Mistletoe Meme for Ariste and Weeds +-+ Because I must
>The Twelfth Perigee’s Ball
“Lady Arneus!”
You bound up to the petite violinist, skidding to a halt mere inches from her side, catch her about the waist, and whirl her off her feet into a spin that culminates in a French dip and a sound smooch to the lips.
Prior to your precipitous arrival, you had not had the time to take in much of her appearance beyond that you recognized her, but now ‘t doth occur to you – she has an actual gown on. Draped in gray and green silk, face made up, arms and ears and horns adorned with jewelry, she is a far cry from the wild thing of the woods you previously encountered, and you are momentarily taken aback – as is she.
Momentarily. “Orpheo, WHAT–” her voice climbs several octaves in the space between words– “do you THINK you’re DOING?”
“A thousand pardons, Lady Arneus,” you say smoothly, and bow your most flourishing bow to her. “I am not normally so intimate in my greetings, but –” you dodge a smack– “if thou wilt but listen– LISTEN! Thou standest beneath a mistletoe, ‘tis thy own fault.”
“Oh, yeah?” Her eyes narrow, and she makes as if to grab you by the arms, though you cannot discern whether she means to kiss you in return or strike you.
Regardless, you sidestep her advances and grin ear-to-ear. “Alas, I have left mine own partner unattended for too long – but hast thou brought thy violin? I suggest a duet later, but for now – au revoir!”
And you are gone into the crowd, though not before you hear her irritated shriek.
“Perhaps ‘twould not be sensible to trust overmuch in a confessed thief…. however, instinct tells me that he couldst provide much in the way of prank assistance!”
What sort of pairings (romantic or platonic) are you *looking* to write? Alternatively: what would be your ideal dynamics for each of your chars in their available quadrants?
Old-ask answering, hot dang!
Okay, I’m always a sucker for anything involving emotional depth, especially since a lot of my current threads are more fun-adventure-times rather than actual major plot pieces, but hmm, let’s try to be more specific here…
For one thing: blackrom. None of my trolls have or have had a kismesis, with the exception of Widsth’s occasional flings and Taz’s weird semi-flirtation with Umetto, and none of them have a conclusively-planned black ship, I don’t think? And boy do they all need one! Plus I need to learn how to write blackrom better, since I’m not sure how to at the mo. This goes for ashenrom too; I’m interested in exploring those dynamics, which is why I’m super excited that Vide/Riccin is imminent and there may be an auspisticism for Taz on the horizon.
I will always be in favor of more pale fluff, too! And not just piling and feelings-jamming and angsty soul-baring and the pale-honeymoon stuff, either (though I am a wreck for that, as mentioned, I will DIE), but pale couples out and about, doing plot-relevant things, while generally helping each other function better.
But like… also. I really want Vide to have more friends who are 100% not into her romantically and never will be. Several of her past “friends” have turned out only to be interested in her due to having a crush on her, whether pale or flushed, and she feels pressured and anxious when she can’t reciprocate those feelings. It’d be really nice for her to have a circle of supportive people who don’t want anything from her but platonic friendship! Friends who can joke and gossip with her, go shopping with her, shut her down when she gets Weirdly Pale, whatever. Just normal platonic stuff, in a variety of dynamics!
I also want Genuine Friends for Taz, and horrible musician or historian friends for Weeds (and Genuine Quadrants for both), but they’re better set up for friendship than Vide is at the moment.
OH ALSO I would love to backplot ex-quads for Weeds, and maybe a few for Taz – she’s dated around a bit, he’s flirted-and-jilted his way through most of the music scene, the history scene, and the obscure-translations scene, both of them should have exes of varying levels of amicability out there.
Second part of the question was also interesting, answered below.
We’re going to say that “available” means “not actively dating someone right now,” even if that quad has been plotted, so Vide♥♦ and Taz♥ are currently unavailable. Also, keep in mind that these are what I think would be best, off the top of my head, not accounting for what my trolls could offer (as opposed to what they need) -- so they’re obviously allowed lots of wiggle-room
Vide:
♣: Definitely someone who would take the quadrant pretty seriously and let her meddle at full capacity: someone who’s willing to spend a lot of time with her, since Vide gets horribly domestic with all her quads. But also someone who will meddle back and help her out with her blackrom woes! Vide’s very bad at blackrom and she could use someone to help her loosen up and release her inner bratty side. I guess I’m looking for a sort of teasing-but-affectionate, almost sibling-like relationship here?
