Hi Exe!! Sorry this took 5 million years to get to!
15. a book rec you really enjoyed
Other than my previous answers (A Memory Called Empire and The Traitor Baru Cormorant), I would probably have to say The Lies of Locke Lamora!! I'm pretty sure it was actually @transmasc-wizard who I saw posting about it, and I was like "I need to read this ASAP". And I was right. It's now one of my favorite books of all-time.
Bonus shout out to one of my dad's former patients who suggested Percy Jackson when my dad was in the stage of "baby Morri has read everything in the kids section by the age of 6, I shall ask my near-endless supply of middle schoolers for book recommendations". I distinctly remember the first time I ever heard about it. I was playing basketball with my dad, which is notable in and of itself because not only do I hate the outdoors and spots, I also hate the texture of basketballs with a passion.
Bonus: Book recs I'm really looking forwards to reading: The Assassin's Apprentice, The Monster of Elendhaven, and Leech. (all recommended by the same friend who rec'd the first two above. Leech was also seconded by @space-writes so I'm doubly excited for that one.)
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#oh you guys are NOT ready to learn about margays' ankles then...
Oh no I'm ready. PLEASE tell us about margays' ankles. Weird animal facts are my favourite!
hahaha, thank you for asking!!! Weird animal facts are also my favorite!! (<- zoology major who works at a zoo)
So, margays are the only fully arboreal cats in South America, meaning they spend most of their time in trees. They hunt in trees, they sleep in trees, they live in trees. They mostly hunt birds, and are really really good at it.
Part of the reason why is...
They're able to rotate their ankles 180 degrees and walk headfirst down trees.
There's a clip near the end of this video. (Embedded in post, bc fuck youtube right now.)
This is the best still image I could find (yay enshittification of search engines!):
According to a paper I found, they've been observed hanging upsidown using only their back feet to hold on while using their front feet to grab prey/food.
(The complete paper is paywalled unless you have university access, but the bullet point intro is available as a part of the free preview.)
good luck on moving morri! not so nice oc ask, future for rook and carrion?
hiiiii exe!!! thank you for the asks!
future: What's the worst possible future for your OC? Are they taking steps to avoid that outcome? Are they even aware it's a possibility?
For Rook, I don't know what his worst future looks like (probably something along the lines of getting recaptured by Wolf and dying in her hold), but I do have my "Evil Rook AU" that lives in my head rent-free and is absolutely the worst possibility.
In it, the only thing that has to change is that instead of the party finding him in the Feywild, Sigmar/Purity finds him first. Rook ends up becoming attached to him much as he did in-campaign, but this time there's no big secret. Purity trains Rook, who eventually becomes his right-hand man, continuing the cycle of radicalization and abuse that start when Minister White did the same to Purity.
Rook would end up taking his father's place as Lord Lockwood (and hate every second of it, but he'd do anything Purity asked of him), most likely after murdering his father. White and Purity would train him in manipulation and use him to gain control of Arborcea (the country where Rook's father currently holds a seat on the governing council).
By the time the party is ready to face the Children of the Enlightened (Purity's cult), Rook is now the penultimate boss of the campaign, complete with a full set of the chess piece-inspired moves Sigmar started teaching him in-campaign. Instead of commanding a crew of pirates, he commands a crew of nightwalkers (our generic term for the fucked up experiments made by the CoE, not the actual dnd monster of the same name).
Oh, and somewhere along the line, Purity or Rook kills Zara, Purity having convinced Rook that she never really cared about him as much as he thought she did. (This is based on the fact that Sigmar in-campaign was wary about Rook meeting Zara again, saying that Zara had failed him, and he was worried Rook would be hurt by Zara not living up to his expectations he'd set in his mind over the last 3 years.)
Also, Rook does still get recaptured by Wolf, but this time Purity shows up to rescue him (in the flesh!!! not even a corpse puppet!!!), and slaughters Wolf and her crew. (I have a lot of feelings about Purity showing up in person and picking Rook up and Rook's blood staining his pristine while lab coat / robe thingy.)
