MxF 𝐒𝐮𝐠𝐚𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐕𝐢𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 | 𝘢 𝘳𝘦𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥 | 𝘤𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘥

[chap]

HI, HELLO, AND HOW ARE YOU? Well, hi. For all intensive porpoises, you can call me chap, if you want to. I'm a guy in my mid-thirties. I live in the Southern United States, but I hope you won't hold that against me. I'm basically what you get if David Lynch (but not as unrepentantly cool), Cormac McCarthy (but not as enthrallingly brilliant), and that dumb hipster that lives down the street from you (spot on, really) had a baby. I've been doing this whole roleplaying thing for way longer than I thought I would and way longer than I care to admit. Funny how that works out, huh? Most of what I write is somewhere between high concept mania and a weird-ass fever dream. If you really wanted to pigeonhole me, I guess I fall under the 'advanced lit' umbrella of roleplaying, but I think that's a pretty dumb term, don't you? So, let's not. I'm a sweetheart, basically.​ CURRENT AVAILABILITY God, I'm really bad at this, huh? Like, legitimately awful. I signed up, bumped, disappeared, came back, bumped again, disappeared again, and you can all thank the combined efforts of my job, my dog, and my poorly timed vacation. So, my bad. I think I'm in a better place to actually make this work this time...? Maybe? I'm working from home now. So, that's cool. I haven't been doing much (read: any) roleplaying lately, if we're being honest. So, this is (another) attempt at dipping my toes back into the proverbial pond. Just like last time, we're going to take this nice and slow, easy peasy. At most, I'm open to one or maybe two roleplays right now. Let's cross our fingers, huh? ​ SO, HERE'S THE THING I'm particular. Picky, I mean. Persnickety, even. That's especially true when it comes to one on one roleplays. I decided a long time ago that the best course of action was to just lean all the way into it. That being said, I think it's only fair to let prospective writing partners know exactly what they're getting themselves into before they start prospecting too hard. Expectations are important, right? So! Gathered below, you're going to find all sorts of bits and pieces that will most likely dictate whether or not we'd make for a good match. As I'm sure you can imagine, this part is a bit boring. Bear with me, okay?​ WRITING WITH STRANGERS When seeking new writing partners, chemistry is pretty much everything to me. If we're not cut from the same cloth, we should at least be manufactured in the same textile factory. Plotting and planning is a requirement. I'm not the type to dive right into writing with someone new without having a long discussion about our story, our characters, and where we'd like to see the whole thing go. If you're looking for something quick and painless, I'm probably not your guy. This may also be a good place to point out that I only write Male characters paired with Female characters. That includes all Females, regardless of what they have between their legs.​ IT'S CALLED STYLE, SWEETIE I write in Third Person Omniscient or Limited by default. The grand majority of my posts tend to be multiple paragraphs and range anywhere between 500 to 2k words in length. I'm a wordy bitch. It's a habit. My availability and posting rate can be all over the place. You'll likely get a post or two out of me a week and that's being generous. Along those same lines, real life always comes first. No exceptions.​ SMUT, SEX, AND GETTIN' IT Wanna hear a joke? A guy signs up for an (predominantly?) erotic roleplaying site. He doesn't write erotica. Badum tss. So, here's the deal... I like smut. I really do! But... I don't really write it all that much. It used to be pretty much all I wrote, but nowadays, most of my stuff is story driven with a heavy focus on characterization, world building, and plot. That being said, I'm not against sex happening in the story! it just needs to have a purpose, you know? I want smut that advances the plot and a plot that can make the smut actually matter beyond our characters having the chance to bump uglies. It's all about balance.​ WRITING SAMPLES If you've made it this far, you're probably pretty curious what I actually write like. So, here's a couple samples pulled from other roleplays I've done. Feel free to give them a skim.​ Sample 1 Out past the city with its skyline like headstones, past the suburbs and the blacktop and the hissing telephone wires and the spinning plates of modern life, past where the river flows beneath that rust red bridge and where the steepled church sits with the sign out front announcing the world to come, past where the sunspots gleam against those old tin roofs, past where the interstate hums its dirge against the natural world, past the unpainted billboards and the abandoned storefronts, the overgrown lawns and all the absence therein, past where the cows bawl against the morning light with clumps of half chewed cud hanging from their dirty mouths, past the empty main street where no cars go and the pockmarked fields and the barbwire fences and the false foxglove and ragweed and chigger lace and goldenrod and blooming dogwoods. Out there, past all the ephemera of simple existence, an old farmhouse sat on an acre of bones. Sun peeled paint and creaking floorboards. An unused chimney and a screen door full of holes. A backyard given back to nature like a gift and the farmhouse itself and the darkness within; the death of man writ large in its shadow. Look at