#orphanarium

[fryandleelasbigfling]

i love ur blog:))

do u think the orphanarium kids will return in the revival? i know theyre adopted now but with the idea that itll be set in 3023-ish, they could be teens. could be some interesting dynamics :00

thank you! and that's a good question and definitely one i've thought about. i don't expect them to age up the kids (including dwight and cubert) after not doing the same in the CC era, but it could be funny for jokes. i think they could also justify it by saying the kids are just that malnourished they haven't grown physically in 20 years, or otherwise kept in some sort of stasis.

i think it would be mad funny if they aged up cubert and dwight to make fun of nerdy millennials though, definitely tracks with cubert's original purpose of mocking those ACKSHUALLYYYY kind of fans. most of the orphans don't have the same level of personality except sally, but i would not be opposed to seeing them again especially interacting with leela. honestly i don't even 100% expect the show to remember they got the orphans adopted (or maybe they'll handwave it as abner firing them if their show ended lol) but it would be funnier IMO to see them still working in the TV industry.

[wheresjonno2023-complete]

Mina tells us today that Jonathan is out and won't be home for lunch. So...

[freelafan4life545]

Time for a fan theory about Leela's orphanarium. TW for child abuse.

The adults at Leela's orphanarium where she grew up were abusive.

I mean, bars on window...

🤨

Now, I don't have proof for physical abuse, but verbally.

I mean, come on! Keep up! It's 2024!

Now, for Leela's side. Well... let me throw in @fryandleelasbigfling post (again).

I mean, growing up, neglected, verbally abused, and bullied just makes Leela suffer CPSTD (also a headcanon) and develop unhealthy ways to cope (I.E violent outburts) But pretending she liked it!?

That's stockholm I think.

What do y'all think?

[mimble-sparklepudding]

Family headcanons 😞 = Finding an orphaned child would your muse opt to take them in, find someone more qualified, or just leave them? ( ´ ∀ `)ノ～ ♡

Thank you for the ask @yourlove-is-sunlight :)

Mimble has rescued a number of orphaned children in his time, including from active combat situations. Despite his air of cheery flippancy, the protection of the vulnerable is something he takes very seriously. Enough to even let it show on occasion.

Fortunately he has much more strength than his diminutive frame would suggest, which has greatly assisted him when attempting to carry non-Lalafell children to safety (most Roegadyn toddlers are actually somewhat larger than he is for example).

Whilst not in a position to parent a child full-time himself, Mimble is remarkably successful in rehoming orphaned children, if not with a suitable caregiver, then in an institution suitable for the purpose. Many such institutions have actually benefitted materially from Mimble's patronage - and even more so the patronage of others who have found Mimble's encouragement to provide funding terribly persuasive. Recent examples include the Eulmorian Orphanarium and The Bloefhis Bloefhiswyn Memorial Home for Children in Limsa Lominsa.

[mannytoodope]

Professor Farnsworth: Good news, everyone! You all know the orphanarium where Leela grew up?

Fry: Sure. We talk about it all the time.

Leela: Really?

Fry: No. Burn!

Professor Farnsworth: Well done, fellows! Anyway, said orphanarium has named Leela "Orphan of the Year

Amy: Yee-ha!

Bender: Alright!

Amy: Your parents must be so proud. Oops! Sorry.

[overfedvenison]

It's entirely understandable but it's really funny when DMs mangle their words Really amused at my one friend who legitimately called it an "Orphanarium" once

[flamboyantcuttlevawn]

Yasta Gwyn - Imperium Maledictum Psyker

My group will soon be starting a game of Imperium Maledictum, and I'll be playing Telepathy/Divination psyker Yasta Gwyn.

I've started writing her backstory, so I'll put the first part of it under the cut.

The 9th child of Admiral Nonus Gwyn of the Askellon Sector, Yasta Gwyn was born under a veil of ill-omen. Conceived aboard her father’s flagship, the Indomitus Noctis, during a nightmare warp voyage plagued by storms and predators of the Immaterium, Yasta’s mother Deanna struggled to carry her pregnancy safely to term and ultimately lost her life whilst labouring to deliver the pale, sickly infant. 

Knowing that a ship of the line was no place to raise a noble child, Admiral Gwyn entrusted his youngest daughter to one of the Sisters Hospitaller serving within his fleet, Sister Alleyn. She was ordered to deliver Yasta to the Gwyn family estate on the Askellan Capital world of Juno and to remain there in custody of the child until a nurse could be arranged to take over her care.

