Asocial Sociologist

AKA: My excuse to research flowers and their symbolism

Flowery - Buttercup

This is a given as it’s taken straight from implied Undertale canon. Shape-wise, these are likely an inspiration for all the flowers' light-world sprites.

Buttercups represent playfulness, joy, youth, and friendship.

Because they reflect sunlight and create a yellow glow, they are also associated with light. Which could mean nothing.

Orange - Copper Iris

Orange irises represent courage, bravery, pride, and youthful energy.

There are a few orange iris species, but I think the bright copper irises best suit her as one of the few orange "beardless" irises.

Yellow - Black-Eyed Susan

A yellow flower which often symbolizes justice as well as motivation and truth.

I also like that an injury is literally in the name considering Yellow’s whole deal. Ironically, they are actually very hardy and difficult to kill.

As a bonus, they’re native to the western United States.

Green - Envy Zinnia

Not only do Zinnias often represent long-lasting friendship, green zinnias represent good health and prosperity (you owe them $5) as well.

The name also feels very ironic and funny to me.

Aqua - Scilla (Wild Hyacinth)

Cyan flowers aren't really common in real life so I went with a sky-blue flower instead.

Scilla actually come in a range of cool tones from white to bright blue to purple. To distinguish from Blue, but still keep her bright, I gave Aqua a hue near the middle.

Hyacinths in general can represent play and sport, but scilla in particular represents optimism, new beginnings, and trust.

Blue - Delphinium

The deeper blue variety in particular.

Blue delphiniums represent grace, strong bonds of love, joy, and an open heart.

Bonus fact: blue roses like the ones Blue grows in-game and which are loosely associated with the chapter overall don't actually exist naturally. They have to be artificially created and often symbolize mystery or the unattainable!

Gee, I wonder what that could do with the chapter's themes...

Seth - Clematis

Represents mental beauty, cleverness, ingenuity, and aspiration.

Comes in many shades of pink and purple, but the bright purple suits them best.

Fly with me

[Deltarune] Sunrise

then in the extras we get comics like this

which at a glance fleshes out the racial aspects via a character explaining the racial rules of universe - humans have x amount of bones, while orcs and kobolds have more. however, if u take it less straightforwardly, it points out how the concept of 'human' is a constructed concept in the world. the fact that there are different categories of human in different parts of the world based off of what types of humanoids occur there is already a demonstration of this. in response, the bones explanation seems to kabru and the characters as an objective way of measuring humans vs nonhumans.

but obv, when the culture was deciding what humanoids were humans and nonhumans, they weren't blindly analyzing skeletons and then deciding. just visually, one can glean that orcs and kobolds look less like the ingroup of tallmen, elves, dwarves, gnomes, etc. the bones explanation appears as a justification for that immediate prejudice under a scientific guise - I'm sure that one could come up with the same number of physical differences between a gnome and an elf that they would find between a tallman and an orc. it sounds a lot better to say 'well, an orc has 230 bones while a human has 206' then 'well, an orc looks ewwww yucky yucky to me while a human looks normal'.

and what i like abt the comic is that the characters take the explanation at face value for the most part. when a contradiction is brought up in the oni, kabru can neatly slot them into the predetermined number of bones framework. bc that's kinda how it works irl - there r cultural prejudices that we can posthumously justify, and if we find something outside of it, we can twist it to fit into our predetermined binary. however, since the reader does not live in a world where there are orcs and kobolds to be prejudiced against, we can see that flaw in the cultural logic. when the party encounters the orcs, the number of bones has no bearing on their humanity. They r shown to be cliquish and distrusting of outsiders, but not any more than the elves are later in the story.

This comic makes things even clearer. Fantasy Racist Kabru believes that HIS racism is Objectively Correct and Justified, becomes outraged at the Touden's non-fantasy racism.

bug and jack flag comm for @bish-0-p! thanks for supporting me!!

I am a social worker. I have worked in community mental health and in home-based healthcare. And it is much, much easier for me to help you when the situation you're in is not yet a full-blown crisis.

"I'm out of money and have been for a while and now I haven't eaten for three days." This is a crisis. A crisis where I'm likely going to have to put you in the car and take you to the nearest food bank--except food banks require appointments now, and the next opening is in four days, so you're staring down the barrel of a week with no food. That's obviously not going to work, so, let's call eight different food banks until we've found one that has an appointment the next day...except it's in the neighboring county and you can't drive. So now I'm calling your doctor to try and brow beat an emergency plan of care update out of him so I can come back the next day and drive you to the food bank. And we haven't even started on the "constantly broke" part of the problem.

"I don't think I have enough food to make it to my next paycheck. I have (xyz) in my house and that will only last until (date)." This is bad, but not a crisis. We have a few days. We make you an appointment at the food bank and contact your brother to make sure you have a ride there. Now we can spend our visit talking about what bills are causing you the most problems and make a jump on a long-term solution, like looping in a community action agency to cover your utilities and getting you an OTC card from Medicaid to cover some of your groceries every month.

"I'm ten months behind on rent, and my landlord said I have a week to get out, or the cops will throw me out. I don't have the money, and if I get evicted, I have nowhere to go." This is a crisis. Every single thing we do here is going to be some version of a Hail Mary. In Michigan, we have the state emergency relief fund for rent issues, but process time is well over one week. There are community action agencies that we can call to assist you with payment, but they are unlikely to have sufficient funds to cover nearly a year of back rent. We can contact legal aid clinics to try and prevent your landlord from evicting you, but they may look at your case and determine that too much "fault" lies with you. Most likely, I'm going to have to put you in touch with homeless shelters and the public housing office.

"I'm two months behind on rent and I don't think I'll be able to pay next month either." This is bad, but not a crisis. This is solvable. We have time to apply for SER, or put you in contact with community action agencies. We have time to review your finances and see if you qualify for a public housing wait list or other forms of ongoing rental assistance. We have time to talk about a million possible adjustments to try and ease the burden of your rent.

"I am the sole caregiver for my elderly parent who has dementia and is emotionally volatile and fully dependent on me. I have not slept through the night in weeks and I have not had an actual break for over a year. I am having screaming meltdowns multiple times a week and I am threatening self-harm unless someone comes to collect my parent and take over all caregiver duties." This is a crisis. This is a crisis where the ethical code of my profession demands that I call 911 and report the conversation to them. They will likely come to the house and interview you. If they determine your threats were serious, they will have you forcibly committed to a psych ward. Your parent will either be dumped into a random hospital or rehab center, or left in the house on their own. Upon release from your psych hold, you will be expected to resume caregiving duties as though nothing happened. Except, now, adult protective services is actively investigating you, because it was determined you may be an ongoing danger to your parent.

"I am the sole caregiver for my demented parent, and I have not had a break in a couple of weeks, and I feel angry and weepy most of the time." This is bad, but not a crisis. We can get you in touch with volunteer groups for respite, and apply for state funded programs to get more day-to-day help, and talk about long-term planning for when the dementia symptoms get worse. We can get you the phone numbers for crisis lines and enroll you in a support group.

And be proud of yourself for reaching out for help and doing something to try to protect and take care of yourself, even though it's stressful as fucking fuck.

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

This goes for asking for help as well.

Or, for example - if you reached out for help with rent, maybe the community group or relief fund can't get it to you by the 1st. But maybe they can get it to you before the 3rd or the 5th - when your landlord adds on a late fee.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and that and other such aphorisms exist for a reason.