#this brought back memories

[fizzingwizard]

in a writing rut. but here's something i scribbled to try to get the creative juices flowing. it amused me. i might do something with it

totally unfinished, random ideas. moomins at (american) college, but this is fantasy so it's not america, it's troll land or whatever haha

~~~

"Moomintroll, why don't you try something new for a change?" Snorkmaiden asked.

"Something new? Like what?"

"I don't know. How about rugby?"

"Rugby?"

“Well, you have the right build for it. And wouldn't it be fun to win?”

“More fun than losing, anyhow.”

"Oh, pooh! The risk is what makes competition so exhilarating!”

Moomintroll pulled a face. With a huff, his girlfriend folded her arms. Today her fur was tinted a whimsical fuchsia hue. She used to keep it white, because "white goes with everything." Lately, though, it seemed she'd entered an experimental phase. Which was fitting. Why else did people go to college, except to try on a hundred shiny new personalities out of sight of those who knew them in high school? They certainly didn’t come for the academics.

"It's up to you, of course. But if you ask me, your life could use a shake-up. You practically live in your dorm. You don't come to campus events. Class is the only place we ever see you."

Moomintroll bit back the urge to retort that this was college, you were supposed to live in a dorm and go to class. Snorkmaiden liked sarcasm, but not when she was lecturing. (She also didn’t like to be described as lecturing.)

"You're seeing me right now," he pointed out instead.

"But in twenty minutes I'm going to the Midnight Breakfast, and you won't even join me for that! There will be pancakes, Moomintroll!"

"I don't like pancakes."

"Yes you do!"

Shuffling his feet, Moomintroll turned his back to her and pretended to search for something on his desk. He opened the drawer. Inside there was a little tin box, where he kept shells and sea glass worn smooth by the waves.

In a small voice, he muttered, "I like the way Mamma makes them."

Snorkmaiden heaved a long-suffering sigh. He felt a pang of guilt, and wished he'd kept his thoughts to himself.

"I know you miss home, my Moomintroll." Her paw came to rest on his arm. With the other, she nudged the drawer with the tin box shut. "But this is your chance to live your own life, however you want it. Remember how we used to stay up late planning adventures for when we grew up? You wanted to be a pirate!”

"Trolleton College doesn't offer a major in piracy."

"Comp sci!" Snorkmaiden chirped.

"Wrong sort of pirate."

At last she let the subject drop. But he could sense her disappointment, even though she talked and giggled the same as always. It rankled. He knew he should feel grateful that she cared. And she had waited over a year to start gently prodding him to put more effort into collegiate life. Now, half-way through their sophomore year, Snorkmaiden was in every club her packed schedule would allow for and had friends in every department. She never lacked for something to do or someone to do it with. Compared to her, his daily routine of go to class, eat lunch, go to class, eat dinner, study, then sleep, looked pretty sad indeed.

It hit him suddenly, as Snorkmaiden’s twenty minutes ran out and she took one last swing at persuading him to come to the midnight breakfast (“There won’t only be pancakes - last year they had scrambled eggs, fried ham, sausage, fruit, not to mention donuts!”), that Snorkmaiden was popular. In the small valley where the two of them met, grew up, and fell in love, he’d never noticed. People liked her, of course. But back home people were rather scarce.

She nuzzled his cheek, waving as she exited his room, the buttons from various campus events that covered her backpack twinkling in the light. They sported slogans like “Go Green,” “Save The Arctic: Polar Bears Menacing But Too Cute To Die,” and “I ♥ Ethical Environmental Policies.” He wondered how she could enjoy living in Trolleton, surrounded by brick and cement, not a tree to be seen that hadn’t been planted last year by boy scouts. At night, instead of the hushed parley of frogs and crickets, their lullaby was police sirens and motorcycles ripping down the street.

His stomach growled. Moomintroll looked at the clock. Just after eleven. He opened his mini fridge and took out a frozen pizza.

The first time he ate pizza, he was around fifteen. His family never traveled much farther than the mountains, although they loved to talk about it. But a winning sweepstakes ticket took them out of the valley to the Riviera, where they found the cozy pizza restaurant. It was real pizza, with fresh basil and tomatoes, baked in a massive wood-fire oven. The cook slid it out on a huge wooden slab, the cheese still bubbling. Even the memory made his mouth water.

The frozen pizza was rock-hard. Heating it in the microwave always left the crust soggy. Moomintroll clutched the box, wrestling with indecision. It might not be too late to catch up with Snorkmaiden. Honestly, the scrambled eggs at the caf were like rubber and only marginally edible. But donuts never let you down.

