#c: Pirianus

[void-botanist]

I had inspiration for an AITA post written by local cringefail ferasca Pirianus, so here you go.

AITA for going on vacation?

I (62M) am married to 6 other people (62F, 61M, 59F, 59F, 57M, 65M). Recently my primary partner (62F) - let’s call her Carmen - retired from her very demanding job and has had more time to spend with her spouses. This has not translated to her spending more time with me, only with her primary partner (59F) - let’s call him James. Things got heated between James and I because of this, and I realized that we both needed time to cool off, so I decided to go on vacation for a few weeks. This gave me a lot of time to think and realize that none of my spouses particularly want me around, so I decided to continue vacationing along the coast indefinitely (money is not an issue).

Fast forward a couple of months and another of my spouses (57M) - let’s call him Thaddeus - shows up and is upset with me for “leaving” because I didn’t mention I extended my vacation. He puts Carmen on the phone, and she chews me out for the same. Thaddeus and I got into a massive argument after that and I shudder to think what awaits me when I arrive home. It’s obvious they don’t like me anymore, yet they’re livid that I tried to solve that problem by getting out of their way. AITA?

Edit: I am not misgendering James. Have none of you ever met a butch lesbian?

Edit 2: “you have to both be each other’s primary partner” according to whom??

Iecunem taglist: @vacantgodling @kk7-rbs

[void-botanist]

so I have become sucked into writing about Pirianus having to face the consequences of his actions (being a little bitch, really) and it's just...ough

basically the context is that for reasons unrelated to Piri his wife, Kiatcarmen, has retired from being queen, and Piri thought this meant she would finally want to spend time with him, like to hang out???? but that didn't happen so he got into a fight with her favorite husband and then went to go vacation at the coast while things cooled off and just vanished. Of course he eventually got found by Thade, the husband who actually loves him, and of course he was such an obtuse ungrateful baby about it that now even Thade is done with him. He gets home. He gets interventioned by his entire polycule. and for the first time he gets legitimately afraid that his whole life is about to slip through his fingers

[void-botanist]

17 & 18 of the group situations for any of the polycules <3

Finally getting to this one with Marcus and Kiatcarmen's polycules :3

17 - One of the characters in the group has been replaced by an evil doppelganger. How does the group figure out who it is?

Marcus: gonna be honest, if he seems too relaxed there's gonna be suspicion. Yera would be the hardest to fool because she is both discerning and has known him the longest. So she has a pretty solid sense of how much emotional constipation and anxiety and depression he has.

Yera: this one might be a challenge because while everyone knows Yera pretty well, her MO is to have fun. So as long as the doppelganger doesn't do anything that is obviously at someone else's expense/actually mean, they could probably explain away just about anything. But they would also have to remember the ten million little moments she has shared with people and if they forgot, Gren and Hossan would figure it out.

Umedes: the biggest mistake a doppelganger could make is treating Umedes' alienness and relative distance from everyone else as an excuse to stay aloof and do whatever. Pali and Gren would figure that out easily (Marcus would kinda figure they were just trying something new and of course they're tired of him. he's such a sad boy).

Hossan: he defines himself in very specific ways. Yera and Gren would know something is off the second he starts using words like "kinky" and "polyamorous" about his triad.

Pali: it's way too easy to try and play Pali as conniving and scheming but she really is not an evil mastermind type. Her goals and her door have to be just open enough to keep Umedes or Marcus or Gren from figuring it out.

Gren: he's the slut spouse, not the seductive spouse. He's not much for innuendoes or specifically flirting, versus just being really nice. So really any serious seductiveness will have everyone wondering if he's okay.

Heith: the doppelganger would have to walk a fine line between being very cynical and also not being depressed, which would be hard with Marcus tipping everything depressionward. Unfortunately Marcus is also the one Heith spends the most time with and is most likely to notice something is wrong.

Kiatcarmen: it would be hard, ngl. But she's not equally mean to everyone or mean to them in the same way. Still, as long as they don't do something as obvious as badmouthing Jimmy, they might go undetected if there aren't any nuances that Jimmy or Pirianus pick up on.

