#she's also talking about studying stuff from earth which i don't remember at all??

[karokawwo]

did i miss something?? wasn't the postcard meant to be like a huge reveal in anisa's route??? did dorian rewrite the prologue or something bc i don't remember them dropping this many plotpoints

[iamawolfstarsimp]

what's up everyone

a quick fic for you guys because I got inspiration when I woke up and a life update

so basically I've been spending my summer doing some different things but mostly spending time with family. I've been going through some difficult mental struggles recently and mostly have just not had any inspiration or interest to write or even be active in the community. I don't know how much I will be active on this blog in the future with writing and stuff but I won't be deleting my account yet, if I do decide to delete then I'll give notice. if you do want to see where most of my activity is now you can go to my side-blog which is non tickle related but still me (it's mostly different fandom stuff including marauders, taylor swift and whatever i feel) but yeah that's what I've been up to. I'm mostly okay I just need some time to heal

But here's a quick marauders fic for fun <33

love ya'll, stay blessed and enjoy

Contrary to popular belief, James wasn't dumb. Or at least not as dumb as he pretend to be for attention and to be funny.

He wasn't top of his class but he could be if he really wanted to be and tried to. He studied quittitch and memorized tactics and routines and was an excellent tutor and mentor depending on class (potions was never his strong suit, what could he say).

But besides school, he also knew people. He could read emotions and faces and voices. When he knew someone well enough he could tell what their different reactions to things meant on how they felt.

He knew that Remus went quiet when he was thinking hard about something or was being stubborn or spiteful and Sirius always got quiet when he was either concerned or ticked off. Peter would chew his nails when he was nervous or scared to relieve some of the stress. Lily sucked her teeth when she was annoyed at something and always grinned really big but tried to cover her smile when she got happy or excited.

So he wasn't exactly surprised when Remus and Sirius told him they were dating. He pretended to be in shock but eventually he told them one late night in the common room, almost two years after they'd told him.

"Yeah, no, I saw you two becoming a couple way before you guys ever did." James said nonchalantly.

"What?" "You're joking." Remus and Sirius yelled at the same time, both of them laying on the couch in front of the fire with James on the ground and his back against the armchair Lily was sat in, her legs criss-crossed and reading some book about quittitch history she had gotten from James ("I've already read all the books in the library, they're boring! Yes, and Remus' books too!").

James laughed at their shocked expressions. "How on earth did you know before we even knew we liked each other?" Remus asked, ever the skeptic.

James' mind flashed through memories over the years, a few specific ones coming to mind.

He remembered flying up on the quittitch pitch one winter day during their third year at hogwarts and practicing by himself, back when being in the air was the only time he could straighten his head and calm his thoughts.

He looked down at the snowy ground seeing his two best friends walking next to each other, shoulders brushing every few steps.

He thought of yelling at them but didn't and just watched their easy conversation he couldn't quite hear. He watches as they stopped and looked out onto the lake that was frozen over and kept talking, looking into each other's eyes every now and then.

He smiled to himself and turned away to give them some privacy, even though they didn't know they were being watched.

His mind flashed to the first time Remus spent Christmas at James' house. He remembered Remus watching James and Sirius play wizard chess and staring at Sirius' eyes and hands and back and then turning away as if he was ashamed of looking at him for too long.

And then he thought of Sirius doing the same thing when Remus would throw his head back and cackle at some joke James and Sirius had been saying. Remus was always quieter than the others but he was loud when he wanted to be or didn't care enough to be quiet. Sirius was always mesmerized by it.

His thoughts shifted again to one time when he was walking up to their door to hear loud laughter coming from their room, the door cracked open.

Out of pure instincts, he snuck up to peak through the crack at the scene he saw.

He couldn't tell whose bed they were in but if he could guess it would have been Remus' due to the fact it looked like it might have been slightly made before all the tackling and squirming that was currently happening.

Sirius appeared to have jumped on top of Remus (for whatever reason he found acceptable to do so) and was digging both hands into Remus' ribs, the later of the two throwing his head back and laughing loudly, the exact way Sirius was obsessed with.

"This is what you get for being so damn snarky all the time." Sirius grinned up at Remus who closed his eyes and grabbed onto Sirius' wrists but didn't pull them away from him.

"You're the wohohorst!!" Remus shouted through his laughter.

"Oh yeah, I'm the worst?" Sirius asked and Remus nodded, too busy laughing to actually answer.

"Ahaha-and I hahate youuUU AH SIHIHIRIUS NOO!" Remus' voice raised in pitch and volume as soon as Sirius' hand moved to his neck while the other snuck under his loose shirt to dig into his ribs better.

Sirius only grinned bigger and continued. "What's so funny, Moony?"

Remus growled through giggles and attempted to roll them over but only succeeded in prying Sirius' wrists off of him momentarily. James took this opportunity to walk in after a quick knock.

"Lads, you want some dinner?" James shouted over Remus' laughs. Sirius turned to look back at James but while distracted Remus managed to throw him off of him with his legs.

"Ouch Moony, that hurt." Sirius faked being hurt and pouted from the floor. Remus rolled his eyes while panting, a smile still plastered on his face. "I'd love some dinner, I'm starved."

"Alright then, meet you down there in five minutes! I'm off to find Pete." James replied.

"Great, we'll be right down." Remus was already throwing himself at Sirius before James had even left the room, more shouts and laughter coming from the room as he shut the door.

James blinked back into reality and simply shrugged at Sirius and Remus, a small grin on his face because he knew not explaining it would annoy both of them.

"Just had a hunch." He heard Lily laugh from above him at Remus and Sirius' faces.

Hope you enjoyed! And no, I didn't proof read this so if there's writing errors, my bad lol

[vigilskeep]

How does Minerva not being good at glyphs interface with Irving being all about them? Is there drama? Do Irving's spells influence her own choices and in what ways? (Eg, Irving has fully developed the lightning tree so Minerva is inclined to consider lightning the superior element, or stuff like that)

(plz talk more about magic 💜)

irving may have been a little frustrated by her failure to ever crack glyphs—i think she's too impatient and always messes them up lmao—but i also think he'd rather she excel in what suits her than force herself to mimic him

irving's style of magic is pretty versatile, and dedicated; he has the full arcane tree and then one full tree in both primal (lightning) and creation (glyphs), and almost a full tree in entropy (hexes), plus the handful of other first level spells you would expect someone to pick up over the years. i like that, characterisation wise. he's not meant to be a super powerful mage, but one who has studied for a long time, and carefully chooses to focus his learning. it's also a good grounding to understand the different types of mages under his care, and to be able to teach his apprentice the fundamentals of any school they wished to pursue. i don't think he would mind his apprentice having their own interests and he'd probably appreciate them having enough dedication to push back on what they prefer. i also think mentors are there to give you the fundamentals in everything and you're probably more likely to truly specialise after completing your apprenticeship

i very much like that he seems to least favour the school of spirit (with only one spell in it), which i have always cast as the least trusted by the templars. i'd like to imagine he avoids it for political reasons himself, and it fits really great with my hc that he first took an interest in a young minerva when he was called upon to help with her fear of her own natural gift for spirit magic. he was the one who encouraged her to focus on primal magic instead, which she really thrived in because it helps her feel more in control

minerva's personal favourite element is ice not lightning and i imagine them lightly bickering abt it but minerva is fully upgraded in lightning too, it was probably the first element she focused on as a kid bc of him. and anyway they combine forces to dunk on earth tree enjoyers (minerva's had to fight off a laugh from a remembered joke while talking to wynne sometimes)

[polyhexian]

Nate, my boy, since you know everything and what you don't you make up, do you have any info on Warren Johnson as a writer?

Well he's got a short list of projects but they're definitely nothing to shake a stick at. Wonder Woman is a huge net score. Beta ray bill is too. Working with both marvel and DC is solid credentials.

Dead earth seems to have notably good reviews, which i remembered from extremely fleeting familiarity. I've heard the name before positively.

I found this review particularly noteworthy:

However Chad isn't the only one concerned about it being in character

One of the main complaints people seem to have is that DWJ had a story he wanted to tell and he pushed the characters he was given into the molds to tell it.

Also very highly rated.

Chad didn't like this one, but apparently the characterization issues were absent this time. Scrolling through other reviews, I didn't see any other complaints about characterizations-- I saw lots of comments about how great the characterization is, actually. Perhaps that is because beta ray bill has a lot less history than wonder woman and perhaps people are more open to seeing more diversity and exploration of who this character is. If you don't go here, beta ray bill is not a HUGE character, but he's been around since the early 80s and has plenty of media to draw from. He has plenty of ardent fans, so plenty of people who already have an idea of who this character is when they went into this story.

All of his work has reviewed really well, nothing dips below a 4 on Goodreads.

Reading reviews and summaries of each book, it seems like DWJ really likes action, blood, hyperviolence, and, specifically, mad max. I see people being up mad max in so many reviews I can't not mention it. he does a lot of stories with fighting, with big action setpieces, wrestling, heavy metal, grit and gore. Pretty much all his stories are gritty.

I strongly suspect he is going to write a very "gritty war story" version of transformers, which is... Something we have seen before. It may not be bad, but idw definitely already did that. So did wfc siege. Grimdark kind of hyperviolence and war and action is pretty par for the course with tf. I don't see a lot of people talking about his stories being particularly deep or emotionally engrossing. I see people say some are very FUN or very engaging or even that they have interesting commentary. But... Mm.

Having not read his stuff and only having just studied these reviews, I'm expecting some really pretty war violence. Seeing as he's clearly not as familiar with the property as your average tf fan, he's still a little shaky on his tf stylization, I'm predicting he's going to focus on a lot of mainline G1 characters, the pop boys people recognize. Megatron, Optimus, soundwave, prowl, Jetfire, starcscream, the seekers probably, ultra Magnus, grimlock, hot rod maybe, arcee definitely. I think it's a lot less likely we will see more obscure characters like we did with idw2.

Tho if I had to drop money I would bet windblade is there. Hasbro has been pushing her hard. I really suspect they will have asked him specifically to make sure she's there.

[theflyingfeeling]

PANIC PANIC PANIC I've got a job interview tomorrow 💀

It's a teaching job in an open university where I myself studied for a semester some ten years ago and I'm actually interested and excited about the opportunity because I'd gain teaching experience on yet another level of education, but that's also exactly the reason why I'm shitting myself as we speak, because I just spoke on the phone with one of the people interviewing me tomorrow (she was my teacher there too and she's so so sweet) and she told me there'll also be some "substance questions", i.e. content questions about some of the stuff I'd be teaching. They're basic level university courses, so rather different from the stuff I've been teaching recently (high school), and while I obviously have studied all that myself back in the day (and gotten decent grades for them too), I'm so so scared that they'll ask me something I know / can't remember shit about. Logically thinking I know they won't be asking anything extremely specific, but that only makes it harder to prepare myself for those questions in any way, because I simply cannot know what I'll be asked. Either I'll know it or I won't?? 🤷‍♀️ I know this may sound like a 'problem solved' kinda situation lol but it's actually the opposite: there are MANY problems in fact and there's NOTHING I can do about it and I will likely make an absolute fool of myself and cry all the way home because I'm not good or smart enough for anything 😐

Fuck, even the 'tell us a little about yourself' part in the beginning of the interview scares the shit out of me. How on earth am I supposed to talk about myself in a positive light when I feel like I'm not good at anything ever and I'm so goddamn ashamed of myself that I feel extremely uncomfortable talking about anything related to myself? Who am I to tell them they should hire me, when the honest answer is that they'd be way better off with literally anyone else? (okay fiiiiiine maybe not literally anyone else lol but you know what I mean 🙄)

I fucking hate job interviews so insanely much, because some of the questions are just impossible to predict, and then I look like an idiot because I have no answer ready or can't think of one in the moment. This is extremely frustrating, because I know I'd benefit from preparing answers to some questions beforehand, and of course there are certain questions I can safely expect them to ask, but I also know there'll be so many questions I won't have been prepared for at all, and those are the ones that stress me out the most, because I have frozen during interviews before when they asked me something and I didn't know what to answer. I know in some cases they're not necessarily that interested in the contents of my answer, but as I told you in the first paragraph (lol congrats if you're still reading), THIS particular interview WILL apparently include questions SPECIFICALLY about the contents of the courses I'd be teaching 🙃

However, it's a part-time job (which I actually wouldn't mind, despite being paid less), so I want to believe they don't have that many applicants and that my chances are pretty good (especially since one of the interviewers knows me and I may have even been one of her favourite students hehe (joking, it's been ten years and stuff like this shouldn't affect their decision)). I really want this job, so that I won't have to feel like I'm a waste of space for at least until May next year (that's when the contract ends), please please pleeeeeeaaaase let things go my way for ONCE 🙏

(Please don't feel the need to interact, I'm mostly just venting and none of you won't be able to predict the substance questions in the interview any better than I can, but if you do want to reach out, know it's appreciated 💗 However... I don't want to seem ungrateful, because I really really do appreciate anyone who reaches out and I KNOW you only mean well, I really do!! 🥺 but please understand that I'm not venting because I'm feeling insecure and suffering from the imposter syndrome and just need a bit of encouragement and then I'll feel better about it. Surely it's all that too lol, but I also genuinely believe I won't know shit about the stuff they might ask me, and I genuinely believe I'm not good enough, and no matter what you say can easily change my mindset about myself at the moment. "You're an expert on your field, you got this" is an instinct response and yessss logically thinking it might even be true and I'm just stressing out over nothing, but when my genuine feeling about this is that I very much haven't "got this" at all, like, not even a little bit in the beginning, it's... not necessarily as encouraging as it may sound like? 😭 as I said, I knooowww you have good intentions, but you don't know what's inside my head, only I know what's in there, and I know it's nothing. In addition, please don't say "everything will be alright" because you can't know that?!? Yes, everything might go well and I might be hired, but it also might be a total disaster and I'll start crying mid-interview because I feel so incompetent. I can't know, you can't know, so let's just focus in the here and now, yeah? 😩

...however if someone has any tips on how to answer 'tell us a little about yourself' I'm all ears! 😅 I feel like none of the tips I read on recruiting websites are of any use 💀)

[cooloddball]

It's story time (please give me advise because I am spiralling)

I am 23 (F). I'm gay and I started dating this girl 7 months ago. Around the same time, I got an internship at an advertising firm (I'm studying marketing at grad school). Anyway, my girlfriend is down to earth and I see a future with her. We have exchanged I love yous and even moved in together.

When I joined the firm, I met two other girls who are also interns (lets call them E & F). I hit it off with E and things were going well at first but then she started acting strange. Strange how? You might ask. She would suck up to me one day and the next she would act as if I didn't exist. I know we, as women, we are complicated and I assumed she was going through something.

But no. I asked F if E was acting the same way with her but she said they were cool and nothing like that has ever happened. I let it slide since we are workmates and not necessarily friends.

So, a week ago, I was driving to the mall and you know when random thoughts just pop up in your head? Something pinged! E and I had kissed in high school. It was during a friend's party and I was kind of high and drunk. She had even given me her number back then but when I called her the next day her boyfriend told me to leave her alone so I did.

