#(either his legal name or his nickname‚ which was after an uncle of his bc he was apparently the spitting image of)

[yardsards]

mostly joking toh theory: amity and emira are both trans girls, and the fact that they got to choose their names themselves is the only reason why neither of them ended up getting named "odalia jr."

[cherryblossomsno1fan]

more meaningless sk8 headcanons

reki and langa's favorite duet to dance in just dance is can't take my eyes off of you

oka is reki's uncle (mom's brother)

reki tries to give shadow the intimidating talk when he starts dating oka but he fails really hard and ends up laughing his ass off while shadow is just there Confused

cherry named carla after his niece who he loves a lot (i can elaborate on this further)

reki is a harry styles bisexual

reki listened to sweater weather before he knew that it was kind of a bisexual song and one day he was just listening to it with earbuds on and one of his classmates said "hey are you listening to sweater weather?" and he's like "yeah i love this song!" and they're like "oh my god same! are you also... you know?" and he's like "what" and they're like "what" and they explain to him and he's like "oh. wait-" and he just kinda reevaluates his whole life and then a week or so later he comes up to this classmate and says really proudly "i DO listen to sweater weather!" and they immediately understand and they hug bc yay two bisexuals

shadow has a really bad amount of internalized homophobia and it's a huge fucking problem and it never really leaves

reki introduces miya to his sister bc they're around the same age and they become really good friends (their main hobby is gagging at reki and langa and making fun of reki)

joe doesn't actually believe in astrology but he pretends he does just to piss off cherry, who thinks astrology is the dumbest shit ever

everyone thinks shadow's music taste is rock/metal music because of his aesthetic but one day miya used his phone for spotify and found out that he listens to a bunch of dancey songs and shit like that from the 90's (like britney spears,,, yknow)

half italian joe half italian joe hALF ITALIAN JOE GODDAMNIT

adding to ^ that, joe listens to a bunch of old italian songs and often plays them in the restaurant (HELP NO MATCHABLOSSOM BRAIN WENT "lol them slow dancing to old italian songs lol think about it")

joe unironically listens to macarena and has to do the dance every time. it's his legal obligation. he has to do it every time he hears it. no matter where he is.

cherry knows this and has carla play the macarena during one of their beefs and joe is like "FUCK YOU" but does it anyways

they both lost in the end because cherry lost his shit laughing (they both fell at the same time so it was considered a tie)

miya wouldn't stop giving them shit about it for weeks because they both literally looked like complete wrecks (cherry almost broke his leg and joe did, in fact, dislocate his elbow), like he would look at them and burst out laughing

one time miya laughed so hard at them that he fell from his chair face first and broke his nose which is the only reason he stopped laughing (it hurt to laugh, literally)

reki is so used to kissing his sisters' minor injuries when they like fall or scrape their knees that it's become a habit and while this does open up renga opportunities please let me enlighten you with the idea of Big Bro Reki treating one of miya's scrapes (either a tumble or he tripped or smth idk man bear with me) and accidentally smooching his arm or smth out of habit and miya kinda cries a little

also, this angsty shit is brought to you by my gf who likes to make me SUFFER: after reki and langa's fight, one of his younger sisters sees that reki is really upset and crying, so she goes up to him and kisses his chest to make him feel better

ITALIAN JOE TIME ok so joe's mom is italian and when she met his father she didn't really know much japanese and her pronunciation was so weird so instead of calling his father by full name she called him "joe" for short (and it was easier for her to pronounce) and when he was born it kind of became a little nickname his mom gave him

reki listens to paramore NO i am not taking criticism on this

when they were like kids cherry and joe promised to each other that at their weddings, they would be each other's best man; skip to when they got engaged, joe is like "oh no,,, oh my god we didn't think about this did we" and cherry thinks that he wants to call off the engagement and kinda panics for a few seconds but then joe said "who will be our best men??" and cherry is like "OH THAT'S WHAT YOU MEAN-" and then kinda smacks him for scaring him but also is really mushy inside that joe remembered

whenever joe speaks to cherry in italian (complimenting him and being romantic and all that) cherry immediately assumes that joe is insulting him and gets mad (when really he's telling him his eyes are beautiful)

whoops accidentally made this one about the Matchablossom Agenda oh well promise there'll be more tadashi and adam content in the next one

