C O U N T E S S

T h e ☠ E v o l u t i o n


[ This is an actual story, only read if interested ]


She is probably the most profound and unique character I've come up with to-date

And that was not intended from the beginning.

Countess originally started as a drawing of myself, wearing a bunch of things I have been hardcore into for years, as a 'scorpio aesthetic' piece. (Scorpio's signature colors like reds, blacks, and other dark monochrome colors- Halloween inspirations because Scorpio rules Halloween on the calendar: ouija symbols, opal birthstone, leaves, pumpkins and bones to tie into the holiday as well- and of course some elements that are key symbols in my art like stripes and space.)

>> http://www.furaffinity.net/view/18082937/ <<



But I loved the look so much that I found that I wanted to make it it's own character. Countess was to take on her own timeline, personality, and story that was different from mine. I am just a person, not an fantastic dragon or elementalist or supernatural being. Just me, and I want that to shine through in most art of myself.



Back then I had been (and humorlessly still am) struggling under the weight of unwanted obsession from other people who sought to pick up every thing I would say I liked/drew and attach it to themselves, all while denying they were doing it. I needed a way to cope. Ignoring them wasn't stopping the pain of their copycat actions, and it wasn't making me any less bothered over the blatant theft.



So I think subconsciously that helped me delve into the base story for Countess.



Originally,

she was to be a vampire.
(Get it? Vampire? Because I'm allergic to the sun and pale as fuck? Huuhu)



Her outside appearance was to, mostly, be based off of me. Long white hair, braids, pale silvery yellowgreen eyes, the scar I've always placed across my nose in art, black and white stripes on her at all times (hence the horns staying), pale skin, the earthtones 'smoky eye' shadow, pear shaped body, the same mole next to my left eye, and the same dragon/bat/demon albino wings I've used in my art for over a decade, dark colors for her outfits, etc.

Of course, I'm just waaay less attractive than her. And don't have those fantasy bits like the wings, facial scar, horns or that Disney-level hair volume/length.


However her personality was to be different.

But how?

I'm an altruistic bleeding heart by nature, with a fairly good understanding of other people and how their inner workings play out. (Interpersonal skills heeyy) I'm almost always in a good mood, and love joking around. If I had a base for how I felt 90% of the time it would be curious, optimistic, and humored.


So Countess couldn't be any of those things.
The physical appearances were already way too similar.


I decided that instead of being a bat- she would be one of my favorite animals, a DRAGON.

Makes sense, right?



But why would a dragon be named Countess?
I was already too attached to the title to leave it.


Then it occurred to me that dragons, in some ways, are rather similar to bats. Like massive fantasy lizard bats.

A dragon..
That wishes it was a bat. (Aka, a vampire)



And from there an amazing storyline parallel to the frustrating journey I had been dealing with laid out before me.



Countess, in personality, would represent those who tried so desperately to adopt all the things I would mention mattered to me, or that defined me. Those who were nasty towards me but stalked me for inspiration and keys on what they wanted out of life or who they wanted to be- for whatever twisted reasons they had. I'll never pretend to know how someone's mind like that works.




I started researching the true Dracula line, along with the different renditions and takes on 'Dracula'- from the real historic family all the way down to Bram Stoker, and everything inbetween.


I found that Dracula's father was named 'DRACUL'- which actually means 'dragon'.
He was awarded that name by the Order of the Dragon, a Christian group that sought to beat back/destroy the invading Ottoman Turks.


I then decided that Dracul would have, in my storyline, set out to find dragons that he could train to fight alongside him.


He would collect twelve dragons total- one born in each zodiac sect. For each zodiac sect would bring a different talent or skill to the table.


All dragons in my story are female- and reproduce a new generation dragon via self-sacrifice. This ritual does not happen often, as dragons have very few weaknesses and are otherwise immortal (they have to come to the personal conclusion that the world needs a stronger version of themselves so they die to bring forth that next, better dragon- and some dragons are so deluded that they can take thousands of years to reach this conclusion) So it wasn't easy for him to find the twelve dragons he desired, but he did.