Instead of Jay and Pluto being the ones to drag Rook back from the brink of death, it's Purity.
Carrion's response under the cut, because I talk a lot.
Carrion's worst possible future is actually the one he thinks he wants for himself right now.
It's the one where he (attempts to) kill Theodore. Partly because it would probably end with Theodore being forced to kill him (the DM confirmed that if Carrion asked to fight him, Theodore would honor that wish. She then also confirmed that Theodore can take Carrion out in a single hit, despite his whopping 60hp.), and partly because it means he would never learn any kind of forgiveness and never understand that Theodore was caught between a rock and a hard place. He acted selfishly, yes, but to act unselfishly would have meant killing Reverence.
Even if he were to by some MIRACLE successfully kill Theodore, he would then be hunted to the ends of the earth by the Silver Order. There would be no chance for him to be seen as anything other than the monster he fears that he is. He would become his own self-fulfilling prophecy.
He thinks that's what he wants (although in his mind he believes he could somehow kill Theodore and then just... leave??? and somehow be happy and safe? as if killing the man whose love saved him would make everything okay?? as if being alone for the rest of his life would bring him peace??), but I have hopes that he can change his mind over the course of the campaign.
I do have some wiggle room in that right now Carrion knows he's not strong enough to fight Theodore, and he's still so fucking terrified of the paladins that he'd either just freeze or run if he saw them. So I'm not going to be killing one of my favorite PCs right off the bat. But I do need his decision to forgive (or at the very least forget) to feel genuinely satisfying.
HI. I'M SORRY. I SAW THIS AS SOON AS YOU SENT IT BUT THEN I GOT DERAILED FOR TWO HOURS BECAUSE MY LIFE IS IN CHAOS. (Last week of my last semester of university, signing a lease for a new apartment later this week, final project for internship is due next week, moving states next week, had to fill out 5 million bits of paperwork and schedule a time to get fucking FINGERPRINTED first thing tomorrow morning bc new job (in another state, which I start less than 2 days after returning from what is sure to be a chaotic (/neg) family vacation) is kinda-sorta a government position (Americorps). Among other things.) (I swear I'm excited about most of this. It's just like "HOLY FUCK THE BIGGEST CHANGES IN MY LIFE TO DATE ARE ALL HAPPENING IN LESS THAN 3 WEEKS.")
ANYWAYS.
You asked about my boys!!
⚔️ — What would they fight for?
Oooh, this is such a fun one, because these two are SO different from each other in this regard.
Rook would fight (and die) for his friends. Which, the bar to becoming a person he would throw his life away for is pretty much "be nice to him at least twice, and don't try to kill him". One of my favorite in-character conversations I've ever had as Rook was Sigmar confronting Rook about exactly this!!! (I'll add a snippet under the cut.)
Carrion, on the other hand, fights for survival. He is, deep down, terrified. Of being seen as a monster. Of the Silver Order. Of Drakkenheim. And yes, of death. He is so fucking desperate to SURVIVE, no matter what he has to do.
(This was literally the reason for his first few transformations before he got control of them. He was afraid that his life was in danger. His backstory goes over those first few key events.)
Rook snippet under the cut. (I've shared it a lot because I love it so much, so if it seems familiar, that's why.)
“Why are you doing this?” Sigmar asks, breaking the silence.
Rook blinks at him, uncomprehending. “Doing what? Coming to Torsek?”
Sigmar nods. “You’ve been pushing yourself to your limits, throwing your life on the line over and over again. Why? You’re endangering yourself, you’ve even died,” Rook could have sworn he heard Sigmar’s voice waver on that word. “But you keep doing it. What could possibly be worth that?”
An answer leaps to Rook’s lips. “Because they need me.” It comes out quietly, but seems deafening in the empty room.
Sigmar leans back slightly, eyes widening in surprise. He looks Rook up and down, as if he’s reevaluating him.
