#ask moc

King of Cups - the most mature man your character knows.

◥█̆̈◤ Four of Cups - how indecisive is your character?

For Mael

★ Six of Pentacles - does your character accept help from others?

Queen of Pentacles - the most organized/chill woman your character knows.

King of Cups - the most mature man your character knows. (Lilu)

I really think it depends on how you define 'mature' in this context. Lazuli's uncle Nero is certainly the most refined man she knows, and her Luli is the most worldly and educated. Her Azza is the one who is the least likely to get offended by something, but he's also the most likely to hold a grudge, so he might be out of the running.

Ultimately, she's inclined to answer the one that she thinks has grown the most, is the most serene and compassionate: her boyfriend's father and longtime family friend, Muriel.

◥█̆̈◤ Four of Cups - how indecisive is your character? (Lilu)

I mean, poor girl is 17-18, she's not exactly at a part of her life where's she's overflowing with wisdom and purpose. Combined with her stubbornness (that's the Keshet blood), she's prone to making decisions based on her intuition and sticking to them, outcomes be damned. That's not to say she can't be convinced to have a change of heart if presented with enough evidence or circumstance, and ss she matures, she's much more prone to think things through before making a decision.

★ Six of Pentacles - does your character accept help from others?(Maël)

Naw, hell no, absolutely not. He has first son AND youngest child syndrome, and is hellbent on proving he can handle his problems himself. Learning to ask for help from those he trusts - his partner, his parents, his friends - will be his lifelong struggle.

Queen of Pentacles - the most organized/chill woman your character knows. (Maël)

Listen, Maël knows a lot of incredibly organized women in his life: his aunt Nadia, his aunt Portia, his auntie Iris. But chill? Aside from Portia, who is kinda chill about some stuff and incredibly unchill about others, he wouldn't describe any of them as chill.

👃 : Does your OC smell good? Do they have a signature scent? for Iris

💌 : How would they plan a romantic evening for a significant other? for Lazuli

💐 : What is their courting style? How would they woo someone? for Mael

👃 : Does your OC smell good? Do they have a signature scent? (Iris)

Iris smells incredible, dude. She is the type of bougie b who wakes up, washes her face, brushes her teeth, and puts on perfume no matter what kind of day she's going to have. Her signature scent is Replica's Lazy Sunday Morning (dewy florals, aldehydes, and white musk).

The reason she does this is because she's a sweaty betty, and Vesuvia is hotter than the Devil's taint 9 months of the year. Gorl's gotta stay on top of the personal scent situation, so perfume it is.

💌 : How would they plan a romantic evening for a significant other? (Lazuli)

Lazuli knows her partner isn't much for extravagant romantic gestures or big public displays of affection, so she would probably do something very intimate and private, like a picnic in the cedars with all his favorite foods, a night swim at some moonlit waterfall, or an early-morning mushroom hunting hike followed by lunch and a lazy afternoon nap together. She might also surprise him with tickets to see a musician or band that he really admires, or plan a particular scene that she knows he's been fantasizing about.

💐 : What is their courting style? How would they woo someone? (Maël)

If you asked Maël, he would say that he doesn't court, and he most certainly doesn't woo... which is to say, none of his romantic gestures are intentional, and are much more incidental to him working through and expressing his feelings for his romantic interest (he is his father's son, after all).

Thank you fren/mutual 🖤

1. My partner… he is just. The best and most beautiful human. I am astonished, awed, and humbled that every day that I get to spend my life with him

2. My cats, and cats as a whole. Cats IN THEORY

3. The smell after a summer thunderstorm. The smell of a crisp fall morning. The smell of forests in November. Nature smells in general. Nature in general

4. Making stuff, like writing and drawing and painting and cooking, but SPECIFICALLY the flow state of making. See also: performance focus and performance high (reformed band/music theatre kid)

No bingo - am I doing this right?

Like most of the canonical chars in the Arcana, I think Asra suffers from a lack of his traumas truly being addressed in his route. Out of all the LIs, I think his is the CLOSEST to the mark - his breakdown in the Death chapters, his Strength chapter, his Moon chapter - and his upright Judgment chapter are some of the strongest writing that NH has, imo. He was the route I referenced the most in writing the Oracle, and in a lot of ways, Iris was formed to work against the ways in which Asra sought desperately to gain control his life.

And yet!!

Where Asra gets really muddled (imo) is his interpretations in the fandom. A true Gemini, Asra has many moods and many modes, and he transitions between them so smoothly and so sweetly you’d miss it if you weren’t looking for it. Asra can be bubbly, can be silly, can be dark af, can be incredibly intense. I think the downfall of his characterization is when that fluidity is what’s ignored for more what I’ll call “tangible” traits - Asra is soft, Asra is controlling, Asra is childlike. Asra lives many lives in this fandom, and many of them can feel like half-truths to me. Especially those who are quick to judge the actions of incredibly broken people, or don’t dip in past that surface playfulness and sexuality (yes, like Julian, I think an unhealed Asra uses sexuality as a means of control and release).

When writing the Oracle, Asra was a straight up enigma to me. Julian was very easy for me to write, even as he changes on the path of the fool’s journey - but he doesn’t share the same flexible characterization as Asra. It took him a long, long time to open up - the same way it took me a long, long time to realize what I was writing about. In a lot of ways, my growth in the oracle mirrors Asra’s. For that reason, he is incredibly precious to me.

Not a weird (or dumb!) ask! It's definitely one of those things that can be difficult to portray visually and rhythmically in text.

A few things: You might want to lean into it looking "bad" or "weird", depending on how you want your reader to feel. If the stutter is a thing your character is shy / embarrassed about, or that is a feeling you want to evoke in your reader, it *should* look kind of odd to the eye. That ensures that your reader won't gloss over it, and/or draw the eye to the speech itself.

That said, you can also soften the stutter by leaning into how other characters/character with the stutter is feeling or experiencing that moment. "X waited patiently while Y finished their thought: 'I - I - I - I thought we were meeting at 8?"

Lean into rhythm - stutters are often rather rhythmic, so repeating the same sound with the same punctuation will help to emphasize that repetition. "My-... my-... my-... my-..."

White space can help to create pause, while removing it can make the stutter seem more rapid. "K-k-k-k-k-" reads much quicker than "sh... sh... sh... sh..."

Trust your gut! If you're writing something like your own speech patterns, you're the expert in how to portray that in a way that's authentic. You could have a writer friend you trust review it in comparison to your own speech patterns if you're still uncertain.

Man I wish I could say soon but idk. The last month has been wild and rough (work, school, holidays, health, family, etc etc) but I’ve been chipping away at the recent chapter and writing ahead, albeit slower than I would like.

The Story and What I Want To Say still live rent free in my head, to the point where I dream about it. Here are some shitty notes from a dream that help to sew together a pivotal scene later in the narrative, if that’s any consolation. Thank you for your patience and support. 🖤

I feel like it’s a double whammy: 1) it’s a hozier line, whose social justice music and work gets sidelined for Bog Wizard Daddy and 2) it’s not enough to be “woke” we need to also put the knowledge of social justice into practice

Thank you! I’m very lucky that my bread job is social justice-adjacent, so I’m able to practice much of this on the regular (it very much seeps into my writing as well). But the tag is mostly a reminder for myself - that even my bread work is not enough and there are other spaces where I’m needed if I have the spoons to show up for it. Allyship and advocacy is the work of a lifetime.