#they actually aren't if u look closely they're all the colors of the main adults in their lives

[gryptids]

oc ask meme quastion: #culecore gang 7, 15, 19

TEE HEE thank u for askin :3c I'm gonna answer each question for the main four, answers below the cut!!

7: What triggers nostalgia for them, most often? Do they enjoy that feeling?

Cara: There was a point before some very big life events happened in her childhood where everything felt 'perfect' -- her grandmother was alive, she was close to her rabbi, and she felt connected to her community as a whole. She has a tendency to look back at those times with rose-colored glasses. Hey, if you can't romanticize the present, at least you can romanticize the past...

Victor: Reconnecting with his ex-husband, Jude. They share a lot of history together, and as bad as they are for each other, spending time with him reminds Vic of how much fun he used to have when he was younger. He was confident, hot-blooded, strong, energetic... things he's not sure if he'll ever be again. Maybe that's why they're still each other's sneaky link after so many centuries.

Saoirse: Interacting with Cara, funnily enough. They remember when they were new to this world, how confused she was and how blindly they followed people like Victor. Seeing Cara repeat some of her same mistakes is both painful and vindicating. They like to think that they're so experienced now, but Cara makes them confront the fact that she still has no idea what she's doing. It's confusing, and it sucks... but it's also a comfort, in a weird way.

Jude: His human partners tend to trigger nostalgia for him. Usually it's when they're discovering something he loves for the first time -- a movie, a play, an old poem -- and watching their reaction anew makes him fall in love with being human all over again. It classifies as nostalgia because he hasn't been human in a long, long time... but he still looks at it fondly (and holds it in a vice grip).

15: How do they speak? Is what they say usually thought of on the spot, or do they rehearse it in their mind first?

Cara: She has zero filter, and tends to say exactly what's on her mind (with plenty of dry sarcasm and swearing peppered in). Cara is one who has big feelings, and those feelings absolutely come out in speech (as much as she tries to bury them). She comes off as kind of a cunt to people who aren't prepared for it, but what she actually is is bracingly honest... with everyone except for herself.

Victor: He's a soft-spoken guy in spite of his size; he tends to speak in fragments instead of full sentences, and won't use five words when three would do. It makes him a bit hard to read, but it's less because he's genuinely aloof and more because he's pretty introverted. The one time he does get flowery is when he's flirting.

Saoirse: Saoirse has a flair for the dramatic, even when it comes to casual conversation. Plenty of metaphors and figures of speech pepper their way of speaking, and they always manage a conspiratorial tone -- as if you two are the only ones in the world sharing a hilarious secret. She does have a fairly chill vibe, though, like they're perpetually running on 1.5 hours of sleep.

Jude: He tends to speak very formally, even among friends. He has a specific cadence that feels 'vintage,' even for the setting -- like you're watching an old Golden Age film instead of someone genuinely speaking their mind. It can get especially annoying when you're arguing with him -- like, who are you even trying to impress? There aren't any cameras here!! Give it a rest Lawrence Olivier!

19: What is their favorite number?

Cara: Cara likes 12; 12 months in a year, 12 years old to become an adult in the eyes of her religion, and all the nice ways it divides (by two! by three! by four! by six!). It's easy to find, and thus is a constant comfort in the mundane parts of life. It feels like a whole number, for lack of a better term. I'm sure that's not reflective of any kind of envy or yearning at all.

Victor: If you asked him, he'd probably chuckle and say he hasn't thought about it that much. Push him, and he'd say something lame like "infinity," even thought it's not a real number. It's a nice thought, though, right? That things don't always need to end? That something could go on forever, in spite of everything?

Saoirse: Something so obnoxiously indie and/or specific that you kinda wanna groan when they give you their answer, like the Euler-Mascheroni constant or ~zero.~ It's clear she's trying to casually outdo everyone in the room creatively when the question is asked. But beyond the posturing is a genuine appreciation of anything undefinable or mutable -- they like finding where definitional systems fail and get weird.

Jude: Two! It's the only even prime, and everything is better in pairs :) It's the basis of a lot of mathematical functions (even numbers are defined by two, for example), and he identifies with the sense of responsibility, yet isolation, that two must feel. He WILL get a little weepy about it if he thinks about it for too long.

[yukipri]

Compilation doodles + Name explanations for the OC kids in the YOI Future!verse ABO AU

^ Literally the above, because I thought WAY too hard about these for legit months (the twins were conceived in my mind back in DECEMBER and Arisa in January >.>;;) and I want to rant about my reasoning for all of them. :P

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IF YOU ARE NEW TO THIS AU: It’s Yuuri-centric polyamory in an ABO setting, Yuuri’s married to four mates (Victor, Yurio, Phichit, Minami) and the above are their kids.

BASICS of this AU

INTRO to how ABO works in this AU

OTHER POSTS (comics + illustrations) in the Future!Verse ABO section of my YOI Masterpost.

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Please keep ship bashing out of the comments/tags. Don’t like, just skip <3 Thank you.

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PLEASE DO NOT REPOST, EDIT, OR OTHERWISE USE MY ART WITHOUT MY EXPLICIT PERMISSION. More detailed rules available on my Rules & FAQ Post.