The voyage from the fleet back to Juno was not easy, requiring the good grace of a passing merchant vessel and promises secured from the Admiral to arrange, and the passage was by no means a direct one. Nearly eighteen months passed on the meandering merchant’s ship’s route, and by the time Alleyn finally made landfall with the now-toddler Yasta, she arrived to find the Gwyn estate in shambles and the servants and other children of the Admiral nowhere to be seen.

With nowhere else to turn, Alleyn returned to the nearest Order Hospitaller Sanctum with the babe in arm, to seek guidance and advice from the Sister Superior. It didn’t take long for her to find what had happened - while she had been in transit, a little under a year after departing from the Indomitus Noctis, a tragedy had befallen the Admiral and he’d lost his life to a sudden brainstorm that his medicae had been unable to treat.

Though he had siblings of his own, those that had survived the Admiral were scattered throughout the galaxy on warfronts and serving in sector fleets all their own, and were not able to take charge of his orphans nor his House. So in the tradition of all waifs of the Imperial war machine, Yasta’s siblings had been scattered to various Schola Progenia based on their respective ages, sexes and abilities. And so, the Sister Superior ordered, would be the fate of Yasta Gwyn too.

Delivered to the care of the Schola Progenium orphanarium, Yasta’s early years were otherwise ordinary. With her intellect being fairly middling and her physical prowess rather lacking due to her slight, willowy frame, she showed no aptitude for any of the militant tracks. Eventually her pleasant if somewhat mischievous demeanour led her tutors to guide her down the path toward the Orders Famulous, where her personable nature might provide some use in the Noble Houses of the Imperium. 

Within the Novitiate Path of the Orders Famulous, Yasta started to thrive. She seemed to have almost a preternatural ability to anticipate the needs and desires of those around her, often falling into the role of diplomat amongst her sisters, soothing minor spats and arguments amongst the temperamental teenage girls. Her powers of observation were unparalleled, and she was the favourite amongst the dorms for her ability to anticipate when the Senior Novitiates or Dorm Mistresses were about to spring a surprise inspection, helping her friends to hide their contraband and escape punishment. 

But it was on the eve of Yasta’s graduation to a Sister proper when that ill star shone down on her once more. The onset of puberty had resulted in a tendency to night terrors for the young woman, dark dreams of claws and teeth, of hideous laughter in the void and terrifying visions of fate for those around her. In an effort to combat these, she’d taken to filling her free time outside lessons and meals with prayer, often sitting up late into the night to transcribe passages from her prayer books onto small parchments that she would carefully sew into the hems of her robes. 

It was during one of these late transcriptions the night before she turned eighteen that Yasta fell asleep, quill in hand. And as she slumbered, she continued to write, her neatly printed Imperial prayer script scrawling off into scratched and frantic ramblings that foretold the gruesome death of the Schola’s Sister Superior in a welter of blood and bile. 

The next morning the Schola awoke to news of a tragedy - the Sister Superior had died in her sleep due to an ulcer rupturing, leading her to bleed to death in her bed. 

[theworldvsyoshiko]

Oh yeah, Beasley was another teenage wild man we found bleeding out in the wilderness. If you take a walk on this planet you're gonna trip over a paralyzed or bleeding teenager in ten minutes, tops.

Starting to get concerned about Stein's fascination with slapping people.

He looks like a fucking Beasley.

Fast Walker + burning passion for Crafting is pretty choice, though, so I'll forgive him for being named Waldo Beasley.

And

the colony's up to 13 kids. Official orphanarium status. Gotta make more bedrooms. We're about this close to the point where I stop bothering to announce every new child as they arrive, because it's roughly every six minutes at this point.

[dark-magician-girl-meets-world]

Every Christmas, kind Master Fazzbim would let all of us children at the orphanarium share one of these

I’m crying my beautiful husband has wrapped the most limp wristed pathetic sickly blunt in the world

[fryandleelasbigfling]

on fry, leela, and the baby carriage (pre-hulurama)

aka “jen infodumps about her freela parenting headcanons for a very long time”

i think about this a lot. other people in the fandom think about this a lot. if fry and leela do get permanently married and settle down... would they ever have kids? could that work in the narrative, somehow?

this is, in my opinion, a complicated question, but one that i think would be utterly fascinating for the show to address. and to explain it, i’m going to talk about leela and fry’s individual trauma surrounding family, the struggles this would cause them in trying to have kids, and whether they would want to give it a shot anyway.

this is going to be a very long post.

