#roslin maynard

[marigoldbaker]

a visual introduction to the most perfect little bakery wizard in the entire world, and quite a lot of her favorite people.

[marigoldbaker]

wrote some original fiction look at that!!! have been thinking very loosely about writing the bakery ladies in a modern setting, and a love interest for marigold keeps insisting i give her some attention, so i gave her some today. :)

amazing news for all: this DOES read completely fine without any context! it's a standalone. soooo if u wanna meet my girls but have found the new fandom confusing: meet them now!

~~~

Marigold hadn’t actually been expecting to find anyone else under the table. She’d sort of been hoping for the opposite: a people-free location, somewhere that no one was looking at, where she wouldn’t be surrounded by a thousand incredibly thin people wearing as little as possible because they didn’t have any reason to feel like an overstuffed sausage when they wore a glorified bra to a social engagement. And she wasn’t one of those thin-girls-who-thought-they-were-fat-but-were-really-just-charmingly-curvy, either–she had cellulite, she couldn’t ever find anything in a Target, and stretch marks covered her hips and breasts and upper arms in such a way that low-rise jeans and corset tops wouldn’t have looked half as charming on her, at least in her estimation. 

Not that the size of the people here was what had Marigold under the table–no, that was just what she’d been thinking bitterly about for the first fifteen minutes of the party, as soon as effortlessly beautiful Evie had shown up with equally effortlessly beautiful Amara, both of them looking practically emaciated, both of them wearing the sorts of things that Marigold had sort of thought people only wore for Instagram photos. And absolutely everyone at the party was beautiful, too, of course, with Marigold easily the biggest girl there, never mind that she didn’t know anyone there, because she still didn’t know a single meaningful thing about Evie. 

Evie had swanned off immediately once it was clear that Marigold was “settled in,” or at least “settled in” by her definition, which mostly seemed to mean “physically present.” Marigold suspected that she was off with Amara, or with one of the many boys bearing down on her like they could smell blood in the water. That was the sort of thing that was supposed to concern a sister, wasn’t it? Would have, if it was Marigold getting flirted with at a strange party and Roslin and Lenora lingering reprovingly in the corner–but Roslin and Lenora would never have left her alone at one of these, and Evie had, which was maybe the difference between adoptive and biological sisters. Wonderful to find that out now.

So Marigold had stayed standing there, awkwardly, and made excruciating conversation with people she hadn’t wanted to talk to, because she’d come here to talk to Evie, to spend time with Evie, to learn more about a sister who she’d lost and somehow found again, only to find that the feeling wasn’t mutual and Evie really just wanted to go be social with another party-goer in the host’s bathroom. And she wouldn’t have ducked under the table if not for the fact that one of the party-goers had asked, “Wait, you’re Evie’s sister? That chick she’s always talking about who got, like, murdered or some shit?” at which point Marigold had found herself so blazingly angry at Evie that she’d known she couldn’t talk to anyone at the party anymore.

Hence: table! Not the world’s most normal hiding place, but most of the party-goers were drunk enough that no one was looking very hard for Marigold. She’d seen a flutter of movement under the tablecloth, remembered that one of the hosts had mentioned a cat, decided that mortification was better than fielding even one more question about a story no stranger had any right to (and no sister had any right to tell). So she had ducked under the table, and she had found her eyes locked with eyes so green they seemed to glow in the dark.

Marigold said the only thing she could think of. “Is this seat taken?”

The eyes blinked. The face they belonged to was pale and sallow, possibly East Asian–though of course, Marigold, being something of a mix of things herself, had never been very good at ascertaining where anyone else hailed from, which made guessing probably not a good idea. The girl had long, dark hair, blacker than even the dim light around them, and she was wearing thick-framed black glasses that only added to the large luminescence of her eyes. She didn’t say anything, just tucked her feet in so that Marigold could shift all the way under the table.

Marigold never did well with silences, and she wasn’t really sure how to fill this one. What did the standard social contract have to say about dinner table conversation when one or both party members found themselves under it? “Do you, um.” She smiled awkwardly. “Come here often?”

The small smile that danced across the girl’s face immediately settled Marigold’s nerves. Anyone who smiled at an awful joke like that would probably be a very permissive conversationalist, which Marigold always needed in a conversation partner; her mouth ran on and she wasn’t very good at stopping it when it started. 

“I’m Marigold,” Marigold offered.

The girl raised a hand and waved. She was wearing quite a lot of rings and none of them matched. More than a few were the cheap plastic sort one might get as an arcade prize. She said something, barely a whisper, but the music was loud enough that even a whisper would have been impossible to hear.

“Sorry?”

The girl bit her lip. She leaned forward. At normal volume, she said, “Beetle.”

“...Beetle?” repeated a bemused Marigold.

The girl jerked her thumb towards her chest.

“Oh, you’re Beetle?”

The girl smiled again. She was wearing lipstick, Marigold noted, blood-red, but with a blackish undertone that made her look positively gothic. There were really quite a lot of things to look at when it came to this girl; it felt like Marigold could spend more than just a few centuries looking at her, and still have places she wanted to keep looking. Mostly the eyes. Her lashes were sharp and thin, like spider legs.

“I’m Marigold,” said Marigold, winced, and said, “I think I said that already.”

Beetle moved forward a bit more. Stared at Marigold, unblinking. Marigold felt pleasantly unmoored and incredibly aware of how pretty this girl was. Was this the sort of party where people kissed each other? Marigold was a bit too sober for drunken kissing, but maybe Beetle was drunk and wanted to kiss her. She didn’t smell like alcohol. She smelled…sort of like hand sanitizer. A lot of hand sanitizer. 

Beetle moved back again, still staring, still smiling. Clearly this interaction appeared to be going successfully, at least from her perspective, which was a baffling relief. Marigold was fairly certain all she’d done was say her own name and usurp Beetle’s solitary hiding place.

There was a crash from the living room, followed by raised voices. Marigold flinched involuntarily.

Beetle’s hand rested on her shoulder, feather-light, as if waiting for permission to close her fingers and hold Marigold all the way. It was a surprise, but not an unwelcome one; Marigold liked very much when people touched her, though she wasn’t always sure how much touching was allowed between people who barely knew each other. She shrugged her shoulder up a bit so that it connected more firmly with Beetle’s hand, which made Beetle smile again, reassuringly, and tighten her grip just enough to make it less of a hovering question.

“It’s a bit loud,” Marigold confessed.

Beetle nodded emphatically. 

“Do you think anyone will notice if we, I don’t know,” Marigold glanced furtively at the moving feet around them, “leave the table and go somewhere else?”

Beetle said, “Oh, I don’t care. I don’t know these people.”

Her voice, while warm, was somehow a lot lower than Marigold had expected–a warm alto voice. This, too, Marigold liked immensely. She let Beetle steer her out from under the table, made brave by Beetle’s hand on her upper arm. A few people by the table stepped back, alarmed and bemused, and Beetle fixed them with a hard look that held nothing of the still, sweet curiosity she’d shown Marigold under the table, which made Marigold like her even more.

Evie was kissing Amara on the sofa. Marigold turned her eyes away, towards Beetle, as they stepped quietly outside.

The street was silent save for the muffled sounds from the party indoors. It was chilly, but pleasantly so; Marigold hadn’t brought a jacket, and didn’t half regret it. She liked the cold. 

Beetle said, “I don’t think I’ve seen you at one of these before.”

“So you don’t know these people, but you’ve been here enough times to know I’m new to this?”

“I live upstairs,” said Beetle. “They mostly just invite me to be nice. I came today because it’s November and I have a shit-ton of discount Halloween candy that I didn’t know what to do with, so I was just like, hey, why not give it to a bunch of drunk people and keep it from cluttering up my room forever?”

“Where did you get the discount Halloween candy?”

Beetle smiled. “At the grocery store.”

“Too much to just eat yourself?”

“I have little siblings,” said Beetle. “I was putting together a care package to send to them in California, but I guess I sort of overestimated how much Halloween candy was gonna be in those bags. You know how usually they fill potato chip bags only halfway? Kinda thought the Halloween candy bags would be like that. Or maybe I wasn’t really paying attention. I don’t know.”

Marigold asked, shyly, “Do you still have candy left over, or would we have to go back into the party to get it?”

“I got like seven bags,” said Beetle. “I think I brought four down. I left three upstairs because I felt like I might need them for something.” She shrugged, then smiled. “I guess it’s this?”

“You’re awfully nice, you know,” said Marigold.

“Not a lot of people tell me that,” said Beetle.

“Well, you are! I wouldn’t give my candy away to a stranger, if I had any–”

“Oh, please. You’re not a stranger. We’re under-the-table buddies. That’s basically like the antisocial shut-in version of brothers-in-arms.”

Marigold was opening her mouth to say something else when a car across the street honked its horn, once, twice, three times, with particular urgency. She recognized the sound immediately. Turning slowly, she exhaled through her teeth with exasperated frustration. “Oh, hold on,” she said, and crossed the street.

“No no no don’t come over here!” shrieked Roslin from the front seat. “We’re not here! We’re–Mom, why would you do that?!”

Thea said, “Bunny, did Evie leave you at that party by yourself? I keep saying–”

“Did you follow me here?!” Marigold demanded. 

“We came along to try to stop her,” said Lenora, who was sitting in the backseat with Sofie in her lap. She added, somewhat redundantly, “Didn’t work.”

Sofie babbled. Marigold said, “You brought Sofie?! It’s well past her bedtime! And you know I’ve been trying to get her on that regular sleep schedule–”

“Couldn’t find a babysitter,” said Thea.

“One of you could have stayed home! I told you,” Marigold continued indignantly, “I said it was fine, and it is, and I don’t need some sort of police escort if I want to go and spend some time with my sister–”

“I don’t like the look of some of the people that girl trusts,” said Thea ominously.

“You don’t like the look of anyone, Mommy,” said Marigold, even though she did actually agree. “Butt out.”

“Will you need a ride home?” said Thea. “Don’t see Evie round.”

Marigold had, in fact, come to the party with Evie, and her phone was still the old flip phone that Thea had gotten all of them because Thea didn’t believe in smartphones, so calling an Uber wasn’t really an option for her in the same way that it would have been were her mother, oh, remotely fucking normal about anything. But the thing about Thea was that because Marigold couldn’t call an Uber, Thea would also do things like this, which, annoyingly, pretty much balanced things out.

She said, “You came to give me a ride home?”

“Case you needed one,” said Thea. “Parties run late for girls your age. And you don’t go to these things often.”

Marigold said awkwardly, “Well, I’m–sort of going to go get Halloween candy from this girl’s apartment?”

Lenora sat up straighter, staring incredulously. Roslin said, “Bunny, how are you even a real person. Oh my god. She’s literally going to kidnap you.”

“I am twenty years old,” said Marigold.

“They’re going to–” Roslin was starting to laugh. “They’re going to have to put your face on the fucking milk cartons. You’re going to be the first ever college student to get kidnapped the same way they get kindergarteners. You would literally get into an unmarked van for candy. This is why we’ve gotta drive out with the baby at butt o’clock in the morning and make sure you’re not getting yourself roofied or something!”

Thea stiffened. Marigold said, “Rosie, do not say roofied in front of Mom?”

“You’re the one saying I’m going to get Halloween candy from this girl’s apartment in front of Mom!”

Marigold glanced over her shoulder. Beetle was standing across the street. The March family was pretty historically good at being really loud for no reason, which meant that there was a less-than-zero chance she’d heard all of that, even with the distance. “Look, just–wait in the car, I’ll call you,” she said.