Now that I remembered the truth, I don't know how to act around her. I have been home sick for the last week so I haven't seen her since I remembered anything. I don't know how to tell my girlfriend and I don't know how ro behave around E.

Oh I almost forgot, I had a sex dream about her once a few months ago but I dismissed it as a reaction to us spending time together at work. She also revealed that she doesn't want to get married (idk if this information is useful but I thought I should add it.

Advise me please

-🌼

oh wow this was an interesting read 🌼 and i honestly don't know what to say. however, i will try and give my two cents.

on the one hand, it would be prudent to address the issue with E and ask her if she remembers you from high school. maybe don't ask her 'hey did we kiss in high school or whatever?' since this could be a hr issue. i mean i'm not familiar with the kind of environment you work in but i don't think it would be smart to bombard her with all that.

ease in by asking her, which high school she went to. then from there you can venture into exchanging stories about high school like cool stuff you did and parties you went to. again, don't mention getting high or alcohol it could be another hr issue. eventually, the kiss will come up. maybe? and then you can address it.

you mentioned a gf of 7 months, if it were me, i'd come clean. it's not like you have feelings for this E person do you? and if you do, maybe just tell your gf. she might surprise you with understanding or maybe not but honesty is the best policy. i know you might be worrying that she might break up with you but, at least you won't have any secrets. the secrets i'm talking about here is not you and E kissing in high school but you having that erotic dream about her and the fact that you two work together.

you didn't mention whether or not you feel guilty about the dream or not but as i said since you are in a committed relationship, come clean before it becomes an issue later on.

i hope this helps. sending love and kindness your way.

[baeddel]

do u ever have trouble making friends w ppl who dont have the same awareness as u? like not even different or more awareness, either less or no awareness... of like, politics or critical thinking or societal issues... or do you prefer to have some ppl in ur life that u can never be serious or critical with ?

long and you get a bit of a lecture sorry

your coworkers are probably not any less engaged than you, you just don't agree with them. my mother's previous boss belongs to this charismatic Pentecostal milieu. you get a minister who founds a church in his living room. they pack in about twenty middle class ulstermen and pray together, sing hyms and speak in tongues. when they've collected enough tithes they buy a little building or something. in less than a year it will collapse because of a ferocious ideological struggle or, just as often, an adultery scandal. gasp! then they pack into someone else's living room to pray and argue. she and her husband write these little political-theological pamphlets to distribute within their milieu. at school she'll go in the office and hold a prayer session with others like her. they practice what my grandmother sarcastically calls 'good living.' as her son grew older he became interested in fantasy fiction and she asked me to lend him some of my books. among a bunch of other things i gave him all my Terry Pratchett, including some of his late books that mixed fiction and nonfiction. these were returned the next day, which i was told was because he asked her to return them because they mentioned Darwin and it frightened him so much he didn't want it in the house. they are also by the way anti-vaxx, young earth creationists and so forth. she was very rowdy at work during the George Floyd protests. my mother used to come home shaking and start ranting to me about it. and i was stunned by just how radical her views had become; my mother, the only person in our neighbourhood who'll call the cops, who at the start was so concerned about looters, now talking to me about the task of black liberation, educated not by leftist propaganda but by the negation of church ladies' racist prattle. anyway, once i was getting this little holy card of a particular saint (i don't remember which) but, because i guess the website was really for clergy, you had to get them in packs of fifty. i asked my mum if she would give the rest to that very religious woman she worked with since she could pass them around the congregation—certainly not, she had to remind me. iconography. oh yeah, oops...

this isn't someone who is lacking awareness of the issues. it's just that their theoretical touchstone isn't Marx but Martin Luther. or Ray Comfort. but you would be quite surprised at just how aware your conservative neighbours are of critique if you'd really talk to them. i used to use this dating advice site where heterosexuals would go to give each other awful advice and talk about current events, and most of the userbase were US republicans of various sorts. i would sit down and argue with them every day. to back up their arguments they'd abuse studies and statistics in the usual way, but you might be surprised to hear they were not the least bit shy to talk to me about Foucault. one gentleman countered my Marx with his own Hegel, and i would very often hear from Burke, who's remark about society's 'little platoons' has become such a cliche on the American right that now it'll make most conservatives roll their eyes (in 2018 the American Conservative ran with the headline: Knock It Off With The 'Little Platoons' Already).

you'd know that if you sat down and talked with them in a way where you could be completely honest with each other, but you're probably never in that situation. they know you don't want to hear all that stuff. you'd get in a big fight, so they settle for talking about the ordinary topics of conversation or try and bond with you over something which seems politically neutral. an old neighbour of mine would make me take all these CDs because he knew i played guitar. he gave me this instrumental album by The Shadows, the backing band for Cliff Richard, since "one of them guitarists on there", he assured me, was "the best guitarist in the world." he'd always invite me over to get drunk with him and i'd always politely decline since i was trying to be sober. "i don't drink now," i'd say. "you'll learn!" he'd say. not drinking all the time was incomprehensible to him. but he was a UVF man. i knew that, somewhere, in another life that he led, he was confronting the concrete questions of organization, the theoretical problems of loyalism, coordinating with foreign arms and so forth. what did he think about the Good Friday Agreement, decomission, all the rest? how did he hold onto the values of family and community when his concrete activity consisted of racketeering and intimidation? i wish i went drinking with him when i did have the chance. i loved sitting down to drink with all those old crooks. as a homosexual i’d be all over Belfast, or as far up as Antrim, or down by Armagh, exploring boy’s bedrooms. every family is ‘connected’, so i met dangerous fathers and uncles of every sort; IRA men, UVF men, UDA men. and as much as my crossdressing alarmed them, it was good manners to invite me to drink. and alcohol works a kind of magic. they’ll get excited enough to tell you a big story that they set aside all the problems; now you’re sharing something authentic with a guy who, in any other situation, would be threatening your knees. anyway, you get talking about things. the intellectual field on offer was limitless. Carlos Castaneda, Aleister Crowley, William Burroughs, Salvador Dali, Bertolt Brecht, Jacques Brel, Joni Mitchell, Pink Floyd, the Doors. there was always a sort of sad nostalgia to these conversations. you get these guys who were, deep in their hearts, beatniks and hippies, who joined the UDA for the drugs and glamour. did they want to spend the rest of their lives as fascist bullies, defending lines on a map they can’t even fully explain? most of the paramilitary men i met had been through this ‘internal emigration’, into a sort of unhappy anti-political consciousness. it reminds me of Monsieur Dupont’s discussion of certain workplace militants in Nihilist Communism:

[W]e should like it to go on the record that we have met with several workplace militants and for the most part they have no political consciousness. Many of these militants are very anti-political, we would say they were post-political, but how did they become militants if they did not receive political instruction? Their condition is one of absolute refusal of the legitimacy of the manager, an absolute intransigence over specific workplace issues and a kind of terrifying site-specificity producing in them an absolute refusal to look at the wider picture (like Ahab on the back of the white whale they are consumed with a madness for not escaping). We do not endorse such militants, we see them as being stuck in a loop of restricted gestures which their identity seems to depend upon, what would they do if they had not their struggle? It is a fact of our experience that most workplace militants are quite mad and/or not especially very nice people to know; it is important not to get wrapped up in their personal feuds but still we would argue that these mad-eyed prophets are in advance of those who are politically motivated, in advance and waiting in the desert, gone mad with waiting, gnawing at locusts, sitting on poles. Some of them, and of a certain age, cite Pink Floyd, and not Marx, as the biggest influence on their lives. They required only a narrative of otherness, something that was not contained in the usual cause and effects of everyday life to legitimise their dispute. Will the misty master break me, will the key unlock my mind? For such people, the A to В thinking of most pro-revolutionary activists is too basic and not even appropriate to the situation. To them it means nothing to ‘speak in a language the workers understand’ because nobody has ever spoken such a language.

Monsieur Dupont are criticizing you, by the way—this idea that ‘political consciousness’ (in your case an even more timid ‘awareness of societal issues’) is something desirable or progressive, which pro-revolutionaries should be trying to raise. isn’t the problem often the opposite, an excessive awareness of societal issues, like a kind of tinnitus that doesn’t stop ringing in the ears? their workplace militant reminds me of a guy my father knew—’radicalized’ by Pink Floyd, but who got sucked into conspiracy theories by the internet. he was a nice guy who would do anything for you, and my father had asked him to drive me home one night. he would talk to you the entire way home and when he talked to you he would stare at you and wouldn’t look at the road at all. he told me all about HAARP, the NWO, chemtrails, the occult causes of earthquakes, the damage radiation is doing to your body because of telephones and microwaves, and how he wrote a 300-page pamphlet to give to his son’s teacher disputing all of the false science they were teaching. during our conversation a light on his phone began to blink, which he decided was because they must have been listening, whereupon he ripped the battery out of the phone and threw the whole thing out the window. when we got to my place he gave me the address to his facebook page where he predicts the future, but when i looked it up the next day it was gone.

i knew a lot of conspiracy theory guys. to live in a country like this you have to go insane, it’s unbearable. conspiracy theorism has a split consciousness; there’s an enjoyment of occult symbols, gematric connections, divination and spiritism, while at the same time attributing these things to evil powers, the explanation of which should inspire the hearer to their political undoing. many conspiracy theorists are also occultists, or move between one and the other with a little embarassment. in any case, it relies on a relationship to societal issues that is beyond awareness, in fact a hyperawareness. i suppose the opposite side is one sort of self-depricating disavowal of agency which is very common among young lumpen/proletarians, who belong to Oscar Lewis’s culture of poverty. the culture of poverty is a kind of alienated consciousness which results from a disidentification with the institutions of society. he was trying to explain how it was the case that even when many social programs exist, lumpen/proles do not make use of them; nor do they join in with class conscious organizations (such as unions) that enable collective struggle. it’s because, he determined, they didn’t interpret any information about those programs or organizations as being relevant to themselves. they don’t regard themselves as citizens of their own country. if disillusioned fascists take an ‘inner emigration’, disillusioned lumpen/proles are ‘inner illegal immigrants’. this is how i think through a certain consciousness which is quite typical among my peers. they regard the church, politics, the media, the results of natural sciences, art and poetry with equal cynicism while, at the same time, they regard themselves as total morons, invincibly incapable of agency or analysis. many of my highschool classmates didn’t do their homework or participate in tests and left school without even attempting to acquire qualifications. if you asked them about it they’d be completely honest with you: what’s the point? it’s not that they thought education had no purpose in society, they just felt it had no purpose for them, as they were not such a subject which could be cultivated. yet if you did not share their cynicism they would be very angry with you. one of my friends told us how he once caught his sister reading a book and was so angry with her that he ripped it out of her hands and threw it away. there was something fundamentally dishonest to him about reading. you were putting something on, acting above your station. it mystified me, since i would go home and immerse myself in Plato and Eddic poetry, yet neither was i any more tolerant of school or society. who could say why we felt so differently though having such a similar background? here is another very demonstrative example: one of our friends, when some missionaries came by to give out bibles, made a show of throwing his in the bin. why throw it in the bin? because he was a politically convinced atheist who hated the Church and its lies. most people thought he was a tosser for that. but were they themselves deeply Christian? no, not remotely: they would mime the hyms and fall asleep in RE just like everyone else. like the conspiracy theorist they had a kind of split consciousness; neither society nor the destruction of society had any claim on their hearts.

i can’t really talk about it, but things happened that did engage these other kids in a political or militant direction, despite all those things, at which they were very successful. then when the battle was over, in some ways won and in some ways lost, they went back to alienated life. most of them had children before they turned twenty and now i only hear about them in the part of the newspaper that reports on court cases, whenever they’re in trouble for vandalizing a pub and ‘found in the possession of a certain quantity of ketamine.’ this is why i’m sympathetic to the Duponts’ fetishistic elevation of material conditions over consciousness. but in any case, here is how i handle things now: in my estimation most people suffer, intellectually, because they belong to a racket. they have to share space with roommates, work at a workplace, belong to a family, or even associate with a political party, and they depend on these things for food, shelter, and intimacy. these things place harsh limits on what they can acceptably think or feel and in their soul they resign and acquiesce. whatever thrills, excites or even frightens them becomes latent in their soul, meanwhile they say the things which are expected of them. when this is true your conversations, even heated arguments, are predestined by their relevance to a pre-determined intellectual regime which your argument merely performs. it doesn’t matter what political or social issues you have these conversations about; they don’t contribute anything that isn’t already fully present in the agitating subject. nodding conversations between radicals and screaming matches between enemies are just as alienated as the most unlikely conspiracy theories and the most depressing cynicisms. what you want to do is allow someone to express some authentic excitement with you. actually listen to what they have to say and don’t judge them. be open to their system of values without imposing your own; don’t expect to hear about Marx, and try to stop cringing at hippies and beatniks and acid casualties and music hipsters and movie guys and any other form of enthusiasm you’ve been trained to think is naive. you’re trying to find what someone considers their own and give them an opportunity to express their ownness. then you can be as ‘serious’ as you like with them.

