#all the nswl use nicknames. their full names are much longer & often difficult for non-nswl to pronounce

[void-botanist]

@outpost51 it's insect time 😎

The Semilsstrom family consists primarily of four adult siblings (because I have done approximately 0 character development for their parents, who are alive and chill and nonbinary but don't even have names yet):

Snap (he/per), perpetually cheerful and always ready for an adventure. Fucked off to Icepith in the far north not too long ago for adventure and friendship's sake.

Lexie (she/her), goth darling who is busy being an arcade manager and also in other people's business and fucking around in the third Akkanswl (their home). Has more piercings than the whole rest of the family and their hangers-on combined.

Derik (he/him), Wylie's identical twin and sensitive jock mechanical engineer who has lived in the fifth Akkanswl out east for a while. Not normal about artsy movies and the opera and got recruited onto the Melichacha from the shipbuilding crew.

Wylie (he/him), Derik's identical twin and athletic/pathetic interspecies doctor who had a residency in the fourth Akkanswl down south and just never left. Applied for the Melichacha crew in an attempt to get Derik's attention, and has some sick ass forearm tattoo sleeves.

And they all have their own companions:

Rolf (he/she/they), Snap's BFF, an imbra (imagine a human who is one foot tall. Then imagine them having evolved from a bat [minus wings]) full of restlessness and sarcasm who led the charge to Icepith.

Barb (she/they), Lexie's BFF/lover/whatever the hell they feel like, an intimidatingly buff orea-nawwen who just lives in third for some reason.

Mirilde (he/him), Derik's boyfriend, also a swl from third and just like a cool sweet guy.

Vy (she/they), Wylie's girlfriend, a human who is built like a tank and is technically his superior on the Melichacha.

For reference here is a picture of Mirilde (I decided nswl were scaled after I drew this so just pretend they have scale patterns like geckos):

[Image description: a digital color drawing of Mirilde, a swl, from the shoulders up. He is a light green lizard person with a long neck, pale yellow belly coloration that extends down from his bottom lip, a rounded snout, large forward-facing brown eyes like a gecko, and a thick pale gold crest similar to a chicken's comb, with tall pointed ears on either side of it. His ears are swiveled partly forward to match his smile, and both ears have purple gauges near the base with chain links hanging from them. He is wearing a dark green t-shirt with his thin choker tattoo partly visible. /End description.]

Now that we've covered that, insects.

Snap and Rolf will race each other to catch insects in random encounters. Rolf usually wins because of being small and fast. Snap: at least put some sauce on that Rolf: [crunching, does not give a shit] Imbrath can actually survive on a diet of insects on account of being so small. Nswl are way too big for that, so for them insects are considered treats/delicacies. So, you know, you should at least put some sauce on that.

Lexie likes grilled insect kebabs, which mostly means larger insects. Barb doesn't love insects that are recognizable as insects except when they're candied (and I do mean candied, not just preserved inside a lollipop). But I do love the image of the two of them walking down the street, Lexie sliding all the insects off the stick at once with her sharp teeth, and Barb, arguably the scarier-looking one, licking a big ol insect lollipop.

Derik prefers his insects in pastries, where it's more about the flavor than the texture. Mirilde thinks the texture is important and has waxed poetic more than once about how you have to sauté them until they're crispy around the edges and have taken up some of the flavor of the oil.

Wylie likes them as garnishes or add-ins, the equivalent of putting granola in your yogurt, but this also means that he's eating them dead but raw most of the time. Vy spent a while investigating this to ascertain whether she was likely to get sick from this, so now she knows significantly more about the insect supply chain than your average swl. Personally, she's on Derik's side - she's not a very squeamish person but she just can't stomach eating whole raw insects, so they better be thoroughly incorporated and unrecognizable.

Bonus: Vy has two queerplatonic partners, Quint (they/them), the captain of the Melichacha, and Red (ey/em), the mycelial engineer. Quint is a neriet (mushroom person) and has zero hangups about eating insects as is, unless they're worm/sluglike in any way, in which case never, no thank you. The ironic thing about this is these are the only types of insects that show up in their native cuisine (not as a major part, but still). Red is a human but won't eat insects at all because ey likes them too much, in the same way some people go "this animal is too cute I can't eat its meat".