#cal vereo

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My GW1 folks Cal and Daisy dancing, courtesy of the lovely @just-eyris-things!! :D

(Thank you so much again, Eyris, they turned out amazing <3 <3)

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I am Late to this post but still wanted to share, so I present you with assorted folks :D

Kerra, Nisha, Cal, and Brook (nonbinary);

Tanza (demigirl) and Sindri (demiboy);

Daisy and Aysel (trans);

Finch and Rhi (agender);

and Eethie (genderqueer)! :)

(Technically there's one more guy who should be on here, but he's still in the development phase!)

🏳️‍⚧️HAPPY TRANS DAY OF VISIBILITY🏳️‍⚧️

Please, share your trans ocs here! Let's revel in this day both in real life and in game. And if you want to celebrate yourself as a trans gamer on here too, all the better! From one trans player to all you out there, I hope you're having a great one 💖

This includes 100% any nonbinary characters. Being gnc is not a requirement either. If the character is in any capacity trans they are welcome on this post and I would be delighted to see you share them on this day 💙💗🤍

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❛ was that your first kiss? ❜ or ❛ today isn’t your day, is it? ❜ :>

Hello hello, it is now YOUR turn to be the recipient of a ficlet that's at minimum a month overdue! Congratulations! xD (And so sorry it took a while!!)

You get what I think is the first actual piece of writing I've posted about Cal and Daisy, my main folks from GW1 :)

Warnings: mentioned injury, blood

The stone floor is hard under Cal’s knees, and they can feel every crack running through it. Distantly, they can hear shuffling feet—the medics, or Rurik, or someone else entirely. It’s the echo of a thought compared to the limp hand they hold clutched to their chest, watching Daisy’s rise and fall.

Blood seeps into their shirt, making it cling to their body, but they pay no mind. Someone had found jam earlier, they remember vaguely. It had gotten in their braids somehow, and Daisy had laughed louder than she had since before the Searing.

The sheets are stiff and rough as they press against Cal’s arms. The tight bandages around Daisy’s head and on her cheek look softer. They hope so, at least.

They’re not sure how long they stay there on the ground holding her hand, but it’s dark when she stirs. Cal jolts, scrambling to attend to her, limbs stiff and slightly clumsy.

“Daise?” they whisper. It comes out raspy and fear-tinged.

She coughs once, wincing, and her eyes slowly open. Cal is lost in the ocean.

“Hey, love,” Daisy says, quiet. “Hey.”

She lifts her hand—the one that’s still in Cal’s—and feebly reaches for the claw marks on Cal’s chest, just barely visible above their shirt.

“Today…today isn’t your day, is it?”

“You’re the one in a hospital bed, you know,” Cal chokes out, feeling their lips turn up into a wobbly smile. “By the Six, Daise, you—”

Are really hurt. Could’ve died. Almost died.

“—scared me,” they finish, their voice breaking.

Several emotions pass over Daisy’s face very quickly before settling on something so painfully fond that Cal wants to cry. A pulse of magic passes from her hand into their chest, and they can feel their injuries fading from open wounds to raised scars.

“Didn’t stop for treatment?” she asks, softly teasing.

“Save your magic for yourself, you absolute—” Cal groans, dropping their chin down and stifling the end of their sentence into Daisy’s sleeve. Muffled, they add, “You need to focus on getting better.”

“So do you.”

Cal doesn’t have a good retort, so they just sigh, feeling the warmth of their own breath heating the fabric. “’m not planning to go on patrol tonight, you know.”

“Good.” The exhaustion is becoming progressively more apparent in Daisy’s voice, and Cal looks up to meet her eyes again. “I love you,” she murmurs. “Stay?”

Cal leans forward and kisses her briefly, gently brushing their fingers through her tangled hair.

“Of course,” they say, and it’s as easy as breathing. “Always. I love you too.”

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general 3, 8, & 9 for the ship game, any ship you wanna talk about :3

I am going to steal this spot to talk about my GW1 folks Cal and Daisy, because I can and I want to :3 (hope that's cool and thanks a bunch!! :D )

3. What was their first kiss like?

Sweet and felt like it was a long time coming, though they hadn't actually known each other all that long. Outside at sunset--accidentally a very romantic setting; they'd both mostly wanted to take a break from dancing for a while, and then they ended up by themselves and actually talked about the fact that their friendship had turned into mutual crushes. Also, notably, it was before any of the playable story really kicked off (in this case, around six months to a year before the Searing).

