#this is about my mom obviously

[inkskinned]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[kcrra]

it makes me literally sick to think about alicent's relationship to her children. like. they are all she has. she loves them more than anything and hates them just as much. each of them is a shackle around her neck. they are her babies even though she was a baby herself, forced to be their mother. she'll pick up a knife for them. they are her living prison. everything she ever does is for them. their very existence makes her sick. she understands them and yet doesn't know them at all. they are her future. they stole her past.

she was 15 years old tethered to a rotting body of a man entirely against her will, watching each of her children invade her body as a result of martial rape. how were they ever supposed to have a normal relationship!!!!!!!

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 266

Back on my Danny & Ras frienemies/rivals/maybe-lovers-nobody-can-tell-their-signals-are-very-mixed train. 

See, Danny has gone through time a lot. Often. It comes with being Clockwork’s charge-son-thing and honestly he finds it fun. And several times he’s used this time travelling to get some training in. Enter Ras, stage left, also a teen at the time and also learning swordsmanship from the same person. 

And they… utterly despise each other. They would kill the other for an apple slice, if the other one would die! But also, only they can kill the other, as it is obviously their right! 

And well, they keep running into each other. It has been a hundred years, surely the other would die by now? But of course their rival would live through utter spite. Probably to spite them specifically. 

The amount of times they have ended up sparring- trying to kill each other or not- the moment they see the other is actually ridiculous. But time is also passing. And… Danny understands, not having another to talk about things people are forgetting, or have already forgotten. 

How they ended up actually talking without a murder attempt was a long story that included a demon, a dragon, a pair of fae, some bandits, and a lot of alcohol, but it happened. And then it happens again. And again, and now it’s just kind of normal to share a drink after their spars, talking about things that no longer exist, and things they miss. 

Sure Danny can go back in time again, but he knows better than to do it willy nilly. He’s matured, he’s been an adult for a hundred years now, he knows there’s consequences for messing with time, even with Clockwork’s blessings. 

The first time they got married was technically for an undercover assassination. Well, Ras was there to assassinate someone, Danny was there to grab an artifact that should Not be in the realm of the living. And they got divorced after, it was fine. 

They just, also got married again when they met a few years later, for another job. And… okay, so maybe they have gotten married over a dozen times now and only divorced like half of those times. Half of those were for the bit or while drunk! 

And even if technically they’re married or shared a bed, it’s not like they're exclusive! As Ras’ daughters’ existences attest to (adopted in one case or not). They don’t exactly have a label for their relationship, despite others asking for one or trying to put a name to it themselves. 

Now Danny knows Ras isn’t exactly a good dude, or at least on the side of ‘good’ as he’s a literal assassin. But he also knows that good? Bad? Rather relative. He had gotten labeled as a villain when he was just trying to help all that time ago after all, and really who was he to tell someone else how to live their life? 

Which brings him to now, where he’s run into his old frienemy-rival and his youngest daughter. Who has a braindead teenager and a small toddler. Which is fine, really- but also, Talia dear, why are you using a brain dead teenager to guard your three year old son? 

…

Okay, Talia dear, Ras (Derogatory), why are you using your brain dead son and grandson to guard your younger son and grandson? Do you not have the Pits, which you were soo proud about Ras? Yes, he will spar with you, but for Realms’ sake, heal, what’s his name? Ah yes, go heal Jason and he’ll actually stick around for a few years, deal? Good. 

[aimbutmiss]

Just finished marineford with my mom. She cried (I did too) but that's not the point of this post. What I wanted to share was actually me telling her about the crocodad theory and she was INSTANTLY on board.

She was like "he must have had a love affair with Dragon 😏" and I didn't even say anything she just started shipping dragodile on her own.

Anyways that's it. I just think my mom is iconic.

[lyss-butterscotch]

Yall seem to like Herrah alot so have some herrah doodles

[vaguely-concerned]

every time gricko semi-mockingly imitates kremy by going 'and then kremy'll be like 'waddadoo waddadoo fellas etc.', years get added to my lifespan and my skin clears

[r0semultiverse]

[winepresswrath]

tbh all jiang cheng ships are hypothetically good to me because jiang cheng is just so not in a good place for dating or marriage. no one should wife him up which is why anyone wifing him up has great comedy potential. it is a situation you're putting him in where he's forced to cope with intimacy and the possibility of betrayal or rejection. he's going be thinking about his parents' marriage except for the times he's going to be thinking about his sister and his redacted. and also there is the potential for someone to die horribly and leave him alone with a baby. again.

[philsmeatylegss]

I’m genuinely so interested in who knew about dip and pip before they came out (both sexuality and relationship). I’m so fascinated by it and I could talk about British vloggers (plus Tyler Oakley) 2012-2015 craze for hours. How they were photographed being away from other YouTubers. How they’ve implied that hated being grouped in with them. I’m so interested in which family and friends knew, if any. Blah blah blah that’s personal I know I don’t expect it to be answered but I’m so interested

[fiendishartist2]

//And I can't recall that special way, she told me each and every day, her name. I can't recall the fact that I always said I loved her back, the same way, every time the same//

[deoidesign]

Happy EDS awareness month!