Ashmalo: the giveaway would probably be him being vitriolic about Kiatcarmen, or him being overconfident as a dad. It's kind of a toss up who would notice first but my bet's on Orvi, since he's both very observant and friends with Ashmalo.

Jimmy: probably getting involved with Marcus and Minaya too much. He's always been distant from them, and any deviation from that would be odd to everyone else.

Pirianus: his whole MO is opaque to everyone else, yet it does follow a pretty predictable logic of being extremely emotionally repressed. If he got more transparent or just less judgmental it would be a tip-off. Thade would probably figure it out first.

Caladea: the biggest possible mistake is to assume that she is both soft and kind of weak-willed in all areas of her life. The only people who believe that are the ones who have never seen her strategize with Ashmalo or met her in the bedroom. The opposite is true too: what Caladea would talk back to Kiatcarmen, or talk to her at all if it wasn't necessary?

Thade: he can be annoying, but he chooses his moments because he wants attention more than anything. Someone constantly being annoying just for the sake of being annoying would raise some flags.

Orvi: it might be possible to skate past Thade and Caladea if they got some small details right. But either the complex web of politics in the court or an overdeveloped sense of power from Orvi's personal surveillance network would trip them up.

18 - One of your characters is sick in bed. What do the rest of the characters do to help them feel better?

Marcus: the most often repeated phrase with him is "take the pills". He's so ready to just suffer through it but nobody will let him. And pretty much everyone will come to say hi to him at one time or another but Umedes will be there the most.

Yera: she has the window cracked open so that someone can hang out on the other side of it and be somewhat protected from whatever has her sick. But she's suffering not being able to be around anyone and they try to be extra social with her in other ways to make up for it.

Umedes: half the time they won't even tell anyone they're sick—they'll just recede into their chambers. They don't want to make people take care of them, but they almost inevitably get found out and taken care of anyway. I think there's some kind of Vick's equivalent for scales and that's what they use, and it's hard to feel too much like a burden when hot guys are insisting on giving you a scale rub.

Hossan: he hates being sick so much. He will take the pills without being told though he doesn't always believe they do anything. But Gren and Yera have discovered the best way to make him less miserable is just to give him a space Switch and not bother him too much while he plays games in bed.

Pali: Umedes and Gren especially are checking in frequently to make sure she hasn't decided to return to work while they weren't looking and make sure she has enough water and snacks and such. Luckily she doesn't like working in bed, so it's hard for her to pretend she wasn't working.

Gren: for the most part they all just staying out of his bedroom, because he's determined to sleep it off. But it's also answering his messages as quickly as possible so he can get his meals in before going back to sleep.

Heith: she will let Marcus in to hang out with her periodically and also Gren so he won't worry, but mostly she wants soup and to be left alone with the space netflix password.

Kiatcarmen: she has Jimmy on video call half the day every day, because she doesn't want to get him sick, but she can't be without him. The rest of her time is spent either watching trash TV or sleeping. She used to just rely on the staff to leave what she needed at the door, but she's discovered that Pirianus is only too happy to play her nurse, and sometimes she lets him.

Ashmalo: he doesn't like being sick by any means but he does like that Caladea takes it on herself to take care of him. She doesn't hang around a ton, just because it's boring for her, but she will make sure he has everything he needs and massage his shoulders and tuck him in.

Jimmy: he tends to have a short temper and very little energy for socializing when he's sick, but he also can't stand being left completely alone. So he will have Kiat or Caladea on video chat for a few minutes here and there.

Pirianus: well, in his ideal world, Kiatcarmen would dote on him like he dotes on her, but he has to make do with mostly Thade, who operates on a strict "don't shoot the messenger" policy. Thade is just delivering stuff. Don't blame him for anything that goes wrong, just send him to get something else. But Thade is also decently likely to not be home when Piri is sick, so then it's Orvi, or some representative of Orvi, fetching things, and occasionally Caladea will see him until she gets tired of him, and even more occasionally Kiatcarmen will drop by.

