oreramar

[oreramar]

All of the above, yes! Soulmate AUs have long bothered me on many of these points.

Discussing this post with bf, however, he suggested a version of the whole soulmate concept that might answer a few of these things, ignoring the weird deterministic angle perhaps?

Instead of a soulmate mark appearing at birth, it only develops after you've been dating/close to someone for a good while. Let's say a year on average, give or take. In this way it's more a confirmation of compatibility than a mark of destiny from the get-go. Let's also say that the mark can develop no sooner than biological puberty if you want an evolutionary link, or if you're going cosmic/mystical/the work of a god, it develops around whatever the social age of majority is (or maybe the earliest it develops is the social age of majority, chicken or egg style).

As such, aromantics need never have or develop one, polyam groups might get whatever makes sense as a group, and if you assume that whatever universal force or omnicient love god is in charge of all this is concerned with the happiness and well-being of those involved, then presumably DV could be circumvented in genuine cases of soulmate connections. And at the very least you're not being bound by destiny to a complete stranger from the beginning of your existence.

Now this still has worldbuilding implications. Weddings might not have quite the same social weight of making oaths to each other - maybe once you get those marks, you're considered good as married and all that's left is to fill out the paperwork on it for the legal side of things and throw a celebratory party for the social side.

Maybe it's still considered abnormal if you never, ever develop a mark. The happy utopia for couples who face societal struggles to be together in reality still doesn't necessarily work out particularly well for aromantics, given the heavy romance focus of this worldbuilding. I don't think this can be fixed except with the happy little bandaid that says everything is ok for everyone, actually - not a very realistic answer.

If a couple dates for years and years and never develops marks, do they break it off as something that'll obviously never work out? Stay together hoping it might one day change? Go to some shady tattoo artist who can more or less reliably fake the marks in order to get married even if the universe seems to be saying they shouldn't?

Can these marks change or fade over time? People grow and change and this doesn't stop just because they've married each other. It's possible to just grow apart, to lose compatibility. Is a changed, faded, or lost mark simply taken as evidence enough to grant an easy divorce? Is it regarded as some kind of moral failing by society? (grounds for cultural differences there, I think) Again, can it even happen in the first place, or is the judgement of the Universe/Love God doing this simply that infallible?

If you're widowed and begin to date again, maybe you can start developing a new mark with someone, whether they had a previous soulmate or not. Do the marks change due to death? Do they remain in some form forever or do they fade away with time?

...

You know, all this said, I think that part of why the whole Predestined Soulmate AU thing rarely works out when you really start poking at it is this: love isn't just about feelings. It's about choice. It's choosing another person, choosing to communicate, choosing to cooperate, choosing to stay with each other or choosing to break apart.

Soulmate AUs are pretty little surface level fantasies where you cannot ever make the wrong choice, and therefore nobody can deny you that choice...but there is no choice in that part, is there? It's really just a cosmic-level arranged marriage, and sure, you can still choose to love that person, but you never chose the person to love.

i can never write a soulmates au cause i very quickly stop thinking about romance and start thinking about the sociological implications of a world where soulmates are a confirmed verifiable thing

#soulmate au #I've had thoughts about the whole soulmate au premise before #and I swear I've never liked it for so many of the reasons brought up above #it also always felt very cheap when it came up via fanfic shipping #even if I liked the ship itself just fine #seeing it touted as “They're Soulmates In This AU Actually” always bothered me so much #the fic always had to do some real heavy lifting with the concept to keep my interest in spite of that #it felt like a shortcut to avoid doing hard characterization work

[oreramar]

Florist Talk: daily tasks

I recently made a post with bullet points talking about some of the common aspects of being a florist (caveat: at a mom n pop shop in a small town in the US, not all points apply universally). This time I'm going to narrow down on the normal sorts of everyday, week to week aspects. This is written as though it's a guide for the writing of Florist AU fiction/fanfiction, so occasionally I'll refer to the example Florist as your Florablorb, or, now, Florbo for short.

May this be of use to anyone writing such a story in order to simply ground your character in everyday tasks when plot/characterization needs to happen.