Without thinking, Rook adds, “You’re one of them.”
Sigmar, who has opened his mouth to speak, closes it again. He regards Rook for a long time. Eventually he says, “Your motivations may be more noble than mine, but at heart we act for the same reasons. I know you have not felt the care of a parent the same way I did…” He trails off momentarily, then continues, “But you are desperate for love all the same. I do everything in hopes of someday committing an act that will make the world love me. You, you act in hopes that the Vanguard will love you.” He looks Rook directly in the eyes, face serious. “You’re a fool.”
Rook says nothing, unable to summon up any kind of response to that statement. Sigmar continues, “The Vanguard does nothing but show you love, try to help you. They attempt to show you their love over, and over again. But you refuse to accept it.”
The words hit Rook like a slap, and he opens his mouth to retort, but Sigmar pushes ahead. “Instead of accepting their love, you throw yourself recklessly into danger, putting your life on the line again and again. You’re killing yourself, Rook.”
Rook’s eyes blaze with anger. He isn’t killing himself at all. He doesn’t want to die, far from it. He fights viciously for his life in every battle. He snaps back, “I’m not killing myself.”
Sigmar’s reply is swift and painful, like a bullet from his gun. “You might as well be.”
Also for the pride asks, 21 about any topic you like! If you want to pick another character and just tell me your thoughts about them, feel fre!
Thank you for the ask, Exe!!
As you might have been able to tell based on my last set of responses, my own autism and aroace-ness (as well as my agender-ness) plays a huge role in not only my real-life perception of sexuality and gender but also the way I play my characters.
[putting this under the cut because I ended up rambling about my own experiences with gender and sexuality and how that has been in conversation with my OCs, especially my D&D OCs and it got a little bit out of control with regards to length, lmao.]
I grew up under the impression that "love" was something that they made up for movies and tv and books, not something that happened to real people. (My parents were no help in that regard, as I spent a good 10+ years subconsciously waiting for them to divorce before it finally happened.)
Not only that, but even once I realized I was autistic and aroace, I was really confused by the way people talked about gender. Like, I knew a few friends who were trans in one way or another, or otherwise gnc. And while I respected and was proud of their journeys, I was kind of confused about the whole thing.
I more or less thought "How can you tell that you're not the gender you were assigned at birth? Why do you even have strong feelings about it in the first place? I mean, I understand the body dysmorphia, but the actual gender feelings? What is that? Where does that come from?"
It wasn't until after years of seeing and relating to tumblr posts about "My gender is red shirt in target. I just work here." and "My pronouns are I/me, it's your problem how you refer to me." that I started to consider the idea of being agender. I'd heard the word before, but didn't really understand what it meant because, like with romance and sexuality and all kinds of other human social things, I assumed that my lack of strong feelings about gender were the default.
Finding out that some people (cis and trans) actually really do feel a connection to the concept of womanhood/femininity or manhood/masculinity was honestly one of the biggest revelations of my life.
Actually, I have D&D characters to thank for that realization, hahaha. I realized one day while talking to friends that I'm the only person out of my many, many D&D friends who has no strong preference for gender/pronouns among my characters. I play relatively even amounts of characters who use she, he, and they pronouns (or some combination thereof). (I actually made a whole spreadsheet about it, which is very autistic of me, if I do say so myself.)
Thinking on it more (and talking to a few friends about their own feelings about playing characters of a gender different than their own), I realized that the reason it was so easy was because every gender just felt the same to me: nothing. (Like the bi → aroace pipeline where "I'm attracted the same to everyone" but "the same" is just nothing. Which, is also something I did, lmao. Are you sensing a theme here?)
I play every character based on their backstory, not their gender, and pick gender more or less at random based on vibes or the whims of the universe. So realizing that it's that complete and utter lack of any kind of feelings (positive or negative) about gender that made that so easy for me was a little bit of an OH moment for me, hahaha.