[bloededhoine]

world building cause twn doesn't part 12: the hen ichaer

i realize i've been mentioning the hen ichaer without really explaining it, and for that i apologize. but without further ado, let's go

colour code cause i fucking love colour codes - already happened/introduced, probably s2, important background info, stuff that might be in the prequel, extras

series masterpost

general

the hen ichaer is basically a magical gene that originated with the elven sorceress, scholar, and princess, lara dorren aep shiadhal

it can lie dormant or inactive for generations, but when someone is an activated carrier of the gene, they are called a source

sources have an insane capability for magic, it's so intense that without instruction they are a huge danger to themselves and/or others. remember pavetta's betrothal feast? hurricanes should not happen indoors

same thing with ciri's sonic scream.

obviously, the hen ichaer is highly weaponize-able, but it's difficult to put this into theory since the magic is so strong that it can easily kill the person who carries it

most important is that the hen ichaer can open ard gaeth, the gates between worlds. you may remember that the witcher is a multiverse, and the continent is just one of countless worlds

aen elle

the aen elle, elves who live in another world called tir ná lia, controlled at least one gate that they used to get slaves from other worlds

however, this was before the hen ichaer was seriously studied. unicorns are also capable of opening ard gaeth, and were present in tir ná lia, so the aen elle would kidnap them to be used as their world-hopping-genocide key. yeah, the aen elle are seriously fucked

the king of the aen elle was named auberon muircetach, and he was very well known for his wars with the unicorns, who weren't too keen on being enslaved for the purpose of conquering other worlds

the hen ichaer came into play when auberon noticed that his daughter, lara dorren, had pretty intense magical abilities. like, ard gaeth opening abilities.

auberon, lara, and a few other elves began studying the gene and trying to figure out how it works and how to use it.

through this study is how we got the title aen saevherne, which is used to distinguish an elven mage with extensive knowledge of history, science, magic, and, most importantly, the elder blood.

both lara and auberon were aen saevherne, as was lara's husband-to-be, avallac'h, and avallac'h's foster son, caranthir ar-feiniel

ithlinne's prophecy

ithlinne aegli aep aevenien was an elven prophet known for her incredibly dark prophecies that she delivered at totally random times. how dark were they? ithlinne's prophecies were almost exclusively about the death of all humanity and/or the end of the world. she was fun at parties.

anyway, when we talk about ithlinne we really only mean one specific prophecy, aen ithlinnespeath. to be confusing it's usually referred to as ithlinne's prophecy

here's the prophecy itself:

Verily I say unto you, the era of the sword and axe is nigh, the era of the wolf's blizzard. The Time of the White Chill and the White Light is nigh, the Time of Madness and the Time of Contempt: Tedd Deireádh, the Time of End. The world will die amidst frost and be reborn with the new sun. It will be reborn of Elder Blood, of Hen Ichaer, of the seed that has been sown. A seed which will not sprout but burst into flame. Ess'tuath esse! Thus it shall be! Watch for the signs! What signs these shall be, I say unto you: first the earth will flow with the blood of Aen Seidhe, the Blood of Elves...

what does that mean? well, the white chill (aka the white frost) is a massive ice age that has been approaching the continent for years. don't believe me? the white frost has destroyed countless worlds in the past, and it literally cannot be stopped. the only way to save the world is by the power of the hen ichaer.

here's a perfectly frightening visual of the white frost

ithlinne didn't elaborate on the how, but we now know that the only to survive the white frost is by finding a new world and massively evacuating the continent through ard gaeth, which can only be opened by the power of the hen ichaer.

genetics

clearly, the hen ichaer is important enough to literally save, or end, the world, but the aen elle did a famously terrible job of studying it. like, you'd think they'd be good at that, but no. to their credit, it is a bit complicated

first, there are multiple types of elder blood genes, the main gene, the latent gene, and the activator gene. to actually show the powers of the hen ichaer, someone would need to either have one latent and one activator, or the main gene.

let's go back to secondary school biology for a second, remember punnet squares? these fuckers

the letters in a punnet square represent a genotype, or the two alleles that are inherited from the parents. phenotypes, on the other hand, are what you see on the outside. for example, a genotype would be Aa but a phenotype would be brown eyes.

while the main gene is a simple dominant allele (shown by a capital letter on a punnet square), both the latent and activator genes are semi-dominant, meaning that when they meet they create a new phenotype: the innate magical ability that makes you a source.

it gets a little less scientific here so bear with me; this new phenotype is so powerful that it sometimes creates a whole new genotype. so instead of having one activator gene and one latent gene, the two would merge and you'd be left with only one (very powerful) main gene. this is the only single gene that actually has magic and it's a dominant gene, so you only need to have one to have the power.

but, the latent and activator genes don't always combine. you still have the full powers when they stay separate, but it is then less likely to pass the hen ichaer your children.

complicated? very much so. but in practice it's a lot easier.

for simplicity's sake i'll call the activator gene g/a, latent gene g/L, main gene g/m and a regular nonmutated gene g/r. to be a source, the genes you inherit would be g/a g/L, but they may combine to be just g/m. your average person would be g/r g/r and a carrier would be either g/a g/r or g/L g/r.

clearly, this makes tracking it pretty messy, since generations of people can be carriers without having a single source

tracking the hen ichaer

for now, let's do what those elven sages couldn't and track then hen ichaer, starting with lara dorren

eventually, lara met an exceptionally talented human mage, cregennan of lod, and they were lab partners (oh my god they were lab partners) in the study of the hen ichaer.

eventually, lara met an exceptionally talented human mage, cregennan of lod, and they were lab partners (oh my god they were lab partners) in the study of the hen ichaer.

for all the studying, lara and cregennan's own genes have always been something of a mystery. elven mages don't tend to have any issues with using themselves as lab rats, so it's entirely possible that lara and cregennan, knowingly or not, mutated their own genes in their research.

ultimately, it doesn't matter what lara and cregennan's genes originally were. by some happy little accident, the two eventually ended up with at least one activator gene and at least one latent gene between them.

later, when lara and cregennan made their own happy little accident, riannon, she inherited one of each gene (g/a g/L), making her a source. however, riannon's genes did not combine as the elves expected, which made her a little harder to study.

riannon eventually met king goidemar of temeria (g/r g/r), and they had two children named fiona and amavet. i'll start with fiona, who the aen elle managed to figure out had the latent gene, making her g/L r

fiona ended up having a baby with king coram II of cintra (g/r g/r), they named him corbett, and he inherited fiona's g/L and one of coram's g/r.

the aen elle lost track of the hen ichaer when they studied riannon's other kid amavet. see, amavet was kind of a whore. he had twins, muriel and crispin, with the married countess anna kameny. obviously, these children weren't legitimate, and when the angry count kameny murdered amavet a few months later, he was officially childless

the elves did, however, manage to figure out that amavet had riannon's g/a gene and goidemar's g/r gene. anna kameny was just g/r g/r, and crispin ended up being g/r g/r as well. destiny does favour the hen ichaer, but sometimes it's just not meant to be. muriel, on the other hand, did inherit her father's activator gene and was g/a g/r.

let's hop back to corbett, fiona and coram's g/L g/r son. he and princess elen of kaedwen (g/r g/r) had a son, dagorad, who got corbett's latent gene and one of elen's regular ones, meaning he was g/L g/r

muriel married robert of garramore (g/r g/r), and their daughter adalia, the dramatically posed lady right there, had the same genetic combination as her mother, g/a g/r

this is where it gets even weirder

the lovely adalia married dagorad. her second cousin. they shared riannon as their great grandmother. feel better in the fact that it was not intentional, adalia's mother, muriel, was not officially riannon's granddaughter. no one would have even known, but adalia's g/a met up with dagorad's g/L in their daughter, calanthe

for the first time since riannon, the hen ichaer was back, and calanthe's parents genes combined to give her g/m g/r

while it took generations of destiny and accidental incest to make the hen ichaer happen again, now that calanthe had the main gene there was a 50% chance she would pass it to her child, which, of course, she did

calanthe and her husband roegner (g/r g/r) had pavetta, who inherited the g/m from her mother. no one knew about this until pavetta literally created a source hurricane, and was already pregnant

pavetta and duny's (g/r g/r) daughter, ciri, inherited the main gene from her mother and was a source.

sources

it's important to note that a source is not necessarily an incredibly powerful sorcerer, merely a person who has the genetic predisposition required to channel very intense magic

sources, like anyone else, can be bad students, allergic to potions, or just generally averse to magic on all levels except heredity. there is also no way to guarantee that even the most willing source will be good at using magic, in fact it's far more common that they will be really really bad at it. sources are extra susceptible to the chaotic state of magic in the world, and many end up pretty seriously harmed by it.

magical talent tends to make itself known in very emotional situations, like the death of a parent or a war. the same applies for sources, but they have an extra rule: their full powers are off limits until they lose their virginities

now, netflix has not mentioned that rule to be true or false, but i'm going to think of it as strictly book/game/etc canon, because ciri is 10 years old when netflix shows her using her source powers for the first time

the virginity rule makes things even more complicated, as customs about premarital sex are pretty strict in the witcher world (well, among nobility), and the dudes didn't seem to have fast reflexes. what i'm saying is that getting pregnant the first time you had sex was not uncommon. sources couldn't even use, and likely weren't aware of, their powers until they were already passing them on to another generation.

and even still, there is no guarantee that someone who is a source will ever actually show their powers. calanthe had the genetics, but she wasn't a mage. what happened? we don't really know. after calanthe married, cintra was pretty peaceful; there were no invasions or massive upheavals that could put enough stress on her to show her powers. plus, her parents didn't know she had any magical powers, so they didn't give her the training that would develop them, and she was a very level headed person who would likely be unaffected by many of the things that would make another source lose their shit.

[marindram]

full transcription of Marin's blog from Omega Mart!

huge thanks to @b0chelly for recording a scroll-through, which i typed this out from. (and warning for Omega Mart lore/story spoilers. second half is in reblog)

Marinknows.best

Location: Seven Monolith Village

Last Login: 12/31/2019

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About me: I love listening to music and glitter

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June 26, 2018

Happy Birthday to meeeeeeeeee!

So 14 feels way different than 13. For real. I think it's because I was expecting 13 to feel different, but sometimes when you expect something it turns out the opposite ya know?

Plus, 13 is like, "I'm new to being a teenager!!"

14 is more like, "I'm becoming the person I want to be." At least that's how I want it to be. I wanted to start this blog as a record of all that.

I should ask Did you guys feel the same way when you turned 13 and 14?

But probably nobody's gonna read this because I'm just a weirdo in the weird dessert. I mean, I know my best friend Jesse is reading this (hi Jesse). Besides her, crickets.

But yeah, if you are reading this and you don't know me - I live in Seven Monolith Village, a teensy tiny town that you've only heard of if you're into aliens or homesteading. And I'm literally stuck. As in, I'm physically unable to leave. My first memories are of all the adults in my life (Charlie, my great-uncle/father-figure - Rose, my what? Roommate? Mother-figure? Pseudo-aunt? All of the above? and my mom, Cecelia. who doesn't live here) telling me that for some reason, there's something wrong with me that makes it so I can't leave a certain radius of where we live. I got older and thought that they were just exaggerating to keep me safe, but then last year I tried. And it was, let's just say not good.

Anyway. That part of my life sucks, but not everything sucks. This year is all about Marin Dram 2.0. Not new, but definitely improved.

And maybe someday, somehow somebody will read this and care about what I have to say. Somebodies, even. Until then, this is Marin Dram signing off and sending my lame contemplations into the void!

July 1, 2018

Things I Want To Do Before I Turn 20 (and some of these will never happen like are literally unable to happen but JUST LET ME DREAM

1. Kiss someone (who???)

2. Meet HTB (kiss him) (jk he would never) (plus meeting him would be enough)

3. Go to Paris

4. Go to Rome (or somewhere cooler in Italy, look up where is the best pasta???)

5. Go to Greenland (why not???)

6. Go to New York City

7. Go to LA (with a dream and my cardigan lol)

8. Go to the Grand Canyon (this isn't mine, but 9, Jesse is sitting right here and she went to the GC when we were 12 and she's like blah blah blah it's my favorite place in the world and you'll love it. I'm doing this so she'll shut up.

9. Live in a normal house with normal rooms → ideally 12 of them: living room AND TV room, kitchen, dining room, 3 bathrooms, 3 bedrooms, study/library.

-plus an upstairs downstairs

-I'm willing to compromise on the number of rooms as long as there's more than ONE for TWO PEOPLE and I got my own

-plus an upstairs/downstairs

-I'm willing to compromise on the number of rooms as long as there's more than ONE for TWO PEOPLE and I get my own room with an actual door. Very into doors.

10. Go to a mall (Jesse says there's a bunch of bonkers ones in Vegas)

11. Make friends who aren't Jesse (no offense, Jesse)

12. Get Cecelia (my "mom") to teach me about business stuff so I can open my own cool coffeeshop/bookstore someday

13. Learn to drive (ask Charlie to teach me, he's obsessed with his truck) (Jesse says she can teach me because she's Little Miss Mechanic and thinks she knows everything about cars but news flash Jesse: you're you get than me)

14. Figure out my signature style- like I want people to send me pictures of things and be like "this just screamed Marin" and for that to be true

15. Liquid eyeliner??

16. I'm stopping here because I just read over all this and want to die/cry because easily 3/4 of these are literally impossible?

17. Kill me

18. Bye

19. Lololol Charlie just came in and I was complaining about this, not being able to leave and stuff, etc and he said that I should visit new places by... reading books?? And I mean I like to read. But dude. That's the dumbest thing I've ever head.

July 30, 2018

Okay so this is what I want my life to look like:

I want a pink room. Not just pink... P I N K. Cool pink wallpaper (floral? jacquard??), pink carpet, lots of pink flowers everywhere, a four-poster bed with a pink silk canopy, lots of cool pink throw pillows. Like, so pink that

people think I'm being sarcastic! Oh, and BOOKS. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases, and some of the shelves have, like, STUFF on them that isn't books, like gifts people gave me, or things I've collected on my JOURNEYS. You know, normal stuff that people who live on normal places and do normal things have.

If I lived in in this room, it'd be in awhite three-story house at the end of a cul-de-sac (did you know "culs-de-sac" is the plural? Not "cul-de-sacs"? crazy) and I'd wear very classic girly clothes and my hair would always do what I wanted it to. It'd be one of those towns that people call small, but it's actually a city. just one with a kinda small, cozy feeling. Somewhere that gets cold enough to wear cute jackets but not so cold I have to to like, shovel my driveway. Not a non-place with like 100 people where you can't even go outside without going crazy.

August 2nd, 2018

I guess I should explain where I live, for all my avid fans out there! (lol) (hello??)

So like... I don't live on Earth. At least, not the Earth you think of when you think of EARTH. I live in some some weird off-brand version of Earth called the Forked Earth where there are aliens and magic wells of magic energy and everything is MAGIC but like the crappy kind of magic, where the sun never fully rises and some goo called "runoff" has made everything wacky and oh yeah, my mom is responsible for that and everyone here hates her!! LOL

Also, I can't leave! Like, literally can't! Rose says I'm a "special child of Source" and that's why but that LITERALLY explains tells me nothing, in fact it just raises further questions that no one can seem to answer! AHHHHHHHHHH

Anyway, the last time I tried to leave I felt. When I try to leave I feel like I'm being pulled back by something, like you know those old cartoons where someone's on stage doing something dumb and then someone offstage pulls them away with a giant shepard's crook? It felt like that, and when I opened my eyes I was back in 7 Monolith Village. UGH.

I know this sounds crazy!!!!! But believe me when I say that I am the least crazy person here. Also, """here""" is C R A Z Y. Runoff has made everything the bad kind of psychedelic and then people here actually DRINK IT! Not only do I not DRINK THE STUFF THAT HAS MADE THE WORLD INSANE, I also do not talk to aliens (or whatever Nula are) like Rose or believe crazy conspiracy theories like Charlie, so I believe that qualifies me as the most normal person in the Forked Earth, thank you for this honor, I accept this award with humility and grace!

September 4, 2018

I had the weirdest dream last night?? I was swimming in a pool full of cereal, and when I came up for air, my mom was pouring milk on my head like she was rinsing my hair. She had her hand over my face like I was a little kid and she was shielding me from soap getting in my eyes.

