#peterstakh lore

[meirimerens]

peterstakh concept of peter painting rubin load-bearing to me (including load-bearing in the fics i've written) right (i think he enjoys doing some more academic works from time to time it's a no-brainer to him he did this so often in his life it's almost meditative) and in the same way artists thorough the centuries [but i have the Renaissance ones in mind specifically] have used mythological pretexts to draw sexy naked woman i think peter gets into his mind to paint rubin giorgione's/titien's venuses style. but he's not a sensual pale redblonde-haired woman he's a sinewy bald man over 2 meters tall (6'9" you laugh). does not matter gets posed sensualvenus style. alongside get painted attributes such as corinthian helmet and spear and anatomical cuirass, painting gets titled something like "Mars at rest". and peter can weave some shit about mars mirror of venus, all being fair in love and war twin sides of passion's/conquest's coin, reclaim himself in the vein of the masters like he was not paintbrush-bitingly paintwater-drinkingly dizzy with desire the whole time painting it.

[meirimerens]

what are rubin's thoughts on daniil as his quasi brother-in-law? and what are your thoughts on older burakhovsky as a couple? i live for your verbal vignettes in ask responses, really feels like im there...

you are indeed here you are homonculus in my study from behind the glass of this bocal youre in you see me pace around talking to myself running my hand in my hair like a maniac until I suddenly walk to your shelf and lean over towards the bocal you're in like this

and force you to listen to me.

anyways as far as Rubins thought on Dankovsky Well he doesn't hate him as much as he's hated burakh in the past you know. even as the rubin burakh relationship has been/is more complicated than brotherly bond [I'd argue it barely is especially in p2, it's not about being a brother to him its about being him. A topic for another time] they've been very much Cain & Abel yeah. Like rubin has wanted to hit burakh over the head with a rock if that meant being favored by god I mean isidor. but dankovsky well. he has no animosity towards him, as a pseudo-in-law or as a guy in general. indeed they have mutual respect and indebtedness for The Plague Time and maybe rubin thinks dankovsky kinda has bad taste in men since he still has residual desire to hit burakh with a rock [not out of hatred or jealousy anymore, just to see what that'd be like], but like. <peterstakhblogreminder> rubin can talk. like he doesn't have the best taste in men either. </peterstakhblogreminder>. Rubin is doubly in dankovkys circle from him being 1) his pseudobrother's hubby 2) his own hubby's like. third side of the threefold coin or whatever. so they do run onto each other frequently. when dankovsky shoulders burakh at his medical practice rubin is also there. the healers and also rubin you know. he sees dankovsky be bad at cooking and burakh taking over the stove and is like damn maybe he's just some guy. there is the type of respectful distance you'd expect from in-laws except rubin has seen dankovsky get tipsy in Peter's attic and he called burakh to come pick up his man.

Re:older burakhovsky i got this thing and that thing unsure how much I'm repeating of them rn [can't open multiple tabs on mobile] but basically mellower right. still got some deep dark residual fears yeah I don't think that ever goes away. Holding onto each other at night sometimes. Chronic pains a lot of those. Grumpy together. Burakh busies himself making all sorts of teas balms cataplasms to help with dankovskys arthritis and back pain and strain and this and that and lather it on him. reciprocally from dankovskys part. Learns basic herbal medicine so he can be a bit independent in his medicating and also provide some to burakh. burakh doesn't retire for he is more than a doctor; dankovsky shoulders him. [NEW LORE UNLOCKED FROM P3Q] we've seen dankovsky likes Writing The Self [In] right... self-mythology self-biography [something other than autobiography] and the #realones know I've always believed he writes something once back from the plague well as he gets older he writes more obvious fiction. It might even start as tales burakh tells mishka to sleep. kind of Lewis Carollesque but a different guy. Gets burakh into beetle collecting and burakh gets him into herbaria. oh, all sorts of hand pains from writing/typing at thag typewrite/sewing & knitting for burakh... arthritis? possibly. they already have a Hand Thing for each other in their early days as they grow old it doesn't falter -> the analgesic cataplasms massaged on longly. At least one of them eventually needs glasses maybe both. Looking like alchemists. When the legs hurt the days are spent sitting (inside or outside), flipping through herbalism/botany/astronomy/anatomy books dankovsky has [once] brought back from the capital. with the big glasses on. You know?