Before he could talk himself out of it, he threw on a scarf, grabbed his lanyard with his student ID, and hurried out of his dorm. Outside was dark, the lights streaming from the cafeteria beckoning. Over the archway hung a banner:

MIDNIGHT BREAKFAST! At the caf, 10:00 p.m. - 1:00 a.m. Tuesday, December 10th. We know you all want to cram in a few more precious hours of study, but you’ve still got to eat! Power up with good food and good friends! Food is free with your student ID. 5 silver coins for students without a meal plan. Best of luck! Show those finals who’s boss! Sponsored by the student union.

At the door, Moomintroll hesitated. There were a lot of people inside. A lot of people. It wasn’t like he was shy. But how was he to find Snorkmaiden? He didn’t want to be that awkward guy eating a stack of donuts by himself in the corner. He’d probably wind up with a horrid nickname that would stick with him for the two and half years - longer if he went to grad school - something like “Corner Donut Boy.”

Grabbing a tray, he made his way around the buffet table. He snagged two jelly donuts, one custard donut, and a cinnamon-dusted stick thing with a placard that read CHURRO. Then he scooped up some sausages, since they were there, and a few hash browns for the salt.

With his tray loaded, he took it and wandered around dismally. Every table was occupied. Should have thought to bring a doggy bag.

A gasp. “Ooh! Moomintroll!”

Snorkmaiden shot up so fast that her table rattled. “Over here!” she cried. “Move over, Sniff, move, move!”

“Why do I have to move?” Sniff cried. “It’s just Moomintroll. I was here first. Let him sit on the floor!”

“But he’s my boyfriend and I want to sit next to him.”

“So?”

“So, girlfriend privilege. Scoot over!”

Sniff’s whiskers twitched, but he made room on the bench. Moomintroll squeezed in between them with a sheepish grin.

“Thanks, Sniff.”

“Don’t thank me! She twisted my arm!”

“Well, thanks to your arm, then.”

“Come on, Sniff. We’re happy Moomintroll’s here!” Snorkmaiden said, raising her eyebrows with meaning. “We’re so happy our friend made it down here to hang out with us before finals after all.”

“Why are you looking at me like that? Moomintroll, what is she doing?”

“Being subtle.”

Sniff stared at him, mouth open. “... Huh?”

Moomintroll picked up a jelly donut. “Want a donut, Sniff?”

Donuts were the one thing Sniff loved more than not having to share his seat.

“So is this boyfriend?” someone asked. Moomintroll squinted, but no one appeared to have spoken. Across the table sat a rather gaunt hemulen, quivering as he pored over an entomology textbook (whether the quivering was the result of lack of sleep, nerves, or too much caffeine wasn’t immediately clear). To his left was a pretty girl with enormous blue eyes, her red hair bundled in a tidy knot. Next to her, a round, sturdy blonde in a striped shirt gazed dreamily into a mug of cocoa.

Moomintroll was gobsmacked to realize he didn’t know a single one of Snorkmaiden’s friends (apart from Sniff, who he couldn’t help knowing - Sniff was his brother, of sorts). Apparently she flitted like a butterfly through the different circles of friends on campus.

“Um.” He bit into a hash brown. “... Did someone say something?”

“I did,” answered the same voice. Once again, no one’s mouth appeared to move.

Moomintroll blinked twice, then rubbed his eyes.

“Down here, idiot.”

Someone jabbed his leg. Hard. In shock, Moomintroll bent and tried to fit his snout under the table. There, on the floor, stood a very small girl in a red dress, sneering. She also had vibrant red hair in a knot like the pretty girl, but her demeanor couldn’t have been more different.

“Well, didn’t your mama teach you it’s impolite to stare?” the tiny… student? … shouted at him.

“Oh - sorry - I didn’t realize you were down there is all. Er. I didn’t step on you, did I?”

The girl cocked one brow at Snorkmaiden. “He’s quite the catch, your lover boy.”

“Moomintroll.” Snaking an arm through his, Snorkmaiden snuggled in close. “Let me introduce you. This is Little My. She doesn’t always eat under the table. Sometimes she sits on top. But she said Hemulen’s moaning gave her indigestion.”

“Nice - nice to meet you,” he stammered, suddenly feeling quite anxious.

“And this is her sister, Mymble,” Snorkmaiden added.