it. You wouldn't have even noticed if I hadn't told you, would you? It sat only ever in the periphery, living in some romanticized version of rural America; unseen and unnoticed, lacking importance, a relic from a bygone era. See it now. The gravel strewn driveway, the old sky-blue pickup truck with the engine already running, the man sitting inside with his disheveled hair and unkempt beard smoking his tenth morning cigarette. See it all. Those deep wells beneath his eyes, those nicotine stains on each of his nails, the way his chest heaves and lifts beneath the weight of endless, constant, limitless grief. Grief. That's the only word that fits him and no amount of poetry can put that into perspective until you've experienced it for yourself. He sat in the truck preparing himself for the drive ahead, sipping from a seafoam green thermos and staring through the grit covered windshield at the windbreak trees across the road and the flocking birds that gathered on their limbs. He remembered all of the evanescent beauty that had existed on that very plot of land just a few years prior. He felt the longing trying to pull him back to days he'd already lived out in his head a million times or more, that sepia-toned nostalgia acting as an unwelcome reminder of all the things he had lost and all of the things he still stood to lose. It went like this. Planes fell from the sky the first time it happened. Cars went careening over embankments with the baby still in the backseat. The Senate was adjourned. He had been tending to the garden; radishes and turnips and parsley and cucumbers. He was wiping the sweat from his brow when he heard the wailing from inside the house, the slamming doors and crash of panic. He went running across the yard, tilling the ground with his feet. She always made him kick off his dirty boots before he came inside, but that didn't matter in the moment. He trekked mud across the floorboards. He found her standing in the kitchen with a busted nose, all blood and tears in the half light, wide eyed and pale as a specter, clutching their newborn son in her arms. The high chair was overturned next to the dining room table. A bowl of cereal sat uneaten, the milk still rippling. Where was their daughter? That moment overturned the order of their souls. This is causality. From there, she withered from the inside out and he began to drink more than he should. When it happened again, she was gone and he could only hope she was in a better place. He took on the role of a single father until the third wave took that away from him as well. With every new round of disappearances, he began to pray to what ever trickster god might be listening that he would be the next to go, but it never came even as it surrounded him. The fourth wave took his father, the only man on Earth that was worth his admiration. The fifth wave took his brother from a hospital bed in Tucson and there was some small kindness in knowing it got to him before the cancer did. His mother was the last to go and he didn't find out until two weeks after the fact. That night, he took a bottle of sleeping pills, drank a fifth of Jim Beam, and woke up the next morning with his cheek glued to his pillow by vomit. This is causality. These are the rules. There were suspicions. There were questions. There were investigations. The police came calling, searching the property for unmarked graves when the rumors first got out. Gossip as good as gospel and all that. Before it had shut down, someone at the local departure office had called him an anomaly. "Mr. Burroughs, I ain't never heard of anyone who lost someone every time this thing happens," He said. "One or two people, sure. Hell, I lost my cousin and his wife in the second poof. But you? Don't take no offense to this, but it's downright bizarre." It wasn't exactly the best distinction in the world, but he thought he was just ahead of the curve. On a long enough timeline, everyone would lose everybody. On a long enough timeline, there would be no one left at all. Even though he had made the drive from Buckley to the city a thousand times before, that didn't make it any less of a hassle or any less of a chore. Two hours on the road there and back again with nothing to do but smoke and think. In truth, it wasn't like he did much else anyway after the country decided to put him on a paid leave of absence. Precautions, they said. Liabilities. For your own safety. We're worried about you, Ezra. We can't have you climbing the poles in the state you're in. Take some time off, brother. Catch your breath, you've had a rough old time. We're here for you. Go sit inside your mausoleum and rot. We'll keep sending the checks. Ezra Burroughs, former husband. Ezra Burroughs, former father. Ezra Burroughs, former son. Ezra Burroughs, former brother. Ezra Burroughs, former county linesman. What are we if not the titles we're given? Ezra Burroughs, nothing at all. This is causality. These are the rules.