sphinx
https://glowfic.com/users/118 Moiety: malachite. sphinxthreads tend to be low on saving the world and high on traumatized gays having relationships with weird power dynamics. can be found on ao3 as consumptive_sphinx.
Major Templates
Sasha
Overview
Traumatized gay artist; has strong opinions about many things even when he's scared to say what they are. Has the magic superpower of making people talk about their feelings. Threw away his sense of morality in favor of self-preservation and never once looked back.
Sashas are always gay men; sometimes they are also straight trans women.
Metadata
Name attractors: lots of S's and A's. Tends towards feminine-sounding names. (Trans female instances chose their own names and are exempt from this pattern.)
Instances
Modern Earth
As seen in: and see how bright we shine; until the hurt starts to make sense
- Constellation screenname: letting-in-sky
- Trans guy; has been sleeping with people in order to sleep in their beds since fleeing an abusive boyfriend. Studying art history.
Amenta (purple) - Terror / Ahsashani
As seen in: Amentablr
- Constellation screenname: a-terror-of-shadow-and-flame
- After having been abused by a purple separatist group, married a grey and has approximately infinity opinions about the entire concept of caste solidarity.
Amenta (red) - Azah
Unthreaded
Auradon - Sasha Nobodyson
As seen in: gang activity; take a bite, come on, be bold
- Constellation screenname: not-a-footprint
- The child of two henchpeople and nobody important; grew up on the Isle of the Lost.
- Believes the concept of morality was made up to hurt people with.
Victorian
As seen in: shut mine eyes and steal my breath
- Constellation screenname: survive-their-joy
- Grew up in Imperial Russia; at the age eleven fled the pogroms with his family; currently in university studying to be a translator and hiding his accent.
Spiderman
As seen in: every hero needs a theme song / what's up danger
- Constellation screenname: exit-pursued
- Child of immigrants; superheroing at night and a high school student during the day; failing alllllll his classes.
Hogwarts
As seen in: young scrappy and hungry
- Constellation screenname: halilah-hazel
- Muggleborn and recent refugee from the Soviet Union.
- Slytherin.
- Does not speak the local language, and is doing his very best to make sure nobody notices.
Gilead - Lily
As seen in: Cascadiablr
- Grew up a gay man in Gilead; found the underground queer community young enough that their religious opinions are somewhere between agnosticism and aestheticism.
But I'm a Cheerleader - Raine
As seen in: under pressure, as long as anyone with hot blood can
- Constellation screenname: not-safe-for-wizards
- Teenage trans girl having a very bad time at ex-gay camp.
Star Wars - Seku Ani
As seen in: the bright sword for its sharpness
- Constellation screenname: stole-plum-and-pear
- Twi'lek ex-sex-slave. May or may not have murdered his former owner.
TMA - Sasha Fairchild
Unthreaded
- Vast avatar. Loves being a vast avatar. Does not love how some of his loved ones think maybe he should not eat people's trauma and should instead starve because it would be the right thing to do.
Marlo
Overview
Trying very hard to be Lawful Good; happiest and most himself at Neutral Good. Contains enough denial and internalized homophobia to kill an elephant. Tends towards sunlight imagery.
Metadata
Name attractors: Does not have them, is just really picky about names. Luckily for me the author, his base name can be used in most settings without sounding weird.
Origins: evolved from Glorfindel from Lord of the Rings.
Instances
Evangelical
As seen in: surrender in your hands, disobey this message
- Constellation screenname: imitate-the-sun
- Ex-military. Definitely 100% absolutely straight.
Gilead
As seen in: Cascadiablr
- Member of the Eyes of God, the Gileadite secret police. Hates his job. Believes it is a personal weakness that he hates his job.
Star Wars - Marlo Aliya
As seen in: the bright sword for its sharpness
- Constellation screenname: there-is-serenity
- A Jedi. Takes the Jedi code very, very seriously. Does not have ANY attachments. Please come up with some excuse for the droid he's treating as a person and the escaped slave he's hiding behind the curtain; he certainly is.
Auradon - Li Chen
As seen in: gang activity; rotten to the core
- Constellation screenname: polished-perturbation
- Son of Mulan; Lonnie's younger brother.
- Grew up in Auradonian China knowing he was going to be his country's representative to the rest of Auradon. Takes public image very seriously. Plausibly should take it less so.
Captain America
As seen in: every hero needs a theme song / what's up danger
- Constellation screenname: e-pluribus-unum
But I'm A Cheerleader
As seen in: under pressure
- Constellation screenname: here-is-no-water
- Put in an ex-gay camp at seventeen. Somehow still the most well-adjusted instance of the template.
Gallia - Emmett
As seen in: were you expecting flowers
- Constellation screenname: as-the-lodestone
- A respectable gentledom who gained some amount of recognition in the Anglian Navy.
- Not a sub. Definitely not. Why are you looking at him like that?
Osirion
Unthreaded
- Cleric of Abadar. Believes his impulse to give help where he sees it needed is a force for chaos and needs to be suppressed as hard as it can be.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Aliyah
Unthreaded
- Chosen as the Slayer. Probably should not have been.
- Has a job. It's important. It needs to get done. People will die if she stops. So what does it matter if it's wrecking her?
Mordred
Overview
With deeply held ethical principles, an antiauthoritarian streak a mile wide, a strong desire to fight the world, and the ambition to kill God, Mordred desperately wants to be a classic glowfic protagonist, like Bells or Leareths. However, he is in fact a crazy teenager or twenty-something with trauma up to his eyebrows, and it turns out that saving the world is really hard actually.
Metadata
Name attractors: I'll get back to you when there's a single instance with an altname.
Origin: Mordred from Arthurian literature, as written by sphinx.
Instances
Medieval
As seen in: that i should rise and you should not
- Born the bastard son of King Arthur and his half-sister Morgause; prophecied to destroy Camelot. His father tried and failed to have him drowned as a baby; he was raised in his mother's court, fully aware of his destiny and terrified of it.
- He has convinced himself that he believes in free will, and that he's destroying Camelot not because he feels he has to but because he's chosen to for entirely unrelated reasons. This is, to put it lightly, not the case.
Modern
As seen in: and i am this great unstable mass of blood and foam; the goth kids hold the line
- Constellation screenname: blood-and-foam
- Antipsychiatry; antitheist; has strong opinions about youth rights. Is trying very hard to care more about the things he feels like he should care more about. Is not... really succeeding.
Call of Cthulhu
As seen in: Eternal Lies
- Constellation screenname: in-places-deep
- A deep one hybrid. Grew up in an old-money family in a small town near Innsmouth; moved to New York City to become a journalist and never looked back. Does not know that he isn't human.
Cascadia
Unthreaded
- Grew up a fertile trans man in Gilead; when he was fifteen ran away to Cascadia instead of becoming a handmaid and immediately started doing sex work to save up for a hysterectomy.
- Has accepted the truth claims of Gileadite Christianity but not the moral claims; believes that it is patently obvious that God exists and created the world and wants what Gileadites say He wants, but also thinks that He is evil.
Revolutionary Girl Utena
Unthreaded
- Is fighting for the power to bring the world revolution so she can destroy the concept of gender. Has not even a little bit realized that by participating in the duels, she's enforcing patriarchal norms though institutionally normalized violence.