduce us to your character!
chainika loves animals. she waded into the stormy ocean, fighting riptides and sharp rainfall against her scales whenever she surfaced to bring a struggling sea lion back to shore, where she nursed it back to health using things they found on the island. upon returning to veritas, they got a job at helping fins and she's finally found another purpose.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
due to her sister's relationship with a coldwell, chainika's sister met a fatal end. in the years since nika lost her, she disappeared from veritas isle. making a new home on a deserted island where she could finally embrace her own nature, drawing men to their own violent ends as penance for the loss of her best friend. however, the vengeance wasn't enough. she was taking lives, but none of them meant anything. they returned to the island recently, having plotted multiple means of revenge on the coldwell family.
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She knew herself, how she had slowly, over years, become a cat, a wolf, a snake, anything but a girl. How she had wrung out her girlhood like death.
Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless
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"She knew herself, how she had slowly, over years, become a cat, a wolf, a snake, anything but a girl. How she had wrung out her girlhood like death."
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“She knew herself, how she had slowly, over years, become a cat, a wolf, a snake, anything but a girl. How she had wrung out her girlhood like death.”
Catherynne M. Valente
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DANSE DES FÉES *
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[...] zâna zorilor îşi uită acuma supărarea de tristă ce se făcu şi trimise pe sfantul soare ca să umble în lume să facă din şapte zile una … să cerce să afle şi s-aducă veşti. o zi din şapte zile zâna zorilor n-a făcut alta decât a stat şi privit în calea soarelui, a privit … privit … până ce au început a-i curge lacrimile din ochişori, nu ştim acuma de privitul cel mult ori de durerea şi dorul ei cel mare! iată-ntr-a şaptea zi sfantul soare se reîntoarce … roşu, trist şi obosit … iarăşi veste rea! hei! că petru era unde razele soarelui nu pot pătrunde! [...] porunci apoi, ca între lume şi împărăţia zorilor să se lase vălul cel mare al întunecimii prin care să nu străbată decât o singură rază de soare, care să ducă vestea-n lume cum că "până ce nu va veni acela care a dus apă de la fântână, soarele să nu se mai mişte pe cer".
[...] the dawn fairy forgot now her anger for all the sadness she felt, and sent saint sun to travel across the world and make from seven days one ... to try and find news. one day out of seven the dawn fairy did nothing but sit and look in the sun’s path, and she looked ... and she looked ... until tears started flowing from her pretty eyes, i cannot say now whether because of the long vigil or because of her pain and great longing !! and so it was that on the seventh day, saint sun came back ... red, mournful, and tired ... and yet again with bad news !! hey !! for petru was where the sun’s rays could not touch. [...] she decreed then that between the world and her kingdom the big veil of darkness shall fall, through which only a single ray of sunshine shall pierce, so that it may spread the word that “ until he who stole water from the fountain will return, the sun will not move on the sky”.
a folk legend meant to explain the long winter years that had fallen upon the world, unknown writer.
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FULL NAME: Bellatrix Ezmeray Lestrange, neé Black.
NICKNAMES/PSEUDONYMS: Madam lestrange by colleagues; Bella by close family only.
REGISTERED BLOOD STATUS: Pureblood.
KNOWN LANGUAGES: English, Turkish, French, Latin.
BIRTHPLACE: Ankara, Turkey.
GENDER, PRONOUNS: Cis female, she/her.
FAMILY: Cygnus Black (father) She has always been the perfect heir, though to Cygnus it seemed she was nothing more than a consolation prize. He took her along with him as she grew, taught her the ways of the family, but there was always the lingering threat of Bellatrix being cast aside for a son. Luckily, one never came. She has become the ideal face of the Black family, always excelling where it matters most.
Druella Black (mother) Druella always fret more over Narcissa and Andromeda than she did Bellatrix. It always seemed that Druella disliked Bellatrix in some regard, being rather cold and unfeeling towards her. The pair have never gotten along.
Narcissa Malfoy (sister) She does LOVE her and would do absolutely anything for her. What more can I say.
Andromeda Tonks (sister - estranged) When Andromeda left, Bellatrix and Druella battled it out for quite a while. She sulked for weeks after Andromeda was blasted off the tree, sure that given time she’d come to her senses and return to the family. She snapped at anyone that asked about it until what began as an open wound healed into a twisted scar that she has learned to leave untouched.
Evan Rosier (cousin) She does LOVE him, they do GET each other.
MARITAL STATUS: Widowed.
OFFSPRING: Bellatrix is infertile.
ORIENTATION: Bisexual.
AGE / DATE OF BIRTH: 30 / 27th October.
WESTERN ZODIAC: Scorpio.
MORAL ALIGNMENT: Lawful evil ??
EYE COLOR: Brown.
HAIR COLOR: Black.
BUILD & HEIGHT: Slender build, stands at a regal 5′9.