Opening tasks: I'm sure you can imagine. Doors open, lights on, computer/POS logged into and till shift opened, any ambient music turned on. Extra details can be added such as dragging out sandwich board signs or those outdoor flags or maybe even an outside display stand/cart (only in warmer months) or shoveling/salting a walkway (if in a snowy time/place).

Then Florbo goes into the walk-in flower cooler and removes any flower arrangements premade for delivery on this day. Maybe delivery slips are organized now, maybe left for when a delivery will actually be made. Anything that was ordered in day(s) before this one should be delivered on the first run of the day if possible.

If there's a florist website it's possible web orders came in after previous day's closing/before opening this one. They might autoprint and simply need to be collected off the printer. If they exist they get sorted into same-day or put into whatever organization system is used for future orders. The shop I work at has a series of cubbies labeled Monday through Saturday; order sheets are folded in half and put into whatever day it's meant for.

Start working on whatever flower orders came in for this day. If they're done before first delivery time then they can go out with the others. If not, they'll go out later. On a busy day, an unspecified or "designer's choice" arrangement can be chosen from the display cooler for speed. It'll be replaced by a design of similar price when more time is available.

If calls or walk in customers happen during any of this then they're handled in between the rest of it.

Usually in my experience there's minimum two deliveries per day: one mid morning / before noon, and one after lunch breaks are taken / mid-afternoon. Rarely are there fewer runs, and occasionally more orders come in during or after the second run so a third (or fourth, or sometimes, rarely, even a fifth) are needed. This might be very modest given the size of the shop/town I work in; more may be normal (especially with a dedicated driver) in a larger or busier city.

Again, usually I can get any same-day morning orders done either before or just after lunch breaks conclude. Again, this might vary place to place, and definitely varies day to day.

Lunch breaks can be half an hour to a full hour depending on your place and person and how busy it all is. I've got a near-retirement boss who likes to go out to lunch and takes a full hour. I usually only do half an hour unless for some reason I need to run home for lunch in which case I can typically have an hour as well.

If and when same-day orders are finished, Florbo will get into the cubby/other organization and find anything already there for the next day and start working on those orders. Floral arrangements go into the back cooler (not the display one, to avoid confusion/people walking in and wanting to buy things already made for others). Any live plants or gift-type items go on some sort of shelf or counter or other out of the way surface. Confusion can happen if Florbo doesn't pay attention to dates: an order for Monday the first will be in the same cubby as an order for Monday the eighth. Gotta try to stay on top of that but mistakes can happen.

If a same-day order is made while working on next-day orders, it gets priority.

Obvious is obvious but orders that go to schools have to get there comfortably before school lets out. If that is just not feasible because someone up and ordered fifteen minutes before the final bell they'll need to be told that it's gonna be a tomorrow thing now. This usually isn't an issue.

There's usually a same-day delivery time cutoff, usually sometime in the afternoon. How strictly it is followed may vary by the day and store. If someone tries to skirt this cutoff by ordering online they may or may not need to be called and informed that it's not gonna work this day. There will be a separate post on Delivery Protocol later because that gets a bit long.

Make any arrangements needed to refill the display cooler. Every few days or so, recut and rewater any arrangements left in the display cooler to give them more longevity.

Normal cleaning chores might be done during lulls as well. Dusting shelves or watering live plants is occasional, but sweeping the work area and cooler floors is daily. No matter how careful you are in cutting leaves and flower stems stuff will end up on the floor. Some of those stems will ricochet wildly when clipped.

Flower deliveries come about twice a week. They could arrive any time of day, even overnight (warehouse drivers will usually have a key shop to put them inside for you) depending on your suppliers and their routes. Flowers arrive bundled in big, long boxes, and must be trimmed and put into water treated with flower food.

Flower food comes either in big buckets of white powder (mixed into water) or big buckets of liquid concentrate (again, mixed into water, and a handy hose that connects it to the water source through a special nozzle makes this much easier. The nozzle is squeezed like a gas pump and can be used to fill buckets/vases/jugs directly).

