Smart men are always looking for loopholes.

[itookashot]

WHO: Jesper Fahey and you!
WHAT: Catch-all for October
WHERE: Cadens, Nocwich, Horizon
WHEN: Throughout October (may add event things)
WARNINGS: Nothing right now.





[ooc: feel free to wildcard below or ask me for a custom starter on plurk]

Comments

[itookashot]

Well if you want to learn I know some things. Mostly meat and vegetables, if I'm being honest, but with flavors so it's not boring. We'd probably both have to take baking lessons from someone else, we can probably count on Sam for pecan pie.

[ Or count on Sam for any of these traditional dishes, apparently that's his thing. Jesper wouldn't know the phrase 'as American as apple pie' but he gets the energy from Sam when it comes to all these holidays and meals he likes the most. Ketterdam has more of an 'as sketchy and untrustworthy as Ketterdam' vibe to it. He didn't cook for a long time there, they just had actual inns and pubs with worthier food. ]

The Zemeni, my mother's people, had a lot of things like that. They're a very lively people, they have so many festivals and holidays. It's very work hard, play hard in Novyi Zem. And they love colors.

[ Jesper would say he gets basically everything from his mother. As much as he loves his father, they could not possibly be more different. Colm has red hair, he's pale, and he has a serious and paternal energy to him. As opposed to his mother who was dark-skinned, warm, and fun-loving. Also an amazing Durast, far more so than him, but Jesper feels like he's getting closer to her every day. He's such a momma's boy. The only thing he got from his father is his silver-gray eyes.

So basically he thinks he'd get along great with Cinco de Mayo and whatever this piñata would be. But he laughs at her reaction to Rocket, nodding and he chips away at one of the teeth. ]

Yeah I met him while he was trying to buy something off them and didn't have the honey pellets. He's a real interesting person, loves guns too. I think he's from one of those future spaceship places.

[princessvegas]

I mean, honestly, it makes me feel kinda dumb. Who can't figure it out when there's a cookbook? I'm okay with biscuits, though. Everythin' else turns out like, a little off.

[ Part of it is unfair self-criticism, but she really does seem to have a knack for mistakes or unfortunate outcomes. Things crumble or bake unevenly. Taste just a hint too salty. ]

Fun cultures always have the best food, too. I'm from the worst kinda borin' people there were back home. [ Julie is, unfortunately, from what would be described best as white trash. She's realized that this is a class that simply doesn't seem to exist in other worlds -- only equivalent Earth-dwellers tend to understand her background when she explains. ] When I got to Vegas, I tried all kinda stuff that I couldn't get back home. Sushi, paella, pad thai, everythin'. Now I can only get that stuff in the Horizon.

[ She heaves a sigh. Not everything about her world was a total wash. Food was something they'd had a lock on. It would be nice to be able to get her hands on some foods that don't seem to have translated into Abraxan cultures. ]

I only met 'im at the masquerade. He had like, a freaky little human face. But still the ears and the tail and all. [ Her nose wrinkles. ] He was kind of a dick. But maybe I'd be a dick if I were a raccoon too, I don't know. D'you think he's like, the brain of a human implanted into a raccoon body? That would be so fucking terrible, I bet he misses bein' human. Although those little raccoon hands are pretty similar to ours, I guess.

[ She will have to be stopped. ]

[itookashot]

There is definitely a skill to it though, otherwise some people wouldn't become master chefs compared to people who work as hard who are middling at best.

[ Jesper doesn't think it is always a question of who works the hardest, he's been cooking for him and his father since he was a child, he has plenty of experience. There's no reason he shouldn't be as good as someone else, but it probably is the lack of true heart in it. Survival, not for fun. He knows Julie's hard on herself though. He's just trying to nonchalantly act like she shouldn't be. ]

They are definitely fun people. I can never be mistaken for anything other than Zemeni so it's good I love that side of the family. We're dark-skinned.