[meirimerens]

modern au peterstakh & in-law lore is that when andrey starts barking up rubin like a dog does a tree because he's seething about peter spending more time with his boyfriend, rubin takes a POV picture of andrey from his 207cm height and shows it to him saying "you see now why I don't take you seriously"

[meirimerens]

Why do you ship Peter and stakh asking this out of genuine curiosity

I've talked at length about this like "dedicated lore tag" typa length + answered this very same question twice already so as always [lore post] [lore post] [lore post] [first post which started it all] [lore tag] [fic I've written] [fic I've written (french)] [art and posts tag]

[meirimerens]

meiri, when we are talking threefold bullet or three and a half fold, what is your take on the dynamic and relationship between stamatwins themselves? i am of the opinion that since they consider each other to be the same, singular person often in text, they basically are, but what is your take? are they the same? are they that different? do you think they're actually close or distant? and if we're talking close, what do you think of, like, interpretation of them as an androgyne, don't really know how it's spelled correctly in english, mythological creature cut in half for hubris which people basically take as "see, romantic soulmates"?

oh this is one of my fave subjects to write about or rather to incorporate in writings where i center on peter going his own loving ways this is gonna be fun

okay i'm responding to the androgyne part right out of the gate: the mythological (Platonician, and i'm guessing you mean the Platonician myth because it is the most well-known and the one in which beings were cut in half) androgyne is half male, half female. [i'm not talking about the historical use of androgyne for intersex people nor the modern sense of androgyne as a gender identity or presentation this is about the MYTHOLOGICAL BEING, FROM PLATO'S SYMPOSIUM]

that's the ethymology of andro/gyne used very literally in plato's symposium (ἀνδρός/andros = man, as in the sexed/gendered being as opposed to άνθρωπος anthropos which is man as in humanity [think "mankind", "caveman" when both of these terms Also Include Woman] and γυνή/gynê = woman) so right out of the gate they're eliminated from the mythological androgyne story by virtue of being both men. and i'd argue them being both men is important to their lore and how they handle of concept of Conception/Creation and how they talk about the Polyhedron specifically (calling it "a child" or "a daughter"). the platonician myth of the androgyne does have the androgynes (and to be fair, all the other "pairs" (male-male, female-female, female-multiple & male-multiple beings) equally) punished for hubris, cleaved in half, and desperatly trying to reunite with their half, but at the core of this myth very much is the etiology of romantic & sexual desire: Eros. quoting Plato’s Symposium translated by Benjamin Jowett :

"Each of us who were separated, having one side only, like a flat fish, is but the indenture of a human being, and we are always looking for our other half. Men who are a section of that double nature which was once called Androgynous [Androgynes] are lovers of women; the women who are a section of the woman do not care for men, but have female attachments; lesbians are of this sort; peoples who were originally of two or more parts are of the sort we call ‘amphiphylóphilos’, ‘lovers of both’, and they are especially favored by Eros."

One of the thing that also happens with the Platonician Androgyne is that, before being cleaved in twain, they would reproduce asexually. upon being cleaved, when reunited, they starve to death and do nothing else from not wanting to do anything apart, so the gods rearrange their genitals around so they can reproduce as the people now do : the platonician myth of the Androgyne (and of the cleaving in twain) is about romantic and sexual desire, the drive for a romantic (soul)mate and reproduction. it is an etiological myth about sexual desire and sexual inclinations (why some women are not attracted (EROS! eros eros eros) to men, but to women: they once were one with another women; why some people are attracted to both men and women: because once a upon a time they were one with a man and a woman or more), as well as how we got to be a sexually reproductive species.

the term "soulmate" does apply to the twins, or rather, andrey tries his hardest for it to apply to them, but the platonician myth of the androgyne is Not about non-romantic soulmates.

tldr : platonician myth of the androgyne out of the equation because

1. it is about a being half male and half female, which the twins are not

2. or rather 1.5. it is thematically and narratively important that the twins are men for, to me, this greatly informs the way they act and speak about artistic Creation (goes for a lot of male artists irl tbh)

3. it is an etiological myth about sexed reproduction and the drive of romantic and sexual desire (EROS!!!!) which does not apply to the twins.

now for Da Other Part :

It's Complicated </3

in my mind andrey is the one most attached to them as a single being. quoting him from PCHD :

- Twins are the two sides of a single person. - I'm quite a quarreller—and I don't want to discredit my soulmate! [he means Peter]

and, interestingly enough, at the beginning, Peter is also quite keen on the "a single person" thing :

- You will make no mistake by calling me Peter. You can call me Andrey too, just for the sake of diversity, and it won't be wrong either.