[classicschronicles]

Hi lovelies,

In class the the other day we were discussing the Aeneid and somehow we ended on the topic of Cicero’s name really meaning ‘Chickpea’ and, well obviously, I had to know more about how on earth he even got that name, and so todays entry is about nomenclature in the Roman Republic and Empire, otherwise known as the ‘Tria Nomina.’

At first glance the Tria Nomina is an extremely convoluted system- why does one man need SO many names? Why are there a million men in one family with the same name? Well, it wasn’t always like this. In pre-republican days when the Roman Empire was still under the control of the Etruscan overlords, most Roman-male citizen just had the one name but the naming process became increasingly complicated as time went on. By the time of the Republic all aristocratic men had three names- split into praenomen, nomen and cognomen.

Marcus | Tullius | Cicero

Praenomen | Nomen | Cognomen

Gaius | Julius | Caesar

The praenomen was the first part of a name and was the ‘personal name’ chosen by the parents of a young Roman child and given to the child during a naming ceremony, which was later reaffirmed at your marriage ceremony. The praenomen was used primarily within the family or by close intimates but was usually abbreviated in inscriptions. Shockingly, there were a very limited number of praenomina and the same name was often used multiple times within the same family. The eldest son was often named after his father with second and third sons being names after an uncle or other male relatives. Sometimes boys were named after male relatives from their maternal family- brining a new name into the gens (clan). The naming of a son after his father served to emphasis the continuity of a family across many generations, and also to distinguish one gens from another. Roman men were usually known by their praenomen to members of their family and close friends, whilst by those outside of the this circle, they may be referred to by their nomen or cognomen.

During the time of the Empire, the praenomen became increasingly confused with practices of the aristocracy, with emperors often using ‘Imperator’ was their praenomen, whilst at the same time retaining their own praenomina. But, due to the fact that most early emperors were legally adopted by their predecessors, and formally assumed new names, even these were subject to change. Many members of the Julio-Claudian dynasty would swap their initial praenomen for a cognomen, or would receive their cognomen instead of the praenomen at birth. Due to the complicated nature of these practices, the uses of the praenomina to distinguish between men went into decline, only propped up by tradition. Over the 3rd century, written records of the praenomen became increasingly sparse and from the 4th century onwards it became almost entirely obsolete.

The nomen was the name which belonged to the gens and was hereditary- it’s what we today would consider the equivalent of a surname. The gens consisted of your extended Roman family, all of whom would share the same nomen, and would claim its origin from a common ancestor. To Romans, the gens were almost like a state within a state, consisting of its own scared rites and establishing family laws (which were binding on its members). It was used to refer to the man in informal conversation and between friends if the man had no cognomen.

The cognomen was the third and (at last!!!) the final element of the tria nomina, and acted as an addition of the personal name. In the early years of the republic, some aristocratic Romans had as many as three cognomen (bc ofc three names wasn’t already enough). The cognomen could arise from any number of factors (characteristics, place of work/ birth, looks personality etc…) and were often used as nicknames. My favourite example of a cognomen was that of Cicero- meaning chickpea- either because of his dappled skin or because an ancestor of his had a nose that resembled a chickpea. Unlike the nomen, the generational name, a cognomen could appear and disappear almost at will and were usually not chosen by the person they referred to- which would account for the presence of harsh or unflattering cognomina. Under the empire, the use of the cognomina increased dramatically and where previously only distinguished houses had multiple names- it was now commonplace for all Romans to have multiple names. For the majority of the Republic the usual of distinguishing someone was via the nomen, but as the praenomen began to lose value, the cognomen began to replace it.

