#and what ive got written is a) pretty rough and b) not enough content that i feel comfortable posting it

[fiddles-ifs]

"Hey Kiddo." [GREENWARDEN ANNIVERSARY SNIPPET]

Sometimes, when Dad isn't home, Mom lets you watch cartoons at the diner in town, lets you meet other kids at the park. Always home before sunset. Always wearing a hat. Never tell Dad where you went, what you did. Never stay for too long in one place.

Sometimes people from town stop Mom in the streets and ask how she's been, their eyes all a-worried. Asking if she can stay over at theirs one of these days, catch up, and she always declines with a look your way. There's a deep sadness etched on her face. It reminds you of the rocks at the beach. You see the same face worn into their sides by the unrelenting, salted tide.

Sometimes Dad doesn’t come home, out deep in the woods somewhere. That’s when Mom takes you out for ice cream at the diner and lets you watch cartoons as much as you want, and talks in hushed voices with people you don’t know. Their faces are friendly – but they look at you like you’re a monster. Something with teeth waiting to pounce. A few even look like they hate you. You feel it in the soles of your feet, bare on the tile.

Dad is home tonight. He has you out in the woods today, watching you from a log as you scratch a big buck between the antlers, its head bowed to give your stubby arms a little more access. It snorts and takes two paces backward when Dad gets up from the log and puts his big anvil hand on the top of your head. 

You can't help the flinch. He ruffles your hair. Slowly.

That is not your father.

“What's it thinking, kiddo?”

“Uhm,” you look at the buck, watching your dad with unblinking eyes. The animals don't really have thoughts. None that you can hear, anyway — you feel their minds through the soles of your feet, up into your shoulders. The squirrels and deer, the pillbugs under the rocks. The big buck takes another step back.

“I dunno?” Dad's hand on your head stops. Your little heart starts a hammering rhythm in your ribcage.

“Try again.”

Whose memories are these?

“It's — scared?” No, not scared. You don't know the word. If it were scared, it would have run — but the big buck just stands there. Watching.

In town, there's a big church with gargoyles (like the cartoon) sitting on the edge of the roof, staring down at the sidewalks. It's like that. If there's a word for it, you don't know it. You can barely read, all your schooling spent in the woods learning how to track, hunt, and bend the woods to your chubby hand.

You stick your fingers in your mouth to chew on. They taste like game grease and fur and a little bit of grit.

Your dad hums. A stick somewhere deep in the woods snaps, and suddenly the buck runs off. You wave bye-bye to it. The pillbugs and squirrels and whippoorwills scatter at the sound. You turn to squint into the black. There's a monster in there somewhere — you feel the emptiness on the soles of your bare feet, the surface skin of your arm.

Dad pats you on the head and turns you toward the house, pushing your shoulders a little. You almost fall. You scrape up the top of your foot on a rock catching yourself, blood bubbling from the split skin.

Not yours not yours this is not yours.

“Go on — your momma's waiting.”

“Okay!” When you run off, your heart finally slows to a metered rhythm. Somewhere, deep behind you, you hear the sound of crunching and ripping flesh.

[solidburnreturned]

by popular demand, here is my oc chatter regarding stuff like relationships n random character traits. its rly long oops but i divided it by character at least lmao,, these are all things that i think id also wanna use if i ever use these characters as humans (which i def will at some point honestly)

- i thinkkkk i want toad and pike to date. toad would come across pike in their lagoon one day while hes wandering around on another wonked exploration and pike is like hey lol :B with their pointy teeth and long ass hair and toad is like :0 he just sits and talks with pike for hours and comes by a few times a week to hang out with them. they fall in LOVE

- fred and lani are def gonna date too. two butches who use he/him pronouns fuck yeah? they have a powerful relationship. mega BDE. power couple. not a lot of pda but alone together theyre both very loving and tender, its a vulnerability thing for both of them. like lani is very cool and can be either stoic or borderline obnoxious while fred is punkish. fred is very head over heels for lani tho 

- mardi n berg.....complicated....i gotta figure out how they actually end up together. berg is a jogger and mardi is a piercer/tattoo artist so that doesnt....make them line up very much in that department. ill think about it more and figure something out. itll probably have something to do with berg’s nose stripes and eye rings

- also side note on mardi......i want his backstory to include a grey period set off by his brother being eaten when they were both young at the troll tree. like he becomes angry and depressed, sorta like branch, his tattoos that he gives himself the only color on his body, until he learns to let go and his colors come back (high key this was inspired by 21 savage, mardi’s voice claim, and the line in his new song A Lot “my brother lost his life and it turned me to a beast”). ill develop this idea further but i just wanted to get it written down

- bismuth.......unsure. they had a crush on pepper and kept trying to ask her out until she came out to them as a lesbian, then they were like :’) but theyre ride or die theyre not gonna be an ass to her because they cant date her. they just care a lot about her. its like icarly

- gazpacho and jupiter CUTE two small trans trolls in That Love. i need to develop them more but. theyre just cute 

- talia is still a little too new for me to develop her......but im thinkin about it...

