#it might be a little weird and rambly bc my brain is a little scrambled

[hobbysognodilibri]

Making a new pinned bc I need the rebranding lol

Hello, people in my phone

I'm Dai, 22, most likely bored out of my mind

I'm a poor uni student, constantly stressed and anxious, constantly scrambling to study for an exam

I'm aroace (and have had to friendzone quite a few people, it doesn't get any less awkward with time) and non-binary, my pronouns are mostly they/them but I hardly care

Linguistics major who will most likely include linguistics fun facts in conversations that don't require it

My first language is Italian, I've been studying English since I was 5 (technically earlier but it was just repeating the alphabet or some songs my mom taught me) and I studied German in middle school and now for two years in uni (though I'm not nearly as proficient)

My hobbies include writing, researching new interests I'll abandon in a few weeks and rambling about my life

List of fandom:

Wuthering Waves: been playing since release, will ramble about anything (character builds, showcases, lore, story, characters, OCs, leaks...). Intro post

DC: recent interest, still getting into it but it's been sticking the past few months, open to recommendations for anything

Riordanverse: I've been reading these books since middle school (technically I started in 3rd grade but abandoned it after the third book). I'm only missing the last few books and Kane Chronicles (but will fix the issue asap). Will link my OC's masterpost as soon as I post anything about them

Newsies: been so long since I posted about this but you might see me ramble about this one every once in a while (and totally open to chat about it)

Some fun facts bc idk where else to put them

My favorite colors are green and purple, I'm using pink in this post bc I have the blue color palette and can't read it with the purple lol

I don't have pets (my siblings are enough already) but if I did I'd like a cat. Definitely more of a cat person and one of my best friends always complains bc cats like me better

I have two younger siblings (Nu and Tiny) and an older brother (Elio) (they each have their own tag for my rambles)

I like cooking. It's a nice way of showing care to the people I love and to myself, and I like experimenting

I'm totally a coffee addict, but I can also enjoy a nice cup of tea (black tea with a teaspoon of sugar or some sort of fruity blend with two teaspoons of sugar).

I enjoy working out. When the weather is good enough I like staying outside practicing wushu (I've done it for 11 years but had to stop in 12th grade bc of school, plan on restarting again, was black belt), but I also enjoy the feeling of going to the gym (or better yet, the feeling of a post workout shower)

My tags:

#my ocs ig -> various OC rambles

#dai's weird tales -> my personal tag, you'll see a weird mix of tales, rambles, complaints etc

#dai's batfam -> one of my favorite tags, courtesy of a moot. My rambles tied to my family

#the tiny birthdays thief -> my little brother's tag. Codename: Tiny

#it's not nu's fault -> my younger sister's tag. Codename: Nu

#pans and pots -> my older brother's tag. Codename: Elio (this isn't actually a codename but shhhh)

#the normal nerd -> tag for one of my best friends (for whom I still need to find a codename bc he doesn't have nicknames)

#Jiahui -> my wuwa oc, you'll see me ramble about her a lot

#beneath the sands wuwa -> tag for @unrealistic-ideas-for-writers 's writing project that includes some of our Wuwa OCs

DNI:

The usual, do I even actually have to write it? Don't be a bigot, an asshole, racist, homotransphobic, abilist, fatphobic, bla bla bla

Be a decent person and we'll be fine

Hopefully you'll enjoy your stay in my convoluted brain

I will not be held responsible for eventual crushes y'all get on my characters, you've been warned

[endternal]

lee taemin. nonbinary. he/him. asexual. ⇝ hey, isn’t that karam shin ( nickname: eden )? i think that the thirty-one year old from redacted works as a florist at the flower basket; toxicologist for the grim fox, but outside of that people describe them as the reflection of the moon over rippling water, a bubbling stream lapping against the rocks and the cool spray of the river; hands running through hair, nails digging into skin, a lonely figure hunched over in an empty room. i hear they are solitary & unusual, but they are also known to be intelligent & unswerving. consider giving them a visit at their home in the seal harbor apartment complex and get to know why they’re called the restless spirit.