Whilst the nomen was a required element of the tria nomina down to the end of the empire, its usefulness declined over the course of the imperial times and an increasingly larger number of people became known by their nomina, which gradually shifted to become akin to the cognomina. By the 3rd century the cognomen became the most important part of Roman nomenclature. By the 6th century, as Roman institutions began to vanish, the differences between the nomen and the cognomen ceased to have any importance and by the late years of the empire, the western empire reverted to single names- which were indistinguishable from the cognomina that they replaced.

As per usual, the women in this have faded into obscurity and we largely assume that the tria nomina refers to men. The case with women was that they would adopt the family nomen, but with a feminine ending. For example, the women of the Julio clan would be referred to as Julia, and women in the Claudio clan would be referred to as Claudia. Notice how I say women, plural. Meaning your first daughter would be Julia, your second daughter would be Julia and your third daughter would be (you guessed it) Julia. Rather confusing if you ask me.

Hope you all enjoyed learning about Roman nomenclature- or the tria nomina. Have a lovely weekend!

~Z

[awed-frog]

in which caesar doesn’t do anything much and all the women are named julia

[Hi, this is me stanning Adrian Goldsworthy’s biography of Caesar. I studied Classics, but not this period, so all I can contribute here are squeals of delight, a few mistakes and the occasional witty comment. If you’d like to know more, please buy the book - it’s really good and a fun read.]

PART 2

The thing is - there’s a lot of boring relevant political stuff going on in this chapter, but I’m mostly fascinated by the glimpses we get into the world of Roman women. 

As I said, this is not really my area, so I know random, unconnected facts about how life was like for them; also it doesn’t make much sense to talk about ‘Roman women’, because, as a reminder, ‘Rome’ stretches from the 14th century BC to the 14th century AD, came to include dozens of very different regions, and obviously was home to an incredibly diverse population. And if we’re talking about the late Republican / imperial aristocracy, there’s a sharp divide anyway: on the one hand, the ‘ideal woman’ is the same old model we’re all used to and heard about (silent, obedient, virtuous, chaste, a perfect mother and so on), but on the other, Roman noblewomen had a lot more freedom than, say, their Greek counterparts, so there was usually some political scheming going on - something that in Greece was reserved to a handful of very well-placed courtesans. 

(In this sense, think about the contrast between Lucretia, the mythological wife of Collatinus, whose fridging created the Republic, and Agrippina, mother of Nero, empress and all-round badass bitch.)

Anyway, this chapter made me think about women because it starts with Caesar being born and getting his name - it’s sort of an urban legend, btw, that every single Roman had three names: that was just for the Moste Noblest - and how Goldsworthy casually mentions that, unlike men, women of noble birth would just take their family surname as first name. In Caesar’s family, for instance, all the women were named Julia.

(As a reminder: his given name was Caius, then ‘Julius’ identified the tribe, and finally ‘Caesar’ was a nickname that was possibly given to his grandfather for something elephant-related. 

People whose grandfathers did not do elephant-related stuff generally never enjoyed the prestige of a funny nickname passed down through the generations.)

So it’s bad enough that twins might be named ‘Peter and Not-Peter’ or ‘Peter and Twin’, but imagine going to the park with your buggy and meeting your old friend Oldest She-Jones (daughter of Ferdinand Jones), now married to George David Taylor, and her five kids - Louis David Taylor, She-Taylor, She-Taylor the Second, She-Taylor the Third and She-Taylor Born on Christmas. So damn cute, and also the reason why the Romans never developed smartphones or social media - how the hell are you supposed to find someone on Vultocodex when every single cousin and aunt has the exact same name?

Poor management, that is.