leela

i’m gonna be honest. leela has mom energy. i think this is the inevitable reality of any character played by katey sagal, but the show itself has leaned into this characterization several times -- bender sarcastically calling her “mom” in “fry am the egg man,” and of course “2d blacktop” making an entire joke about her suddenly acting like a soccer mom (though her character writing in that episode is a bit weird... i think it’s the Written By Men of it all).

but despite this, leela has a bit of a complicated relationship with the idea of motherhood. there are two episodes where she’s been convinced to conceive a child under the guise of repopulating her species. i obviously don’t count these instances towards her wanting to be a mother because A) it was out of obligation and she never suggests otherwise and B) she didn’t properly consent to either situation. 

her excitement to start a family with adlai gives a bit more credence to the idea she would genuinely want kids. in fact, she even gets the idea to adopt because of her own experience as an orphan.

however, this is complicated by how superficial her relationship with adlai was. was she genuinely excited to be a mother at this point? or was she just happy that her very normal childhood crush wants to start a nuclear family with her? is it about her actual feelings, or is she just doing what she thinks she’s “supposed” to do?

there’s also the fact she has no emotional connection (so far) to her biological offspring with kif, consistently calling them “her DNA” rather than “her kids.” this is because culturally, they’re amy’s kids, and i like that she (and the narrative) respects that they came from kif and amy’s love. it’s almost guaranteed that the tadpoles will return and i think it would be very interesting to address leela’s relationship (or lack thereof) with them. after all, part of her connection to motherhood in several of these situations is that it’s what’s expected from a committed, loving, normal relationship -- if she has a loving husband and good kids, it means she proved that she’s a lovable, capable woman after all. her accident with kif doesn’t mean any of that. 

despite these nuances, it’s clear leela is an extremely caring, dare i say maternal (no matter what her sims 3 counterpart says) person. it’s a core trait that she will do anything to take care of what she perceives as a helpless animal, probably because she spent decades without anybody to take care of her. she coddles nibbler like he’s her own baby boy, and the way he refers to himself as the “object of [her] misplaced affections” is primarily about her lack of a boyfriend, it also kind of leans into him as her substitute baby, especially since she seemingly has this hover pram thing already set up:

she was good at babysitting the de-aged coworkers in "teenage mutant leela's hurdles." she also obviously connects very strongly to the kids at the orphanarium and wants to be a good role model to them. she connects with the young jrrr and even outright says she hopes he always sees her as his mama (before he drops the detail that his species eats their mothers). 

in “the bots and the bees,” she’s the only one who isn’t fully repulsed when bev gives birth, jumps up to help her out, and is generally the most interested in bender’s journey through fatherhood. while this is because she’s a naturally helpful person with a lot of personal hangups about parenthood, i just think it’s worth noting here.

she also gushed over the nannybot back in the fox era!

even in “meanwhile,” despite a later joke that i’ll discuss later, her response to the unexplained glimmer is “if it keeps bugging us, we'll either kill it or adopt it.” literally right after their wedding, i love it so much.

i also have to bring up the futurama comics because, while they are only debatably canon, there are multiple instances that pretty much confirm that leela wants kids. issue #26 (my favorite comic hands-down) sets up leela being forlorn about the fact she isn’t close to falling in love and having a family, playing on the “biological clock” trope.

however, after the harrowing ordeal of raising her own infant and teenage selves (god i love this comic!), she stops obsessing over her biological deadline and just lives in the moment, appreciating herself. i love that! 

even more explicit is issue #62. this comic sets up that leela wants to be a mom despite the rest of the crew not thinking she’s sensitive enough to be one. (personally i think it’s kind of shoehorned dialogue and that fry is OOC to talk to leela like this at this point in their relationship, but it is very, very comics-canon that leela wants kids.)

the plot of the comic is basically she gets amnesia, zapp claims her and convinces her that she’s his wife and they have three teenage robot kids. it’s a bit of a weird plot and it’s a weak zapp characterization imo, but it does establish that leela works well taking care of the kids and they get very attached to each other to the point she wants to have a biological baby of her own. 

she’s not in a fully lucid position though and she could very well just be leaning into the tradwife role because she doesn’t know anything else until later. however, when she does get her memory back, she obviously rejects zapp violently, but she is genuinely endeared to the robot kids to the point of crying. so this probably goes beyond just leela wanting to prove she can do something she was told she can’t do.