Caladea: she wants everyone to stay away from her. Well, maybe Orvi or Thade or Ashmalo can sit far away from her and talk to her from there. But for the love of god do not let in Pirianus, because he wants to be her Big Brother TM, but he's just overbearing.

Thade: if he's perfectly honest he kinda prefers getting sick in his hotel suite in Landris, because then he doesn't have to think about socializing with the polycule beyond his phone—he can just call his assistant Wyn to get him some stuff and then chill in his space. In the palace Orvi and Caladea and Ashmalo are checking in on him, and that's nice, but why do they all have to do it every day. Can they not just coordinate.

Orvi: he has tried to just be sick in peace but Caladea won't let him. Which is mostly a good thing, honestly, because otherwise he would just vanish for a week, and would barely interact with anyone. Ashmalo and Thade will also visit him, though he's not sure if Ashmalo only comes if Caladea tells him to.

[void-botanist]

let’s start with 1-5 for all the polycules! -@vacantgodling

This is gonna be a long one lol. But first, a little note on these polycules for those who don't know: they're legally mandated for the royal family (Kiatcarmen, Marcus, and Minaya) and have at least one of each sapient species in them. That's why Jimmy was replaced in Kiatcarmen's polycule when he died, whereas in an organic polycule, that likely would not happen.

1 - How many members are in the polycule? How are they related to each other? Feel free to draw a flow chart.

Kiatcarmen: there have only ever been five at one time. But those members have shifted twice, when existing members died. Kiatcarmen and Ashmalo are Marcus and Minaya's parents.

First set of members:

Second set of members:

Third (current) set of members:

Marcus: seven, technically. It remains to be seen whether Heith will stick around. With the exception of Heith, it's safe to assume they're all friends. Gren only knows OF Heith, since Marcus met her on another planet. Yera and Hossan recently had a baby. Also they don't actually have non-cow ears I just couldn't rally myself to make updated picrews for this post.

Minaya: six, all pretty much friends. Dawn is currently pregnant with Arbores's baby. Lanya is permanently annoyed with Arbores because his state of being is sort of to just disappear into the woods and not engage that much with the administrative/royalty things he, Minaya, and Dawn manage.

This isn't all the existent relationships in these polycules but it is all the most notable ones.

2 - Did the relationship start polyamorous, or was it a monogamous relationship that eventually opened?

All three of these started as technically polyamorous relationships, though they grew little by little. But if you look past the legal requirement it's a little more complicated. Kiatcarmen's polycule has always been a mess, and to be honest she would have been just fine having just Jimmy.

Yera and Hossan in Marcus's polycule started out as a functionally closed couple within the whole (they don't actually restrict each other to this but that was how it was anyway) but a couple years in, Marcus married Gren and Gren became besties with Yera. Over time this morphed into Gren being their third partner, but Gren is still very mobile between the different members and divisions of the polycule.

Minaya's polycule, once completed, was functionally three parallel couples (Minaya and Lanya, Dawn and Arbores, and Lucy and Ramona) until Ramona fessed up about her crush on Lanya and those two couples merged into something like a quad.

3 - If it started monogamous, how did the process of opening the relationship go?

Marcus: for a while it wasn't clear whether Yera and Hossan's relationship was going to open - maybe Yera just had a new fuckbuddy. But Gren and Hossan spent a lot of time together incidentally, and Gren also wanted to be friends with him too, and over time Gren just sort of got absorbed into their dynamic. There was a little jealousy they had to work out (Hossan was very used to being Yera's singular obsession), and there was a conversation at some point, though, when Hossan realized that he no longer thought of Gren as a separate external addition. He still doesn't think of himself as polyam but considers Gren in the same breath as Yera.

Minaya: opening her and Lanya's relationship felt easy. For a while, though, it was pretty much just sexual. That was easiest for everybody, especially with Lucy and Ramona being away for training and competition a lot. But over time it's developed into a more romantic dynamic, which has been fairly smooth, despite Lucy's defensiveness and Lanya's counter-defensiveness. There is some uncertainty about how things will change once Minaya ascends the throne, though.

4 - Are there any mono-poly relationships in the polycule?