“Not even slightly,” said Thea. “You’ll get the candy and you’ll come home.”

“I am twenty years old! Mom–”

“You’ve got class in the morning and you’re not taking the train before it’s light out, which you’ll have to do to get to campus on time. We’ll wait out here to drive you home.”

“God,” said Marigold, “fine,” even though she wasn’t really all that mad and they all knew it. Having a family who drove across town just to make sure you got home safe wasn’t always a guarantee. She leaned in through the open window and pressed a firm kiss to Thea’s cheek. “I love you, mommy.”

“My bunny,” said Thea. Her hand passed gently over Marigold’s hair. “Evie been good to you?”

Marigold didn’t really want to answer that question. She squeezed Thea’s hand and hoped that this would count as a response. 

Lenora said, “If she turns out to be a total bitch, we’ll stab her.”

“Do not talk about stabbing in front of the baby,” said Marigold immediately. She turned back towards the lit-up house and the too-loud music, picking up the pace. 

Beetle was still standing there, waiting. She said, “Cute family!” in a tone of voice that was decisively amused without being mocking, which Marigold liked. 

“They brought the baby out at whatever the fuck time it is,” said Marigold tiredly, “just to make sure I was fine, which I am. You’re not going to, like, take me up to your apartment and murder me with your Halloween candy, right?”

“I’m thinking of calling it Death By Chocolate,” said Beetle, straight-faced. Marigold snorted. “Bummer you’ve gotta go, though. Kinda felt like we should get to know each other.”

“Really?” said Marigold. Her heart flipped over.

Beetle smiled, that eerie, lovely smile, and said, “You ever just feel like maybe you’re supposed to know someone?”

Yes. No. Sort of. Marigold had felt that way about Thea, Roslin, Lenora, very much Sofie, but it hadn’t felt like this. “You could be wrong,” she said, carefully.

“Okay, yeah, I could be,” Beetle gamely agreed, turning on her heel to head back towards the house. Marigold followed. “Tell me about yourself.”

They walked through the front garden, everything halfway wet the way it always was on that kind of a cold November night. Beetle didn’t take the front door in, instead weaving carefully towards the side of the house and a rickety set of stairs leading up to an upstairs apartment. Plants, Marigold noticed: she had a whole bunch of plants in pots on the landing outside the apartment, which felt a lot like their home and all the plants Ros was always fussing over. Maybe that was one of those supposed-to-know-her feelings right there. 

“Well, I’m Marigold,” she said. “Marigold Baker. I mean, technically Marigold Riverborn, but that’s way too long a story to tell this early in the relationship, probably, so let’s just say Marigold Baker for now. I’m in culinary school—”

“Marigold Baker in culinary school?” said Beetle—again, laughing, but without any malice to it. “I’m kind of obsessed with you already. Keep going.”

Marigold grinned at her shoes, darting her eyes back up as they climbed the stairs. Beetle’s miniskirt rode up a little and showed off a rip in her fishnets, higher up her thigh. “I’m in culinary school,” she continued, “because I want to be a pastry chef, like, licensed and everything. My mom Thea runs a body shop and I think it would be super great if I could figure out a way to make it a body shop that also serves cupcakes. We kind of have to look into all the different business things we’d have to do for that? And Thea’s money’s still tied up in the divorce, which is—so not something I’m supposed to be talking about. Do not tell her I said anything.”

“Sure,” said Beetle, mouth twitching. “I kind of haven’t met your mom, so I feel like that might not be too hard?”

“Well, if we’re supposed to know each other and you’re obsessed with me, it stands to reason that you will meet my family,” Marigold pointed out, “them being my beating heart and all.”

“Oh,” said Beetle, “you’re one of those family-is-everything girls! Kinda dig it.”

What a complicated sentence. “I’m…adopted,” said Marigold carefully; it was not the whole story, but it was as much as she gave out. “As are my sisters. So, yes, they all mean a lot to me. We sort of chose each other.”

Beetle tilted her head thoughtfully. “Neato,” she finally said.

“What about you?” Marigold asked. “Is family everything?”

Beetle’s easy smile flickered. She said, “I’ve got a brother and a sister and I send them a shit-ton of candy whenever I can, like I said.”

Marigold knew the cadence of a half-truth. She didn’t press—just watched Beetle unlock the door.

The apartment was wallpapered, and poorly, in an intricate black-and-emerald pattern that made the space feel even darker than it probably was. Beetle turned on the lights to reveal that the walls were covered in photo frames. “Bugs,” she said cheerfully.

Marigold scanned the walls, a fascinated smile stealing across her face. Every framed photo was of a different insect—some of them drawings, some photographs, some scientific diagrams, all with a small identifying label attached to the frame. “Beetle!” she said, delighted.

“Yeah, it’s actually Beatrice, but Beetle feels like a better opening statement,” Beetle supplied. “Makes people go oh, okay, all the bugs make total sense, rather than whoa, that chick’s got so many bugs in her house! Is Marigold your name, or is it just ‘cause, you know, the hair?”

Marigold twined a red curl cheerfully around her finger. “Marigold is really my name!” she assured Beetle.

“Does anyone ever call you anything else?”

“Mari, usually.”

“How do you feel about Goldie?” Marigold’s nose crinkled. Beetle threw up her hands and said, “Mari it is. Or, I don’t know, what about Riri?”

Marigold felt a slimy shudder run through her. Face perfectly composed, she said, “My sister’s boyfriend calls her Riri. So.”

“Oh, which sister?” said Beetle with interest.

“...The one who invited me to this party,” said Marigold.

Beetle waited. When Marigold did not supply any further information, she said, with a note of friendly and deliberate finality, “Sounds complicated,” and moved further into the apartment. “Do you have, I don’t know, an Instagram or something? I kinda want to send you this artist I follow. I feel like you might really like her work.”

“...No,” said Marigold awkwardly. “My mom’s sort of got a whole Luddite thing going on. Like, right down to all the machinery-smashing.”

Beetle said, “You know the Luddites were just trying to go for job security, right? Not the worst thing to have happening.”

Marigold grinned a bit. “My mom is big on job security,” she agreed. “And also fucking up computers.”

“You should get an Instagram.”

“I use my sister’s. I’ll give you hers.”

“Your party sister?”

“No,” Marigold giggled, mostly because she wasn’t sure what else to do, “the sister in the car. Um, one of them. Roslin.”

Beetle was rummaging in a cabinet. She pulled out a large orange bag, handing it to Marigold, and said, “Take it. No razor blades, swear to God.”

Marigold opened the bag and laughed out loud. There wasn’t a trace of any name-brand candy—rather, the bag was full of themed chocolate, milk and dark and white chocolate insects in a variety of shapes and sizes. “You’ve got a really consistent aesthetic!” she observed. “So you just send a whole bunch of chocolate bugs to your siblings, usually?”

“Nah, they get the name-brand stuff,” said Beetle. “This candy’s what I bring out for the cute girls.”

Marigold blinked, nervously, and kept her smile on her face, not entirely certain what to say next. An affirmation, possibly? It wasn’t as though she hadn’t been considering it, only that as soon as it was on the table, it felt objectively terrifying. She wondered if her reticence would be read the wrong way and the candy would be put back in the cabinet. She hoped it wouldn’t.

Beetle’s smile softened a little and she ducked her head. “But if you want the name-brand candy,” she started.

“Probably it would be a bit easier to transport,” said Marigold awkwardly. “This is a full bag of unwrapped chocolate, and I really don’t want to take all of your good bugs home.”

“A good bug going with a good bug,” said Beetle, solemnly.

“I have no idea what that means.”

Beetle took the orange bag away and handed Marigold a fun-sized bag of Snickers bars. She said, “It’s seriously fucked up that I don’t have a party mix bag on me; this thing is depressingly uniform. Oh, fuck, are you allergic to nuts?”

Marigold shook her head.

“God. Good. Should have asked about food allergies before I just started handing you shit.” Beetle smiled again, self-deprecatingly. “Snickers okay? I might have some other stuff if you wanna see.”

Marigold didn’t care one way or the other. She liked this beautiful, strange liminal space she’d stepped into, where she was suddenly an almost-grown-up holding a bag of Halloween candy with a new friend who thought she was pretty. She wanted to stay in it a bit longer.

“What do you have?” she asked.

Beetle turned back towards the cabinet. “Uh, Three Musketeers, Butterfingers, and this one’s kinda polarizing, but a whole bunch of York peppermint pies.”

“What’s polarizing about peppermint?”

“I knew this guy who said it was like eating a bunch of toothpaste. Almost put me off it for a year or two before I forgot I totally love eating toothpaste.” Beetle shifted the bag down. “Is that a yes to the peppermint?”

“Norie loves peppermint,” said Marigold.

“Okay, but they’re for you. Do you like peppermint?”

Marigold blushed, and smiled again. “...Yes to the peppermint.”

“And because I’m kinda thinking maybe you end up giving all of them to Norie,” said Beetle, “because you’ve got that kinda sparkly-sweet thing going on, I’m going to give you the Three Musketeers too and say those are for your mom and your sisters, and the peppermint’s literally just for you.” She considered. “Two are for Norie, who I’m guessing is…your other sister?”

“My other sister!” Marigold brightly confirmed.

“So which one brought you to the party?”

Marigold thought about Evie, almost certainly throwing herself at someone who wasn’t her insufferably slimy boyfriend, and her jaw clenched.

Beetle didn’t ask again. “That enough candy for you?”

“Almost too much!” said Marigold.

“No such thing as too much candy,” said Beetle firmly. “At least not if you’re starting from zero. I’m starting from seven bags; I’ve gotta offload some of this shit.” She took a handful from the orange bag, pressing a collection of half-melted bugs into Marigold’s hand. “Take at least a few. Y’know, as, like, a token of my affection, or whatever.”

She was blushing a little, which showed up really easily on her pale face. Marigold felt a sense of profound satisfaction that her own golden-brown skin didn’t redden half as visibly. “Thanks for the beetles, Beetle,” she said, which made them both smile. “Can you actually hold onto them for a second, though? I’m going to give you—”

“Your sister’s Instagram?”

Smooth and sweet, Marigold said, “My number.”

“Oh, shit, okay!” said Beetle. Her blush deepened and she smiled in a way that was much more silly and excited. “Sure! But I do want your sister’s Insta too, because that thing in your pocket is super obviously a flip phone, and I’m one of those long texters.”

“I’ll just make an Instagram and text you,” said Marigold. “The handle is—”

“—no, man, you gotta check to see if it’s available before you—”

“Marigold underscore Baker underscore Tasty underscore Pastry underscore Nature apostrophe S no space Masterpiece.”

Beetle bit her lip, clearly trying not to laugh, and said, “Dude, that is not gonna work with the character limit. Just give me your sister’s for now so we don’t have to call each other like old people.”

Marigold pressed the melting chocolate into Beetle’s hands. It felt sort of like a kiss, somehow—wet and sticky and silly. Full of warm honesty. There was a magnetic whiteboard on the fridge, a schedule written out in neat handwriting. “Is it okay if I—”

“Go ahead, man!”

Marigold wrote her phone number, and Roslin’s Instagram underneath, then added, in parentheses, Marigold Baker the Party Girl, with a little heart next to it. She liked the thought of existing as Marigold Baker the Party Girl on someone’s fridge. She wondered if Beetle would do what she’d do were their positions reversed, and just never erase it, letting the erasable marker dry into that permanent foreverness that was the worst thing ever to clean. 

Beetle said, “Okay, cool. Tell your sister I’m gonna text her and it’s gonna be about you.”

“Ominous,” said Marigold. “I hope you say nice things.”

“No, dude, I’m gonna text her to talk to you. We’re not starting a group chat about you when there’s still so much stuff I don’t know about Mystery Marigold. Like, okay, what’s your favorite color?”

“Green,” said Marigold.

“Don’t tell me now!” said Beetle. She handed Marigold the chocolate back. “You go have a nice class tomorrow, okay? Get down there before your family thinks I killed you.”

“I don’t think I’d mind if you did,” said Marigold. “Bug girl.”

“Flower girl,” Beetle said, like they’d said goodbye like this forever. Maybe they really were supposed to get to know each other. 