(granted the comic does have this as the punchline but it’s pretty clear that as caring as leela is, she’s got a lot on her plate which would get in the way of her being a mother in her actual working life)

there’s also an extremely cute comic where everybody becomes a scout leader and leela leads a bunch of mutant scouts and it gets me feelsy. it’s literally the issue right before the mommy leela one. something on the writers’ minds i guess.

so does this mean leela should be a mom? honestly, i would like to see her accept that she doesn’t have to be a mom to have worth in her life, but she still wants to be, once she feels ready to do so. a lot of leela’s arc is learning that she doesn’t have to fit someone else’s idea of a perfect woman, or a perfect family, or a perfect love life, just to stop being lonely -- she needs to lean into what makes her feel confident and happy. if she feels fulfilled taking care of a child, then she should go ahead and do it. not out of obligation towards the universe or towards the “good, respectable woman” mold -- just cuz it would make her happy. (this is why, if her role as “the other” really is referring to her needing to be a mom to fry’s child for some sort of Chosen One prophecy, i really hope they don’t play that straight, because i very much want leela’s autonomy to be a focus of any arc dealing with her being a mother and i do not want her to be forced into it after multiple other episodes where she almost gets tricked into conceiving a child.)

i can see her struggling with perfectionism about it, though. we see in issue #26 that she struggles to calm her baby self and communicate with her teenage self and i think not knowing exactly what to do would put a lot of stress on her because she’s so used to being the one who has everything together. i think she might have to reel herself in from lashing out and then feel guilty about not being an “ideal” loving mother.

“teenage mutant leela’s hurdles” shows her deliberately trying to live out what she thinks a “normal” teenage youth entails because she never got that as an actual child, and i wonder if she would project these same ideal expectations onto her own child, particularly if she had a daughter. (i do think fry is good at helping her outgrow this desire to fit a particular mold, though, as are her parents.) she’s also really obsessed with being a good role model (”a leela of her own,” “yo leela leela”) and i can see her worrying that any fault of her child is a reflection of her “failures” as a parent.

it’s interesting to think that leela probably never expected to have biological kids due to being the last of her kind (though i do headcanon she once had a pregnancy scare with sean). but i also headcanon that mutants don’t have a lot of kids, as we don’t see many, if any kids in the sewers (barring an issue or two in the comics where mutant kids show up). it would make sense because A) a lot of mutants don’t want to bring kids into their life situation, B) they can mutate enough to live for very long times so reproducing isn’t as needed, and C) i don’t think a lot of them want to or even can have sex with each other, ha ha. i can see there being a lot of pressure from her parents, because they probably also want to live vicariously and actually be able to raise a baby like they always wanted to, especially on the surface. 0′)

i don’t think her being a “strong independent woman” is at odds with this arc, either, as long as it’s not treated as an obligation. bojack horseman has a great example in princess carolyn of a character who still wants to have a family despite being a career woman who is incredibly attached to her work, and she doesn’t have to give either of it up if she has people to support her. i think it helps that we have amy to contrast, as she didn’t want kids (despite ending up with them, though i suspect kif will be the one taking care of them). 

(also, female writers. that goes a long way in making an arc like this not come across as a derailment.) 

fry

there is much more to say about leela than fry because they haven’t done as much with this subject when it comes to him. sure, he has a son, technically, but y’know... it’s his dad, and he never sees that as anything but a weird sexual encounter he had in the past.

but i do think fry would want kids with leela, especially if that’s what she wants. there’s a one-off line that implies he’s not opposed to this in “the cyber house rules,” though this is before he (knowingly) sees leela as anything more than an attractive coworker and doesn’t care much about long-term goals yet. it’s really more a joke about fry just being extremely persuasive (especially given how he gets roped into bender’s mass adoption scheme). 

but the actual biggest thing that makes me wanna see fry as a dad: he is so, so, so attached to taking care of things, usually in the context of animals in need. he saved seymour from starvation, brought the orphaned leelu out of depression, and protected mr peppy at the risk of his own life. creatures are naturally drawn to him for some reason, probably because he’s got such a big heart and lacks the reservations most people have. he connects to animals at their level and doesn’t have the confidence to act superior most of the time. i think this can easily be applied to kids as well. 

