#except with my oldest of friends my partner and my parents

[spiritualcuriosities]

Meanwhile in Japan, there's a scene in a drama that is definitely commentary on communication in which they debate how to handle squeezing lemon on a serving platter of chicken. It goes something like:

Person A: wait you shouldn't just squeeze lemon on the chicken! Not everyone likes lemon on chicken

Person B: what? Everyone likes it

Person C: no A is right, not everyone does and you shouldn't assume

Person D: then just ask - does everyone like lemon on chicken?

Person C: no you can't ask, because then it puts ppl on the spot and they might feel like they have to hold back from saying no

Person B: so what the heck am I supposed to do???

*person A and C decide to act out what they think is proper procedure. They don't know each other well and don't use any words to communicate what they think is best, they just go straight to acting it out*

Person A: oh, I see there is lemon

Person C: you're right, there is lemon.

*both turn towards person B, concluding the "demonstration"*

I've been thinking about the "it's not that autistic people don't know how to communicate, it's that we communicate differently" statement. True. Very true. 100% agreed. Absolutely and totally valid. But, hear me out: communication is also highly culture dependent.

In the USA, my being direct, literal, honest, frank, answering what I'm asked, and speaking what I'm thinking, is often considered "rude" and "mean". In Germany, it's neutral, appropriate even. In China, I'm being nice because I'm not actually insulting anyone.

Example: "Does this dress make me look fat" when it actually does.

USA: "Of course not! You look great!"

Germany: "Yes."

China: "It makes your ass look as big as the Yellow River."

Another example: "How are you?"

USA: "I'm very well, thank you!"

Germany: "I have diarrhea."

China: "I need to go shit my brains out for the eighth time, you idiot, go away."

[winterrrnight]

hey angel, please could you write a fic with soft rafe x reader where they have been best friends for years and are finally in a relationship after admitting feelings for eachother and they have cute happy moments where they remember they’re not just friends theyre finally in a relationship now?

Tysm x

oh my goodness, this took me so so long than it should've and I'm so sorry about that! I love and adore this idea so much, but for some reason I never felt satisfied with how I was writing it so there were too many restarts. But we finally have the final product! It's inspired by your request, I don't think it's exactly what you requested, but the main idea was kept in mind throughout. I hope you like this and is up to your expectations 💞

memories

PAIRING: soft!rafe cameron x gn!reader

SUMMARY: a little collection of some of your favorite moments with your best friend, lover, partner in crime all rolled in one: rafe cameron.

WARNINGS: small mentions of alcohol, but mostly fluff and two lovers being mean to each other because it's their love language 🫶🏻🤭

EDITH SPEAKS: thank you to my bestie @runningfrom2am who helped me out with this fic! she told me all her favourite memories with her own boyfriend and that resulted in this very cute fic so thank you sooo much raye 🥹🥹

There is a little KC Undercover reference in the fic, which is like, probably one of the most iconic dialogues of Ms. KC herself and I had this beautiful opportunity to use it so I just couldn't pass it up 🤭

I hope you all like this!! Please ignore any little grammatical/spelling errors. And please like and reblog if you like this 🪂

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It's so easy for you to say how your life has changed for the better when you and Rafe finally became official. He has been your best friend since you both were little, and now to see you both expand your relationship which you had formed since such a small age, always makes you feel like the happiest person on this planet.

It's no lie that it took you some time to finally get to the dating stage. After realising your feelings for each other, you both needed a lot of pushing from your friends to finally confess.

"He looks at you as if you're his whole world! Why aren't you telling him?" Your friends would groan, as they would catch you with your mouth almost agape as he walks past you and gives you a smile.

"No, I don't think he does," you would dismiss your friends' thoughts and before they could say anything else, you would be rushing to your class.

Now, fast forward to three years later, you both are in university and live in a shared apartment. You took your own time to reach to this stage of your life with each other, but you're so grateful where you are now, because there's no one else you'd rather do it with.

"When we'll grow old, we'll be roomies forever!" Rafe would tell you in his little squeaky voice when he wasn't even seven years old. You would giggle at him and eagerly nod. Who knew those little dreams will come true, and you both will be a lot more than just friends?

Sharing an apartment with Rafe is everything you've always imagined it would be, each night feels like the sleepover you had when you were little. Except this time, you don't have this fear of laughing a little too loud that a parent is on their way to scold you for being up for so late. You can laugh and talk as loud as you want to, eat whatever your heart desires and talk about any topic you feel like.

You both have your moments where you tend to forget you're dating and aren't just two best friends who share an apartment solely because they thought it would be fun. One time, you had one of your oldest albums in your camera roll opened, and you were laughing at all the pictures.

"Dude look at this one!" You laughed, finding a hidden gem. Rafe feigned shock as he looked at you.

"You did not just call me dude." He said, deadpanned. You pop a crisp in your mouth from the packet you're both sharing.

"What's wrong with that?" You asked shrugging.

"I'm your boyfriend, that's rude,"

"Whatever bro," you giggled, averting your attention to your phone.

"That's even worse!" He whined.

"OH MY GOD!" You yelled as you laughed out loud, the next picture on your phone seeming pretty unbelievable. It's from a Halloween night years ago, and you both totally forgot you dressed up very poorly as Barbie and Ken. But the thing is, you were Ken and he was Barbie.

You both were dressed in a hot pink from head to toe, and your make up is loud and proud. "You need to be Barbie again," you laughed, as you teased him by nudging his arm with your elbow.

"Definitely not," he chuckled, shaking his head.

It definitely doesn't stop here. It was your aunt's birthday and she had a big party, inviting a lot of your family. It was towards the start of your relationship, and you definitely weren't used to calling this idiot your boyfriend.

"And this is Rafe! He's my uh, my boyfriend! Yes, boyfriend, oh my god!" You said out loud, your aunt laughing at your reaction.

He only shook his head at you and flicked your ear. Your reflexes acted up instantly and your hands went to his hair to completely mess them up.

One thing about you both is that have been extremely competitive since you were little. You've always wanted to beat him in whatever game you're playing, bowling, basketball, or even just Uno. And when one wins, they make sure to remind the other about it every minute.

"Oh my god I totally crushed you!" You yelled, attracting attention from people around you as you jump up and down, looking at the final score of your bowling match with Rafe.

"I won, you lost, I won, you lost," you sang as you danced in front of him, and he just stood there, looking at you.

"Oh shut up," He groaned, walking away as you're there dancing to yourself. You laughed and ran to catch up to him, wrapping your arms around his shoulders and he instantly picked you up, you now on his back with your legs around his waist.

"I'm sorry bub, but I did crush you big time," you mumbled kn his ear. He groaned again, and then threatened to drop you on the ground. You let out a squeal and tighten your grip on him, which in turn made him laugh.

But you both are a whole another level of competitiveness when you are a team. There's not a single game invented which you both cannot win as a team, and the adrenaline rush you both get after you win results in some of the most crazy victory couple dances.

You found yourself at a party, and the game of beer pong is at an edge as people are watching you and him compete against another couple. It was the tiebreaker point, and if Rafe made the shot, you both would win.

"You can do this yeah?" You said, your hands holding his face as you looked him straight in the eye. "Just take a deep breathe, and shoot." He nodded at you and you handed him a ping pong ball.

He took his position and took a deep breathe in, clutching onto the ball in his hand. He shot the ball, and you watched from the side expectantly, your hands clutched together. It felt as if everything was in slow motion as the ball made its way to the other end of the table. You heard a soft plop as it landed in a cup of beer, and everyone around you started to cheer out loud.

You ran up to Rafe with the biggest grin on your face and he picked you up and spun you around. One of your friends came up to hand you the cup of beer. Rafe drank half of it, and then gave you the beer left to drink.

Everyone came up to you to congratulate you and hype you up even more, getting an occasional pat on your back. You looked at the couple who you both defeated, and Rafe made his way to them with you on his heels.

"Ding!" He said out loud. "That's the sound of the elevator, because you're not on our level!" He teased them and everyone around you gasped and cheered out loud, as you hollered around. The couple just gave you both a dirty look and leave, and you just looked at Rafe and gave him a high five.

"That'll tell 'em not to challenge us anymore," he said, wrapping his arm around your waist and kissing your head.

But what was the most concerning yet your favorite moment between you two was when he had this urge to be your knight in shining armor, but he also wanted to be the reason you needed help.

You were planning to take a little boat ride with all your friends, and as you all were standing on the dock, Rafe gave you a little nudge and dropped you in the water.

You screamed out loud as you went into the water, but quickly resurfacing as you swam up. You wiped your face with your hands as you pushed all your hair back, and when your eyes regained their focus, you saw everyone on the dock looking at you with utter shock.

You were gasping as you felt the cold water on your skin, when Rafe quickly removed his t shirt and came closer to the edge of the dock.

"Don't worry darling, I'm coming to save you!" He yelled with his chest wide as if he's a hero. You watched him jump into the water and swim up to you, and just as he reached you, you punch him in his arm, hard.

"What the fuck is this?!" You yelled, and Rafe came closer to you and wrapped his arms around you.