But anyway - as I said, there’s a dissonance here because women being treated like garbage (like, not given normal names and married off at fourteen) also led to the very peculiar phenomenon: generations of (male) politicians and VIPs being raised by very forceful, strong, and ambitious (widowed) mothers. Because if you count old age, wars, trampolining injuries (let’s be honest, men have always been obsessed with attempting dangerous stunts just for the fun of it) and the general risks of Roman politics, it was very usual for a noble kid to not even remember his father at all.

(Nero is a good example of how weird and all-consuming this boy-mother relationship could become - there’s entire books about it, but I’d point 16-and-over readers to Suetonius’ Life of Nero for details.

Keep in mind 95% of it is propaganda because Suetonius hated Nero, but still. HBO-worthy stuff in there.)

All this to say - we know that Caesar had a very close relationship with his mom (named ‘Aurelia’ because - you guessed it - she came from the Aurelii family), who was a near perfect figure of virtue, intelligence, beauty and common sense. Very powerful in her own right, Aurelia raised Caesar basically on her own, because her (much older) husband was either away at war or dead for most of their marriage.

Aside from drinking in Aurelia’s wisdom, Caesar’s education also included the normal lessons noble Roman boys were required to learn: self-worth, narcissism, delusional manias, rhetoric, martial arts, horse-riding, and writing really bad fanfiction based on Greek myths.

And now for the MEANWHILE part.

(I have no idea why this gif was tagged ‘meanwhile’, but I’m not enough of an idiot to let it go to waste, so.)

Meanwhile, all sort of messes were going on.

As I’m sure you remember, at some point the consul was Marius - Caesar’s uncle and a military genius, but not much of a politician. His negotiation tactic of choice was secretly inviting groups of unconnected people to his house on the same night, serving them dinner in two separate rooms so they wouldn’t see one another and try to work out some kind of agreement between them. Whenever a new point came up, Marius would say he had diarrhoea, pretend to run to the bathroom and instead sit down with the second group and see what they thought about the first group’s proposal.

(Isn’t ancient Rome magnificent?)

A big problem Marius had to deal with was how to grant citizenship to the allied tribes in Italy without pissing off current citizens. Basically no one wanted these other guys to be given new rights, but since they supplied more than half the soldiers of the Roman army and got nothing in return, their patience was running a bit thin. At some point, Roman bureaucrats started to erase foreign-born citizens from their lists claiming they were not actual citizens (something so openly dishonest NO OTHER GOVERNMENT would EVER attempt it again), and next yet another tribune working on a citizenship reform was stabbed to death in the street. 

So the allies went to war. 

(This war, confusingly, is known as the Social War, because ‘socius’ means ‘ally’ in Latin.)

As you can imagine, it was a disaster. Most of the allied communities had been part of the Roman republic for I don’t want to check but let’s say decades, they lived side by side with Roman families and fought in the same wars, so it was more of a civil war than anything else. Some tribes chose to remain faithful to Rome, others didn’t. Lots of people died.

Caesar was too young to be a soldier, but this was Cicero’s first taste of war (bet you never thought of that weaselly weasel as a soldier, uh? appearances can be deceiving, folks!). Marius was also involved, but since he was old as shit and had famously weak and leaky guts (hahahhaha), he mostly stayed out of active combat, which wasn’t all that normal for a Roman general. In the end, the whole of Italy, down to defeated tribes, cows, dogs and random patches of mossy rocks, was granted citizenship and everyone went home. Their votes, however, were inserted in the system in such a way that they didn’t count much. 

On the whole, the one winner of this war was Lucius Cornelius Sulla, one of the military commanders, who became a consul soon after.