BUT!!! and this is where i start salivating the evil gears of my mind start turning. on day 10, shit hath broken loose, and dankovsky comes seeking peter :

Dankovsky : Go help your brother. Do you know that he's been arrested? He's killed several people trying to help you. Peter : ...That's fine. I've been suffering for ten years because of him.

now this is soooo delicious je m'en lèche les babines. we can imagine that the "for ten years because of him" refers to the murder of Farkhad which, in PCHD, was Andrey's sole doing (as far as he retells it). it can also be about the Polyhedron's constructin : something they so covetted and so desired that in my mind a man was killed for this, something they so protect and are so protective of, but which has driven peter mad. in these ten years, peter as sunk to the bottom. by day 10, he's trying to self-immolate. he's developped and is sustaining a debilitation alcohol addiction, alcohol of andrey's making.

i think andrey grasping at this belief that they are one (including la fameuse "The furnace of this catastrophe has molded me, my brother, and you into a single person… The fire of war has molded us into a threefold bullet. It's natural. We are one. The three sides of a single process.") because he's guilty. trying to cope with the fact that he has ruined is brother with his liquor, with his murder, with his completion of the polyhedron which, according to all, simply should not exist. and yet it does. haunted twofold. andrey, by presenting himself as peter's other face, is trying 1) cope with the distance that's growing between them, by his fault and 2) trying to protect him. when shit hits the fan, he's running after peter, there are mixups, dankovsky gets taken for him. by being peter's other face, andrey is trying to protect him.

here's what i think it is :

it is less "two sides of the same coin" than it is "two sides of a same shield". also fits with andrey's "I am the battering ram that clears his path." (P2). a shield has two faces: the one that takes the blow of the blade and the one inside. andrey is the face that takes the blade and peter the one inside. or rather he wishes he was.

when i write peterstakh (you're on the peterstakh blog you are told about peterstakh), andrey lives very poorly the fact that his brother is "breaking away" from him. quoting my own self:

“It’s you.” “As much as me can be.” “It is you… right?” “As much as right can be.” Peter noticed the dimple between Rubin’s brows, this worried notch like a knife nick. “Don’t fret. I keep my doors locked.” He paused. “And Andrey wouldn’t want to touch you. Well, except to h—” “Except to hit me.” “He’s needlessly, mindlessly possessive. And a fool. He knows better than anyone else, even than myself, that you’re not fighting for the same honeycomb in me. He just doesn’t want me to get hurt.” “What are you, his? Won’t he let yourself be you?” “Less his than he at all. You already noticed.”

(Tenderopen Be Sir Carrion)

& my own self again :

« Does it surprise you [that I haven't slept with any of my models] ? » Piotr asks [...]. « Quite different from your brother in this way, then—forgive me for getting ahead of myself. I heard he was… generous in his affections. » [...] « He has… a way bigger heart than I do. Full of holes to let the light in… And people through. — Do people compare you two often ?  — Too often for my taste, not often enough for his — or vice-versa, depending on the day. » [...] « He thinks seducing others this much protects me, in a way. That he spares me the woes of love by attracting them to him.  — That's commendable… I suppose. — So do I. »

(Pierrot sur le Rivage, my own translation (it's in french originally lol))

TLDR : they're close. they're really close. to me even, because i love fun, they can do whatever the hell was happening with the Kains by the end of Bachelor's route : hopping back and forth between each other's bodies (<- this is a link to a lorepost i made), swapping consciousnesses. they believe they should have been born as one (conjoined), and where they imagine they once were stuck together in utero, the imaginary scar sometimes burn when they get too high or too drunk. they consider themselves halves of a whole, and it hurts.

it hurts because andrey hurt(s) peter, has been hurting him "for ten years". with the murder, with the alcohol, with the successful(?) construction of the polyhedron. andrey copes with his fault by insisting on his protective role, his front-shield face, his battering-ram head, because it helps ease the guilt of knowing it is his samogon, which he began distilling for selfish reasons, that is slowly making peter lose himself in the whirly depths of the bottle. showing themselves as "both sides of a whole" is a protective measure, yes, to blur where one ends and the other begin, so if they're hunted the hunters have twice as many men to pursue. it's also true.

peter is growing distant because he's in pain, he's sick, he's losing his mind, and gaining a love andrey has no control over.

to quote a fic i've been working on for years on and off

[Rubin] : "If you don't think his heart's big enough to contain the both of us in different chalbers, you can give him a piece of yours. I'll help cutting you up."