I've gone on long enough, but I'll end by saying: I use she/her pronouns because they're comfortable and familiar, like a pair of shoes worn in just right. But I don't actually think of myself as a woman, and don't mind being referred to by other pronouns. Despite that, I'm fine with being referred to as a woman / classifying myself as a woman with regards to society, because that's how I'm (generally) perceived. It's not grating to be called one, but it doesn't feel accurate. But neither does any other gender.
So yeah. To extrapolate on a joke from one of my friends, I'm powered by two AAA batteries: anxiety, adhd, autism, and aromantic, asexual, agender.
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Pride asks! Carrion for 1 and 5, and Morana for 2 and 3!
Hi Exe!! Thank you very much for the ask!!
What's your oc's gender identity? What's their relationship to their gender?
Carrion is (technically) a cis man. He doesn't really spend any time thinking about his gender, and being a man is what he's used to and comfortable with. Also, having spent time in what was essentially the church military and having Theodore (a cis man) as his biggest influence, he definitely has a certain idea of masculinity, etc. But it's not something he's super pressed about, if that makes sense.
(I say technically because his story works extremely well as a trans allegory. He changes something about himself/his body and is cast out / separated from the people he cares about because they think he might as well be dead. And the whole name change thing, not to mention the body dysmorphia related to his monster form. I mean, hell an eldritch psychic entity in the sewers offered to change it for him. (I wouldn't recommend getting any kind of gender-affirming surgery done in a sewer.) Shoutout to his (extremely genderqueer lesbian) DM who said that transmasc Carrion would go hard, and also making him an honorary member of the Buff Butch Bitch Brigade. (That's what I jokingly call all the characters I've played in my Friday group. It's like 4 women, and then Carrion.))
5. How did you figure out your oc's identity?
Him being a cis man was just the result of me playing around with an appearance and design for him and then going with the default of cis. His (unknown to him) aroace-ness is also largely a side-effect of my own aroace-ness that ends up bleeding into almost all of my OCs. However, the more I think about it, it does make a lot of sense with the general themes of his story. He's extremely touch-averse, which blends well with being sex-repulsed. He also forms extremely strong platonic relationships and sees his friends as his highest priority in life.
Not related to queerness, but he's also autistic, which is also something he gets from me. That one wasn't really intentional, but it is 100% accurate. (The DM once said, unprompted (affectionately) that "Valeska and Carrion are on opposite sides of the autism spectrum." and she was 100% correct.) Realizing that about him also explained a lot of things about his character, including how much he struggles with interpersonal/human relationships, as well as some of his unusual responses to various things.
2. What's your oc's orientation? (Romantic/sexual/platonic alterous ect) Do they have opinions about it?
Morana is the most aroace person to ever exist. She's interested in anatomy and finds human bodies interesting, but she has never once in her life found one even remotely attractive. She's extremely sex-repulsed and would rather do an autopsy or dig up a cadaver with her bare hands than even think about herself or others having sex. She's not ignorant or naive, but she is absolutely repulsed by it. She also sees romantic relationships as a waste of time, and marriage as a very illogical concept. (Why legally bind yourself to someone? All things end, one way or another. Why make it more annoying when it happens?)
All of this may sound like a walking stereotype, however Morana's sexuality and view on relationships in general are modeled almost directly after my own. (You can perhaps see why I enjoyed Sherlock Holmes so much as a child. Hyper-logical (but not uncaring or unkind) and uninterested in romantic or physical relationships? The ideal character.)
3. How did your oc discover themself? Did something cause them to question, or did they always know?
Morana has known that she was uninterested in sex or romance for pretty much as long as she's been aware of what those things were. However, for a very long time she was under the impression that her feelings were the normal or default ones and that everyone else was lying about their interest in romance and sex. Once she realized that wasn't the case, she still continued to think that everyone else was a bunch of fucking idiots. However, being autistic she's very used to not understanding a lot of human social behavior. So she just kind of filed it away as "another way most people are Weird and Wrong", the way she had many other things, including eye contact and smalltalk.