8. Who gets jealous easier?

Cal by a bit, but it's a very small bit--neither of them have much occasion or opportunity to feel jealous. The only reason Cal takes the top spot is that Daisy grew up with a best friend whose partner was very actively jealous of those in his vicinity, and she is just...the MOST done with that emotion. Not for her.

9. Who whispers inappropriate things in the other’s ear?

Daisy, 100%. Absolutely uses her height to her advantage there, too--it's a lot easier to be the one leaning down to whisper than the one who'd have to stand on tiptoes to do it, situations where one party is sitting notwithstanding. She has maaaybe done this in at least one important strategy meeting before. Will neither confirm nor deny.

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🖊🖊🖊!

Three pens for three folks, cause why not! :D Thank you!! (Also my GW1 folks are on the brain today, so you get some facts about them, hope that's cool!)

🖊 - I've mentioned this one in passing before, but it's worth mentioning again because it makes me happy. Cal has a habit of collecting flowers everywhere they go, and they really enjoy gardening. They spent close to two years in Ascalon before the Searing and, through said hobby, managed to save several types of flowers that otherwise would have gone nearly extinct.

For a bonus new fact about them that I'm pretty sure I haven't shared here before, they're something of a pioneer in magitech, at least when it comes to designing magical weapons for their specific profession (elementalist, though they're a ranger as well thanks to GW1 dual-classing). The staff they wield is one they designed and built themself.

🖊 - Daisy is very in tune with magic related to both Grenth and Dwayna (she's a necromancer and monk by class in GW1) thanks to a childhood spent experimenting on the best ways to use and balance them. She's attuned enough to it that she would have sensed something up with Vizier Khilbron before his reveal, actually, if it weren't for the Scepter of Orr being around. It was powerful enough to throw that sense off--could just be coming from the weird incredibly powerful magical artifact, after all.

Last one under the cut for potential spoilers for future GW2 content (of the What Lies Beneath variety):

🖊 - Nabi is Luxon, and in addition to being involved with the main GW1 storyline, she's the one who spearheads the mission into the Deep to deal with Kanaxai. He was a demon and the original cause of problems down in that area of Cantha in the GW1 era, and he caused some similar problems to what we're seeing now in What Lies Beneath. He played on fear and horror and despair an awful lot. (Also, apologies if I'm explaining something you already know--I have no idea if you've played GW1 or not aslkjd.) She was victorious in her mission and celebrated for said victory, but she certainly had a Time down there.

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👀👀 wip time! 😎

WIPs you have requested, and WIPs you shall receive :D

1: hurt/comfort in ascalon (injury/blood mention)

The stone floor is hard under Cal’s knees, and they can feel every crack but don’t bother shifting. Distantly, they can hear shuffling feet outside the door—the medics, or maybe Rurik,  or maybe someone else entirely. It’s the echo of a thought compared to the limp hand they hold clutched to their chest, watching Daisy’s rise and fall.

Blood seeps into their shirt, but they pay no mind. Someone had found jam earlier, they remember vaguely, and it had stuck to their braids, and Daisy had laughed louder than she had in at least a year.

The sheets are stiff and rough as they press into Cal’s forearms. The tight bandages around Daisy’s head and on her cheek look softer. They hope so, at least.

They’re not sure how long they stay there on the ground holding her hand, but it’s dark when she stirs. Cal jolts, scrambling to attend to her, limbs stiff and slightly clumsy.

“Daise?” they whisper. It comes out in a rasp.

She coughs once, wincing, and her eyes slowly open. Cal is lost in the ocean.

“Hey, love,” Daisy says, quiet. “Hey.”

2: more sibling incidents

His father is hard on Kid.

Colin doesn’t think Kid misbehaves any more than he did when he was younger (Kid, clearly, is a million years younger than him, seven to his thirteen). Was his dad this hard on him? He doesn’t know. He thinks maybe he didn’t notice it when it was him.

He finds himself taking the blame for mistake after mistake—when Kid spills a drink on important maps, when Kid loses Edur’s favorite sharpening stone, when Kid is late for weapons practice, when Kid talks out of turn.

He sees Isbert, occasionally, when he practices with Warrin. Warrin says something he shouldn’t, once, when the three of them are together. Their dad comes over to scold them.