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DISCLAIMER: I don’t know any Russian or Thai and my info comes from not-so-trustworthy Google-sensei though I did my best to triple check from multiple sources including non-English ^ ^; I am however native and fluent in both Japanese and English and also consulted a Japanese linguist regarding my kanji choices ^ ^; If I made any mistakes please be gentle, and also understanding that this is a low-stress self-indulgent near-crack AU >.>;;;

Onwards! vvv

The twins: So one of the base premises of YOI as a series is “HEY check out this name ‘Yuri’ that works in both Russian and Japanese! Let’s have two characters from these nationalities share this name.” So it only makes sense to me that any Russian-Japanese kids they have also follow this multi-lingual pattern. I also really wanted the twins to match as much as possible because their characters are very much inseparable, sides of the same coin type kids.

Turns out finding names that work in both languages other than Yuri is pretty hard, especially when your knowledge of Russian is 0. The ones I came up with I was like AHAHAH NAH WHAT JOKE ANIME VILLAIN NAMES ARE THOSE but in the end I couldn’t find better and after calling them that for months, it’s kinda stuck >.>;

So that’s how I ended up with two names that are both nicknames in Russian, both have pretty unfortunate/evil phonetic first impressions in Japanese, and both are feminine and elegant in their Japanese kanji.

Yasha (夜紗/Яша) - I absolutely wanted this for Victor and Yuuri’s son, because apparently it’s the nickname form of “Yakov” which I mean COME ON. Unfortunately, the English approximation of the Japanese phonetic is “demon,” oopsies, not sure you want to name your kid that in rl, but it sounds cool so you may recognize it from various anime ^ ^;;; Luckily Japanese kanji can switch out meanings, so we have “night” and the second character is an uncommon feminine ending that can mean something like “silk,” but is generally just feminine and pretty.

Shura (珠羅/Шура) - Is apparently a nickname for “Aleksandr” and other variations in Russian. Unfortunately, the most obvious meaning for the sound is “carnage,” most frequently used in shuraba or “scene of carnage” in Japanese (in addition to being taken literally, this can also refer to love trouble situation, such as catching your lover cheating etc). Also sounds cool, also pretty common in anime/song titles but nooooot so great rl name LOL With the swapped out kanji, the first character is “pearl,” and the second, while different from Yasha’s, can also mean “silk” and is also a very feminine and elegant character.

Wow u two like the Free!! kids as boys with girly names

I feel like Yurio would be super excited at the prospect of naming his kids like badass anime characters “Demon” and “Carnage” and Victor would be too tickled by the bilingual options and Yuuri would just sorta cave and be like FINE OKAY but don’t turn to me when the other Japanese kids look at them weird...

ALSO, I’m aware that both are in nickname form and not the full Russian names identified above, but as the nicknames are the only ones that work in Japanese those are their official names ^ ^ Given the international nature of their family, I figure it’s fine.

Arisa (愛利咲/อริสา) - This is a common enough relatively modern name in Japanese, and I found it in enough Thai sources to think it works as a Thai name too, but I’m not entirely sure if it’s a native Thai name or a loan name from a different language and also couldn’t find a Thai meaning to it ^ ^;; But given how I’ve heard Thai nicknaming works, I was like okay it’s fine if it’s leaning towards Japanese right?? Anyway, it’s a name I genuinely love outside of bilingual potential so I was biased towards it the moment I found out it could work ^ ^;

ANYWAY, the meaning of her name based on the characters I chose (many combinations possible for this name) means “blooming love,” which I feel is super fitting for this family. ^ ^ ALSO, the middle “ri” character is not particularly cute or feminine compared to the alternatives, but is rather masculine and the choice is intentional. In Japanese, many parents (including my own), will choose to write their kids’ names using characters from their own or their family members’ names. The “ri” in Arisa is the “ri” in both Yuuri and his sister Mari’s names. This character is also actually the first one in Yuuri’s dad’s name, Toshiya (利也), yep it’s read super differently but it’s there, which absolutely makes it a family legacy thing.

Yuuji (勇次) - The most straightforward of all their names, but also given with some thought. ^ ^;; It’s an obvious combination of Yuuri (勇利) and Kenjirou (健次郎)’s names, and is a pretty normal Japanese name. I also could have gone with “Yuujirou,” but it’s a bit long, the “rou” is really masculine, and it’s also the exact sort of name that would be butchered mercilessly in international contexts (though Yuuji is also a pretty masculine name).

The first character, Yuuri’s “Yuu,” means bravery, and the second character from Minami “ji” is “next,” and is commonly given to the second son. But I feel in this context, “next bravery” also seems like a really good name to give someone who you have high hopes for continuing his parents’ legacy in the next generation.

*All of their hyphenated surnames were chosen based on their parents’ fore-knowledge that they’d be growing up in primarily international contexts. Hyphenated surnames really aren’t a thing in Japan at least and Katsuki-Minami is bizarre af but I figured anything goes if it’s all international and given how unconventional their family already is, they’re going to prioritize keeping the pattern than giving a traditional name. Katsuki is first in all of the kids surnames so the kids’ll be together alphabetically. As of the “current” time in this AU, all of the parents have retained their original surnames.