all that glitters is gold(blum)

People always ask me how I pronounce my name.... I always tell them the same thing:

How dare you speak to me?

a jeff goldblum multimuse, lovingly growled at by ren

FEATURED MUSES: mac, dr. ian malcolm, mickey holliday, the grandmaster, & non-jeff flavors in william shakespeare, dio theoinos, & the collector HIGHEST MUSES: mickey, mac

rules ✨ dossiers ✨ more to come!

This is not an exhaustive list but does contain information that’s becoming increasingly applicable to what I’m doing here. Feel free to pick my brain about whatever you see here, and to use and borrow for yourself as you see fit! Full disclosure up front, there are elements of 1980s camp-alien scifi that I just can’t do without, and that includes an out of place inclusion of royal hierarchy! 👑 ✨

Mac, Zeebo, and Wiploc aren’t just coworkers, they’re genuinely friends. Wiploc is the wild child of the bunch, a wannabe-lady’s man who Jhazallan girls think is a loser. He’s immature and undoubtedly the dumbest, but is very earnest despite his shoddy playboy “persona.” He’s actually the ship’s engineer, and a damned good one at that!, if a little…accident-prone. I can’t quite decide who Zeebo is in this friendship triangle, likely because I have never actually had one. I don’t know what stereotype he is and I am open to suggestion! I don’t even know what role he would serve in the dynamic except perhaps being the security chief? Perhaps he’s a jack of all trades and a master of none! Despite what his family (read: his mother) might tell you, Mac is the mature friend, the level-headed voice of reason who’s also unfortunately a hopeless romantic and endless optimist. He’s not just the ship’s captain; he’s Jhazalla’s crown prince, and by fulfilling the duties of the one role he’s shirking the responsibilities of the other. Much like me, when I hide here instead of facing Oscar.

Mac wants to explore. Anything and everything, it really doesn’t matter what! The universe, alien cultures, his lover’s body, the ways in which music connects us and the universe, everything that he can! That’s why he agreed to, actually asked for!, this exploratory pan-galaxy observation tour. He’s lucky his friends volunteered alongside him, or the mission never would have made.

By contrast, Mac’s mother and the Jhazallan Court in general would prefer if Mac would just find a fucking spouse, knock them up, and sit his ass down in the throne. It’s not a glamorous job, but somebody’s got to do it…right?

This is actually Mac’s last flight. After this, he has agreed to take the throne. He feels bad: his mother’s aging and this pursuit of exploration feels selfish under the weight of that knowledge. He might drag it out for as long as possible, and his friends might too—but unless the issues at home can be solved, he will always eventually have to return there.

He’s such a soft romantic boy. He plays the piano and enjoys cuddling. He’d love to teach his partner piano. (Related sidenote, I know nothing of music, sorrz.) He’s very tactile but I haven’t decided if that’s a him thing or a cultural thing.

I’ve noticed a weird tendency to write him as like…honestly not knowing what sex is. Which doesn’t really align with the way we see Mac processing and the utilizing language. He knows what sex is in that he knows what intercourse is, what it does, how it’s done, etc.. He doesn’t know what the word “sex” is. See also: that quick turn around on “Mr. Right” and contextually figuring out what a “girlfriend” is. The actions and concepts aren’t what are alien to him, just the language.

Speaking of language, I’m sorry: most likely you’ll never be able to speak Jhazallan. Not without undergoing risky and experimental surgery at least. The organ group we would recognize as the vocal cords—and indeed those are among its other parts!—include organs developed for the express purpose of manipulating itself to replicate non-vocal sound. It’s why they can so perfectly mimic any sound they hear!, but it also makes parts of their speech incapable of replication through purely biological means for the majority of species.

This is not an exhaustive list but does contain information that’s always applicable to what I’m doing here. Feel free to pick my brain about whatever you see here, and to use and borrow for yourself as you see fit!

Sakaar is a pet project of his. Some days it’s precious to him; some days he thinks about imploding it and starting over again, or not at all. He’s very fickle about Sakaar and other things—but he’s also very possessive of Sakaar. These are “Hotel California” rules out here, people! You can check out any time you’d like, but you can never leave. This isn’t just because of his abandonment issues (although those are still a factor, I’m sure), but also because of the very few infra/structures in place on the planet to keep it functional even if and when he steps away. It’s a very delicate social ecosystem, never mind that fragile economy. Just a mess!