Warrin is punished, and Isbert says nothing. Colin decides that he doesn’t want to be like Isbert after all.

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Hello hello folks, please observe this lovely commission of my GW1 hero Cal that @just-eyris-things did for me! They look fantastic, and in case it wasn’t clear, I very much recommend commissioning her if you’re able to :D <3

(She’s doing a mount license promotion thing at the moment, too, if you want to grab a commission like this one!)

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Random short character thought--I just started the Beyond part of GW1, and therefore I’ve just started getting to know Keiran Thackeray, and I’m laughing because he absolutely managed to endear himself to Cal very fast.

They care a lot about Gwen, so the fact that Keiran clearly thinks she hung the moon is, of course, also good. But it’s also the fact that when he asks Cal for their help setting up a picnic, he says that the specific thing he wants to show Gwen is a garden that he made. And he says this to the person who’s been traveling around the world collecting flowers for years now and who very much cares a lot about plants.

So, yeah. They take a liking to him real quick.

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for the match up game: partner/friend/rival to sanne :eyes:

For Sanne!! Ooh, okay okay! :D

I was almost like "but they're not in the same time period!!" for these two, and then I was like "wait...that literally Does Not Matter Here" aslkdfasd, so:

I'm going to give you Cal for a potential friend! :) Cal would absolutely love all of Sanne's ravens and would happily talk with her for long periods of time about animals, if she wanted to, so I could see them vibing just based on that. I also think there'd be a decent amount of understanding--Cal remembers being immature/kinda impulsive when they left Istan for the first time, though they're less so now; and, they're not quite as gregarious (is that the right word?) as Sanne is, but they'd be glad to keep up with her in their own way. There's also something to be said for accidental lorekeeper Cal (through their art and the flowers they collected) meeting very deliberate lorekeeper (skaald) Sanne. (And a sadder bit--depending on which version of Cal met Sanne, they'd also understand her loss to some extent. A Cal still in the GW1 in-game timeline would know how much they valued their own partner and have some idea of how much losing her would hurt them. If we're talking about Cal in the Mists much later down the road, they'd understand Sanne's loss because they experienced their own version of it.)

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character spotlight, day 7: cal vereo

“Save the statues for Kormir.”

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1, 12, 29, B, and E for Cal! :3

@mystery-salad

:D :D Sure sure!!

1. What’s the maximum amount of time your character can sit still with nothing to do?

If Cal has something to watch (like people, animals, the ocean), then quite a while! But if there's literally nothing going on, then the answer becomes "not very long". They get restless pretty quick.

12. How do they deal with an itch found in a place they can’t quite reach?

Props to you for finding a Cal fun fact--their shoulders are double-jointed! This doesn't happen to them :)

29. Do they usually live up to their own ideals?

Generally, yes, though not always. Mainly, there's been a couple instances where Cal's worked with certain people (either by necessity or by choice) and has regretted doing so.

B. What inspired you to create them?

Part of the inspiration was just because I wanted to try GW1 (they're the first character I made in the game), but as to how I ended up with Cal specifically? Honestly, I think a lot of their backstory comes from the same feeling I had when I joined--kinda out of place, but excited/interested/happy, and also not that far from home, so to speak :)

(To explain a little more what that turned into for them: Cal was born and raised in Elona but always wanted to see the world; they managed to end up in Ascalon a couple years before the Searing and fell in love while they were there (and therefore stayed longer than they planned); and, when the basically-apocalypse happened in Ascalon, there were too many people they wanted to protect for them to want to leave.)

E. Are they someone you would get along with? Would they get along with you?

I'd definitely get along with Cal! :D I'd like to think they'd get along with me, too. Though they might worry about me a bit xD

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Sup babe why don't ya 🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊🖊 gush a bit? gimme the chara who hasn't left your mind this week

Oooh, okay okay! :D Thank you!! Hmm...I've been thinking about Cal a lot this week, so assorted Cal (GW1) facts for you!

🖊 - Cal had a childhood friend, Masika, but their friendship soured extremely quickly when they were both thirteen thanks to a) Masika and her family being revealed as corsairs and b) Masika and her family trying to steal shipments of goods that were heading to Cal's mother, who's a merchant in Kamadan. Cal holds more of a personal grudge towards Masika than towards corsairs as a whole, but they're still not particularly fond of pirates.

