probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.
we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."
at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.
the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.
the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.
what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.
here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.
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Me when Logan was about to walk away in the end and Wade was like "Logan 🥺" and that's all it took for him to stay... Y'all I can't they love each other so much 😭
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Telemachus's life post-Odyssey has the potential to be so funny bc bro is suddenly going from the son of, essentially, a single mom to the son of two VERY in-love middle aged sweethearts who never had to learn boundaries about what is/isn't appropriate to say around their kid.
Penelope: I knew that "beggar" was you the whole time, you know.
Odysseus, laughing: Oh, really?
Penelope: You can disguise a lot of things, but I'd know that ass anywhere.
Telemachus: I am begging you guys to keep it in your pants for ONE family dinner.
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the revelation that claudia’s rebirth was such a twisted and horrible moment, with louis dragging her like she was a thing, a stranger who neither of them knew but he kept saying over and over “our daughter, our beautiful little daughter” to lestat, really solidified the way she was never the main character of her own story. she was always an accessory to some or the other of louis’ whims: his guilt, his loneliness, his conflict of being a killer, his rocky relationship with lestat. there was love there, love from both her fathers, but it was never enough. lestat saw her too much as a wretched mirror held up to his own self, and louis was always too steeped in his own feelings to care enough about hers. claudia’s story truly was the greatest tragedy in this tale, treated horribly by every man around her, even her fathers, relentlessly exploited and brutally ignored, always second and never first. the only one who loved her the way she deserved to be loved was madeleine, and the moment she truly had her, her happiness was torn from her. and just before she died, she got to see someone actually choose her in her entirety, not for what she can be but for who she is, and it still wasn’t enough. she still burned alive in the sunlight. the love was there, but it wasn’t enough to save her.
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