[meirimerens]

I love your peterstakh and I love how everyone is perturbed disturbed angered by them

THANK YOU ^_^ and lowkey the only one who's mad as hell is andrey. because he's not used to having to share who he considers his half and it hasn't clicked in his head that he and rubin are literally not in competition like at all. because he's a gemini and his skull is thick as hell ("battering ram" thing). as far as perturbed and disturbed burakh is for sure. like he's barely on speaking terms with rubin rn but he's still like Dude why (<- being psychologically tortured by the twins in his dream [ATA lore])

but also he ought to shut his big mouth because both he and rubin being real (quoting a friend)

(the black-haired emo goddesses are dankovsky and peter respectively in this)

as far as everyone else it's like. well. ummmm. what an odd pairing (<- they can't do anything about it because rubin is 207cm, has killed before, and peter either has killed or is known to be able to so they're like. well i'm keeping my mouth shut. what can you do about this. what can you even do about this...)

anyways SMILESSS THANK YOU ^_^ MORE TO COME very soon. well "very" i fib a bit i might be fibbin. but soon enough

[meirimerens]

in your mind's eye, is stakh peter's first romantic partner? if not, then what kind of men (and women) he would date?

sorry for the late reply i was looking at an acephalic roman marble copy of a bronze greek athena Yes it took 13 hours Now Yes i think he is. elaborating because i Love Lore + putting it in writing allows me to Rember so multiple reasons

i think it is a nice contrast with andrey who has enough lover to raise a small army (weapons included possibly). the hoeless and the hoeful.

while the peter we see in-game is Fucked Uppppp from the Farkhad Incident i think he was also kinda off his hinges before (#respectful, i'm off them myself) and kinda difficult to handle as a lover. or even as a person frankly. 2.5. you gotta have big strong hands to handle him and the people of the capital kinda too soft-grasped.

in correspondance with 1. & 2. i think peter is pickier about his lovers, or his entourage in general. i think he's been courted in art school but they were so plebian to him he did not fw them. he also needs to #build something #deep and #powerful with someone before lovermode gets activated (again in contrast to andrey, who's way more casual about these things) and he both Is Difficult To Like as a person and Has Difficulties Liking

while you asked for the kind of people in the Peter Already Dated instance, i will still say it because i think it fits the answer anyways: he gravitates towards People Who Strive For Greatness, For Greater-Than-Themselves: this is why in-game he expresses fondness (mixed of fear) for the Kain women (someone asked a while ago how i considered his praises of either maria or nina they asked: this is what his deal is), and in my mind's eye gravitated towards farkhad -> this resulted in The Incident, especially considering farkhad is also Literally Great As In Tall, Like Taller Than The Twins, and it did peter's mind upside down sideways and all ways.

but actually 4.5 -> this is literally what the peterstakh deal is. rubin is Literally Great As In Tall and peter's brain melted. all blood drained from it went somewhere else. he has the big hands to handle him. literally this

[meirimerens]

in my beautiful peterstakh mind peter stares at stakh like this ^ hoping he'll let him shave his big head all bald. doesn't need to do it because stakh would let him regardless but that shan't stop him

[meirimerens]

this is how peter would look at stakh if stakh told him he couldn't use his toothbrush.