​ Sample 2 Virgil McCormick had never been a violent man. A mindful of hornets and a mouthful of liquor; sing the song of violence and watch how the gathering crowds sway and nod like reeds in the wind, wanton and wanting and waiting for the taste of blood on their lips, on their tongue, between their teeth, dribbling down their chins, droplets congregating in a red flood that will surely swallow house and home, mother and child, the natural world and the world of man, everything and all and all and evermore. The milk of human kindness tastes like spite, if you drink enough of it. If you drink enough of it, it tastes like nothing at all. Virgil McCormick had never been a vengeful man. Year of her birth, just a few hours from home, the backroom of a gay bar with his cock in another man's mouth. He should have felt guilty, but he didn't, not then and not there. That guilt wouldn't come til later when the tears started flowing down his wife's cheeks, eyes rimmed red and lower lip all a-tremble. After the screaming, after the accusations, after the confessions, after the sighs, after the paperwork, after the divorce, after the shared custody, after the child support, after the rumors, after the trail of shattered dreams left in his wake, after he gave all he thought he had left to give, what was left? A taciturn heart and lust like a plague of locusts, the tick and the tock of every hour, every minute, every second leading him to where he was in the present, in his bedroom, alone, a mindful of hornets and a mouthful of liquor, singing the song of violence beneath ragged breath while a barroom of hungry ghosts feasted beneath his feet. Virgil McCormick had never been a bloodthirsty man. Bloodthirsty as in eager, eager as in wanting. Beneath his feet, hungry ghosts feasting on schadenfreude. He'd put each and every one against the wall if that would bring his daughter back. After two decades of playing chicken with oblivion, he'd finally found his purpose, his reason to live. It's the things you take for granted that you miss the most, they say. The way she smiled and said goodbye as he descended the stairs to start his day, how she barely hid her laughter whenever it was at his expense, her lyrical speech patterns or how she crinkled her nose when she was embarrassed. All those moments, crisscrossing his memories, haunted, haunted, haunted. Beneath those stars, the mind wandered and waned, but it never wavered. The seed had been planted, the decision had been made. Quentin Severin would die, if that's what it would take. He'd streak that man's blood across his face and dust his hair with that man's ashes. He'd slit thine wrists and gouge thine eyes, steal thine life and feel the waylaid ghost breathing down his neck. Anything for Carla, if that's what it took, if it came to that. Any good father would do the same. To kill for love is to love completely, a voice whispered in his ear. Virgil McCormick sat on his bed, passing his gun back and forth from his left hand to his right. Midnight would come with a dead moon in its jaws.​ ​ THINGS I LIKE Collaborative storytelling and all that entails. Cormac McCarthy. David Foster Wallace. Kurt Vonnegut. Tom Waits. Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Radiohead. David Bowie. David Lynch. A whole lot of Davids, apparently. Stanley Kubrick. Classic country music. Elevated horror. Science fiction. Magical realism. Metafiction. Breaking the fourth wall until it turns to dust. Surreal little ideas that only get more surreal with time. A good story that has a point, a purpose, and a meaning behind it. Petite women. Redheads, just like every other man on the planet. Butts, of course. Rough stuff. Characters that are going through some shit. Stories about grief and failure and the human condition. Coffee. Dumb jokes. Music and movie recommendations.​ THINGS I DON'T LIKE Slices of life with no strings attached. Anime for the most part. Canon/Fandom based roleplays. Anything to do with rape or non-con. The gross kinks; you know the ones. Impatient partners. Feet, just in general. Vampires, as a rule. 'Dark', edgy roleplays that are the writing equivalent to shopping for all your clothes at Hot Topic. Furfolk and their furry ways. Racism, sexism, and all the other terrible -isms. Perfect characters with perfect lives and nothing to worry about. Stevie fuckin' Nicks.​ STORIES TO TELL Humbug and Balderdash Genre: Noir. Horror. Surrealism. Pairings: Two paranormal detectives in a haunted city. Inspired By: The X-Files. CSI. Chromatics. "Though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil, for I am the evilest motherfucker in the valley" In Vauxbury, there are no children. In Vauxbury, the sun only shines for two hours a day. In Vauxbury, the shadows grow long and they all have teeth. In Vauxbury, you're never quite as safe as you may hope to be. This is a story about a haunted city that exists only on the periphery of reality. There, alleyways weave like labyrinths and the blackstone buildings tower above the cobblestone streets; a city where ghosts and monsters and all manner of horror not only exist, but thrive. Of course, as strange as the paranormal happenings in Vauxbury are, the denizens who choose to live there are even stranger: The woman in red on the street corner down the way, briefcase always handcuffed to her skinny wrist. The fortune teller with gold teeth and a permanent cough, her mind wandering through future possibilities. The cult leader in the high rise, weaving miracles from thin air. The one-eyed dwarf operating a sprawling black market in his basement. The sewerfolk who treat the world beneath those streets as their own personal playground. And, of course, our main characters, Humbug and Balderdash. That isn't their real names, but those are the names they've chosen for themselves. Humbug and Balderdash are paranormal detectives in a city that demands their attention. One, a bowery-tough brawler with a penchant for cigarettes and fists like wrecking balls. The other, a femme fatale who only takes her coffee black and holds the world in cool disregard. Together, they work the streets, investigating reported hauntings and trying to make sense of a senseless place. Notes: Noir! Horror! Police procedural! That's what this one is all about. Unlike most of my ideas, the characters already sort've exist. You have Humbug and you have Balderdash, paranormal detectives who work in the haunted city of Vauxbury. Beyond that, I'd rather expand on the characters with a partner. Ideally, this idea would be told episodically with an almost monster-a-week/case-a-week vibe to it while also telling an overarching story, if that makes sense. The goal here is to tell spooky stories with maybe a healthy dollop of slowly unfurling romance. Sounds fun, right?