I'm a webcomic artist with EDS. be aware.

EDS affects many parts of my life. I have chronic fatigue, chronic pain, and I need to use a cane! I often find myself ruminating on themes of chronic illness in my work, whether or not I am intending to include them.

I already can't paint anymore, it hurts my hands too much... Anything that requires small details or precise motions will hurt me for days. I have a lot of grief around it. But working digitally allows me to still create!

I animate, I illustrate, I get to tell my stories. I have to go slow, take huge breaks (often against my will) and recover slowly. But, working in this space allows me the grace to do this.

So, I just wanted to share a bit of my experience with my audience, and say thank you for reading my work and supporting me! It means the world to me, and I hope maybe someone in my audience feels a little more seen through me sharing this. It causes me pain, but I love myself; and that includes my disability.

[possamble]

What are your headcanons about Marcille's mom if you have any? It's interesting that what drew Donato to her was cause she lived the history he studied, or that was said somewhere at least. She must've had an interesting life.

so this was going to be just a normal answer but then I realized I have a Lot of Things To Say. so here goes, a compilation of what we know for a fact from the canon, what I've extrapolated from the visual cues and details, and my theories based on all of that.

Things we know for a fact about Marcille's mother because they were explicitly stated in the manga and supplemental materials:

She was a court mage for a Tall-man kingdom at the southern part of the Northern Continent

Donato, a court historian, fell in love with her because she had lived through the history he was studying, and he courted her for 17 years (age 15 to 32) before getting married

She was a cheerful person who rarely showed extreme emotion and took things as they came

She always cooked a huge meal for Marcille on her birthdays

She remarried a gnome after Donato's death and a short distance away from Marcille's childhood home

Pipi, Marcille's pet bird, was actually older than Marcille and originally belonged to her mother (bird died at 62)

She was extremely heartbroken when Donato died and ultimately ended up instilling a deep fear of mortality in Marcille with her words

the only time she showed extreme emotion in front of her family was when Donato could no longer eat his favourite dish near the end of his life.

She scolded Marcille for being cruel to ants (implying she can have a stern side when needed)

Things that are explicitly shown but mostly through visual cues

She has a very distinctive style of dress always involving a ribbon choker (mirroring Marcille's habit of always wearing a matching choker with any of her outfits that don't cover her neck)

She was almost stereotypically good at housekeeping and traditionally "wifely" things (very frequently depicted wearing an apron or doing some domestic chore when not at work, seems to have been an avid cook).

She knits? (also, note the affectionate smile as she's looking at Donato and Marcille reading a book together in the full panel)

She was as excited for Marcille's milestones as Donato was.

She didn't tell Marcille much about elven food

(there are a couple things that this panel in particular implies:

She lived a good deal of her life (if not being born and raised) in a mainly elven country in the West, implied by her knowing enough of an elven region's cuisine to prefer Tall-man food over it

seems to have a pretty carefree and casual demeanour overall, if this is how she replied to Marcille asking her about it (sounds like she never gave her culinary preferences that much thought to begin with)

slightly related to number 2, it seems like she and Marcille had a fairly casual parent-child dynamic (especially in comparison to the Toudens' memory of their father)

(local elf tastes Italian food once and never goes back))

However, she seems a lot more... serious in most of the other times we see her? Almost like the very stereotypical archetype of a graceful elf.

Subsequent conclusions about her personality:

Usually pretty carefree and cheerful at home, has been a loving and attentive parent throughout Marcille's childhood (while not being so doting that she didn't discipline Marcille).

Slightly more conjectural theories on her personality:

Had a much more graceful and professional personality at work, which would explain the more serious portraits we see of her.

Given that both she and Donato had positions at the royal court, it seems a little odd that she'd go out of her way to do all the housework herself, so maybe she just enjoyed doing it?

Now taping all the evidence together and toeing the line between analysis and fanfiction:

It's clear that she loved Donato very much and was utterly devastated by losing him. But there's one thing that really stuck out to me in what little we see of her:

Doesn't she seem... angry? The way she's gritting her teeth, clutching the tablecloth, and how this is the first and only time we see her eyes opened that wide. In the following panel, you see her being quiet and dejected after her initial outburst. She's still crying very intensely, but her brows are furrowed, and she's not really responding to Donato's affection in her body language.

We're not told the details of how she felt about losing Donato other than that it upset her. But this, to me, implies that she was angry and resented that he was aging, that the end of his life was approaching. An "it's not fair" type of preemptive grief. And if this was the first and last time she cried like this in front of her family, she was either very good at coping in private... or very bad at letting herself feel unpleasant emotions until they become unavoidable and end up overwhelming her.

It's not too remarkable a detail on the surface. It's even reminiscent of what the audience has seen of Marcille. But... when it comes to the big picture, you'd think an elf who voluntarily chose to marry a tall-man and have a half-elf child would have been better prepared for this.

It kind of recontextualizes her cheerfulness to me.

"I'm sure everything's gonna be okay!" (or some variation thereof, depending on what translation you have).