"What do you think this is? I'm here to save you," He said with a proud smile on his face.

"You asshole, you dropped me in the water," you said as he started to lead you towards the dock.

"What are you saying? You tripped off the edge and I'm here to save you. Did you hit your head on a rock or something?" He shook his head. You scoffed as he helped you get onto the dock. "I'm your knight babe, I'll always save you whenever you need to be rescued."

"What a relief." You said, rolling your eyes.

What he said that day is totally true though, all these times you've wanted help from someone, he's been there for you without fail. He picks you up everytime you fall down, even literally (but after he finishes laughing at you).

He makes you the happiest you have ever been. You'll always be so grateful for him.

↶ೃ✧˚. ❃ ↷ ˊˎ-

TAGLIST: @runningfrom2am @saccharinesammie @maybankslover @totalswag @madelynie @chenslucy @ietss @elle-mp3 @viawritesstuff @wallsdreams @tahliac11 @sadfury

(If you want to be added, check out the 'join my taglist' post on top! + send in requests if you have any, but please read the 'requests' post first!)

[weirdo09]

what to name this jess x rio x jeff au? 🤔 eh it ont need a name rn

anyway i’mma just make a list of ideas

they’re all married

jess is miles’ other mom (because i say so)

miles’ jess and jeff’s child

billie’s jess and rio’s child

jada’s jess and rio’s another child

they’re a happy family

miles, as the oldest, is protective of his baby sisters.

jada n billie always ask for miles as much as he plays with them

jada is a february baby

miles (canonical but i’m addin it away) is a august baby

billie’s a june baby (idk her canon birthday but late june - early may seems right for her)

jada has 4c hair, billie has 3b hair n miles has 4a-4b hair

all of them except for jada are tenderheaded

they all have thick hair tho

jada’s clinger with jess than with any of her other parents (rio fake pouts about this because “my baby doesn’t spend as much time with me!”, the two women laugh it off tho, lil jay’s left oblivious)

the babies are a year apart, jada’s the youngest.

since miles is 13-14 years older than the babies, he likes to act like they’re his babies.

jess is trusted with the kids’ hair most days because of rio’s work schedule and jeff can’t braid.

rio and jess mostly speak spanish amongst themselves and the kids, jeff is left out convos most times but he doesn’t care too much as his wives are just so beautiful when they speak spanish.

rio is transfem (to me 😭😭) and her partners are widely supportive, she began to transition once miles was born.

(if we’re talkin bout transfem miles) rio would be absolutely estatic once she told her that she feels more of a girl than a boy (transfem genderfluid miles has my heart 🫶🏽) she still dresses ‘masculine’ and uses her name n he/him pronouns (genderfluidity at its finest, can you tell i’m slightly projectin?)

jess and jeff would be excited as well, they’d have a party n everythin (he would be shocked how all out they went from her)

(closin transfem miles section)

hobie comes over from time to time to see billie and jada, jada’s his favorite (jkjk, they’re both so lovable)

(punkflower thingy) once rio, jess and jeff heard about miles dating hobie, i’d say jess was the most accepting. she loves the kid, he kinda reminds her of herself so obviously her favorite boyfriend of miles’ (the only one *cough*)

(miles and miles 42 as twins) miles is older by 10 minutes, myle gotta big head and miles would tease him relentlessly about it when jess told them the birth stories. (actually i’mma add this to the au !!!)

myle n jada just clicked when she was born, same with miles n billie but they all love each other equally (or do they? /j)

(au where miles’ spider man and myle’s the prowler) they didn’t know about their secret identities until they went home one night and found each other in their suits. there was a lot of questioning after.

(punkflowerbyte au) jess was really happy when she heard that her son’s dating a black girl (let’s be so honest, black queen’s his type fam) along with his childhood friend who she loves like a son. she was really keen on getting to meet margo, the two hit it off instantly and they’re like best friends (miles sometimes jokes how his momma stole his girl, hobie agrees)

that’s all i gots now, more may be added. i really like this au, it may stay talked about from me really. i’mma def make oneshots on ao3 about it <3

[pseudowho]

Haitch!!!!!! I am in peril!!!!!

So. My boyfriend (let’s call him Jay) and I have been going out for two years roughly, and before that we were friends for about half a year. We met through family friends at an old lady’s birthday (the party was amazing and 40’s themed) and have been inseparable since. And I think Jay is proposing to me on my birthday in a few weeks and idk what to dooo.

My parents were together for like ten years before they had me, and they still aren’t married. In my country there’s this thing where you can like register a “partnership” (it was mainly used by same-sex couples before gay marriage was legal) but my parents haven’t even registered their relationship there either. So, legally speaking, there’s nothing tying them together except me and their house. And I never thought about marriage, probably partly because of my parents. Frankly I thought I’d never even find a partner I loved enough to actually commit to, but I love Jay. But I don’t know if I want to get married. To anyone ever, not specifically Jay.

I think I’m just too pessimistic a person with too many trust issues because I’m convinced that Jay won’t actually want to be with me for the rest of his life. Like, he’s bound to grow tired of me eventually. We’re just 25 and 27. There’s only one forever-relationship, and all the others will inevitably end. And I’m sort of sending myself into a spiral about this.

I feel like… in the grand scheme of things… knowing each other for 2.5 years is nothing. Like, 2.5 years ago the man I share a bed with was a total stranger. And now he’s telling me I might want to get my nails professionally done for my birthday? Snooping around my jewelry for my ring size? Asking if I prefer gold or silver?

In the end I know I need to talk to him about it. But I don’t really want to because I know I’m being silly and unnecessarily dramatic and I’ll probably start crying in the middle of it and I hate crying in front of people. Uwaaaah.

Sorry about this long message lol, I would have asked my sister for advice if I had one but I’m an only child, and the oldest of my cousins. And my mom is not great at advice and I’m not that close with my dad. And I love my friends, but they would just tell me to talk to my therapist about it, but I wanted to kind of… get a non-professional view of it.

Point being: do you think getting engaged after 2.5 years is too soon? And how do you think I should bring my worries up to Jay without hurting his feelings?

Sorry again for a long ask and I hope you have a wonderful day <3

This is a simpler answer than the length of the Ask would suggest:

Marriage, or not marriage, will not increase or decrease the love that's already there, if you are in a healthy, truly understanding relationship.

Our perceptions of marriage are often affected by the relationships of those around us, it's true. If I were to look at the marriages in my family, I would have a very mixed view on its sanctity. However, I was very focused on the man I had chosen to marry, and whether it was right for us.

You don't have to get married. But, you should look into the core issues here: comparing your relationship to that of others, your low self-worth, and your conflict avoidant way of thinking that means you're trying to base one of the biggest decisions of your life, on how others would feel about it.

You need to talk to him. You need to actively discuss what marriage means to you both, and why you would or would not get married. You will probably find that a healthy discussion of this sort does a lot to assuage your worries.

One thing you do need to do, is stop projecting your low self-worth onto Jay. That's unfair on him. It certainly sounds like he wholly believes in you, and his love for you, and commitment to you, and not getting married because you dislike yourself and are convinced that he will eventually dislike you, too, is just hurting yourself to pre-empt the perceived possibility of him hurting you.

Talk to the only other person that matters; Jay. You're not trying to hurt him. Be generous with your emotions and seek to traverse this together.

If you can't get through pre-marriage discussions like this, that's an indication in itself.

Good luck!

Love,

-- Haitch xxx

[mai-mai-lim]

alright i'll cut to the chase, i have been forgetting to post these OCs cause i had an idea to properly introduce them but blame my brain for keep opening up new wips and say: heck these doodles will do

tl;dr: these OCs (except Mort who is a canon character) are created based on the RC9GN universe, basically the future parents of a few teen characters of the show, with focus on the parents of the main character randy :3

now here's some details, oh boy this is gonna be a bit long after years of notes piling

we start off from randy's parents: Robin and Kiyoko Cunningham (née Suzuki). Tbh I rarely make fandom-specific OCs, and they are originally created for the purpose of my self indulgent RWBY AU, but I wanted to have fun thinking how they fit in the canon universe, hence their freshmen year appearances.

Kiyoko is Japanese-american

because in the AU, Randy's color is purple, hence i made Robin and Kiyoko having the color blue and red respectively (i also want to be funny heheh)

neither of them is the Ninja, when they started school the Ninja is already in sophomore/junior year

Robin wishes to be the Ninja, while Kiyoko is neutral about it

Randy is more closer to his mom while keeping a decent relationship with his dad, Robin often works abroad or extremely busy

Kiyoko's younger brother Tadahiro works as a studio photographer, Randy quite likes his uncle.

by the way, Robin just got like a revamp cause i wasnt being too satisfied with how his hair is just a longer version of his teen hair and his original beard is now used on my human design of a stick figure, below pic was drawn either around 2019/2020

moving on, they got some new schoolmates!

Aside from Robin, Kiyoko, and a young Mort, there's Jessica Sasson, Howard and Heidi's future mom. A freshman together with Robin and Kiyoko, and seems to look at Mort often.