​ The Inland Expanse Genre: Sci-Fi Pairings: Members of an expedition into a secret, otherworldly place. Inspired By: Annihilation. The Southern Reach Trilogy. The Walker Brothers. "That's how the madness of the world tries to colonize you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality." If you were to ask three different scientists from three different fields of study what exactly the Inland Expanse is and why it exists, you would receive three very different answers. These are the facts: The Inland Expanse is located in Nevada, an hour South of Las Vegas. It comprises a fifty square mile stretch of land that was closed to the public in 1994 after various anomalous occurrences were detected there. It's an ecological marvel in the sense that, for reasons still unknown, various flora and fauna that have never been observed on our planet before appeared there overnight. Prior to its closure, a clandestine government agency known as the Mojave Research Collective (hereby referred to as The MRC) made it their business to study, research, and better understand the phenomenon. As of 2023, the Inland Expanse still presents more questions than answers. The main method of research over the years has been the practice of sending in teams of researchers to study the Inland Expanse in the flesh. To date, there have been four expeditions in total. While every expedition has yielded a wealth of fascinating discoveries, the fourth expedition quickly became the most notorious after only one of the twenty researchers that crossed into the Inland Expanse returned. The researcher was found suffering from a form of amnesia regarding what happened during their six-month expedition and did not know the whereabouts of the rest of their team. Two years later, the MRC has decided it's time to send in a fifth expedition to uncover more secrets and, with any luck, discover what happened to the fourth expedition. Notes: This story is my white whale. I've had it posted in some form or fashion for years on a few different sites. I've even talked to a few people about possibly playing it. It's never panned out. This story is heavily inspired by The Southern Reach book series and the movie adaptation of Annihilation. I would highly recommend watching the movie if you're interested in this story as it does a pretty excellent job at giving the general vibe that we're going for. We'll be playing members of the fifth expedition as they traverse what amounts to an alien world in the middle of the Nevada desert. Ideally, we'll be taking on the roles of multiple characters in the story with multiple storylines happening at the same time. ​ The Knock-Knock Game Genre: An A24 Horror Movie. Pairings: Two people playing a game they never should have played. Inspired By: The Left Right Game. Talk To Me. A really fucked up Narnia. Beach House. "Knock knock. Who's there?" There's a door in the basement of a bar in Downtown Nashville that shouldn't exist, but does. It's not always there; it appears at random, carved into the brickwork wall like it's been there all along, like it belongs there, like it's normal for a door to just appear out of the blue whenever it wants. It's always wooden, it's always locked, and for as long as anyone can remember, people have always flocked to it to play The Knock Knock Game. The rules are simple: On nights that the door appears in the bar, folks will pile into the basement and take turns knocking on the door. For most people, nothing will happen… but occasionally, for one or two people in the crowd, the door will unlock as if inviting them inside. If the door unlocks for you, you have to go inside. Most people come back saying it was nothing but a dark room. Other people claim to see impossible environments; dense forests, vast deserts, snow capped mountain ranges. Some even claim to see figures standing at their periphery, silently watching them. One intrepid Knock Knock player has even written a guidebook on things you might see and how you should react, but most people consider it bullshit. This story revolves around two people who play The Knock Knock Game and go through the door. They get trapped on the other side, the door locking behind them, soon finding themselves in a strange, supernatural world where the laws of reality bend and break. Together, they try to find a way out. Notes: Weird one, right? A weird game revolving around a door in a bar that only appears occasionally, an alien world or a parallel dimension or an alternate reality on the other side of it. This story aims for spookiness above all things. It's meant to capitalize on creeping dread, a sense of unease, the unlikely result of reality colliding with the uncanny. Basically, this story is going to be full blown horror with just enough surrealism and mystery tossed in to make things interesting. Ideally, I'd love to find a partner for this one that doesn't mind deep diving into the world building aspect.