♠: The thing about Vide is that she has some very specific blackrom issues springing from… not really knowing what it is or how it works? So ideally, she’d date someone who could go slow with her and maybe even be a bit domestic -- as I said above, Vide gets very strongly attached to all her quadrants. They’d also have to cool it on the violence aspect of the relationship, putting more emphasis on verbal arguments or passive aggression and pranks. Not that Vide wouldn’t want to physically fight them (because she would) or that she wouldn’t do well with someone who would push her to be stronger (again, she really would!), but a super-intense, hate-makeouts-with-lots-of-teeth-every-five-minutes kind of relationship would be likely to scare her off -- or scare her into flipping pale. She has to be able to win sometimes! And physical fights with people are not something she feels she can win at.
Taz:
♦: I’d say, someone relatively calm and rational, who can get her to simmer down when she’s anxious or angry and curb her more self-destructive tendencies without alienating her for them. That might need to come later, though; at this point she’s badly in need of someone to talk to without fear of rejection, honestly.
♣: Taz is pretty good at being (bluntly, aggressively) ashen anyway, from long practice with the gang. For someone to actually get in a relationship with her, there’d have to be some reciprocity -- helping her out with her Umetto troubles, mediating tense business meetings with other gangs, maybe even setting her up on dates. I actually haven’t thought about this relationship a whole lot, because Taz just plain doesn’t hateflirt much!
♠: Not Umetto. Ha, but really, she might do better with a rival gang leader or someone on the other side of the law -- or even someone not related to the smuggling business at all: the trouble with being pitch for Umetto is that Taz is not really a domestic kismesis, and she can’t compete with him the way she wants to in a blackrom without shooting herself in the foot. So a Jets vs Sharks or Javert vs Valjean relationship could be fun with this one! However, any relationship based on work has the potential to screw up her profits, and she’s Very Not Okay with that. Honestly, I think it’d be more interesting if her kismate didn’t even know she was a smuggler: they’re competing with her in sailing, or they’re a rival coffeeshop, or something like that. Taz’s life is pretty high-stakes and this might be a fun way to lower those stakes. (Okay, so maybe I just want escalating coffeeshop wars, don’t judge)
Widsth (a.k.a DATE SOMEONE ALREADY): With nearly all of his quadrants, there really needs to be a friendship there first in order to give the romantic relationship staying power. Because his definition of “attractive” is so broad, because he’s like 25% in some kind of love with all of his friends anyway, it could pretty much be anyone! But this is about my ideal dynamics, so, hm.
♥: I kind of want him to date a lowblood! Particularly in this quadrant, since Widsth all but worships his matesprits, and I’d like him to end up with someone whose existence forces him to confront both his casteist beliefs and his weird courtly-love expectations of redrom, with its ideal of an unattainable, remote highblood beauty for a matesprit. Additionally, they’d need to have some common ground interest-wise (in music or history or adventure or storytelling) and be able to keep up with him on his travels, for his interest not to wane as it has in the past. So: someone unpretentious but with an active interest in being involved in his life, and either someone who will travel with him, or someone who he’d be in love with enough to keep coming back for – but the latter is very unlikely.
♦: You gotta find the fine balance between loving Widsth for the dramatic, extravagant nerd he is without trying to stifle him and not letting him jump off a cliff because he and Riccin think it’s funny. Weeds is not emotionally in distress very often, but he is very bad at coping with it when he is, and also very bad at not doing distressing things like cliff jumping or making out with a stranger in the bathroom of a bar for an hour on the off chance that they might be serendipitous. He desperately needs to be reigned in -- just not smothered.
♣: If we’re going for Mirk-Brand Meddling Auspisticism™, this might be the person to smack him upside the head when he starts flirting with inappropriate people again, or possibly make apologies to the people he flirts with. Of all his quadrants, this is the one with the most leeway for difference in interests: you don’t have to be into music/history/melodrama to get ashen with Weeds, you just have to be able to put up with him and bat him away from bad decisions once in a while, maybe be that cold splash of reality on his rosy-eyed romanticism
♠: There has to be real competition here, so a musician would honestly probably be best? Or someone with lots of history knowledge, anyone he could have a meaningful contest of skills with. They’d have to be genuinely skilled and able to keep up with him, so that he could respect them while still wanting to beat them this time for sure!!! I don’t imagine they’d get into physical fights very often! Sometimes, yeah, but at his heart, Widsth is not a fighter, he’s a bard. Might be fun for this one to be a lowblood too, but I don’t actually care about caste or gender!
Yeah, he’s never gonna lose that. Honesty is as integral to Weeds as music is, which is to say pretty dang integral. He doesn’t actually view it as a flaw! He’s probably never going to work on it! He opins, in fact, that everyone else is flawed for being dishonest -- it’s likely that he’d be really sanctimonious about it if he hadn’t made as many friends as he did when little.
It might end up being his downfall, if he can’t keep a secret that needs to be kept, or if he tells an uncomfortable truth to someone who doesn’t react well. I’d actually like to see more situations where telling the truth isn’t the right answer and he has to deal with the consequences of that.
[A short time after the last post, Widsth swings back into the chat and takes a selfie. Hadean and Ullane do some shipping at low, low rates.]