Then there's Penelope Fowler, Theresa's future mom. The oldest one, and the most reserved as she's been in Norrisville High the longest. Made friends with Kiyoko in a class.

Lastly, we have Debbie's future dad Issac Kang. not much thought is given in what he does except his daughter pretty much took the journalism from him that's all

I have not thought of Penelope and Issac's future partner whoops.

and that's all for now! I wish to expand more of them but my brain is currently fixating on funny stickmin game eheheheh, in the future hopefully.

[angrennufuin]

Elflinguistics Part 2: Ravnica

For the currently-paused Ravnica campaign, I'm playing Sûl the elven bard-warlock, currently a courtesan but formerly a noble. Mainly I wanted my Ravnica names to sound different from my Eberron names; these are different settings and vastly different people-groups. Let's, once again, get into it.

Rules for myself

Ravnica is a planet that is all one giant city, but some parts of it are currently less-inhabited and more ruined than others. Sûl's family hails from part of this Rubblebelt; while Linmir's clan is a diaspora of middle-class tradesmen and occasionally warriors, Sûl comes from a stuffy, dissipated high-elf aristocracy clinging onto their former glory.

So the idea here is still poetic eloquence, but where Eberron elves make portmanteaus with layered meaning, Ravnica elves go big or go home. Long names are in vogue, and often include hyphens and/or prepositions. They also have multiple names/forms of names for different levels of connection!

Long, formal name used by strangers + acquaintances

A shortened (usually single-word) form of that name used by friends and family

An entirely different "private name" known only to parents and really serious lovers

Formal names

These are used by strangers and acquaintances, in formal settings (which are most settings, for Sûl's family). Elves have long lives and long memories, and it's considered slightly disrespectful/kind of bad luck to name your child entirely after someone else, whether deceased or living. They can get away with this because there are not, historically, that many elves, period, in Ravnica. There are even less in the Rubblebelt, the sparsely-inhabited area of ruins and urban decay that is home to this branch of crumbling elf aristocracy.

We're not using Sûl as the case study for any of these, for reasons I'll explain later. Instead, let's go with her oldest sister. Her long-form name is Elen-atto-vomentië (=meeting of two stars); short form would likely be Elen, as the first word in the name is most likely to be picked for casual usage. Elen (stars) is an extremely common Elvish name; other possibilities could have been Tië (path) or Vomen (to gather together).

Generally, children are allowed to choose the casual form of their name whenever they want to. Like being named Alexander and going by Alex, for example. Not a particularly weighty decision, and subject to change! The "don't name your kid after someone else" social norm only applies to the full formal name, but if you have like six people in your immediate family tree who shorten their name to Elen, it's considered quite gauche.

Intimate names:

The intimate name is a much bigger deal. Generally only a child and their parents know it & parents would never use it except alone with their kid in a moment of great emotion. Traditionally you'd tell your spouse at your wedding, but modern elves might tell it to a non-marital life partner or even a VERY best friend, if their bond is close enough. It's supposed to be something of a horoscope/prophecy/wish from the parent to the child. Elen's intimate name is Asya-Mekte (=to ease [one's] heart); her parents hoped she would be a kind and empathetic soul.

I cannot stress enough that you Do Not say this name except in private! Think like the True Name of a fairytale creature. There's a superstition that where you give your private name, you give your heart -- with the proper spells, some believe it can be used to control you. Is it true? Who knows! But certainly it would be extremely rude, having been given the honor of an elf’s intimate name, to use it where anyone not so chosen could hear.

[I think I was using an older form of Elvish for these? But I've forgotten entirely.]

Surnames:

Surnames are a lot easier to deal with, because they're just place names. This brand of elves is pretty traditional and keen on long history, so they generally go by whatever region/estate/geographical feature they consider their ancestral home. Sûl's family comes from a region and its corresponding manor called Haudh-en-Calen (= Green Hills/Green Barrows), so that's their last name. In the most formal settings you would stick a possessive from in there: Elen-atto-vomentië Haudh-en-Calenva. If one were inclined to make one's introduction more accessible to non-Elvish speakers (Elen is NOT inclined), one could call oneself Elen of the Green Hills. Or Two-Stars of the Green Hills, but that would be just too assimilationist.

This got long and has been languishing in my drafts for months, so you'll have to hear about Sûl's name another day.

[aprillikesthings]

I run into people--online, IRL--all the time who seem to think I'm this exotic brave creature for traveling alone and going places alone.

And, to be fair, there are places/events I do not enjoy alone!! Movies at the theater by myself aren't as fun. I've gone to a couple of concerts/shows alone and while in many cases it's better than not going, it's not as fun as going with friends. (Except for classical music concerts. I don't know why.)

And, also, I am an extrovert; and for me part of the fun of traveling alone is meeting and chatting with new people, even if just small talk.

(Lol that has come up more than once on forums/groups/etc for people who do solo travel--the actual introverts who don't want to talk to people and that's why they travel alone, getting grumpy that most of us are social and like meeting people!)

And obviously: it's fun to go places with friends or my partner. Showing my fave places and events to Daci will never get old and I still have a long list to get through! Like Astoria and Seattle!

But! I love going places by myself.

And I keep realizing: I've always done this?

I was the oldest kid and only girl among my siblings. I also often had few friends. So I went places alone or I was stuck in the house. So sometimes I just wandered around, to the extent I was allowed to do so, lost in my own thoughts, playing pretend in my head.

In Iceland as a kid (living on the American military base) I would walk around just because. I would go to the USO and drink Lipton tea and read a book because...why not? In Virginia Beach I'd walk to the store and flip through all the magazines and buy a Snapple (it was the early 90's lol) and walk home. I'd bicycle around aimlessly (not that I was allowed outside our subdivision). I would've gone to the beach or the mall alone if I'd been allowed!

My parents were considered overprotective, and I still got to do all those things. Wild to think about, now.

Moving to the Portland area, that first summer after high school I'd take the bus to Barnes and Noble and buy a frappe at Starbucks (they were NEW at the time lolll) and browse the books for hours alone, bouncing off the walls with caffeine and sugar. That fall I got my license and realized I could drive downtown (or drive to a light rail stop and take that) and nobody could stop me. I would poke through vintage clothing stores and Powell's books and nobody would hurry me along or complain that they wanted to go somewhere else. It was bliss!

And I think it was like, ten years ago or so, when I found out a fairly common source of like, anxiety? fear? -was eating at a restaurant alone. And I still cannot wrap my mind around the idea. Like....why. What are you afraid will happen? Nobody is paying attention to you. Nobody cares. Like. What?! Just bring a book.

But I've had so many people tell me I'm brave for going places alone and I just don't feel brave at all? To me being brave means being a little scared and doing it anyway, and while I'm always nervous when traveling about SOME things (taking public transit in a new place, especially when you don't speak the language; is intimidating at first), the general concept of going to a place alone is just exciting to me.

I don't have to worry about anyone's needs but my own. I can eat whenever/wherever I want, do whatever I want, go wherever I want. It's so, so freeing.

[tumbleinthenet]

SamFrazie with 6, 8 and/or 21?

i'm so sorry... you're going to get so many headcanons spewed at you and almost none of them are going to make sense. take this all in assuming that sam: 1. is blastokinetic and 2. killed her father on accident as a child, thus thoroughly destroying her already tense relationship with her mother and probably seeing her very rarely from that point on.

6.) What about their environment influences them?

they're short of options for other people to talk to, honestly. they're very similar kinds of girls, brought up in homes that were never normal, even if the aquatos were happier than the booles in myself and my friend's shared headcanons. frazie grew up molded by the experience of being an eldest sister and so did sam. they have to protect their siblings from the bullshit their parents put them through (though i think sam does a better job of that). i don't think frazie is the oldest technically, i do think she's dions younger twin, but being the eldest sister is still a very unique experience.

they're very abrasive in very specific ways (a little violent, a little unhinged). they don't have much experience with other people their age. they're just going to kind of drift together no matter what. (sorry if this answer makes no sense for this question, its 2 am and im having trouble parsing it so i just threw in every kind of answer i thought made sense)

8.) Is there a third party involved that influences them in anyway?

in most cases, it's probably their brothers that push things forward. raz and dogen being friends would be a good enough push for sam to check out raz's other siblings, and frazie knows sam was the least fucked up to raz when it came to everything so she doesn't dislike her as much as she initially does the other interns.

in some cases, norma is the linchpin. i just don't super ship her with frazie which has led to me putting her into kind of an antagonistic role sometimes? frazie battles her sexuality long enough to confess to norma, they don't have a very fulfilling relationship (norma's bound to other things. she likes frazie well enough but she's probably a little nervous about her own sexuality along with familial pressure and the image of herself she likes to put out into the world. a partner, especially one as reckless and wild as frazie, just doesn't work for her. she gets colder and colder and eventually turns away from her completely.), sam picks her up when she gets dropped and becomes the surprise rebound. they bounce off each other better than expected.