Kiatcarmen: sort of. Despite having a sexual and quasi-romantic relationship with Pirianus the only person she's ever considered her partner is Jimmy, so in essence she has always been the monogamous person connected to her own polycule through her very popular spouse.

Marcus: no, but only because Heith isn't monogamous.

Minaya: Lucy teeters on the edge here. She's never outright decided she's monogamous, but she also doesn't have a lot of patience for maintaining multiple romantic partnerships.

5 - What “shape” is the polycule? A triad, a “V”, a straight line of metamours, or incomprehensible?

Kiatcarmen: currently, a cul-de-sac. Kiatcarmen only considers Pirianus anything close to a partner, Pirianus has complicated relationships with her and Thade, and Thade, Caladea, and Orvi are all just vibing with each other. In other words: almost entirely metamours and meta-metamours from Kiatcarmen's perspective, and something resembling a cohesive whole from Thade's.

Marcus: in Marcus's absence, it became kind of a bow tie, with Gren in the middle between Yera & Hossan and Umedes & Pali, and Marcus and Heith as a separate island. Upon his return, it expands into more of an anglerfish - Gren is still the point of connection between Yera & Hossan and Umedes & Pali, but Marcus has joined Umedes and Pali, and also has a connection to Heith.

Minaya: it's more or less a quad (Minaya, Lanya, Ramona, Lucy) with an orbiting couple (Dawn and Arbores).

[void-botanist]

kink rating game fooooor pirianus, thade, keearo & aza (and you lol): orgasm denial & praise? :0

This one was a lot of fun :3

denial

Pirianus: 7/10. Mostly he's just into being denied, and into having someone control him, but he has also slightly eroticized not getting what he wants.

Thade: 2/10. He can't be denied. He just can't. If he does not come right now he will die. But he occasionally finds it hot in other contexts where it is not happening to him—he enjoys denying people who are into it.

Keearo: 6/10. Denial that lasts longer than a single session is a no-go, but being temporarily denied—even multiple times in a row—is pretty hot.

Aza: 3/10. She thought longer term denial (like a week or two) would be fun, but she mostly ended up feeling icky about denial in general. But it will occasionally hit her right. Most of her engagement with denial is just making Keearo squirm, though.

Me: 2/10. I'm with Thade on this one lmao.

praise

Pirianus: 5/10. He has a mild praise kink but more than anything he just wants someone to genuinely praise him, not even in a horny way. Even before he got entangled in royal family nonsense he has really just needed someone to appreciate him.

Thade: 10/10, in the right circumstances. Pirianus's "praise" just feels patronizing, but Caladea's is the hottest fucking thing. (Orvi's just makes it obvious that he's trying to forget his own name but that's hot in its own way.)

Keearo: 6/10. He loves to please and wants to know that he's doing it well. If he's being honest he likes how Kirnus does praise more than how Aza does it, but that's a little bit the novelty speaking.

Aza: 8/10. The only trouble is she struggles to relax enough to enjoy it and not overthink it. She also particularly likes Kirnus's praise but she's not really picky.

Me: 6/10. Unfortunately I am like Aza and not great at just chilling.

Send me a kink and get some OC opinions

[void-botanist]

Thade Adventures: Parkour

OCs: Thade Orech-Pabat, Caladea Ores-Pabat, and Pirianus Orech-Pabat

Words: 500

Content warnings: heights, getting kinda made fun of in front of your crush

Taglist: @vacantgodling

“Do you think it’s possible to parkour all the way down to the ground floor from here?” Thade said, leaning against the railing at the edge of the open space that cut all the way down to said ground floor.

“Maybe,” Caladea said, barely looking up from her phone.

He grinned.  “You think I should try?”

She looked up for real.  “No, you can’t parkour.”

“I can totally parkour,” he said, pushing himself up on his arms so that his hips rested against the top of the railing.  He brought one sandaled foot up between his hands—he wasn’t going to go further than crouching on the rail, because he couldn’t parkour, but his foot slipped out from under him and his arms betrayed him and he found himself bent double over the railing, clinging to the slats, his feet barely skimming the carpet.  The fourth floor suddenly looked very high up.  

