#nattering //

[plushri]

god if you really loved me you would give me the ability to kill my friends terrible parents without consequence

[smaller-comfort]

It's shitty pizza night! DID YOU KNOW Hungry Howie's has a secret menu? And that you can order a Tie-Die Pizza, which is just a regular cheese pizza, absolutely encrusted with edible glitter?

Well, now you do. Now you, too, have to live with the knowledge that this exists. May god have mercy on all our souls.

This, btw, is what it's supposed to look like:

[britishmuffin]

oh ;_; this made me really emotional actually... thank you lovely person, I will make more fanart <3

[wheremermaidsdwell]

GUESS WHO'S IN ORTHAPEDIC URGENT CARE

(I stepped wrong last night and did something to my knee 😭 today has sucked, walking is painful)

[hotbunking-vacheads]

You know what's a badly overlooked dynamic in SW Empire-related canon and fanon? Darth Vader and TIE pilots. No idea what new canon has done with Black Squadron, but Legends had developed a little bit of backstory for them and it was kind of fun (the pilots had adorably edgy nicknames like Mauler, Backstabber and - lmfao - Dark Curse, seriously, man, and this dude's combat mission at Yavin IV was supposed to be his last before retiring). Also, come on, a bunch of unhinged speed freaks with more mortality rate than brains would totally idolize anyone on their side pulling an Anakin with a starfighter.

[sixthcrane]

Bro I hope your leg is okay 😭😭

Me too bro 💀 (description under read more)

It was just a mosquito bite that got really bad, and I like scratched open a hole in my leg. I think it’s fine bc it looks healed enough from how fucked up it used to be. The tissue around the area was very red and got swollen huge, but it’s faded a lot and shrunk in size thanks to the treatment. The nurse at the CVS clinic said it’s fine, but she still prescribed me more medication. I wasn’t able to finish the first trial

That and another bite on my OTHER leg is showing the same signs, and (tmi) it started leaking like the other one did before it got super fucked up looking so 💀💀💀 AT LEAST I HAVE ANTIBIOTICS?? I’m just grateful I can get them in this situation bc power’s not coming back for another week. I’m focusing on being grateful for everything that does work rn and that I have the privilege of receiving.

[madcap-nattery]

all right it's cool and all that I just got hit with a huge flash of inspiration for a new project and it's making me feel alive again, but I really need to channel that creative energy into completing my Secret Samol project please and thank you, brain

[troiings]

Hopefully I got the right account, recently I stumbled about your Yen/Tiss fic with the flower shop with Tiss being a botanist and Yen charming her way in Tiss' life. In the first chapter, Tiss recommended yellow roses as a congratulatory flowers. Yesterday, I graduated and was gifted yellow roses. It made me remind of your fic. But, mostly Tiss and Yen. Oh Rao, I think I need to re-read again. Love your fic!!!

awww! haha i'm glad you love the fic! and congrats on your graduation!

[the-iron-orchid]

Actually I'mma talk about this outside my tags lol

I don't generally take the initiative in finding other characters to ship with, because:

Most folks in this fandom are younger than me

I have a very strong personality (if anyone couldn't tell...) and I don't want to accidentally bulldoze people

Social anxiety and conflict aversion are very common around here

With all of this in mind, the LAST thing I want is for people to just go along with me because they feel like they can't say no. That's no fun for anybody!

What I will do is to drop ask memes and such to encourage interaction of various sorts - platonic stuff is great, too! - and let people come to me instead. I recognize that people may feel too intimidated to interact, or be afraid I'll think they're just trying to get an OC model made by shipping with me, but with the first three things in mind, it just seems to be the best way to go.

With all that said, don't be afraid to drop shippy bullshit in my inbox or send in an ask meme if you want to, because more is always merrier!

[plushri]

Oh you're having a good day? Well Wakaba doesn't remember Utena. What about now?

[smaller-comfort]

Extremely rambly thoughts on necrontyr society/marriage headcanon stuff. Some of this dovetails with the snecron biology stuff; you get 'gestational parent' and 'inseminating parent' as concepts because I'm not going to be more creative with words tonight.

At the upper levels of society, marriage is solely for cementing political alliances and the transfer of wealth. That's it. It's a legal contract between two families, and the contract lays out how wealth and power are shared and inherited between them.

Courtship would vary wildly between dynasties and even between different vassal states within a dynasty (a lot of this gets flattened out post-biotransference, alas). But before then, culturally, a dynasty from the eastern fringe might be nearly as alien to a dynasty in the west as any of the Unclean. (The fact that they've got mutually intelligible language across the galaxy is hilariously the biggest science-fantasy leap for me, I'll be honest.) Also, space-mormon Ithakas is weird as hell to everyone.