there's also donatella? i don't think she has any specific role in things, but my view of her is as a woman who does not hold any particular liking for her daughters. i love dona. i think she's great. i also think she's a boy mom, and her only involvement with her girls is to teach them how to be proper women. i don't think frazie's into that. i think she worries a lot about how her mom thinks of her. tala's the little primadonna to be; it was never going to be her.

she feels a lot like she's worth nothing in the family dynamic (she has nothing that's her own as compared to her siblings, she has nowhere to go and nothing to be without the circus) and i think dona influenced a lot of that thinking just for bringing up the boys to a different standard. i think she's very much a papa's girl but he fucked her up too, in different but very noticeable ways 😭

21.) How much of the issues are external vs internal?

for them, it's probably more internal. i think of frazie as having a really hard time coming out, and struggling with being a lesbian not because she hates herself for being one or hates the idea, but because she worries a lot about how she'll be seen by her family and by the greater public. it takes a long time for her to get to the idea of being in a relationship, and once she's in one, she's pretty private about it with everyone except dion, when they're getting along well enough for him to listen.

sam talks about it pretty much openly, though it only comes up on occasion. the external bits of this are that frazie has a hard time with pda and it does Not Feel Good for sam, as well that she just really struggles with knowing when is too far. frazie is used to talking with her siblings, she knows what they can take both physically and mentally, and even then she sometimes hurts their feelings. she probably hits the wrong button with sam a few times and doesn't know how to apologize, even if it's kind of hard to tell when sam's feeling hurt at all.

sam, imo, has kind of a fear of intimacy but is trying? she nuked her home life pretty hard and doesn't know how to come back from that. she puts people at lengths. they both don't really know how to navigate a relationship but it's super frustrating to her that frazie doesn't even seem to be trying to get over her own hurdles.

just as well, they really don't know how to communicate. it's probably their first relationship ever in any world where norma isn't a part of the situation, and they don't have many close relationships with people outside of that. plus, they're teenage girls. they're still figuring themselves out. being psychic doesn't help everything. they have to figure out how to talk to each other.

[ciaossu-imagines]

Random Seri? 💙

Of course, my lovely anon! I don’t think I’ve written too much for Seri before, so this was a fun challenge! I hope you all enjoy the headcanons 😊

Seri is still really close to all her family. She is someone who does consider family to be of extreme importance and does have the attitude that, even if someone isn’t always the nicest to you or even if you personally don’t like them a lot of the time, if someone is family, you must love them and you must forgive them. In that way, she does have some really old-fashioned views around family. I’m not saying her family is cruel to her though…her immediate family is a very loving one, though her parents are strict with her in some ways. To her though, their strictness was necessary and helped her grow into someone confident, capable, and useful to society.

She still is close friends with some of the people from her childhood. In fact, her oldest friend is someone she knows from her elementary school days and someone who grew up alongside her. If Japan followed the same tradition of high-school reunions, Seri would be that kind of person who would get really excited for them and would likely even ask to be part of the planning committee for any school reunions.

Going along with that, Seri is someone who just genuinely enjoys planning things. She’s very organized and finds the act of planning out things very relaxing. She definitely has her dream wedding all planned out, has imaginary parties planned that she would love to host, right down to decorations, how the table would be laid out, the menu, the cocktails, etc. She plans dream vacations she will never have the time or opportunity to take, things like that. Even if none of the things ever come to pass, there’s something even just in the planning of them that Seri really does enjoy and finds soothing.

While she likes to think she’s a terrific cook and an exceptional baker, Seri cannot follow a recipe to the exact specifications. She likes to think her palette is very refined and that her tastes are universal, so she always modifies recipes to taste how she most enjoys and just magically assumes that everyone else will love them as well.

Despite her business-like and strict demeanor a lot of the times, Seri is very, very traditionally feminine in some regards. When not in uniform, she likes to dress elegantly, but in very feminine styles. She loves high heels, lingerie, makeup, jewelry. She definitely has more than one handbag and knows several designer brands and lusts after their products, even if she can’t afford them. She’s surprisingly knowledgeable about things like girl groups (though she prefers girl groups that push more towards the ‘girl power’ ideals than those that present as super innocent and cutesy) and celebrities. And she has very little issues with discussing traditionally girly things with her friends when they bring the topics up, like their ideal partners, what celebrity is the best looking, cute things they just bought, the pros and cons of different beauty products, etc.

She is someone who does have some very strict routines. She has a very set bedtime that she likes to observe whenever possible, to keep her body functioning at its best. She has dedicated skincare and beauty regiments. She trains consistently and unless an emergency happens, she will never skip her workouts and training sessions. She calls her parents at least once a week, preferably more. She has specific days of the week where she checks the mail or does certain other little errands and doesn’t really deviate too much away from that routine.

Seri is someone who would like children eventually but not at the current point in her life. She wants to really push her career and excel at that before she thinks about starting a family, as she does plan to put her career on hold for at least the first couple years of her children’s lives. She would prefer to have more than one child but again, her biological clock isn’t ticking fast or anything and to her, those are easily at least ten years in the future.

[autisticlee]

the older I get, the more of a struggle making friends seems to be. it was always a struggle but it only gets worse, never better.

first, the fact that adults don't have best friends, they have partners (ive had several people say this to me when i've said I want a best friend). they go date and forget i exist. second, many adults get so caught up in adult life they forget how to enjoy things.

I saw a post twitter recently that autistic people aren't "more childish" it's just that we know how to enjoy things more or don't care as much about social expectations and all that. I can't figure out how to have friends that don't enjoy the same things. it ends up feeling like we have nothing to talk about. most adults I meet have no hobbies or special interests. they only have jobs and partners and kids and that's their entire life focus. if they do have hobbies and things they like, it's hardly ever thing I like. I tend to enjoy things that are usually fandom based. I was into animes and then paramore as a kid, then I was into kpop and bts, now I like genshin impact (though not on a special interest level, but it's the most prominent interest atm because of one friends I use it to bond with).

the thing about fandom related interests while getting older and trying to make friends is that you're almost always outnumbered by younger people. except for the few years I spent on the internet (my paramore era in my teens) I usually ended up being the oldest or one of the oldest among people I knew and socialized with. that's fine when you're early 20s spending time with late teens or mid 20s and they're early 20s or if you're a teen with younger teens. sometimes it's an older fandom that all grew up and is mostly older now (pokemon). but when you get to 30s+ you can't be hanging out with the teens or fresh adults. first of all, adults generally shouldn't be befriending children, second, you generally have nothing in common with them, even fandom views. when I try to get friends and only teens in a fandom reach out to me, it's very :/

but sometimes it's only the teens that are willing to reach out, try accepting me, and are nice. most adults already have a long-established friend group i'm not welcome to intrude or are more judgey about who they like. then I feel bad when I have to turn the nice teens down. i thought about trying to be like an internet big sibling or parental figure for teens who need adult support figure in their lives, kind of like a found family, but I barely know how to adult and don't think i'd be the good influence/support i'd hope to be. they deserve better🥲

but yeah the point of this was making friends is harder the older you get and it already felt nearly impossible lmao 😭

[random-thought-depository]

Made but then deleted a post yesterday cause I came up with some interesting ideas about how bonobo-like human gender works but then I decided maybe I didn't like the exact model I'd tentatively settled on. Such is a risk of posting first draft concepts. I did get some ideas I might keep though, so I'll talk a little about those now.

OK, you know that thing where male effeminacy is associated with youth, it's a lot easier to get some social advantage from being a kind of cute and feminine guy if you're young, and old-timey systems of institutionalized homosexuality often kind of used age as a substitute for gender with the younger partner being the "woman" in the relationship? I think with bonobo-like humans it might be the other way around; I think bonobo-like humans might think of older males as more feminine! Reasons:

As I said in my previous post, as they get toward middle age bonobo-like human males tend to get less horny (or at least less outwardly horny, it might be the same thing that I suspect is going on with sapiens women; not so much less horny as pickier in what makes them horny and more cautious in expressing their horniness) and less desirous of sexual variety and their sexual attraction tends to become more reactive (i.e. more something that happens in response to somebody else’s desire instead of in response to just the presence of an attractive person) and more focused on intimate partners and friends. In other words, as BLH males get older their sexuality starts to look more like our stereotype of female sexuality! I think BLHs will have enough gender stereotypes in common with us that they'll make a similar observation.

Older BLH males tend to be more involved in childcare than young but adult BLH males (though of course this is a trend with lots of individual exceptions). BLH society, like ours, has an association of childcare with women.

