the gan-and-los cinematic universe

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@lucienfairfax is the primordial soup from which this blog arose.

for a quick rundown of the characters talked about here, see this page.

it gets weird here, and I don't particularly care about being canon-compliant or even compliant to fandom-accepted standards of characterisation. I am here to have fun. soooo much fun. illegal amounts of fun. if it ain't fun, I ain't doin it.

feel free to ask any questions you like about anyone/anything you're curious about. I might reblog an ask meme every once in a while; you can find any I've reblogged under #prompts and don't even bother with the timestamp, I'll take questions from memes at literally any time. time isn't real but follower engagement is. just make sure you put the title in your ask so I know which meme you're referencing.

quick note: all of my characters are people of colour, queer and gnc, and non-monogamous. and very fucking weird. because they're all little pieces of me and I write them from experience.

for example, imagine em approaching Leviathan in this

his personality is abrasive and he's rather asocial (to say nothing of his bloody proclivities) which makes it difficult to find things to do with him that aren't... well, kind of fucked up. I consider it a miracle that he makes it to the Mojave and finds a friend in Gideon, let alone that he also befriends Ulysses and that they both make it all the way to the Commonwealth (imagine crossing this country twice, oof) without one of them killing the other. (quite the contrary, it seems.)

but I have this idea of a Mosaic figure leading a group of world-builders to find... a vault. not like, a Vault, but... a mythical-seeming place, probably deep underground, that houses either a vast store of human knowledge or a vast store of resources. a library, we'll say. a place that holds what is needed to forge a new world.

because, let's face it, the Wasteland is doing its best, but it hasn't really gotten very far in two hundred years. time for some deus ex machina, methinks.

anyway, Noah was my first choice for this leader figure, but Noah is emotionally bound to the Commonwealth and I'm happy to let him stay there. Gideon is dead. but Ulysses... absolutely. and Gabriel, who has already crossed this country twice and is apparently no stranger to wandering (a true master of highways both visible and hidden, that lad), would surely go with him.

you swallow pain & fold around it you have always hurt. you hold it carefully, and twisted in such a way that other people don't have to see it. you don't choke on it. you don't drown. you just have it, the way some people have freckles, this is a thing that lives in your bones. you fold instead of fighting because you know how to make yourself small, tuck away the places where they have clawed at, swallow the bruises so you seem clean. nobody needs to see it. you will live through this on your own. you know what you need, and relief isn't it. this doesn't mean you cannot reach out - it means it is not in your nature to do so. you should. hiding does not mean you won't be seen.

“Rules: Take this quiz for one of your OCs. (Only 8 questions, some of them are a little… U-Quiz-y, but I liked the results."

I chose to take it for Dayir, and got:

you were meant to it was built into you. designed for you. there is pain here because it was meant for you, and how fucking dare they. your suffering is not their right. you hurt because they gave you ways to suffer and carved it into you when you could not breathe, because the intention always was that they could weaponize your pain against you. it is Yours. You are Yours. How fucking dare they. they cannot make you theirs; do not let them try.

hmm. a little vehement and edgy (non derogatory) for Dayir's tastes, more something I'd expect to get for Ishan

but speaking of Ishan, there was a "choose a quote" question and while I ended up picking a different one, I saw this and was floored by how much this feels like Dayir towards Ishan:

it's almost embarrassing how alike they are because sometimes I'm like "oh god does this make me look like a copycat" but it's truly coincidental, I think Aurora and I have just enough values and tastes in common that it turns out this way

so when Dayir comes along with eir draconic features, obviously that's where Aymeric's mind goes -- except, of course, Dayir is a giant bottom and while eir service-topping is quite lovely, it's not "pretend to be a dragon" calibre

which is fine of course, it's not a big deal, but two great things happen post-Dragonsong War that have Aymeric praising Halone at the top of his lungs:

1. Dayir masters the mantling of demi-Bahamut, giving em Big Dragon Dick Energy

I wrote a promptfill for ffxivwrite2020 that was about Dayir obsessively reading Ishgardian etiquette primers in the middle of the night because ey were nervous about offending Ser Aymeric because -- predictably -- ey had a giant crush

and I think that's funny when you consider the above, because it's pretty obvious to everyone but Dayir in that circumstance that there's no way ey could possibly fuck up Ishgardian customs that badly. in fact, eir gentility is a matter of much gossip when ey first arrive because 1) it stood in extremely stark contrast to Ishan, who was supposedly Ishgardian but behaved like an incorrigible boor for some reason and 2) it was so disarming from a foreign adventurer who mysteriously defeated primals and looked like a dragon. no one knew what to make of it. it was truly only the beginning of Dayir (and company) engineering their society's total paradigm shift

How polite is your character? Do they go out of their way to mind their manners? Do they get upset when people around them aren't polite?

oh, this is great fortune :) would you like some lavender milk and a piece of cake? 

since I have multiple OCs, I’ll answer like this: I think the most polite -- as in, not just kind in manner but also with adherence to the social standards and etiquette specifics of their environment -- are Dayir and Noah. 

Noah was just raised that way, to always be respectful of others even if their social needs seem alien at first, and to always be tactful and speak softly (you can always get nasty later, if you have to, but you can’t overwrite a bad first impression!). people in the Wasteland can be kind of distrustful of him because of this -- they're used to more... direct ways of communication -- but his actions and behaviour usually prove his sincerity in short order.

Dayir is blessed with the Echo, which among other things gives em the ability to grasp the nuances of a language as well as the semantics of it, and ey are very sensitive/intuitive besides, so it’s pretty rare that they make social faux pas. ey are dedicated to compassion and diplomacy and mutual understanding, which further adds to eir desire to mind eir manners and put people at ease.

both of them can handle when other people are impolite -- Noah really just doesn’t mind, especially since civilisation as he used to know it just doesn’t exist anymore and he’s learned to adapt. Dayir can handle it too because ey deal with a wide variety of people on a regular basis and ey are very adaptable, but ey don’t always enjoy it, particularly if the impoliteness is egregious or taunting.

what can't Dayir consume, what can't be assimilated into Dayir's vast aetheric body? the most complex and self-actualised of primals are still nothing to this great Asci-Allagan gift within eir ribcage, this ever-ready black-hole Heart (what lies within the Heart of the Heart of Darkness? all). there is profound sensual joy in being a vessel, in blooming hot or icy or earthy or bright with some lovely egregore's aether, in wrapping oneself around some imperious and raging will and feeling its shuddering gasp as it finally acquiesces to a will even greater. yes, profound sensual joy, to be sure

but then there are eir dreams, where ey sink deep, deep into some inky velvet blackness, swallowed, devoured, enveloped wholly, caressed by appendages that have no limit, succoured by mouths that have no end, and ultimately, yes, taken, filled, like the vessel ey are, but in a way that hollows em out utterly, that devours em within in much the same way as ey are being devoured without. the Heart of Darkness, eaten by Darkness. what bliss, what immolating bliss.