Anyway I have no idea what it's supposed to mean. I went to bed hungry and I need to take a shower? Lol

October 16, 2018

I was trying to hide this entry from Jesse, but JESSE IS A NOSY PERSON. She says that blogs are for readers, and if I wanted something to be private then I should "Just write in a fucking notebook and hide it under your bed like a normal person, Marin." I'm allowed to have secrets!! Anyway, I'm making her a freaking playlist, that's why I wouldn't tell her what I was writing about. but EVEN STILL! I'm allowed to have secrets!! But I have this blog because I wanna get my feelings out, I wanna see everything in my head typed out all nice in a way that doesn't make it look insane. You know? I don't know who I'm asking.) Because, it's not like I go to a normal school or have a normal life where I'm surrounded by normal people I can talk to. No one knows about me! I'm trapped in this crazy place and This blog is my only outlet to the world outside. I KNOW that's heavy but it's true! The point is: Jesse's birthday is coming up. The central consistent thing in pretty much my whole life is sharing headphones with her and listening to music. The soundtrack to my entire existence is her. I wish I had money and could buy her the best presents of all time, but I can make her the best playlist of all time. I want it to be so good it feels like magic. I want her to think I'm magic. I had another dream the other night. I don't remember much, just glitter. I must be crafting too much. Or looking at festival makeup tutorials. Or both.

November 12, 2018

WARNING- Weird thoughts ahead, lol.

I can never tell which feelings are normal, and which are me being a giant weirdo. But for as long as I can remember, I've had this feeling like every part of my body that's possible to have a ribbon tied around it, has a ribbon tied around it. It's so weird. I can't see the other end of the ribbons - how far they go. where they're attached, nothing. And sometimes it's fine, because sometimes I can hardly feel them. I can forget about them for days at a time, weeks, months if I'm lucky. But then other times I can feel them like, pulling at me. It's freaking spooky, to have something pulling at you from somewhere you can't see. I can't tell if it's pulling me toward whatever it is? Or if it's trying to warn me? Or if I'm just insane??

Does that make sense? Does anybody else feel that way? (she asks into the void)

So idk I guess this ribbons-feeling is why I'm really careful all the time. Like I'm just a careful person. Charlie tried to give me a hard time about it, and I can't be like "I don't wanna pull back in the ribbons too hard without realizing it and wreck something!" because he'd be like "WTF Marin, do we need to get you help?" But also, more and more, I want to be the opposite of careful. I want to take a pair of comically oversized scissors and cut the ribbons into so many pieces that nobody can even tell what they are any more.

I don't know why I'm such a freak, only that I am. I don't know why I can't leave 7 Monolith, only that I can't. But there must be a reason, even if I can't see it, and I feel like it makes sense that the ribbons-feeling is part of that reason, right?

There's just a lot.

January 15, 2019

Happy new year! Lol I forgot to write on the actual first day of 2019, but OH WELL!

I got this new glitter nail polish, thanks to the monthly makeup subscription box my "mom" sends me as an outlet for her abandonment guilt. It has like, every color glitter imaginable without quite reading as "rainbow" which is fine just not really what I was in the mood for and it's vaguely halographic and shifts into all these different colors depending on the light. I'm obsessed. Anyway.

I was putting on another layer because I chipped it like 20 minutes into wearing it, and all of a sudden I had this feeling like I recognized the glitter? Like I felt this thing way deep in my gut and for a minute I couldn't breathe. It's the closest thing I've felt to how books and movies make Christmas look. Like I was home, with family, cookies and cider and all that stuff. Familiar and safe. I almost didn't recognize that feeling. And it came from the nail polish. How weird is that.

I mean, I don't want to make it sound like I've had this awful Charles Dickens childhood - Rose and Charlie are the best ever and always there for me and I love them a lot. But things never feel like...home. You know?

My mom always says this cryptic stuff about how I'm "special" and I wanna strangle her because I'm not, but you try getting my mom to stop doing anything she wants to do. Rose told me once that one day, I would "lead the charge into a new era of existence and access" because I'm "of the Source" and I was like uhhhh okay?? Charlie mostly treats me pretty normal, except when I ask him questions about our family. my mom or any Dram. He knows that I want to know more about them and he's my only real entrypoint, but apparently he's like the black sheep of that whole family. He and my mom were close way back right before I was born, but now whenever she comes to visit he barely even looks at her.

So that's to say: nobody tells me anything, ever.

January 16, 2019

Okay this is so weird. I wrote that entry yesterday about glitter and then last night I dreamed about glitter. Then I woke up with purple glitter in my bed?? Like not a lot, so at first I thought it was from my nail polish, but it was just a handful of purely purple glitter that looks nothing like my nail polish. SO WEIRD!!!!!!

February 14, 2019

Rose has an old book full of "ye olde" style fairy tales, and I flipped through it for the first time in forever today.

Not so weirdly, I've always been drawn to the story of Rapunzel.

Rapunzel couldn't leave the tower, or else she'd break her neck and die.

Same.

February 19, 2019

I was reading this article the other day in one of the teen magazines my "mom" gets me a subscription to and it was all about body positivity, which is great, but it was basically just like "wear a crop top if you wannna wear a crop top! it doesn't matter what size you are! You go, girl!" And like, sure. Yes. I am all for that. But doesn't it seem like there are some steps missing in there? Like, I can physically put on a crop top and wear it outside. But how do I convince myself that everybody isn't looking at me and making fun of me in their minds? How do I unlearn the last almost-fifteen years? How do I get actually positive about my body, not just put on a crop top and fight the urge to cry all day?

It's the same thing like when my mom sends me brochures from the CEO camp she ten when she was my age (her dad started the camp for her, which is an insane thing just by itself, but she did all the work, which is even more insane) and she's like "Marin, you lack direction for your life" and I'm like, cool mom. Yeah. I can see that. What I can't see is how to get there from here.

March 2, 2019

This is what I want my life to look like, volume 2:

The walls of my room are covered in Polaroids of me and my friends. There are lots of mirrors in all kinds of shapes. hearts and moons and stars. There's a record player and a lot of vintage records by Billie Holiday and Lena Horne and Peggy Lee and Nina Simone. And Christmas lights! Everywhere! Lots of of pink and purple Christmas lights everywhere.

If I lived in this room, I'd have so many friends and be part of so many clubs. My best friend would have a collection of vintage cameras, and every place we go to that has a photo booth, we'd get photos taken. Every time I'd look at myself in one of those mirrors, I'd feel happy at what I see and never weird or sad. (Jesse hates taking pictures, so even when I actually do normal stuff with her there's no evidence. What even is a life supposed to be without evidence? That's not an actual question you need to answer Jesse, it's just a question)

Anyway, if I lived in this kind of room, my mom would probably be like, an art history professor at a liberal arts college. That's how come everything looks so cool, because I would know stuff about art. My mom and I would love to try new recipes together. We get each other new cookbooks for every special occasion, and right now we're working out way through a Moroccan one. Moroccan Mondays.

In actuality, there's a dust storm happening outside and my eyes sting.

March 9, 2019

Here's what I'm obsessed with lately.

Can. You. EVEN???

February 3, 2020

Omg I totally forgot this blog existed!!

I lost the password and instead of just resetting it I got in one of my super stubborn moods (Taurus moon lol) and just kept putting in guesses and jokes on me, it locked me out. Anyway, that's a boring story.

But my friend Ximena is really good at hacking and stuff, so she got me back in. Yeah you read that right - I have friends. Obviously a lot has happened since my last post. Ximena moved out here a couple months ago (X's family used to live here but they moved away a while ago) and she introduced me to Lora who I sorta-not-really already knew, and Jesse and I have been hanging out with them a ton. Jesse kind of more than me. Which is fine!!

Anyway I'm 15 now? If I lived somewhere normal I'd be psyched about almost being 16, because I'd get a car and have a Sweet Sixteen and eat a huge PINK cake, but I don't!

February 16, 2020

I read this fanfic the other night that was written in the second person so everything was like "you." "you're doing this" etc you know?

So... You go to a drive-in movie with Heartthrob Boy, and he spills soda on you by accident. And you take off your shirt ( you have a tank top on, don't worry) to clean it up, bit you're still all sticky and self-conscious about being sticky and HTB like... used his tongue to get it off??? AAHHHHH I'M DISGUSTING

but also I wonder if a boy will ever touch any part of me with his tongue

March 2, 2020

Hi I don't know if you heard but I have friends :)))

March 15, 2020

I think I'm so into painting my nails and doing my hair because those are things that always fit. I don't have to worry about places not carrying about a size 8, or places that carry XLs but when you read the measurements they're actually size 8s too and it's like jesus if that's an XL what am I

My "mom" was confused why I needed new pants because mine still look new, but I showed her the thigh holes and she was like "that's a weird place for a hole, how did that happen" and I realized that when your legs are a certain size, you just don't know about thigh rub and what it does to clothes. Pants could just last for years.

No matter what, I can paint my nails with a different color nail polish on every finger, and I can always do a braid crown. And I know I'm cute as hell, etc, so this is not a Marin Needs to Learn to Love Herself thing. It's just an UGH thing

April 17, 2020

So Rose does all these Source experiments on plants and flowers and stuff. Tbh, it's just one if those things I hardly even register anymore because it's just always there. She's explained to me a million times what Source is/does/means, but the way Rose explains things sometimes is just a LOT to take in and she refers to me as a "child of Source" but I kinda figure that's like "child of God" right? What else would that mean?

But anyway, it's really annoying because dried flowers are a part of my new aesthetic and I pinned a bunch of them up on my wall but I woke up this morning to a freaking jungle of very alive flowers. I freaked out. on Rose, and she Rose said she didn't do it and I was like WELL THEN WHO DID and she said that I did??

Which like. Obviously that doesn't make sense. I asked her what she meant and She just shook her head and said " It's happening. We should have known" which is some horror movie shit that she refused to elaborate on. I love to feel safe and normal!!

Or maybe it's not a horror movie at all. But maybe it's a superhero movie? Maybe there's some kind of origin story I don't know about yet, and all of this will be worth it once I figure out my powers. I wonder what my costume will look like. Lol.

April 23, 2020

Is it possible to die from longing? I know that sounds melodramatic, but I'm also kinda serious?? Because it seems like one of those things that could fester and get infected and kill you. It's like when you fall down and bang up your knee, and you need to put a band-aid on the scrape for a while, but THEN you need to air it out - but how do you know when you're supposed to do each one of those things? And if you do either one too much, your knee gets infected. What if I smother my heart with band-aids for too long and it gets infected? This isn't about anybody. I just keep having these dreams about someone I never expected to have dreams about and they're so intense that they keep leaking into my life and I wonder if I need to do something about them.

May 2, 2020

So Jesse's gotten really into metal music, and I tried to get her to play me something since, AS PREVIOUSLY ESTABLISHED, that's what we've literally ALWAYS DONE with music and each other, and she kinda looked at Ximena out of the corner of her eye and said like "I don't think it's really your thing" And it was the meanest thing anybody's ever said to me.

So later I looked up Zenion, the band she was talking about, and I listened to every single fucking song they've ever recorded turned up as loud as it could go with my own headphones that are better than hers anyway, and I loved it. And I didn't love it just because she said I wouldn't. I loved it because it was loud and weird and wild and when I listened to it it made me feel like it's not crazy when so feel stuff so hard it's like my heart's gonna vibrate out of my body. And I would have told Jesse all this and we could have shared it, but I guess she thinks just because I like HTB and glitter and stuff, I don't have the capacity for anything else.

She clearly doesn't know me at all. So much for any kind of whatever, why would she ever want to kiss someone she clearly sees as like a stupid baby.

May 7, 2020

The dreams are getting weirder and they're happening more. I'm getting scared to go to sleep. Not that the dreams are always scary (they almost never are, or not scary like in a typically scary horror movie way). I mean, I've only ever been me. I don't know what other peoples' dreams are like.

The other night in one I was jumping on a trampoline, which is something I've never done in real life. I told Rose about it when I woke up, and she said "do you even know how to jump on a trampoline?" and I said "Rose, it's not like riding a bike. You don't have to learn. You just jump." and then we got into this whole thing about how some things we just know, and jumping's one of them, and how that's so weird. Sometimes I really like talking to Rose about stuff.

May 19, 2020

So, it's prom season in the real world. If I lived somewhere normal, my prom dress would be pink with lots of tulle and silk flowers at the shoulders, and it would fit perfectly and trying in dresses would be fun and not anxiety-inducing.

But since there are only like 10 teenagers currently in 7MV, were not having a homecoming. Cool.

May 27, 2020

So, mom came to visit this weekend, and I asked her about her prom. She was Typical Cecelia at first, very "Prom is a waste of time and money, Marin. It's a night when lesser people play dress-up to engage with their aspirations of grandeur." And I was like eyeroll forever and just stopped talking. BUT THEN she actually talked to me like a human being. She was like, "I actually didn't go to my prom" and when I asked her why she said that she didn't have a date, and was very self-conscious about it. I almost passed out at her admitting that she's ever been anything less than perfect.

(gonna continue this in reblog)

[aggressive-positivity-network]

How do you think the mercs would react to engineer getting really tired and doing something absolutely idiotic? Like Engie don't lick the soap it won't taste good sweetie (totally not inspired by the fact ive done this same thing while exhausted)

Also your hcs are great!! They all seem super thought out and they're a thrill to read! Your writing is... Ok no word seems sufficient to describe it! It just too good!

Askers like you make my day! Thank you so much! Sorry if this is a little short, but I’m still working on the relationship ones, which take forever to write.

Scout:

“Hey, uh, Engie...buddy...you good?”

“Listen, I’m the only merc around here that does stupid stuff like that...you’re one of the smart guys, remember?”

Pretends to yawn so that Engie will feel more tired and go to bed faster.

When that doesn’t work - Engie doesn’t pay much attention to his surroundings when he’s working - he asks Sniper for help.

Sniper:

“Aw, bloody ‘ell, ‘as he gone into one of his fits again?”

‘Fits’ meaning bouts of creative invention that can last anywhere from several hours to a couple weeks.

Sniper waves a hand in front of Engie’s face, but to no avail.

“Nah, mate, he’s outta this world. All off in his own universe. There’s nothin’ that can bring him out now.”

Suddenly Medic walks by, and the pair practically pull him in to help.

Medic:

“Hm...zhere’s only vun thing that can avaken zhis building beauty!”

Medic wraps his arms around Engineer’s neck. No response.

Head on the shoulder. Nothing.

Chin resting on top of head. Nope.

Tugging on his collar. Still nada.

Finally, Medic uses his secret weapon: the cheek peck.

Engie still doesn’t look up - in fact, Medic has to pull his arm away from almost putting his hand on a sparking wire, something that an alert Engie would never do.

“Ach! Engie! Dummkopf! Vhat are you doing?!”

Suddenly, Spy peeks his head in as he walks by, but Medic grabs him by the tie.

“I need zhis vorktable for my experiment, and ve have all tried our luck. Any bright ideas?”

Spy:

“Why must I always find myself in these situations? Surrounded by idiots, waiting for my assistance.”

A murmur of complaints all around, but no one contradicts him. They still need a pair of fresh eyes.

Spy snaps in front of Engie’s face.

“Laborer? Do you mind coming down to earth so the good doctor can commit his nightly atrocities?”

No answer. Not even a look.

Spy thumps Engineer’s hat several times. Then knocks. Then takes it off completely. Still no reaction.

Spy has been getting increasingly more frustrated, as he has been waiting to unwind all week, and this is keeping him from a glass of scotch and a good magazine.