~~~

Thea had put on “Baby Shark” to try and get Sofie to go to sleep, which wasn’t working, because whenever Sofie saw Marigold, she’d stay stubbornly awake until Marigold came back to rock her to sleep. Under most normal circumstances, because Sofie was the kind of baby whose idiosyncrasies seemed perfectly designed to psychologically torment her caregivers, “Baby Shark” would put Sofie perfectly to sleep so long as it was played exactly fifteen times in a row, but they’d hit seventeen and Sofie was still babbling half-coherent nonsense to an exhausted-looking Lenora, who kept trying to hand her off to Roslin.

Marigold hurried over to the car. Sofie said, “Mama!”

“We’re not doing that, she’s twenty,” said Thea, but Sofie was already making grabby hands towards Marigold, who scooped her up in a flurry of kisses. 

Roslin said, “Are you trying to reason with the baby?”

“The baby is a little terrorist who cannot be reasoned with,” said Lenora. “We need to get home so I can play first-person shooters and not listen to Baby Shark, ever again.”

Thea said, “Get in the back, bunny. How was the party?”

Marigold wasn’t sure how to tell them all about Beetle. She didn’t know if she wanted to. She sort of had to tell them about some of it, though, so she said instead, “Rosie, it’s okay that I gave someone your Insta, right? She wanted mine—”

“Dude, make your own,” said Roslin. “How many times is this gonna have to happen?”

“No one needs to be on social media,” said Thea immediately.

“Okay, well, Mommy, I am twenty-five, you don’t get to take away my phone,” said Roslin. “This would not be a problem if you just got, like, a MacBook or something. Whatever you have in your office is legitimately evil.”

“I bought a computer,” said Thea stubbornly. “I have a computer. I don’t see the problem.”

“That thing has to be from, like, the Revolutionary War!”

Marigold settled into the backseat with Sofie, resting her cheek against Lenora’s shoulder. She said, “Actually, there weren’t computers in the Revolutionary War—”

“Do not start this at like one in the morning.”

“You started it at like one in the morning.” Marigold buckled Sofie back into her car seat.

“Defending you! Do you want Mom to start burning laptops in the backyard again?”

“That was out of context,” said Thea immediately. “And mostly an accident, anyway. Didn’t realize lithium did that.” She started the car. “We turning off Baby Shark now?”

“No, Sofie likes it,” said Marigold.

“YES,” said Lenora. “Sofie’s awake anyway, Mari—”

Sofie had fallen asleep. 

“See, you have to leave it on now,” said Marigold, “she will wake up if you turn it off. We all know this.”

“Torment nightmare torture baby,” said Roslin affectionately. “You know sometimes it starts to make me sleepy when I listen to it? Something about the baby shark doo doo do do do do—”

“I will kill you if you start singing it, Roslin, it’s bad enough that we have it on without—”

“Doo doo do do—”

Thea said, “Quiet, I need to make this turn!”

Marigold cuddled into Lenora’s shoulder again. Lenora said, “Your baby is ruining our life.”

“Stop calling Sofie her baby,” said Thea. “Mari is too young to be raising a kid.”

“I’m twenty!” said Marigold.

“You’re a baby,” said Roslin. Her eyes lit up. “Baby Mari doo do do—”

Lenora said, “I am going to murder you, Roslin. I am going to kill you dead.”

“No murder until I’m done getting onto the highway,” said Thea, eyes on the road.

The girls quieted. Marigold cuddled into Lenora until Lenora leaned forward and towards her, letting Marigold use her as an all-the-way pillow. “Good party?” Lenora asked quietly.

Marigold didn’t answer. She wondered whether Evie would even notice she was gone.

“You’ll see her on her Monday shift,” Lenora said. “You can catch up with her then, if she wasn’t—I mean, you know, if she got. Distracted, or something.”

Marigold said, “It was a good party,” and realized that she did actually mean it. “I…met someone.”

“Oh, shit!” said Roslin from the front seat. “Goth Halloween candy chick does, like, bug taxidermy?”

“Roslin, do not stalk her Instagram!” yelped Marigold. “Just—just give me your phone! Give me your phone so I can—”

“I AM MERGING!” said Thea. “YOU ALL NEED TO FUCKING SHUT UP!”