IDENTIFYING MARKS & SCARS: A dark mark contrasts against the otherwise unmarred skin of her left forearm, it is almost always rendered invisible via charmswork.
SPEECH PATTERNS: Her voice exudes a certain sense of elegance, and Bellatrix typically adopts a tone that suggests she is the most important person in the room.
HOUSE, IF APPLICABLE: Slytherin.
SCHOOLING: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry.
OCCUPATION: Sitting member of the Wizengamot.
REGISTERED WAND: 12 ¾” walnut with a dragon heartstring core, unyielding. Possesses a distinct curvature.
AMORTENTIA: tba.
BOGGART: Black manor, dilapidated (a symbol of loss, it speaks more to the crumbling of family and legacy than to the building itself).
PATRONUS: Non-corporeal.
KNOWN AFFILIATIONS: Ministry of Magic, Black family.
CURRENT MAILING ADDRESS: Lestrange manor.
LAST SEEN LOCATION: Last seen exiting 13B, Knockturn alley. More commonly known as Borgin and Burkes. Left empty handed and looking quite pleased after arriving with what appeared to be a small jewelry box.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Skilled occlumens, capable of wandless and nonverbal magic, avid potioneer. Previously married to known Death Eater, Rodolphus Lestrange, though she claims ignorance to that fact.
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tag drop 1/3
*.★.。 ❝ currently dissociating into the astral plane ❞ › ooc.
*.★.。 ❝ for rainy days ❞ › saved.
*.★.。 ❝ support the brand ❞ › sp.
*.★.。 ❝ look at all those chickens ! ❞ › p.
*.★.。 ❝ maybe fallen stars are meant for other galaxies ❞ › wishlist.
*.★.。 ❝ i don’t want to be heard. i want to be listened to ❞ › starter.
*.★.。 ❝ her voice rose above the hurricane ❞ › reply.
*.★.。 ❝ even now at the end she was watched ❞ › answers.
*.★.。 ❝ the promised child made from prophecies and ruins ❞ › introspect.
*.★.。 ❝ women though; we are mostly water - sea inside us ❞ › musing.
*.★.。 ❝ for instance: what ocean was before it became flesh ❞ › headcanon.
*.★.。 ❝ how she had wrung out her girlhood like death ❞ › aesthetic.
*.★.。 ❝ bride of water ; bride of stars ❞ › body img.
*.★.。 ❝ let us be greedy together. let us hoard ❞ › desires.
*.★.。 ❝ crowned in light & woven from gilded gossamer ❞ › wardrobe.
*.★.。 ❝ and i’m burning up like an ancient sun ❞ › lady of the stars.
*.★.。 ❝ party girls don’t get hurt - can’t feel anything. ❞ › modern.
*.★.。 ❝ where the waves crest and the land only knows summer ❞ › azha.
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Louise Glück, from Averno
“Sometimes you leave your hair at the bus station
& get on the bus & as your face falls asleep against the window
you realize it is all your body now, everything between you
& the pieces you lost once,”
Aracelis Girmay, from Kingdom Animalia; “Portrait of the Woman As a Skein”
Marie Howe, from Magdalene: Poems; “The Girl at 3″
“She knew herself, how she had slowly, over years, become a cat, a wolf, a snake, anything but a girl. How she had wrung out her girlhood like death.”
Catherynne M. Valente, from Deathless
“Many girls lock themselves up, / become pantries, closets. / Some, like trees, grow bark, / and others, like rivers, / burble into dimpled pools.”
Eli Mandel, from “Rapunzel (Girl in a Tower)"
“Sometimes I forget. I become a volatile spirit / a butterfly out of its wings, a blooming flower / in decay. I fall in love with ghosts and cry / when they flesh out,”
Mahtem Shiferraw, from Fuschia; “Being a Woman”
Aracelis Girmay, from “Portrait of the Woman as a Skein”
“Not every girl survives the forest. / Sometimes she becomes it.”
Catherine Garbinsky, from “The Princess & the Thorns,” Even Curses End
Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost
“I was something else, not a girl, not a wolf, something blank-eyed, tired,”
Catherynne M. Valente, from The Bread We Eat in Dreams
“Shame fuses to silence letting the night maraud, killing bit by useless hope of not being this girl I was. Am. She is.”
Eimear McBride, from The Lesser Bohemians
“When I was a girl / and you were a girl / we were floral / and ungiveable. Squash / blossom. Bleeding / Hearts in the sideyard. / Vine, albino root. / Petals open only in the moonlight.”
Emily O'Neill, “Wedding Soup,” from Pelican
“Glory be to the girl who goes back for her body.”
Dominique Christina, from Star Gazer
“Cover the memory of your face with the mask of who you’ll be—come, and frighten the girl you used to be.”