“fry am the egg man” is probably the most glaring example of this, because he immediately latches onto the egg when he learns the egg has a chance of hatching. (which kind of raises some “pro-life” questions that aren’t necessarily contradictory to fry’s political upbringing, but i think He Could Outgrow That in the right situation, ideally.)

his initial plan is to eat it but he does genuinely get so attached and protective and it’s sweet to me. he does drop it at the end and quickly detach but i think this at least shows that he has a real sense of love even if his sense of responsibility and focus can slip sometimes. (this is where i remind the audience that leela lays eggs according to “leela and the genestalk” so fry being good at raising eggs could be very useful there)

fry grew up with a very inconsistently-affectionate, often emotionally neglectful family. like leela, he doesn’t have a really clear reference point of what a good family unit entails, but he isn’t self-aware enough to seek it out. he can be reckless and indulgent, and that often puts whatever he’s caring for at risk, but he is loving. we know from his behavior towards leela (and bender, and even a few of his other girlfriends) that he will put his life on the line for what he loves. and i think if he had a baby with leela, it would mean so much more to him, because he loves leela so much i don’t think he would want any child of hers to be in danger. he just needs to be able to recognize what danger is.

one of the comics i didn’t bring up yet is issue #32, which introduces us to the closest thing we have to a canon freela baby: leelan von fry-bot, a hybrid clone mixed with fry and leela’s DNA (so not the result of nookie😔) that also takes over a bender copy’s body and overthrows humans for oppressing him like a boss. anyway my point is that fry’s initial reaction to having a kid isn’t more than “oh cool this means leela and i have sex” (and thus getting slapped bc their dynamic is still kind of like that by this point in the comics), but when leelan gets apprehended, he straight-up forgives the little genocidal maniac. 

i don’t think fry really thought of himself with kids before leela. pre-canon, i don’t think he expected to settle down or have any committed relationship that didn’t exist for the purpose of mooching and surviving. i do think, if he did have a child, fry always saw himself with a son (again, not counting yancy sr). there’s a joke in “the route of all evil” that is analogous to him wanting a son (”i hope it's a lager, so I can take it to a ball game”), and in FATEM, he specifically wants the egg “to blossom into a beautiful young man, like [he] did as a baby.” it’s just easier for him to project that way and i think the culture of his house (i.e. the persistence of the yancy fry name) would put a lot of expectations on the boys to have sons. i think not having a son would surprise him but he’d still get so excited. he’d probably expect his daughter to be an action hero as much as leela does (though i think his expectations are way lower). 

we also see in later episodes that while he represses it, fry really does miss having family and gets very quickly attached to the family he does have ("near death wish," "game of tones") so i think having a kid, especially biological offspring, would shake him to his core in a way he didn't expect could ever happen. it helps solidify to him that leela truly is his family now.

there’s also a gag early in the comics when they need to get more humans on earth and it’s implied fry asks leela to repopulate the planet but otherwise idrk if there’s much specifically with him and kids. 

there’s the other joke in “meanwhile” where he implies it’s good they didn’t have children because they might get violent with them (and admittedly they have gotten a bit aggressive with kids in the past, i.e. leela trying to hit cubert), but personally i don’t think fry would do that, even if it’s been implied domestic abuse was uncomfortably normalized for him. leela might be tempted but i think she can reel herself in. and the reason i think they didn’t have kids in the meanwhile timeline is just because it would be too risky to bring a child into a universe where nobody else is sentient and able to help them out, especially after fry and leela die. 

so my conclusion is that fry might not be knowledgeable on the traditions and necessities of healthy parenting right away, but i think he would try to learn. he clearly tries to learn for the people he loves, even when it’s hard, and making leela happy is his top priority. he doesn’t want her to get stuck with all the hardship (even if she’s still gonna be better at organization and the like). and i think he has such an earnest, unfiltered sense of love that he can connect to his own children immediately. and i think they’d sense that.

here’s a fry kid dogpile for extra cuteness

the narrative potential

fry and leela having kids has been thrown around the writers’ room a lot, according to commentaries. now most of this information i’ve gotten secondhand as i haven’t listened to most commentaries or read older interviews as much. there is an interview/commentary (i forget specifically which) where the writers joke that fry and leela would not be good parents because they’d either be dragging their kids with them on dangerous space missions all the time or leaving them home for long periods of time. (edit: there's also this 2010 bit where DXC says he doesn't want them to "[have] a baby and [move] to the suburbs" or anything for the show's sake lol)

this is an extremely understandable reason not to give fry and leela kids. it’s already bad enough when you overthink where cubert and dwight are during farnsworth and hermes’ various adventures, and fry and leela both work so this is an obstacle. there are ways around this practically -- get leela’s parents or even nibbler to babysit, or get a hologram or something as a proxy, or even have fry stay home at times. but it changes up the dynamic of the show in ways that might be hard to adapt to, especially if they’re already doing something similar with amy and kif. plus, they probably don’t wanna make fry and leela too domestic -- i know they worried about that back in season 6 which led to all the on-and-off stuff, but i think now their concern is just staying sci-fi and not simpsonsy.

