Characters / Destructive Harmonics

Maenad

The Band

Band Tropes

• Artist Disillusionment: They don't hate their fans, exactly, but sometimes they find them irritating and a bit disturbing even by Nightmare Fetishist standards (not without reason - it's not as if the amount of Serious Business in their fandom encourages sane and temperate behavior.)
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: For all their other failings and eccentricities, they're all talented musicians.

• Cuteness Proximity: to greater or lesser degrees. Given their Nightmare Fetishist tendencies, this is sometimes provoked by unlikely creatures.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Maenad is popular with women of all orientations.
• Fiction 500: "according to the IRS, we officially have too much money."
• Freaky Is Cool: all of them, to varying degrees, sometimes to the point of Nightmare Fetishism.
• Multinational Team: American, Canadian, Swedish.

Valerian Nightshade (Teuila) (lead vocals, lyricist)

• Berserk Button: Brutalist architecture, mostly because she thinks the name is false advertising considering the lack of portcullises, dungeons, spiky metal bits, and poles on which to impale the heads of one's enemies.
  • And don't question her gender or femininity.
• Big Girl: Very much a Type 3. She's a bit of a marshmallow for a very tall, perpetually black clad former dominatrix turned heavy metal vocalist.
• Brawn Hilda: She's a 6'2" plus-size contralto profundo who can carry both guitarists at the same time. (Although to be fair, Yanang is tiny and Lilja is quite thin.)
• Dark Messiah: speculated to be so by those who think Maenad are people of metaphysical significance, but Val herself denies it.
  "For God's sake, people, I am not the Messiah!"
  "She's a very naughty girl."

• Face of a Thug: Her naturally intimidating appearance is an advantage in her current job, but caused her problems in high school.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: She likes the beer.
• Heroic Bastard: her parents' relationship ended when her mom went back to South Africa, and they never did wind up getting married. Val has her father's last name because he's the one who raised her.
• Make Me Wanna Shout: Unintentional variant. She gave up on Death Metal because her lower register tended to break things and make listeners acutely uncomfortable.
• Statuesque Stunner: She's 6'3" in her socks.
• Stout Strength: She deliberately cultivates this.
  "For one thing, toned fat looks better than flabby fat, in my opinion, and also, if people still insist on giving you crap about your looks, it's easier to fling them across the room."
• Verbal Tic: She, uh, tends to use a fair amount of, y'know, speech fillers.

Lilja Lakebetonika (lead guitar)

• Can't Hold Her Liquor: She has worse tolerance than Violet, who is tiny.
• Chubby Chaser: It isn't made a big deal of, but she tends to be attracted to women who are curvier than is fashionable.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: While she doesn't lose all her arrogance, she gradually becomes a little friendlier and more emotionally open with her bandmates.
• Forgets to Eat: She tends to lose her appetite when she's under stress. Excellent for maintaining her slender figure, not so great for keeping her energy up on long, demanding tours.
• Lethal Chef: She's managed to ruin ramen, toast, and tea. Fortunately, she knows her limits.
• Lipstick Lesbian: She prefers women for the most part. Oddly enough, she doesn't actually wear makeup offstage except for media appearances, but she spends enough time on hair care to make up for it.
• Petite Pride: At the very least, being on the flat side hasn't hurt her body image any.

• Statuesque Stunner: she's a little over 5'10" in her socks, and quite pretty if you like thin, leggy, flat-chested blondes.
• The Unfavorite: Her parents were preoccupied with her chronically ill twin brother (both before and after his death) and didn't pay much attention to Lilja unless they needed a blood donor.
• Vanity Is Feminine: Although, to be fair, fame tends to make people self-conscious.
• Verbal Tic: She very rarely uses contractions and occasionally falls into mild Poirot Speak, although her overall grasp of English is pretty good.