Closing bits are just what you'd expect. Sometimes someone calls or walks in five minutes before closing, and Florbo must unfortunately suffer this.

SATURDAY SPECIAL: any and all of the above needed, but this tends to be the slowest day for orders and deliveries, so instead some of the time is filled by removing literally all flowers from the walk in cooler, sweeping and mopping the floor, and recutting/reorganizing/refreshing all the water buckets. This includes emptying a bucket used to collect cooler condensation water via a hose. There's never much in the winter but in the summer this has to be done two or three times a week otherwise it gets too full to lift or carry and your poor Florbo, if they have floppy arms, might be forced to drag it across the floor to tip it outside.

Of course things can vary depending on the day and vary even more if there's some kind of holiday altering the flow of business, but that bit's for a later post. This one's gotten long enough.

So go now, and couch your Florbo's dialogue and narrative in actions such as processing a fresh order of flowers from the wholesaler, or in resorting to dusting shelves for the third time that week because business has been so slow and they've run out of normal things to do and space in the display cooler to make things for. There is much variety to be had beyond writing them arranging yet another dozen roses every time plot rears its head!

#florist talk #daily tasks #long post #flower shop au #writing resource

[oreramar]

Florist Talk for Fiction

I'm pretty sure the whole Flower Shop AU thing's day has long since passed but heck it, I've been doing the actual Flower Shop thing in real life for a few years now and I've got a handful of thoughts to throw out into the void, just in case anyone out there is still into or writing for that particular trope or theme or what have you.

First, a minor disclaimer: my experience is at one particular mom & pop shop in a small town in the US. Some details may differ for larger florists in bigger cities or other countries, but if your writing is set in some vaguely defined little town in vaguely defined culturally-American-location, then there could be overlap enough for you. Research and tweak as needed otherwise.

Second, I'm probably going to break stuff up by topic or something and post it gradually, tagging it all as Florist Talk, because initially I started writing a rambling mass of bullet points then realized it was way too much, and there were way too many dumb little details to include on some of those points. So call it a series I suppose. Feel free to send Asks if you have a curiosity about anything in particular. I may or may not have knowledge for you.

Third, a few general points for writing your Florist Blorbo with convincing verisimilitude:

Day to Day and Week to Week, weekdays are busier than weekends, usually. I've seen small town florist schedules where Sundays are Closed and Saturdays are only open for a few hours, like nine to noon or something. I am jealous of these, for the shop I work for is also a gift shop and one of the husband-wife duo of owners believes very much that Closing Early = Losing Potential Sales, and so I must often languish in agonizing boredom for four to five hours on a Saturday afternoon in order to be present for the one (1) person who maybe possibly walks in at 4:40 pm to look around or something.

Summers are the Slowest Season, the Saturday Afternoons of the Florist Year.

A flower shop lives or dies on the strength of its Valentine's Day and Mother's Day sales, basically. Oh, there's other holiday things, and day to day stuff, but nothing that can be counted on like those Big Ones.

Speaking of day to day, morbid though it may be, Funeral flowers tend to be the biggest contributors to flower shop sustainability outside of the holidays.

No seriously your FloraBlorb will know the Funeral Directors in town by name. Use these positions to convincingly place and namedrop minor characters. It's so easy.

Your FloraBlorb may have a Dedicated Delivery Driver (a secondary character perhaps?) OR they may have to do deliveries themselves. If they don't have a second person to run the shop while they do this then they'll have to close the shop and take calls on a cell phone as they come. Use this as needed for character or plot stuff I suppose.

Florist Flowers are Expensive compared to grocery store flowers, but this doesn't mean that the Florists themselves are making that much money. Flowers tend to be very perishable and there's a lot of overhead in transporting and storing them and stuff. Wallyworld might be making a technical loss, maybe just breaking even with their racks of cheap bouquets in the produce section, but they aren't hurt by that because they make so much more money selling everything else as well. A Flower Shop doesn't have that going for them, so they gotta charge more.