but they’ve also, reportedly, teased the idea before, and i think the changing landscape of adult animation (a bit more room for serialization and more serious story elements, which futurama always dabbled in even before other shoes did). rumor has it that the original plot of “law and oracle” involved fry and leela’s son coming back from the future (and i think talking backwards or something???), but it was scrapped for i believe being too dark. i think a time traveling child is a great way to avoid the status quo shift of raising a child, even though it would be pretty big and tragic for fry and leela to meet their child and then watch them go knowing they won’t exist for several years. it’d be funny to see their child try and ensure their conception, or maybe even prevent it in some sort of twist on the trope. (this is one of my theories for “the temp.”)

we’ve seen hints of them as parents in “the route of all evil” where they both get hype about bender’s analogous pregnancy with beer, though they’re also excited to... have beer, lol. also some of my friends read a lot into the way they look at tonya in “stench and stenchability” and i do not blame them for that.

this concern about the status quo is also where adoption can come up again, as i can totally see fry and leela adding some wayward teenager to their family, someone just self-sufficient enough to not be too much of a detriment to the crew. i know the orphanarium kids are all adopted (though they could easily go back on that) but ideally i’d like them to adopt a mutant kid; i think it would mean a lot to leela for obvious reasons. maybe an alien or a robot, even. it doesn’t need to be formal adoption -- i can see them just picking up some lost little outcast guy because they feel bad he has nobody to raise him. maybe not for the rest of the series but even for an episode it’d be funny.

however, i think the idea of them having biological kids is utterly fascinating. is there precedent for a mutant breeding with a normal human? if leela “occasionally lays an egg,” what other weird stuff happens with her reproduction system? having an egg to carry could be another way to make the baby plot easier without incapacitating leela and fry too much after all. (and like i said before it’d be so cute to imagine fry carrying around an egg all protectively... like the dad in harvey beaks.) i think more people should take advantage of leela’s mutant genetics and give their offspring a bit more of her latent mutant traits, or traits from her parents’ side. more tentacles and tails and sheddable skin! hell, give them three eyes like leela’s grandma!

(but i think leela actually being pregnant would be interesting too. you know she’d be even more emotionally fucked up than usual on hormones, and would get so stubborn about not being incapacitated and not needing help even though fry keeps wanting to dote on her. also i wonder if mutant pregnancy would be different at all? radioactive morning sickness? fun! it would make some aspects of the show harder to work around though, like i do not know if she could fit behind the wheel while pregnant without making weird adjustments, and i also worry about the infamy behind the whole MWC pregnancy arc, but i don’t think that same uncomfortable and traumatic risk translates to animation.)

and what about fry’s genetics? does his child inherit the lack of delta brainwave? this comes up a lot in freela baby talk, especially with the “chosen one” theory, that fry’s brain thing and leela’s mutant thing might combine in some world-saving combination. again, i’d rather this be deconstructed, because nibbler trying to coax fry and leela to have babies for the sake of the universe is amusing but also pretty fucked-up, and we know fry doesn’t like being used and leela has already had this kind of deceptive thing happen to her before. i want them to do this because they want to, not out of some debt to the universe. that’s way too much pressure on them and their kid.

even putting that aside, i can see both fry and leela having insecurities about having a child, especially biologically. leela of course has her mutant/cyclops trauma and aforementioned perfectionism, but i think fry would be worried too about “ruining” their child with his own mental issues. i can see a sitcom type of story where they try to conceive (maybe with some weird sci-fi assistive technology) but start panicking when it doesn’t work and blaming themselves. one of my theories for “parasites regained” is that fry only takes the worms again when he’s trying to get leela pregnant, because he knows leela loves him for him by now, but he still wants to make sure their child is as perfect and healthy as can be. (i could even see a twist with leela also taking the parasites due to having these same issues.) honestly them getting pregnant on accident (and you know fry’s pullout game weak) would also throw them for a loop.

there’s also the complicated drama and fun of bender getting jealous of fry putting his attention towards not just his wife, but some smelly brat he put inside her. bender sometimes has the vibes of being fry and leela’s bratty teenage son so i love him interacting with their kid like a bitter older brother.

even if they don’t give fry and leela a kid, i could see them bait-and-switching the audience cuz they know it’s such a big deal to some people. like leela seems to have pregnancy symptoms but it’s really just some weird facehugger possession or womb horror. or they catch a glimpse of their future and think they see themselves with a kid but it’s out of context. or they knock fry up instead cuz they love making the guys pregnant instead. i have this joke idea for when the kif babies come back that leela seems to get baby fever really bad, but it’s a literal fever she contracted from the amphibiosian swamp and it’s only cured by the insanity of babysitting the kif babies. 