🖊 - Cal gets their first pet (which is a beetle--not a roller beetle or anything like that, just a regular very cool-looking orange beetle--that they name Orangey) when they're ten years old. The pet that later travels with them throughout the GW1 storyline is a bat by the name of Itri, who they love very much.

🖊 - They're semi-unintentionally responsible for recording a lot of the historical events they live through, thanks to the fact that they draw/paint a lot. They're not doing it with the intention of creating a visual historical record, but considering that a lot of their art is based on their life experiences, it works out that way. (Also related--their collection of pressed flowers from all the places they've traveled ends up helping to save some rarer ones from Ascalon that otherwise would have gone near-extinct after the Searing. Side note, can plants go extinct? I think that's still the right word.)

🖊 - If I were to answer that question from a recent GW2 ask game about which enemy/antagonist they had the biggest vendetta against, it'd be Joko. Despite him not fully playing an antagonist role during the playable story of GW1, Cal definitely is involved in the struggle afterwards to keep him from taking over Elona. If I had to pick someone who we actually fight against during the GW1 story, Cal really was not a fan of Khilbron.

🖊 - They deliberately share their leadership position during Nightfall--they don't want to be the sole person giving orders to an Order they previously rejected and still don't feel like they belong to. They're almost like a..."visiting expert", I guess? If you can be an expert in avoiding world-ending events, and the place you're visiting is your homeland xD But anyways, they still carry an honorary Sunspear title and very much give orders as needed. They just share that responsibility with Enna Tlali, one of my other OC kiddos who does in fact hold an actual Sunspear rank (and, of course, they consult with their partner and friends as well; they rarely make important decisions entirely on their own).

🖊 - Cal's classes in GW1 are ranger and elementalist! They favor using fire to fight, but they're decently accomplished in all four elements, and actually learned to use water magic first. They're also something of a self-taught magitech engineer, specifically related to their own weapons--namely their staff and their enchanted bowstring. They learned some of the basics from their father and from various folks visiting Kamadan and taught the rest to themself via trial and error. (Yes, they set multiple things on fire while they were learning, lmao.)

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7, 13, 26 and 33 for any pair you wanna talk about

Oh no I've been given free rein, who should I pick...you know what? I haven't talked about Cal and Daisy on here almost at all, so you get GW1 character hours today :) Thanks a bunch and here you go! :D

7. Would they build a pillow fort together just because?

Yes, definitely :) It'd probably be Cal's idea.

13. Who’s the bigger tease?

Daisy, though it's not specifically being a tease necessarily--she just really enjoys flirting with Cal (though she has zero idea what she's doing at first) and seeing if she can fluster them (which she gets Very Good At over time).

26. What are their vices?

So, this led me into a Google search to determine how broad the definition of "vice" is, because I really only ever hear it in the context of alcohol, drugs, or (more rarely) sex-related things, and the answer apparently has to do with what religion you're looking at, and sometimes it means the same thing as "sin", and sometimes doesn't? So I've gone down a rabbit hole today asldjfasdf, but I now have a better idea of the meaning of this word, which is cool xD ANYWAYS! Time to attempt to answer this now!

Daisy's is pride--she has a little bit of a chip on her shoulder, despite being about the farthest thing from noble-born possible, and she doesn't really enjoy being wrong. She'll gladly argue points with you for quite a while longer than she probably should.

Cal's is jealousy, though they are very good at hiding it. Most people would have zero idea unless they were paying very close attention (or were very close to Cal and thus know them well).

33. Who's the better cook?

Cal has about three or four things that they can cook very well, and Daisy knows cooking safety basics but not a ton of recipes that aren't baking, so...in terms of actual food that goes into a main course? Cal. In terms of desserts? Daisy. They usually work together on meals, though.

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Cal (GW1) being Sindri’s (GW2) revenant legend is something that I have just realized has the potential for hilarity and it’s making me incredibly happy.

Case in point--they absolutely would ask what happened to Joko, to which Sindri would, ya know, tell them that he’s Very Dead Now.

“Very glad to hear it. What exactly happened?”

“Oh, my cousin ate him.”

“...Your cousin did what now?!”

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💖🍊⭐🍐💙🔮🎀 from the jumbo asks for Cal (@likemesomesalads)

Oh HELL yes, that's so many asks for them and I am absolutely down!! Tyty :D GW1 kiddo hours! Also, for everyone who doesn't know who the heck this is, have the picrew I made of Cal:

Answers under a cut because they all got Long!