Musa Hawthorne (drummer, lyrics)

• Cool Big Sis: She's a few years older than the other girls, has the most worldly experience, and winds up listening to a lot of their personal problems that they don't consider urgent enough to take to Artemisia. However, she resists being thought of as the Team Mom.
  "How about I'm the 'cool aunt who's a bad influence?'"
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl / Lady Drunk: sits somewhere between these two, as she's more jaded than the stereotypical Hard-Drinking Party Girl but more playful and less bitter (usually) than the usual Lady Drunk. She is, however, the heaviest drinker in the band under normal circumstances.

• Oh, My Gods!: She tends to invoke the deities of Ancient Egypt in various creative ways.
• One-Note Cook: She's not bad in the kitchen, but she has a hard time wrapping her mind around the idea of recipes that contain no alcohol in any form. (Pasta sauce: vodka. Potato soup: white wine. Brownies: coffee liqueur.)
• Sad Clown: in a way, she's a bit of a mess underneath the amiably cynical sense of humor.
• The Smart Guy: She's the most book-smart person in the band proper, although this doesn't keep her out of trouble.
• Stepford Smiler: She's got a lot of issues relating to her family and her old band that she does her best not to think about. When they come up anyway, Drowning My Sorrows tends to come into effect.

Yanang Bai (rhythm guitar)

• Bifauxnen: The only one in the band with short hair, and was mistaken for a boy more than once before she got famous.
• The Big Guy: she's a tiny Hmong woman, but has the attitude, and she's strong for her size.
• Book Dumb: She's prone to Eskimos Aren't Real moments (such as her belief that mistletoe is a myth) and isn't much of a scholar, but she's a talented musician and has a lot of odd skills.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: She's not as technically incompetent as Lilja, but her recipes tend to be excessively spicy even by most Southeast Asian standards.
• Cute Little Fangs: In-story, they're unusually prominent yaeba. Her immigrant entrepreneur family didn't have the money for cosmetic dentistry, and by the time she could afford to have them straightened they'd become part of her image.

• Friend to Bugs: she has a pet tarantula.

• Pet the Dog: she's been putting her younger siblings through college since she made it big.
• Shonen Hair: she developed her particular variation during her punk days, as a result of having hair that was naturally about sixty percent cowlicks.
• Unknown Rival: to Rachel Maddow, temporarily, after discovering that Ms. Maddow came out ahead of her in an online "Hottest Butch Women" list.

Violet Aciano (bassist)

• Author Avatar: Not exactly, but she does have the most interests (marine biology, baking) and personality traits (vegetarianism, love of animals, odd sense of humor, highly-strung nervous system) in common with her creator.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Normally, she's a kind and cheerful young woman, but she can be a little emotionally volatile at times. Her bandmates have exaggerated this tendency and live in fear of Violet really losing her temper and bringing on The End of the World as We Know It.
• Chaste Hero: She's the only band member who's still a virgin, and if she isn't oblivious to Yanang's occasional crude flirtation, she hasn't said anything.
• Cloudcuckoolander: She has her moments, although it can be hard to tell how much of the weird stuff she says is an honest reflection of how she sees the world, and how much is her odd sense of humor at work.
• Contractual Purity: While she's not officially held to stricter standards of purity than the rest of Maenad - their manager tries to keep her away from hard drugs, but that's more out of pseudo-parental concern than a desire to preserve her image - some of her fanbase does hold her to exaggeratedly lofty standards of innocence for an adult woman in a decidedly non straight-edge rock band. She's been criticized as a Bad Role Model For Young Girls for doing things like wearing skirts shorter than school dress codes allowed and consuming alcohol in public when she was of legal drinking age.
• Feminine Women Can Cook: She's fairly feminine compared with her bandmates (although more girlish than womanly) and shows the most interest in the culinary arts, although she concentrates more on sweets than on real meals.
• Granola Girl: She's a vegetarian, loves animals, doesn't wear leather or fur, drinks a lot of herb tea, recycles her soda and vodka bottles, and enjoys walking around barefoot in warm weather. To Yanang, this makes her practically the Anthropomorphic Personification of hippiedom. She does, in fact, eat a lot of granola, but that's mostly because she likes it and other kinds of sugary cereal don't react well with her weird metabolism.
• The Heart: lampshaded.
  "Officially, I'm the bass player, but my real job is to keep the two guitarists from killing each other."
• Parental Abandonment: Her parents died when she was young, and she's lived with her aunt and uncle ever since.
• Sweet Tooth: Unfortunately, she suffers from mild low blood sugar on occasion so she can't overdo it.
• Womanchild: She wears barrettes, collects stuffed toys, and is the band's "younger sister" figure.