The pretty redhead smiled.

“You don’t… mind that your sister eats under the table?” Moomintroll asked.

“Oh no,” Mymble replied. “She’s always stirring up trouble, you see, and makes me run after her. If she’s not trying to go for a ride on a frisbee, she’s photocopying her face in the library, or leaving toy roaches in RA’s shoes. I’ve had so many discussions with the dean on her account. If she’s under the table I don’t have to worry at all, except if she starts biting ankles.”

That explained this strange anxiety. Little My did give the impression she was likely to take a bite of his ankle instead of the pancakes.

“I hate it when she bites,” Sniff grumbled.

“It’s all right,” the blonde girl said. Her voice was as airy and dream-like as her eyes. “Keep your ankles out of reach and you’ll be perfectly fine.”

Sniff quickly tucked his knees in. “That’s easy for you to say!”

“Expect the best and prepare for the worst,” grinned Little My.

 The girl in the striped shirt suddenly drained her cocoa and stood, plopping a funny blue hat with a red pom on her shaggy crop.

“Are you leaving, Too-ticky?” Snorkmaiden asked.

“Yes. My first exam is at eight-thirty, and I like to get a full eight hours’ sleep. Good-bye, everyone.”

She even walked away dreamily.

“Sleep well, Tooti,” Mymble sang.

“She’s very nice,” Snorkmaiden told Moomintroll. “A bit - odd - but who isn’t?”

“And she’s a philosophy major,” piped in Little My. “They’re all a little whiz-bang-watchamacallit, if you get my meaning."

“What’s your major then?” Moomintroll asked, to be polite.

Still under the table, Little My appeared to turn her head a full 180 degrees, fixing him with her piercing green eyes. She bared her teeth. “Toxic mycology.”

Moomintroll gulped. “I didn’t know the majors here were so… specific.”

“I customized my own,” she answered. “And what’s yours? Let me guess. Undeclared?”

It sounded like an insult, the way she said it. Which was ridiculous. Lots of students went undeclared in freshman year. And sometimes their sophomore year too. Nothing wrong with that. Still, he found he was once again stammering. “No - well, yes - but I have - an intention to declare a major soon…”

“Oh, you do?” Snorkmaiden perked up, turning to him with interest. “What did you finally decide? Tell me, I’m all ears!”

“Ehm… agricultural… something…”

“Agriculture?” Little My scowled. “Aren’t you afraid that if you start a farm, you’ll be mistaken for one of your cows?”

That ruffled Moomintroll’s fur. “People usually say Moomins look like hippos, not cows,” he shot back haughtily.

Snorkmaiden patted his shoulder, in warning, perhaps. “My sweet. That’s… not the flex you think it is.”

Little My shrugged. “I’m just saying. But I guess you know all about farming, growing up in that lovely, open valley Snorkmaiden goes on about.”

“Moomintroll doesn’t have a farm,” Sniff interjected, helping himself to Moomintroll’s questionable "churro." “His papa doesn’t work. Moominmamma has a garden, with big tomatoes and cucumbers in the summer, and squash in the fall. But she doesn’t sell them. I told her she ought to, but she said if he sold her vegetables, what would she have to cook my birthday dinner? So I said maybe she could sell only some of the vegetables, and leave enough for my birthday dinner. But she worried that then she wouldn’t have enough to make sandwiches for Mrs Fillyjonk’s tea.”

Sniff, naturally, was a business major.

“Pappa works,” Moomintroll objected. “He writes books.”

“Anything good?” Little My asked.

“Yes. Lots.”

“Anything I’ve read?”

Moomintroll thought for a while. Snorkmaiden drummed her fingers on her cheek with a look of deep boredom.

At last he settled for: “Well, when he publishes his memoirs, I’ll send you a copy, and you can judge for yourself.”

Little My set her jaw and nodded. “You do that.”

“Snorkmaiden dear,” interjected Mymble. “Do you want more cocoa?”

“Gosh, yes!” Snorkmaiden exclaimed, seizing her mug. “I meant to go earlier but - oh, looks like they’ve run out…”

“No problem,” Mymble said. “I can get us some from the back. Wait a little.”

She sashayed off. Moomintroll watched her go, perplexed. “What ‘back’ does she mean?”