💖 Has your OC ever been in love, be it romantic or platonic or otherwise? Who with and did they ever express their feelings or keep it private? How long did these feelings persist / do they still feel this way?

Yes, definitely! The (romantic) love of Cal's life is Daisy Llew, and I'll give you the picrew I made of her too 'cause why not:

Daisy's from Ascalon, and Cal meets her there about a year and a half or so before the Searing (and therefore a year or so before the start of the GW1 in-game storyline). Since you can dual-class in GW1, Daisy's specifically a necromancer/monk, and she chose that combo to spite people who insisted that you were only supposed to deal in life OR death magic. (And in part to spite her tutor at the time, Verata.) She's skilled enough in magic that she serves as an informal sort of protector for her village, which is a bit to the east of Rin. She shares a house with her mother, Grace, who she loves a whole lot; her father's been dead since she was five, but he was horrible, so she's not sad about it. (And there's more about her character I could definitely share, but since that's not the point of this post, I'll stop here for now xD)

The entire reason Cal's even in Ascalon at that point is because they were traveling--they really wanted to see the world, so they sailed to Lion's Arch, traveled through a great deal of Kryta and over the mountains, and ended up in Ascalon. They didn't plan on staying long, but they managed to make some friends (including Rurik), and then they met and started falling for Daisy, and...yeah, their plans of moving on quickly got fully halted for a While.

Cal did indeed express their feelings! :) They and Daisy were officially dating for about six-ish months before the Searing, and they stayed together until their deaths many years later. They had two children, and one of their descendants (Maya) participates in some of the major events in my GW2 story.

🍊 What is your OC’s favorite meal? Snack? Dessert? Drink? Any reasons behind this besides liking how it tastes?

Meal (though it could kinda be a snack too): drake kabobs, both for the taste and because they remind Cal of Kamadan; snack: fried banana chips, because that's something their dad made for them growing up; dessert: pumpkin bread, thanks to Daisy's mom; and, drink: spiced apple cider, literally just because they like it.

⭐ What is your OC afraid of? Any crippling phobias or some such? How do they act when scared and what helps them calm down? Does anyone ever find your OC scary? Why?

Ooh, interesting. I can't think of any specific phobias that Cal has, but the biggest fear they have comes later down the line. Once they're settled, sometime after the events of Eye of the North, in Istan with Daisy (and, later, their kids), they are terrified of a threat coming to uproot that. They've seen enough of that in their life, both in other places and in Istan--the Searing, the White Mantle, Khilbron, Shiro, Nightfall/Abbadon, Primordus on some levels, the Ministry of Purity (though they're less directly involved in that situation)--and, at this point, they're done moving around. They've seen enough of the world. They want it to be safe enough that their children can grow up in peace. They have to work through a lot of emotions around this over the years, especially when the kids are very little, but they manage to work through it. And then, about 10-ish years later, Joko starts raiding the Vabbian border, and there's a new (old?) threat coming back to haunt them again, and their kids might not be safe--it's a Lot. It's a lot.

Cal was definitely scared plenty of times during the main GW1 story, but they're good at compartmentalizing, so it mainly comes up after the fact. They'll hold onto someone (Daisy, one of their friends, etc.) to make sure they're still there; they'll take deep breaths and try to calm down; they'll craft new arrows or work on improvements to their staff (they're pretty decent at making magical weapons and made their staff themself!). They use those same kind of coping skills again after the main storyline when they're dealing with the fear of their home being destroyed, but the symptoms of this fear also are slightly more severe. They struggle with panic attacks for a while, and they have trouble sleeping--not nightmares, they just can't get to sleep very easily and don't sleep well when they do.

🍐 What is your OC’s mentality? Are they overall positive? Negative? A bit of both? Describe their thought patterns and reasoning behind their choice making!

A bit of both, I think--Cal's more realistic than anything, but they lean more positive as a child than they do as an adult, and even just as a younger adult than they do later on. They're extremely excited to see the world when they leave Istan at ~22, and they legitimately think it will, overall, go well. Sure, it'll be different than home, but that's the point! And if it's dangerous, they know how to fight.