Liana

Maenad's original bassist, who left the band in 2007.

• Call to Agriculture: She eventually moved to a small organic farm in rural New England after leaving the band.
• The Pete Best: for Violet

Maenad employees and associates

Artemisia Mandrake

The long-suffering manager. A small, geeky, quietly hypercompetent Norwegian-British woman a little older than Musa. The band knows just enough about her to know that she has Hidden Depths, although they're not entirely sure about the details. Yanang has speculated that she's actually a killer robot lawyer from the future, or at least a cyborg.

• Action Girl: She's a trained martial artist. This comes in handy more often than you'd think in her line of work.

• Lady of War: Polite, dignified, and can kick your ass in a skirt and sensible pumps.
• Mama Bear: Do not threaten any Maenad member's life or long-term welfare. Artie will not be happy.

• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Her hair's actually very dark brown, but she fits the high-contrast aesthetic.

• Scary Shiny Glasses: She can do a Gendo Ikari impression regardless of where she is in relation to the light sources in the room. Now that is a talent.
• Stoic Woobie: She's been putting up with Maenad and the associated, sometimes life-threatening craziness for years.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: She's not one for showy displays of emotion, which she considers unprofessional and potentially dangerous, but she cares in her way.

Ivy Choi

A Chinese-American record producer who's been in the business since the seventies, although due to a few peculiarities of her medical history, she looks a bit younger than she is.

• Cool Big Sis: Like Musa, is in the position of "older and more worldly, but not really maternal."
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: She's the only character who can keep up with Musa in the Withnail and I Drinking Game.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: The combination of very pale hair + bangs + trademark big sunglasses makes her look rather like an older, Asian Lady Gaga with a slightly more conservative fashion sense.
• Sunglasses at Night: She has enough issues with light sensitivity that she decided to just wear them all the time.
• Super-Senses: Relatively mundane version - she has ears like a bat. In terms of capabilities, not appearance.

Doctor Alaria Ajowan

Maenad's physician. She's mysterious and eccentric, but undeniably good at her job.

• Bio-Augmentation: She acquired lab-grown prosthetic eyes (which she grew herself) at some point in the past.
• Bollywood Nerd: She doesn't talk about her past much, but she seems to be South Asian, and she's definitely a science geek.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: She has a slight Mad Scientist streak, but it doesn't interfere with her work.
• Dark Is Not Evil: She's not a bad person at all, just a bit creepy and eccentric.
• Defector from Decadence: She was rejected by her former colleagues for using her discoveries to do things like create assistive technology for people with disabilities instead of making Super Soldiers.
• "Uh-Oh" Eyes: she grew them herself! They work just fine, but their appearance is a bit disconcerting.

Margerit

Maenad's chef, a highly skilled, basically unflappable Danish woman.

Employee #00314, aka "Pi"

The world's unluckiest roadie, who has been Maenad's loyal employee for several uncomfortably eventful years.

• Hollywood Cyborg: Let's just say it's a good thing that Maenad's medical plan covers cybernetic prosthetics.
• Iron Butt-Monkey: His employers' house has tried to eat him alive on more than one occasion, and yet he carries on.

Maenad minions

• Sassy Secretary: Layla, at times, although she's choosy about when to bring out the snark.
• Semper Fi: Ruby served in the Marines at one point. Unfortunately, rumors about her sexuality didn't improve her career prospects in the military.
• Theme Naming: after various One Woman Songs (or the male equivalent)

Doctor Magnolia Oakmoss

Band therapist and Southern Lady. She has her little quirks, but who doesn't? And she has such lovely manners.

• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: When her habit of murdering people is out of the picture, she's a perfectly competent therapist, and she does manage to help Maenad.
• Catchphrase: "Why, bless your heart..."
• Cute and Psycho: She's very feminine and always minds her manners, when she isn't murdering people. Fortunately, she's managed to behave herself while working for the band.
• Girly Girl: compared to her, everyone in the band is a bit butch.
• The Shrink: Doesn't fit any of the usual stereotypes, since she's competent at her job, but has some fairly serious personal failings of her own.
• Southern Belle: She never wears white before Easter, and you will pry her hairspray from her cold, dead hands.
• Sweet Home Alabama: She's very Southern in some ways (big on the hairspray and sweet tea), but open-minded enough to get along reasonably well with a multiethnic group of bisexual rock stars, even if she does think their fashion sense needs work.

Other Maenad-verse characters

Families

Valerian's family

Valerian grew up surrounded by the relatives on her father's side (the Teuilas, most of whom settled in Hawaii), but didn't meet her mother or any of the other people on the South African side of her family until she reached her twenties.

• Apron Matron: Huihana Teuila (Val's grandmother) is not to be messed with.
• The Clan: at the very least, she has a lot of relatives compared to her bandmates.
• The Fundamentalist: Huihana, although she mellows a bit eventually.
• Gentle Giant: Kamani, Val's father, at least when he isn't in the ring.
• Goth: Valerian's mother. How do you think Val wound up with a middle name like Nightshade?
• Missing Mom
• Professional Wrestling: Kamani's primary occupation, although he's also a B-Movie and TV actor, and he focused more on acting once he hit middle age.

Violet's family

Violet was orphaned as a preschooler, and grew up living with her aunt and uncle in Beaver Tracks, a small town on the British Columbian coast.

• Jewish Mother: Jewish aunt, actually, but a similar shtick.
• Jews Love to Argue: some of her relatives are like this.
• My Beloved Smother: Violet's aunt was annoyingly protective of her, both from her innate personality and out of a belief that Violet was particularly fragile.
• Nephewism

Artemisia's family

Artemisia's parents are Magnus Ravnen, a Norwegian supervillain with a cult fan following, and Lily Mandrake, a British accountant Magnus originally hired to help look after his "legitimate" financial interests.

• Anti-Villain: Magnus, before he retired.
• Badass Long Robe: Magnus is a fan of "medieval chic."
• Brainy Brunette: Lily
• Elegant Weapon for a More Civilized Age: like his daughter, he's a fan of swords.
• Happily Married
• Harmless Villain: Magnus is competent and creative, but isn't psychologically cut out for real evil. His legitimately employed daughter is actually more ruthless.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Magnus is thin but tall (over six feet), Lily is around 5'2".
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: they're both good at their jobs, but Lily has the common sense, attention to mundane details, and financial aptitude to complement Magnus' Mad Scientist / Mad Artist tendencies.
• Noble Demon: Magnus again.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: both of them, although Magnus has blue eyes and Lily's are brown.
• Redemption Promotion: Magnus gets a lot more done when he's behaving constructively.
• Retired Supervillain: Magnus. He's a bit too nice to be a Retired Monster.
• Wicked Cultured: Magnus writes poetry and is a fan of classical music.

Musa's family

Musa's family hails from a smallish, mildly depressing (at least by Musa's standards) city in Eastern Washington. Her immediate family consists of her parents Frasier and Lantana, her older sister Erica, and Musa herself.

• Cool Old Lady: Great-Aunt Saffron. She's the only relative whom Musa actually likes.
• It's All About Me: Erica is the queen of this.
• Muse Abuse: some of the celebrities in Erica's Roman à Clef and Very Loosely Based on a True Story novels bear an awfully strong resemblance to the various members of her sister's band. This has not helped family harmony any.
• Parental Favoritism: Frasier and Lantana spent a lot more time and energy on Erica than on Musa. Both sisters acknowledge this, although they both feel that this state of affairs has somehow wronged them. Erica's more vocal about it.
• Writers Suck: Erica's not exactly a Butt-Monkey, and she has some talent, but she's also monstrously self-absorbed and totally lacking scruples.