[ There is racism in his world, there's racism in every world, although Grisha have it particularly hard. Throw in Grisha who are also not Ravkan, and it's not a great combination, one of many reasons he's glad he never went there. Jesper is mixed but there's no mistaking his heritage with eyes alone. ]

You would not know my father for my father if you saw him. He's got bright red hair, as white as you, I only have his eyes.

[ There are probably some facial similarities that someone could figure out if they looked at the two of them side by side, but there's no mistaking who he takes after. Jesper was raised with the Zemeni though, it's his father's Kaelish side he knows almost nothing about. He ignores the fact that he has a real taste for redheads, he doesn't think he has daddy issues enough for that particular intrigue. (Probably.)

Jesper doesn't stop her because he enjoys when Julie rambles. ]

He had an attitude for sure when we met but I liked it. [ Jesper loves sass! ] I don't think he was human, if he was, he's very comfortable in his body now. [ It's possible! It just seems like someone uncomfortable in their body would be more obvious, and Jesper's great at reading body language. ] I mean do we know if Nanaue was human once, or is he just another species?

[princessvegas]

[ She hums, clearly ambivalent on the idea. Julie is less interested in actually baking so much as she doesn't want to be bad at it. Her female family members had all been decent bakers, so she can't quite figure out what's going wrong with her.

Carefully, she sets a candle into her pumpkin and lights it with a glowing pink fingertip. Technically, she could just put a ball of flame in there and cut the candle out of the equation, but it's tradition, and also there's something a bit spookier about it when there isn't magic keeping up an illusion. The pumpkin's eyes and mouth flicker cheerfully with the light, and she starts picking seeds out of the pulp to go in a smaller bowl. ]

So, like, all Black people are the same... ethnicity? In your world? [ Her brow furrows thoughtfully. Julie hasn't exactly investigated the topic of race in other worlds, but she suspects it's either less prevalent or less complicated for most than it was for her own world. ] I guess not Black, really, but like, darker skin. Like, in my world, we had lots of different colors of people from different parts of the world. And even people whose skin looked the same would be from like, whole different cultures. Different countries. I can't imagine if everyone with one skin color was like, the same.

[ Honestly, she's glad to be rid of the burden of American-style racism and discourse. That shit was an irrevocable albatross around the necks of 350 million people, affecting nearly every part of life. Abraxas has lots of its own problems, but from what Julie can tell, racism only seems to come into play when it comes to being non-human entirely.

Her head tilts to one side and she smiles before looking back over at him. ] My hair used to be red. Like, my natural color, before it started growin' pink. My fox costume at the masquerade, that was what my hair looked like when I was a kid.

[ Not that she'd go back to it, but it was nice to do for one night.

She barks out a laugh and shakes her head. ]

No fuckin' way he used to be human. I think he's just always been a sharkman.

[itookashot]

Yes, mostly. There are other areas who have different skin colors, but they tend to be nations or countries more than spread out. Ravka and Fjerda are the major countries and they lean toward xenophobia, unless we're helping them like in the Grisha army. I suspect my kind in the army got some shit for it. Ketterdam's a port city so everyone goes there, it's not brought up.

[ Jesper didn't really have to come up against it often because he was from that area, and then in Ketterdam it was not really considered. If someone called him Zemeni trash, which did happen a few times, it was rarer than being called general criminal trash. It wouldn't occur to him the kind she's talking about, because they really do on the whole lean toward one country, one type. One of those different world things. ]

Inej is Suli, for example, they're nomadic, they're widely hated in some places because they didn't have their own nation. I think it would benefit people to not be so locked into one country and one culture. Our differences are more distinct for such sharp boundaries drawn.

[ But he'll always be Zemeni and Inej will always be Suli, the two of them can't run from their cultures, nor would they. Why would he when he clearly loves his people and so does she? But it is a very culture-based way of life, country by country. Jesper never really thinks much about his own world's way of being until he contrasts it with somewhere else, it's fascinating to constantly be re-contextualizing. ]

I'm surrounded by redheads, lucky me. Though that may be one hair color I just can't pull off.