Maybe this is why I so often see Flower Shops paired with something else out there. Flower and Gift Shops. Flower Shops that sell Homemade Fudge on the side. Flower Shops and Boutiques. Flower Shops and Bakeries. Basically, feel free to write this AU and wedge the obvious interests of two Blorbos together into one store. As long as you can find a way to convince us all that their Flower Shop / Cabinetry business can thrive in the same space then why the heck not.

#florist talk #flower shops #fic advice I guess #or whatever you want to do #tag blorbos all you want #this is for your imagination to play in

[oreramar]

Prompt: Cursed Jewelry

Veil of Truth (Cursed)

When worn, it increases the user's powers of insight and observation by a significant degree.

Curse: Every insight or observation made while wearing this veil is twisted to its most negative conclusion. Your friends are hiding something, so they must be conspiring against you. Your spouse smiled at someone, so they must be cheating. Your rival is making overtures of peace, so they must be hoping to lull you into a false sense of security.

As with most cursed items, once used it becomes very difficult to stop using - not necessarily because of the magic of the curse itself, but because without it, you begin to fear that you could miss some vital detail that could lead to your ruin.

#art #cursed jewelry #magic item

[oreramar]

Stasis Lanterns

The best lantern you'll ever pack, as long as you can find, make, or keep a light source around. Anything with a natural glow will work and will be amplified by the lantern's magic, so some adventurers might carry around some luminescent mushrooms or moss, or a small tinder kit to ignite a burning ember on the go.

Most stick to very practical designs but some of them get fancy, especially when used as more permanent lighting. These have to be routinely checked to make sure the levitation spells aren't showing any drift and to replace the lightsource inside - they might be in stasis but it's more of a slowing of time than an outright freeze, and the lights will eventually fade if left unchanged too long.

#art #design #lanterns #magic

[oreramar]

Did another prompt, but also did not. Technically the prompt was "Adventurer's Inventory: Cooking Supplies" but that did not spark joy or interest and I'm doing these for fun, not for challenge, so I made my own in a similar theme -

Magical Adventuring Food, Based on Tasty Things I Like.

#art #magical food #rainbow bread #tea #garlic chicken #purple sweet potatoes #fairy style

[oreramar]

A few days ago, I was mindlessly trawling through Pinterest for anything of interest or inspiration and I found one of those daily-for-a-month drawing prompt lists - Inktober, but someone's unofficial remix. I saved the image link, thinking maybe I'd do some of them one day because I liked the theme.

Another was recommended, and I liked it too, so I also saved that link.

Then there was a third and at that point I gave up and made a folder for them, and by the time I emerged from that rabbit hole, shaking dirt from my ears and blinking in the sudden light, I realized that I hadn't really drawn much in some time, not very much at all, and that I missed it and wanted to do more.

And so, while I'm not exactly following all the prompts or doing anything every single day - I'm far too busy with far too many things right now to commit to that without tearing myself apart over guilt for missing it or prioritizing other things some days - I have picked at a prompt on that first list.

Adventurer's Inventory: Weaponry of Choice

My answer: A sword of starry nights, whose nature is revealed when light is cast upon it, hung up in a comfortable home after the adventure ends.

#art #drawing prompts #fantasy #adventure #sword

[oreramar]

Eventually this will be the center of a blanket. I have foresty color blend hexagons for some of the outer rings - not enough, but some - and want to do a watery shoreline transition ring before I get to those though that might be ambitious.

It's gonna take a lot more yarn and time but it'll be so warm and soft when finished, I think.

#crochet

[oreramar]

I have seen it attested that in Irish folklore, you put a bit of your soul into everything you knit or crochet, and so you must intentionally work a mistake into your craft so that piece of soul can escape and return to you.