Yanang's family

While Yanang and her siblings were born in the United States, the older generation are all immigrants. One of Yanang's uncles fought in the Secret War and claims to have CIA connections of an unspecified nature, her parents earned their living in a more mundane fashion by opening a Southeast Asian fast food joint in East LA.

• An Immigrant's Tale
• Open Minded Parents: eventually. They're just happy their wayward daughter is managing to earn a living at something she's good at.
• Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: Yanang's grandmother, after her stroke cost her most of her "brain to mouth" filter.
• Theme Naming: after various Southeast Asian culinary herbs. Bai Horapha (Thai basil), Bai Makrut (lime leaves), et cetera.

Lilja's family

• Littlest Cancer Patient: Lilja's twin brother Lars.
• Parental Favoritism: their parents were so preoccupied with Lars's medical issues that they didn't pay much attention to Lilja unless they needed a blood donation. This preoccupation extended to after Lars's death.
• Soap Opera Disease: Lars unfortunately suffered from this for much of his childhood.

Other Characters

Erik Mortiisson (a Norwegian-American lumber baron and the former owner of Maenad's Cool House)

• Affably Evil: he thinks of himself this way.
• Cool Old Guy
• Eccentric Millionaire
• The Hedonist: he devoted his retirement to (mostly relatively harmless) debauchery and scandalizing his children and adult grandchildren.
• Shout-Out: Mortiis is the stage name of a Norwegian musician.

The Assassin

• Ascetic Aesthetic: her apartment.
• Combat Sadomasochist
• Dark Action Girl
• Fan Disservice: a scarred-up but otherwise attractive woman who runs around naked and brutally murders people.
• Full-Frontal Assault
• Psycho for Hire
• Psycho Lesbian: has a rather squicky obsession/crush on Artemisia.

The Apprentice

• Good Thing You Can Heal
• Iron Butt Monkey

Laugh of the Medusa (Musa's first band, a mid through late nineties feminist Alternative Rock group)

• Bifauxnen: Sage, the drummer.
• Dysfunction Junction: towards the end of their career, they were worse than Maenad when it came to mental health and basic functionality.
• Floral Theme Naming: Musa (lead vocals, guitar), Yuri (bass), Lotus (guitar), and Sage (drums).
• Four-Girl Ensemble
• The '90s
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Lotus's appearance was based on Tori Amos.
• The Ophelia: Lotus, particularly on the last tour when the stress started getting to her and her mental health took a serious downturn.
• Shout-Out: the band name is a reference to a feminist essay by Helene Cixous.

Ginger Sorel

Violet's best friend from high school, a half-Quebecois city girl whose family moved to Beaver Tracks when Violet was fifteen.

• Dark Is Not Evil: she's a firm believer in this, and as a good-hearted Nightmare Fetishist, is an example herself.
• New Transfer Student
• Nightmare Fetishist: she sought Violet out as a friend because Violet gave the impression of being the least "normal" girl at their school.
• Perky Goth: friendly enough to bring Violet out of her self-imposed shell.
• Satellite Character: played with. She's only in the story because of her friendship with Violet, but when they were in school together, Violet was Ginger's sidekick.

