Kanaya Maryam (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
speakveryclearly) wrote2012-01-03 06:07 pm
speakveryclearly) wrote2012-01-03 06:07 pm
Rainbow Drinking [OLD]
Kanaya Maryam is a fucking vampire. Unfortunately, her canon used to be pretty vague without it. THIS HEADCANON IS ALL OUTMODED NOW AND IF YOU CATCH ME SLIPPING BACK INTO IT IN GAMES SLAP ME GENTLY ON THE WRIST OKAY...
Rainbow drinkers are "heinous undead" who feed off "light and the living". The medium thorugh which they consume life is primarily blood, and their skin glows with white light: They are diurnal, unlike nocturnal trolls. Their victims survive without being turned or sucked so dry that they die; becoming a rainbow drinker is more complicated, and will only happen to certain trolls in certain circumstances. The "transformation" takes place while the troll appears dead, over at least half an hour. They have a reputation for libidinosity and bloodthirstiness, and are hunted by warriors traditionally armed with chainsaws.
Here ends everything canon has told us about rainbow drinkers, and at this point I am fairly confident it will not tell us much more: Act 5 ended without exposition, act 6 focuses on humans, and act 7 has been declared by steady sources to be a mere epilogue. Xenobiology has never been a focus of the author, and is used as a narrative tool more than anything else; as much as we might wish so, rainbow drinkers do not run off of white science. Hussie liberally takes cues from Stephenie Meyer in creating his funhouse vampires, making them verbose and virtually scintillating. Hence I will be using Twilight vampires as my first reference, with augmentations where it is contradicted by Homestuck or has its own gaps. From here on I will speak in the indicative mood, as this will be canon for the purpose of any roleplay this version of Kanaya is involved in. This is almost all, relative to the canon of Homestuck, hypothetical speculation.
The inception of the rainbow drinker's undead existence is at a violent death involving severe blood loss after high lifetime exposure to sunlight - 612 hours, say. The skin pregnant with absorbed light is what triggers the transformation. It functions as the rainbow drinker's placenta, consumed entirely and replaced by the new vampiric skin, a complex network of interconnected living, breathing light. The consequent "newborn period", one of increased thirst and strength, is a result of the lack of blood and pure fueling of the rainbow drinker by light, a substance more linked to the sympathetic nervous system for them than blood, as the digestion of blood is a function of the parasympathetic nervous system, and the sympathetic nervous system that takes over in its absence is largely a manifestation of bloodlust.
Therefore drinking blood is also necessary, and because of the literal blood rainbow trolls possess within themselves (i.e. the hemospectrum), the substance is rich in metals and color that light lacks. The rainbow drinker's skin is like a prism, repurposing the disparate intake into a single white light. During the moment of feeding, with duration similar to how the taste of food lingers in the mouth, the blood color is visible on the rainbow drinker's skin; over an extremely long period of a lopsided diet, this effect may become more permanent. Newborns need to feed three times a day, the more experienced once. Here originates their libidinosity: Since trolls can barely endure losing blood more often than every several days, no matter how much a drinker might prefer to feed only from her lovers, she must seek out further pray with whom to partake in this intimate act. This is only exacerbated by the natural desire for a wide variety of blood colors - after all, as has been said, they are "rainbow" drinkers. A preference for certain colors is common. Most rainbow drinkers have a "singer", with whom they almost inevitably become romantically involved, in the flushed quadrant somewhat more often than others. Their blood color is usually somewhat higher, or a shade lower, than the rainbow drinker's own. Blood matching a drinker's color has a more neutral taste to it, and that of another drinker is hardly appealing or nourishing at all, especially if it is their own - that scenario is an absolute last resort in the tradition of Fedorafreak. The blood of animals, or bright red blood, can provide sustenance but does not have any appeal whatsoever. Alien blood is a mixed bag, and depends largely on the similarity to trolls both with respect to the species' general nature and blood color itself. Your best shot is oxygen-breathing, approximately troll-sized, and deeply hued. Injesting non-blood material leads to highly unpleasant expulsion at a later date.