​ Like Clockwork Genre: Time Fuckery Pairings: Two strangers stuck in a seemingly endless time loop. Inspired By: Groundhog Day. Palm Springs. David Bowie. "When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope." It was by accident, you know. That's how these things usually go. No one ever plans to get stuck in a time loop, but once you're there, you're there and it can be very difficult to get oneself unstuck. This is the story of two strangers who, while visiting an idyllic little town somewhere in Appalachia, find themselves stuck together in a seemingly endless time loop. After coming to terms with their predicament and eventually finding one another, they begin testing the boundaries of their newfound lives while also looking for a way to escape the loop and return to their regular timeline. However, little do they know, all is not what it seems and there are other forces at work who plan to keep them exactly where they are... Notes: This idea is obviously inspired by the movie Groundhog Day and, as a more recent example, Palm Springs. On the surface, it's a pretty simple concept; two people stuck in a time loop, repeating the same day over and over and over again. To get a bit more in depth, I'd love to get real weird with it and explore more heady concepts like eternal recurrence, spiritual transcendence, and finding purpose in an otherwise purposeless existence. Pretty run of the mill themes, right? Anyway. This story, while mainly dependent on the strength of our characters and how we can play with the concept of time, does have a little sparkle of romance to it. Ideally, I'm thinking this story would take place during a holiday (Fourth of July? Halloween? Christmas, if you like the lights). This idea is fairly open ended and can go in a myriad of different directions, but I'm thinking it could be a pretty fun time, yeah?​ Nothing Fades Like the Light Genre: McCarthy-esque Western, but with vampires. Pairings: A pair of vampire hunters in an apocalyptic version of the Old West. Inspired By: Blood Meridian. From Dusk Till Dawn. The Mountain Goats. "You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow." In the desolate and lawless frontier of the Old West, where violence and death are as commonplace as tumbleweeds, two relentless vampire hunters emerge from the shadows, driven by an insatiable thirst for justice and a deep-rooted desire to rid the land of the undead scourge. As the sun sets over the ghostly town of Devil's Belly, a place stained with sin and blood, the hunters, a hardened gunslinger haunted by his past and a mysterious woman skilled in ancient lore, form an unlikely alliance. Together, they embark on a perilous journey, chasing the trail of a coven of vampires that has been terrorizing the unsuspecting settlers and leaving a trail of mutilated corpses in its wake. Notes: So, full disclosure: I don't really like vampire fiction all that much. You might have noticed up above that vampires are on my 'no' list. This story is the exception. If you've known me for any length of time, you know that I'm obsessed with Cormac McCarthy and his novel Blood Meridian. It's very possibly my favorite book and I think it's fair to say that no other piece of fiction has had such an impact on my writing. This story pays homage to that while also adding that horror element that I very clearly crave. This is, ultimately, an intimate story of shared grief and violence. It's going to get dark.​ Ulysses Genre: Lovecraftian seafaring surrealism Pairings: A widowed woman and the fishing boat captain she hires. Inspired By: HP Lovecraft, unfortunately. The video game Dredge. That feeling you get when you look out at the sea and realize exactly how small you are. Cocteau Twins. "Eternity begins and ends with the ocean's tides." She arrived on the dock at dawn, her cheeks tearstained and the letter still gripped tightly in her hand. She was begging, pleading to anyone that would listen. Safe passage, she said. I'll pay good money. A lone fishing boat captain overheard her. He could never turn down a woman in distress or an easy paycheck. He took her on board without so much as a second thought. Her husband had gone missing three years prior, she explained. Lost at sea. She'd moved away from New England in an attempt to rebuild her life without him, but recently received a letter in a mail from her missing husband. The letter was cryptic, written in tongues and metaphors, but one thing was perfectly clear: Her husband was alive and well, living in a island town called Ulysses. The captain had never heard of Ulysses, but that didn't mean it didn't exist. The coastline is full of little towns on faraway islands, nameless and unknown to the mainland. And so, the search began… and unspeakable horrors were found. Notes: So, I think it's best to start this off by saying I'm not a big Lovecraft fan. As a writer and as a human being, the guy kinda sucked ass. But… it's hard to deny his impact on horror and weird fiction. You can see his fingerprints all over the genres. For example, I recently started playing a video game called Dredge. It's basically a Lovecraftian fishing simulator where you captain a boat through a series of islands, fishing from horrifying creatures lurking beneath the waves. That's where this idea comes from: the uncanny results of something so mundane being turned macabre. While this is absolutely a horror story in every sense of the word, I want to take an almost surrealistic approach to telling the story, employing everything from dream logic to magical realism as our characters traverse an ever widening ocean, going from island to island and coastal town to turn, searching for a place that might not exist, a man that might not be alive, and finding things they can barely comprehend.​ ♡​ ​