Sofie squirmed happily and continued to sleep. Marigold was fairly certain it would be six more plays of Baby Shark before they were in the clear. 

~~~

beetlenecromancer: hi marigolds sister lol

beetlenecromancer: can u send me her insta when u have it? she said she’d make one

strawbrosie33: hey man if you fuck up my sister i’m going to use norie’s poison kit to poison you

strawbrosie33: HI THIS IS MARIGOLD

strawbrosie33: SORRY

strawbrosie33: SHEHS TRYINGG TO GBRAJB THE POHNE BACKC

beetlenecromancer: lmao

beetlenecromancer: nw

strawbrosie33: I AM ROSLIN I TRIUMPH

strawbrosie33: im so serious though bro i will literally kill you she is so fucking baby. you have no idea

strawbrosie33: you’ve known her for like five minutes we’ve known her forever she is THE BABIEST

strawbrosie33: Hi this is Marigold again I am So So So Sorry 

beetlenecromancer: dude you need a smartphone so bad this is so dire for you

[marigoldbaker]

i can talk about my ocs if i want this is a lawless land. picking songs for them to sing at karaoke night, under the cut

marigold sings pat benatar's "hit me with your best shot" because it's one of thea's favorite songs <3 and she has a lot of fun with brassy upbeat 80s vocals!! bold singin' words from a girl who CANNOT take a punch. very bouncy. tries to mime the guitar solo and forgets she's holding the mic and may have actually caused some damage to the system. thea will pay for it later it's fine

all are expecting evie to sing something weird or overtly sexual but she sings kirsty maccoll's "they don't know" very very earnestly. there is something extremely heartbreaking about how much love she sings it with, and who she's thinking of.

norie did not want to sing. is not going to sing. was pushed into singing by roslin who picked the song for her and it's kate bush's "wuthering heights," which she is really mad about because she actually does love the song, so the entire time she's just going >:( while mumble-singing into the microphone. least fun to watch UNLESS you're roslin, who thinks this is adorable.

roslin (who WOULD be a directioner in any situation where karaoke is a viable option) sings one direction's "best song ever" and then tries to transition towards performing the entire discography of one direction until norie (professional boy band hater) runs up and gets into a small fight with her trying to take the microphone away. both of them are probably pretty drunk by now so no one's winning. thea has to break it up

wrote one thing for thea but reconsidered im coming back to this one. sings bruce springsteen's "cover me" and knocks it out of the park. does not have a good singing voice but when you're a rough and tumble butch mom in your fifties you don't need one to do a lethal springsteen cover.

[marigoldbaker]

decided to pick the moments from my bg3 wip that live in my head as the most iconic, defining, emblematic-of-their-energy-and-priorities things my beloved girls have done. Enjoy previews of coming attractions. ���

marigold: setting herself on fire to get baking ingredients

evie: hitting on zevlor and halsin in rapid succession at the tiefling party. Failing both times. Not caring

roslin: immediately derailing the super important family mission for zombie drinks at the undead tavern (not pictured: her successfully poisoning herself with fucked up alcohol)

norie: telling people who don’t have the full context that the SERIAL KILLER is a noble hero who is completely correct in SERIALLY KILLING PEOPLE. Clearly committed to this perspective

thea: texting her girlfriend insanely concerning messages as to her whereabouts and responding to justified concern with 👍

sofie: category 4 horse girl moment (she’s 11. What else could it be)

and bonus daisy: mid anxiety attack about leaving the house. At all times

[marigoldbaker]

it’s the bakery ladies!!! except much smaller!! (plus two sisters to a bakery lady. can’t leave evie and elodie out.)

[marigoldbaker]

Afraid of one’s own shadow

(ok so Briar is the obvious choice for this one, but it would be fun to see Roslin or Marigold wearing those shoes)

had to go for roslin!!! those in the know will know what this is about :)

It's so fucking stupid. It's her horns. It's her horns, and the angle the moonlight hits through the window. She had one of those dreams again, and she jerked up, wide awake, and the way she moved, the way her horns looked against the moonlight, silhouetted against the dresser--there's a fragmenting where head meets neck, a separation, so that it almost looks like her head's on the dresser and her body's slumped against the floor. Which isn't what happened. Not here. Not to her.

(A head on the dresser. A tiefling head on the dresser. A tiefling head with beautiful red locs, hair like Roslin's, skin as red as blood, red with blood, red with--)

Roslin climbs out the window, quiet as a cat, like Jaheira taught her. Norie is a light sleeper, but she doesn't wake up when Roslin moves like this, because no one knows that Roslin can. She clambers over the windowsill, focused only on her balance, very aware that this is dangerous in the state that she's in, but she can't be anything but silly, bubbly Rosie in that house. There's no room for it. Norie needs her mother. Roslin had a mother. Roslin doesn't have a mother anymore.

She moves like someone who isn't Roslin. Jumps from roof to roof until she finds Jaheira, sitting on the roof just across from the Tasty Pastry like she's been waiting for Roslin the entire time.

Jaheira says, "Rosalie. Come here."

Rosalie is the name that her mother called her, which is why it isn't painful to hear it from Jaheira, which is a statement that Roslin cannot look at in the daylight but clings to right now. She sinks down onto the slippery tile of the roof, almost really slips, but Jaheira hauls her up by the scruff of her neck and props her against the chimney.

Roslin can't breathe. She presses her face into Jaheira's shoulder until she can.

Jaheira just sort of sits there. Doesn't try to stroke Roslin's hair, which is good. Roslin would bite Jaheira's fucking hand off if Jaheira tried to be her mum right now.

Jaheira says, "What was it?"

"My shadow," says Roslin. Which is so fucking stupid.

Jaheira says, "When I was in Athkatla, I woke from a dream, and--there was a tree, you see, outside our inn, and the shadow it cast on the wall--I thought for a moment that Khalid had returned to me. It looked so much like he did when he came to bed after a long night. And then the moon shone through and I saw--oh, it did not look like him at all."

She doesn't move to hold Roslin. She doesn't shrug her off.

"Grief is a mirage," she says. "Tie yourself to those who will remind you what is real."

[marigoldbaker]

I dont know your girls, but tell us 17. how do they celebrate their birthday?

HI THANKS !!! <33

marigold keeps trying to con people out of remembering that it’s her birthday because she can’t handle positive attention despite craving it constantly and she doesn’t want people to go out of their way for her despite also craving that constantly. so she will be that girl going “oh i don’t want a celebration!!!!! it’s fine!!!!” when she actually kinda does lowkey but has 87 psychological problems. her mom and sisters have danced this dance for 12 years though so they very patiently ignore her when she does this and just put on a really cute and small party (family only, plus jaheira’s kids every so often) with an exorbitant amount of really silly gifts. sofie’s gifts are always new drafts of magic recipes inspired by marigold and they always make marigold extremely emotional.

evie uhhhhh . Oh man. does she even know when her birthday is? her mind is kinda soup by the time canon happens. i think when she finds it out again she’s probably supremely indifferent and astarion is like GODS i have to do EVERYTHING around here and figures out a way to throw her an extremely extravagant party on ye olde brother’s credit card. she does in fact ditch this party with him to sit on the roof and throw hunks of birthday cake at all the fancy guests he invited. ideal times for evie

birthdays are a little hard on roslin with her family in another city, so the actual date she was born is a family only secret bc she gets a little twitchy if customers start wishing her a happy birthday. the bakery ladies put on a much more lowkey version of the marigold party (the nice wine is brought out and everyone makes something fun for dinner) and everyone gives ros a single present that she probably cries over for like 10 minutes. very sweet.

lenora’s birthday is some sort of deranged affair because when she was 9 and moved to live with thea she refused to admit she had a birthday, so thea had to use all of her governmental connections to figure out norie’s birthday and subsequently figure out how to sneak attack norie with a celebration. her version of a sneak attack was probs just a surprise cake but she explained the concept to ros and mari and they got. Overzealous. so every year the bakery ladies act like they’ve forgotten norie’s birthday, they don’t remember norie’s birthday, and then WHAM someone dumps an industrial tub of confetti on lenora while she’s trying to go into the kitchen (which marigold has used illusory magic to turn into a giant ballroom full of presents.) norie LOVES THIS bc she gets to complain and moan and pretends she hates it and also she gets presents and the attention of her sisters. Wins across the board.

thea wasn’t planning to mention her birthday to anyone, but her daughters asked jaheira about it. jaheira actually already knew when it was, which thea did NOT know about because jaheira has never gotten her anything for her birthday and paired it with an actual verbal “happy birthday,” so when every other year or two jaheira would randomly give her a new weapon or some rare ingredients on her birthday & then immediately leave, she’d just be like. Does she know??? no she can’t. But does she????

the girls like surprising thea but ros and mari have zero subtlety. norie COULD pull off a surprise but really doesn’t care enough to try bc she knows thea is expecting it every year. they like to take thea for a picnic by the chionthar with a bunch of her favorite pastries (that she taught them to make) and goof around and talk about all the fun stuff they got up to over the last year. all of thea’s presents are always handmade (mari usually makes her a long term preservable snack that is both magical and delicious, norie embroiders her something, ros also embroiders her something which is a real labor of love because ros fucking hates embroidery and is very bad at it).

[marigoldbaker]

More fool me for thinking i could write an older sister without older sister issues. was like oh she’s not REALLY the older sister she’s too silly and ditzy and that girl is doing so much emotional labor hidden behind an elaborate mask that she ends up jaheira’s protege possibly

[marigoldbaker]

Give me Roslin's non-combat banter, 1-10 gogogo

LOVE THAT OKAY !!!

1. Clicking on them once (non-combat)

"Yep! It's me!" "How's my hair looking?" "Good day for a bit of a wander!"

2. Spam clicking on them too many times

"Ah, fuck, I knew I should've bought the good lipstick. This one is not holding up in battle." "I'd make a killing as a bard if I didn't like bashing heads in so much." "[in a silly voice] Nature's servant awaits! ...Gods, she'd kill me if she heard that. Gotta remember to do it while she's around."

3. Directing them to attack/move in combat

"Serving up a nice cut of sword for breakfast!" "Eat blade, fuckers!" "Ready to parry? More like ready to party!"

4. Hiding/sneaking/hidden movement

"Quiet as a Daisy!" "Ugh, I hate when people don't get to see my outfit..." "Harper stealth mode: activate!"

5. Taking a short rest

"Could've done with a snack or two, but oh well..."

6. Low health/asking for healing

"Mumma? I--oh, sorry. Forgot. Getting dizzy..."

7. Attacked by a party member

"Wow. Having a bad day, I see."

8. Companion/romance death reactions