Rainbow drinker anatomy mostly still resembles trolls'. The nervous, endocrine, and lymphatic systems are modified to run off light, augmented with appropriate hormones by blood. Hence the lack of blood intake easily triggers bloodlust. Ordinary illnesses are easily burnt with unholy light in the white blood cells, while the neurological changes explain the improvements to senses, reflexes, and charisma. Light also reinforces the musculoskeletal, boosting strength, speed, and sex appeal. The rainbow drinker's personal features are of course still entirely recognizable; improvements are mostly to things like facial symmetry and bone structure. Compare Twilight vampires' indescribable statuesque quality, or becoming a Pretty in Scott Westerfield's Uglies series. The pervasion of light into the unaltered reproductive system is more subtle.
The entire cardiovascular system becomes frozen, and the heart ordinarily ceases its activity. However, when stirred, the rainbow drinker's heart may beat once; the sensation is similar to when a living troll's heart skips a beat. The blood in their veins has dried up where it hasn't been consumed, though a watery venom, mostly saliva with the slightest clotting agent, does exist in the mouth to lubricate throat and fangs. Likewise the entire respiratory system ceases to act for the conversion of oxygen, and only functions now to take in air for scents and release it for speech.
Both respiration and circulation are taken over by the intergumentary system, the crown jewel of the rainbow drinker's body. This shining tapestry of interwoven light makes troll skin seem like a mere dull gray cloak fit only for suckling by wigglers - which, from the rainbow drinker's perspective, it is (recall the earlier placenta analogy). The intricately inter-connected light is determined to keep its own shape, which makes physical injury quite hard, and permanent harm almost impossible: The pieces come back together. In this way they're also immortal, because the processes of light take an infinite time to grind to a halt. The light is forever reflecting, renewing, reabsorbing. Processing of blood into light takes place here, taking the digestive system out of play. In a sense the rainbow drinker is dead mostly below the neck and above the waist. If you cut their body open, the knife would be mostly dry; there's little fluid outside their venomous mouths, and most of the organs have a distinct shine to them like wax models in a museum.
In light of the skin's importance and its functions of both circulation and respiration, it should be no surprise that glow is a key measure of rainbow drinker emotion. The main major variations are listed below. (Note: The following art is either from MSPA, from my userpics, or from userpics from Livejournal's lovely alltheladies.)
Here is a list of blood color tastes. Note that these are carefully fine-tuned to Kanaya's perceptions; I feel these would highly depend on the rainbow drinker's own blood color, predispositions, and emotions, just as inclinations with respect to food are determined.
Rainbow drinkers are "heinous undead" who feed off "light and the living". The medium thorugh which they consume life is primarily blood, and their skin glows with white light: They are diurnal, unlike nocturnal trolls. Their victims survive without being turned or sucked so dry that they die; becoming a rainbow drinker is more complicated, and will only happen to certain trolls in certain circumstances. The "transformation" takes place while the troll appears dead, over at least half an hour. They have a reputation for libidinosity and bloodthirstiness, and are hunted by warriors traditionally armed with chainsaws.
Here ends everything canon has told us about rainbow drinkers, and at this point I am fairly confident it will not tell us much more: Act 5 ended without exposition, act 6 focuses on humans, and act 7 has been declared by steady sources to be a mere epilogue. Xenobiology has never been a focus of the author, and is used as a narrative tool more than anything else; as much as we might wish so, rainbow drinkers do not run off of white science. Hussie liberally takes cues from Stephenie Meyer in creating his funhouse vampires, making them verbose and virtually scintillating. Hence I will be using Twilight vampires as my first reference, with augmentations where it is contradicted by Homestuck or has its own gaps. From here on I will speak in the indicative mood, as this will be canon for the purpose of any roleplay this version of Kanaya is involved in. This is almost all, relative to the canon of Homestuck, hypothetical speculation.