IT: I have aCquired a temporary refuge
IT: MN -- Emerel, I presume, given thy exposure to Pheres's amorous inClinations? -- I am some thirty kilometers west of CasCara, yes
JM: What is Cascara like
MN: its onE of thE biggEst finE art and historical cEntErs on thE continEnt its prEtty awEsomE
MN: okay cool orphEo tEll .ME. whErE you arE and what you look likE and .I.ll comE pick you up
JM: From what you say
JM: He is around your height
JM: His horns are large and I wonder he does not wreck doorways
MN: aw shit what a rack
JM: He has glasses and a
JM: damn
JM: cup cut?
JM: No
JM: ...
JM: His hair goes to the middle of his neck about
JM: That's about it
MN: dEscriptiVE
JM: he has an accent
IT: as it may be diffiCult to follow the desCription given
IT: here is a photo!!
JM: now I get to feel redundantJM: oh wellJM: my pumpbiscuit will go on
-- inspiredTalesmith sent sgdsjk.jpg [a rather blurry selfie taken as he runs down the street. The ceruleans are visible over his shoulder--
MN: jm thats a bowl cut
ID: run nerd, run.
MN: no kidding about thE horns wow
IT: i am headed down ironCold lane, and I am
MN: ironcold
MN: okay thErE should be a sErVicE station nEar thErE somEwhErE
MN: hidE out in thE toilEt thErE and .I.ll bE oVEr in a flash
IT: About that
IT: I remain on IronCold lane, however
IT: I appear to have taken up residenCe in a dumpster
IT: This surprises me as muCh as it may surprise you
ID: ahahah did you jump in.
MN: ....okaaay stay in the dumpstEr
MN: and .I. will find you in thE fucking dumpstEr
IT: I didst not jump in, ID, for thy information
IT: I didst not WILLINGLY GO
IT: I was PUT
ID: ahahah classic.
MN: this is why wE dont stEp on toEs hErE
JM: into the trash with you
ID: welcome to your new hive.
IT: they are trying to deCide whether to send someone after me
IT: I am enshrined in half-rotten produCe, like a gutter saint
IT: I Can pelt them with tomatoes, should the need arise
IT: Unfortunately my Chosen weapon is of no use in this environ
ID: you throwing tomatoes will just piss them off more probably.
IT: I do not, in faCt, Care about their feelings
IT: Given that they have THROWN ME INTO A DUMPSTER
JM: tsk
JM: rude
ID: i mean. pissed trolls are more likely to cull you but whatever.
MN: hold on .I.m still on the way
MN: just kEEp thEm distactEd or whatEVEr until .I. gEt thErE
MN: dudE just moVing to thE dumpstEr might bE thE safEst placE for you by this point
IT: I have invited them to duel me in my new hive
IT: one-on-one, of Course, as is right and honorable
ID: well emerel, your new buddy is fucked.
MN: a duEl in a dumpstEr sounds likE a littlE morE than a duEl if you gEt what .I.m saying
MN: .BUT STOP CHALLENGING THEM YOU WINGNUT.
MN: .WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU.
ID: he wants to die in battle. not pounded to death while hiding in the dumpster.
JM: I begin to see how you came to me with such wounds
IT: SiC transit gloria mundi
IT: u0u
ID: what.
JM: something world
ID: hatched a nerd, die a nerd i guess. =:I
MN: dont you giVE .ME. that
MN: yourE going to liVE if .I. haVE to drag you back from hEll damn it
IT: why Emerel, I barely know thee
IT: ;O
JM: pfft
ID: <>?
JM: wouldn't bother, Orpheo
JM: I think it's born of irritation
MN: wEll normally .I. giVE no fucks
MN: but .I. already said .I. was picking you up and damn if .I. look likE a liar now
MN: uh no
MN: no <>
ID: boo.
ID: you're ruining the rom dramaness of this chat right now.
MN: plus .PHERES. is fond of you so
ID: if i had popcorn i'd be throwing it at the screen right now.
MN: .I.ll ruin your facE nExt ;)
ID: you're welcome to try. =;) i mean you'll fail, but more power to you.
Weeds’ full name would most likely be pronounced “WID (rhymes with bid) + sth (like you’re trying to get over a lisp),” since it’s yanked from Old English. But if you happen to speak a language where i is pronounced with an ee sound, it comes out WEEDS-th, so…
IC answer: Riccin and/or Weeds’ ex-moirail started calling him that to tease him. He permits Riccin to keep doing that because they’re ~best friends~, but anyone else using the name gets LOUDLY corrected. His name is Widsth, or Orpheo if you’d prefer, but it is not Weeds.
OOC answer: Another RPer, whose first language was French, started doing it because she pronounced his name WEEDS-th, and somehow it just stuck? And now everyone says it, haha