So, for example: Nihilakh crownworld nobility courtship customs involve, first and foremost, a team of lawyers, on both sides. Immediate members of the Phaeron's household probably have to get permission from the Yyth seer before even beginning the process. Courtship gifts are wildly expensive and extravagant and meticulously documented, with particular emphasis placed on the provenance of unique rarities. The exchange of courtship gifts is always a public spectacle- 'subtle' is for crypteks and lawyers.

At higher levels of society, the two people getting married might not even meet until after the paperwork is filed. Mid and lower level nobles are a bit more relaxed about it, but they're also not dealing with quite the same scale of wealth. Weddings are still ridiculously over-the-top affairs that can and will bankrupt smaller houses hoping to secure a politically advantageous match to a larger family.

Meanwhile, on Solemnace, you do see a similar emphasis on legal documentation, and rare or unique courtship gifts, but they're much less extravagant about the displays of wealth. Gifts are more often exchanged in private, and though weddings can get elaborate, it tends to be more about tasteful, elegant luxury than extravagant excess. Is this at least in part to keep their Overlord from stealing the silverware at the wedding? It's impossible to say.

Over on Mandragora, you announce your intention to court by challenging your intended to a duel. The date and time of the duel is the anticipated date of the nuptuals. Generally the intended couple will not actually fight one another, but the wedding will involve a lot of demonstrations of martial prowess, and usually there will be a ritualized duel of some sort between representatives of each family. Whichever family wins gets to officiate the wedding, and keeps the larger share of the dowry.

On Gidrim, no dueling is required, but it's customary to present your intended with some sort of hunting trophy. There'd be some kind of annual tourney or major gaming event where young necrontyr might dedicate their victories to their intended- think medieval tourneys, and knights jousting for tokens from their beloved. Now, given that gender parity is standard, this potentially means that you end up fighting against the person you're trying to court. This sort of thing is frequently the subject of romantic comedies and dramas. Gidrim weddings usually last several days, with feasting and recitations of long form epic military ballads and more games/martial demonstrations. The subsequent hangover may last up to a week, if you're doing it right.

Those would all be courtship practices for a primary spouse or consort for higher-level nobility. Polyamory is common, both for the purpose of providing heirs, and because at the end of the day a marriage contract is a business contract, and why wouldn't you try to form as many alliances as possible?

So it's not uncommon for third or fourth children to be married off as secondary spouses to vassal houses, to reinforce political ties between families. Since everyone is dying of turbo cancer, it's also not uncommon for these secondary marriage contracts to include a clause for what happens when the fourth kid in the line of succession becomes the heir apparent. (Divorce practices vary between dynasties as well, but by and large it is a fast process out of necessity.)

Secondary spouse courtship and weddings can be just as elaborate as consort matches, depending on the status/wealth of everyone involved. Usually they're not quite as involved- on the other hand, if your new intended is the Phaeron's fourth daughter, you're damn well going to go all out, or suffer the consequences.

Because of rampant fertility issues due to turbo cancer and a not insignificant amount of inbreeding among the nobility in certain dynasties, inheritance and succession frequently have nothing to do with parentage or genetics. Heirs are adopted from subsidiary families all the time. There are some families where heirs are always adopted, to reduce infighting among the actual children, or to avoid particular genetic defects.

That said, some dynasties do place a lot of weight on genetics and familial lines, so contract marriages or concubines/surrogates are frequently used to produce heirs. Any children produced via concubine are legally members of the family who owns/employs the concubine. Doesn't matter who the inseminating or gestational parent is; legally, the child has legitimate status as a member of that household. (This can afford the concubine a certain amount of status as well, or at least security; fertility is a highly sought after trait.)

(Sidebar on contraception and eugenics: contraceptive implants are used most frequently among nobility/merchant class/military officers. The further down the social ladder you go, the less available any kind of medical technology is, never mind contraceptives, and commoners/serfs/slaves are encouraged to reproduce as often as possible. Rank and file miltary, however, would be surgically sterilized, and have any viable gametes extracted for genetic testing and possible use by surrogates. Sometimes this is reversible; most of the time it isn't, because it's assumed they're going to die before they'd be able to retire and have children anyway. A majority of pregnancies result in miscarriage; many children don't make it out of infancy because of birth defects. Infanticide is still common in some parts of the galaxy, but they'll usually try to terminate a pregnancy early if it looks like it'll be nonviable.) (Maybe they do lay clutches of eggs, I'm fuzzy on a lot of these details, honestly. Not all of them- but a lot of them.)

(Zahndrekh does not get to retire to a remote garden on a mountain with Obyron to write terrible poetry and raise a bunch of fat, happy children. He thinks about it sometimes, though.) (Obyron does not want to imagine how impossibly unruly Zahndrekh's progeny would be, and is frequently, fervently glad that he's sterile.) (Also he's pretty sure 'retirement' is just what happens when you meet the wrong end of a pike.)