“Did your Texan weed of a mother never teach you manners? Or did she not know any herself? She most likely had yet to learn her alphabet, much less any sort of etiquette.”

Scout cringed, Sniper pulled his hat over his eyes, and even Medic put a hand on his bonesaw. You never talked about Engineer’s mom. Scout almost got a wrench through his forehead when he walked into Engie’s workshop in the middle of a Yo Mama joke.

This happened to be an exception, because Engie still stared blankly at his project. This infuriated Spy, whose sharp tongue usually had a much bigger impact.

“LOOK AT ME WHEN I’M TALKING TO YOU, YOU SLACKJAWED SCREW MONKEY!”

Spy gave Engie a stinging, backhanded slap.

Engie scarcely stumbled.

Spy roared in rage and walked out, using his cloaking device so he wouldn’t have to bear a walk of shame. He was also holding his raw hand, which was hurt from the slap.

Demo walked in right after, rubbing his eyes and looking really hung over.

Demo:

“Mmph...whasall this, then? Aye...onea those, eh?”

Demo, being the night owl that he is, had seen Engie in his zone before - in fact, he was usually the first to snap Engie out of it.

“Comere, I’ll show ya how it’s done.”

Demo took the empty beer bottle he was holding and cracked Engie over the head with it. It shattered on impact.

“Don’tcha worry, lads, that hard hat ‘a his is made for more than a strong drink.”

Demo laughed at his own joke, then slowly got serious as he realized Engie still wasn’t reacting.

“Lad? Are ya...did anybody check for a pulse?”

Medic walked over and put two fingers on his neck. After a few minutes, his eyes went wide.

“No bloody pulse?! How the hell-!”

Pyro suddenly walked in, holding a bag of gummy bears.

Pyro:

He mumbles excitedly, then goes over to Engie.

She takes a red gummy bear, which are Engineer’s favorite, and holds it out to him.

No response.

Pyro laughs good-naturedly, as if he was joking about how silly Engineer was being. He put the gummy bear in Engineer’s mouth.

It fell out, but Pyro giggled and put it back in again.

It tumbled out once more, and Pyro cocked their head.

This whole process went on a few more times before Pyro decided to tap Engie on the shoulder.

When that didn’t work, he walked over in front of the table to look at Engie’s face, and hopefully get his attention.

Pyro took one look, started, then backed away slowly. After they had gotten a good distance, he ran to Medic and hid behind him, starting to cry.

Sniper translated: “He doesn’t look good...he doesn’t look like Engie...he didn’t even look...did I do something wrong?”

There was a rattling from above, and Soldier popped his head out of the vent and looked around.

Soldier:

“Morning, maggots!”

“It’s ten o’clock, mate...”

“You shut your godamn mouth before I write you up for insubordination!”

Soldier leapt down, took one look at Engie, and grunted.

“Gone A.W.O.L, huh?”

Everyone nodded, albeit unsure.

“I’ll show you landlubbers what we did in the army...”

He very slowly crept up to Engineer, grinning. Everybody took a step back, just in case.

Finally, Soldier pounced, taking Engineer’s hat and replacing it with his own, whooping and laughing as he went back up the vent.

Everyone just stared at each other, and while they were all recovering, Heavy walked in, still in his nightgown.

Heavy:

“Team is all here...what is wrong?”

Everyone started talking at once, but Heavy just held up a hand.

“One at time. Doktor. What is wrong?”

“Engineer doesn’t have a pulse, he hasn’t reacted to stimuli, his facial expression doesn’t change...he is a dead man valking!”

Heavy just chuckled. “Engie just sleepy. Here. Heavy will take him to bed.”

Heavy picked Engineer up by the underarms, lifting him over his shoulder.

Before he knew it, Engineer was falling apart. Arms, legs, body. It all crumbled to the floor in a mix of wires and cogs.

Pure. Chaos.

Everyone was either screaming, crying, looking like they were about to vomit, or were trying to salvage the pieces.

Suddenly, they heard a yawn behind them.

“Well, howdy, y’all!”

Engineer:

After everyone had gotten over the shock and had made a huge hug pile, Engineer explained everything.

The Engie at the desk was a robot with a realistic skin suit on. In the dark and dusty workshop, no one had noticed the difference.

He was actually doing an experiment - something that resembled a “straight face” experiment they had done with children. He wanted to see how people reacted when there...wasn’t any reaction. His hypotheses were mostly correct - except for Soldier, put he was a random variable anyway.

Scout was mildly put off, Sniper and Medic came up with a logical solution, Spy was furious because of his job’s emphasis on reaction, Demo joked around until it wasn’t funny anymore and then just froze, Pyro was very upset, and Heavy tried to physically change the situation.

“It was all real interestin’...but it had to be a blind study. Sorry I had to worry y’all. It’ll never happen again.”

He looked down at his broken robot.

“Especially not with my Engiebot in pieces.”

Engineer told everybody goodnight, apologized one more time, said he’d make it up to them, and then went to his room.

Needless to say, everyone followed Engie to bed that night.

And he had a certain Frenchman to apologize to over a cold-shouldered breakfast.

***************

I’m a writer...can’t you tell? No, but seriously, by the time I realized it was spinning out of control, I had written too much to delete. I know it wasn’t exactly a normal response, but I just couldn’t resist! I just felt a really good story in this one!

Anyway, I’m sorry this took so long! I have an ask blog and a lot of requests coming my way, so I may be a little slower on the upkeep. But a lot of the requests are pretty short, so I should be able to knock them out.

@catbunblue302

[khaleesiofalicante]

bestie do you really think it's funny to make me cry?

OK WHERE DO I START AUJHUJHDSDUJHFV

deep bre-INCOHERENT SCREAMING

That's it. that's all I have to say.

THEY PASSED THE CHILD PROTECTION BILL I'M GONNA BE CRYING IN A CORNER IF ANYONE NEEDS ME

All those shadowhunters who ran back to Idris I hope you starve to death there. have fun!

Anjali is so awesome OH MY GOD I LOVE HER ALREADY

Rafael is THAT kid I see...it suits him so well.

It had been two very long years stuck in this small office room. But every time Alec saw the way David giggled when Lexi called her father Jalapeno poppers or some other equally ridiculous name, Alec knew it was worth all the trouble.

THIS OMG I'M NOT OK

Alec wondered if that’s why so many leaders before him had been awful. It was easy to be a bad leader. But it took effort to be a good one.

This is so true...I'm so proud of him...

Dani...bestie THAT IMMORTALITY CRISIS WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO ME. I know it's gonna happen but I was having a very good day. why do you hurt me in such ways... (I'm pretty sure my family thinks I'm mentally unstable after the way I screamed reading)

“Anjali,” Diego sighed. “What have I told you about doors?”

“Knock them down?”

“I said knock on them!” Diego corrected, shaking his head. “Not knock them down!”

I'm in love.

HUHYUHKSDYKFVYUFVYU ALEC'S CONSUL VOICE I'M SCREAMING

SIMON BESTEST!! HIM SORTING THE STUDENTS INTO THESE GROUPS I LOVE IT SO MUCH!!! AND ANJALI BESTIE GOOD LUCK AT BEATING THE SEELIES!! (good luck with stealing the weapons)

well, Rafael do you perhaps have a little crush? (Grammarly ik I'm writing in lowercase stfu)

ok ok I know this is pretty sad but every time someone gives Magnus or Alec the "you haven't talked to him yet?" look I start laughing-

ALEC'S SO CLUELESS ABOUT MAX AND DAVID I CANT-

“So, you are just going to leave me here and go to York then?” Max demanded now; all puppy dog eyes. “Like my mom left me at the academy?”

Yeah. He took the news a little too well.

MAX PLAYING THE ADOPTED CARD I LOVE HIM SO MUCH

“Is it because you don’t like me?” Max pouted again. “Like my mom…Who left me all alone.”

“You can’t play the adopted card with me, you lil shit,” Rafael laughed. “I’m adopted too.”

I'M SO IN LOVE LEAVE ME ALONE

AWW MAX SEEING THE INSTITUTE AND IMMEDIATELY GOING "David would love this" ISTG THIS KID I LOVE HIM SO MUCH

“Weren’t you listening to a podcast on Mayan Civilization during breakfast?” Alec raised an eyebrow.

“Bapak said it’s historically accurate!” Rafe argued.

“Bapak is not that old!” Alec countered.

“Maybe he is,” Max said, analyzing the paintings on the walls. “Maybe you don’t know it.”

“Excuse me, I know how old my husband is,” Alec said indignantly.

“Then where are the receipts dad?” Max asked. “Show us the receipts!”

Where are the receipts, Alec? EXACTLY!

THANK GOD SOMEONE ELSE HAS CAUGHT ON TO MAX'S VERY OBVIOUS CRUSH

“I think he likes David,” Rafe whispered.

“Of course he does,” Alec whispered back. Why were they whispering? “David is a sweet boy.”

“No. I think he ‘likes him’ likes him,” Rafael giggled.

Alec looked at his son sharply. “But-He is..Da..They are children!”

“You’ve never heard a childhood crush?” Rafe grinned.

“No, I was too busy…studying,” Alec sniffed.

“That’s not what I heard,” Rafael bit his lip. “I heard you had a thing for boys in motorcycle jackets.”

“Okay that’s it! You are not allowed to hang out at Hotel Dumort anymore,” Alec said.

Really Alec? Studying? REALLY???

MAX AND RAFE RACING TO THE TRAINING ROOM!!!

the reference to the infernal devices...I'M GONNA KILL THE ALREADY DEAD STARKWEATHERS! I'M ABOUT TO DO SOME NECROMANCY SHIT TO BRING THOSE FUCKERS BACK JUST TO KILL THEM SLOWLY

Hugs max it's gonna be ok buddy.

In that moment, Alec remembered all the talks.

He remembered how his mother had lectured Izzy about not going out alone late at night, but she hadn’t said anything to Jace or Alec.

He remembered the way Jem spoken quietly to Mina in soft Mandarin about how people might call her names, but he hadn’t said anything to Kit.

He remembered the way Julian had told Ty to be careful about kissing his boyfriend in public, but he hadn’t said anything to Dru.

I hate this so damn much. I hate it. It sucks how there will always be people who will be targeted for being born the way they are. Whether it be skin color, sexuality, body type, or anything, people will always fucking talk and make the world unsafe for certain people just because they aren't generic male cishets. If you're a girl you're in danger. If you're a POC you're in danger, If you're neurodivergent you're in danger. If you're a member of the LGBTQ community you're in danger. If you're disabled you're in danger. If you're part of any minority you're in danger. If you dare to be different you're in danger. Fuck people. I'm a queer POC female and it's scary. I don't want to be always checking my surroundings when I'm out. I shouldn't have to feel this scared walking out of my own house but I do and it sucks. Ok, I feel like I'm derailing from the main point here.

Sorry for that just got really heated for a second there.

NO NOT THE NIGHTMARE. BABY NO

DAVID MY CHILD!! OMG, HE'S GONNA TAKE UP ARCHERY SOMEONE HOLD ME WHILE I CRY!

“This is who you are,” David said, his voice oddly soft now. Softer than usual. “And you’re beautiful.”

Alec blinked at that.

“Blue,” David said quickly. “I meant you’re blue. Uh, yes.”

BESTIE I SAW WHAT YOU SAID THERE. WE ALL DID

Also, alec sitting outside max's room...IM GONNA-

“David is in there,” Alec whispered. “I just wanted to…check…if everything was okay.”

“Alexander, are you spying on our child?” Magnus demanded. “Without me???”

“What? No! I-”

“Move over!” Magnus sank down next to him. “What are they saying? Are they kissing?”

“WHAT? They are not kissing!” Alec said in alarm. “Wait. Are they???”

He couldn’t hear anything now. Alec panicked.

“I haven’t talk to the kids about kissing yet,” Magnus pointed out. “We can’t talk to Max without talking to Rafael first.”

“Wait. Is Rafael kissing people???”

“Rafael is not kissing people,” Rafael replied as he walked past them to the kitchen. “Also, you guys are shit at whispering.”

Alec rolled his eyes at him and turned to Magnus. “It’s stressful enough that we need to talk about racism in the shadow world. Now we need to talk about kissing??”

“And other stuff,” Magnus chuckled.

Alec groaned into Magnus’ shoulder. “By the angel. Fine. We’ll just tell them there is no kissing. Until they are 30.”

“Hypocrite,” Rafael coughed into his hand as he walked back to the table with a bag of chips.

THIS WHOLE SCENE OH MY GOD.

And srsly alec? 30? really? whips out the extract "kissed" from cassie's website According to my files here-

“And David?”

“Yes, sir?”

“The bedroom door stays open from now on.”

David blinked, his cheeks pink. “I…What?”

“Door stays open,” Alec said, lowering his voice, just a register. “Is that understood?”

AYY ALEC DAD MODE YUCDUHDFHFUHJIUHC THIS IS SO AMAZING IM GONNA SCREAM

Alec advising David with the bow is so close to my heart...IDK WHY IT JUST IS

That conversation...PEOPLE FUCKING SUCK I HOPE HUMANS GO EXTINCT BECAUSE I SURE AM READY TO DIE SO LET'S TAKE THE EARTH DOWN-

“Why don’t shadowhunters have acne?”

"What?" Alec blinked.

“Their skin is like so freaking perfect and smooth and they can just freaking go through puberty without a one freaking pimple and don’t even get me started on the freaking dimples and then-”

Magnus started laughing. Alec felt a little confused.

EXACTLY MY THOUGHTS !!!!! THAT DAMN ANGEL BLOOD

That part about how we normalize these little things which are actually hurtful...I didn't realize that. I guess we really do, huh? This just made me want to be more careful with others and if I feel others do this with me, to stop them and correct them.

I loved this chapter so much. You're such a great writer.

I wanted to share something of my own now!! I FINALLY GOT MY COPY FOR RWARB!!!! I told my parents it was a thriller about how the first son and the prince forge a friendship and discover secrets about the government and the monarchy-

The place I bought it from sent me a very cute bookmark. It's a pride bookmark and it's just my first ever pride merch and I'm close to tears. Let's just say my family isn't the most accepting so this bookmark's really precious to me

Sorry, the quality isn't the best. I was in a hurry. It's almost 4 am now I'm gonna try and sleep (I'm gonna reorganize my bookshelf). See you on Tuesday!!

Thank you so much. I love reading your comments. They are so honest and full of life. You are going to LOVE rwrb. It's such a good book and it's so romantic and raw and perfect. Lmao about your parents. What they don't know can't hurt them ;) And I loooooooooove your bookmark. Be gay. Do crime.

PS -

"It sucks how there will always be people who will be targeted for being born the way they are. Whether it be skin color, sexuality, body type, or anything, people will always fucking talk and make the world unsafe for certain people just because they aren't generic male cishets. If you're a girl you're in danger. If you're a POC you're in danger, If you're neurodivergent you're in danger. If you're a member of the LGBTQ community you're in danger. If you're disabled you're in danger. If you're part of any minority you're in danger. If you dare to be different you're in danger. Fuck people. I'm a queer POC female and it's scary. I don't want to be always checking my surroundings when I'm out. I shouldn't have to feel this scared walking out of my own house but I do and it sucks. Ok, I feel like I'm derailing from the main point here."

