#i will literally infodump about fish for an hour it’s so fun

[pansy-picnics]

I need more next gen. I am starving. Pls. What are UD/varigo like with their niblings. Is Eugene the fun uncle. Who had a hero crush on Hugo. Stuff like that.

IVE BEEN MEANING TO DO SOME CONTENT OF THIS FOR A WHILE HEHEHE THANK U….. i’ve been collecting sketches for this for a while so it’s gonna be a long one

emery loves their aunties and uncle and rapunzel and her partners all spoil them to DEATH its so fucking cute

they’re very into botanical and herbal sciences, so she does a lot more hands-on and in the moment studies than varian and hugo, who usually stay cooped up in their lab most of the day. rapunzel especially loves going out with her on hikes or nature walks whenever her dads are busy, and they do field journals and stuff…. sometimes others will join them on their little trips but for the most part it’s just something the two of them do together. they garden a lot too, obviously, and raps listens to her infodump for hours on end

em also absolutely ADORES her aunt cassie, as she has dubbed her (it definitely got varian a few death glares at first, but he swears up and down he didn’t teach her anything). she loves hearing all the stories about her adventures and is especially fascinated by her cartography. cass also loves to collect weird things, like feathers, funny looking rocks or crystals, animal/fish bones, reptile skins or wings of insects, various things from deceased creatures she’s come across on her travels. emery finds this stuff incredibly cool, since they love animals

whenever cassandra travels out of corona for a bit she brings home lots of flowers and herbs and things for them to study, along with plenty of pretty trinkets and baubles for both them and the twins <3

that’s jusr like one of her love languages she’s like a crow. just gives people shiny rocks and sticks she found, and sometimes jewels/little hairclips/rings/generally very fancy things she definitely stole. sometimes nobody knows what to do with them but they keep them because they love her

eugene is absolutely the fun uncle but like, only when yong’s not around bc he easily solos eugene any day. no hard feelings it just is what it is

but yeah eugene always does the best storytime voices, especially with the flynn rider books bc hes been doin this for YEARS hes got DECADES of experience bro. sometimes the kids encourage him to act out the scenes in which he tries his best but fails miserably while lamenting about his old man bones

rapunzel and cassandra both laugh at him and sometimes will try to pick up where he left off

and, speaking of flynn, with another kid in the castle eugene finally gets another chance to play his favorite game: how long can i have this child convinced that i am the REAL flynn rider in the flesh

the answer is quite a while and it will eventually lead a very pissed off alchemist to storm into your room ready to beat the shit out of you

eugene definitely helps them get away with shit especially considering he’s trying to get revenge on the years varian and hugo spent being menaces to the twins. it is actually CRUCIAL that hugo and varian stay childless for a good 5-7 years after the twins are born because they get that long to be Goofy Ass Uncles and nothing more

no bc theyd literally be the worst most irresponsible mfs imaginable bc they’re both fucking around the whole time trying to impress the kids but they start getting rlly overly competitive about who they like more and fighting about it while the twins are just along for the ride

so. they DO still end up being the favorite uncles just. not for the reasons they think

they’d be like, showing the kids all sorts of projects they have around the lab but theyre just so much more hyperfocused on one upping each other- varian would do tons of interactive experiments so they can get involved and be hands on with everything. it’s just simple stuff obviously, baby science

but hugo on the other hand is more keen to giving them eye candy. fancy machines with cool lights and noises and the like. he does this with kids in town already, they always know him by name and like to play with olivia so he knows how to get the attention of children, but varian thinks it’s cheating so they get into a really stupid argument about it

varian: HAHAHA hugh you’re KIDDING right. that’s nothing they dont even know what’s going on its just a big machine that makes fancy lights and noises

hugo: ??? ok but that’s all you really need isn’t it?? it’s not like kids are all that hard to impress. plus you cant get on my case when yours is just some vial that changes color. you can at LEAST give them something cooler than that