“She means she’s going to flirt with Marco the cafeteria worker, and get him to dip into the cocoa bins in the supply room.” Little My made a noise of frustration. “I thought grad school would teach her to cool off some, but the minute she spies anything shiny with washboard abs and a few chin whiskers, off she goes…”

Managing Marco didn’t take long. Mymble returned after a while with cocoa packets for each of them. When she offered one to the Hemulen, he pinned it to the table lightning quick, muttering about bluebottle butterflies.

“Now let’s talk about something else,” said Mymble.

“Like what?” Little My pulled herself onto the table in Too-ticky’s spot.

“I don’t know. Pick something.”

“Fine. Piranhas.”

“Nothing that bites,” Sniff cut in, shivering.

“Moomintroll, you pick,” said Snorkmaiden.

He was taken aback. “Why me?” he cried, but she only looked at him expectantly. Frantically shifting through his mind, he tried to summon a topic that everyone would like, something interesting, something current.

“How about finals?”

“Finals?” For someone of her stature, Little My had quite the thunderous voice. “Groke take me. We came here to get a break from the endless facts going round and round in our heads, and all you can think of talking about is exams?”

“... Or something else,” he squeaked.

(to be continued.... ????)

[videoworm]

a friend send me this

[here] the original post (on instagram)

but this totally reminded me of when in either primary school or early secundary school: i used to do roleplay in a howrse forum with friends (howrse is a french web game where you care for horses basically). and i did a slidewhow of all of our characters (whos art was just picked from random animes) with Silbermond as the background music. ajsdklfajs iconic

(also the roleplay universe was called Dark Dimension and i also remember us being all Vampire Knight fans)

[pinktinselmonstrosity]

[srapsodia]

"Right now, you're useless to me."

[canisalbus]

Once in a thousand years

[katabay]

someone’s hands have always been inside of you

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app / tip jar!

[claraoswalds]

This is a brand new science for me, and I love it. The language of luck. 'Cause what is a coincidence but a form of accident? Two things bumping together unexpectedly. Like you and me.

[unlimited-nobu-works]

[shihoerusu]

“you rise with the moon. I rise with the sun”

.

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.

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Eternally grateful for my best gal @oceanview15 for all her amazing ideas and support

[bluerosefox]

Same As The Day I Lost You

I...

This came to me as I'm making dinner so I'll be quick.

What if we mix deaged Danny and twin/older sibling (either one works) Damian, AND he gets tossed to his sibling in a last minute escape.

Like what if he was fighting Vlad who was doing his whole "denounce your father and join me as my son Daniel!" Thing while in the Zone and knocks Danny into something that's floating in the Zone with the ability to deage or was hit by a new Fenton or Plasmius invention while fighting in town that accidentally deages him.

Danny, who in this was adopted, gets put back to the age of six. The same age he had been found by Jazz in a 'haunted' forest Jack and Maddie were visiting/investigating while also using that time as a family vacation. (They were shocked to see a little boy with a stab wound bleeding out and rushed him to the nearby town, almost completely forgetting about the glowing green tiny puddle they found nearby and bagged most of it as evidence when they heard Jazz's scream of terror over finding the hurt little boy)

The sudden revert into that traumatized age, along with the child response to a fight or flight scenario, and add Danny's deepest need/wish to be protected his child fogged mind wishes to go to the one person who always made him feel safe.

His twin/older brother.

Just as quick as it was with Danny being turned into a child, his ghost powers ripped open a portal and sent Danny to the person he wants to be with...

Only he didn't know that right at that moment his seventeen year old twin/older brother is currently fighting the League with his family's help (his mother was trying to convince him to return to the League and be it's heir) in Nanda Parbat (the very place Damian lost the last/only person he knew loved him without any strings attached.)

So imagine everyone's face when a portal opened up, some muttering its a new pit being formed before them or something, and crawling out of it is a very scared and confused six year old Danny.

[acuar-io]

Brought someone back from the dead <3

[morii-moth]

if i had a nickel for everytime a man who was just rejected an alliance by cleo decided to build a floating heart island as a base, id have two nickels, which isnt a lot, but its weird its happened twice.

[avocado62524]

[pininiu]

I can't get any decent sleep so I did what any sane person would do

Draw more

Ya think xyx would enjoy the fun activity of hunting sea urchins to snack on?

Of course I had to draw him from the birthday illustration by robobarbie

[xiexielians]

@animangacreators hotel challenge: first anime you watched

Digimon Adventure (1999)

[shynetyme06]

Pj if he was freaky on a friday night

Guy belongs to 7goodangel