Another war, because this is Rome and Romans were dicks, but! this one was in the East, which means every single soldier would get super rich and also! wars in the East were considered easy because *insert racist trope here* and! Sulla had been promised that, as the big winner of the Social War, he could go there with his legions and basically enjoy this Disneyland of golden cups and ultraviolence but! at the last moment, Marius, who never liked Sulla much, managed to snatch the commandership from him, which! was completely legal but also *insert outraged emoji* and wait for it! instead of going gentle into the good night, Sulla made a fiery speech to his soldiers all like GUESS WHAT FOLKS WE’RE STUCK HERE SCRATCHING OUR TESTICULI AND THOSE IDIOTS FROM THE 25TH ARE TAKING YOUR GOLD AND YOUR UNWILLING WOMEN and! Sulla’s entire army marched! on! the! city! of! Rome!

It was the first time a Roman army had ever invaded Rome. Nobody was expecting it, and people panicked. Sulla’s men won easily, burned down some buildings, killed some people, generally had a great time; and then Sulla announced a bounty for anyone who’d disembowel his political enemies (including Marius) because he didn’t have time to go to Braavos and learn how to do it himself (remember, he still had his war waiting for him in the East).

(This turned out to be a success, btw. One guy was even killed by his slave - Sulla gave him the promised reward, then shoved him off a mountain because duh, slave and “When I said ‘anyone’, I meant people, not IKEA furniture” and “Honestly”.)

As nobody could have imagined and/or predicted, as soon as Sulla left for Greece Weak Guts Marius came back with an army and took back the city, beheading his way to the Senate and leaving a trail of blood wherever he passed. As soon as he got there, however, he dropped dead - heart attack, trampolining, diarrhoea, who can tell - and the city was taken over by his second-in-command, Lucius Cornelius Cinna.

(Man, what a ride.)

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to know what Caesar was doing during this time.

Personally, I like to imagine him in Rome - a well-dressed, grey-eyed 15-year-old, freshly orphaned, horrified and exhilarated by the violence exploding all around him - I see him running down the streets, stopping to watch the corpses float in the dark waters of the Tiber, daring his friends to go and touch the severed heads nailed to the doors of the Senate; recognizing many of those heads as friends and colleagues of his father and uncle (passing a hesitant finger on the cold flesh, remembering how they’d once laughed and frowned and spoken about boring matters from the dais). 

The truth is, Caesar was just a kid. He was supposed to learn about the Republic, and his own role in making it great, by watching his elders. 

God knows what he actually learned, and what he thought, as he was passing through Rome’s paved streets, now shimmering with blood. 

PREVIOUS — NEXT

[obibail]

my main squeezes: Vince, Sam, and Vespa! + your Skyrim OC 👀👀👀👀👀👀🔍

fghjdfskj the boys!!!!!!

Vince

The only person to ever call Vince Vincent is his mother. And Rush that one time.

Speaks English, Spanish, French, Haitian Creole, Portuguese, and Arabic.

Was attending NYU for cinema studies. Loved loved loved cinematography studies and film theory. Wanted to be a director! Had actually written & directed two short films already and had been shooting two more that he hoped to premiere at a few local film festivals. Had to drop out of the program after the accident that cost him his left arm because of the medical expenses and the long hospital stays. To say he was crushed is,,,, an understatement.

Was in California having an experimental prosthetic arm fitted & attached when the bombs dropped. He’s told that he followed everyone else to the bunkers but he has no memory of it. The doctors assume it’s either shock or the anesthesia that was in his system when it all happened, but regardless he comes to in immense nerve pain and in a crowded hospital bunker underneath Los Angeles with no clue with the fuck is going on. 

Actually knows Ghost, ran with the same group Ghost did in Baja California for two years. Ghost had a big hand in how constantly battered Vince was during those years, liked to goad Vince into worse and worse shit because Ghost wanted to see how far someone like Vince - who was one of the few people in their group with morals - could be pushed before he broke. Ghost got their answer, too, when Vince turns around and - in a nearly blind rage - kills two of their group just before a planned attack on a community of mostly non-combatants.

Lost his right leg in 2030, an infected bullet wound that they (in the middle of a medicine shortage after a brutal winter) didn’t have the means to treat. His eventual leg prosthetic was built based on close study of his arm. Connecting it alone puts him out of commission for almost two months.