[meirimerens]

do you think there is any chance Rubin will start growing ny hair out on his head again? because (considering your lore about him) the time he was trying to remain celibate is gone, so not a monk; the time when he was at war is gone (well, maybe not fully of course. one can simply imagine such things don't go away so easily. but still), and now he's not a soldier. is it #Bald forever or is there hope?

this is such a beautiful ask i love the world it conjures (which is mine) okay let's do this.

ok in my mind's eye rubin pre-The Baldening had long hair like pretty long hair. longer than current-events peter but shorter than pre-events peter [who had it to the waist or something]. so the transformation of long haired -> bald was immediate, drastic and jarring. in p2 burakh says "I'll be damned… you shaved your head. Preparing to become a monk? Or a soldier?" & since in p2 the Rubin War Lore doesn't stand (however i make it stand) the Monk thing is like. as possible as the soldiering. (in canonverse i don't think he meaningfully contemplated monkness[?] because he is not like pious in that way, however he'd have considered hermiticism/secular anchoritism). so he went from long-haired to Bald for multiple reasons, including asceticism, sharp separation with his old life (some cultures have hair-cutting as a traditions of grief), and also because a ponytail in the army is not that useful or safe (but most of the reasons are internal/psychological in nature).

as the Events unfold however... i think he considers growing his hair back he does. however, he needed decades to grow his hair as long as it got to be, so he hesitates, because the awkward stage of bald -> meaningfully long is like. pretty damn long. he's not sure he wants to deal with the short scruff of growing back out a buzzcut. he might just stay #Bald forever. sorry.

in the concept of of the peterstakh [you are on the peterstakh blog.] i think on one hand peter Would Love to see him with his long hair... but it'd take a while... so in the meantime he creates dreams out of pictures he's shown of rubin age 20 with his long hair. he creates dreams and he braids their hair together. in dreams. also purely as a "opposite attracts" thing: the concept of Bald x Luscious very entertaining to me. also i think peter loves his #Baldness because he gets to do shit like this:

[meirimerens]

the Beauty to me of peter's Weird Gay Farkhad Thing past in the context of a present Peterstakh, & reciprocally the beauty of a present Peterstakh in the context of peter's Weird Gay Farkhad Thing past, is that in any other circumstances, things would have been flipped over... in other circumstances, peter and farkhad could have been very close, as philosophers, as colleagues, as anything else, enriching each other's lives. but instead, circumstances pushing the twins into this animalistic corner, farkhad was killed. sad. in other circumstances, peter and rubin would have not been able to stand each other. they'd have gotten on each other's nerves Bad, philosophies fundamentally at odds. but instead, they're kissing. tongue and all. And i think that's so beautiful

[meirimerens]

Not the same anon as the stamatwins cat allergy ask but I truly love the idea of Andrei being partially disturbed that Petyr went to live alone in P1 as an "identical twin syndrome" thing where Andrei conceptualises their joint identity as 1 being, and Petyr's independence (good or not) threatens that in his mind. The idea that they can and do have differences and the idea of the shadow breaking off from the main body.

Have a nice day Meiri!!

literallyyyyeyeyyyy you get it + I'm sure I've talked about something of the sorts already because all I do is talk about the twins and then put them in situations but I truly see it + it's especially saillant in p1 to me. Peter says that he's been "suffering for 10 years because of [andrey]" like there's a rift between them and Andrey specifically is trying to mend it with Petr "coming back" to him (calling and mentioning him over and over) because being by his side/by each others side is their default state but farkhads death has caused a deep, painful rift between them, and the polyhedron, as a joint venture but Peter's brain-child, is beyond their comprehension in a way that renders (peter, specifically) mad, and I think it cannot help their previously very close bond. In p1 Andrey is like ooo we're two sides of the same coin etc and Peter is like He Cause Me Pain and as both of those are real and true the pain is unbearable on both ends. Petr gets in #bigtrouble and Andrey says he's gonna stay by his side and never leave in case his ass gets in a pickle but to meh its..m almost am excuse to take back his place as The Twin. He sees that apart great trouble befalls them, even if being close hurts them too. Can't live with him can't live without him. Exactly like with a brain if you have chronic headaches.