Alejandra Pizarnik, from Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962-1972 (tr. Yvette Siegert), “Paths of the Mirror”
“—if I could remember a day when I was utterly a girl and not yet a woman— / but I don’t think there was a day like that for me. / When I look at the girl I was, dripping in her bathing suit, or riding her bike, pumping hard down the newly paved street, / she wears a furtive look— and even if I could go back in time to her as me, the age I am now / she would never come into my arms without believing that I wanted something.”
Marie Howe, from What the Living Do: Poems; “The Girl”
“‘How strange it is to long for one’s self!’ she said; ‘and yet I often, so often, long for myself as a young girl. I love her as one whom I had been very close to and shared life and happiness and everything with, and then had lost while I stood helpless.’”
Jens Peter Jacobsen, from Niels Lyhne
Mary Oliver, from Blue Horses; “Blueberries”
“Your bare feet became a woman's feet, always saying two things at once.”
Louise Glück, from Descending Figure
“And I must choose. War before me, and behind, a woman I do not know, the woman I could have been, a human woman, whole and hot.”
Catherynne M. Valente, from Deathless
Louise Glück, from “The Myth of Innocence”
“Beware your face, / your limbs, your walk: / Gods see these / as invitations. / Beware of swans. / They may lift you / but you will fall. / Beware of children / hatched from eggs, / unfledged and beautiful: / they will burn / cities to the ground. / Don’t be seduced by the gods, / my daughter. / Though you break / into song beneath them / you will remain broken.”
Jeannine Hall Gailey, from Becoming the Villainess; “Leda’s Mother Warns Her”
“What could I have grown up to be? What kind of human woman, what kind of simple, happy thing? If I had never been broken on a bird’s wing. If I had never seen the world naked. I want to be myself again… I want to stop knowing everything I know.”
Catherynne M. Valente, from Deathless
“But I don’t really like what I know; I don’t really care for wisdom and experience. I would rather believe, and beat out my brains, and believe some more. I do not like this safe well-armed woman I have become. The loud bleating disheveled starry reckless failed girl was a better person.”
Martha Gellhorn, from Selected Letters
“a child with seafoam eyes / and dusky skin might cry, there / goes a girl with seven thousand years / at the hollow of her throat,”
Amal El-Mohtar, from ‘Song for an Ancient City’
“I say “her,” because I don’t recall having been present, not in any meaningful sense of the word. I and the girl in the picture have ceased to be the same person. I am her outcome, the result of the life she once lived headlong; whereas she, if she can be said to exist at all, is composed only of what I remember.”
Margaret Atwood, from The Blind Assassin
“There were always in me two women at least, one woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning, and another who would leap into a scene, as upon a stage, conceal her true emotions because they were weaknesses, helplessness, despair, and present to the world only a smile, an eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest.”
Anaïs Nin, from The Diary of Anaïs Nin: Volume One, 1931-1934
“Come, let me suffer! That is worth more than viewing injustice with a serene countenance, as Shakespeare says. When I have drained my cup of bitterness, I shall feel better. I am a woman, I have affections, sympathies, and wrath.”
George Sand, in a letter to Gustave Flaubert
“Slapped the man’s face, then slapped it again, / broke the plate, broke the glass, pushed the cat / from the couch with my feet. Let the baby / cry too long, then shook him, / let the man walk, let the girl down, / wouldn’t talk, then talked too long, / lied when there was no need / and stole what others had, and never / told the secret that kept me apart from them. / Years holding on to a rope / that wasn’t there, always sorry / and righteous and wrong. Who would / follow that young woman down the narrow hallway? / Who would call her name until she turns?”
Marie Howe, “What I Did Wrong”
“She is a woman stranded at doorways and passivity is killing her. There is only one thing she can do. Make noise.”
Anne Carson, in her Introduction to Elektra
Audre Lorde, from The Black Unicorn: Poems
“Part of me died here / so another could go on.”
Marty McConnell, from “When They Say You Can’t Go Home Again, What They Mean Is You Were Never There”
“see, you will rise. / and are you less of a woman for this? / no / what is woman? / woman is this—enduring. / listen girl, you will survive this—you will. / but what fool said you had to do it silently? / here is a tip—scream”
Salma Deera, Letters From Medea, “medea gives advice to a young girl with a broken heart”
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words cannot describe how much i adore tsukuyo and everything she is as a character. she has been taught at a young age to throw aside her womanhood, that relying on others and letting them in is considered to be weak, pointless. yet she triumphs over that, she learns from others, she embraces those around her, she saved so many women of yoshiwara. protected them and cared for them, lead them and made them a part of her force. she is a protector, but also can be protected too, that it’s okay.
hinowa and seita are her most important people, her family. the hyakka, all of those in yoshiwara. her home.
she knows now it’s not a bad to be a woman, to finally come to peace with her feelings and to love with all her being. tsukuyo is absolutely raw and stunning.
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