The last of the dragons he found was Countess- but she was not named so originally.
They were given Romanian names, to fit their personalities.


Countess, the Scorpio dragon, was originally named "Marian" (Bitter, Rebellious)

Her eleven sisters were named:

1. (Aquarius) Ruxandra "Dawn"
2. (Pisces) Eugenia "Well Born"
3. (Aries) Luiza "Famous in War"
4. (Taurus) Madalina "Magnificent"
5. (Gemini) Celestina "Heavenly"
6. (Cancer) Constata "Steadfast"
7. (Leo) Lenuta "Mild"
8. (Virgo) Regina "Queen"
9. (Libra) Aurelia "Gold"
10. (Saggitarius) Anatolie "From the East"
11. (Capricorn) Diana "Divine"



The dragons were taken in by Dracul and shielded in their younger years. He protected them, provided for them, trained them, but above all lived with them as members of his family.

Aside from titles, they were equals.

Being the newest dragon, Countess was still very young when Dracul died and the dragons' transferred their allegiance to his son- Dracula; Dracula meaning 'son of dracul'



Dracula took his name very seriously, and as the 'son of the dragon'- he considered himself a symbolic dragon and the dragonesses as his beloved sisters. All but Countess had already pledged their hearts to the Dracul line, and felt an immovable sense of belonging towards Dracula.



Countess, however, was a internally tormented being.

Something inside of her was different from her sisters. She was self pitying, she lived with a constant irrational sense of being inferior and persecuted, deluded herself into inventing false memories and situations to support her bitter feelings, and victimized herself as often as was possible.


She was also immensely selfish, and would make any excuse to write off her abuses towards others, Or even further- accuse her victims of having abused her. To the point where she actually believed that she was innocent of all her sociopath actions.


Dracula loved her still, and attempted to share everything he had with her. He even stretched to nepotism- granting her pardons and second chances that none of the other dragons would even dream of needing.

But it was never enough.


For everything he forgave, everything he extended to her, it was never good enough.

Countess wanted more, needed more.

Tortured with a sense of emptiness, she concluded that the only way she could finally be happy would be to become Dracula. She had to have his life, his history, his future, even his name.



It was decided.


So she, in the heat of another battle they all forged through as they had many times before, murdered Dracula. Or rather, she took the steps to ensure that he would be overwhelmed and never return from the battlefield.

Dracula had never taken a wife, and had no heir to his throne.



Knowing this, Countess stormed back into the castle that had once been a home full of beings that loved her- now void but for her desperate fantasy to become what she felt would grant her peace from her self hatred.

Wielding the fallen Dracula's axe, she stood before the people of Walachia/Transylvania as the sole survivor of the war. She bellowed for their loyalty towards her, proclaiming herself as the last remaining being of the Dracula line- the last vampire.


The people knew better, but terrified of her now open madness none uttered a word in revolt. They quietly accepted her as the new Queen, and ruler of Transylvania.



But Countess, ever suspicious, paranoid, and manic- was not satisfied by this meek agreeance. She still wasn't happy, and the guilt of her actions were creeping up through the cracks of her broken mind. Convinced she just had to go further, just had to take more, she dove deeper into her insanity.


Countess began fabricating stories of abuse from Dracula towards her in a desperate attempt to tarnish his name while gaining sympathy from her new subjects. She twisted his image and name, painting him to be the very same person that she truly was on the inside- praying that these lies would cleanse her conscience of it's anguished sense of blame.



She accused Dracula of foul actions she herself had done, and followed this downward spiral into the final count of the war- where she claimed that Dracula had made an attempt to murder her on the field, and that she had narrowly escaped with her life.


The people still knew better, but they dared not speak up against this plagued being. For fear of their own safety, as she was known to be a cruel and malicious, vindictive dragon, they remained hushed. Disturbed deeply but unable to escape their painful positions as the citizens of this mad ruler.