Does actually,,,, steal rings off corpses sometimes. A habit he picked up while with Ghost’s crew, a kind of trophy-hunting activity that turned into an unconscious action because he did it so much. He’s got,,, a pretty substantial ring collection. He pretends he feels worse about it than he actually does because what use did a dead person have for jewelry anyway?

Rush is the one who teaches him to shoot, a year or two after Vince joins his group. It comes to the group’s attention that Vince had never even held a gun prior to Rush - acting on a hunch - putting one in his hands one stupid hot California day and told him to go hog on some static targets. Vince missed pretty much every single one. Thankfully, his aim has gotten much better since then.

Vince feels conflicted about a number of things that he has done over the years but killing Ghost’s sociopath ass when they cross paths again in Hope County ain’t one of them.

Sam

Sam, good old midwestern boy that he is, legally cannot cuss.

He’s tall as hell but also thin as hell. He’s 6′6 at least but he’s also probably 145lbs soaking wet. A toothpick.

Nick calls him Sammy. (One time Nick slipped up and referred to the Judge as Sammy and everyone had a bad day about it.)

Sheriff Whitehorse is actually Sam’s godfather! Whitehorse and Sam’s dad (a retired sheriff from South Dakota) were really good friends & still kept in touch pretty regularly before the cult business started up bad in Hope Country. It’s Whitehorse that pulls the strings to get his anxious pothead veteran godson a position as a deputy. (Sam calls him uncle). 

Sam is bisexual but how do you say very very repressed about it. Lots of religious-guilt-tinged self-hate because of growing up Catholic in the midwest and then in the south. Definitely had an “in love with my same gender best friend and very ashamed of it” phase.

Sam and John Seed actually ran in the same circles growing up, just at different times. John’s a few years older but they went to the same high school & John’s adopted parents and Sam’s mom were actually well-acquainted. As a teenager, Sam used to be invited to John’s parties & would go with friends and get a little too drunk (which John would them use as fun leverage against Sam’s fairly powerful mother).

On that subject, John was 100% Sam’s bougie weed man all through high school and later when he got out of the Air Force & was self medicating his PTSD.

Sam, realizing he played right into Joseph’s hands: You played me like a fiddle!Joseph: Oh no, Deputy. Fiddles are actually difficult to play. I played you like to cheap kazoo you are.

& some Judge stuff bc 💔💔: Sometimes he’ll disappear for hours on end and most of New Eden is just *solemnly* “he must be doing something very important” except instead of doing that he’s sleeping in the most secret, softest place he could find.

Has an adopted daughter, a little girl named Abigail who attached herself to him at the hip - because she was born mute and he is also mute and she thinks that’s neat, she’d never met anyone like herself before. She and the Judge make up their own version of sign language - that actually ends up being shared between a lot of the residents of New Eden, especially the scouts that the Judge trains.

Vespa

Card-carrying member of the billionaire boys club. 

Corporate CEO mom who raised him in a very hands-off way because she was always too busy. Homeschooled, raised by nannies. A lot of his education came through the net, which he learned to navigate at a terribly young age while ignoring his tutors because they bored him.

Has a “rival” in Dare Aranya, his mother’s former protege and the person who (“allegedly”, but definitely) orchestrated her assassination and the woman who is currently CEO of Sasaki Industries and is the executor of Vespa’s mom’s will.

Even though his mother is assassinated when he is 16, he stays in Night City for a year after and blows through whatever bits of his inheritance he can get his hands on, on parties and drugs and vehicles and whatever else a traumatized teenager who saw his mom’s murder can spend money on. A spoiled disaster of a teenage party prince of the highest caliber. Ends up leaving Night City when his money suddenly dries up, syphoned off by Dare.  

Bounces between countries and netspaces for years, never spending more than a few months in once place (aside from significant stays in Mumbai, Moscow, and Tokyo). Only returns to Night City after a botch job in Tokyo. 