Circling back around to Ithakas being fucking weird, it's traditional for Ithakan dynasts to practice either parthenogenesis or self-fertilization, which is considered either taboo or just kind of gross in most other parts of the galaxy. (Not everywhere- but definitely a lot of places. Parthenogenesis is actually a fairly rare trait for necrontyr; it was considered one of the things that made Ithakka the Lawmaker holy by the original separatist cult. It's not something all of their descendents have shared due to the general weirdness/instability of necrontyr genetics.) So there's no mention of Oltyx and Djoseras's mother, because they only ever had one parent. (Does this make everything about Unnas ever so slightly worse? Sure does!)

If biotransference hadn't happened when it did, Djoseras would've been expected to start producing children as soon as it became clear that Oltyx wasn't going to live past the age of 20. (At one point someone probably floated the idea of ending the Ithakas-Ogdobekh war by marrying Oltyx to Zultanekh. Djoseras would've shot down that idea- and whoever suggested it- with extreme prejudice.) (Zultanekh still laughs about this on occasion. No one ever told Oltyx; Zultanekh certainly isn't going to.) (Zuktanekh would have suggested a contract marriage between himself and Djoseras; after all, would Zultanekh not have birthed the most magnificent sons to be seen in the history of either dynasty? Yes, yes he would have! Alas, it was not to be. Djoseras rejected Zultanekh's courting gift of sulfur wine, and anyway, Anathrosis and Unnas would have come together united in abject horror and rage at the idea.)

Ogdobekh courtship usually starts with gifts of food or wine, followed by fine metalwork- either weapons and armor, or jewelry. Ithakas courtship has similar beats, since they were an Ogdobekh subsidiary originally. They're more about subtle gestures and acts of service than material gifts, though. (Oltyx is not really aware of any of this; as kynazh, he would've been explicitly forbidden from courting because, again, Ithakas is fucking weird. Yenekh, on the other hand, would be familiar with the process, and probably had no shortage of suitors pre-biotransference. He was a little too busy being a war hero to entertain any of them seriously.) (His first true love is the sea the void fancy spaceships fancy swords duty to the dynasty.)

(Drazak courtship usually starts with fighting side by side in the horde; sharing kills, sharing food, sharing flesh. The hunger is always easier to bear when you find someone to share it with.)

Cryptek conclaves can get weird and varied as well; some are extremely insular, and any children born to members of the conclave would be raised and trained there. Others will excommunicate anyone who gets pregnant, because pregnancy interferes with certain schools of technomancy. (You cannot have a pregnant plasmancer. It ends badly for everyone involved. Chronomancy also tends to have unpredictable effects on developing embryos.) Those conclaves actively recruit new members from military and commoner castes, rather than relying on existing members to keep the population going. Generally, crypteks don't marry, because their legal obligations are to their conclave first, and then their patron.

Cryptek/noble or cryptek/merchant couples would be vanishingly rare, because most crypteks don't have the wealth or status to make a politically advantageous match. (Orikan is kind of an exception to that rule, and he would've had a number of people vying for his favor, though not so much in a courtship-leading-to-marriage kind of way. I'm torn between the idea of him slutting it up in the Sautekh court, or being universally repulsed by anyone he considers less intelligent than him. Could go either way.) Pre-biotransference, crypteks of different schools who didn't see each other as competition would be the most common pairing, but even then actual marriage would be rare. There's no wealth or power to inherit or share, so couples would be more common-law/informal.

Otherwise, it'd be bullshit academia rules dialed up to 11. "Did they...you know...publish research together?" "No, they were fucking in the library." "Oh, I thought it was something scandalous. Nevermind then."

[britishmuffin]

Fully aware this is mainly an imminent-death-of-twitter issue but

I got a few more Bluesky invites going spare, so let me know if you need one 👍!!

[wheremermaidsdwell]

idk if i'm gonna manage any more tonight so this might be the tally! soulmates was at 7k when october began, it is now at 67k! I think I'm nearing the end. guessing 85-90k.

[hotbunking-vacheads]

Normal person: *insert cute universally relatable headcanons here*

Me, a gremlin: So, the current canon Wookieepedia entry for Corellia has this line here: In the DVD commentary of Solo, set decorator Lee Sandales revealed that the film's crew pictured Corellia as the Star Wars version of Venice, Italy, specifically an "industrial" Venice. I have genuinely no idea how aware Americans are that Venice, Italy, does have quite massive industrial districts, and anyway now I cannot unsee Corellia as the space version of Mestre, Porto Marghera, and even if it's a bit of a geography stretch towards Trieste, also Monfalcone because shipyards.

[sixthcrane]

i love eating apples wish i had horse jaws so i could just hork em down

[madcap-nattery]

why did shelved by genre just stop working on my podcatcher midway through an episode yesterday... can't stream, can't download...