I once saw an interesting post that suggested that gender is a mating strategy, and I think that idea makes a lot of sense. Let's consider possible implications of that idea for the gender expression of older vs. younger BLH males in light of older BLH males being more involved in childcare and in light of how BLH female reproductive hierarchies work. Effective reproduction strategies for a young BLH male will be to appeal to women between ten years and fifty years older than him who are most likely to let him impregnate them in the context of something that's a mix of sperm donation and short fun sexual affair and who will rely on alloparents for childcare assistance with the resulting kid and will expect little or no parental investment from the bio-dad (BLHs mature faster than us and have much later menopause, so the maximum age gap for "bio-dad who just became an adult and mom who's more-or-less the oldest age at which a BLH woman can semi-plausibly get pregnant" is a 67 year old being impregnated by a 15 year old(!)). Effective male reproduction strategies for that context are likely to involve eroticizing your difference from your potential partners. Effective reproduction strategy for an older BLH male will be to appeal to women who are a similar age to him and have roles in family and society not very different from his and whose willingness to reproduce with him may be contingent on the expectation that he'll assist them with caring for the resulting children and the expectation that he'll be good at that. Effective male reproductive strategies for that context are likely to involve emphasizing (and eroticizing) your similarity to your potential partners. So I think older BLH males are likely to do behaviors that signal similarity to middle-aged women, while young but adult BLH males are likely to do behaviors that signal difference from middle-aged women and maybe by extension to a lesser extent difference from women in general.

I think their more intense self-domestication would make adult BLH males look kind of low-key femboy-ish/bishi to sapiens eyes, like they would be naturally beardless and they'd have "finer" facial features than sapiens males. More intense female sexual selection + a heavily alloparenting-reliant family system so it doesn't matter as much if the bio-dad dies or becomes disabled when the child is young also means they've gotten a lot more selection pressure for staying kind of hot-looking in old age. I don't think this would encourage thinking of older males as more woman-like than younger males, but I guess it might remove some of our reasons for associating male femininity with youth, e.g. BLH males almost never go bald.

"Young but adult males" is another way of saying "males of prime fighting age." This isn't a big deal now when the BLH world is pretty peaceful, but it was a big deal in a lot of past BLH societies, and the present BLH gender system, like ours, has a lot of cultural "legacy code" from more violent past eras. The old-timey BLH gender system had basically the same division of humanity into fighting males and protected ones that ours did. Older males would have tended to be less effective as warriors and more physically vulnerable because they were at least starting to suffer the disabling effects of aging. But also... I think human gender roles have been massively influenced by the fact that a guy who dies at 22 can potentially have way more kids than a woman who dies at 22 and all else being equal a community that loses half its males but none of its women will have a much easier time recovering its numbers than a community that loses half its women; I suspect this has as much or more to do with the very strong historical tendency to assign the fighter role to males than sexual dimorphism. I think, especially in the context of non-literate mostly oral societies where almost all the community's knowledge was in people's heads and nowhere else, something similar to that might apply to older males vs. younger males; an older male has more knowledge in his head so losing him would be a bigger blow to the community, but he's basically just as good as a younger male for breeding and likely if anything would do a significantly better job helping raise the next generation, so the people your community would be harmed least by losing would probably be younger males, and in communities that were strongly incentivized to select a disposable class decisions would be made on that basis, either consciously or in an "adaptation executor, not fitness maximizer" way. Basically, I'm saying older males (at least the ones old enough to suffer significant aging-related disabling) actually have a structural relationship to violence that's kind of similar to the one women have - and considering the other features of BLH society that might put into their minds the idea that older males are kind of like women, I think BLH societies might have more awareness of that than we do.

I think this might really change the emotional dynamics of older male/younger male sexual relationships! Like, in terms of that knight/damsel gender roles complex the younger male would be the "knight" in the relationship and the older male would be the "damsel" - that's a profoundly different social and emotional dynamic from something like the erastes/eromenos thing! And, like, yeah, I think BLHs have features that would be highly conducive to the emergence of institutionalized male homosexuality that looks like that. They have very fast puberty that happens just on the threshold of physical adulthood, so they basically go straight from childhood to being physically mature adult males at the peak of their physical power, and the way their low-key female privilege society works means if they're in the kind of social landscape where knight/damsel complexes emerge they'd probably develop a heterosexual version that's, like, older woman with younger guy where the woman is assumed wiser but physically vulnerable and in need of protection and they're supposed to compliment each other by the woman being the guy's mentor and kinda second mom and the guy being the woman's protector, it'd be super easy to take that basic script but gender-flip the woman to make it gay.

So, like, if you want to imagine one of the closest things BLHs ever had to the erastes/eromenos thing, it'd be a middle-aged heterosexual couple trading sexual favors, social patronage, material support (roof and meals), and basically gentle non-authoritarian parenting-lite, and basically informal therapy for war trauma to a 22 year old boy in exchange for some farm labor, him being the person who spends the summer with the community's livestock on the high grazing grounds protecting them from predators and rustlers along with some of the other young males of the community, and him being the one who'd go out with the other young but adult males to meet and repel raiders or invaders if they came. The social conditions for that sort of relationship don't exist on the bonobo-like human world today (except maybe among the equivalent of mafia/Yakuza and the like, I guess), but I expect it shows up a lot in modern BLH romance novels set in their world's distant past.

If you're wondering what sort of top/bottom dynamics this implies...

... The answer is that bonobo-like humans basically don't have them. Bonobo-like human sexual scripts for sex between males are mostly non-penetrative. This is because bonobo-like human sexual preferences have been significantly shaped by selection pressure for behaviors that mitigate the vulnerability to STIs their polyamorous lifestyle creates, and non-penetrative sex is less likely to transmit STIs. PIV and vaginal penetration with fingers and toys is a prominent part of sex that involves BLH women, because PIV is how babies are made so liking it continued to be selected for, but there was no equivalent selection pressure to protect sexual interest in forms of penetration possible between (cis perisex) males, so sex between bonobo-like human males is mostly various kinds of non-penetrative outercourse.

Actually, it's not quite accurate to say that BLH sexual scripts for sex between males are mostly non-penetrative; sex between BLH males does involve a lot of relatively gentle and shallow oral penetration, but, as I said, it's relatively gentle and shallow; the BLH idea of a good blowjob emphasizes diversity of stimulation with hands, lips, teeth, and tongue, not deep penetration of the mouth.

Basically, in BLH society sex between males tends to look a lot like sex between women (BLH scripts for sex between women and our scripts for sex between women are much more similar than BLH scripts for sex between males and our scripts for sex between men).

[ima-ghost-art]

This is a sorta master list of my Cats Oc’s so far!!

(this is all set about a year after the current Jellicle ball for age reference)

Adults:

Bellona Jones (Bustopher's sister and mother of the monochrome siblings and Ex Jellicle protector), Merlinite (Bellona's mate and father of the monochrome siblings, a magical cat who joined the junkyard as a favour to old Deuteronomy before having to leave with his wife for safety when she first became expecting)  (both deceased)     

Magnolia and Magdalene (Merlinite’s sisters who both live in the care of some nuns at a convent, both love their nibbling's very much and try to visit the three often after the death of their brother and sister-in-law!) 

Lyre-Bone (Daughter of Griddlebone and Apollo and current open partner/ unofficial mate of Macavity and mother of 2 of his kittens)                                     

Apollo (father of Lyre and used to live in an Opera house) (deceased)

Tililith (friend of Mungojerrie, mother of Macavity’s twins) (deceased)

Mollycoddle (mother of Jennyanydots, Jellylorum, and Griddlebone, was the Jellicle choice the year before Grizabella) (deceased)

Old Jillymonty (Leader of the street cats tribe. She lives in a bookshop and is about the same age as Old Duet, they are also good friends and have knitting dates together every fortnight!!)

Pippa (Jillymonty’s granddaughter and protector of the street cat tribe who has a big ass crush on their tribe’s storyteller)

Knoxly (Storyteller for the Street Cat tribe, hopelessly in love with Pippa but he is too shy to tell her) 

(Old Jilly definitely knows of the two’s affections for one another and finds it quite amusing watching it play out. She can’t wait to bless them as mates when they finally pluck up the courage to admit their feelings!)

Pennyfathing (He is a member of the Hidden Paw and ex-friend of the Jones family) (status unknown)

Kismet (They are a member of the Street Cat tribe as Pippa’s second in command and becomes the mate of Etcetera and parent to their daughter!!)

MACAVITYS KITS:

(I’m not adding Plato Jem or Admetus to this list since they are all cannon cats in at least one Cats stage show but just know they are there!!)

Alibi (daughter of Mac and Lyre and second oldest of Macavity’s kittens! She is a Magical cat with abilities similar to her father and Mistoffelees, her biggest trick is being able to teleport herself and others, however, using her powers comes with her body overheating exponentially (which can be really dangerous) and a chronic feeling of fire and soot in the back of her throat. she manages to keep the side effects of her powers hidden from the tribe (except Electra who finds out on accident) for most of her time there, Sadly she is the first Jellicle choice after Old Deuteronomy) (yes I accidentally wrote her entire life story shut up I love her)

Lucideus (eldest of her and her twin sister and daughter of Mac and Tililith. She is really close with her two younger siblings as well as Hiraeth (who is technically her nephew but they sick with calling themselves best friends lol) Like her Grandmother Grizabella and Tribe idle Bombalurina, Luci strives to be the next glamor cat, and often is found dancing while Hiraeth sings for her!!)