The inception of the rainbow drinker's undead existence is at a violent death involving severe blood loss after high lifetime exposure to sunlight - 612 hours, say. The skin pregnant with absorbed light is what triggers the transformation. It functions as the rainbow drinker's placenta, consumed entirely and replaced by the new vampiric skin, a complex network of interconnected living, breathing light. The consequent "newborn period", one of increased thirst and strength, is a result of the lack of blood and pure fueling of the rainbow drinker by light, a substance more linked to the sympathetic nervous system for them than blood, as the digestion of blood is a function of the parasympathetic nervous system, and the sympathetic nervous system that takes over in its absence is largely a manifestation of bloodlust.
The nervous system can be in one of four states: Parasympathetic, quasisympathetic, sympathetic, and subsympathetic.
- A parasympathetic vampire's eyes are a yellow as warm as a normal troll's orange. (Drinkers' eyes will forever be only as blood-colored as when they were turned, no more.) They turn the glowing yellow Kanaya demonstrates in most of A5A2 when not entirely sated.
- The quasisympathetic system kicks in after a certain severity of thirst, and causes glowing such that the area around the eyes is more white than black. At this point the rainbow drinker's entire conscious mind is devoted to the pursuit of blood, and they will make active intelligent attempts to obtain it, such as negotiation, seduction, and kidnapping.
- A truly starving rainbow drinker, completely sympathetic, burns ocularly with the white of their internal light, and is now past any conscious intellectual process. In this state, there is a high risk that any victim they find will be sucked dry.
- Finally, there is the subsympathetic state, which is a different path from parasympathetic onward. A rainbow drinker gets this way by, rather than drinking lots of healthy alien blood then suddenly stopping, gradually reducing themselves to an inadequate diet of non-hemospectrum blood (or animal blood). In this state, the drinker's glow may be reduced, possibly to the point of re-rendering their skin gray and their eyes yellow-orange. This holds especially so when, after a time, they begin to pseudo-sleep: Saving energy by, for parts of the night, temporarily becoming for all intents and purposes an ordinary troll corpse.
Therefore drinking blood is also necessary, and because of the literal blood rainbow trolls possess within themselves (i.e. the hemospectrum), the substance is rich in metals and color that light lacks. The rainbow drinker's skin is like a prism, repurposing the disparate intake into a single white light. During the moment of feeding, with duration similar to how the taste of food lingers in the mouth, the blood color is visible on the rainbow drinker's skin; over an extremely long period of a lopsided diet, this effect may become more permanent. Newborns need to feed three times a day, the more experienced once. Here originates their libidinosity: Since trolls can barely endure losing blood more often than every several days, no matter how much a drinker might prefer to feed only from her lovers, she must seek out further pray with whom to partake in this intimate act. This is only exacerbated by the natural desire for a wide variety of blood colors - after all, as has been said, they are "rainbow" drinkers. A preference for certain colors is common. Most rainbow drinkers have a "singer", with whom they almost inevitably become romantically involved, in the flushed quadrant somewhat more often than others. Their blood color is usually somewhat higher, or a shade lower, than the rainbow drinker's own. Blood matching a drinker's color has a more neutral taste to it, and that of another drinker is hardly appealing or nourishing at all, especially if it is their own - that scenario is an absolute last resort in the tradition of Fedorafreak. The blood of animals, or bright red blood, can provide sustenance but does not have any appeal whatsoever. Alien blood is a mixed bag, and depends largely on the similarity to trolls both with respect to the species' general nature and blood color itself. Your best shot is oxygen-breathing, approximately troll-sized, and deeply hued. Injesting non-blood material leads to highly unpleasant expulsion at a later date.