I'm sure I've mentioned in a peterstakh context (sorry. You're on the peterstakh blog you're gonna get told about peterstakh) but to meee one of the things that greatly hurt and displease Andrey and throws a wrench in his conception of himself-in-regards-to-his-brother/the two of them is that petr is like. Seeing people(one person) Andrey doesn't know well, and doesn't like too much (because he doesn't know him well). Having an emotional life that Andrey doesn't know much about. "Puts himself in harms way" so to speak. I've written it in PSLR so in French so many of you don't know about it but methinks Andrey always saw his extrovertedness + eagerness to #get some bitches as a way to protect Peter from the #pains and #hurts of love/emotional turmoil. Like if he makes all the bitches converge to him, they will leave peter alone and that'll spare him the pains and anguishes of #love. So when Petr moves on to have his own romantic and emotional life with some who didn't go through andreys vibecheck Andrey is like. Scared honestly. It feels like petr is "breaking off" from the shared twin-body indeed (and so is him telling Andrey hurt him, and so to meh does the fact that they live separately now and quite a distance apart) and Andrey is scared. Scared more than anything. I think in that context it takes him weeks to realize he and rubin are Literally Not Competing for the same thing, and Petr is enough of a person to care about multiple people in completely different ways. Not andreys dick not andreys problem. But he struggles to understand that. SAD! Have a nice day too honey :3

[meirimerens]

hi hi ive sent more than one anon about yr thoughts and hcs so i apologise but you really do get it. anyway. ive been thinking about burakh and rubin and i just find it so interesting. i think you compared them to kain and abel once. wild but true. how do you see them 'making up' / moving on after the epidemic? does rubin accept the offer of opening a clinic together, how are the first months/years?

hiiii don't even worry about it Keep Asking it busies my weekends.

anyways i sure did. it is true to me. cain killed abel because god preferred abel's sacrifices to cain's, and in my mind rubin would want burakh out of his way (salient p2 lore which i like to abide by) for isidor to recognize his sacrifice; that's why he's sooo aggro in p2 seeing burakh's return. while he gets murderous because he thinks burakh killed isidor, i think there is, underlying this, a "Master would be so so mad if i killed his son so i mustn't. buuuuuuuuuuttttt omggggggg".

rubin has a lot of resentment towards burakh for stealing (what he sees as his) inheritance from him, so while he accepts to shoulder him in his doctor's duties, he's mad the whole time. he is mad but it is also a way to partake in the inheritance, so he engages in competition with burakh (which burakh disregards. flies right over his head. rubin is working himself up in his own mind many such cases). by following in isidor's footsteps, even if it is alongside his fake brother whom he hates, he is doing what he's always wanted to do.

rubin is quite a good doctor. he was a good student of isidor's and is skilled. i think burakh probably says "dad would be proud of you if he saw you" and rubin tries to strangle him. but it is true. rubin doesn't have the human warmth that burakh has so he scares the hoes a bit but he is good at his job. dankovsky also partakes in burakh's medical practice when he's over and rubin calms down because it's not dankovsky's fault he's got decades-old beef with burakh.

now that's what i'm talking aboutttttt i have a fic on the stove which is a two in one burakhovsky & peebeestakh deal but like probably won't be done in 5yrs fuck my life. anyways peterstakh are an item before burakhovsky becomes it: they hang out before the plague hits (#platonically), both are out of the closet (or as out as you can be when your celibacysweeping your way through life [not on purpose in peter's case (nobody wants him), on purpose after getting it on with your fellow soldiers in rubin's case] or at least Know This about themselves.

they hang out since dankovsky and peter Are Buddy and dankovsky Figures Out they're an item, and shuts it. is quite envious, sometimes, cf [this old thing] (2022 art jumpscare) which is still so true. rubin is mildly put off by dankovsky's presence but peter Makes Him Understand He Is #ofthem and rubin is like oooh okay. and shuts it.

burakh takes seven trillion years to figure out rubin and peter are an item because he's like. pure of heart or whatever. multiple times he has to help the team (rubin dankovsky andrey) manage peter because he's drunk or high or hurt himself or is out of his mind nuts and he watches rubin be very kind very tender uncharacteristically so and he's like ❓ damn okay that's his friend but doesn't catch on. in my mind and i have been wanting to either draw or write it for fucking years now, one night he and dankovsky sneak into rubin's place while he sleeps to steal something, peter is in the bed with him looking unnerving as he does, burakh gasps because it just clicked what their deal is, dankovsky turns to him, burakh goes "i just understood something" and as dankovsky looks with hopeful eyes he has to say "nothing that's going to help us though so sorry" and dankovsky goes "well. better luck next time"

eventually mid-plague he asks rubin something like. "...... so are you happy" and rubin goes "? i'm fucking miserable cub have you see how everything is so shit outside. i'm miserable, you're miserable, everyone is miserable. [stops, blushes a bit] but he makes it more bearable" #awww

as far as it goes when burakh and dankovsky gets together rubin is endlessly amused. basically