Tilibubble (younger of the twins and also the daughter of Mac and Tililith, she is closest with her fellow youngest siblings, Hiraeth and later on Russet! Tili was born mute, but surprisingly she finds it can be a great help (but also sometimes a big pain) at her job as when she’s old enough she trains under her Uncle Munkustrap and Brother Plato to be a Protector!)

OTHER KITTENS! :

Eglantine (Middle sister of the Somali cat trio that gets lowkey adopted by Tantomile and Rumpleteazer! She is a magical cat who later gets mentored by both the Physic twins, Mistoffelees and Alibi) (She also finds Hiraeth can be a terrible bore but she also can’t help but enjoy his company)  

Hiraeth Jones (Eldest son of Victoria and Plato!! He is fully blind due to an attack from a member of the Hidden Paw a few weeks after his birth. He is the next flirt of the junkyard and a great singer too!) (he may also have a crush on the newest magical cat in town tho)

Atlas Jones (one of Victoria and Platos triplets and probably the most protective of his siblings and cousins (like both plato and vicky in my hcs) he trains under Munk Alonzo and Cass to become a protector he is also aroace!!)

Diotima Jones (also a Platoria triplet!! She comes across very pessimistic and often very blunt (like her favourite uncle Misto) but she is also a hopeless romantic with a very detailed outlook on love! She also adores to dance with her mother and her auntie Jemima!!)

Aristotle Jones (final platoria triplet!! Ari is a mini Bustopher just with his uncle Alonzo patches!! Hes just a big friendly outgoing guy and loves to gossip with Jennyanydots! Like his triplet he also becomes a protector!!)

MollyMay Jones (May is the youngest of Victoria and Platos kittens and she is probably the most curious of the bunch! She is the reincarnation of Platos mother, and when she was born plato was shocked in that realization and it took time to come to terms with it. MollyMay is also the only one of Platos kids to not meet her aunt Alibi)

Azalea (Eglantines sister!! Aza is the oldest and she is also trans! She loves her siblings a lot and is very thankful for the Jellicle's but she also longs for a life on stage, she loves sitting with Jellylorum and learning about Gus (who was the last years Jellicle choice she didn’t get to meet) Later in life she fulfils her dreams and becomes the next theatre cat!)

Russet (Russ is the youngest of his siblings but definitely the most outgoing! Sadly he is the reason they had to leave their human family as he was born with no front legs (arms?) and was rejected by both their parents and their humans. His sisters didn’t want to leave him so they took him and ran away, bumping into Rumpleteazer who then gave them a home with her and her mate!!)

Oopsie Daisy (Daughter of Etcetera and Kismet!! absolute ray of sunshine like her mother, and just as big of a fan girl! The moment she’s able to speak, she had already appointed herself as Hiraeth’s biggest fan!!) (when she’s older she likes to spend her time split between her parent’s tribes!!)

THE SEVEN!!:

These are the seven kittens Tugger talks about in his song about Misto!! They are normally under the care of Pippa but one day they ran off and she came to ask the aid of the mystical Mistoffelees to help her pull them from a magical Top Hat the group had gotten stuck in!!

Dapple doo (oldest and a bit of a ring leader)

Checker, Morrison, and Chip Butty (Chaos Triplets who all admire Tumble Brutus and Pouncival the moment they meet them!!)                                      

Dylula (magical cat in training and has Sass that will leave you crying)              

James (somehow has the best aim for kicking you in the back of the knees)        

And finally Piccadilly! (youngest and has the pickpocketing skills that would leave even Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer impressed!!)

_____________________

WOW, this ended up way longer than planned but tbh this is here to help me keep track of all my OCs XD

At least half of these were created to help add more to cannon characters’ backstories, or to help be NPCs for a Cats DnD campaign I dream of running!! There are a couple other OCs i could of added too but i think im going to keep them as a surprise for now!

[into-the-blorboverse]

Song Family Dynamics

the Songs are a bit of a mixed family, the household has two dads and a mom as a polycule but they have kids from other relationships too. most of them share the same mom, except the oldest, Andréa.

Andréa is distanced from the family due to some Drama with her father, and she has such a age gap from the rest of her half siblings that she doesn't have a relationship with them. she's not even technically a Song but for convenience we refer to her as that lmao. she and Sammy have interacted more than the rest, being the oldest kids of the group, but Andréa was kind of a mess at the time and Sammy doesn't wanna be like her lmao. sorry girl, thanks for dissuading Sammy from substance abuse with your actions though teehee :)

Sammy takes the role of Oldest Sibling on easily though, even if he technically isn't the oldest. he had his time out of the house when he went to college and everything but he came back to live with the family at some point, there was Family Drama (this is a common thing in this family lmao.. vague drama u know how it is) that he felt he needed to come back to support the twins about. the twins have moved out on their own now but Sammy likes being home with the rest of the family, he has fun getting to help out with the youngest sister, Kai. Kai still sees Sammy as the Cooler Older Brother and he tries his best to keep that opinion in check lmao, of course i'll drive you somewhere no problem!

Sammy and the twins get along well, its always a fun wild time when the three of them are together. Kyri and Emma see him for the dork that he is and will tease him about him being their little big brother :) no fair that they're younger and taller than him...!!! arguments often ensue about things like who is the coolest and it gets loud and heated but they're always joking about it lmao.

Kyri and Emma are basically inseparable and have a bit of separation anxiety, stemming from aforementioned Family Drama TM. they live in an apartment together with their respective partners. the twins... you know the twins!! for some reason im blanking on things to say about them jhsfdh. i feel like the separation anxiety is stronger on Kyri's end, Emma could probably manage more distance but she doesn't mind living with her bro, she knows he needs her. and its never a dull moment with him, they're buddies and best friends!!

Laurence was adopted as a teen (13ish maybe) so he didn't grow up with all of them, Sammy was in college at the time so they don't have the greatest bond, but Sammy tries to reach out nowadays now that he's living in the house with him. he is the most reserved of the whole group but the twins try to draw him out a little, Kyri definitely being a bit more annoying about it lmao. Being the babies of the group Kai and Laurence get along well, they can confide in each other for alot of things. if Kai was like 4 when Laurence came into the family i'm sure that was a funny story to share at preschool, yay im getting a new brother! he's older than me though :)

Kai, or Kai Junior (she's named after one of her dads, yes its true), is da baby. the last teen in the house and can always count on a sibling to give her a ride somewhere, oh her social life is thriving thanks siblings! Kyri likes to call her Kaiju because come on that's a freaking rad nickname!!! he's a little jealous though if only he was Kai Junior..... the family is the most stable now at this point so luckily Kai hasn't had to deal with too much drama first hand (its vague timeline but she was probably pretty young), though she does wish that they would let her in on what happened back in the day. she does wonder about her mysterious oldest sister sometimes too, hm! maybe one day she can bridge that gap, when you're a lil older bb girl.

tbh this family has existed conceptually for a really long time and has went through alot of iterations, the parent trio were like OG ocs that i had with my cousins and it was like. alot of drama nonsense you write when you're a teen so trying to re-contextualize it now can be tricky?? like for example one of the dads was a vampire mob boss of sorts lmao. they were all vampires and were-people. how do you make that work. so some of this is Vague but i do like these lil guys anyway haha they hold a special place in my heart :)

[yulgurr]

a random thing i actually want to complete so it can collect dust in my folder afterwards!

so there was that fe heroes oc Astrid and she has 5 brothers (4 older brothers that are quadruplets and 1 younger; 2 of the quadruplets "went missing") and I wanted to doodle all currently present brothers and then never touch them again (I drew 2 of them before once)

and a lore dump

Currently present brothers are:

The oldest of (ex)quadruplets Aster. He's a musician and plays piano. He also can fix string instruments and that's needed for the plot point when Elm shatters Audun's violin. Aster is also Audun's future partner.

The third of the (ex)quadruplets Torsten. Their father is minister of finances and Torsten is to inherit his father's title. He is a sweet guy but his standard face expression is just >:( this. He is closer to Astrid than the other two, but he's not an overprotective type (he may seem like one, but he's not).

And the youngest Brynjar, pegasi actually like him and he'll be a pegasus knight in the future. Pegasi bring him flowers and he always has some in his hair.

Pegasi like Brynjar because he inherited the blood of Geirskögul, which usually manifests in women of their family.

Geirskögul was a valkyrie from Jötunheimr, who came to Askr long long time ago to assist her friend Líf to establish a kingdom, and she liked it there so she brought her beloved pegasi there too and decided to live in Askr. Geirskögul was a jotun and her pegasi were also big and strong, and with time they became popular among rich people of Askr, and that's how the pegasi knights training grounds were established. Geirskögul and her children would teach the pegasi knights, and a few generations later, long after Geirskögul's death, her children would raise and sell the pegasi.

