anne carson, “dirt and desire: essay on the phenomenology of female pollution in antiquity” // juwon jeong, “goodbye everyone” // hélène cixous, “poetry in painting” // huang yuxing, “river | big red whirlpools” // maggie nelson, bluets // ferris jabr, “how does a caterpillar turn into a butterfly?”
Hi I hope you don't mind but I need to know who Cara and Jude are so so bad do you have any info on them somewhere to read :3
EEEE I don't mind at all!!!!! You can read more info about them on their toyhou.se profiles; Jude's backstory is still TBA but those pages have most all of the art I've drawn or commissioned of them, plus additional character info like preferences and hobbies. I'm also always happy to chat abt them via asks or DMs if you have other questions!!
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.