THIS IS THE MAIN POINT. YOU GOT IT. SO CONGRATS <3

[afroherbalism]

"Emma Dupree (1897-1992) was an influential black herbalist from Falkland and Fountain, in Pitt County in North Carolina. She was known locally as “granny woman.”

Because she prays, she brews herbs. Because she brews herbs, she heals. Because she heals, she is the undisputed sage of Pitt County. They say her home remedies can quiet a colicky baby, cure a mean cold and scare lice off a hog.

"All that we see, everything that is growin' in the earth," Emma says, "is healin' to the nation of any kind of disease."

She was the daughter of freed slaves and grew up on the Tar River. She was known for her work with native herbs: Sassafras, white mint, double tansy, rabbit tobacco, maypop, mullein, catnip, horseradish, and silkweed.

Here is an excerpt from an article published shortly after her death:

"From the time she could walk, Emma felt drawn to the land. She would roam the woods, plucking, sniffing, tasting weeds. She grew up that way, collecting the leaves, stems, roots and bark of sweet gum, white mint, mullen, sassafras in her coattail or a tin bucket. She'd tote them back to the farm, rinse them in well water and tie them in bunches to dry. In the backyard, she'd raise a fire under a kettle and boil her herbs to a bubbly froth, then pour it up in brown-necked stone jugs: A white-mint potion for poor circulation; catnip tea for babies with colic; tansy tea - hot or cold - for low blood sugar; mullein tea for a stomach ache. Mixed with molasses or peppermint candy to knock out the bitterness. Her kind of folk medicine dates back centuries. In the 1600s, African slaves brought root-doctor remedies to America. Indians and immigrants had cure-alls, too. In some rural areas, scattered herbalists still practice."

She was born on July 4, 1897, the seventh among 18 siblings, Emma Williams Dupree grew up on the Tar River and was known in her family as "that little medicine thing" because of her early understanding of herbs.

Her parents, Pennia and Noah Williams, were freed slaves farming in Falkland, NC.

She told an interviewer in 1979 that her mother remembered being "on the porch of the old Wooten's farm home when freedom came. She was 16 when Mr. and Mrs. Wooten walked out on that porch and told her she was 'as free as they were, but they loved her just the same.'"

She was married for one year to Ethan Cherry, a farmer. She divorced him and remarried another farmer, Austin Dupree, Jr., who was born in 1892. Emma and Austin moved to Fountain, NC in 1936 and had five children, whose ages in the 1930 U.S. Census are indicated in parentheses: Lucy (12), Herbert (9), John (5), Doris (3), and Mary (1).

They remained married until his death at age 90. She died at home, at 3313 N. Jefferson St, Fountain, on March 12, 1996. She is buried at Saint John's Missionary Baptist Church Cemetery, in Falkland,NC.

Emma Dupree's "garden-grown pharamacy" included sassafras, white mint, double tansy, rabbit tobacco, maypop, mullein, catnip, horseradish, silkweed and other plants from which she made tonics, teas, salves and dried preparations. These were cultivated in her yard and gathered from the banks of the Tar River. She told Karen Baldwin that she grew a special tree in her back yard, which she called her "healing berry tree."

She explained, "Now that tree, I don't know of another name for it, but it's in the old-fashioned Bible and the seed for it came from Rome." She also told Baldwin of being an especially alert baby: "They said I was just looking every which way. And I kept acting and moving and doing things a baby didn't do. And I walked early. I was walking at seven months old, just as good and strong. When I got so I got out doors, I went to work. I was pulling up weeds, biting them, smelling in them, and spitting them out. And folks in them days, they just watched me, watched what I was doing.

Awards and Recognition

In 1984, Dupree was awarded the Brown-Hudson Award by the North Carolina Folklore Society, recognizing her as an individual who contributed significantly to the transmission, appreciation and observance of traditional culture and folk life in North Carolina.

In 1992, Dupree received the North Carolina Heritage Award, lifetime achievement recognition for outstanding traditional artists in North Carolina

NOTE:

Here is a link to a video of Mrs Emma Dupree being interviewed by students of the ECU medical research department. This video is Produced by the office of Health Services Research and Development, School of Medicine, East Carolina University.

It is 40 minutes long.

Link: https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/58575?fbclid=IwAR1e22I8_vRfvzI0nZXDBT8XG7Z-4DgiNykjqsbPD8hoD2Aw8haC2uI8vvo#details

Source;https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/ncpi/view/5581

Source:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Dupree

---

Herbalist, 94, Lets Nature Heal

by Paige Williams Feb 20, 1992

Before her came African root doctors and Indian medicine men. People believed their mystical potions could cure body and soul and sometimes they could. Some modern medicines still use herbal derivatives. Few old-time herbalists like Emma are left in North Carolina. Hospitals first forced her kind out of business. Death is finishing the job. Emma Dupree's hanging tough, though, pushing 10 decades. She takes the tonic, see. Drinks it like water. She jumps out of her chair, props fists on her waist and swivels her hips Hula-Hoop style. She holds both hands out flat and squirms her wrinkled fingers all around, crossing and uncrossing, like she's making a million wishes. No arthritis there.

"There's something to that stuff," said her granddaughter, Sandra White.

Joe Exum, town grocer, keeps a Crown Royal bourbon bottle under the front seat of his pickup truck. It holds the slimy remnants of Emma's tonic: oily brown syrup that looks like tobacco spit, stings the nose like paint thinner and tastes like pine tar smells.

"I'd pay $50 for a bottle right now," Exum said. "Two swallers and it'll knock the sore throat right out." He's waiting for Emma to brew another batch. She stewed her last at Christmas. She used to make the tonic right steady, every day almost, the way she learned 80 years ago, when the woods first called her.

Pitt County borders the Pamlico River 80 miles east of Raleigh. Its largest town is Greenville, the county seat, population

44,972. One of its smallest is Fountain, population 445, founded in 1900 on the western rim. Emma Dupree was Emma Williams then, a 3-year-old growing up the daughter of freed slaves on a farm 9 miles east in Falkland, where she was born the Fourth of July, 1897. Emma was the knee baby, second from the youngest of seven girls and four boys, and always hanging on her mama's knee. Early on, Pennia and Noah Williams knew she was nature's child. From the time she could walk, Emma felt drawn to the land.

She would roam the woods, plucking, sniffing, tasting weeds. She grew up that way, collecting the leaves, stems, roots and bark of sweet gum, white mint, mullen, sassafras in her coattail or a tin bucket. She'd tote them back to the farm, rinse them in well water and tie them in bunches to dry. In the backyard, she'd raise a fire under a kettle and boil her herbs to a bubbly froth, then pour it up in brown-necked stone jugs: A white-mint potion for poor circulation; catnip tea for babies with colic; tansy tea - hot or cold - for low blood sugar; mullen tea for a stomach ache. Mixed with molasses or peppermint candy to knock out the bitterness. Her kind of folk medicine dates back centuries. In the 1600s, African slaves brought root-doctor remedies to America. Indians and immigrants had cure-alls, too. In some rural areas, scattered herbalists still practice.

"It's dying out," says Charles Reagan Wilson of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. "People more and more rely on modern science." Pitt County's got both. Modern medicine and Emma Dupree. Her school was God's school; her classroom, the land. While the other children played, she picked herbs. Sometimes she caught the other children talking about her: "There comes that ol' rovin' gal. Reckon where she goin' now?" Yet they always followed her.

When Emma was about 20, she married Ethan Cherry, a farmer. It lasted about a year. The story goes that Cherry went one wisecrack too far about how many women it takes to satisfy a man. Emma whacked him with a chair. Knocked him out cold. Then she divorced him. "He wasn't no good husband." She married another farmer, Austin Dupree. They moved to Fountain in 1936. Old age killed him in the the early 1970s. He was nearly 90. Of Emma's five children, only Doris, 66, is left. She lives next door to Emma's little white-and-green house on Jefferson Street, a longtime magnet to the afflicted.

Herbs' earthy aroma herbs brewed day and night. Their warm earthy aroma filled the whole house. Emma poured her tonic up in glass vinegar jugs and canning jars and kept it in a pantry off the kitchen. Somebody was always knocking on the front door. Emma would fetch it: "Now you take this with faith because it's not me. I'm just the instrument." She never set a price. People paid what they could, sometimes $5, sometimes $30. "It was a common thing for people to literally be waiting in line," said White, 38, the granddaughter Emma raised. People sought advice, too. They'd bang on the door, pull her aside: "Can I talk to you?" Fountain's own Ann Landers. "You can tell her a problem and she can work it out so it don't seem so bad," White said.

Some, she couldn't help. Once, a young girl dying of leukemia and weary of doctors showed up at Emma's door. Emma suspected it was hopeless. Still, she couldn't say no. She gave her the tonic. "I don't want to make her sound like a saint," White said, "but she tried to help everybody." Emma won't take the credit. "Whatever your talent, whatever you is, you come with it," she said. "When you come into this world, God's done fixed you with what you got to do." To townspeople, she's "Aunt Emma."

In December, they made her grand marshal of the Fountain Christmas parade, all two blocks of it. She waved from the back of the long white limousine borrowed from the local funeral home. Only the best for the sage of Pitt County.

Source:https://www.tulsaworld.com/archives/herbalist-lets-nature-heal/article_3b0e06d1-4af9-5567-93ee-bc4b50d5867f.html

[soup-fish]

Hiya I meant to send you asks like forever ago but I'm bad so I didn't do that so here they are now they're from this ask prompt thing you reblogged

Feel free to answer these about any of your OCs cause I don't really remember any except rabbit and Knight so~

1, 10, 25, 29, 33, 37, 46, 50, 61, 63, 78, 80, sorry there's so many you don't have to answer them all, I am just cursed with insatiable curiosity only balanced out by my fear of asking too many questions and being annoying—

Hi!!! You’re not bad!! You’re one of the coolest aliens ever!!!! 

I am absolutely answering them all with multiple OCs because I will take every opportunity I get to talk about them. 

Putting it under a cut because it is LONG and I don't wanna bother.

1. What is their gender?

The Knight: (she/her)

Rabbit: agender but they use (they/them) pronouns

The Apprentice: (he/him)

Dijon: (he/him)

Julienne: (she/her) (they/them)

Monty: (he/him) (they/them)

Diana: (she/her)

Captain Pumpernickel: (he/him)

William: (he/him)

10. What are some of their talents/skills?

The Knight: Swordfighting, Dancing, pottery

Rabbit: Parlor magic, puppetry, Acting

The Apprentice: collecting, Dunescotch [the world's rough equivalent of chess], chemistry

Dijon: cooking, writing, gardening

Julienne: biking, photography, bird watching

Monty: people watching, bingo, garage sales

Diana: fencing, archery, calligraphy

Captain Pumpernickel: Singing, acting, swordfighting

William: whittling, philosophy, accordion

25. What is their biggest flaw?

The Knight: her naivete 

Rabbit: Their reluctance to be vulnerable

The Apprentice: His aversion to change and the unknown

Dijon: his self-pitying nature

Julienne: Her self-centeredness

Monty: his...not quite human-ness

Diana: She’s uptight

Captain Pumpernickel: hooboy where do I start? For one, his complete and utter dismissal of everything that doesn’t contribut to ADVENTURE

William: his lack of ambition

29. How would they describe their own personality?

The Knight: “Hmmm. I try to be as nice as possible and I’ve been told I’m rhapsodic! I don’t think my singing’s that good but it’s a sweet compliment!” 

Rabbit: “Witty. Yes. Sarcastic? Yes. The people’s demon? In more ways than one~ Even hell can’t handle me.” 

The Apprentice: “Simple, studious, and an enjoyer of quiet studying. I tend to be rather straight-forward in my methodology.”

Dijon: “God do I even have a personality? What am I besides a vaguely human shaped pile of mistakes and disappointments?” 

Julienne: “A fun loving fun person!” 

Monty: “Just your average Earth person! Nothing else to see!” 

Diana: “Calm, cool, collected, the perfect dignitary”

Captain Pumpernickel: “AN ADVENTURER! And a lover! Of your mother! Bring out the good ale my good fellows! Your captain has won another battle of the wits!”

William: “Personality? Never heard of it. Wouldn’t even begin to know what the word means. I know no such words such as sarcastic, laid-back, carefree. Nooooo.”

33. What is their biggest fear? How would they react to having to face it?

The Knight: Being ignored and unheard. She’d probably get really frustrated and maybe cry a little as a result. If it really got to her, she’d need help being pulled out of a dark place. 

Rabbit: Abandonment. Their general reaction to it is to put on a veneer of not caring and close off from the outside world more, even going so far as to act annoying and unlikable so that people leave before getting close. 

The Apprentice: Not knowing. Or, by extension, not being able to learn. He’d probably lash out in anger and storm off. 

Dijon: Being an unredeemable person. He faces it every day and he deals with it by being melodramatic in all of his writings and wallowing in misery. AKA, not dealing with it. 

Julienne: People being genuine. They’d probably get really uncomfortable and try to excuse themselves from the conversation or make jokes to redirect the conversation. 

Monty: The republic finding him hiding out on Earth. He’d fight or do anything possible out of desperation. 

Diana: Being a disappointment 

Captain Pumpernickel: Not being able to bang your mom not having adventures with his crew. He'd probably be reduced to a shell of his former self.

William: Not being able to talk his way out of a situation. 

37. How easy is it for them to say “I love you”? Do they say it without meaning it?

The Knight: Pretty easy but she means it when she says it. She's just full of love tbh.

Rabbit: It's really hard for them to say "I love you". Really really hard. Especially at the start of their arc, they would never say it, however much they mean it.

The Apprentice: It's hard for him to say, simply because it's not quantifiable enough. How does one properly explain how much they love someone? He prefers showing love through actions and more direct compliments.

Dijon: It's not easy for him to say, but he says it without meaning it, both knowingly and unknowingly.

Julienne: She doesn't say it often, but she says it to the people she cares about occasionally. She prefers to say it through time spent and physical touch though.

Monty: The Dude Loves Everything. But they also barely understand the meaning of the word so...

Diana: She doesn't say it almost at all, but prefers to use acts of service and gift giving.

Captain Pumpernickel: He never says "I love you" because he usually doesn't really mean it. He'll use some other compliment or compound of it.

William: He doesn't throw it around easily, so when he says it, it has so much more weight behind it.

46. How easily can they express emotions? How easily can they hide emotions?

The Knight: She expresses her emotions a lot and very easily, but she has a hard time hiding them.

Rabbit: They think they're sly at hiding their emotions, but they let micro-expressions slip constantly. If anyone decided to notice, one would

The Apprentice: He's a blank sheet baybee. What is he thinking? Unless it's frustration or anger, you'll never know.