“Okay, I take it back,” he said.  “Can you help me?”  If he’d been with anyone but Caladea, they probably would have left him there to think about his actions for a while, but she came over right away to haul him back up by his pants waistband.  Which would have worked if he hadn’t chosen this moment to be wearing sweatpants.  Instead of helping, she just pulled down his pants, and he suspected also his boxer briefs.

“Oh no, I’m sorry,” she said like it was an accident, but she was also giggling.  

“Callie, you better not be filming this.”

“I’m not.”  Giggle giggle.  She must be, because she certainly wasn’t helping him.  He kicked his legs a little bit and felt a cold rush of fear as he shifted forward on the rail.  Well, this was fine.  He could just work his way back up the slats with his hands, and he would eventually slide back onto the floor.  It wouldn’t be easy, but it would be faster.  He’d hardly started when he felt familiar rough-edged hands on his hips and he was ungraciously pulled back upright.  As his blood stopped pooling in his head, he beheld Pirianus standing there, frowning as always.  That is, until Caladea showed him something on her phone, and he cracked a tiny blue-edged smile.

“Thanks,” Thade said with zero gratitude, pulling up his stupid sweatpants.  Before he could escape these two chucklefucks, though, Caladea turned her phone on him, and he was met with a photo of himself stranded over the rail, his panicked face looking through the slats, and his hairy asscrack surrounded by ironic hearts and sparkles.  Across the top was the word PARKOUR flanked with party poppers and flames.

“Great, thank you,” he said with a fake smile.  It should have been funny.  He should have been laughing—he could take a joke at his expense any day of the week—but instead he felt his cheeks burning.  “I’ll get that put on my calling cards.”  

He didn’t look at her or Pirianus as he walked away.

[void-botanist]

@vacantgodling: #this mf: ….. out

@kahvilahuhut: #pirianus was getting pizza. obviously

he just needed to be by the seaside. for eternity. #justpirithings

Last Line Tag

@vacantgodling tagged me for this and I have a good one from the polycule shenanigans I've been working on:

“Where the everloving fuck have you been, Pirianus?”

I'll tag @kahvilahuhut, @sarahlizziewrites, and anyone else who wants to join in!

[void-botanist]

I am experiencing a mild obsession with Thade because it is fun to watch him be annoying. Who wants scenelets

[void-botanist]

#THE CHARTS ARE SO HELPFUL IM SAVING THIS #rip pirianus but kiatcarmen just sounds like an asshole why do you care so much 💀#also i do hope heith sticks around :((( let marcus be happy :((((

I was like, "am I doing too much for these charts" but obviously not!!

Pirianus is the funniest fucking thing to me because I started out like "hey everybody! Thade is a selfish asshole!" and then the more things percolated the more it turned out that Pirianus is the one who actually acts like a selfish asshole still. He should not care so much about Kiatcarmen and yet. he actually married her at the worst possible time, which was when she was less of an asshole because she was having her fairytale romance with Jimmy, and then fell for her and decided that he could fix her (he can't) and that he needed her to need him so bad (mistake). The real question is what does Thade see in Pirianus but I think the truth is A) Thade is hard to bother and B) he's long been convinced that Pirianus's demeanor is a facade, and tbh he's not wrong.

It is unheard of for Heith to do something like go meet a guy's secret polycule on another planet instead of dumping his ass when she finds out he has a secret polycule at all (a polycule is fine. a secret polycule is wack and not fair). Once she relaxes a bit I expect she'll stick around. I also wouldn't be surprised if she also gets pulled into Yera's orbit, at least insofar as becoming her lover.

let’s start with 1-5 for all the polycules! -@vacantgodling

This is gonna be a long one lol. But first, a little note on these polycules for those who don't know: they're legally mandated for the royal family (Kiatcarmen, Marcus, and Minaya) and have at least one of each sapient species in them. That's why Jimmy was replaced in Kiatcarmen's polycule when he died, whereas in an organic polycule, that likely would not happen.

1 - How many members are in the polycule? How are they related to each other? Feel free to draw a flow chart.

