#never gonna post these edits tho

[inkskinned]

probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.

we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."

at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.

the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.

the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.

what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.

here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.

[iindigoeyed]

saw this dress and purse and i KNEW i had to draw this, it's so her!!

[italiantea]

soft and neat

[fumifooms]

That. That screentone on Chilchuck’s chest in the low open collar. Is Chilchuck having chest hair canon Kui. Kui? Gripping my knee

[seaweedstarshine]

Hi! Long time no yap but I've been really bothered by this thing and I know you're just the person I can go to with this (even if we don't always end up agreeing at times).

I got into a tiff with someone in a comments section of a post that was about Amy (Which character do you think deserved to become a villain? or something similar). They brought up Amy's abuse of her boyfriend. I may have tried to defend Amy (key word is tried. I am officially rubbish at debating) but then I may have said something? Because they said that I (and apparently a lot of other fans) was excusing Amy's abuse because of her trauma. It got me stumped because isn't young Amy's treatment of Rory rooted in her trauma? Did I miss the memo where we separate trauma and abuse? Am I missing something?

That statement bothered me a lot because if there's one thing I never want to do it's defend an abuser. So here I am, humbly asking and hoping to clear the muddy waters.

Your really confused and disturbed moot, Tia 💌

TIA!!!!! Thanks for the ask 💌 , and I send you all the hugs.

Discussion of abuse, trauma, ableism, infidelity, and unhealthy relationship dynamics beneath the cut.

(First off… while I really appreciate your faith in my explaining skills <3 <3 <3 my passion for traumatized characters and mentally ill+neurodivergent rights doesn't make me especially qualified to fully clear muddy waters especially not knowing the full context, but I feel you, and what follows is my informed perspective!)

Speaking generally first, harm done in media is best examined by the impact on the audience, with a different lens than harm done to real people. While relatable experiences in media can be useful and validating and incredibly important, you can’t be “defending an abuser” when the abuse is fictional. It's actually normal for traumatized/ND/mentally ill people to project onto mentally ill villains, when villains are the only significant representation for those stigmatized symptoms in a media landscape that excludes and demonizes us simply for existing. RTD can't stop people who hallucinate from reclaiming the Master's Drums and projecting onto the Master, for example — 90% of the best Doctor Who psychosis fic by psychotic authors is about the Master, whether RTD likes it or not. It's not true crime.

(This is speaking generally. Amy Pond is very much not the Master.)

Abuse is a behavior, and there can be many reasons for it, but reasons based in trauma don’t make it not abuse (some forms of generational trauma can propagate abusive parenting styles, when the parent thinks abusive parenting is normal, or lives entirely vicariously through their child). This absolutely should not be taken to mean trauma correlates with abusive behavior; rather that abusive behaviors from traumatized people are more likely to present in specific ways.

Abuse is also a targeted behavior, based in control — not consistently displayed C-PTSD symptoms as seen in Season 5 Amy Pond through many aspects of her life. Mental health symptoms don't become abuse just because they hinder one partner from meeting the other partner's needs. Any life event can do that.

Without knowing the context of the arguments, this is the aspect of their relationship I've seen you talk about before (which I also feel strongly about), and what I assume is what you were debating? So, here I will talk specifically in regard to Season 5.

We all know Amy — she's never attached to Leadworth because she never wanted to leave Scotland, no steady therapist because none of them stick up for her, can't stick with one job yet her first choice is a job that simulates intimacy because her avoidant behavior (a known trauma response) isn't sustainable to her wellbeing. Rory knows her fears of commitment stem from her repeated abandonments, it’s why he’ll always wait for her, and it's why he blames the Doctor “You make it so they don't want to let you down.”, who apart from having caused a lot of her trauma, has actively taken advantage of her being the “Scottish girl in the English village” who's “still got that accent,” because he wants to feel important, so yeah, I think interpreting Amy's issues (and how Amy and Rory transverse them) as Amy abusing Rory indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of their relationship, as well as a misunderstanding of the (raggedy) Doctor’s role in Amy’s formative self-image (which of course she works through in Season 6, but I am sticking to Season 5).

Abuse is always based in control. That just doesn’t fit here. While Amy's detachment from her real life includes things like calling Rory her “kind of boyfriend” (which she is upfront about to his face; differing commitment levels isn't abuse, though it can be a relationship red flag for both parties IRL) — her Season 5 disregard of Rory’s feelings occurs only in response to the fairytale embodiment of her trauma. It's never a response to Rory; it's a response to the Doctor, who stole her childhood and led her by the hand to her death. She cheats on Rory with the Doctor in her bedroom full of Doctor toys, drawings, models, she made from childhood to early adulthood.

(And yes, like many repeatedly-traumatized people, Amy is prone to being sensitive and reactive. Take her “Well, shut up then!” line in The Big Bang; but given Rory responds to this by hugging her, clearly he doesn’t take it as her actually dismissing him. He knows her better than that.)

And by no means do I meant to imply this is fair to young Rory, poor Rory, who's left struggling with the feeling that his role in her life is in competition with the role of her trauma (aka the Doctor). But not every unhealthy relationship dynamic is unhealthy because of abuse. Labelling Amy's treatment of Rory in Season 5 more accurately isn't the same as excusing her harmful choices — but making mistakes is part of being human, Amy's mistakes are certainly understandable, and she works through them out of love for Rory.

If there's one thing to say about Moffat women, it's that Moffat allows his female characters the same grace that the male characters *coughTENcough* have always had, to hurt and struggle and make realistic mistakes and overcome those mistakes and to heal without being demonized.

Amy isn't perfect, but she is a fully realized character, and her story gives us a resonant depiction of childhood trauma.

