#mentis consil

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Really normal excerpt from a sketch I'm doing

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It's extremely obvious from chumhandles which character took some inspiration initially from 1984. However. I do think there's a not insignificant number of people who would not get it.

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While writing conciliatory relationships, I like to switch it up between "one party is the concilliated and one party is the concilliator" (as in canon) and "both concilliate and are concilliated", though the former is never quite as strict as canon.

For example, in Eldred, Leusse, and Mentis's auspisticism, the concilliator is pretty clearly Eldred, but Leusse and Mentis do also have to auspitize between the other two from time to time, especially towards the end of their relationship when things are falling apart. This is especially interesting considering how badly their ashen relationship is failing, honestly. Eldred tries his best to be a good auspitice while dealing with growing feelings of dissatisfaction with the relationship and the knowledge that there's something else going on that he doesn't understand, which over time make maintaining the relationship increasingly daunting. Mentis will occasionally try to more overtly control Eldred like she does with Leusse, and Leusse "auspitizes" them to keep her off him. Mentis' attempts at auspisticism are also fake, even more so than Leusse's, because when their relationship starts failing it's Leusse that tries to fix it, mostly by talking to Eldred, and Mentis finds excuses to "mediate" as a way of getting between them before they realize just how much of a problem she is or try to break up.

Meanwhile, in every single instance of Laedre/Cuimia moirallegiance (they're the meowrails of Fragments sheerly in the sense that every Laedre is in a moirallegiance with their respective Cuimia. Which, funnily enough, was an accident.) it's a situation where they're both concilliating. Both Peleme and Pasque, despite being generally very nice people, can be exceptionally violent at times, Peleme because of how she was socialized and Pasque because he's used to being powerless and living in fear. Leusse helps reroute Peleme's more aggressive urges into the relatively non-dangerous and objectively funny outlet of cartoon villainy. Carcer handles Pasque's issues at the source: he and Pasque have been through a lot of shit that, while very different, has a lot of similarities, and they've both got some similar feelings about it. He's got a sort of "if we're backed into a corner, at least we're in it together" that works wonders on Pasque's feelings of powerlessness in a way that a less pessimistic form of comfort just can't. On the other hand, you've got Leusse and Carcer, queen and king of self-destructive behavior. I'll elaborate on this part another time, but the long and short of it is that Peleme keeps Leusse out of trouble because she's one of the few people whose advice Leusse respects; meanwhile Pasque does his moirail duties the way they're more typically portrayed, in that he comforts the bullshit out of Carcer.

None of this is to say, of course, that the first type of conciliatory relationship is bad and the second is good. I picked the examples I picked because they're the most prominent examples of conciliatory romance in Fragments.

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RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA THEY ALL FINALLY HAVE NAMES AND CHUMHANDLES

most of the names will probably be changed but the chumhandles are almost all permanent and good. you should totally ask me about them.

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Mentis: I bet my girlfriend is texting our boyfriend right now and telling him i suck and am awful. she is RUINING our fucking auspitism right now. I cannot believe her.

What Leusse is actually texting Eldred: idk man i just think maybe you should be more engaged in the relationship if you're gonna be our third leaf :/

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Fragments handles that I have changed

coleopteranSpark > coleopteranDaguerreotype

shallowCombustion > selfConsumptive > demolitionCatalyst

campyVillain > spunkyVillain

doublespeakEducator > doublespeakOrthodox

terrapinHunter > perpetuallyArgumentative > prophetAugmented

ardentProtector > adamantProtector

enthusiasticDichotomist > ophiophagicDichotomist

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Some character dynamics between characters that don't interact much in fragments:

Leusse and Tintoa: cannot be left unsupervised together or they will kill each other. Nothing but pure unbridled platonic hatred here. This gets a million times worse when they meet Carcer and Reptir. Nightmare scenario.

Mentis and Roonei: Mentis thinks they're besties. Roonei would push Mentis off a roof for three dollars.

Vereni and Genetz: two pretty best friends

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like to charge the tepid assblast reblog to cast

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Okay here's the promised friendship post

Surprise! It's not about the major friendships in fragments, it's about the friendships I either have to be careful with or prevent because they'd be so good for each other that they'd get character development too soon.

Roonei Cannel and Genetz Anttio: aspects do matter in fragments and Roonei, a light player, is really drawn to both void players and I think you can do with that what you will. Also this friendship happens.

Tiixit Matsya and Mentis Consil: there is surely an alternate universe whete Mentis sought advice from Tiixit instead of Reptir and it is a much happier world for everyone. This one doesn't happen.

Roonei Cannel and Vireni Cannel: guys stop fighting :(

Carcer Laedre and Tintoa Priepe: the hating Reptir Priepe club is now in session. But in all seriousness I think Tintoa would help Carcer stand up for himself and Carcer would teach her ways of resistance that don't involve excessive violence. This one doesn't happen.

Vireni Cannel and Eldred Anttio: the Cannels and Anttios have interesting relationships. Anyways these two have the sibling relationship with each other they wish they could have with their own dancestors.

Roonei Cannel and unnamed Alternian ceruleanblood: physical illness and mental illness solidarity lmfaooooo. anyway they understand each other. Roonei is on here a lot because fragments Roonei is desperately lonely and I think having close friends would fix her.

I'll add onto this because there were others I forgot

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Okay I'm making a romance list for fragments because I was talking about it so now I'm thinking about it and also I'm making a post about friendships later so here's the big ones

Leusse Laedre <3< Mentis Consil c3< Eldred Anttio: world's most dysfunctional ashen relationship in multiple ways. I desperately need them to break up.

Protse Consil <3</<3 unnamed beforan ceruleanblood <3 Genetz Anttio <3/<> Tiixit Matsya: the less functional of the two Beforan polycules. Ship name for Protse and the ceruleanblood is Snakebite. Ship name for Genetz and the ceruleanblood is Bro Code. They're not really a polycule so much as they fell prey to what I can imagine is a common occurrence with quadrant romance, which is that they fell into a dating chain by accident. Also I think it's funny that Genetz is nominally gay but is not ever seen dating a man. His matesprit is bigender and his moisprit is non binary. Speaking of said bigender matesprit this player really managed to pull a gay man AND a lesbian huh? That's wild bro.

Protse Consil <> Reptir Priepe: sure gay marriage is cool and all but have you ever heard of lesbian divorce?

Roonei Cannel <3< Tintoa Priepe: they r playing gay chicken and Tintoa is losing. BADLY. I figure this story deserved one cheesy unproblematic teen romance amid all the drama and toxicity but I went with a blackrom couple to fill that niche because I get bored of red.

Carcer Laedre, Vereni Cannel, unnamed beforan oliveblood, and unnamed beforan mutantblood's <3</<> (and occasionally c3<) polycule: ship name make war not love. never underestimate the power of a complicated, mostly asexual anarchist polycule. Also some of them are firmly stuck in either pitch or pale, some of them are vacillated, but somehow they're all pitch or pale except for the occasional foray into auspitism. Do not separate them. We're not making it out of troll Portland with this one (except not actually because grumblr already has a troll Portland polycule I think)

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fragments has so many unreliable narrators i swear

not telling any of the others but mentis is the worst offender

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Addicted to drawing my stupid little guys rn

When the creepy alien version of your ancestor starts talking to your friend with concerning beliefs no one has ever addressed and you have to try and nip that shit in the bud

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Mentis Consil and Eldred Anttio's homes voted top ten fucked up places to go die in