"Not Gale! Marigold's going to kill me!" "Shadowheart! Hang in there, I'm coming!" "Astarion! You're going to be okay!" "Lae'zel! You've got this, get up!" "Wyll, sweetheart, I'm on my way!" "Oh, shit, Karlach!" "Halsin? Gods, we're all fucked." "Minthara! You've taken worse than this!" "Minsc! Is Boo okay?" "Absolutely fucking not."

9. Going to buff/heal a companion/romance

Companion: "Where's Norie when you need her..." Romance: "Any excuse for a little touch? Shameless flirt, you."

10. Sending them to talk to an NPC

"Ahhh, I love chit-chat!"

[marigoldbaker]

General 1 and story 8 for everyone!

OH FUN!!!

1. Where can your Tav be recruited?  Are they first encountered on the Nautiloid, or in the Nautiloid crash region?  Or are they not recruitable until a later act?

we're going to go with tadpoled marigold for this, for simplicity's sake, which means that mari is in the nautiloid crash region! i think my beloved girl went a-wandering and with her amazing conflict resolution skills her recruitment event is you watching her enchant those bandits by withers's temple. they're getting hostile and trying to defend their score, mari (wizard) starts twirling her hair and going "oh i'm so sorry, i didn't mean to offend! listen, i'm really just hopelessly lost and i could do with some directions and protection, i'd make you a lovely cake in return!" and then when the bandits start gearing up to rob her she fucking wastes them in front of you & turns around with blood on her skirt like hey guys what's up :D and you can recruit her. astarion approves if you do this but all of their banter after a certain point becomes him going I Literally Fucking Hate You So Much. Gods.

evie (ranger) shows up as part of mari's personal quest, which is directly evie-centric <3 it gets weird and probably violent. evie basically begs you to recruit her as a party member and if you don't do it she will just become a camp follower anyway. you have to dismiss marigold to get her to leave your camp, and at any time while she's there you can recruit her.

thea (cleric of haela brightaxe) is recruitable in the last light inn. she showed up to confer w jaheira bc she's very stressed about her missing daughter, which means that jaheira basically shoves her at you like "hey can you take my situationship out for a walk so she stops semi hysterically propositioning me in war meetings." and if you agree: you have thea :)

TECHNICALLY ros and norie woulda come with thea, but we're spacing this out bc this is now working within bg3 party member game logic, so they're both recruitable in act 3 when you visit the tasty pastry! they're kind of redundant atp i think bc you don't REALLY need another fighter or another cleric but if you take one you have to take both.

8. Do they have comments on who the Player Character chooses to spend the night with? 

marigold makes like 200 really really really bitchy and passive aggressive comments if you flirted with her at all but chose someone else OR if anyone starts romancing gale and does not ever really get over doing that for the entirety of the game to the point where a few of the gale specific banters triggered by the PC romancing him are just him going "hey marigold can you please let it go." she does not. toxic hater girl.

evie, who actually probably propositions the PC at some point, will mostly just be congratulatory (a very "hey nice look at you getting some!") but asks a little apprehensively if you're sure about astarion. seems like maybe he needs a friend, not a lover. i also think if you're romancing wyll she asks you if you're sure he's safe. sometimes those hero-types aren't as nice as they seem when the doors are closed and no one is looking.

thea is just like for FUCK'S SAKE do you not have PRIORITIES??? we have BIGGER FISH TO FRY. which becomes super funny and stupid later because i do think there's a cutscene that's the PC walking in on her and jaheira having one of those swoony and very stupid romance novel arguments like the world isn't literally ending guys cmon

roslin wants details. independently of who it is. details. share. now. gossip.

norie doesn't care and doesn't comment. you can mention it to her if you want her take and she will immediately be like do not talk to me about this. actually do not even talk to me. What is your fucking problem. THOUGH. she's gender locked (women only) and if you flirted with her or romanced her a little before settling on someone else she gets this little kicked puppy attitude like i kinda thought we had something what happened :(

[marigoldbaker]

How do all your OCs feel about Baldurs Gate 3?

now that’s a wonderfully meta concept bc they were initially designed to populate that world but let’s take it seriously let’s go

marigold romances gale plays a wizard does not ascend him to godhood EXCLUSIVELY because she’s kind of mad the game doesn’t have the option to let HER steal the crown from her video game boyfriend and become a goddess on her own. her myriad of very specific issues have her enchanted by jaheira. No one look too hard at any of these sentences

evie got the game for the hot vampire finds out his backstory cries so hard she throws up turns off the game immediately calls her big sister and is like can you yell at my ex boyfriend in Panera again. i really liked when you did that that was so awesome. i can’t do it but you can do it. & then marigold semi illegally tracks down lion and gets into a screaming fight with him again on evie’s behalf. evie tags along. Sisterhood <3

roslin is literally just having a fun good time :) tries to romance literally everyone at the same time and when this doesn’t work starts playing the heavily modded version where you can do that. her favorite is halsin hands down. she loves a big soft guy

norie plays an evil run because it allows her to kill literally everything and she finds video game murder really really calming. the entire time texts her sister like am i a bad person for killing the tieflings just to hook up with the drow lady? and ros is like it’s pixels. it is not that deep. do what you want.

thea is not tech savvy enough to really Get the game (old lady that she is) so she keeps on having to call her daughters in to explain things that she doesn’t listen to until they’re really just playing the game for her, at which point she leaves to go do her actual favorite digital thing (watching woodworking videos on youtube and criticizing their technique). completely misses the memo

[marigoldbaker]

made the bakery ladies in the sims :)

sometimes a family is a human cleric of ilmater with emotional issues, a barbie dream princess tiefling fighter, a half elf wizard who is trying to win Most Normal And Mentally Stable Girl Ever (and losing), her elven apprentice who's really just her adopted daughter at this point (she's the only one who did not get that memo), and their dwarf mom who is not their boss despite marigold's genuine belief that this is a workplace relationship

[marigoldbaker]

bakery lady moodboards: roslin maynard

“What about your last boyfriend?” said Lenora snidely. “The one who broke it off with you to follow his dreams chasing whales?” “Um, one, he sends me letters absolutely all the time,” said Roslin, “because we broke it off on good terms, and also he’s having a hell of a lot of fun so I’d never begrudge him that. Two, we are not talking about my boyfriends, we’re discussing you battling with carnal lust for fucking Nightshade of all people. Three, if we were talking about my boyfriends, we’d be talking about the fact that I’m still friends with all of them, except for that one who had to go into witness protection on account of that murder he saw. And, see, that’s the difference between you and me, Lenora, my boyfriends see murders and your boyfriends cause murders.”

[marigoldbaker]

HI thank you SOSOSOSO much for answering my questions abt your girlies!!!! i have more if that's okay <3

i have questions about interactions now. bakery girls & scooby gang who they like who they don't: go

how old are they relative to each other? like, who's the oldest, what are their age gaps, etc etc

is sophie not like, technically a bakery girl? what's up w/her

what is lion's whole... situation.

what is up w/him & evie.

why is evie a cryptid.

could evie be popular? like, if she tried? i feel like yes

norie & nora my beloveds!!!!!!! BESTIES OF ALL TIME. idea: if there was like a younger girl version of donovan, would norie go for her? feel like she would

how do the what you make ppl feel abt bakery girlies. who do they like the best? who do they hang out with?

of thea & jaheira & jenny & giles: which of them would hook up w/each other if not in established couples, which of them would get along great, and would any of them have threesomes/foursomes

who are jaheira's kids? do they hang out w/the bakery girls? who are they closest to?

why was elodie not also adopted by thea. what was she like

who are roslin's other family members? what?

I LOVE THEM SO MUCH.

would brie get along with any of them. whom.

ANYWAYS THEY'rE AMAMZING

I LOVE THEM SO MUCH

THANK YOU FOR ANSWERING ALL MY QUESTIONS WITH AWESOME ANSWERS

<3

!!!! HI THANKS !!!! SO MUCH !!!! i literally love talking about these girls this is making my evening <3333

sooooo

marigold gets into like a really weird passive aggressive Thing with willow because they both have a complex and they both need to be the weirdest smartest most adorable girl in the room and honestly there's a non zero chance they have some kind of xander/cordy makeout about it where it's so clear this is not what should be happening and yet it is for sure what's happening. she's tight with giles. this makes it worse

evie gets along really, really, really well with spike and drusilla, specifically because spike has a lot of experience dealing with women who communicate unconventionally and need a little extra support to function, and evie is incredibly forthright and sweet (and, crucially, unafraid of them both). i don't know if there's a romantic aspect to it but i know for certain that evie takes tea with drusilla and the two communicate with a lot of warmth and mutual respect.

roslin has an uncharacteristically shy crush on oz. i don't really think this helps marigold's standing with willow At All. she also really enjoys bothering giles because she thinks his life choices merit some general bullying. leave the teenage girls alone man

norie is outraged by anya's attempts to make herself small and appealing and tries to chase xander down and kill him to death about it. throws herself into being anya's self-help manual in a way that is very, very, very, very gay.

thea is so immediately obsessed with jenny it's not even funny but handles it SO BADLY by defaulting to her hundreds of years of Bluntly Flirtatious Womanizer and just going all in. jenny is delighted by the attention and even though thea is not necessarily her type in terms of personality. hot salt and pepper butch, yknow. in any au where these women meet the scoobies, giles and thea have been long term college friends for some time (i can do what i want), so the energy is very much "STOP FUCKING FLIRTING WITH MY WIFE???? STOP THAT" (giles) vs "man if your wife's looking at me when i flirt with her maybe you're not treating her right" (thea). this is the best day of jenny's entire life btw

2. this one is a little interesting because there's their dnd ages and their kinda general ages! thea in the fic is a dwarf, and i put her at about 260-ish, which i think would probably translate to late 50s/early 60s in an all human situation. roslin and lenora are both close enough to human that i think their late twenties/early thirties general ballpark would apply, and marigold, though she's in her late twenties in the fic, is kinda operating from a delayed half elven maturity, so i would place her very decisively at early twenties in an all human situation. evie is early twenties in the fic but i think she'd be like 18-19 (not a very big age gap btwn her and mari; similar levels of maturity). sofie's age is whatever i want it to be lol but always decisively a little kid.