[crownrots]

↳ SIDE HOTD (1 /∞ ) 🐺🏹 MYRANDA OF MAIDENS MOUTH ── i don't belong here, i don't belong anywhere. (x) (x) (x)

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

"yes im so fine"

*researches whether i can get my hands on ipecac*

[bonestrouslingbones]

btw one of the things i want to do when i really rap up atbb for real is spontaneously get the energy at will to do actual updated fullbodies of the main 4 since now i actually have the ability to draw them the way they look in my head & have the skills to put some more variety in their shapes. basically i wanna

[wereh0gz]

[deepseawave]

obsessed w the tags on ur last reblog

Omgg, thank you haha, it was a quality post so I just had to appreciate it in full force 😂❤️

Can‘t believe someone would actually enjoy my yapping :,D

[fruutbaag]

if my brain could stop telling me im not Really enjoying things and im just humoring people all the time and i don't actually care about abything thatd be great. would really like it to stop doing that

[cerealmonster15]

scuse me i gotta go be embarrassing under the cut brb 🚶

@cosmiccoincidence @felix-the-lemon-king well FUCK ok hi lol 👋

so like images from the engtwst translation that altered my brain forever:

so like. 🧍🙈 URGHGHHHG lol. felix u may have heard some of or all of this tangent before in the dms LOL but

my attempt at long story short: friend and i were into twst well before engtwst came out, so when we saw the official translation translated cater's "leona-kun" to "leona, sweetheart," we were like 🤨sweetheart?🤨🤨🤨 jkslajKLDJL like ik it's a casual thing meant here but. however. you see LOL

longer details: me being how i am as a person™, i let this fester in the back of my brain and it gradually grew out of control. i dont like. theyre not a pair i think of when i think of My Cater Ships. HOWEVER as i do with most leona potential ships(???) they read as exes to me here JSDLFG like. me with my soap opera lenses on [they are never off. sorry.] has me running wild w/this like leona/cater having A Thing of some undefined nature like maybe last year. tapping into cater's implied vibes of not always letting people get super close / used to kinda keeping things surface level and making the most of Being In The Moment and less concerned about making lasting ties bc hes used to stuff not lasting from his moving around etc etc whatever. like cater and leona starting off w/ a bond of just quietly being in each others space [i mean caters a chatterbox LOL im thinkin those rare moments where hes like mask off kinda lethargic or something. caycays such an interesting character w/a lotta mystery in that regard but i do NOT have time to get into that so just!!! bear with me LOL JFKLSDJF]

anyway i feel like i recycle the same plotlines with characters/ocs forever but thats just too bad: cater+ leona bonding somehow dont worry about it. idk leonas a spelldrive star and caters really good at flying so They Could Bond -> somehow falling into like a Casual Lowkey Relationship where theyre like 'we arent DATING dating, no labels and mostly just hang out when no one's around but Something Undefined is happening here. they kiss or whatever lol -> they emphasize w/e they have is strictly casual and 'doesnt mean anything' -> perhaps cater emphasized the 'doesnt mean anything' part more idk -> some forbidden feelings kinda spark anyway but one or both of em are just kinda. ignoring/denying it lol -> ive had a specific image in my brain for a Long Time of like. cater kissing lion boy. then being like ✌️its ok, its just for fun dont worry doesnt mean anything ✌️ -> and like its a mutual neutral feeling At First but like eventually i think their Situation falls apart for one reason or another and theres Tension

^i said takes place the year before the game starts but i think i also had it in my mind toying w/the idea of it as like a SUMMER FLING/ROMANCE(?) that ended RIGHT BEFORE school started. or idk maybe it ended right before they got out for break. WHATEVER.

point is those screenshots are from book 2 which is still pretty early on in the school year so ive got the vibe of like "oh things are still awkward between them, the 'breakup' is still relatively fresh, and leona feels bitter about it and is playing extra hardball with these guys and also harshly teasing them about it bc caters there and hes Emotional but taking it out sports style" lol. and supplementing that Specific Image In My Head^ i imagine in that convo in the screenshots w/cay being like 😔leona sweetheart plz chill😔 leona would just be like 😒well. it 'Doesnt Mean Anything' so whats the problem here 😌 😒

anyway. you maybe didnt really ask for the extra headcanon au lore whatever details but i gave them to you anyway LOL my LeoCay Messy Breakup AU. but i ALSO just like drawing them together bc cay is my fave and fun to draw, and leona is Also fun to draw 😔 my fave character cay + character i have been dragged kicking and screaming to kind of respect over time KLJFSDKLJFL every time leona says or does something that makes me think hes cool or smart i get SO MAD about it. seething at book 6 LOL SJDKLFJD twst with their damn complex characters making me Think Deeply 😒 and then i steal their deep blorbos and put them in my funny little barbie dreamhouse soap opera recycled romance drama plotline loop forever and ever and ev

ahem. so yea on the surface. pair that probs would never ever work out HOWEVER it's MY mind palace and i can make up whatever silly rules i want!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[jessiesjaded]

most interesting popular accounts to me are the ones that just post stuff like gifsets or art or writing but never ever say anything, like no tag rambles, no personal posts, no opinions, no rants. im always like surely.... surely you have something to say....

[milkbreadtoast]

...hey guys completely random but i made a youtube channel 🚶🏻

[clenastia]

i dont know why the running joke of this chapter is kakashi fearing for his kidneys. where did that come from. WHY did that come from.

i should probably cut that in editing it's a little ridiculous.

except it makes me giggle every time so maybe i should leave it there.

[asteraegis]

haha was in a... silly kind of mood. howlen in warriors orochi naotora li's deity outfit, hien ass up, and uh *reading smudged handwriting* oh zenos torture porn whoops.

thanks howlen for censoring. two versions of the zenos thing in case you understandably are a normal person and dont want your baby girl beat up. alt text available, may be helpful to read before enhancing on the last image.