#tree princes

[alice-the-kittycat-yt]

Don't know when or if I'll finish this.

Song I was listening to while making this:

[twilightangelsworks]

Presenting, The Tree Witch recreated as the princess of trees. I added pale pinks and purples to her palette because I saw some weeping willows had those colors. I think she looks pretty elegant.

[lackadaisycal-art]

Once upon a time...

[stuck-in-jelly]

I just cant believe that its finally me and you,

And you and me

Just us,

And your Ex-brother-in-law Terry

Do-do-do-do-do-do-do!

✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: Terry :･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧

[nepherit]

The winged snakes were Messmer's constant companions.

They were there when the base serpent was sealed away behind his eye. They were there through his eternity of suffering.

They will accompany him yet, in his hideous new form, born when he destroyed the grace granted by his mother. They have accepted his fate as much as he.

I know I said I wouldn’t do anything serious for Messmer until I figured out a definitive style for him, but I had to get this one out of my system, else I was gonna explode 😅

It’s not perfect, his face or hair might change next week, the snake placement’s probably off, but I don’t care. This wasn’t about looking pretty. It was about letting out a feeling that hit me while sketching a sleeping Messmer with the snake wrapped around him (the helmet description really got me 😭).... It’s wild how just a few lines of text can carry so much sorrow! I’ve never cried over a piece of fiction, but reading the heartbreaking lines right after his death almost made me

Here’s my silly sketch if you're curious how it started 😆

[snogards]

Headcanon that Zuko isn't just a master swordsman, but just really proficient with weaponry in general.

Swords, bows, spears, axes, knives, war hammers, crossbows, you name a weapon, and he probably knows how to use it well enough to teach you how to use it and then master it yourself.

He prefers his dual Dao because he's most proficient with them, but odds are that someone can just hand him a random weapon, and he can use it near perfectly.

When Zuko was younger and his bending still hadn't presented, Iroh used his connections to find him teachers like he did with Piandao in canon, because he didnt want Zuko to feel lesser (it majorly backfired but hey now he's got skills). For example, his archery teacher was a former member of the Yuyan Archers.

And then when Zuko’s fire-bending finally presented itself, he just kinda...kept up with it? Because he just learned how to use all these weapons freakishly well and weirdly fast, so why give it up after putting so much effort in? And now he's a prodigy in weaponry? Like yeah, that doesn't hold much weight in the royal family, but hey, it counts for something, right? He thinks to himself that his skill is gonna be useful at some point, right? Right, Uncle? This will be useful someday? RIGHT?

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 339

So erm, Danny might’ve fallen through a portal. And might have no clue where he is right now. 

He fell into an alleyway! Right into a dumpster! Which isn’t the worst thing he’s fallen into but still. Ew. Well, Dad should be able to find him and bring him back home! …Right? 

He shakes out his itchy fur and scales, already impatient and bored in the single alley despite it only being a few minutes. What’s a realms hatchling to do but explore? Well, besides taking care of his shed, but it’s too dry where he is anyway. Maybe he’ll find a lake! 

Hm. He can’t understand what anyone is shouting or freaking out about. It’s like they’ve never seen a dragon or something, geeze! Oh well, he’s on his way to find water, he’s not built for the desert…

[jon-sedai]

Thinking about how one of the most important motifs in Dany’s childhood memories is a seemingly nonexistent lemon tree. Or rather, a tree that her memory insists exists where it naturally shouldn’t. And thinking about how, in her last Dance chapter, at a pivotal moment of development, she reflects that while she wanted to plant trees and watch them grow, dragons don’t plant trees. But how funny is it that her narrative ancestor, Princess Daenerys of Dorne, left behind a legacy of planting an entire garden of trees — a place where children of all backgrounds could come and bloom within it? And then thinking back to Dany’s moment in Clash, when she comes upon a barren wasteland. A place that, despite its harshness, has many types of trees growing within it. For a brief moment, she considers staying to nurture and watch it bloom.

Sure, her childhood memories are false. But the lesson isn’t that she doesn’t belong anywhere because she dreams of lemon trees in Braavos, where they don’t exist. Maybe the lesson is that she can plant these nonexistent trees elsewhere.

Lemon trees don’t grow in Braavos, but Dany can grow them wherever she chooses to plant them. And this is something she will have to understand when the Long Night comes. Winter means death. It means the trees will wither and no new ones will grow to replace them. But Dany is the mother of dragons, and her life is tied to the very process of life and death, destruction and renewal. The Long Night will be marked by dead trees that bear no fruit. But that’s okay. Because Dany has spent her entire arc dreaming of trees where there aren’t any. And isn’t THAT the dream of spring?

[woodbrook-wanderer]

Bits + Bits: A meta discussion on Sam's gender

Hello! This post by @spyjam24 has been itching me for quite a while, and while I could just include this in a post about Sam and in general the queercoding of the BTTWNS world, this seems important enough to talk about on its own. Sam being a woman while presenting masculinely is another point of discussion in my future Nigel analysis.