No matter how much Countess ranted and raved, no matter what lies she spread or what histories she invented up, nothing gave her rest. She was still unsatisfied.


She began to suspect that the people did not love her as much as they had loved Dracula. And this enraged her. Fueled by her need to be him, to be BETTER than him, she threw herself into a horrible cycle of competing with a vision in her head. Chasing the impossible dream of achieving and becoming everything he had ever had.

For if she could be as loved as he,
If she could be as talented as he,
If she could be as admired and praised as he--

She would be complete,


He was her goal, and she would stop at nothing.




There was no telling why she fixated on him so. But something that had once, in her younger years, been an admiration and inspiration-- had turned into a disturbing, dark, twisted obsession. Somewhere down the road, she went from being his equal to feeling like his shadow. She could not stand how he outshone her, how he effortlessly did the things she struggled to do, She no longer wished for his success, she anticipated his failures. She rejoiced in his sadness, she reveled in his shortcomings because she had attached her entire soul to his and any triumph of his was a victory stolen from her, in her mind.

Existing alongside him had become an internal zero-sum-game for her.
And the only way for her to rise, was for him to fall.



So she did all she could to make him fall, even after driving him to his death, she haunted his reputation and stalked it into ruins.

No amount of tarnishing him could wipe her slate clean though. And little did she realize how transparent all of this was to the people who watched her deteriorate into her state of delusional distress.



When spreading poisonous words wasn't enough, and it never was enough,
she resorted to other measures.


She threw away her true image, her true self. Lost in the obsession of becoming just like him, she gave up everything that once made her- her.

Originally, she attempted to saw and gore off her dragon wings and horns. But they would grow back, each time at a more rapid pace.


So she insisted that she was a truer, more pureblooded member of the Dracul line- that she was so pureblooded that she physically took on elements of the dragon. And as all the people knew- the family line was named for the dragon. At least, she tried to tell herself that they believed her.

She filed down all her teeth save her canines, mutilating herself to look less like her, and more like him.

Her dragons eyes, which remained slit save for her berserker mode where they spiraled, she claimed were only slit because that's what Dracula's eyes did before he fed. For all knew that when a vampire was hungry, their eyes narrowed inhumanly, and she hoped this would instill more fear in her subjects. For more fear meant more respect, and respect could lead to love-- the love she was so starved for.

She surrounded herself with a thousand shades and materials of red. The Dracul line's signature color. She hoarded them, as dragons are known to do. Never having enough, she always displayed some form of red on her personage or surroundings.


She had to.
For she, only a dragon, did not see red in the same light as the Draculs did. The Draculs adored red as the color of their life force, the blood they consumed to survive. To them, red was holy and sacred.
As a dragon, she only consumed mineral material. Rocks, crystals, stone-- dull and earthy things. She could not even be satisfied with the nature of her being- she wanted to be known as a blood drinker as well. She would never be able to convince the world that she could though, could never show them that she could do what a vampire did, as consuming blood would do incalculable damage on her body. A dragon was never to consume organic material. For all the old tales told, it would destroy them.

So the next best thing would be to appear as though she was a vampire by encompassing herself with red like the Dracul line before her had.


She then clothed herself in all fashions of dark, royal attire. Only ever wearing shades of red, gray, black, and white. Just as the vampires before her had.

And as a personal snatch from Dracula himself, she began dressing in black and white stripes- something he was well known for always appearing in.
Even her horns, a milky quartz white that matched her wings, she scored deep terrible scars into until she reached the black marrow beneath. She did this in jagged sections so that she would always be in stripes, just as he had been.

Her hair, she would braid as he would braid his before her.

She claimed his battleaxe.

And the similarities that she appropriated from Dracula stretched on endlessly.




She hated him, she abhorred him- for all that he had. She claimed that she didn't want to be him, in those moments of private discussion with the darkest reaches of her mind. No, she would never be him- she despised him, but she wanted all that he had and the only way to achieve that would be to follow his steps exactly. To do what he did, she would have to be what he was.