Kiatcarmen: there have only ever been five at one time. But those members have shifted twice, when existing members died. Kiatcarmen and Ashmalo are Marcus and Minaya's parents.

First set of members:

Second set of members:

Third (current) set of members:

Marcus: seven, technically. It remains to be seen whether Heith will stick around. With the exception of Heith, it's safe to assume they're all friends. Gren only knows OF Heith, since Marcus met her on another planet. Yera and Hossan recently had a baby. Also they don't actually have non-cow ears I just couldn't rally myself to make updated picrews for this post.

Minaya: six, all pretty much friends. Dawn is currently pregnant with Arbores's baby. Lanya is permanently annoyed with Arbores because his state of being is sort of to just disappear into the woods and not engage that much with the administrative/royalty things he, Minaya, and Dawn manage.

This isn't all the existent relationships in these polycules but it is all the most notable ones.

2 - Did the relationship start polyamorous, or was it a monogamous relationship that eventually opened?

All three of these started as technically polyamorous relationships, though they grew little by little. But if you look past the legal requirement it's a little more complicated. Kiatcarmen's polycule has always been a mess, and to be honest she would have been just fine having just Jimmy.

Yera and Hossan in Marcus's polycule started out as a functionally closed couple within the whole (they don't actually restrict each other to this but that was how it was anyway) but a couple years in, Marcus married Gren and Gren became besties with Yera. Over time this morphed into Gren being their third partner, but Gren is still very mobile between the different members and divisions of the polycule.

Minaya's polycule, once completed, was functionally three parallel couples (Minaya and Lanya, Dawn and Arbores, and Lucy and Ramona) until Ramona fessed up about her crush on Lanya and those two couples merged into something like a quad.

3 - If it started monogamous, how did the process of opening the relationship go?

Marcus: for a while it wasn't clear whether Yera and Hossan's relationship was going to open - maybe Yera just had a new fuckbuddy. But Gren and Hossan spent a lot of time together incidentally, and Gren also wanted to be friends with him too, and over time Gren just sort of got absorbed into their dynamic. There was a little jealousy they had to work out (Hossan was very used to being Yera's singular obsession), and there was a conversation at some point, though, when Hossan realized that he no longer thought of Gren as a separate external addition. He still doesn't think of himself as polyam but considers Gren in the same breath as Yera.

Minaya: opening her and Lanya's relationship felt easy. For a while, though, it was pretty much just sexual. That was easiest for everybody, especially with Lucy and Ramona being away for training and competition a lot. But over time it's developed into a more romantic dynamic, which has been fairly smooth, despite Lucy's defensiveness and Lanya's counter-defensiveness. There is some uncertainty about how things will change once Minaya ascends the throne, though.

4 - Are there any mono-poly relationships in the polycule?

Kiatcarmen: sort of. Despite having a sexual and quasi-romantic relationship with Pirianus the only person she's ever considered her partner is Jimmy, so in essence she has always been the monogamous person connected to her own polycule through her very popular spouse.

Marcus: no, but only because Heith isn't monogamous.

Minaya: Lucy teeters on the edge here. She's never outright decided she's monogamous, but she also doesn't have a lot of patience for maintaining multiple romantic partnerships.

5 - What “shape” is the polycule? A triad, a “V”, a straight line of metamours, or incomprehensible?

Kiatcarmen: currently, a cul-de-sac. Kiatcarmen only considers Pirianus anything close to a partner, Pirianus has complicated relationships with her and Thade, and Thade, Caladea, and Orvi are all just vibing with each other. In other words: almost entirely metamours and meta-metamours from Kiatcarmen's perspective, and something resembling a cohesive whole from Thade's.

Marcus: in Marcus's absence, it became kind of a bow tie, with Gren in the middle between Yera & Hossan and Umedes & Pali, and Marcus and Heith as a separate island. Upon his return, it expands into more of an anglerfish - Gren is still the point of connection between Yera & Hossan and Umedes & Pali, but Marcus has joined Umedes and Pali, and also has a connection to Heith.

Minaya: it's more or less a quad (Minaya, Lanya, Ramona, Lucy) with an orbiting couple (Dawn and Arbores).