In a much sadder turn of events, the word “Sakaar” is actually a verb, and one of the very few examples of verbal communication from his previous culture. It roughly translates into to be lost. Unfortunately for you, unless the man himself or another Elder tells you that little tidbit, there’s no organic way to hold that information. His culture is so long-dead it’s thought now to have never even existed, and even when it did, its primary means of communication was psychic.

He is incredibly hot. Just. Very fucking uncomfortably hot. Insanely hot. He’s also warm to the touch! All jokes aside, he…technically predates the Big Bang. Pseudoscientifically speaking, which science-fiction also me to do!, En Dwi and the rest of his race were part of the singularity which creates the Big Bang. He and his kind retained much of that creational heat. It’s actually part of the reason he always seems so distracted: because some part of him is always monitoring his temperature, moderating it to keep it within whatever levels he deems acceptable. He despises cold weather and favors light, airy materials and clothing for the obvious reasons.

He probably doesn’t view you as a person. Let me explain! He is one old-ass motherfucker, literally has the gall to claim he predates the universe just because some of his molecules directly do. He was a completely different person at the beginning of his life, even his life as an Elder of the Universe!, than he is now. He’s grown sullen and jaded and he’s grasping at hedonistic straws to keep going! He’s seen so many people from cradle to grave that he’s grown completely numb to it. Except for that which stays around long enough to earn his attention, he doesn’t view anyone as a person anymore. In his frame of reference, the only “people” alive are other Elders of the Universe, other immortals—so it’s easier to think of only those same people as people. Everyone else is…a cheap imitation.

The Elder he is closest to is the Collector, Taneleer Tivan (who will eventually be appearing on this blog).

They share an exceedingly close bond, and while I’m open to changing the nature of it, that’s something I’m really going to insist on any time I interact with a Collector. If using my lore rather than building one together, the two have shared the culture of their respective homeworlds only with one another, and so to an outsider the cultures seem intertwined. They are, in fact, very, VERY different. The two have done this because they have claimed each other as a brother in a very real, close, kinship way. They have each adopted the most important aspect/s of each other’s cultures to signify this. To help differentiate I will post each one as its own bullet because, remember, I’m surfing in a canon of my own frankensteining. I am open to editing these as preferred per thread!

From En Dwi’s culture comes a fixation on the mouth and chin and a hierarchy in matters of touch. To signify status, elites from Homeworld would daily paint on a stripe down the lip and chin, the breadth, shape, and even color of which was used to express social status and identity. The stripe En Dwi bears now is considered sacred, and represents totality; by contrast, the stripe Tivan bears is self-made that would signify a bastard in its original sense, but represents his House in their own sense. These stripes are painted on daily. To smudge them is an insult, to apply them an honor. Both of these lead into the hierarchy of touch: unless otherwise invited, it is considered rude to touch someone of a higher social status than you until they had touched you first. For some statuses, such as the one En Dwi embodies, permission must also be obtained before you can touch them, even if they touch you first.

(As you can imagine, En Dwi is especially given to touching people while demanding they receive permission first, and often denying that. He usually touches people on the chin, lips, and nose, something that would have been considered obscene and possibly demeaning on Homeworld.)

From Tivan’s culture comes a fixation on hands and fingers and a different hierarchy in matters of touch. To signify status in the version of Cyngus I made up, nail polish and general upkeep of the hands was used and ritually attended to. To smudge or otherwise damage the nail/polish is insult, to apply it an honor—you get the drill! Deference is shown through the hands, and much like the social status determination of who can touch whomst explained above, the ability to touch or inspect a hand is supposed to be first offered to the higher status. (En Dwi has a fixation on hands, ask me about that later.)

En Dwi’s homeworld is creatively named Homeworld, because its true name is a mental projection of the feeling of home and considered sacred—blasphemous to reject the feeling of!—but Off-Worlders struggled with ot rejecting the forced emotion. It was by necessity given a name, but En Dwi refuses to share that with anyone except with Tivan.