varian: ??? HUGO I CAN ONLY DO SO MUCH THEYRE LIKE FOUR😭 at least MINE is educational. it teaches them about alchemy while helping them develop critical thinking and motor skills

hugo: oh my gods var it’s not that deep😑 like work smarter not harder you know what i mean?? it’s not like they’re our kids we don’t have to worry about that stuff

varian: IT’S NOT EVEN ABOUT THAT THOUGH it’s about captivation and keeping their attention. kids have really short attention spans, fancy gadgets may look cool but they’ll get boring in like five seconds. if you get them involved with the process and allow them to understand the craft they’ll be WAY more interested and-

varian goes into a rant before hugo cuts him off being all “ok fine well if you’re so confident lets ask what THEY think” and varians like “FINE” and so hugo turns around in a huff and realizes both the toddlers are Gone.

and he’s just “,,,,,hey um. hey var. love….where did the twins go” and varian whips his head around like “YOU FUCKING LOST THEM????”

so obviously they both freak the fuck out and are scouring the entire lab making sure they arent off drinking some dangerous chemicals or some shit but like, both of them are smart as fuck so it turns out they just walked off in the middle of their argument and went to go steal sweets from the kitchen. cass, raps, and eugene all chew them out for it later. they get more responsible when emery comes along but like….yk not that much AUDJSJDHDSNS

on the topic of stupid uncles, i should mention that though they love all of them dearly…lance is kind of the favorite like 90% of the time

cuz see eugene along with hugo still continue to be a bit overprotective and paranoid with the kids at times. varian is usually very laid back but when emery hits her teen years he starts to worry a lot more, while hugo mellows out considering that’s where vars own life went downhill LMAO. if there’s anyone who will indulge them and let them get away with ANYTHING it’s lance.

there’s such a blatant and vast difference between your first time parents who are always overthinking everything and worrying about whether they’re good parents or not and your cool, unmarried uncle who already adopted and raised two teenage kids in his 20s, is in the prime of his life and doesn’t technically have to take responsibility for you at all

granted though, the twins have had everyone wrapped around their little fingers since their birth

immediately after the twins were born, everyone in the castle (and even those who weren’t) all collectively pitched in to help as much as they possibly could. especially considering rapunzel struggled a lot mentally in the first few months of her kids’ life, the whole family was very determined to make the time as stress-free as their abilities would allow

one thing they found out quickly was that the twins absolutely adored varian. which obviously confused the alchemist and left him feeling quite helpless considering 1. kids hardly ever liked him (he usually got bullied by them) and 2. because of this he. didn’t really know what to do with kids. ryder once fell asleep in his arms and he lowkey panicked bc he had NO idea what he was supposed to do

when the anxious new parents were finally able to let people be alone with the babies, varian ended up being a pretty regular sitter. to the point where he would have little baby slings in case he needed to hold them while he was working on small projects or something. people would even frequently assume they were his and he eventually got tired of explaining they were actually his niblings so he just let people think whatever

before theyre born hugo jokes around like “lmaooo i dont even like kids” but he’s lying thru his fucking TEETH. hed die for them.

also alina thinks hugo is SO fucking cool (obviously considering he cut her hair based off of his) but also em admires hugo more than either of the twins could ever possibly comprehend. i havent drawn it enough since most of what i’ve drawn of them is them bullying each other but thats just their love language of course emery picked up on it. past the age of like 10 emery would rather die than admit how much she looks up to her father but hugo Knows <3

its not to say em doesnt admire varian, because she loves both her dads equally!!! but because hugo also came from an orphaned past being with him made emery feel a lot more safe and understood during her first few years at the castle. hugo knew what it was like to suddenly go from having nothing to having Everything and he knew it could be really stressful, especially for a little kid….having someone who understood that was really comforting to emery.