Although in some small way this made her even more mad, as all these things did was remind her of him. And in those small moments of weakness she would regret her terrible decisions and the shattered road she had allowed herself to travel for so long. A flicker of hesitation would play across her mind, and she would wonder how she could make it all right again, but too prideful for that- she would slash away the remorse and plunge forward deeper into her life's obsession.
The more times the things she stole from him reminded her of him, the more she would take on. Eventually she could make herself forget, she could eventually believe that it really was her who did and started all these things on her own, that she never stole them, but rather had them her whole life.

Yes, she could do it, She just had to try harder.


It was decided.



But the people were not silent throughout this extended process. Voices, few and small at first but greater over time, chimed out against her. They called her 'the copycat queen', 'the mirror', 'the thief'. And over time despite her attempts to silence them, through lies or threats or false sympathies and pity she pleaded for, they saw the truth. The truth they had always seen but never acted on.


She had lost control, her already crumbling dream was shattering and breaking into a thousand pieces. Falling through her trembling hands like sand. Time was up, there was nothing she could do anymore, she had gone too far and they all knew. Her mind snapped, and she fled Transylvania as the mob closed in.


She ran hopelessly far, so far she thought she could never have to be reminded of her indiscretions and traitorous behavior, But the whispers were never far behind her. As she had mutilated her body, she had mutilated her own soul. Carving the horror of her real self on the surface for all to see. No matter where she went, she had done the damage. There was always one, then another, than many- who caught wind of her past. She had labeled herself and it did not take much for them to know her, and to hate her.


But the irony is, she could never help herself after that.

She retained it all, all the things she had stolen from Dracula.
She poured over her memory of him, looking back on all his methods and what made him him.
She still adopted the red, the greyscale, the black and white stripes, the ouija, the chalkboard slate, the yellowed eyes, the white wings, the battleaxe, the scar, the braids, all she had seen him do-- she clung to it desperately. Forever drowning in her lack of satisfaction, barely breaking the surface to catch enough breath to keep her in that broken limbo.


She was her own prisoner, trapped in the idea of him for all to see.

_____________________________________


The moral of this story is,

You know what you're doing,
Though I don't know why.

And my heart breaks for you.

It's nice to be able to cope with this unwanted appropriation through a character that I can't hurt like they hurt me. Because I don't want more hurt to come out of this, even if revenge does sound tempting or justified, it never is.
I can vent in a way that doesn't point at anything but Countess, but at the same time love her because she is visually made up of all the things I already loved, the things they ripped from me. Her personality, based off of them, is mellowed out by her appearance. It makes it easier to forgive them and love them despite what they do. I don't know how I got so lucky to find a way of copying that wasn't petty bullshit side comments or taking a stab back at them, but I'm so glad I did.

I know, I have to believe, that there's good and worth and originality in them. They're just lost. And I would help them if I could, but they wouldn't want help.


So I'll keep being me, I'll be what I've always been and watch as they become more and more like me. But that's what it is, I just feel so truly sorry for their unhappiness. No one deserves to be so miserable and broken.

But I guess in our own ways, probably much different than this- we are all broken. No one is ever really perfect or innocent completely- I'm pretty fucked up, myself.




WELL ANYWAY, that's all good and dandy. I'm glad I got this out so you guys know her backstory and history with vampires. I guess it may seem more like a rant but even right now as I write it up I'm not upset or venty in the least, I'm actually watching AHS and drinking ginger ale and looking forward to doodling up some silly draws.

Honestly at this point, I just expect this kind of stuff.

I'll probably work on sections of this as comics- because even though she does fucked up things, I want people to bond with her and pity her too. It's not so simple as 'she's bad' or 'she's good'. She's just broken.

I hope you guys can come to love her dysfunction as much as I have, she's a hoot!


Countess, Art ©