Is actually an Arasaka on his dad’s side, is the great grandnephew of Saburo Arasaka. He ends up staying with a branch of the Arasaka family in Tokyo until he fucks up a job for them while high and gets thrown out on his ass. 

Has constant splitting headaches because of his bionic eyes - which are half the reason he self-medicates so heavily. Had to have them replaced and maintained constantly as a child because of natural human growth, which was always a terrifying experience for him, not helped at all by the sterile white rooms he would be taken to or the cool detachment of his doctors who did not work with children and were not paid for their bedside manner. It culminated in a scalding dislike for doctors and a refusal to go to them unless he is literally dying. Ripperdocs are equally, if not more, off limits.

Is notorious for turning off his hearing aids when he wants to focus better or when he is getting too sensory overloaded to function, frustrating everyone he has ever worked with. 

He’s adamant his nickname is from the Italian word for “wasp” (as a riff off Dare’s last name, a phonetic spelling of araña, Spanish for spider. one time - while he was in Milan like the rich idiot he is - he heard about these wasps that kill spiders and he has a Justified Grudge against Dare so. wasp) and not from the scooter but he’s scooter boy forever now. 

Jackie Welles, hefting Vespa “idiot bastard who spent all his money on drugs and passed out in the back room of a bar again” Sasaki over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes: god damn I wish you’d take care of yourself

I didn’t know if you meant Katja or Sylon but I’m gonna go with Sylon because I love him & bc he’s the more developed of the two rn 😬😬

Is some mix of Breton and Bosmer but no one really knows for sure because no one knows who his actual parents are. The ‘parents’ he was taken from were skooma addicts who had been hounding Khajiit merchants for weeks and were irresponsible to the point that a whole caravan of Khajiit, stressing out while watching this couple neglect their tiny child, collectively lost their minds and just went “listen here’s the stuff you want, don’t even pay us just give us the baby. give us the baby, please.” The caravan finds that couple again not two days later, dead in the desert, and no one is even surprised.

Amazing singing voice but doesn’t actually think he can sing at all. Will hum or sing absent-mindedly sometimes and get real surprised when he looks up to find people have come over to hear him better.

Doesn’t have time for destiny, just wants to steal.

Becomes a thieves’ guild merchant in Riften & moves his business into the Ragged Flagon when their reputation starts getting better. Is also a thief in the guild itself but legitimizes himself as a merchant in Riften by actually running legitimate goods (which helps Khajiit caravans a lot because they can’t trade in the cities but he can and he’s always happy to help the caravans he crosses paths with).

Being raised by Khajiit, Sylon had been taught from a young age not to rely on people and to only rely on his own talents and abilities & to be out for himself and only himself & he believes in this doctrine fully. That is, he believed in it up until the second he meets Karliah and Brynjolf and then he just *lays face down on the ground* “hmm maybe caring about others and wanting to have people that care about me is okay actually.”

Is definitely in love with Brynjolf but no one will ever get him to admit it, least of all Brynjolf.

Meets Katja after she catches him stealing a box of jewelry from her home in Dawnstar. Gets roped into a quest to kill giants with her as a form of recompense because she knows he’s the dragonborn and she’s pissed he isn’t living up to expectations. They end up becoming incredibly close friends whose favorite pastime is jointly roasting Kali, the stupidly naive exiled Redguard noble that Sylon saved from being assassinated one time and who Katja is now housing and feeding (and terrorizing).

Would adopt every orphan in Skyrim if given the option. Despite being fairly aloof and coming across as self-serving, he is shockingly doting and attentive to kids. Makes a name for himself in the cities as a friend of children and someone who will provide without asking for anything in return. Is the unofficial patron god of orphans and strays. And although he doesn’t ask it of them, they make a great information network for him & are happy to tell him everything they overhear in the cities that might be of interest to their thief dad.