because of this though hugo tended to be the paranoid mother hen type, especially compared to varian who was a LOT more laid back and wanted to give them the freedom to trust their own judgement and make mistakes. it was tough to balance these styles at first but emery genuinely loved them both, even if hugo’s fussiness was a bit annoying sometimes

in fact the reason emery dubbed hugo “mama” in the first few months was not because they could sense his massive amounts of Gender (well like, partially, but it was about a month or so after that before the ‘are you a boy or a girl?’ question finally came up), but instead because hugo’s constant doting on her reminded them of their birth mother

varian and hugo dont know much about emery’s birth family or what happened to them, considering she doesn’t say much in her younger years and eventually forgets most of what she didn’t; but she seems to have cared a lot about her birth mother, and frequently still misses her presence.

whenever those waves of emotion are too much for her to bear, hugo is there to comfort her- and he assures her that despite never even meeting them, he still misses his birth family, too, but that it will get easier, and no matter what, she’ll always have people who love and support her

anyways thats all i have rn *opens my head and puts my brain back in it like the little frankenstien dude from nightmare before christmas* idk when ill have more content of them but the next time i do it’ll probably be that drawing with rapunzel kissing both her partners on the lips and both of them being so romantically in love with her /hj

[hunxi-guilai]

maybe this is an ask for after hours bc its not cql focused but its not for any fandom so? your Qu Yuan is one of my favorite all time posts, is there any other stories from histroy you just wanna go apeshit over? what is the historical gossip? anymore conspiricy theories? idk basically i just love history and wanted to see if there was anything you wanted to infodump about

ahahaha I’m flattered you enjoyed the Qu Yuan post, I actually had a ton of fun writing that! 

I mean, there are so many stories from history that I’m constantly lowkey losing my mind about (at this point I have no mind left and yet I continue to lose. what gives). I’m still waiting for a dramatic wuxia adaptation of the life and times of Wu Zixu from the Warring States period; Sima Qian (aka the inventor of Chinese historiography) has a wild backstory and it’s super interesting to read his life experiences back into the 《史记》, his magnum opus (or, well, to read other people reading his life experiences back into the 《史记》). I dabbled in 明朝那些事儿 for a hot second, and let me just say--Ming Dynasty? Has got it going on. Wang Yangming is a legend, an icon, a tactical genius, and chronically underpaid.

I’ve also been meaning to read the 《庄子》 because I love it and also because it’s zany as all hell; it’s generally classified as a philosophical text and literally starts out with “so there’s this giant-ass fish named Kun that transforms into a bird named Peng and fucks off to the Southern Darkness” and you’re like “uhhh... dude you okay there?” (and the answer is yes. Zhuangzi is constantly thriving). Meanwhile, I’ve been slowly inching through the 《论语》 in the original because I think the greatest disservice we’ve done to the figure of Confucius is overlook the fact that he’s actually just a salty old man with some sick burns. 

In terms of conspiracy theories, I’m fond of the one about dragons (i.e. what came first, the image of the dragon as a mythical creature or the serpentine designs on Zhou dynasty bronzeware? perhaps our image of the long, serpent-like dragon came not from story but from re-interpretations of abstracted taotie?), which like, I know nothing about art history or archaeology but it’s just fun to think about, y’know?

oooh, here’s a fun one! I went on a baidu-baike spiral not too long ago about the 四大美男 si da mei nan, which was a wild time. Most people know about the 四大美女 si da mei nv, the four most beautiful women in the Chinese tradition famous for their 倾国倾城 beauty (lit. “toppling kingdoms and cities,” step aside Helen of Troy, there are four of them in Chinese history and that’s just the shortlist), so in the spirit of gender equality I went hunting for a ranking of the four hottest guys in ancient China and was not disappointed

(this page actually does a pretty solid overview of the four of them! of course people debate the rankings--honorable mention goes to Ji Kang, one of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove--but it’s a good place to start)

tl;dr I got into this field for the sick burns and the classical sass, and every day I find something new to yell about