#random meta meme

[mirkstrolls]

differences in the Rennis girls, and how those came about?

So the Rennis girls, at their core, have a lot of similarities – all soft-hearted, care a lot about people’s opinions, don’t like conflict, tend to repress emotions, have honesty issues, enjoy nature. And they’re all on some level aware that being a small, soft-hearted girl in a world like Alternia is Not A Good Life Plan. 

The differences are really obvious though, especially in how they deal with that last point. 

Cut for length and ur faves being problematic, but tl;dr: Eryali has an extreme sense of self-preservation, Vide doesn’t have one at all, Saulia’s personality boils down to this post.

I think they would have had certain tendencies even had their situations been different: Eryali was probably a little standoffish and cold to begin with, Vide is a natural-born doormat, and Saulia would almost certainly have been feisty and witchy regardless. But it just so happens for the sake of narrative convenience that they each had an upbringing that played into those tendencies.

Eryali grew up relatively isolated, in some backwater settlement where there were more trees than people, and the people who were there tended to be outlaws. Thinking of yourself as prey was probably a good strategy unless you were roughly Hulk-shaped. By the time she reached adulthood, she had some serious issues about allowing people close: every interaction was a potential life-or-death situation, every touch a potential murder attempt. She felt it was safest to just have nothing to do with anyone ever, but Rennises are people who need people: her need for isolation, numbness, and independence kept being superseded by her need for companionship, affection, and acceptance.

In the end, though, her hyperactive survival instinct always reasserted itself. She was prepared to go to any lengths, sacrifice any relationship to avoid perceived threats without a single look back. Hornblade convincing Eryali to wait for her was mostly emotional blackmail, but the waiting itself sparked a revelation: maybe it doesn’t have to be “them or me” ALL the time? For the first time in her life, she was considering the idea that maybe, maybe caring wasn’t a weakness – it was just sheer bad luck that she died before she could pursue that line of thought.

Vide, on the other hand, was always wired to be more loyal to her friends than to herself, and between Oracle’s excessive protection and the incredibly unhealthy situation with the SGC, what few personal boundaries she started with slowly and steadily eroded. She is not important! What’s important is keeping the people she cares about safe and happy and un-inconvenienced, and “the people she cares about” meant “literally everyone” until like a year ago. 

Rather than lying about her background to push people away and keep her secrets her own, Vide lies to keep them from realizing she’s anything but Embodied Altruism. A big part of her issues in her early- to mid-teens stemmed from distorting her personality and hiding the truth so that she’d fit into the template she thought her friends wanted her to fit – this is the companionship/affection/acceptance thing again, taken to an extreme. In her mind, failure to be perfect and nice 100% of the time is failure to be of any value at all, and that failure would be extremely likely to result in her death. Fortunately, she had her maybe I was wrong realization a lot earlier than Eryali did, and is making efforts to change her worldview. She’s doing this specifically for her friends, rather than herself, but at least it’s a start.

Then we have Saulia. Probably the healthiest of them all, she grew up smack-dab in the middle of her ancestors’ stomping grounds, surrounded by the ruins they left behind. There were enough living trolls around her that she learned how to be functional in society, but the population was sparse enough that she’s independent by necessity. So she wound up deeply spiritual, with a rebellious streak a mile wide. Saulia, like both her ancestors before her, realizes that Alternia is not usually a place that rewards kindness; unlike them, she thinks that grim/dog-eat-dog worldview can suck it. Kindness is an intentional choice, says Saulia, kindness can be a weapon sharper than any knife. (You’re an utter loony, say the ghosts of Vide and Eryali, loudly and in unison, and then each is horrified by agreeing with the other.)

She’s relentlessly sunny (ha) in disposition, no matter the circumstances; while this is mostly genuine, it’s also her way of spitting in the face of what she considers “mainstream Alternia.” She believes that the world is full of magic and light, and that troll society profanes it with their petty squabbles. That’s not to say she’s not a little hypocritical as well: Saulia is someone who would call you honey in the most saccharine tones while thinking bloody murder (that she’ll never commit, because she is too polite).

To look at things a different way, leaving aside their upbringing: Vide is Eryali with a more outward focus and less difficulty accessing emotions - Saulia is Vide but less afraid and more inclined to believe in a higher power. Each would be utterly incomprehensible to the other two.

[mirkstrolls]

Tell us about how hemoanonymity works! Is it as easy as buying gray clothes at the store? Is there stigma, or is it accepted? Who are the usual demographics that use it? :0

It’s probably a little more difficult than that! I imagine most of the classier clothes stores have in-house embroidery teams to add your symbol and/or bloodcolor accents to the clothes you buy, and saying “nah, just gray” gets you some serious shopkeep side-eye. Buying hemoanon contacts would REALLY get you looked at askance; you probably can’t get them except on the internet or in seedy, disreputable shops at the edge of town.

There’s kind of a stigma? Like, several rungs above wearing very “alternative” fashion irl, but several rungs below being a conflicted felon. It’s not a crime to be hemoanon, but it’s considered a safe assumption that hemoanons are criminals – or at least pretty shady. Taz being rude to Aardyg here stems from the fact that I think how much attention you get for being hemoanon is inversely proportional to population density. You’re a lot more likely to get hassled/shunned for it if you live in some tiny village where everybody knows everybody than you are in a big city. 

The people who use it are criminals, sometimes (some of Taz’s coworkers are hemoanon). But they’re also lowblood rebels, slumming highbloods, hippies of all castes, people going incognito for personal reasons, and, of course, mutants. But the first thing that would pop into your average troll’s head on seeing a gray symbol is “welp, they’re probably gonna steal my wallet or try to sell me drugs in a few minutes.”

eta: There are varying levels of hemoanonymity -- some people will wear clothes but not contacts (mostly hippies), some will wear clothes and contacts but not makeup, etc. Taz is pretty much at DEFCON 2 in this respect: clothes + contacts + makeup + cutting horns too short to make out their shape.