IMPORTANT LINKS: pinterest.

IMPORTANT: Karam is nonbinary. His general presentation is sort of androgynous but he certainly does not identify as a man so please don't refer to him as one! (boy is okay, so long as it's not being used to infantalise, and anything a little more grey area (e.g; dude and guy and so on) is generally fine). He uses he/him pronouns solely because he's used to them and he's a little resistant to change. He does not mind being referred to as they/them but he doesn't personally make use of those pronouns.

BASICS

The first thing most people will pick up about Karam is that he isn't very talkative, nor is he very emotive. He's not incapable of emoting and he's certainly not emotionless but he's not especially good at expressing himself (particularly in a way that's useful to other people) so he doesn't bother. As for talking, he just doesn't feel like it most of time. There are times where he might talk about something at length but, for the most part, he keeps it to a minimum. This means he has a habit of being quite blunt and curt but it doesn't really bother him, even if it bothers other people. (That said, he doesn't speak in a monotone; the way he speaks is quite measured but that's about it.) He's more expressive and more talkative around people he genuinely likes.

However, the people he genuinely likes are few and far between. Karam is, overall, very untrusting. He is especially untrusting of people who aren't fellow miroir and, because there is, for the most part, no immediate to separate the miroir from everybody else, there is nobody he instinctively trusts. He is hyperaware of his status as a miroir and the fact that people would likely fear or hate him if they knew the truth about what he was.

Karam has a deep affinity for nature. His whole upbringing was spent among nature. There are times where he'd rather be among the trees than other people. This is precisely why he's taken up work as a florist. He's not made for retail at all and his customer service skills are non-existent but being around plants all day puts his mind at ease.

He knows a lot about plants (and other stuff like wildlife, rocks, water, whatever else) and even more about which plants can definitely kill you. Actually, he just knows a lot about poison in general. You can pin that one on the whole toxicologist thing.

Absolutely one of those people who will sneak up and appear behind you when they want to talk and freak you The Fuck out. As in, you won’t hear him coming and he won’t announce himself. He’ll just show up and you won’t notice him until you turn around. And, no matter how often he’s told, he’s not going to understand that’s it maybe not a regular thing to do (or, at the very least, he might try to understand but he’s not going to take it on board).

Karam is autistic. Not diagnosed. (yes, a second autistic phoebe oc.....gotta make ur own representation around here <3 although tbh, i did not plan on writing karam as autistic. he just ended up extremely autistic-coded and i decided to commit :D ) HOWEVER!! I want to be clear that the references later in this post to Karam being very good at memorising a lot of information should not be seen as some kind of Autistic Savant stereotype. Karam is very smart but he's not some kind of cartoonish genius. He also straight up sucks at retaining information he doesn't care about.

Likes to feed the rats living in the Seal Harbor apartment complex. Nobody's caught him doing it as of yet but the Mysterious Rat Feeder isn't popular with his neighbours.

Karam hates loud and busy places and will avoid them. Maybe not at all costs but fervently enough. He just finds them VERY overwhelming.

Spent the first part of his life outside of the Grim Fox homeless. He can't remember how long it was because he never kept count. He got by as best he could by living on the streets and stealing food.

He is also asexual, largely because I just can't see him caring about sex. He's not sex-repulsed, just disinterested. I'm not sure quite where he falls with regards to romantic attraction but it's probably somewhere between biromantic and aromantic; it's not something I've had a chance to explore yet but he's also not particularly interested in that either.

BACKSTORY (tw: death, murder, v brief vomit mention)

a fair note in advance, most of this is written in a deliberately vague and cryptic way. i know this isn't the most accessible way of delivering info about a character but karam's backstory is meant to be a little unclear! it's also very much subject to change as i work stuff out!