Dijon: He's just kinda sad all the time. He's miserable and everyone notices.

Julienne: She allows some emotions to come through. It's a bit of a calculated effort.

Monty: All of his emotions come through all the time and he doesn't mind.

Diana: Well, she hides her sadness and happiness, but allows her frustration and such to shine through.

Captain Pumpernickel: He expresses emotions very openly and very loudly. He is a dramatic ham of a captain.

William: He keeps a near perpetual smile that occasionally wavers when things go wrong. He doesn't like to open up emotionally.

50. How would you describe their style of clothing? How would they describe their style of clothing?

The Knight: "fun and comfy!" Light armor with room for mobility but colorful

Rabbit: "...sexy" literally naked except a cloak.

The Apprentice: "practical and sensible" like a fucking nerd

Dijon: "presentable" the best time to wear a sweater, is all the time

Julienne: "quirky" quirky.

Monty: "human clothing for humans! :D" weird mixture of 1800s stuff and modern day stuff. Weird guy.

Diana: "regular??? Clothes???" Fancy ballgown at first then swashbuckling but still expensive.

Captain Pumpernickel: "EXTRAVAGANT AND ASTOUNDING" sexy hobo pirate.

William: "only the highest tier clothing/s" ...rags. doesn't care enough.

61. Which season is their favorite season?

The Knight: Spring

Rabbit: Autumn, harvest festivals and such are good for demons.

The Apprentice: Winter, you have excuses to stay inside and work. Plus the vibe is nice when it's harsh outside and cozy inside

Dijon: Summer, fewer holidays and he's not really cold resistant.

Julienne: Summer. They like the general vibe and popsicles and shorts and sunglasses and such.

Monty: Winter, they love the holidays.

Diana: Summer, she likes the heat.

Captain Pumpernickel: Autumn! He just thinks the weather and vibe are RIPE FOR ADVENTURE!

William: Winter! He like staying inside and the cold.

63. What is always guaranteed to make them smile?

The Knight: her partner! Or a silly joke! Or a delicious snack! Or friendship!

Rabbit: schadenfreude

The Apprentice: order and productivity

Dijon: his favorite childhood book

Julienne: her pet rats! Or pet frog!

Monty: A human thing like paperclips

Diana: this one is a hard one. Succeeding at any of her hobbies.

Captain Pumpernickel: ADVENTURE. and friends

William: seeing Diana smile and be free.

78. Who do they consider to be their best friend?

The Knight: The prince!

Rabbit: the Knight

The Apprentice: books

Dijon: julienne

Julienne: no one. Monty is close.

Monty: ALL HUMANS ARE BEST! AND FRIENDS!!

Diana: no one [William eventually]

Captain Pumpernickel: The sea. And his first mate. And his quartermaster.

William: no one [Diana eventually]

80. Are they a morning person or a night owl?

The Knight: Morning person

Rabbit: Night Owl

The Apprentice: Morning Person

Dijon: Night Owl

Julienne: Morning Person

Monty: Morning Person

Diana: Morning Person

Captain Pumpernickel: Morning Person

William: Night Owl

[sashasgargoyles]

"i don't want you to regret me" but for brotp eddie and Hamid

also posted on ao3

“Ready to go, Ed?” Hamid asked from the door.

Eddie spun around, looking at his outfit in the mirror with a wide grin on his face. He was wearing a brand new pale gold suit and a cape with sun patterns on it that he hadn’t been able to stop admiring since he’d seen them in the marketplace. “Ready!”

Hamid blinked at the sheer brightness of his friend’s outfit, before smiling. “Great! Thanks for coming with me! None of the others really enjoy these things.”

“I always enjoy your company, Hamid.”

Hamid’s smile brightened and he reached for Ed’s hand to lead him out the door and towards dinner. “That’s so kind of you to say, Eddie. Are you sure you don’t mind? Some of the people I used to go to school with aren’t… the nicest.”

Ed’s expression darkened, his eyebrows drawing together. “Evil-doers?”

“Well, hopefully not,” Hamid said quickly, “But they can be a bit… rude sometimes.”

“Then why do you want to go?”

“Well,” Hamid paused, thinking of the best way he could explain. He wasn’t even entirely sure himself, really, but it was expected of him. Besides, he’d just worked his way back onto his family’s good side, so he’d like to do what was expected as much as possible. At least, the good expectations. “I just think I need to go. Does that make sense?”

“No,” Ed said bluntly. “But I am here to support you! As your friend.” He smiled even wider than usual as he said it, placing a special weight on the word. It was as if it was unfamiliar to him, a special new treasure to be able to say it in reference to himself. Hamid had never asked Eddie about his past, but he had the feeling that before he’d joined the church of Apollo, before he’d met Hamid and his friends, he hadn’t had the best experiences with people.

“I appreciate it.” He squeezed Eddie’s hand as they reached the restaurant where the banquet was being held. “Two for al-Tahan,” he told the maître d’.

“Of course, sir.”

Eddie and Hamid followed the host, and Hamid stopped in his tracks when he saw who was sitting at their shared table. Oh, no.

His heart was pounding in his chest as he looked upon the image of his ex-girlfriend and his former best friend, smiling and holding hands as they sipped their wine and looked over the room.

“All right, Hamid?” Eddie asked as he felt Hamid’s hand, still gripping his own, stop him from moving forward.

“Yes,” Hamid said in a high-pitched, breathless voice. “Everything’s fine. It’s just- perhaps we should go.”

“Go? But we just got here.”

“Yes, but-“ Hamid sighed as he saw Liliana and Gideon notice him. “Never mind. Let’s just get through this.” He gripped Eddie’s hand tighter, drawing on his warmth and confidence as they reached the table.

“Hamid,” Gideon said, a stiff smile on his face that didn’t meet his eyes. “It’s so good to see you.”

Was it? Hamid remembered his last interactions with the two of them. He couldn’t say he’d ever wanted to see them again, after the hell they had separately caused him, but he recognized a man putting on a polite face for the sake of the public eye. He could play along, he supposed. Besides, arguing with them would only cause a scene, and Hamid wasn’t going to ruin his recently recovered reputation.

Hamid had grown, though, since the last time he’d had to deal with Gideon and Liliana, and he’d learned that, well, he has the power to hurt his enemies. He’d never do it, of course, but imaging their faces if he turned into a dragon in front of them…. Well, it was amusing enough to keep him going. He pasted a smile on his face that was almost real. “It’s good to see you as well. Ed, this is Liliana Beekos and Gideon Marsten-Langdon. We used to go to school together. Liliana, Gideon, this is Edward Keystone, he’s a paladin of Apollo.”

The two blinked as they took in Eddie’s blinding attire, but formalities eventually worn out and they each extended a hand to him, which he shook enthusiastically. “Yes, I can see that,” Gideon said, with a sneer that Hamid recognized but that he knew would go over Eddie’s head. There was a matching expression on Liliana’s face, but she schooled it into a polite blankness quickly.

Eddie held his cape to the side, beaming. “Isn’t it great? I got it at the market last week!”

“It’s something,” Liliana said under her breath. Hamid gritted his teeth, reminding himself that, no matter how much he wanted to, turning into a dragon and clawing their eyes out was not a good idea.

Eddie must not have heard her, because his pleased expression didn’t change as he and Hamid sat down at the table.

“So, Hamid,” Liliana asked. “What have you been doing since we saw you in Prague?”

Hamid thought that was a very generous way to say “since you had me arrested” but he wasn’t about to correct her. “I’ve been… traveling, mostly. Doing some work for the meritocrats.” He supposed Wilde still counted as one, if you thought about it loosely.

“You haven’t returned to your studies?” Liliana frowned disapprovingly. “That’s a shame. There’s a new article on the mathematical properties of dimensional distortion I was hoping to discuss with you. Professor Einstein wrote it, and-“

“Oh, we know him!” Eddie grinned. “He’s great! We should talk to him tonight, Hamid. I miss him.”

“What on earth could you possibly have to talk to Einstein about?” Gideon laughed. “The man’s a genius, I doubt he has time for you.”

Eddie’s demeanor, which had been pleasant all night, shifted, and his voice took on a hardness Hamid rarely heard from him. “Professor Einstein is my friend.”

“Einstein has been assisting us in our work,” Hamid chimed in, trying to control the situation. “Ed’s right, Einstein is our friend. He and Ed have become quite close.”

“That’s a shame,” Gideon sighed. “I’d heard the man had gone senile, but I was hoping the rumors were wrong.” His sneer became even more smug as he said, “Clearly that’s not the case if he’s spending his time with paladins. Of Apollo, no less. Airheads, the whole lot.”

Eddie stood up, towering over Gideon even more than he would normally. “I’m not an idiot. And being a paladin of Apollo is a great honor, one you will never be able to achieve. You have too much evil in side you.” It was angrier than Hamid had ever heard him, and it made Hamid stand up and reach for his hand again. Eddie shrugged it away, then turned and walked off.

Hamid turned and glared at his former friends. “The two of you are really horrible, you know that?”

“You only think that because you’ve been away for so long. Honestly, Hamid, even you could do better,” Liliana said, scoffing.

“No, quite frankly I’m not sure there is a better person than Ed in the world, and I’m more than grateful that I have him for a friend now, and not the two of you.” Hamid looked at them disdainfully and, forgoing any hope of redeeming the evening, spat, “Go drop off the side of your precious university,” then ran to catch up with Ed.

He found Eddie standing at the edge of the bridge overlooking the river, his back facing Hamid. “Eddie, I’m sorry about them. I told you, they’re all awful.”

“It’s not your fault,” Ed said. “And- they’re not wrong. I can’t- talk about that kind of stuff.” Hamid reached for Eddie’s hand again, and Eddie pulled it in front of him. “I- I don’t want to hold hands right now.”

“Okay. Could you turn and look at me?” When he did, Hamid said, “They were wrong. You don’t need to be able to talk about… interdimensional rifts. You’ve lived them, and you came out the other side a better person than either of them.”

“I just-“ Eddie sniffed, and Hamid realized he was crying. “I know that you- you’re trying to be a part of this, again, for your family, and- my family pushed me away from this, Hamid, because I wasn’t good enough. I don’t- I don’t want you to regret me.”

Hamid was overcome with the urge to hug him, but he knew his friend wouldn’t want that right now. “Eddie, I meant what I said. You’re better than all of them, and I don’t care about being a part of this life anymore if it won’t accept my friends. Forget about the banquet, okay? All I want to do is have a nice night.” Eddie nodded and Hamid pushed further. “Do you want to go to that ice cream shop we passed on the way in? Honestly, I just had to have a horrible conversation with my ex and her new fiancé, so really I’m owed a little ice cream.”

Eddie let out a soft smile. “Okay.”

They walked side by side for a few minutes until they reached the ice cream parlor, where they ordered two cones, and then sat on a bench outside, overlooking the river. “Mmmmm,” hummed Hamid as he licked his chocolate ice cream. “This is much better than whatever they would have had on the menu.”

Eddie smiled, his mood improved. “It is.” He thought for a moment. “Hamid, could I have a hug now?”

Hamid grinned and leaned over to hug his friend. Eddie was twice his size, and his hugs enveloped Hamid completely, which was one of Hamid’s favorite things about him. “I know tonight was awful, but thank you for coming with me.”

“It wasn’t too bad,” Eddie said cheerfully, pulling back from the hug. “Nothing can ruin ice cream.”

Hamid laughed and tapped his cone against Ed’s. “You’re not wrong there. Next time let’s just skip straight to the ice cream, though.”

[fly-pow-bye]

DuckTales 2017 - “TimePhoon!”

Story by: Francisco Angones, Madison Bateman, Colleen Evanson, Christian Magalhaes, Bob Snow

Written by: Madison Bateman

Storyboard by: Samir Barrett, Victoria Harris, Sam King, Jason Reicher

Directed by: Jason Zurek

Time travel and Louie, oh boy.

This episode begins on a dark and stormy night, or, to put it more specifically...

Roxanne Featherly: Here in Duckberg, life is like a hurricane?

Ha, I get it. Honestly, considering this episode is about an actual hurricane, it be a crime not to reference that. Anyway, the episode begins with the McDuck Manor preparing for the worst El Pato storm in history. Dewey and Webby are preparing the emergency food supply...

...which consists of a Chili Cheese Dog bar. Mrs. Beakley does not approve, and tells Dewey that his mother would certainly not approve of this diet that would only lead to scurvy.

Much to her chagrin, here's Della chomping on a chili cheese dog, telling Mrs. Beakley to just enjoy this "hooray-cane party". This sets up, yes, another Della-related subplot that was hinted at in "Nothing Can Stop Della Duck!". This is the third one in the span of four episodes, they are really getting out all these Della plots when they can.

This particular subplot is about Della's role as a positive role model for mothers everywhere, a role that Mrs. Beakley will have several opportunities to question in this episode. To Della, she should just let the kids be kids, she should not sweat the small stuff, and other things that Mrs. Beakley suspects she only read off of bumper stickers.

She's only been on this Earth as a mother of three for about the time between this episode and the aforementioned “Nothing Can Stop Della Duck!”, but Della knows everything will be fine.

As for one of the other kids, Huey picked this time, out of all the times he could have possibly picked, to brag about his comprehensive caveduck report that he will eventually submit to the Junior Woodchucks. He could possibly be included in the new edition of the Junior Woodchuck guidebook!

Dewey: My brother's going to be a professional nerd!

Yup, that's basically what he is. Huey could ask the Woodchuck's scoutmaster about it, but Launchpad is too busy boarding the windows in the a way anyone would expect. Scrooge, none too happy with all the broken windows, decides to tell him to check on what Louie is doing. Of course, that green guy is looking rather suspicious, but that seems to be the norm for him. As he walks in the kids' room, he notices some flashing lights right behind the Dewey Dew-Night backdrop, and he notices something amazing.

He finds out that Louie has his own tub! Incredible! They do a few jokes with this, including one where he gets out his rubber ducky, leading Louie to tell him that the Time Tub cannot be used as an actual tub. Launchpad seems a bit too eager to use it as one; maybe I shouldn't think about this too much.

This turns out this is yet another subsidiary of Louie Inc: Time Treasures. So yeah, continuation of one of the plot threads from "The Outlaw Scrooge McDuck!", and a slightly better continuation of a previous episode than the last time. So how does Time Treasures work?

First, he goes back in time with the Time Tub that he definitely didn't steal from Gyro Gearloose, teleporting right where a lost treasure was. Second, he takes it. Third, profit. Hey, if it was never found, it's not stolen! Don't even think about the logistics with this. How would Louie know where all the treasures are if they weren't found by anyone? The episode is not really harmed by this, because it's not like Louie is supposed to be using good logic in this new Louie Inc. strategy, anyway.

As Louie and his new accomplice, er, helper teleport back, this caveman goes up to gawk at these weird people in their half-open rock. He ends up getting teleported, too.

Meanwhile, Dewey sees something outside, and the kids go out and investigate. To the sheer horror of Mrs. Beakley, Della doesn't seem to care that her children and another child has gone out when a dangerous storm is imminent. Even more horrifying...

