Multiple Settings [brooding cavern] - broodmother's new interest thread

[Broodmother]

Hello, hello from a burning world!
I didn't think I'd be coming back -- actually I came back because of the Discord server -- and in a way it sort of feels like coming back to your old hometown after college.
Here I am, I guess, a different enough person not to understand why I set this pfp, now with all the time in the world thanks to easily discernable external factors! And I guess that that means looking for partners again, in a moderately caffeinated state.
I've never really done well in group settings, D&D excepted. Too many cooks and all that, but the 1x1 format is exactly the sort of thing you can really get into together, you know?

• Who are you and what are you doing in my coldroom?
• You seem pretty cool! What are your views on the actual writing bits?
• So, about those preferences...
• So what about them plots tho
• You Seem Cool And I Have a Thing I Crave That's None Of These But I Think You'd Like It

• 
  I'm Broodmother. I'm 18+, I'll remember all of you when I'm a judge, and I don't really have social media except for Discord, but sometimes I like to lurk in places. I think I would like to be friends, and I lose interest in roleplays very quickly if there's not a strong component of emotional compatibility between co-players. That component of emotional compatibility is necessary for good worldbuilding, I think.
  Now, what am I doing here among your artisanal jams from the before times? Who knows! Having no idea about anything is half the fun of being alive, and the other half is learning.
  
  I have no capacity to shut up, use normal words and generally be normal, and I'm not really sorry about that anymore.
  That would be like asking a fish to apologize for being wet, and in my house we love ourselves enough not to engage in such futile exercises in needless self-castigation. I've been around the figurative roleplaying block enough that I might or might not be astronomically classifiable as its moon, and if there's anything I've learned in that time, it's that being yourself is more fun than being somebody else's idea of what yourself should be. It's impossible to please everyone, so please the people who can appreciate you, and so on.
  
  
• 
  Thank you! I, too, say things like that to people; it is a thing that well-adjusted citizens such as we can occasionally be seen doing!
  I'd be considered 'literate' or 'advanced', but I do want it to be known that I reject the elitism I sometimes see around this; I didn't get here by any special effort, I just happened to have been raised mostly by a grandparent in a culture obsessed with reading. That tends to do this to people, and a robust course of childhood bullying tends to humble one re: the relative merits of such a state of being.
  It doesn't matter to me how long your posts or other communications are as long as it's obvious that you're trying.
  It does matter what's in them, though. Here's a handy graphic that will significantly streamline both our experiences.
  
  

  DO	DON'T
  Try your best and have fun	Worry about little things as long as the post is readable
  Feel free to express whatever is on your mind OOC	Apologize for being yourself, having a life etc.
  Follow the RPN rules re: explicit and violent content	Be gross
  Participate equally and enthusiastically in worldbuilding	Hem and haw and leave the thinking and deciding to me
  Let me know when you're not around	Feel bad about not being around at those times
  Bring up anything you think is worth bringing up re: worldbuilding	Feel at all ashamed of your ideas and contributions

  
  
  That being said, I do think I should filibuster for a couple minutes at you about my mentality and preferences, because if we're incompatible in that regard, I don't think anyone will have any fun.
  
• 
  
  I'm very understanding of scheduling conflicts. This is important, so I'm repeating it.
  We all have busy lives and some of us have religious holidays and obligations to attend to, independent of there being or not being a literal plague on.
  
  I don't like writing canon characters or characters in relationships with them. It never feels right -- half the process is getting grumbled at by people who interpret the character differently, and heaven help you if you should want to write an au where they're a different gender or something like that. That said, I don't mind writing unrelated stories in the same setting. That can be fun!
  
  I'm happy to write pairings and polyamorous groups of any configuration, and my characters tend to be what one would call diverse. It should be noted that I vastly prefer slow burn relationships, though.
  I never had the experience of growing up as part of a dominant culture or identity anywhere (and I have what was considered an "ethnic" name where I grew up), which does seem to make it easier for me to portray people negotiating these kinds of differences than it is for some.
  That being said, if you happen to be the type of person who's been burned before by insensitive writing partners whose portrayal of any facet of your identity is objectionable, then I should probably let you know that my perspective as an asexual makes me a bit insecure about writing allo characters in general -- male, female, nonbinary, the lot of them. I've been accused both of being bad at writing men and of being a man pretending to be a woman writing women, both of which happened because I don't experience physical attraction the way allosexual people do, and so I tend to sound a little like an alien trying to depict it. This is probably an unfounded fear; I've been as exposed to romantic fiction as anyone else since then, and I think it made me hyperconscious of stereotyping.
  