After the Searing, they become a lot more cautious, and even if they don't expect the negative outcomes, they plan for them. Cal becomes the monarch of contingency plans, and, as they begin to take on more and more of a leadership role, they are very careful not to send someone into a situation they won't be able to get out of. Losing Rurik in the mountains does not really help this overplanning situation, and there's a few weeks where they're kinda spiraling in this regard before they manage to stop, take a breath, and remind themself that they can't control everything or predict everything. And that's the mentality they stick with for years and years afterwards--they'll have backup plans, but even those might not catch all the possible situations, and that's life. They can improvise if they have to.

💙 What did your OC want to be when they grew up and why? Did they have any lifelong dreams or ambitions they never got to work on or are they currently working to achieve this dream? Has their life taken a very unexpected turn and put all these plans on hold for a while or have they given up on any dreams?

Cal really wasn't sure. They thought maybe something to do with trading, like their mother, or helping the Zaishen take care of their animals, or maybe they'd just be a traveler and a kinda jack-of-all-trades. They didn't have anything set in their mind other than they wanted to see the world, do some good maybe (though they hadn't planned on it being on such a grand scale, and they hadn't planned to be a leader), and come back home--and I guess they did do that, so...dreams accomplished, I guess alsdjfasdf? They accomplished their main goal And Then Some.

Fun fact, they trained a little with the Sunspear recruits when they were a teenager. They were an accomplished fighter, but they refused to officially join--they weren't sure that that was what they wanted, and they wanted to travel so badly too; they didn't want to feel trapped in Istan or Elona as a whole. They didn't know Kormir well during this time period, but they did know her, and they told her their reasons for not wanting to join. She heard them and told them to let her know if they did ever come back to Elona, and if they changed their mind. Funnily enough, though, when they did meet again, Kormir was the one who came to Cal in Lion's Arch to request their assistance with the beginnings of Nightfall, rather than them going to her. (Also worth noting--during and after Nightfall, when they actually are working with the Sunspears, they always consider any Sunspear title they earn/hold to be honorary at best.)

🔮 Star gazing or cloud watching? Hand-holding or snuggles? Early mornings or late nights?

Star gazing, snuggles, late nights :)

🎀 Do they wear a specific accessory with a special meaning behind it? What is their usual fashion sense like? What do they wear when they want to be comfortable and what do they wear when they’re going to a fancy party? Or do they just not care?

For the first question--not really, honestly! The closest they get to that is the fact that they basically do the one-earring thing, but that's more because they like the style than because the actual earrings themselves mean anything specific to them. Their weapons do have special meaning to them, but they're not quite going to be wearing those.

Their usual fashion sense is mostly practical, but it's also going to incorporate some kind of personal flair, whether that's sewn-on patches or symbols or just using styles they enjoy from home, and it's probably going to involve burnt/sunset orange in some way, since that's their favorite color :)

When they want to be comfy? Depends if they're going out and about or not--if they are, what I said in the bit above this one, and if they're not, probably comfy pajamas, haha. When it's a fancy party, you're going to see them with a touch more jewelry, clothes that definitely look ironed, maybe a suit of some kind if they think it's appropriate, but nothing past that. And it's still going to be comfortable. They are never touching high heels with a ten-foot pole.

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I keep trying to make a post about Cal and Gwen’s dynamic in GW1, and I can’t manage to phrase it in a way I like, but I’ll give it one more shot.

It’s meeting a stranger who’s much older than you, and thinking they’re cool, and them actually being cool (at least as far as you’re concerned). It’s being a kid and finding a hero, and imagining a future where you’re something like them. It’s having that potential future (and your mentor, and your mother, and your home) ripped away.

It’s meeting a kid whose enthusiasm makes you smile, who likes flowers like you, who wants to follow you everywhere (you make sure it’s never anywhere too dangerous). It’s not quite finding a sister, or someone you want to parent, but still someone whose future you want to ensure, if you can. It’s waving to her five minutes before the city you’re in is set on fire.

It’s meeting again, eight years later, and you’re changed (you’re angry, you’re determined) and you’re changed (you’re exhausted, you’re trying), and you each thought the other was dead. It’s trying to rebuild a bond that’s in tatters.

It’s an example you can no longer follow, someone who’s been through their own versions of hell and still takes chances on love over and over, and you want to follow that example but you’re scared and you can’t be hurt again.

It’s stumbling and falling to figure out how to help, how much to temper and how much to comfort and how much to leave alone. It’s wondering if that help is wanted, if you’re wanted, if it would be better for her if you were strangers again.

It’s a future and a friendship, someday, carved from a broken stone wall.