Robert Candlemass

• Guy of the Week
• Jerkass
• Meteorite On Head
• Theme Naming
• Writers Suck

Adrian Negura-Bunget

• Affably Evil: he and Valerian actually got along very well. Too bad he was sent by an apocalyptic cult in order to knock Val up with the Antichrist.
• Expy: while his personality is rather different, he looks a lot like Vamp from the Metal Gear series. He's also Romanian and a flamenco dancer.
• Guy of the Week
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome
• Theme Naming

Susperia Tristwood

• Fainting: "anemia faint" variety, justified because she's borderline anorexic.
• Girl of the Week
• Granola Girl: of a different variety from Violet - a little less "hippie" and a little more "leftist ideological purity."
• Staircase Tumble: fortunately, she lands on Pi before she can fall too far.
• Theme Naming

Lycanthia Darkwell

• Ambiguously Brown
• Plucky Office Girl
• Polyglot
• Punch-Clock Villain
• Theme Naming

Doctor Love

• Ambiguously Brown: apparently dark-skinned, but the luchador mask he wears makes it difficult to determine much else.
• Casanova Wannabe
• Chivalrous Pervert: considers himself to be such, although women tend to find him annoying at best.
• Drugs Are Bad: according to Musa, he's a lot more tolerable when he isn't tanked to the gills on E and spiced rum.
• Large Ham: uses more CAPSLOCK in his dialogue than the rest of the cast put together.
• No Indoor Voice
• Third-Person Person

Linnea Hammerfall

• The Fashionista: more alternative fashion than haute couture.
• Open-Minded Parent
• Parental Substitute: for Lilja.
• Theme Naming: followings Floral Theme Naming for her first name, and Musical References for her surname.

Seax

The band

• True Companions
• Weirdness Magnet: not Maenad level, but there was that time they summoned the plesiosaur...

Aryn (lead vocals, Danish)

• Boisterous Bruiser
• Large Ham: he's what would result if the hypothetical biologically-impossible love child of Kamina and Liquid Snake were a Scandinavian heavy metal singer.
• Manly Gay
• Testosterone Poisoning: MANLINESS is a major factor in his decision-making process.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: yes, in Scandinavia. Aryn is a real man.

Didrik (guitar, Norwegian)

• Cloudcuckoolander: to be fair, as a psychic he honestly does perceive the world differently from other people.
• I See Dead People
• Moe
• No Social Skills: raised by lichenologists in the Scandinavian arctic, Didrik has problems with social skills.

Hallbjorn (drums, Icelandic)

• Genius Bruiser
• Gentle Giant
• Only Sane Man: at times.
• Psychic Powers
• Token Minority: his father was a native Siberian, which makes him the only member of the band with recent non-Scandinavian ancestry.

Konstantin (bass, Swedish)

• Big Brother Instinct: his relationship with Amalthea has elements of this.
• The Charmer: it works on everyone but his manager.
• Ditzy Genius: he's book-smart, but has a tendency to focus on specific details while completely missing the point of a situation as a whole.
• Stoic Spectacles
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Elisa and Amalthea manage to get him into drag at one point. He carries it off quite well.

Matthias (Hardanger fiddle, Norwegian)

• Berserk Button: mentioning the Black Metal scene of his hometown is a good way to get him in rant mode.
• The Eeyore: mild example, intended as a reference to the "depressing side" of Scandinavian culture (Ingmar Bergman et al).

• Preacher's Kid: his aunt, who raised him after his parents died in a "freak fishing accident," is a Lutheran minister.

Elisa (manager, Norwegian)

• Ascended Fangirl: became a band manager because she loved music but wasn't particularly talented at songwriting or performing.
• Elegant Gothic Lolita: she normally dresses in Gothic Aristocrat style (similar to EGL, but with longer skirts and more grownup aesthetic), but she tones the frills down for business meetings.
• Fangirl: of Artemisia Mandrake.
• Guile Hero: she has no combat training, but she gets things done.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: she looks a lot like Ukrainian politician Yulia Tymoshenko.

Amalthea Lovelace

An American singer and pianist who made friends with the band on their first tour of America, and later provided soprano vocals for some of their songs. See Helix for more information about her.

Other Characters

Naomi Lovelace

Amalthea's older sister, a multimillionaire inventor and part-time adventurer. See Helix.

Delilah Savage

An American Differently Powered Individual, with an outstanding talent for not dying despite considerable provocation, who has, among other things, worked as an actress (in both off-beat Porn with Plot and legitimate drama), musician, and mercenary. See Helix.

