#this is in no way hate to wilma or digby or lydia

[seen-the-stars]

thinking about gorgug and the thistlesprings. thinking about how wilma & digby have gone their whole life trying to raise gorgug as a sweet, non-violent kind if guy. how they were so fixated to prove their families wrong that they didn't realise it wasn't healthy for their son. that they've been loving gorgug despite his rage for so long that they haven't even considered to love him with it, because of it.

thinking about lydia barkrock who's been continuously raging for 20 years, and how her rage is so special and noble. thinking about ragh who's grown up with a barbarian half-orc parent. the fact that despite all he's been through, he was never ashamed of his rage.

thinking about autistic gorgug, who's been masking his rage for all his life, being in porter's class where he's told that if he isn't boiling angry all the time he's useless. how he sees all the kids around him having no issue engaging with their rage. if he ever thinks, "why am i the only person who is struggling with this?" or "fig's not even a barbarian why can she do it and i still can't fucking get it?" or "what does everybody want from me and can they just please fucking agree instead of pulling me in 5 different directions at once all of the time??"

wondering if gorgug ever sees the barkrocks together and feels that quiet jealousy bubbling. if he reprimands himself instantly because it's not fair and ragh deserves this and his own parents aren't bad people, they're just.. different. maybe a little too wrapped up in their families' prejudice to allow them to be even the littlest bit of right.

thinking about lydia barkrock looking at this kid who's never been taught that it's okay to feel his feelings, all of them. wondering if she sees ragh's struggle with his identity mirrored in gorgug. does she feel guilty, for not noticing her son was so afraid to be who he is? does she wish she would have been more there, more open, more supportive? does she ever look at gorgug biting down his rage and think "don't do this, kid, don't go down that path, look at how much damage it did to my son"? does she consider talking to the thistlesprings about it? does she know about their parenting?

thinking about gorgug and ragh, having support in the aspect of their life they didn't really need– gorgug in his sexuality, ragh in his rage. do they bond, over this? do they joke about swapping parents sometimes? do they support each other in the ways their parents couldn't do for them?

[solsticethebatearedfox]

Bad Kids Food + Cooking Headcanons

Adaine

Before moving in to Mordred, she couldn't cook for shit. Her family had unseeing servants and stuff and it was assumed she would never need to know.

Eventually Jawbone, Lydia and Sandra Lynn teach her. She begins to love it - it feels similar to ritual spellcasting for her.

After the Nightmare Forest, she starts cooking and baking with Aelwyn. They make a mean black forest cake together. It's great bonding time

Kristen

Is better with camp food than regular food - made it at church camps a lot

Also had to cook for her siblings constantly (we stan parentification :/) but for the most part it was chicken nuggets and microwaved corn kernels and whatever - easy, processed meals

However, her mother insisted she know how to cook because when she had a husband and children it would be her job. So she would often make roast meals and big servings of chicken corn soup to freeze for the week

To this day she hates cooking - it brings back bad memories and feelings.

Fig

Much like Kristen, better at camp food (ie. ranger meals that Sandra Lynn taught her)

She kinda knows how to forage and hunt but not as well as Sandra Lynn would like

She loves baking but has little patience

Her decorating skills are non-existent but she tries

Fabian

My man can't cook for shit, like at all. He can't even make a sandwich. Cathilda tried to teach him but his parents would often intervene so he never had the patience to learn.

Riz

Riz would be a good cook if he knew how. Unfortunately Sklonda didn't have the time to teach him or the money to buy ingredients for him to learn. She did what she could - he at least knows sandwichs and pasta and rice and very basic staples - but he couldn't tell you how to cook steak

After the Nightmare Forest, Sandra Lynn teaches him how to forage and hunt. He takes to it far better than Fig (he has more patience for it)

Gorgug

Other than Adaine after season two, Gorgug is the best chef of the bad kids. Ain't no way Digby & Wilma were letting him not know how to cook.

He likes baking too, but mainly does things like slow cooker stews and pulled pork sliders with homemade curly fries.