3. sofie i shuffle in and out depending on how i'm feeling about it! she initially started out as marigold's apprentice but the narrative shifted and now she's very decisively marigold's little daughter. she's about 12 but i write her like she's 6 in the fic for Baby Elf Slowly Growing Up reasons, which means i'm still figuring out how old i would want her to be in an all human situation (the consistent through line is that mari is a little too young and flighty to raise a kid without the insane amount of third party support that she's managing, but she and sofie have a really deep connection). i sorta feel like she's a little too small to have a full-fledged character arc, but i definitely think about her as like 1/2 a bakery lady.

4. lion. hm. how much can i say without spoiling things. he grew up in a house with his abusive dad and evie's a lot of the reason he stayed alive through that, possibly. he loves her tremendously and sometimes when you are incredibly traumatized & there's only one person who matters to you, you will do some really, really fucked up things to them out of fear that they will leave.

5. THIS part i can say -- lion and evie are childhood friends! they connected at a time where both of their family situations were. Fraught. and they developed kind of a really intense trauma bond that eventually transitioned into romance. and then things got bad.

6. evie is a cryptid because when you grow up with undiagnosed adhd and your mother is insane you often do not actually learn how to fit in or understand other people.

7. see i actually really don't know how to answer that question because being popular is the antithesis of evie! she is so fundamentally disinterested when it comes to socializing with 80 percent of the general human population. either she loves a person or they don't exist to her. so like Could she be popular? hard to tell. she will literally never try. what matters to her is always gonna be the people in her heart and that's it.

(so much of why she, ahem, socializes with others comes from a place of wanting to reaffirm her connection to her body! it's brutally pragmatic. she talks to people if she needs to and That's It.)

8. oh norie's taste is not nearly that stable. the two Serious Crushes she's had are 1) comphet thing for a serial killer whose face she has literally never seen and 2) literal war criminal who has killed and will kill again. that woman is ONLY interested in women with a kill count and no regrets about it AND future murderous intent, and donovan simply does not meet that criteria even in some hypothetical fem version.

9. man i am sooo not in the headspace of the what you make guys so these answers may be a bit lackluster but i will try my best!

nora, hilariously, adores thea. extremely amused by thea's obvious obsession with her and is very clear about her devotion to her husband + her heterosexuality but thinks thea is SO GREAT and is delighted to meet a mom who has priorities very similar to her own! i think once thea gets her libido under control they're actually really great mom friends :')

donovan adores thea for similar reasons. she's very nora-shaped. actually as i'm typing this in ANY situation where nora was attracted to women or thea to men this could so easily be a "sometimes thea comes around for threesomes" situation but that is just not what's happening here. she's such a good friend though.

stacey is OBSESSED with roslin. they go shopping together and it's the best day of stacey's entire life.

ezra likes marigold a lot and by proxy is also pretty fond of sofie :') he follows mari around very quietly and watches her make things. marigold has never handled people's admiration well at all so she's kind of having a minor panic attack the entire time ESPECIALLY because sofie needs mommy's attention ALL the time or else she'll start causing problems. ezra picks up on this pretty fast and starts paying attention to sofie too. expert problem solver

bella loves evie full stop. same insane adhd girl hat.

art adores sofie and marigold!!! they've all three of them got the same excited effusive chattery sparkle. he and sofie start getting along really really well like i said which again is one of the reasons why bella hates that girl so fucking much.

10. like i said lmao thea is SOOOO into jenny but in a much more superficial way than most situations! really just wants to love her and leave her, which of course appeals to jenny as a concept as well (hooray mutually emotionally uninvolved while still intensely passionate sex EVERYBODY WINS), but jenny is with giles so jenny is like (deep sigh) i guess i can't fuck the hot butch lesbian because i'm in a "serious committed relationship" with my "husband." giles is like why are there quotation marks around both of those things jenny.

jaheira would for fucking sure go for giles. suddenly things are way less fun for thea. giles immediately starts flirting back as retribution for thea trying to steal his wife; jaheira is deliberately putting herself out there for giles in part because a hot younger (by her standards) gentleman with emotional problems does sound like a super fun time for her but ALSO because thea has spent like 30 years not texting her back despite them literally co-parenting children together at this point. Lo And Behold There Are Consequences, Althea!!!! (jenny isn't helping she thinks this is fucking hilarious)

them all hooking up WOULD be on the table if not for the fact that thea is like if rupert gets anywhere near my wife i will break his stupid little face. also i'm like 99 percent sure jaheira and thea haven't hooked up anyway. they're not good at that

11. jaheira's got five kids in canon :') and i actually did write up which bakery lady each kid gets along well with some time ago bc i was thinking about it soooooo

rion (jaheira's oldest, approx. early twenties) adores marigold because they have a mommy issues warriors bond and mari is just the sweetest little sugar cookie. they hang out a lot when they can and cheerfully Don't Talk About It but there's a real Existing Understanding.

jord (jaheira's other oldest, similar age as rion) is actually really tight with norie and i'm certain they get high together on occasion. it's a very quiet and not chatty at all relationship but it really emphasizes norie's softer side. <3

fig and jhessem (jaheira's young daughters, kinda same age as sofie) both are absolutely obsessed with roslin, because roslin is a total girly-girl which appeals to jhessem and roslin gets into a lot of bar fights which appeals to fig. jhessem however has had beef with sofie for a long time (sofie collects child enemies very easily because sofie cannot handle other children as a concept)

tate (jaheira's young son, also sofie's age) is very shy generally speaking. he does best with marigold, because she's warm like roslin but she can actually really do quiet stillness if it's for kids. sofie doesn't have as much of a problem with HIM because he mostly just wants to hang out in the same space as them, and he's not there often anyway.

12. neither elodie nor evie were adopted by thea for uhhhh reasons that are quite complicated but mostly boil down to "marigold was the only kid thea knew about at the time." evie shows up in marigold's life again in their twenties after quite a long time and it's awkward and strange and sad.

13. roslin's status as one of thea's adopted daughters came about in the dnd setting because her family (seven kids!!) wanted to send her to a less crowded place where she could learn a trustworthy trade <3 she writes her parents and siblings very often and she loves them very much! they don't have a strong narrative presence but they're super important to her. i would imagine that in a more modern setting she's staying with thea for similar job-related reasons but she calls her "mommy" because thea's a family friend + she spent a lot of her teen years living w/thea!!

14. ME TOO LOL

15. brie and marigold would kill each other on fucking sight i am 10000 percent certain. extremely unstable and VERY spoiled baby girls who DO NOT play well with others despite appearances. brie tries to start getting along with marigold's sisters and marigold is like im going to use the power of my FUCKING knife to FUCKING KILL YOU. goes downhill from there.

[marigoldbaker]

hi i would like to ask about evie because. i love her

i have a few questions

if they were in a high school au, would evie be like, a mean girl with a heart of gold? that's kind of the vibe i'm getting from her but i'm not sure if i'm right

is evie super protective of her sisters. she is right

would she get along with faith i feel like she would

sorry just. lots of assumptions & vibes i want to check. also. IS EVIE BISEXUAL. DOES SHE LIKE GIRLS

non-evie specific questions now. which of ur ocs r neurodivergent. do they autism. whom. whom autism. WHOMST AUTISM

:)

would sophie get along w art

WAIT IDEA. of the ocs in what you make. and your bakery ladies. what would their relationships be. which would be the favorite cervenak of every one of bakery girls

apparently jaheira has kids? who are they? are they also ocs

okay i love you and your girls. write more original fiction abt them please so i can read it even though i dont know bg3. okay thx

<3

HI OMG THIS IS SOOOO CUTE???? thank you SO MUCH for enabling me to talk about these guys! fair warning this WILL get long lol.

1. actually now i am legally obligated to write about all of them in high school situations. let’s go. as i write this i’m pretty sure in a high school au mari, ros, and norie would actually just be, like, friends, not actually adoptive sisters – ros has her very big and loving family, norie has a really tense situation as Adopted Chinese Daughter of Rich White Parents Who She Hates, marigold uhhhh god wouldn’t it be interesting and insane if she was still living with her bio mother and sisters? this is my narrative and in any narrative of mine high school is the worst case scenario, lol. evil evil place i will never go back to.

marigold is i am pretty sure in a world without magic hyperfixated on science/biology/nature, so she does really good when it’s anything related to that or cooking and really bad when it’s Literally Anything Else. she complains a lot about there not being some kind of home ec class until it’s explained to her that home ec would not JUST be cooking and she’s like oh well i don’t care about that then. she earned the position of student council vice president by bribing the general high school population with baked goods and only served half a term before realizing she hates talking to most people. REALLY tight with the cheer squad bc that’s roslin’s group, so she brings them a lot of snacks and hangs out on the bleachers with norie while ros cheers <3

evie has like 2 friends and one of them is a dead rat possibly and when marigold finds out about this she does her usual Marigold Response To Evie (edging awkwardly away so she doesn’t have to actually be an older sister about it). keeps on getting detention, mostly for small scale things like graffiti and skipping class, occasionally light arson. punched a kid in the mouth one time and maintains he was asking for it. she’s SUPER small though so she doesn’t do a lot of damage in fights but that does NOT stop her from trying SO HARD. (that girl is a teenage cryptid and the only reason she’s got friends in her twenties is because hot + confident gets you A LOT OF PLACES.)

roslin is a cheerleader yay hooray <333 the most #basic girly you will ever meet. has a not insignificant tiktok following that’s driving thea up the wall and they get into a lot of fights about internet safety (these fights are super limited by the fact that thea kind of doesn’t know what the internet is). despite being one of the most popular girls in school, she refuses to spend her lunch breaks with anyone NOT norie or marigold, and will blow off literally anyone and everyone to just sit on the roof with her girlies.