  This also applies to my settings. I've a mild aversion to cookie-cutter, "cultural default" perspectives, assumptions and conventions, not least because I grew up outside them, and I don't confine the inspiration I take to any one medium. If you're already the type to worldbuild from an anthropological perspective, that's great, but we might not be compatible if you're not interested in that sort of thing. I don't believe that the way things are now, or were before, is the only way for things to be; challenging or subverting convention is important to me, and just once I'd like to see a narrative where the assumption in the dominant conculture isn't that LGBT people are deviant or something. I understand the value in depicting perseverance through struggle, and for a lot of folks (myself included!) it's cathartic to write about riding dragons and, say, overcoming homophobia (I'm very much partial to riding dragons and overcoming antisemitism, too).
  But like, there's room as well for worlds in which homophobia is just a foreign concept and people don't have to suffer for it, you guys! Let's write about the intersection of fictional cultures! Let's steal from other people than Tolkien!
  Fantasy anarchyyyyyyyyyy!
  
  Also I want to murder darlings together. Not literally - I hope you're not here to write snuff - but I read a lot of mediocre hurt/comfort as a wee Broodhatchling. It's like crack to me. Characters being flawed people who Mess Up Badly, Unwittingly Hurt Each Other On Both The Personal and Institutional Level, and then Kiss and Make Up is my kryptonite. Dark themes? If you can write them sensitively, I'm here for it.
  
  
• 
  Right, yes! So I'm terrible at actually listing my interests exhaustively (you'll have better luck asking me if I'm in a fandom than making me list them), and I've never had luck with filling out those crave sections. I do like talking at length about settings I've already made, though, as like, a portfolio of the sort of shenanigans one can expect from me, and it's safe to assume there'll be some flavour of fantasy in there - urban, old-fashioned, etc etc. Here are a few semi-comic one-sentence descriptions of places I've been in my head.
  
  Spoiler: yoooo

  - On an agrarian gardenworld built on the ruins of an ancient mech war, a youth builds a glider to join the local messengers' guild, a wizard seeks godhood, and a test tube baby with gills speaks for heaven and earth.
  - A gender-performing dragon from the dawn of time herds his cluster of gays around the timeline.
  - To escape from persecution, a community enters a pact with the terrors of the deep; centuries later, they emerge from hiding, ages behind their former kin and changed.
  - Witches argue about what that word means, to them and in general; the moon hatches, and they give themselves new names.
  - A dead peasant bullies monster hunters on the internet.
  
  And here are some obligatory plots, in about as much detail (to allow for fleshing things out properly together, without like, bias, if you really like some of these):
  
  Spoiler: Hold on to Anything

  A dying small town steeped in a paranormal history grapples with causes of attrition both mundane and not-so-much; the listless youth look on, and something old and hungry stirs beneath.
  
  
  Spoiler: Not Much Alike

  Two monsters pretending to be human find there's a bit more to getting along than just being in the same situation.
  
  
  Spoiler: The Ties that Bind

  A local supernatural being steeped in their own old laws of magic is not here for this, and did not sign up to be the familiar of a tiny witchling who gets all their pointers from the internet.
  
  
  Spoiler: First Contact

  An explorer travels a bit farther afield than usual and meets people who challenge their understanding of what peoplehood means.
  
  
  Spoiler: You Have to Draw the Line Somewhere

  Magic users from cultures that view magic differently hang out. Learning ensues.
  
  
  Spoiler: I Just Want To Stuff You In A Box and Ship You Somewhere Else, Holy SHIT You're Terrible

  Someone finds or inherits a dybbuk box, Roman coin, old grimoire, or other haunted thing, and now the ghost is their roommate. Their exhausting, morally antiquated, dumb idiot roommate that-- oh, hang on, is that friendship creeping up?
• 
  Give,,, give me,,
  ravioli ravioli,, grant to me the roleplayoli,, the way into my dms is a colossal slip n' slide