He has no delusions about what he is. His face isn't his own, his body isn't his own, his DNA is not his own. He's a twisted reflection of some distant unfortunate but the image in the mirror is too sharp. Sharpened to the point of distortion, in fact. But what is his own is his name; Karam. The nickname 'Eden' was granted to him as a matter of necessity but Karam was entirely his own. Who knows what the Original's name was? Who cares? The name Karam is his own. A marker of his own identity. Abandoned and tossed aside, Karam has no plans to step into a life unknown to him. Karam, an old Korean word meaning river. Nothing is static, only fluid. Ever-flowing. (He had asked his handler if he could choose own name. They had taken pity on him and allowed it; he was just a clone, he wasn't meant to have a life of his own so it was the least they could offer him.)

There is very little, in fact, that Karam knows about the person he was intended to replace. They were not very old, just a child, when they vanished. There was no history for Karam to learn, nobody for him to imitate. The fake has outlived the genuine. What little details Karam had known have long since slipped through his fingers, replaced only with the harrowing knowledge that he shouldn't exist. That he's different. Do people look at him strangely? Do they suspect him? No, they have know way of knowing the truth. But, if they did know, wouldn't they hate him? Would they even see him as a person? Or just the ghost of a child who was never supposed to grow up?

He'd been raised as a toxicologist, adept in all sorts of poisonings. Subtle. Showy. Painless. Agonising. Natural. Chemical. They'd decided that his talent for quick memorisation, his ability to absorb information, had made him perfect for the job. You wouldn't necessarily know it to look at him but in that head of his is a seemingly endless list of ways to kill a person. He might even tell you so, not that you'd believe him. A pretty boy like that, knowing such dreadful things? Surely not. (Don't pay too much attention to the boy at the flower shop, he's a little strange.)

He was deployed as a toxicologist too. Was even active for a good while. Karam has a body count and he can't quite remember the exact number. There was never any reason to, he was just following orders. Didn't even flinch when he watched, from a safe and hidden distance, as his mark choked on his own vomit. Karam was good at his work. He may have been a fraud of a person but he was a genuine toxicologist and he excelled in his work. (The more time he spends in Anchorage, the more the numb sting of guilt starts to burn in the back of throat; back then, he'd never thought of his targets as people because he'd been so cut off from the rest of the world but being forced to live in the real world has put things into perspective.)

Suddenly, it all stops. Orders that used to trickle in like raindrops dried up; a drought of purpose. He's not useful anymore. He's nothing. His whole life had been built on strict rules and a particularly routine, and it had all fallen apart before he could make sense of it. They'd left him out in the cold, thrown him aside like an unwanted plaything. And yet he was too detached from reality to hate them or even feel angry. He was only afraid. It did not take him long to learn that there was no place for somebody like him in the real world. Because he knew himself to be an outcast, he immediately fell in with the wrong crowds. Did things he shouldn't. He was young, lost and confused.

But he was found one night, lying sprawled out on the concrete and barely conscious, by a kind and unexpected stranger. They took him back to their place, helped clean him up. They let him stay a while, because he had no home to go to, and helped him get a job at the flower shop. And, then, when he had the money to rent his own place, they let him leave. He had been a distant guest, mostly keeping to himself and revealing very little of his own history but he had been grateful for their help, even if he had never been able to show it. (will probably submit this as a wanted connection at some point!)

Although he does his best to pretend otherwise, Karam never quite adjusted to his new life. Assimilation hasn't come easy to him. He still thinks himself an outsider, a ghost amongst the crowds. A glitch in the system. He likes to leave the city, from time to time, to explore the wilderness and woodlands of the region. He feels grounded there, away from people. There's no judgement there amongst the trees. No shame, no guilt, no hopelessness.

His work at the flower shop is not all that fulfilling and he feels like there's still a great big cavity in his chest; his expansive knowledge of flora is put to good use but he doesn't feel as though he's doing anything. And it makes him feel restless.

Please note that this character is not just a character I've been writing for a while (since 2019) but actually an alternate take on that character. In his original storyline, Karam isn't actually human. I thought it'd be fun to write him in setting anyway so this is kind of a human AU for him? This isn't really smth anybody else needs to keep in mind but [lease be patient with me if it takes me a minute to make everything work with this version!