i saw goody proctor shipping vriska/elias

the primordial bowerverse was conceived many years ago during a prompt game by the tumblr user now known as toastyglow wherein people would send them one fancy word and they would spin out an entire writing prompt. their response to "iridescence", sadly lost to the mists of time when their entire blog was deleted, imagined a world where people courted each other like birds--men dressing up in brightly colored clothes and dancing, and the dully-dressed women judging their performance--and suggested one could have quite a lot of fun writing queer lit in such a setting. from such roots sprouted my bowerverse.

 bowerverse changes from iteration to iteration depending on how much effort i or anyone else wants to put into writing a world with cultural norms fairly different from our own. these are the elements that i would keep: 

inasmuch as gender norms transfer over to any given setting: bright colors are masculine, over-the-top makeup is masculine, glitter is masculine. this is the most goddamn important element of bowerverse

everyone is more-or-less expected to be interested in interior or exterior design. if your mans lives in a plain beige apartment with no decor but a metal bowl of fake lemons Why Are You With Him.

not everyone uses their bedroom as their bower but it's, like. the standard space. if you're in somebody's room and you're messing with where their stuff is you're their wingman, flirting with them, or doing a power play. possibly all three.

everyone is at least a little bit into using their skills to decorate themselves and/or their space. theoretically you could make a bower that looked objectively good from entirely storebought objects and wear exclusively off-the-rack clothes & accessories but like your bower is supposed to be a reflection of your best and sexiest traits so. Why Would You, Put Any Effort In, Come On

widespread fashion trends are less of a thing because people are generally trying to look like Themselves instead of trying to fit into a crowd. goths still exist though. theyre called shrikes and they decorate their bowers with scavenged bones. sick af

(on the heels of this, ironically there is probably Less emphasis on developing an aesthetic and/or tastes completely unprompted -- there’s no such cultural concept as “an entirely self-taught artist” when everyone is an artist and stealing their favorite bits of each others’ styles all the time)

dang i JUST saw this. thanks ?? i think??? i think this is a good thing. 

--

It's a door, of course. A yellow door, to be precise. She can't see in the dark, and in the weak light of one of the heftier lamps left down here it should just look pale. It's yellow, though. Maybe the yellowest thing she's ever seen. The color sticks in her mind and her other memories seem suddenly less real. There is a door; it is yellow; these are the mattering things. The things that matter. 

Christ above, she needs to sleep.

"You look tired," says Helen. The door creak that preceded it should have plastered itself across every crack in Melanie's skull, but somehow she missed hearing it this time. Or feeling it. One of those? Helen had said something about how she looks. She scrapes up her voice.

 "Yes," she agrees, hoarse. She must look how she feels.

"Come in," says Helen, beckoning her, and her foot's just at the threshold when she stills. Realizes how much of an idiot she's being. 

What kind of response does that merit, though? She already feels trapped. Already feels hunted. Helen watches her, drumming her long fingernails against the open door. The clicks come out of sync with the impacts, unsettling. Everything about Helen that should look harmless isn't. Her wings are brightly colored. Bright like poison, saturated as rust and scarlet. They're yellow and black, though. No bloodstains here. Distracted. She needs to focus but she's, she needs, she needs.

Sleep. 

The tapping's stopped. She looks up. Wasn't conscious of looking down, but the ground started moving at some point and she's had to adjust her footing. Maybe. There's a hand in front of her. She blinks. Blinks again, harder, and her eyes won't focus all the way but it's enough to see that it belongs to the creature still watching her.