honestly if they decide they’re not ready to have kids, if they’re not emotionally stable enough or they don’t have a good place to live or if they’re worried about bender or their careers, i’m fine with that. i’d actually love them communicating and deciding on that together! i think it’s just an interesting subject to explore and i really hope the revival does something with it. :)

[glowyjellyfish]

So, I’ve been having a Problem of continually switching to new Sims 2 games. Which is fine, except I keep failing to come back to the ones I’ve already started. Part of it is frustration over certain CC collections causing constant crashes, part of it is limited time causing me to lose momentum on what I was thinking about at work, part of it is probably just ADHD.

So what I’m gonna do right now is list all the games/hoods I have started and feel are in progress (as opposed to ones I am never going back to), plus ones I am planning. This is mainly for sorting out my thoughts and focus, but it’s fine if anybody else wants to look or ask me questions.

Modern Downloads Folder

1. Megahood Classic. This is an Ubermegahood I started around 2020, called a Megahood out of habit. For a while this folder had an older set of mods, not including things like traits and supernatural lifestates, but currently the only thing that distinguishes it is a lack of Proportionate Aging. It’s… slightly far along, for a megahood—most of the premade elders are dead and most of the premade teens are graduating college. It slowed down a bit because I had the aging mod installed for a while before deciding to remove it. And I had no plans to use new supernatural lifestates or traits in this megahood.

2. The Orphanarium. This is multiple instances of the Orphan Challenge played in the same hood, using deaged versions of characters from many of my favorite media, such as FF7 and Stargate. This is a type of hood I have played many times over the years, but this particular version I was just starting to set up.

Disney Downloads Folder

1. Lake Buena Vista, the Disney-themed BaCC featuring social class rules, guilds, and True Love. This is the project I made the downloads folder for, hence the name. Currently, the collection of downloads is virtually identical to the Modern collection, except this one uses Proportionate Aging.

2. Modern Ubermegahood. A freshly started Ubermegahood, featuring traits, proportionate aging with a calendar system, new LTWs, and hereditary supernaturalism. I’ve made a few posts about this; rest assured I got far enough ahead that it feels awkward to go back and make more. Plus I started forgetting to screenshot and write notes.

Medieval Downloads Folder

1. The Megakingdom of Simland. Exactly as it sounds, it’s an Ubermegahood rethemed to be medieval, played as a mega-Medieval Charter Challenge. I talk about it all the time. It’s been stalled for over a year, I think, because I installed CC incautiously and cannot pinpoint the problem CC to save my life. (Or, more accurately, I find a problem CC, remove it, and then the game crashes again and points to another one down the list. In theory the DDO, Clean Installer, and SimPE should help, but there’s always another bad CC file forcing me to 50/50. I have about 2500 files left to check and I hate how long it takes).

2. If the CC is ever resolved, I may make Grimwood Abbey, a sort of small/compressed start to an MCC forcing the sims to earn their social classes.

3. Algary, a standard MCC I started setting up long before all this was a problem. Of note is that the Squire family rolled all teens and children, no adults, and one peasant family includes elder lesbians.

Decades Downloads Folder

1. Arcadia, the hood I set up the folder for. It’s a rather ambitious plan for some sort of through-time BaCC starting in the 18th century, featuring a native population and manual religions. With Proportionate Aging, the idea is to advance a year for each aging year (4 days), or five years for each seasonal year, and progress through different eras at the correct time. There are five couples, the Shepherds, the Partidges, the Farmers, the Coles, and the Threepwoods.

2. Tortuga, the Pirate Shipwreck BaCC I posted about a couple months ago. I may need to duplicate the downloads folder and make a dedicated 18th/Pirate folder.

3. Port Royale, a Colonial BaCC I set up when I first got the downloads collection up. No plan, just four rolled families. Governor Thomas Marlowe is about all I can remember, with his elderly mother and two teen daughters. I think I have a family named Cunningham, and I might have a Cole family or… maybe an Underhill family. I’ll have to check again. I am thinking about renaming the hood to be less piratey, and using it as a simple BaCC through time starting in the 18th century, but without the complexities of manual religion or an entire native community.

4. Silver Hollow, a hood I started tonight because I wanted to start an 18th century BaCC and instead I just made one guy and started a colonial Legacy challenge, only for the game to severely hang up the first time he returned from a community lot. I did manage to make a great Woods community lot that I am packaging for my own use in any hood using the full Sun&Moon collection.