Dewey: Hey, look, a dead guy!

Oh, classic Dewey.

The dead guy turns out to be the caveduck. Webby and Dewey come up with the idea that he must have been frozen in an iceberg. Webby is still on her steak of wrong assumptions, except for that popcorn one from the previous one. Granted, there was absolutely no way she would know about Louie's shenanigans other than schenanigans being his thing.

Mrs. Beakley does bring up that this caveduck is going to mess up all of time, citing the Butterfly effect. How would she know this caveman was time-displaced at this point? Eventually, she does say there is a "S.H.U.S.H. chrono-protocol" about this, but it seems early for her to suspect this. I also know this is just a setup for a joke where Della is disgusted over Mrs. Beakley suggesting violence to a butterfly, but still.

The kids decide to eventually name him after the one word he can say and rhyme with: Bubba. I'm going to be 100% honest: I don't remember this character's appearances in the original 1987 cartoon. From what I have heard, he wasn't very well liked. If it means anything, I didn't mind this character at all in this episode, so congratulations?

The most he really does is let the sins of the modern world corrupt him, as he will eventually start eating chili dogs and wearing backwards baseball caps! This comes much to the disgust of Huey, who wants to just study the caveduck as he was back in his day. That's basically the whole plot with Bubba, really.

Going back to the other plot, Launchpad is helping Louie with a treasure chest that they have "found", and even he is questioning whether or not this is ethical. Louie shoves him off, saying that it's not stealing if it's from pirates, and there's no way this Louie Inc. subsidiary can have any real side-effects. He also silently hopes there's no way anything can be worse, and he also silently hopes that a bunch of pirates do not get zapped into the Manor.

Suddenly, pirates get zapped into the Manor. Womp womp. Louie admits that that might be one side effect.

After the commercial break, we get a news report, showing that this El Pato storm has combined with a time vortex, turning it into the titular Timephoon.

Roxanne Featherly: The Timephoon has unsurprisingly localized itself above McDuck Manor.

Okay, I love how Roxanne says "unsurprisingly" here. Of course it has to be something involving Scrooge. Everything seems to be to the point where even the people in the universe know this.

Roxanne cuts to the meteorologist who is on the scene, who happens to be Benjamin Franklin. Unfortunately, his reporting on the chronologically confused cyclone is interrupted by his fear of the strange box that is pointing at him. Outside of this scene, we don't get to see what the Timephoon's effects are outside of the McDuck Manor. I get that they probably wanted to save a Duckberg-scaled for the Moonvasion, but it does take a little weight off of the issue of this plot. This is especially egregious considering what will come of this.

Scrooge has one particular idea on what caused this: Launchpad and one of the kids, most likely Louie, used the Time Tub, and the caveduck went with them by accident! But that's just preposterous, because it could be anything according to Louie! He even decides to erase it with his jacket to remove any suspicion that this could be correct.

Della: Louie's right!

Della just agrees with Louie, because she has to trust her kids and she can't just give up her "unwilling to punish her kids" character. Scrooge eventually theorizes that every change in the time stream is causing the storm to get worse, as if the small problem are adding up to one large one. Sort of a Butterfly effect minus the butterfly analogy that grossed Della out. He suggests getting Gyro to help, but Louie says the storm is just too terrible for them to go out and talk to him.

Good news for them, Gyro shows up in the same way the pirates do. The bad news for pretty much everyone is that someone took the Time Tub and has destroyed time and space!

His story begins with him just minding his own business, not cloning an army of himself just as much as Louie says he's not doing anything wrong, when he notices his Time Tub was stolen. The after-blast from the Time Tub got him just as much as it got the caveduck from before, and he went all through time to see what happened.

Louie finally gets a clue, and decides the best course of action is to bring it all back.

Also, Bubba is continuing to enjoy the modern joys of life, while Huey gets angry over all of these chronological inaccuracies. Dewey decides to convince him by saying that maybe his research was wrong. We get the closest DuckTales 2017 will get to a face fault with Huey here; still on-model, but something is still not right with him.

Throughout the episode, more and more people from the past show up to cause trouble, like ninjas that Mrs. Beakley has to deal with. Eventually, a triceratops zaps into the present, giving the caveduck. Eventually, he just does a complete 180 from being accurate to his own research, and says this is awesome. Yeah, that's the B plot. I guess the chaos just got to him.

The chaos just gets worse and worse, as Mrs. Beakley gets zapped into the past, complete with Mrs. Beakley showing up on that painting that first shown Della's existence. More and more, and Louie, who is already trying to fix what he has done, is trying to put everything back together.

It doesn't really take a time scientist to figure out that Louie will eventually fix this all on his own, though it is a situation he ends up being forced into. I was almost expecting him to go into the time tub, go back to when he had this idea, and smack him upside the head, but that's not what he does. That ending would be a little cliched, and it would have been a cop-out.

Instead, Louie decides to aim the shower head at the various time-displaced people, including Bubba and Tootsie, shoots a ray that sends them back into time, and hopes that this will make everything okay. Again, don't think of the logistics with this.

Somehow, this makes the Timephoon just spit out everyone back into the present. Dressed as they are, they came all the way over time, and one of them is going to get the grounding of his life for messing with the timestream! Here's a hint: it's the one that isn't even in a costume.

Della finally decides to put her foot down, and ends up being the only person in the room that doesn't want to instantly forgive Louie for what he did. Della doesn't play by the ordinary cartoon rules, and neither does this cartoon since this grounding may actually last more than a silly ending.

Della: You took off in that contraption, without thinking about the consequences or the people you would hurt!

Louie: (loses any pretense of being apologetic for his actions, rolls his eyes) I wonder where I got that from.

With all the hurt that the Della plot has caused, nobody in-universe has ever really called out Della for getting on the Spear of Selene in the first place until this scene. It seems like everyone here has their own reaction to this, but they can all agree that this is not the time for this. Huh, time.

Oh, and as for Huey's caveduck research, it got rejected because it wasn't realistic.

How does it stack up?

I found it okay for the most part. Some parts were actually really good, too! I debated on whether to give this the same rating as "Happy Birthday, Doofus Drake!", and the ending alone is what puts this episode over the edge of that scale for me.

Next, the joys of the naughty room. The Supernanny kind.

← The Golden Armory of Cornelius Coot! 🦆 GlomTales! →

[procrastinating-story-writer]

Bonds that Bind Us

Summary: Odin ordered for Loki to return to Midgard as punishment to atone for what he did in New York and S.H.I.E.LD agreed.

She was not expecting an assignment such as this to fall on her lap but she had nothing better to do. How bad could it be being Loki's warden?

Pairing: Loki x OFC Omidah Penwinkle

Warnings: multiple chapter story, violence, experimentation, language, angst, just to name a few.

A/N: Hello everyone! First off thank you for reading. Now, this story can be found on my AO3 account Onyx_Lenora_Traise and I wanted to post this on Tumblr. Enjoy!

Omidah looked up from the book she was reading when she heard someone call her name. Ever since she agreed (was forced) to live in the Avengers tower, all quiet time and privacy went out the window. She saw her godfather Coulson enter the room, a grim look on his face

(A/N: he's very much alive in this story. Always been one of my favorite characters from Avengers)

"what's wrong? You look real distressed," Coulson sighed and sat next to her, he was not happy with the news he had to tell her but it was Fury's orders

"Fury has assigned you to a mission but I don't think you're going to like it; I sure as hell don't."

Omidah raised an eyebrow, curiosity evident in her eyes, she knew all too well that when her godfather wasn't happy with a mission she had (which was rare), it was dangerous and life threatening and those were the best kind for her.

She giggled, "finally something to do! Please tell me it's really dangerous with lots of fighting,"

Coulson rolled his eyes at her excitement over the matter, she really was a strange young lady.

"Do you remember Thor's brother the infamous Loki?"

"yeah I remember him, how could I not? I nearly whooped his ass when he tried to escape from the helicarrier and I would have succeeded too if I didn't have you to worry about. I still owe him a beating for nearly killing you."

She knew that if Coulson had faced Loki alone that day and gotten the injuries he had without immediate medical assistance, he would have died

"Thor is bringing Loki back here on earth as a punishment from Odin to atone for his actions and he'll be confined to the tower with you as his warden."

Omidah stayed quiet processing the information related to her. She started to laugh. Coulson shot her a confused look.

"Oh my Ra! Do you have any idea how deliciously ironic this is?"

Coulson shivered when his goddaughter cackled (you know that comical laugh in animes when a twisted plan was in place?)

"So when will he be arriving? Where will he be sleeping? I need to prepare....oh my there is so much I need to look after."

Coulson shook his head in disbelief, she was taking this news well, too well for his liking

"Calm down Omidah sheesh, you're behaving like its your long lost friend that's coming for a visit. Why are you so excited anyways?"

She rolled her eyes "It's not everyday you get to meet a Norse god and now I'm gonna know two of them, plus I can finally have questions answered on magic and literature."

"Why can't you just ask Thor about all of that stuff"

"No offense to Thor but he doesn't really know the in-depth knowledge I seek and from what he's told me about his brother, well apart from what I've researched, Loki is like a walking, living fricking Norse encyclopedia. I'm kinda hoping also that he can give me an insight on some of my abilities, still rusty in some aspects.

Coulson give Omidah a have-you-lost-your-marbles-kind of look, she just smiled

"Relax I know what I'm doing, besides he's going to be here for a long time and eventually he will have to talk to someone, so I volunteer as tribute."

"I have to remember to get your brain checked for loose screws"

Omidah faked a gasp and threw a cushion at Coulson making him laugh

"but all jokes aside, I know what I'm getting myself into. The others won't agree with my methods of doing things but I never fail a mission. If Odin is sending Loki here to atone for what he did, he's not going to do so by being distant and locking himself in his assigned room which I have a good feeling he'll do,"

"So what's your game plan then," Coulson asked

"quite simple actually, I'm going to be his friend" she flashed Coulson a smile *any second now 3,2,1.....*

"YOU'RE GOING TO WHAT!?"

.

.

.

.

Sitting in the lounge, Omidah poured over the numerous files sent to her by Fury. The files contained information on the objective of her mission and information on Loki which she didn't need but due to protocol Fury sent them to her anyways.

Getting up and heading to the kitchen, she grabbed a glazed donut and a cup of coffee and headed back to the sofa. She needed to finish compiling her report of how she'll go about executing her mission; leave it up to the Director to give her extra homework. When she reentered the sitting area Tony was reading one of her files.

"If that was meant to kill someone you would be dead right now. Tony why do you have to be so nosy?"

Tony looked up from the file and grinned "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you didn't love me my dear."

"You're like the cousin I never had Tony, of course I love you. It's your need to poke your nose in everyone's business is what errs me," she said matter of factly.

Tony glanced back at the file he just read, an eyebrow arched upwards

"So eye-patch finally decided to give you a mission after 6 months and he felt it was a good idea to have you babysit a temperamental Norse god?"

"I'm not complaining, its better than nothing and besides I'm looking forward to this mission and before you ask why, it cause I think it will be a great challenge for me."

Tony studied her for a few seconds "knowing you and I know you quite well, it's more than one reason. Just be careful okay kiddo?"

Omidah walked over and gave him a quick hug "I'll be fine Tony, what I'm worried about is how you and everyone else feels about having Loki in the tower"

Rolling his eyes Tony flicked Omidah's nose "the hell Tony, what was that for?"

"Just felt like it and we'll be fine just as long as Reindeer games behaves."

She and Tony both knew it was easier said than done.

It took one week for Omidah to have everything prepared for Loki's arrival. Looking down at her watch, it showed half past one. She was informed that Thor would be bringing Loki by two.

Dressed in a simple olive turtleneck sweater and black jeans accompanied by ankle high boots, she stood on the balcony standing a distance away from the helipad.

Shifting her eyes back to her watch which now showed half past two. Omidah groaned in annoyance *Thor is late.....which is not really like him.....what's taking them so long?*

"Well this is very unprofessional, unless Odin changed his mind and decided to keep Loki imprisoned on Asgard." She frown at the idea "Oh goddess I hope that isn't the case,"

Pulling out her work phone she was about to speed dial Fury when a bright light descended from the sky and landed on the helipad. As quickly as it came, it vanished and left standing was Thor and beside him the infamous Loki as Coulson likes to call him.

She breathed a sigh of relief glad they didn't cancel at last minute but pulled a straight face and decided to mess with Thor a little bit for making her wait.

"Thor you are late by thirty minutes and twenty-five seconds, I was beginning to wonder if plans were cancelled."

Thor flashed her a quick grin "Lady Omidah I apologize for the delay but there was a slight mishap before our departure," he grumbled the last part while gliding his eyes in Loki's direction.

Omidah had to refrain herself from snickering. Leave it up to the God of Mischief to cause a mishap

"I see. Well mishaps do happen" she said with a shrug "but you're still late, so to make it up to me, you are not allowed pop tarts for the next week."

Omidah watched as Thor became slightly pale and looked like he was about to pass out. She started to laugh because he just looked like a lost puppy

"Thor I'm joking, I would never deny you pop tarts, you'll simply go into a coma without them but you still have to make up for being late okay?"

Thor breathed in relief and smiled "I'm thrilled that my pop of tarts will not be taken away from me and once again I'm sorry for the delay,"

Nodding she began to walk over to the brothers, a perplexed look crossed her features when she noticed the muzzle around Loki's mouth. The darn thing looked very uncomfortable and she thought it was very unnecessary. It angered her slightly. Wasn't Loki a prince of Asgard? Why was he being treated like an animal?

"Thor I would very much appreciate it if you removed that infernal contraption off your brother and please for the love of the river Nile take off these chains, he looks very uncomfortable. He's not a prisoner in Asgard but a guest in the Tower," She said with a slight irritation in her voice.

She felt eyes on her, so shifting her gaze from Thor she found Loki staring at her in confusion.

"Well if he didn't try to escape the moment he felt the dungeons, he wouldn't be in chains"

"Regardless he's here now so take 'em off, we still need to get him settled plus I need to report to Fury in the next half hour. You and I both know he gets like a cranky old lady when he's kept waiting"

Thor faced Loki preparing to remove the 'infernal contraption' as Omidah called it. Once it was off, the chains were next. Loki gently rubbed his wrists and looked back at the female across from him.

She sent him a gentle smile which only confused him further. He searched her eyes and found no hostility in them, just curiosity and slight excitement.

"Much better, thank you Thor. Well let me be the first to welcome you back to Stark Towers Mr. Laufeyson. My name is Omidah Pennwinkle and I'll be looking over you as you stay here." She grinned at her intro speech and the look of sheer confusion and disgust in Loki's eyes. He really didn't want to be there.

"Come gentlemen, there is much to do and I have...." glancing at her watch she turned and slowly started to walk back inside "fifteen minutes to do so before my boss starts screaming like a banshee in my eyes for reporting late."

The two brothers looked at her retreating form, glanced at each other and followed her through the waiting door. Loki groaned internally, he really didn't want to be there.