With time, Geirskögul's descendants lost their jotun power and became like an average Midgard person, with an exception of hair color, tiny valkyrie wings on the head (not everyone has them though), and jotun blood. They did, however, find out that the jotun power can be reawakened, and for that the blood has to be spilled. Once the blood is spilled, the one with blood would gain a part of Geirskögul's power, which is basically just strength and a shield, preventing them from dying. In game terms, the less HP a unit has, the harder they are to kill + a broken Miracle with healing as a special. Also, the whole "jotun blood" thing is not known to general public. The blood mostly manifests in women, and extremely rare in men (Astrid's aunt has no jotun blood for example). Just having Geirskögul's blood makes it easier to approach and train pegasi, and Geirskögul claimed to actually understand what her pegasi were saying. The pegasi of that breed are not hostile towards men (like the Hoshido ones), instead before they are properly trained they are hostile towards everyone without the jotun blood.

Astrid is 1st in line to inherit the pegasi business, as she is the only daughter, and she was raised to honor the family history, even though some parts were not the brightest. She was allowed to assist the Order of Heroes on occasions, as her mother thought that actual fighting experience would teach Astrid to control the jotun blood better.

The 2 quadruplets (that later went missing), after learning that their youngest possessed the jotun blood, wanted to research it and "make it accessible for everyone" but their research was a bit unethical and they ended up kidnapping both young Astrid and Brynjar, but luckily were both caught before they could do anything. They were then disowned and banished, but Astrid's parents covered it as "went missing". No one knows where they are now.

oh wow thats a lot but i really wanted to talk about all that. if you read to this point, thank you you are so cool! if you noticed any mistakes then in my defence english isn't my first language haha

[classicschronicles]

Hi lovelies,

Every year UCL’s Classics Department put on a Classics play. Last year it was ‘Elektra’ and this year it was a retelling of Plato’s ‘Symposium’. I also sat my Classics paper on Plato on Thursday so my WHOLE week has just been Plato rammed down my throat, and therefore you must all suffer too :D So today I am going to try and explain the crux of Plato’s ‘Symposium’ in the simplest possible way, except there is no simple way to explain it so here goes literally nothing.

The premise of the Symposium is as follows. It depicts a Symposium (a dinner party and discussion) held between a group of notable Athenian men. When all the men have drunk their fill, one guest, Phaedras, suggests that they should all take it in turns to give speeches to define what ‘love’ is. The speeches are to be given in praise of Eros.

Before I get into detail there are a few key words to describe. There is a clear distinction between the ‘lover’ and the ‘loved one’. To ancient Greeks the ‘lover’ was the older partner (the Erastes) and the ‘loved one’ was the younger partner (the Eromenos). These terms only applied to male relationships as they were terms to define pederasty. Hope that makes sense!

The person to suggest the discussion, and therefore the first person to make his speech, is Phaedras. Phaedras suggests that for both Gods and humans Love is great for many reasons. Love is the oldest of the gods and has no parents. As Love is the oldest, Phaedras suggests, that he has the greatest benefits. For a young man there is no greater benefit than what can be gained from a good lover, and no lover could derive a greater benefit than from a young one. The relationship between a lover and loved one made men better members of society. Love also teaches shame in acting disgracefully and pride in acting well. The shame someone feels when caught doing wrong by a lover is worse than the shame he feels when caught by a father or a brother or a friend. Similarly, being seen to act virtuously by a lover is more gratifying than being seen by a father, brother, or friend. Phaedras puts forth the idea that an army consisting of just lovers and loved one would be the strongest army in the world as they encourage virtue in each other. He also says that Love encourages you to act with bravery and courage because if you love someone you will be brave for them. The examples of this he gives are Achilles and Patroclus, in that despite Achilles knowing that if he killed Hector he too would die, he still did so out of love and vengeance for Patroclus.

The next speech comes from Pausanias (a legal expert). Pausanias, in his speech, suggest that there are two types of love- Heavenly and Commonly. Commonly love is the attraction only for the body and not for the mind. Commonly love also covers heterosexual love as according to him, this love is not to be praised. Heavenly love (only MLM) only happened when maturity is reached and the love felt is based off personality and character. He suggests that if you are a follower of Common love you should be forced to adopt the same rule as those with Heavenly love, and that if you have censures on Heavenly love is it because the governments love for ruling and the cowardice of the subjects. He also suggests that a follower of Common love is just for money or influence or other superficial things and so when you act as a lover for these things you are criticised by friends and family. But when it is Heavenly love, if a true lover begs, it is allowed and he faced no criticism. Pausanias goes further to suggests that a lover of Common love loved the body and that this is inconsistent because the body ages and everything you have said to you partner is no longer true and the lover leaves, bringing disgrace.

The third speech comes from the Erastes of Phaedras, Erixymachus. His theory on love is that love is a two fold character, also putting forward the idea of Commonly and Heavenly love. Similarly he says that Heavenly love is love of the heavenly muse is love of well ordered people who exercise restraint and balance. Common love of the Muse Polymnia is love towards over indulgence, and is don’t by those who have erred and strayed towards temptation and desire. He also then suggests that love is not only between people but also between natural processes too, i.e. love is everywhere. For example, a doctor loves the body and it able to reconcile love between its antagonistic elements to heal illnesses. Activities such as athletics, agriculture, and music are also wholly governed by love. Music, for instance, is created by harmony between rhythm in music and creating agreement between divergent notes. In practicing Love you promote order and therefore improving people. Also side note, this man is so bloody arrogant and pompous, like he just stresses me out.

Aristophanes speech comes next. It’s actually a very famous one and when I explain it you’ll probably already know it. Also, it’s worth noting, Aristophanes speech (as the famous comedian) was not meant by Plato to be taken seriously, it is idealistic and ridiculous, but also very wholesome. His theory of love suggests that at the time of human creation there were three genders- male, female, and an androgynous gender that was created when two people were joint together as one body. These joint bodies could be two men, two women, or a man and woman. But either way, humans were two, so that they had four arms, four legs, two heads etc…. However, we became very powerful and the gods feared that we may overpower them. To extinguish the whole human race would be to forfeit the sacrifices we gave to the gods, so Zeus instead split us all in half down the middle, sewing the wound at the naval and leaving it visible so that we would always remember. Zeus also said that should we continue to misbehave he would split us down the middle once more so that we would hop around on one leg. Thus, a humans desire was to find the other half that had been taken from us and unite via our genitals so that we may became one whole again. Essentially, the pursuit of love was the pursuit of wholeness.

The next theory of love came from Agathon, a famed tragedian. He was famously beautiful and the Eromenos of Pausanias. Agathon points out that all the other speakers have discusses the only what humans have gained from love, but not what the actually nature of the god is. He says that Love is the youngest of all the gods and that he only appears to those ‘soft’ in nature. He makes a home in the characters of minds and gods, but whenever he finds a tough character he moves on. As Love is sensitive, he does not settle in the hardest parts of humans and gods. Agathon also goes on to speak about the virtues of love. Love is never forced between people, and therefore never us any force (i.e. everyone consents to his authority). Love is wise as it is the inspiration of all other acts of wisdom. No poet can be wise without love, and the gods and the muses are unable to master their respective arts without love for those arts. He essentially concludes that love is to be praised as it is response for excellence, mildness, wisdom, goodness, and beauty.

The next speech is a long one I can’t lie, it is the speech of Socrates. Socrates starts by defeating Agathon argument saying one does not want for something it already has, and so if Love looks for the beautiful, it cannot already be beautiful. Similarly, if Love wants the soft, then love cannot be soft. Socrates then beings to repeat the view of his mentor, Diotima, in his attempt to describe Love. According to Diotima, Love is neither mortal nor immortal, beautiful nor ugly. Love is the middling of the two extremes. As the child of resource and poverty, Love is forever poor, but resourceful enough to look for what he needs. Diotima also says that goodness and beauty seek to secure immortality for themselves, via legacy as an artist, philosopher, or statesman and via physical procreation. (Side note, in school when we tried to define ‘pregnancy of the mind’ versus ‘pregnancy of the womb’ we started calling them ‘brain babies’ and I accidentally wrote that in my exam). Socrates also lays out Diotima’s ‘Ladder of Love’. At the lowest level is love/ lust for physical beauty, then we realise beauty is similar in all bodies and love all beautiful bodies, then we see that the beauty of the souls outweighs the beauty of the body. After that, we begin to see beauty in activities, institutes, and sciences, before we begin to love knowledge. Once all of these steps are achieved, we arrive at the highest form of Love, in which beauty is revealed to us and we see the ‘Form’ of beauty. (The forms are a whole Platonic theory, it’s AWFUL). Basically the highest form of love is love of Love.