lenora is angling for the position of most weird goth girl of all time. full face of makeup, a whole bunch of piercings (all of them are fake bc she’s scared of needles), lots of very expensive black outfits that earn her absolutely no respect from the goth crowd at their school bc they see her as just a rich kid buying the look. she’s the only one among the three girls who actually gets good grades and they are constantly cheating off of all of her homework all the time. she’s apathetic acerbic and kinda bitey but she will go around the school holding roslin’s hand all the time and if anyone comments she will pull a knife on them. normal activities. (a lot of people assume ros and norie are dating and they are absolutely mutually outraged by the concept.)

thea teaches PE and has been momming the shit out of mari ros and norie ever since norie got into a screaming fight with thea in front of the entire class when thea was like “you don’t get to walk the mile giving each other piggy-back rides anymore” (reasonable request) and norie was like OH SORRY MOM I DIDN’T REALIZE WE LIVE IN A FASCIST SOCIETY!!!!!! then realized she’d called their gym teacher “mom” in front of the entire class and lost so much street cred in that moment, and the psychic damage she took was so adorable to thea that thea was like ok those are my kids now i think. she already SORTA knew roslin bc thea’s friends with roslin’s mom, but finding out about norie (terrible parents) and marigold (horrifying mother) ??? thea’s been sort of trying to semi-legally figure out a way to usurp parental rights for the last few years. also tried to put a hit out on marigold’s mom but was informed by one of the two (2) friends she has that that’s “a bad idea.” (she still thinks it’s a good one.)

lion is still in his teens too so he’s mostly just evie’s twitchy quiet friend who hangs out with her and the dead rat under the bleachers. they don’t talk a lot but they’re kind of inseparable. evie’s mom hates him. marigold said something derisive about lion once and evie tried to punch HER in the mouth, which marigold got blamed for, somehow, which evie then spent like half an hour hysterically monologuing to lion about on the phone. they are hopelessly in love with each other and mutually convinced it won’t work all without ever talking to each other. he writes “mr. lion northaven” on his notebooks sometimes

a bonus elodie! evie’s twin sister. blends perfectly into the background. gets the best grades in the family and is somehow in every extracurricular without anyone actually really knowing her. quiet, organized, neat, perfect. not a lot of people actually realize they’re twins because they carry themselves so differently and they’re never together at school. mom’s favorite.

2. evie’s biological sisters are marigold and elodie and she loves them with the force of a thousand suns and for a lot of complicated reasons this uncomplicated love of hers is not exactly returned in the same way that it is given. marigold’s adoptive sisters are roslin and lenora and she loves THEM with the force of a thousand suns and evie is the kind of girl who’s fine with it because her love does not change shape even when those who love her think maybe it should.

3. evie would come onto faith and faith would i think be immediately and cruelly dismissive specifically because evie would resonate with a lot of things about faith that faith violently hates about herself. (starved for love, loves hard and without her own permission, incredibly casual about sex to the point of detachment, absolutely no sense of self preservation or self worth).

4. oooh let’s make a sexuality list actually!!!

marigold is bisexual! enamored with people she can easily drag around on a leash, independently of gender.

evie is bisexual as well and i don’t think she has a type that is really established all that well beyond “people who want me.” evie has many problems

roslin is my single token heterosexual. absolutely impeccable taste in men, it’s just that all of her relationships always end in ways that are extremely amicable but Really, Really Weird. one guy left to join the circus. one guy left to man a lighthouse. one guy’s in witness protection. That kind of thing

lenora is a lesbian but it takes her a while to figure that out because she hates everyone indiscriminately, so for some time she just identifies as bisexual until experiencing attraction to a lady and going OH. OKAY. SURE

thea is a butch lesbian, and also nonbinary, though i don’t think she’d ever actually use the word to describe herself. her relationship to the concept of being a woman is less self-identification and more a label she likes to use and define as “being attracted to women.” she’s a woman because her love of women is coming from a female identified place, but other than that gender is of no use to her. she’s too old for the bullshit.

didn’t realize it until right this moment but lion (who i can include on this list even with his 900 psychological issues idc. that’s my son who was never gonna make it out) IS bisexual it’s just his Home Situation was such that the internalized homophobia’s keeping him closeted. not really something he’s likely to figure out, though; evie’s the only person who’s real to him and when he notices a man is hot he mostly just freaks out because what if evie leaves him for that objectively hotter guy. surely this will never cause any problems

5. man i honestly feel like all of them have some degree of neurodivergence simply because that’s where i’m coming from and that’s how i write them? i will say though that the places i feel like the qualities manifest the strongest are marigold (autism) my new girl beetle (autism) and evie (adhd) though i did recently get the feedback that norie reads super autistic :’) i will say if you see it it’s probably there lol.

6. :D

7. i had to really think about this one for a second ngl? sofie is for sure the most autism baby of all time actually so she’s really standoffish and awkward around children her own age, and i actually think art’s method of just running up to people and deciding they’re friends would melt her heart pretty immediately. she’s delighted by immediate acceptance and attention! they’d be inseparable and bella would go BALLISTIC.

8. i am running through all the girls in my head and i am actually 100 percent sure that almost all of them attach themselves to nora. mari has mommy issues x5000 + nora reminds her of thea, norie (lenora) and nora (eleanora) are literally deliberately cut from the same cloth and would get along like long lost sisters, and thea is genuinely obsessed with sharp-tongued moms who have emotional issues but love their kids tremendously (woman wants to homewreck so bad and will not succeed). roslin and evie are the outliers; roslin loves donovan’s warmth and positivity, and evie gets really really really attached to bella. so fast.

9. delighted to inform u that jaheira’s kids are canon, we meet them, they give her SUCH grief, and i love them, and so does she.

10. VERY LIKELY I WILL! idk when the muse will strike me next, but things are percolating :’) and thank you SO much for this, it was a delight to answer!!!

[marigoldbaker]

hi!!! sorry if the answer to this ask requires like, the most ever info, i just WANT T O PLAY ASK GMAES WITH EVERYBODY

for EVERYBODY:

⚠️

👖(going w/coffee shop this time, since we already have a hs one)

🧠

⚡

🗡️

👁️‍🗨️

🌕

🐸

📓

🎀 (we already know thea collects children, but for everyone else)

🎃

🔪

🍇 (just type since we already know everyone's orientation)

🧨

🍑

🐹

🔥

for briar & marigold:

👁️

for briar, marigold, & evie:

💛

for everyone but marigold & thea:

🍼

TYSM!!!! I LOVE YOUR GIRLS I LOVE THEM I ALWYA S WANT TO HEAR ABT THEM <3333

HI HAPPY TO OBLIGE !!! <3 under the cut bc this will get so. so long and a little nsft in places. lol.

⚠️ - If this oc came with a warning sign, what would it be?

for fun: i am going to provide all the warning signs and none of the ocs. not at all listed in order:

THINKS SHE IS EVIL INCARNATE FOR BEING MAD AT PEOPLE WHO COMMIT ATROCITIES

KEEPS DEFENDING THE WORST WOMAN ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH AND WILL NOT LET YOU KILL HER

WILL BURN DOWN THE WORLD BEFORE ADMITTING SHE'S WRONG ABOUT SOMETHING

IS LITERALLY LYING TO YOU EVERY SECOND OF EVERY DAY AT ALL TIMES

actually no warning sign is needed at all for evie. i am going to be very clear here: there is no warning sign for evie and i'm removing her from the mystery options just so we all know that. instead she comes with a little sign that i wrote myself that reads "please be gentle and conscientious! she will do anything for you if she loves you, and that's a lot of power to hold over someone. please try to encourage her to make healthy choices, and take care of her when you can."

👖 - Coffee shop or high school AU, your choice: tell me their role.

this is hilarious lol because the girlies literally work in a bakery and i HAVE thought about this one. it's basically exactly the same. marigold works the cash register because she's the only one who can talk to people without causing the entire process to screech to a grinding halt. norie makes drinks and writes people's names wrong deliberately and no one can get her to stop because her mommy owns the place (this is a coffee shop of nepo babies). roslin makes drinks and writes people's names wrong by accident and she's very apologetic :( thea owns the place. evie probably picks up a job there at some point while she and marigold are working through their issues.

🧠 - What is their stress response: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn?

fight: roslin,

flight: evie

freeze: thea, norie

fawn: marigold

⚡ - Does this oc have any unusual or “irrational” fears?

roslin is afraid of bugs and frogs and squishy jumpy things.

norie is afraid of thunderstorms.

thea and marigold are both so steeped in complex unaddressed trauma that all of their fears are kinda tied to that and therefore not really "unusual/irrational."

evie does not process fear like a normal person and therefore isn't really afraid of anything.

🗡️ - Does this oc have a signature object, accessory, or weapon?

evie has her collar :) it's fine it's normal.

thea has her battle hammer, named Consequences.

norie has her morningstar named Spider's Bite and a silver coin on a chain engraved with a feather and blessed by thea (it's a feather-fall pendant to keep her from getting hurt when she falls from great heights, since she spent so much of her childhood climbing on rafters and ceilings).

roslin has a harper pin that once belonged to jaheira's husband (in 20 years we will all find out why she has it).

marigold has a heavy golden coin on a chain, engraved by thea with a little marigold and blessed with safety charms, and thea also wears a matching necklace to ensure that her blessing stays. so that's another signature object :")

👁️‍🗨️ - Eye contact: good or bad for this oc?

all of these women are on some sort of neurodivergence spectrum. either they can't handle eye contact (marigold, norie, thea) or they keep forgetting they have to make it (roslin, evie, interestingly marigold is also on this list)

🌕 - If this oc was an animal, what kind would they be?

augh i actually wrote out a list a while back thru a consultation with my bonus mom! soooo!

marigold: bunny rabbit (OBVIOUSLY)

evie: tasmanian devil

thea: badger

norie: stoat

roslin: husky puppy <33

🐸 - What’s this oc’s sense of humor like?

marigold and roslin are both so giggly that they'll get set off by, like, cheesy popsicle stick jokes. it does not take a lot to get them started, especially when they're with each other.

thea will kinda smirk a little at a REALLY good joke, but the only person who can get her to actually laugh is usually the woman she's in love with.

norie is almost humorless. i say "almost" because roslin will sometimes make her go :') with a really bad joke.

📓 - Do you associate any quotes or lyrics with this oc?

god. yes. we're going to play mix and match again :)

you can fool me once and i'll actually believe you / if you fool me twice, i'm like putty in your hands / just like a lamb, i'll trust you in the still heat / sucking the finger of the butcher who'll kill me

boy, it's not that complicated / you should stay in my good graces / or i'll switch it up like that so fast / cause no one's more amazing at turning loving into hatred