- kinda same with ernie and olive. they kinda mostly just exist as cute babby characters right now? if anything olive is a trouble maker and ernie is a chatterbox

- clem and thursday also fuckin cute as hell......clem was a nervous wreck asking thursday out but theyve been together like ever since, which is more than a few years. they have a rly cute gentle lovey dovey relationship. thursday is usually hanging around up on her gf’s shoulder giving her kisses on the cheek

- bea and crystal.......adorabl relationship......crystal is another character thats kinda nervous but bea is so chill n confident is helps calm her down. theyre both trans and love the hell out of each other. rly slow n steady relationship, bea is very patient

- pj and marcus!!!! dumb mlm rep relationship. pj is so so gay for marcus he can barely comprehend it. its a dumb ego boost for marcus but hes also very in love with pj, he just expresses it in a weird cocky way idk marcus is a nerd. i need to make more content for them i think about these two way more than it seems

- dwight!! he has a boat. he lives on the boat.....ive thought about maybe pairing him with toad and pike. deciding on his voice claim has been the most difficult thing ever

- kass and current HELL yeah buff gf and tol gf......they spar with swords and wrestle for fun and hang out at the beach a lot. kass fuckin loves the gem on current’s back. i gotta make more content for them 

- celia......i wanna do more with celia. friends with berg probs theyre both sporty. shes just a sweet giant troll who loves mushrooms. i gotta pair her with someone whose palette goes nicely with her pastels 

- carrot and harriet are literally cricket and tilly from big city greens just older. yeehaw siblings. havent thought about relationship stuff with harriet yet.....i think she also needs ANOTHER redesign her colors are just too heavy still. maybe if i can make her colors compliment celia’s that could work as a pairing? hm hm.....carrot tho is dating ford’s oc rye theyre gentle country gays

- rainer. hm. i dont think theyre rly the dating type......theyre just chill with being them. they just wanna swim and be funny

- hammond and andromeda are probs two of my least developed characters.....hammond still needs a redesign. he might be cute to pair with walter, theyre around the same age. andromeda tho i have no idea. she might be a nice pairing with eve? if i ever feel like pairing her with someone...who knows. eve is very carefree and might find andromeda’s energy too intense

- radish i wanna make more content for!! i rly like her a lot....i think shes another troll who isnt interested in dating. shes very focused on being a chef instead. loves her friends a lot!

- mack and pepper 2gether 4ever obvs......they have a relationship that gets richer with age for sure

- im just gonna ramble about mack. i thinkkkkkkk i wanna make her half latina? columbian specifically. she doesnt quite read as white and i didnt make her with the intention of making her white. anyway i love mack a whole lot and should really develop her backstory more. its not rly as like...””tragic”” or whatever as pepper’s i know that but she def has layers. i wanna give her whole family more depth. she has a very complicated relationship with her own feelings and motivations that i need to think about more fully. my powerful femme tho i lov her

- mack’s parents, robin and champagne, i need to like....think about them more. they have kinda a comedic relationship thats sorta inspired by roger rabbit and jessica rabbit. robin is a very caring, gentle troll who’s very smart and cares a lot about his nursing responsibilities in the village. champagne is very relaxed and the “voice of reason” character of the family. she loves a good party and has her party planning down to a science. both are very successful power parents. kickass family

- i already talked about topaz and marney in a separate post but i still love them both so much. big wesbiabs

- pepper....pebber. im gonna talk about her the most obviously gfhjdkrs i wanna talk about her mental health i feel like i think about it a lot but i never write about it explicitly? this is gonna be long oops hgjfksd she has depression and ptsd stemming from the trauma of her crash...im thinking she also has adhd and thats just something shes always had. her depression rly got heavy during her recovery and right after like...she hated being bed/housebound and felt rly powerless to her situation and just let it eat at her until her personality had actually changed considerably. like extroverted wild child rebel to introverted, soft-spoken sulker. this got better with time but she still is pretty introverted, just turned her moodiness into chill energy. 

- she has bad depression habits like letting dishes, old food, laundry, or just stuff pile up in her room until it gets overwhelming and she spends like two days just manically cleaning; or staying in bed for way longer than she should and messing with her hygiene; or eating way more or way less than she should eat in a day. just stuff thats hard to completely break out of when youre recovering. her color is pretty consistently the dark red but if shes having a particularly rough day she might look a little paler, or like a muddy brick color at her worst. thats kinda rare tho

- her ptsd is the thing she hates the most. for a while it made her feel very weak and she’d beat herself up over being traumatized by the crash which was obviously not helpful to her mental state but she was really all over the place during her bodily recovery. its part of the reason why she started working out, she wanted to reclaim some sort of feeling of strength and power that she felt she’d lost completely. she still gets really frustrated with this feeling of loss but she gets a lot of support from loved ones which has helped her not self-blame so much. her ptsd manifests mostly as nightmares/insomnia, chronic headaches/stomachaches, intrusive thoughts and sometimes flashbacks. the nightmares are what rly get to her, she really doesnt get a lot of good sleep and it can get to the point where she just doesnt want to sleep sometimes and she’ll stay awake until she crashes hard

- her scars used to be a big trigger for her ptsd, which is why she has her bangs covering the one on her face and wears long pants (her knee braces are too bulky for pants and would force her to wear shorts which would force her to expose her scars). she just. really really hates them. this is something she struggles with for a majority of her life

- once she and mack start going steady with their dating and start consistently sleeping in the same bed, pepper starts to sleep better. she still has nightmares that wake her up at least weekly, but having mack there to comfort her (whether she wakes mack up accidentally or if mack is already awake) helps a TON with getting her back to sleep soundly. it also just helps her sleep in general to have that comforting, loving presence in her bed snuggled up to her ;w; mack is a big help in general with pepper’s mental health, pushing pepper to make better, healthier choices and get out in the village more and have fun. mack for sure does not “”cure”” pepper of anything but shes a very positive light in pepper’s life that helps her pull thru tough times!

- i love all my goofy trolls so much. its so fun to just chill and blab about them to relax between working on big projects ;o; ty if u cared enough to read this whole thing ur so rad