MeetRHODRI
FAST FACTS
NICKNAMES:
Lets Ransom call him ‘Rho’ (“ro”), unsure how he feels about others using it. Ransom also calls him “little guy”.. he knows he wouldn’t like anyone else doing that.
PRONOUNS:
He/Him
AGE:
Between 1 and 100, and that’s as much as he’ll say here.
JOINED SYSTEM IN:
The physical birth year. Decades ago.
SPECIAL NOTES:
Primary fronter, system defender, camouflage system, the filter through which everyone else interacts with the world when the system is ‘undercover’, and co-pilot when the system is ‘out’. The person you’d meet if you ran into the system on the street.. but also very shy and socially anxious.
FROM RHODRI
I have to admit, writing anything to ‘advertise’ myself makes me extremely uncomfortable. I spend the most time fronting, it’s just our ‘default setting’, I guess, but I’m also one of the less well suited people in our system to be a public figure! It pretty much goes against everything I’ve ever been. I think there’s a reason I identify with the more reclusive species of cats out there. Lounging out in the open in a pride out on the savannah wouldn’t exactly be my style. But.. I can’t deny that I’ve been attracted to various performing arts for years, and in a sense, it isn’t exactly outside my wheelhouse either. It’s the part where what I’m ‘performing’ is more the real me than I usually let the public see that’s uncomfortable, not so much the idea of performing at all, I guess.
I also want to make it very clear – we might talk a lot of crap about each other, but we do actually love each other a lot, and we do work together surprisingly well. We’re just very different people, well, some of us are more different from each other, some more similar. Most of us share at least some interests, thank god – but our outlooks on life are all unique. Somehow, though, despite many disagreements on a daily basis, and giving each other trouble sometimes, we actually do get things done when we focus on getting to a goal… and when I’m able to let them help more than really feels comfortable.
I’m usually pretty ‘wordy’.. you can kind of see this in my video content, too, I try to edit myself down and end up still being twice as long as anyone else would be. Yet I’m finding it as hard as anyone else here to write anything about myself. For that matter, it isn’t easy to let the others write anything about me, either. Part of it is that I think I’m still trying to figure out who I am, who is Rhodri, other than not-Finn, not-Teo, not-Skye and not-Ransom? I think I’m always a bit less sure than the others.
It’s part of the learning curve, I guess, part of all of the things I’ve been learning as part of the process of ‘going public’. Maybe someday, I’ll have a better answer.
FROM THE SYSTEM
He's always at the wheel, always has been, so I get it, he's made a lot of rules. He works so hard for everybody here, but I think he could take a break and just doesn't know it. Yeah, I challenge him and his ideas about how things are supposed to be. But I'm not (usually!) trying to be that difficult or anything. I'm trying to help, even if he doesn't always see it that way and all. He's cooler than he thinks he is, and stronger than he thinks he is. I really didn't get him at first. We understand each other better now.
– Ransom
Sometimes, Rhodri calls us twins. It's not that we look alike, or even that we always feel like the same age. It's just that in a way, we're just that close. He's my favorite brother, I probably shouldn't have a favorite, but I do. I want to protect him more than he lets me do. I know cleaning up seems like a waste of time to him, and it's hard, but it's one way that he lets me take care of him at all, and that's important to me.
– Skye
he is doing all the boring things like doing works and puttings away things after arts, and sometimes it is hard to be having times because there is too many doings. but he is do the things that are need doings. it is important.
– Teo
In a way, Rhodri is perhaps the single most important member of the system, while at the same time being the most self-effacing. He'd far rather that we have more attention than is given to him, yet he has the vast majority of fronting time, through little conscious intention of his own. He has a complicated relationship with being the primary front, I believe, yet he wouldn't trust anyone else with the job, either. It is both a strength and a weakness of his, his unwillingness to expose anyone else to the difficult reality that is navigating daily life for him. We all faced challenges writing anything about him, but with some protest, he allowed it to happen, all the same. I am proud of his growth, and look forward to where he, and all of us, go in the future.
– Finn
A Note:
All comments about individual members of Pryderi System, made by other members of the system, are posted with the consent of the person being commented on… even if that permission comes with a rolling of eyes and a sigh, or a blush, sometimes.
Additional note: Teo does not use capital letters, and we respected his wishes to do as he usually does in text communication, allowing us only to capitalize his name, and write as he speaks, regardless of the grammatical correctness.