BEAR HEIRARCHIES:

Being solitary creatures, bears have a simplistic social structure where mature dominant males are at the top, and sub-adults and cubs remain at the bottom. Male bears assert dominance by marking their area with their scent and challenge other males to gain right to food sources or an area. Larger bears roar to scare away younger bears who aren't as strong. While bears are not territorial and learn to co-exist with each other in safe distances, even congregating in places with abundant food supply (streams, coasts, etc.), the male dominance ensures that all the given needs (food, water, shelter, and mates) are streamlined towards them. Females do not have much say in the matter. Although they are tolerant and can live within the territories of dominant males, refusing advances for mating results in injury or even death.

Female bears are most associated with rearing young and defending their cubs when male bears threaten to kill their children in order to get the mother to mate with him. Females do not go out of their way to kill or challenge other females.

Single females and subadults are almost always submissive to mature males but have a loose hierarchy within their own group.

RE-IMAGINING BTTWNS WITH A MALE PROTAGONIST:

Knowing this, how would BTTWNS play out if Sam was a man? The most prominent selling point fans and comic news outlets use to drive eyes towards the comic is its similarities to the TV show Dexter. Similar logline, similar plot, close enough characters. I have not watched the show in its entirety yet but with the knowledge I've gotten through friends and social media osmosis, it's about a mild-tempered investigator who's a serial killer by night. I have heard from a friend that one of the main storylines in the series is a string of murders happens and it is done to impress the titular character.

Sound familiar?

However, coming from a fan of Beneath The Trees and did not read under the advertising of it being "Dexter but Richard Scarry!", I believe it largely undersells and underestimates the message and themes. It also seems to disregard the importance of Samantha being a woman but also being a butch. Her gender presentation is extremely important as to how and why she kills in the first place.

But let's play this hypothetically. Sam is a man. He owns a hardware shop and is well liked in his community. He's the only bear in town. He's secretly a serial killer and goes out to the city to pick and choose his victim. Sure, it sounds similar enough, but why would he still kill in the first place when he knows he's at the top of the food chain or the social hierarchy in Woodbrook in the lenses of the anthropomorphic animal world? More importantly, if he was a man, why would anyone be brave enough to challenge him by becoming the local serial killer?

Nigel challenges Sam because she is a woman.

Caging The Idea:

Of course Beneath The Trees could work alone if Sam was a man but that would take away a lot of the gravity in the implied horror of the series.

First and foremost, Nigel is a stalker. He follows Sam around and obsessively takes photos of her to collect. God knows what he's doing with those photos, but his obsession with her extends beyond the images and into imitation. Aside from becoming a serial killer himself, he tries dressing and acting similarly in Issue 4 where he confesses to the crime in an attempt to become her equal.

But that's the thing though. He doesn't view her as an equal. He's excited at the idea of her masculinity and imitates what he can learn from the violence that comes with it. She isn't as competent because she is a woman and he needs to assert himself under the guise of assisting her or "doing it together".

He throws a fit when he is rejected, similarly to how certain men feel entitled to a woman or a partner and violently attacks her (although in this case indirectly by framing Charlie's murder on her and creeping into her subconscious in the nightmare).

He fights for dominance he knows she can't naturally have because that's how nature is, correct? Females will always be submissive to males and rejection results in injury or even death.

Now imagine all of this if Sam was a man. It does not feel twice as horrifying as it actually is in its plainest form.

Nigel is a predator as we know it in the modern sociological context, and he confidently does this by exerting the violence that comes with masculinity which he ironically learnt from a woman.

WHY DO YOU KILL?:

It's simple. Nigel kills to assert his dominance.

Sam kills to emotionally regulate, but also kills to assert dominance.

Sam is seen to revere wild bears as she sees herself as a bear (she is, but moreso in the sense she is not "human" or social like the other animal folk in Woodbrook) and chooses to be one with what she loves. Her fascination and kinship with the strength and the power they hold in nature is why she chooses to present, dress, and act butch. However, we do see in gaps and moments that she is aware of how powerless she actually is if she was a bear and if she were to be a person. There's the pressure to be good. There's the social pressure that comes with being a woman. There's the expectations of her gender and the exploitation men will have over her in either situation.

And so she kills. She has no young to defend. She's not interested in love, or raising a family or being social so she'll act like a male bear because that is the closest she'll ever get to having power over anyone.

And that power will be challenged in the Spring.

Yes. It's important that Sam is a woman. Don't undersell BTTWNS as a Dexter spinoff.

[shirmirart]

decorating the christmas tree ✨🎄❄️

(the "tree" being alex)

[amya-da-dp]

Wedding officiant: Okay, repeat after me

Callum: After me

Wedding officiant:

Runaan: *whispering to Rayla* are you sure this is the one you want?

Rayla: Didn’t Ethari do this exact same thing to you?

[alice-the-kittycat-yt]

"Tree Princess"

[witherbythesword]

blue prince room riddles on day one: hehe nice free item :3333

blue prince room riddles after day ten: dealing you 100 psychic damage upon you entering the room

[withdenim]

So uh. How about that time skip huh. (Corvus composing and performing the best track in the show was so hot of him btw if you care)

[rutharidiangelo]

HIS FACEEEEEEE

AAAAAA

[jellydrawsposts]

I need to see how their adventure goes trying to find Parrow you have no idea