[ He grins back at her and winks. He may try it some day though, just to say he did. It's not really in his complexion, but since when has he not tried something? Never! ]

Yeah agreed, that's why I'm thinking Rocket's just Rocket. I wonder if it's hard for them, being so alien? I wonder that about Garrus too, the rest of us can pass in comparison.

[ There are not-human looking people in Abraxas, natives and all, but the majority that they see themselves are human. He hasn't seen any reaction to them being negative, and unfortunately for all of them Goro seemed pretty popular during his time here. ]

[princessvegas]

People in my world got moved around so much. 'Specially in America. Most of the natives died hundreds of years back, they got diseases from explorers who sailed out lookin' for new places. They didn't have any immunity, and the explorers were pretty hellbent on takin' over the land anyway, so there were battles and wars and shit. In my time, they had their own little reservations that the government gave 'em in treaties, but they're on shitty land and they're real poor. Everyone else in my country, their family originally came from somewhere else. We stopped gettin' specific 'cause it was too much, I guess. White people. Black people. Hispanic people. Asian people. Just skin colors and like, whole continents. When you got 350 million folks from thousands of different cultures, all tryin' to live side by side, skin color turns into a real big deal.

[ She stops picking the pumpkin seeds out of the stringy goop for a moment. Standing, she wipes her hands on a dish towel and fetches a new bottle of wine to refill the glasses. She nods. ]

Yeah, we had nomads too. Called 'em gypsies, people really didn't like 'em. They had a reputation for bein' thieves and liars and shysters. [ All she can do is shrug. ] I never met one, so I can't rightly say if they were right. I mean, there were other people who didn't have their own specific country, or they'd been forced out of their land at some point, but folks only seemed to hate the ones who traveled by choice.

[ It doesn't matter. None of it does; everyone she's talking about is dead now, or at least most of them are. Their prejudices and preferences all died with them. Julie sits down again, wine in hand, and leans back in her chair. ]

I don't think Nanaue really thinks about it, to be honest. But I get the feelin' that people in his world didn't much like him. [ She pauses, tilting her head with consideration. ] Then again, I think he probably ate a lot more humans before Solvunn got their mitts on him.

[itookashot]

Your world sounds so immense every time you talk about it. To think that it's just your country when you talk about how large it is, and how many people there are. And all mixed in together like that, pushed together. I loved that about Ketterdam but it was one small port city.

[ It's not huge like America, huge like the places she talks about. Ketterdam was expected to be that way because it was a trade route, but the countries were different, the way they reacted to different cultures was different. He doesn't know if he can imagine it precisely, even though she and Sam have painted him some pictures of it. And their technology, their television, it's told him a few things, but it still feels larger than life.

There are definitely things she's shown him he thinks he'd like, and he loves spaceships, he could go around fake spaceships for days, but he doesn't actually know how much he'd enjoy being there. ]

That's exactly it, yeah. Also all the things they say about the Suli. It's why they become slaves more often. Easier to snatch.

[ If they have no nation to run to, no protections in place for them, it's easy to take advantage. It probably was intentional for them to find Inej and her brother, two Suli children. He knows that it was one of her selling points in the menagerie.

Jesper is still working on his pumpkin which is looking decent despite not being able to cheat, because he has an artistic eye, no matter what he does. When he shakes out his fingers though all the goop slides off them into the waiting bowl, assuming he can cheat to get it off without having to wipe. It simply strips away, his fingers clean after. ]

He's sweet but yeah, probably ate more than a few humans in his day. I don't blame him, everyone's gotta eat, but it's a good thing he doesn't plan on munching on us. I need to make him more hats.

[ Jesper will keep making as many hats as Nanaue wants. ]

Apparently he's popular in Solvunn.