5. …and I also wanted to start a new Colonial BaCC featuring a slightly goofy Jebediah Springfield-like Founder, named Pendergast, and four families named Archer, Gardner, Parrish, and Thompson. Really, I should just merge this concept with the other one I started a while back.

Ancient Downloads Folder

1. Living History, a modified Test of Time Challenge to appeal to my history major/anthropology minor ways. The Neanderthal era is getting fully revamped to three stages of hunter/gatherer, tribal, and chiefdom; sims gain social status based on popularity and influence, not money, at least to start; and eras change based on achieving certain goals, not generations (at least not JUST generations; I’m trying to make it work with Proportionate Aging here)

Really, it’s not a ridiculous number of hoods here, it just frustrates me that aside from Ubermegahoods I struggle to get them off the ground and constantly start new ones instead of getting invested in the ones I already have. Honestly, it’s probably building everything from scratch that throws me and slows me down, which would be why I tend to prefer the premade hoods. I’d just download starter lots if I wasn’t always going for very specific themes, and also if installing downloaded lots wasn’t what broke my Megakingdom.

I wish I had more time.

[allwormdiet]

I dunno, I feel like if the Protectorate/PRT was read in on this villain's kid they'd probably insist on some kind of fucked up Orphanarium just for her and other "special cases," and probably insist on a bunch of testing and other measures. For all that New Wave is allegedly about transparency I'm not sure they'd like having this going on outside the family, and I'm also not sure they'd be able to make that specific set of requests disappear.

I'm sure they had strings in general, it came up that Brandish is a lawyer so I'm sure she's got some kind of pull in that particular arena, but I just. That's a wholeass kid they have to make up papers for because if they told the truth there'd be so many questions. I'm not even saying they can't make up those papers, probably they have a better chance than most random superhero groups at pulling it off, but every time I think around this subject it's a bit like when you were a kid and a tooth fell out, you couldn't help feeling that gap where a tooth used to be.

But instead of a tooth it's the step-by-step procedure of how to adopt a villain's kid after arresting said villain at swordpoint

What is going on with that shit???

Like who let the Brigade steal an entire child, it boggles the fucking mind

If they were Protectorate affiliated or something I could get it, it'd be skeezy but not entirely out of the purview of a government backed gendarme but their entire deal is operating outside of Protectorate and government control, so there's no way they'd get any favors pulled that way

What the hell kind of game were they playing where they stole a child and then committed some kind of fraud in order to score themselves this new kid

[mannytoodope]

Zapp: Yes, I wonder what we got you.

Kif: It's a basket! F-For picnics?

Leela: It means a lot to me. It's the basket my parents left me in at the orphanarium.

Hermes: You could use it for picnics.

Mrs. Wong: Here, Amy. We get this one for you.

Amy: Is it a new party board?

Mrs. Wong: It's a board alright! An ironing board.

Mr. Wong: We had your old party board converted now that you not be partying anymore.

Amy: You-You trashed my party board?

Mrs. Wong: Damn right! Now you're a mom, the only surfing you do is under a big wave of responsibility.

Kif: Oh, this is the happiest moment of my life! You all brought such wonderful gifts. But the greatest gift

[capt-t-leela]

Then think about how leela was raised (or wasn’t) she didn’t have ANY sort of safety net to count on.

She had to try and fail and stumble and figure it all out only using the feedback she received from her own actions - with nothing and no one to guide her or cheat for her.

She had no other choice except to take charge if she wanted to claw her way out of the orphanarium.

One of the main things I keep thinking about from Quid’s Game is that it is intensely uncomfortable to let your kid fail and to watch them struggle with things, but it is absolutely necessary for them to fail to grow.

And, that your job as a parent it to let them fail safely. Let them fail and try and struggle and make them feel LOVED AND SAFE to fail.

As the parent it’s your job to be their lighthouse in the storm, the place that they come home to no matter how much they mess up or how uncomfortable it is for you. Your job is to love them, not shame or coddle them.

[welcometoyouredoom]

[yepthatsacowalright]

Randomly stumbled upon this cute little indie PC game (made for Ludum Dare, an online challenge in which people try to make a video game from scratch in 72 hours.) You are a headmistress who must chop down trees to collect stakes during the day, so you can use them to kill vampires trying to steal children from the orphanarium at night.  Very simple, very cute, free to play.

https://michaelaranda.itch.io/night-at-the-orphanarium