> be burakh > come home after 6 years away > learn your closest friend and non-blood-related brother is gay and has bad taste > say nothing love is love bro > learn you're gay and you have bad taste > he clowns on you endlessly

also for the #real ones if you remember peter in The Dark Place of ATA chap. 13, after he's done whining and seeping out like a deflated lung, in my mind's eye rubin walked in there. picked him up. burakh offers to help and peter chews him out spits him out yowls in pain from grief. rubin asks him to Back off, please. and carries him outta here. didn't make it into ATA because i was keeping it burakhovskyfocused but now you know. now you know.

[meirimerens]

You mentioned a burakhovsky wedding… please share your thoughts on that. Like do they marry as old men or younger? Is it like a steppe wedding or more a symbolic commitment thing? I’m curious

Cracks KnucklesOkay so the deal is

they Would have liked to keep it low-key (especially dankovsky who's used to having to cover his ass all the damn time), maybe the two of them + 3 friends each (rubin lara & grief for burakh, peter andrey and the rotten corpse of farkhad they haul around as a ghost like a noxious cloud over their heads for dankovsky), but burakh Is A Menkhu. he is the spiritual leader of the Kin, he is a vital social, spiritual and medicinal person within his community, so his business is the community's business, and vice versa. a sense of Ritual is deeply important to the Kin (not just to them tbh) and if he and dankovsky are to be seen, in the eyes of burakh's communities (kin and town) as bound by dedicated, committed love, a ceremony gotta be done. he WILL be put into a ceremony. dankovsky comes around to a wedding from a sense of What Happen In The Town Stays In The Town so might as well and when he comes back to the Capital the people don't gotta know and also it would make his mom soooo happy she so would so happy for her son to have a weddig(sic) so he's like oh my god okay fine. he's never been a big #marriagehead in no small part because it is like The institution of heterosexuality (especially within christianity) but he comes to consider that the whole "bride being given from father [her previous "master"] to husband [her new one] to go from domestic servant to domestic and reproductive servant" well Does Not Apply here from the But We Are Both Boys Men.

as far as age goes: vitally important to me that yeva (mamakosvky) get to see it so i think they marry age like. mid to late thirties. she's old but she still attends.

it's a whole ordeal because a Warden officiates a Kin wedding, and in the instance that burakh, The Main Warden, is the one getting married, another Warden must officiate. in my mind it is Oyun [cf this thing he's the one hidden and going over the book (2021 art jumpscare)], who also is in charge of updating the rites for Two Men [cf below] and it's kinda awkward due to the Almost killing each other thing.

there is a lot of motherhood - birth - death symbols within the kin's mythology (cf. Boddho herself, The Mother, the birthing of herbs, the "<o> brand" sigil associated with birth, motherhood, cycle and death...) which to me are apparent within the wedding rituals (not just for the fictional[ized] Kin tbh this is a widespread thing irl too) and as such said rituals have to be adjusted for the Gay Thing. it is not that no Kin member has ever been gay or bi, or even that a menkhu has never been that (i know what isidor did to that old man), it's just that burakh junior is the first one for whom such a ceremony pops up. whole ordeal. oyun has to go over the rites with burakh and a bunch of herb brides about what needs to be changed, what can be left in but adjusted etc. "we should probably take this sigil out of the rite it's for a descendance--" "[herb bride speaking] actually☝ it's technically for sexual potency so it can stay" meanwhile burakh is head in hands begging for it to be over. one of the rites include the husband helping his new wife hop on a bull and then lead that bull to the threshold of their new shared house and dankovsky has to sit his dad down and go "okay so i will be on that bull but this is not because i'm "the woman" in the relationship. you must understand this. not "the woman" because there is no woman. we're doing it this way because it's better for the bull to carry lighter (me) and also because i don't know how to lead a bull but burakh does. you understand this".

yeva brings armenian brandy to the post-wedding feast. there is LOUD singing and dancing. honey cakes also (to bring together burakh's & dankovsky's respective backgrounds).

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HEARTWARMING. disgruntled orphan finds unidentified stray animal and bonds with the thing after giving him a warm bath to wash off... whatever that was... surely nothing

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man whatever