This is not a part of the craft that I practice myself, for you see, I - Errors Georg -

[oreramar]

YES I’ve been chased and hissed at by a Canada goose but it doesn’t make me hate them guess I’m just built different

#trying this again as I put it on the wrong blog before #but I used to feed these birds by hand as a small child #never once got bitten or hissed at or chased or attacked #they were just fine

[oreramar]

did u know there's an EVIL Boop if you hover over the button and watch it flip a few times

At first I thought you were talking about the super boop but no... there is an Evil boop

#I desperately wish to Evil Boop #but no matter how long I hover or how many flips the text does #all I can do is Super Boop

[oreramar]

I read a bunch of Frog King / Frog Prince stories, and wouldn't you know it, none of them included a kiss as the key to detransforming the guy.

#video #frog king #frog prince #fairy tale #folktales #art #speed paint #Youtube

[oreramar]

I wanted to draw a rainbow of flowers, so I drew a rainbow of flowers.

#art #flowers #rainbow

[oreramar]

Out of curiosity rb and put in the tags how many fics come up when you type your last name into ao3. Apparently even though my last name is uncommon there's like 500

#23 #one was because someone had my last name as a username #most of the others were in the language my last name comes from #none that I saw actually had my last name as a character's last name #just as an ordinary word in said original language

[oreramar]

When Death is a Doctor's Godparent.

There were lots of little variations in the tales I read - whether Death was a godfather or a godmother, whether the father of the child rejected two or three saints or just God or God and the devil both as godparents before accepting Death for the role, whether the father or the child became the doctor, whether Death standing at the head or the foot of the bed was absolute, whether the Doctor in question could simply prescribe colored water and take the credit for a natural recovery or whether herbs and tonics made their uses known to him or whether the water or ale or what have you was enchanted to heal regardless, why and for whom the Doctor played his trick, whether or not the Doctor got a second chance (and then screwed that up to), whether the punishment was immediate or delayed and in what way...

I myself picked and chose elements from the lot and mixed them into this. It's generally true to the overall shape of the tales, but not necessarily accurate to any one of them in particular.

Folktales are fun that way.

Happy Halloween!

(Psst, by the way, I made that channel new on Youtube recently. So far I have a couple of longer stories up plus a couple of shorts, and more queued to post twice per week - Tuesdays and Fridays - so if you like to listen to folktales retold and watch little drawings take shape, those things are done there.)

#folktale #fairy tale #death #godmother death #folklore fae #Youtube

[oreramar]

The tale of the boy who wished to learn to shudder - or at least, a somewhat compiled version of many such closely related tales.

Happy Halloweek.

#folktale #art #video #speeddraw #Youtube

[oreramar]

Final thing: post-raid cutscene and story stuff debunked our in-the-moment theorizing regarding the other two researchers. Thaliak at the very least seems to have been an entirely different person, from what I recall.

SO

FFXIV recently released their latest alliance raids.

Spoilers May Follow.

The Twelve, gods of Eorzea, are involved, as is the revelation (predicted by some online) that these gods were once people of the world before it was sundered, specifically those who sided with the person who did the Sundering.

So on the quest leading up to the third and final raid, you can talk to the gods you've met so far.

I went through that while talking in voice chat with someone else who was also going through these little chats and we shared the lines to see if there were any differences, such as Byregot commending me (level 90 crafter) for being so devoted to crafting, and encouraging crafting to the level 1 crafter, or patron gods having an extra word or five to say to an adherant player character.

But then I got extra lines from Nymeia and Althyk referencing them having faded memories of my character being familiar, of saying something or hearing something from someone long ago.

My partner didn't get those lines.

The only difference in our experience we could think of that would relate to this was thus: I had done every single Elpis side quest. He hadn't.

We immediately started searching and we think we found the characters who were Elpis researchers once and who then became the gods. There is a longer than normal sidequest chain dealing with, ultimately, the transformation of the underwhelming "Io" into the overwhelming "Behemoth." This sidequest chain involves a sister and brother named Maira and Alkaios.

(Bonus knowledge: The lead-up to the boss fight against Nymeia and Althyk involves fighting three Io's and a Behemoth.)

What really got me in the end though, looking through the quest events, was the little tidbit of knowledge that Alkaios, the brother, is often called upon in Elpis to help deal with the corpses of concept animals by utilizing time magics.

Althyk is the god of time.

I really think we got them.