there's always some fringe case stuff in our deck!
An older Whim really is quite rare... I'm literally older than him by 5 years, so I'm often the emotionally troubled older teen girl (Lapis, Marcy) or the dutiful older sister (Mari, Carmine)... and I handle a lot of IRL caretaking like cooking, chores...

but beneath that impression is the reality that boys like Steven, Finn... are often chasing these girls down, helping them with their issues, better at vulnerability or honesty... though deal of course with their own often underaddressed pain, too. There's always a kind of flipside of Finn taking more care of Marcy than it might appear. Cleaning up her life, not letting her fester forever alone.

Aside though, Ruby is definitely simply a Manic Pixie Dream Girl to her desolate doomer uncle, so I would relate it to a Branch/Poppy situation....

RWBY is an older interest of Whim's, a fandom he engaged in before we were totally intimate, mostly with another friend of his (an Ozpin (: funnily... still there for him). Whim had connected to Qrow a lot at that time... but even he himself was reluctant and embarrassed about it, for how unusual it was. So he was remiss to bring it up to me directly, though I'd see him doodling Qrow as a wildebeest or something.

We even had a funny rule at one point in time where under his instructions, I wasn't allowed to google, read about, see images of, Qrow... because he struggled that hard with it. I don't mind obeying these kinds of instructions... understanding to steer clear until his emotions about something calm down enough to be able to talk about it. The BPD luv... many things are about giving him the time to not feel like, it's catastrophic or unbearable to be seen. There's no good in pushing. Of course, at the start, for him... it was much easier to embody a Finn, a Steven, you know. It felt like those parts of him weren't so hard to swallow, were likable and cute, endearing, lovable. He didn't feel that way about all parts of himself, though.

BUT of course eventually we just watched RWBY together, and Qrow made sense. Bad Luck semblance, playful & yet aloof, dutiful obsessive guard of a special little girl... creepy vampire man vibes. Slumped & miserable. Family reject. Sad bullied beta cuck teen. Racially rare & unique, in a way that ostracizes & others him from both those within that race (who reject him, who he rejects) & outside of it (who are wary of his origins). Somehow being part of a desert-dwelling bandit clan is just a weirdly consistent kinnie thing for my guy.

around this time (when we watched RWBY) I was doing badly in general, unrelated life factors outside of one another, & Whim was feeling more protective, guardian kind of emotions about me, felt like he was my shepherd, like I was so small... I was just fragile then, and, it was so useful to have this RP conduit where I could be playing a child obsessed with her Cool Uncle, while Whim could be this ah, simultaneously presiding cool guarddog, and also pathetic lonely older man who has to be careful to limit his attachment or affection to acceptable bounds, and hide half of his truth from her. It was just kind of appropriate for what we were going through, in a broader social sense & with one another. I liked getting to play something as direct as, an admiring, attached child, just thinking he's the best most fun and coolest thing ever... perhaps after my long life as the emotionally distant older girl, it was very refreshing. I was just in another phase of relationship, one I'd never really been in before. So it was unique. I hadn't really felt like a little girl tugging someone's arm, before... truly ah, more of a Lapis, you know, floating to the lonesome moon. But with Whim, it was now an aspect of me. I was being held in a lap, pet and shushed and soothed, so many nights...

I guess... obviously, the relationship started out with more like the opposite... because his emotions come out so much more uncontrollably, pour & flood out of him, by design. I just had to be popped like a cork to do the same, eventually.

I think Whim has always felt like he's necessarily obscuring ugly truths about himself, & like subjecting others to the full effect of him means dooming them in some way. Qrow's Bad Luck semblance, the literal distance he feels is necessary to keep, yet his uncontrollable sense of duty towards Ruby...; it was a good representation of a struggle for Whim... that struggle of, "I need to be with you, the world won't look after you as well as I would! The world is dangerous! They don't love you like I do! But aren't I also a bad thing happening to you?" Qrow is so interesting like that. His semblance is sure to doom Ruby, but he's there to save her life, anyway. He has such a presence in her life.

But really this kind of dynamic of a girl admiring a cool guy, that's still stuck around; I think Harpoon & Ruki (our current icons) still brandish this. Mysterious to the world at large but, Prase & Dire are... different, but he's her caretaker (albeit kidnapper) and there to help restrain her from self-destruction. More obscure yet, Loon & Whisker, an older teen boy & a runaway child he is keeping carefully hidden in his apartment, and attempting to (clumsily) provide for, befriend, like a scared stray kitten. Well I guess there are now a dozen Splatoon OCs that follow this trend eh... but we don't post about all of the things we RP, and I'm low on time to draw for myself lately... uhmmm... but, Curare/Ephedra are an older, frightfully precise older man who emotionally & medically controls a younger girl's entire life. Another pair, Marimo/Drop, start as a whimsical girl entertaining & emotionally healing a chronically sick & sad man with an unknowable history in something dangerous, with an eventual turn in him becoming her licensed caretaker (& maybe chopping off her limbs, to render her more reliant on him).

Eliv Thade/Gilly ALSO come after Qrow/Ruby, wherein Thade is this much much older, monstrous ghoul haunting a clever young girl. So it's really not so unlikely anymore, that Whim be someone older. Amusingly I guess Pride/Riza is so visually misleading, but of course Pride is... complicated. He's not literally a child, he's much, much 'older' than Riza... and our scenarios with them involved him taking complete control over her, assigning her job as his maid in the presidential estate lol, prying at her will until everything of her belongs to him. Visually it's shota/older woman, but it's closer to a Thade/Gilly "monster who will Keep a girl Forever". Uhm... Amane, owns, Tsukasa... as his sacred object, as his treasure, as his victim.

Now. A lot of those are kind of terrifying guys who are drugging girls or locking them in trunks or cursing them eternally or something. Why has it taken this turn...? I suppose Qrow might have a bit of an empire in being the most sensible, noble, generous, humble, restrained of the Whims... while the other guys, take guardianship & control at the end of their chains. This is something pretty unique to Whim, I guess. The ability to caretake & look after the other is mutable, though it doesn't mirror. Over the years, a lot more Whims have come to the surface since Qrow, and more will still yet come. Help!!