fandomhigh | Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part II

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!event: welcome picnic

Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part II

There were plenty of large umbrellas set up for those who didn't enjoy a good pelting of various summer related materials. Because some people are weird like that.

There was also a splendid selection of food and beverages under a canopy to keep from ingesting suntan lotion. See? Your faculty thought of everything. Except how to make the island behave.

That you'll have to deal with.

[~~Please wait for the~~ OCD is up! This is the FIRST post for general mingling. Please use this post first, if your browser can handle the comment load. Roommates, fake siblings and teachers are here and there is more room for mingling here.]

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Karla shook her head. "Not exactly," she said. "I'm not baseline human, anyway. Among my people, I'm considered human, because we have non-human Blood as well? But what you would probably consider human, we call landens. Though, it's possible than even the landens back home wouldn't be considered entirely human, either. I'm from a completely different world and I don't know if they'd match baseline human all the way down to the genetic code." She shrugged. "But I'd say it's close enough to count."

"Goddess," Liara muttered. She'd only followed about half of that - genetics wasn't her field of interest! Nor was the study of alien species! "...Are there many human subspecies?"

Goddess, she'd have her work cut out for her, not-offending-people-wise.

"On this island? Yeah," Karla said with a smile. "Witches, mutants, demons, aliens, I think someone's an angel...and to make matters worse, we're all from different places and times, so what I think is fine is horribly offensive to someone else."

Like claiming to be the adopted niece to the High Lord of Hell, Rilla.

"Most of the people on the island look human, but are kind of...human-plus maybe?"

"That seems... confusing..." Liara admitted. "I... how many genders does your species have?"

It felt like a reasonable thing to ask, just so she could try and wrap her head around the diversity here, and didn't start assuming that some secondary or tertiary gender was actually a subspecies or something.

"Two," Karla said, suddenly all sorts of confused. "Why, how many does yours have?"

You know, she'd been writing off some of the oddness in the...girl's?...psychic scent as just being alien, but now that the question had been asked, Karla had to wonder...

"We are a mono-gendered species," Liara said ~~because her writers needed to get the memo about sex vs gender~~. "But I have always been told that we are fairly unique in that respect. I... didn't want to offend by making assumptions."

Karla really, really, really wanted to know how that worked. How did they have offspring? How did their culture work? How much would she have freaked out hearing about that only a few years ago?

...How much would she freak out a little bit later? These were all excellent questions.

Karla managed to choke down her barrage of questions, making just a few oddly strangled noises in the back of her throat. She tried to turn that into a coughing fit instead. "Food went down the wrong pipe," she explained. Then facepalmed. "Actually, that's just an old saying. We only have the one esophagus. Umm, you look like a female of the human species. Do all of your people have you, uhh, features?"

Like, oh, breasts?

Karla was very smooth.

"Yes," Liara said earnestly. "Well, not exactly like me. Obviously our skin tone varies, as do our features, and our size."

Not exactly what she meant, Liara.

"Obviously those," Karla said, nodding her agreement. "And, uhh, you can all breastfeed your young?"

Oh, such the tip of the iceberg as far as questions went.

By now, Karla was receiving a quizzical look. "Of course," she said, pausing briefly, then crossing her arms in front of her developing chest. "These aren't meant for aesthetics."

"I'm a Healer," Karla offered, because that would somehow explain everything. "And, in my culture, gender is very important, both physically and culturally. So I'm just intrigued at the idea of a society that is nono-gendered because it is completely the opposite of anything I have ever known."

Intrigued, confused, slightly horrified...details!

"I... know some species have similar situations," Liara attempted. "I am not an expert, however. I am only forty-five years old."

"Ahh, you're from a long-lived race, then," Karla said with a nod. "Forty-five is middle aged for most humans; sixty will be middle-aged for me. But there are several races of the Blood back home who live for thousands of years, and for them, too, forty-five is still quite young."

"My species can live up to a thousand years, or slightly longer," she offered. She racked her brain for anything else Karla might find interesting. "We... go through three stages as we age?" she attempted. "Once I finish going through adolescence, I will be considered a maiden."

"A maiden," Karla said, blinking in surprise. "For us, that's a gendered term for a female who has yet to have her Virgin Night."

She wasn't an anthropologist of anything even close to it, but this was fascinating. She eating the chips off of Liara's plate and motioned her to continue. "What does being a maiden mean to you?"

"The expectation of maidens is that we go out into the world and have as many experiences as we can," Liara said, rubbing at the back of her neck. "I am... not sure if that is what I would want. But it is the expectation."

"It's not?" Karla asked, surprised. "How did you end up here, if you weren't interested in exploring and having unique experiences?"

She offered Liara a wry smile. "By the time you go home, you'll probably have enough experiences to skip right over maidenhood to...whatever the third stage is."

"Actually, we consider maidenhood the first stage. Before that, we are children," Liara provided. "Maidenhood. Then matronhood, children. And then we become matriarchs."

She plucked some of the lettuce out of her lap. "I... was on an internship. Archaeology. It... did not go as I had expected."

"Maiden, mother, and crone," Karla murmured. "That's a familiar enough cycle. But why, if you're a single gender, are your titles feminine-based? Or are you all female?"

Okay, see, now that was a culture she could grok!

"What happened during your internship? Did your people send you here to study?" Karla could see how that could be incredibly unexpected, yes.

"We aren't female, but we can all birth and nurture our young. I suppose we map more easily onto that gender for species with a gender binary," Liara mused. "And... no. My coming here was an accident. I... may have touched the wrong object..."

"Was in an object you weren't supposed to be touching?" Karla asked with a small chuckle. "Darkness knows, that's probably how I would have ended up here, were I in your shoes. 'Karla, don't touch--!' And poof! I'd be gone."

And now Karla realized that they'd never actually gotten around to introductions. "Karla's my name, by the way. Karla diGlacia."

"Oh!"

Right. Names! That was... probably a good idea.

"I am sorry," she offered. "My name is Liara T'Soni."

"Liara? That's a lovely name," Karla said, trying it out. "And no reason to apologize; I just remembered, too. The important thing was making sure you got something to eat before you fell over."

Karla, not everyone was as melodramatic about food as you were.

"I did have lunch only several hours ago," Liara pointed out. "...I think. I have no idea how long I was out."

"Yes, but if we hadn't gotten this all squared away, who knows how long you would have gone without eating for," Karla said, eyes widening in mock-horror. "It could have been even more hours."

She snagged another chip and added, "I'm mostly teasing. Though my metabolism is ratcheted fairly high, so I really do need to eat every few hours."

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Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part II

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