Rainbow drinker anatomy mostly still resembles trolls'. The nervous, endocrine, and lymphatic systems are modified to run off light, augmented with appropriate hormones by blood. Hence the lack of blood intake easily triggers bloodlust. Ordinary illnesses are easily burnt with unholy light in the white blood cells, while the neurological changes explain the improvements to senses, reflexes, and charisma. Light also reinforces the musculoskeletal, boosting strength, speed, and sex appeal. The rainbow drinker's personal features are of course still entirely recognizable; improvements are mostly to things like facial symmetry and bone structure. Compare Twilight vampires' indescribable statuesque quality, or becoming a Pretty in Scott Westerfield's Uglies series. The pervasion of light into the unaltered reproductive system is more subtle.
The entire cardiovascular system becomes frozen, and the heart ordinarily ceases its activity. However, when stirred, the rainbow drinker's heart may beat once; the sensation is similar to when a living troll's heart skips a beat. The blood in their veins has dried up where it hasn't been consumed, though a watery venom, mostly saliva with the slightest clotting agent, does exist in the mouth to lubricate throat and fangs. Likewise the entire respiratory system ceases to act for the conversion of oxygen, and only functions now to take in air for scents and release it for speech.
Both respiration and circulation are taken over by the intergumentary system, the crown jewel of the rainbow drinker's body. This shining tapestry of interwoven light makes troll skin seem like a mere dull gray cloak fit only for suckling by wigglers - which, from the rainbow drinker's perspective, it is (recall the earlier placenta analogy). The intricately inter-connected light is determined to keep its own shape, which makes physical injury quite hard, and permanent harm almost impossible: The pieces come back together. In this way they're also immortal, because the processes of light take an infinite time to grind to a halt. The light is forever reflecting, renewing, reabsorbing. Processing of blood into light takes place here, taking the digestive system out of play. In a sense the rainbow drinker is dead mostly below the neck and above the waist. If you cut their body open, the knife would be mostly dry; there's little fluid outside their venomous mouths, and most of the organs have a distinct shine to them like wax models in a museum.
In light of the skin's importance and its functions of both circulation and respiration, it should be no surprise that glow is a key measure of rainbow drinker emotion. The main major variations are listed below. (Note: The following art is either from MSPA, from my userpics, or from userpics from Livejournal's lovely alltheladies.)
- "Faint" refers to a glow less than an inch away from the face. "Bright" refers to a glow with a radius of at least half a foot. The standard, unsized glow is somewhere in between.
- No glow at all merits mention. We see in the Intermissions that, unlike throughout RDK's appearances in Act 5 Act 2, Kanaya has stopped glowing, and though Rose mentions her skin shines somewhat, in sprites she is shown almost exclusively as a flat white. I interpret this as being symptomatic of her utterly hopeless state after the events of the time leading up to the Critical Moment have died down. She has nothing, not even light. (The darkness of the veil is in fact probably also a factor.) I don't think not glowing is healthy.
- Distinct from this is the state of sparkling. The skin here has only a sheet-white, slight, sparkling, shining sort of quality. This takes a concentrated effort on the rainbow drinker's part, and is generally reserved for such serious moments as "Do I Dazzle You".
- A "feathered" glow describes a sort of aura that has feathered edges.
- Faint feathered glow would be our main canon example. Something like :|, the glow made without outside influences. General situations are sober and unfortuante ones but low on actual emotion.
- Feathered glow. More like :), the default calm state. For peaceful situations and passive happiness. Or just being calm enough to Suggest You Come To Terms With It. This manip is slightly better.
- Bright glow. Overwhelming, pure happiness. May pulsate, but not violently enough to suggest potential homicide. Often associated with red feelings.
- A "pulsing" glow radiates brightly at the edges. This is a direct physiological result of stimuli that in the living would cause increased breathing and circulation.
- Faint pulsing glow: Dissatisfaction. This icon flickers to the same beat her glow would.
- Pulsing glow. Anger. Something is wrong with you. Often associated with negative feelings, along the lines of Lets Motherfucking Dance.
- Bright pulsing glow. Righteous fury. Usually homicidal. Well, obvously potentially homicidal.