Sigyn Solefald aka Queen Beruthiel

A talented but notoriously eccentric Norwegian musician. Was friends of a sort with Delilah during the latter's sojourn in Scandinavia, but their relationship became strained when Sigyn stabbed Delilah through several vital organs with a replica Viking short sword during an argument. She's also notable for being a Norwegian ultra-nationalist and racist against almost every ethnic group on earth, including Germans and Swedes (among other things, she believes that "pan-Germanicism" is an effort of stealth Germano-Swedish cultural imperialism bent on erasing Norwegian cultural distinctiveness.) In other words, she's a piece of work, although her music is generally considered pretty good by fans who aren't put off by her persona or her stylistic experiments.

• Alliterative Name
• Black Metal: her early works.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: she's very talented when she gets her act together.
• Cute and Psycho: she is a cutie. Too bad about the whole "Axe-Crazy racist sociopath" thing.
• Draco in Leather Pants: in-universe. Despite her talent for spectacularly alienating people, she retains a core fanbase willing to forgive her anything. A few of them even sent Delilah letters in the hospital threatening her with various horrible fates if she pressed charges for the whole "attempted murder" incident.
• Expy: She's loosely inspired by Varg Vikernes — or, more accurately, by Greven-tan — crossed with an anime-style Cute and Psycho.
• Genre Mashup: her later works.
• Heavy Mithril: her stage name is based on a Tolkien character.
• Jerkass Woobie: she's kind of a horrible person, but she has rather serious mental problems that have never been treated or even diagnosed - because the people around her tend to dismiss them as either "artistic temperament" or as symptoms of her various moral failings - and, despite her considerable personal charisma, she's no good at maintaining friendships or collaborations.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: she is genuinely fond of her kitty.
• Large Ham: even when she takes off her stage makeup and doesn't sing, she never truly stops performing.
• Mad Artist: she apparently suffers from manic episodes as well as some kind of undiagnosed personality disorder.

Venus Envy

Kate Cadaver / Katherine Valentina Mayakovsky

Venus Envy's lead vocalist and rhythm guitar player, who also writes or co-writes many of their songs. She's smart, creative, and passionate, but has an unfortunate penchant for romantic self-destruction.

• Badass Longcoat: it's a Norwegian Army Coat rather than a trenchcoat or duster, but the aesthetic's still there.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette
• Mood-Swinger: particularly before she gets sober.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: she looks a lot like Brody Dalle with glasses.
• Red Oni: to Dani's Blue.
• Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll

Dani Lilith / Clarissa Danielle Harlowe

Venus Envy's lead guitarist, and Kate's Foil and best-friend-turned-lover. Dani's talented, driven, and in many ways the cold to Kate's heat, although she's not as sensible as she thinks she is.

• Bifauxnen
• Blue Oni: to Kate's Red.
• Broken Bird
• Must Have Caffeine
• The Runaway
• Tomboyish Name

Billie Jiang

Venus Envy's bassist, a quirky, dreamy woman with literary inclinations. She's also a werewolf, but there's medication for that nowadays.

• Asian and Nerdy - although she's more of a music and literature geek than an academic paragon.
• Cursed with Awesome - played with, in that lycanthropy is officially considered to be a bad thing in this setting, and it does have its drawbacks (involuntary shapeshifting, worries about infecting others, contact allergy to silver), but Billie still thinks it has its good points.

Zandra Mackenzie

Venus Envy's drummer. A cheerful and resilient transgender redhead.

• Dye Hard: her hair's really strawberry blonde, but the red's become part of her image.
• The Heart: her non-musical role as "the sensible, motherly, emotionally intelligent one" is what keeps everyone else's personal dysfunctions enough in check that Venus Envy can continue to function as a working band.
• Silk Hiding Steel: not quite a straight example, as she is a punk rocker, but she's both the most traditionally feminine and the best at holding everything together in adverse circumstances.

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