He enjoys seeing the delight on his friends' faces when he makes them food

Honorary Bad Kids

Ragh is in the same boat as Adaine - didn't learn until after Jawbone was in his life. After he worked through his issues, Ragh got really close to Lydia via learning how to cook. Now he often cooks with Gorgug, making BBQ dinners together for their families

Ayda doesn't know how to cook. Past iterations might have but this one doesn't. She has Garthy after all. But she does enjoy baking with Fig or Adaine (and sometimes even helping Gorgug or Ragh)

Tracker knows how to cook, Jawbone taught her. She learnt how to cook on a tight budget, and how to forage and hunt. She and Sandra Lynn bonded over that

Aelwyn is the same as Adaine, never knew until after the Nightmare Forest. She gets really into it, especially baking, making perfect macarons and puff pastry. It's escapism, but she doesn't always have the spoons (it takes a lot outta her)

[swarmkeepers]

a asian diaspora half-orc manifesto including but not limited to

gorgug’s experience as a transracial adoptee goes beyond just “this kid is different from his parents” to one of navigating solace’s still canonically human-centric culture + gnomish culture that digby and wilma have their own estrangement from (see also: cutting ties with most of their family, having few friends outside each other) but that he engages with more by becoming an artificer like his parents + orcish and half-orcish culture which might exist in elmville and which being a barbarian connects him to a little bit but it’s not a hundred percent the same

what becoming better friends with ragh might mean for gorgug, getting to know the barbarian’s barbarian with a half orc mom who still has his own complicated relationship to who he is and what he does. what dating zelda and becoming an honorary eighth maiden might mean for gorgug, getting to know katja cleaver the half-orc who’s not a barbarian, who wields her greataxe with precision and calls herself a battlemaster thank you very much

lydia barkrock commands mordred’s kitchen with one of those giant chinese cleavers (she used to use twin machetes back when she was a barbarian full-time. do not mess with this mom and her blades) that she uses for everything no matter how small + a massive wok. she’s got those asbestos hands and does not fear hot oil or flame or knives of any kind

i just. food as love is such a profoundly asian/asian diaspora sentiment to me (food crosses the language barrier when you can’t say i love you in so many words) and lydia barkrock who enters mordred manor after her house got burned down in a shadowcat murder attempt and immediately starts offering to make dinner? that’s some asian auntie behavior!

that famous chili? actually an absolutely amazing curry, spicy enough to make everyone except ragh and lydia cry. lydia takes one look at the number of kids in mordred manor and immediately undertakes a bunch of projects that require a ton of people like making lumpia or potstickers or stocking the freezer with pho broth in deli containers. (ragh folds dumplings with big gentle hands and years of practice. every other kid in mordred manor curses and makes lumpy ones. gorgug tries his best.)

i say asian diaspora in general but personally i headcanon gorgug as specifically vietnamese (an experience with a complicated relationship to adoption and migration; my own personal experience of what happens when the community is alive and there but when you are a little distanced from your own diaspora; a language i used to know more of than i do now; an experience that in my family is messy with regard to war and anger and grief). 

the dnd language mechanics are a little weird to me and that’s changing with tasha’s but frankly there’s no way/reason for gorgug to know orcish even though that’s a half-orc language proficiency. but he speaks and reads gnomish, and the alphabet is the same but the pronounciation and the words don’t fit right in his head. gorgug looks at words he should know but doesn’t and it makes him feel dumber than he has in a while and he wants to learn but he hates not knowing

gorgug and his imposter syndrome and all the different things he does (sig figs. artificer. barbarian. bloodrush.) and it feels like trying to connect back with this is like being asked to pick again (to pick if he is a barbarian or an artificer; to pick if he is an orc or a thistlespring; to pick if he can be all these things or if he’s still the kid who catches backpacks) 

the thistlesprings making more of an effort to go with gorgug and ragh and lydia to more of the orcish cultural events in elmville when they happen (orctoberfest, anyone?). they wave hi to the cleaver family gorgug eating lydia’s food in mordred and thinking this is like home and it’s not just because most of his party lives there and he’s over every day.

lydia fills the freezer with pho broth; ragh’s shoulders push at the seams of ao gam at new year’s; gorgug takes zelda out for che now that basrar can make things that aren’t ice cream

ragh’s glaive is a yem nguyệt đao, with a dragonflame blade which after fhfy is a reminder to him of how much his junior year changed him for the better. when gorgug gets his new gravity axe it’s one of those super heavy dong son pediform axes, heavy with history but also just with just bronze!