she's always late for chapel but her penitence is real / she's always late for everything except for every meal / i hate to have to say it but i very firmly feel / maria's not an asset to the abbey!

i'll get it if you need it / i'll search if you don't see it / you're thirsty, i'll be rain / you get hurt, i'll take your pain

i'm learning to fly but i ain't got wings / coming down is the hardest thing

🎀Do they have something they collect? {Stamps, rocks, stickers, etc}

putting this one in a modern timeline :D

roslin would collect concert tickets and boy band memorabilia!

norie collects bibles and has this whole stack of bibles in her room because she was trying to get under thea's skin in her teens (as thea was raised in a convent) but thea was like "well why are you collecting bibles if the text doesn't mean anything to you" and she got mad that thea had her number and collected bibles even harder and now she has a really really wild number of bibles and doesn't know what to do with them (norie kind of creates situations for herself).

marigold collects cookbooks and probably also stickers :')

thea does collect children but she actually also collects bottlecaps. generally from bottles she drinks.

evie is too mobile to have a consistent collection. she has a very sparse amount of possessions.

🎃What would their Halloween outfit be?

marigold goes as a playboy bunny ;) and this does her entire family like intense insane amounts of psychic damage which is 100 percent the reason why she picked it. horrible horrible girl.

thea has the Ron Swanson Situation going on where she's just a pirate every year and describes it as her "halloween costume" and cannot be convinced to try anything else at any point in time.

norie goes as a nun. not a sexy nun. just a nun. possibly a possessed nun. she adds a lot of fake blood down her mouth and face. usually norie's costumes are pretty horrifying i think.

roslin goes as barbie <3 and she goes ALL OUT. maybe even makes herself like a fake box or something.

evie actually also goes as a pirate lol? slightly sexier than thea who's also more of a butch pirate captain than a corseted pirate wench. they look at each other on halloween like that spiderman pointing meme. it's really funny.

🔪Say they were put in a classic 80s slasher/horror setting, who would they be? {Example: The killer. The dude who dies first. Etc.}

norie is the haunted ghost thing that's causing all the weird paranormal readings and is just Evil Incarnate No Tragic Backstory Just Evil Evil Evil Evil (she's having the best time and she does kill everyone)

roslin is the final girl but like the final girl in one of those movies where you're like "oh my god how is it even possible that SHE'S the one who survived." does not even break a nail. wearing pink the whole time. possibly missed 40 percent of the plot of the movie because she was getting a mani pedi. our unbothered queen.

thea is the grizzled expert on whatever horrible monster thing they're all trying to fight who comes out of retirement to fight it only to die horribly, probably (sorry my baby)

marigold. oh jesus. uh i think she probably called down the monster through sheer hubris and is now trying to control it to wield absolute power and help it kill people and definitely gets herself killed in the process

evie is Party Extra #2 who's in less than one shot and doesn't get killed entirely because she's not at all plot relevant but for some reason she develops a cult following for being hot and having one of the funniest one liners in the movie

🍇What is their sexuality? And what is their "type"?

marigold likes people who are smart enough to keep up with her and entertain her and who will also simultaneously give her the princess treatment AND hold her accountable for her war crimes.

though she's not fully cognizant of it and would describe jasmine when asked for her type, thea likes a self-possessed, caring, compassionate woman, always a woman who understands the difficulties of being a single mom with a strong sense of justice (usually by also being a single mom with a strong sense of justice), and a woman who, when given absolute power over her, will not abuse it. someone who likes taking care of her and can actually look out for her.

evie is a lovergirl :') all you really have to do is need her and she'll love you. that's it.

roslin likes a nice, sturdy boy with a good heart! she's also an absolute sucker for a bit of muscle. she's really into boy bands in any close-to-now timeline. hardcore directioner.

norie likes a girl who presents herself as a cutthroat terror but is truly a soft little puppy (just like her....)

🧨If they could screw anyone without any consequences, who would they choose?

thea would choose the woman she's been in love with for thirty years without saying anything about it, except she wouldn't, because she's repressed that shit so efficiently that she has no idea that's what she wants to do <3

evie kind of already hooks up with whoever she wants without any consequences. or uh mostly she just ignores the consequences. mostly that second part.

marigold has every disorder. she would overload at this question.

roslin would hook up with a hot celebrity IMMEDIATELY. i think roslin's issue is less that she's concerned about consequences and more that she can't figure out how to get past the celebrity's security detail which could lead to jail time (hence. consequences). i think roslin has misunderstood the fundamental point of this question.

norie would make a beeline for her comphet serial killer crush and finds out that he's aroace and also sees her as a kid sister and ALSO he immediately takes her back to her mom and treats the entire thing like the five year old just asked him to marry her and he's a little concerned about that what with all the serial killing (i am holding my breath trying not to laugh as i write this)

🍑How did they react to having their "first time?" And was their partner understanding if they were nervous?

thea's first time was with jasmine when she was seventeen and jasmine was a fully grown adult at LEAST decades older than her who'd been visiting the convent a TEENAGE thea lived at to do charity work, and if i write more i will kill someone <3 sometimes i entertain writing more of this concept and i think it will just make me homicidal. get that woman away from her

evie's first time ... man i kinda think it was with lion. a very cute and fumbling affair where they were both very overwhelmed by their feelings. lion was the nervous one. they had to stop five minutes in because he had too many feelings and was too worried about "doing it wrong" and evie (used to this) just kinda sat on the bed like :) rubbing his shoulders until he calmed down.

norie's first time was extremely boring for her. she went through kind of a loose dating period prior to finding Her Person where she just met a lot of people she didn't click with trying to find one she did, and so the first person she slept with was very unmemorable and sparked nothing.

ros's first time was for sure very goofy and silly and heartfelt. she's good at finding boys who are incredibly sweet and gentlemanly about things. she was not nervous but she made her partner a little nervous with how insanely confident she was for having 0 experience.

i think i will know more about mari's first time when i write it! she's my dearest most favorite girl. it's going to be fun to find out.

🐹What "pet" names do they like being used for them? {Babe, Kitten, Puppy, Mutt, etc.}

marigold's self-chosen middle name is cathy (i decided this last week lol) so i think she actually really appreciates the intimate cleverness of "kitten." also the fact that it makes everyone in the room uncomfortable. that's a win for her.

lenora likes "lenora" from her partner because "norie" is family only and also she thinks pet names are stupid. she WILL however tolerate old timey way too long and specific pet names like "my gothic rose" or "my sweetest addiction" or anything that sounds like it's from a bodice ripper romance novel.

roslin IS a nickname -- and though this is a secret that only the guy who marries roslin is ever going to figure out, not any of her casual boyfriends, roslin really loves being called by her given name (rosalie) by people who know Her Whole Deal.

thea likes when her partner calls her al or allie, especially because jasmine went for the full-name althea.

🔥Do they get turned on by strange things, such as fire, chaos, blood, etc?

norie is extremely into a little bit of fighting for righteous purposes. she'll get all hair-twirly if her partner's the kind of person to start a bar fight over a Moral Issue.

evie will kind of try anything if it's presented to her! which can get a little wild sometimes.

thea's into being tied up. anyone following along with thea should not be toooo surprised by this. :)

i get the sense that marigold's love for decadent dessert spills over into her sex life! she's very down to involve food somehow.

roslin. god. i am truly not sure. might have to mull this one over.

👁️ - How do other people perceive this oc? How close do their first assumptions come to the truth?

first impressions of marigold are rarely accurate. she hides behind a lovely little paper fan made of sugar and spice and everything nice -- lots of nervous compassion and never-ending chatter -- but it doesn't take too long to notice that this girl is intensely intelligent, incredibly stubborn, and does not take no for an answer if yes is the one she wants. of course she's very CUTE and SWEET when she's refusing to accept your no! very POLITE about it! does it in SEVENTEEN SENTENCES! but the point still stands.

briar...it depends. prior to the narrative hitting her like a truck, i think first impressions of her as ditzy, silly, and loving were also not always accurate, though i don't think anyone in her life actually realized how inaccurate they were (aside from maybe her sister and father, because they literally watched her grow up). she is insanely selfish and self-obsessed and i don't know how much empathy she always has for other people. she wants to be taken care of at all times and has made herself a Local Nuisance to ensure that this is always happening. she grew up very spoiled and very sheltered and this is causing problems.

💛 - Are they ‘good with children’, or more awkward?

marigold is a MOMMY :"D she loves kids! a little doting and oh-you're-so-cute and sometimes kids get annoyed with that, but she is very confident about it and will jump at the chance to keep an eye on people's kids. kids do not think she's cool unless those kids are her own daughter (who is also not cool).

evie is good with baby animals and sees kids as baby animals and treats kids like she treats baby animals. so she's very indulgent and silly and relaxed and takes them very seriously, which means, yes, she is very good with kids.

briar . god. i don't think she should be around children lol. she's the kind of wine aunt who when the kids are like "we're going to climb the electric fence" is like okay cool :) and then when the kids get electrocuted tells the parents that they "just got away from her." she has zero interest in children because they take the attention away from her (queen princess of perfection).

🍼Do they have kids? Or are they willing to have any?

evie...hmm. it's very situational. i lean towards "no" with her, unless it's a case of accidental baby acquisition, but i think she would actually be a really wonderful mother. she's definitely a little bit of a space cadet but she's loving and silly and extremely protective.

roslin wants a HUGE family and when she settles down she likely will have one! LOTS of kids for this girl. she grew up the oldest of seven, so she's always someone who wants a whole bunch of chaos in the house.

norie. augh. i honestly don't know. i sometimes float the notion of her and minthara magic-engineering the World's Most Perfect Daughter in future, but i still haven't pinned that one down? POSSIBLY. if she does have kids, it's only one, and she takes her job as Mom extremely seriously.