- Flickering is distinct from pulsating in that rather than the glow shifting from near to far, it shifts from off to on. Therefore it's less aggressive and demonstrates greater loss of control; its more conspicuous nature, on the instinctive level, comes from the fact that the rainbow drinker has given up on fight for an escape and is considering flight or appeal to their immediate surroundings.
- A "sharp" glow has a constant radius, and the beams within it merely shift; one moment the cheekbones will seem to be the brightest point of the light, the next the forehead. It marks a sort of focused mood, as it arises from the needs of a rainbow drinker on the hunt; a tightly controlled glow.
- Faint sharp glow. Predatory. For this purpose the drinker needs her glow to be tightly controlled, both to better predict where to go next and hide better. This icon has the same beat. If the sharp glow is truly dim enough to eliminate the idea that the drinker could possibly have the upper hand, this is likely because it is actually the glow of the drinker perceiving herself as prey; wanting to avoid attention, and so limiting her glow as much as possible without dazzling properly.
- Sharp glow. Concupiscent. It isn't meaninglessly that this is an intensification of predatory; this is a drinker who know's she's on top but who doesn't have to hide a single inch of her brilliantly glowing skin. This icon obviously has the expression, and just needs the glow.
- Bright sharp glow. This marks every nerve in her body rising at a critical moment, and usually will collapse into another kind of bright glow depending on the actual emotion. The radius is often well over a foot. You can see how this started as one of these, and then began a collapse into bright pulsing.
Here is a list of blood color tastes. Note that these are carefully fine-tuned to Kanaya's perceptions; I feel these would highly depend on the rainbow drinker's own blood color, predispositions, and emotions, just as inclinations with respect to food are determined.
- Candy red: Sour patch kids. A bitter iron blood-tasting outside that gives in to a brief rush of candy at the core. Human blood would be pretty much the same as this but a little less intense with the candy taste. As it's not a natural color of troll blood, I don't think it would actually be healthy for her to live off this long-term, nor human blood.
- Maroon: A really hearty cider, with visible hue and fiber. As it's the most basic troll blood, it works well as a bread and butter; good enough to live off of, certainly, but actual pleasure depends on the individual.
- Amber... she almost definitely wouldn't have opportunity in canon to drink of her own accord. Tavros's would be the worst kinds of chocolate, overmilked, with a faint cast of something else that people associate with the taste of brown. Other characters could possibly manage a more delectable chocolate or even maybe a pleasant fizzy orange.
- Yellow: Lemons, honey, and mustard sandwiches; the uneven mixture gives it a thickness that makes it feel more like food than water.
- Forest green is the waterier attempts at apple juices from Capri Sun's coolers.
- Jade green tastes watery in a heady disorienting way, almost like holy water, and she can't actually live off it for a very long time at all. It's like a certain other kind of self-parasitic drinking you might encounter on a desert island.
- Teal is thick in a similar way to yellow, a wet hearty flavor of Jell-O.
- Azure is the brightest nectar, and when it's stretched thin between a certain pair of sparkling gossamer wings, the adjectives "brilliant" and "transcendent" add themselves. It is her brand of heroin, to use Twilight's terminology.
- Navy is blue-dyed milk.
- Indigo is heavy flat soda; delicious in theory, perhaps, but to some people it's just irrational that people can swing for something so sickeningly manufactured. In a certain person, the soda brand should be immediately identifiable.
- Violet is a deep plum wine. The exact nuance is highly variable due to emotional state. A very, very young Eridan might have tasted clear and sweet and almost Tyrian-pure with hope. By SGRUB, he's devolved into an initial sugar oversweet rush of desperation followed by a deep plum genocide. He feasibly could mature (as Dualscar probably did) into a richer version with the desperation more subtle; but by the time he causes that HOPESPLODE moment in the veil, his veins are nothing but caked gluts of sugar and plums that died on the vine; in other words, dead hope.
- Tyrian purple is a dizzyingly rarified French red-wine type claret.