The next speech is literally the BEST part of the Symposium. It is of course, the entry of Alcibiades. For those of you who don’t know, Alcibiades is the love of my life, I have some weird attachment to him. I want him and I want to be him (I have a post about him here). Anyways so, Socrates makes his speech and then there is a banging at the front door. When they open the door, a very late and a very drunk Alcibiades storms in to crown Agathon with garlands and then leave again. The guests, however, urge him to stay, and when he sees Socrates he throws a little hissy fit. (Context, Socrates and Alcibiades are Eromenos and Erastes). He says that Socrates has no business being cuddled up to Agathon, the most handsome man in the room. Socrates then rebukes Alcibiades and says that since he became his Erastes, Alcibiades is entirely too jealous of everything. When Erixymachus asks Alcibiades if he want sot give a speech on Love, he says instead that he wants to give a speech eulogising Socrates. The speech in favour of Socrates turns more into a ‘Socrates doesn’t love me’ eulogy. He says that Socrates will act as an Erastes but will not treat him as an Eromenos (basically that he will not sleep with Alcibiades). To which Socrates says the most evil (I wanna slap him) thing ever. He says that if he gives Alcibiades knowledge and in return Alcibiades gives him sex it is like Socrates has traded gold for bronze. You can’t say that to Athens famed pretty boy. Alcibiades says that one night he said to Socrates, “I think you are the only Lover I’ve had who’s good enough for me, but you seem too shy to talk about it to me”. He says that sleeping in a bed with Socrates, despite being his Eromenos, is no different to sharing a bed with his father or brother. Socrates, even after watching Alcibiades poor his bloody heart out, just cuddles up to Agathon on the couch. Most modern scholars argue that the actions and effects of love on Alcibiades are meant to act as a cautionary tale on the effects of unchecked desire.

There you have it! A summary to the Symposium. Honestly, it’s definitely worth a read if you get the chance, and so is Plato’s ‘Republic’. I hope you all have a lovely rest of your weekend, and see you next week xx

~Z

[icreatethingsiguess]

I show my ocs again pt. 3 — character I haven't drawn in months edition (lazy art, maybe???)

Meet my girl Eliza Hopp!

⁽¹⁷ᵗʰ ᵒᶠ ˢᵉᵖᵗᵉᵐᵇᵉʳ, ¹⁸⁰² – ¹⁸ᵗʰ ᵒᶠ ᴶᵃⁿᵘᵃʳʸ, ¹⁸⁴⁸⁾

— "Eliza" is short for nothing. Her name is just Eliza. Her name is just a partner name to her mother's, "Beth."

— More about her name: she lacks a middle name (common for her species before 1837 and the mid 1800s in general, although there were cases of this happening afterwards too) and her surname, "Hopp," came from her half brother. It was originally "Hop," as he was half snowy tree cricket, but was changed to "Hopp" later on as an homage to mayor and Eliza's dearest friend, Rainn Fort.

— She's yet another butterfly puppet!! Beth is a holly blue whilst Eliza's father, Jeremy, is a brown/orange butterfly puppet of an unidentified species.

— She has two half siblings, Cassandra Flinders and Thomas Hopp, and two step-parents on both sides of her family, Crispin [step-father on mother's side] and Nyx [step-mother on father's side]. Through her half-brother Eliza has a sister-in-law named Alessandra Hopp who's a gramophone puppet (illegally built), and through her half-sister a brother-in-law named Benjamin "Ben" Flinders who's an anthro lyrebird originally from Eastern Australia. Eliza is also an aunt of seven kids thanks to Ben and Cassandra: from oldest to youngest they are Bellatrix, Samuel, Juliet, Daphne, Fiona, James, and Ashley (M). If this wasn't enough there's also a funky Scottish spirit dude named Duncan who helped nurse and raise all said kids so that they'd survive.

— Technically she has a husband named Rhys Maddox but only when their souls go and live other lives and end up meeting each other on Earth again via new lives and all that junk. They don't plan on having kids but they love each other very much. 😌

— As of mid 2023 she's no longer a resident of Nowhere And Also Everywhere aka "the afterlife," but will return once her current life passes on.

— In terms of personality, Eliza was quite the pessimist and was known to have a very low self esteem. She saw herself as not good enough to do anything but be anything but the town maid (HEAVILY influenced by her backstory) and was very quiet, only speaking to a select few people she felt like talking to: Rainn Fort, poet (and commonly credited founder of the town TLP, alongside Rainn) Matthew Milkweed, Cassandra, and Thomas were lucky enough, among others. Since being dead, her conditions improved.

— (Read backstory for context) Due to her upbringing she struggled a lot with mental illness, specifically depression and anxiety [PTSD and OCD are possible for her as well, but I need to look more into the former and develop her personality a lil more before I make a final judgement.) Even more well known was her maladaptive daydreaming (not a mental illness but oftentimes a symptom of one), which started in early childhood and lasted for the remainder of her life. It's very likely her maladaptive daydreaming played a major role in her untimely demise. On top of maladaptive daydreaming, it's very possible she's hyperphantasic, as I see her having a very vivid imagination.

Beautiful art by @fishyfishyfishtimes! Pieces are a couple years old:

• Here you'll notice she lacks clothing. She's depicted with a rounder segmented body above but actually has a more rectangular body type without any segments. Lack of clothing was first made popular in the 1960s and became accepted in the mainstream in following decades but with the exception of the first puppets in the 10th century, this wasn't the case. Puppets wore clothes, albeit quite raggedy (basically think "poor person in the Middle Ages") and torn, especially those that worked in manual labor. Here, Eliza's without clothes simply because she didn't have a dress design.

• Eliza with her half-siblings!! She and Thomas were very close to each other before she passed, and both were very depressed and angry at the world thanks to very very less than ideal living situations growing up. Cassandra is more of a mediator figure in the trio, see. They might not look it here in this doodle but they were actually quite close during their time together. All three of them lived together in one house and Cassandra frequently visited even when she moved out to live with her husband.

Drawings of caterpillar Eliza:

• Here's a good example of what caterpillars look like! These babies really are like insect puppies, if puppies had a more plant/fruit/vegetable based diet (too much meat for a caterpillar can cause stomach aches). They typically have 6-8 legs and having a "tail" depends on genetics. Eliza here doesn't have one! Caterpillars oftentimes have their future wing prints on their body, kinda like a fun Easter egg for what's to come. Eliza has black spots since Holly blue butterflies have small black spots on their wings :)

• A version of the doodle above except she has a dress. Nothing much to say here besides um. I don't think I can draw loose clothing on complex forms too well.

Eliza's Backstory (1802 – 2023)

CW: Backstory includes mentions of slavery, childhood trauma, segregation, and death

— This backstory is currently incomplete you can help by expanding it. Some details are still a WIP but I'd say it's coherent enough to count as a character backstory.

— A lot of the lore in the backstory was written by none other than @fishyfishyfishtimes ! She's an amazing worldbuilder so please go check her out. She only posts fish/sea creature related things (for now?) but maybe you like that too, I dunno.

Eliza was born (read as: hatched out of her egg) thanks to two puppet slave parents, Beth and Jeremy, sometime in 1802 (usually recorded as "the 17th of September" for simplicity); she was born in a household in London and spent the first couple years of her life around the house with fellow small children and even human children. Like many to-be slaves, contact with her parents was extremely limited if there was any contact at all as many children of slaves couldn't recognize who their parents were or were even allowed to interact with anyone outside their immediate field of view, or alternatively, they were to be sent off to a different household to work.

Reasonably, her living conditions for the first 35 years of life were less than ideal: like many "weaker" and more fashionable species, such as the butterfly, Eliza was resigned to do indoor tasks (most notably cleaning, given her fixation later on) and on rare occasions she would have to do garden work. She lived a life entirely at home, unaware of much of the outside world. Her time was mostly occupied by her excessive daydreaming while she slaved away.

This all changed on the 22nd of May, 1837, a day that's very well known in the (Universe) UK and around much of the world: after 8 centuries of being treated like mere "puppets," the first instance of puppets gaining personal freedoms finally occurred, on this particular day in British territory. Some human families paid royalties to those that had been treated so horribly. Puppet building was officially banned. There was only one nasty catch: instead of being integrated, both puppets and humans were now segregated by law. Thousands of puppets were grouped/grouped together themselves and left areas declared to be "human" areas (mostly big cities, such as London). Travel was allowed but heavily frowned upon by both human society and puppet society alike.

Somewhere in the midst of the chaos, Eliza got in contact with two puppets in particular, Cassandra and Thomas, who turned out to be her relatives. From 1837 – 1839, the trio traveled from developing town to developing town, eventually landing in a developing town between the counties of Kent and East Sussex, Townlocationplace ["TLP" for short]. Eliza quickly became infatuated with the mayor, Rainn Fort. The two became best friends but Eliza wasn't too content with just being friends. Unfortunately, Rainn had instead married a mute dragonfly woman named Alice Brown. This upset Eliza but she didn't push it. The pair remained good friends; Rainn helped her with literacy and even bought her new clothes to wear.

Eliza, however, remained in the cycle she was born into. If not in bed daydreaming, she would be seen wandering around the streets of the town aimlessly. On one of these trips, this proved to be an exceptionally dangerous practice.

On the night of the 17th of January, 1848, Eliza had written a love note to Rainn, wanting to deliver it to him in person. She had no clothes appropriate for going out in the snowy cold, only a gown. In the early morning hours she'd instead gotten lost and froze out in the dark.

Not too long after her soul was transported to Nowhere And Also Everywhere ("the afterlife") where she remained until finally trying to live a brand new life in the late 20th century. As of mid 2023, the present in the Universe, she's still living on Earth.