And this is stated to contrast her extreme grief when finally confronting Donato's failing body and eventual death. But I'm wondering if... maybe this optimism was why she was so upset. What if she went into all of it thinking "everything's gonna be okay"? What if she was a little young by elven standards, and just followed her heart thinking that her own resilience would get her through anything?

Of course, only to get completely overwhelmed when she actually loses Donato. She turns into a completely different person. And that's heartbreaking on its own-- but what the audience sees is the effect it had on Marcille. Can you imagine being her, watching your invincible and upbeat mother suddenly lose all the light in her eyes in one go?

I've already made a huge post about how I think Marcille models her "work persona" off her mother, but another thing that stuck with me as I was looking for more details in the manga was this:

copy pasting from the other post i made about it lmao it's like... the second she resigns herself to lifelong pain and terror, there's another portrait of her mother facing her like this. with their heads bowed, in mirrored body language of resignation and despair and sorrow. Except it's posed like Marcille is still looking at her mother but her mother is looking away.

It took me a second to realize, but I think that it's a visual metaphor for the fact that Marcille's mother was the only long-lived role model she had-- and she failed to model healthy grief for her daughter. I don't say this as an accusation or to disparage her as a character, but just as a matter of fact. In her, Marcille was seeing herself older and losing a short-lived spouse or loved one of her own, and all she saw was hopelessness.

But her mother didn't mean to instill hopelessness and terror in her. She wasn't really thinking of how it would truly affect Marcille at all (at least, that's how I'm interpreting her looking down and away from Marcille in the metaphor), she was just sad. And she, in her own way, was trying to protect her daughter and help her prepare for future losses.

What she meant was "loss is inevitable, and you have to learn how to be in pain but live on anyway." What Marcille heard was "loss is inevitable, and you will be scared and hurt for the rest of your life."

Again. Marcille's mother doesn't feature explicitly in the story the way her father does -- but in so many ways, her shadow, her silhouette, her reflection is always hanging over Marcille.

All that to say... headcanon-wise (everything from here on is 100% without evidence lmao), I'd like to think that she matured and realized that she failed Marcille. I imagine her being regretful about it, wanting a chance to fix it but never finding a way to insert herself back into Marcille's life when Marcille is so so so busy becoming the most accomplished mage possible. I imagine her being herself again, now, so many years after her loss and after remarrying -- but with her cheerfulness tempered with a lot more wisdom and the pain of having gone through loss like that. I think the second Marcille actually tells her what happened in the dungeon, she'd want to go running to her daughter again -- if Marcille tells her the full truth instead of just being embarrassed she let things get that far. (oh, the tragedy of her wanting to be more like her mother and an accomplished adult who doesn't need to be babied... being embarrassed to actually tell her mother how much she fucked up...)

There's also the tension of her having remarried -- I know that there's at least a little bit of resentment that Marcille harbours about that, because she's childish like that at heart even if she makes an effort not to externalize it. I think that her mother would be aware of that, potentially adding to her sense of guilt and apprehension at trying to reappear/intrude on Marcille's life. I honestly don't think Marcille has met her stepfather -- or even considers him a stepfather rather than "mama's new husband" and kind of a total stranger. I think she and her mother actively don't talk about it in their correspondence, like an elephant in the room.

but, ultimately, I think her mother is on her side no matter what. Ancient magic? Dark necromancy? Sure, she'll feel guilty and like she was partially responsible for setting Marcille down such a painful path, but she wouldn't care. that's her daughter!! she would've moved back west and been petitioning for her at the court, buying a house right next to the Canaries barracks and visiting her every day that she wasn't on a mission. And if her husband had opinions on Marcille becoming a "dark arts user," he either gets over it or it's divorce with him. Yes, she might have had her optimism completely humbled by losing Donato like that -- but she's still headstrong and self-assured and she doesn't care what people think of her. It's her way or the highway and she's always going to be in Marcille's corner.

(She also needs a name lol. I went with Juno, just to be cute about "Marcille"s closest real life equivalent being Marcella, which is the female version of Marcellus, which in turn is a diminutive of Marcus, which was derived from Mars. Absolutely in love with Marcille potentially being named after Ares/Mars the fucking god of war btw)

[sergle]

has the huggable twee irritation always been a Thing or did it evolve in response to like, "you're not ugly. i'd fuck you" type comments? like in your personal experience

god, I'm not well spoken enough to describe it exactly the way it Registers In My Brain... but like. It's not the "you're not ugly, I'd fuck you" genre, and that type of comment is so easy to immediately dismiss because it always comes from a certain type of man, and it's like yeah yeah, I could throw a sandwich and you'd fuck it before it hit the floor. But also, that one's so specific, it's a bottom-of-the-barrel "compliment" that dudes will give when a woman has actively said something about feeling like she's unattractive.

The HUGGABLE THING. The oooh squishy marshmallow somft huggable mom shaped 🥺🥰 She looks like she gives GREAT HUGS. Those comments are UNPROMPTED. I'm immediately like. Every keyword you say, I kill another hostage. I will blow up this whole building and everyone in it. Because it is SO FUCKING WEIRD. And I have heard it one million times. And I see it on every drawing of a character who's even remotely plus sized. These comments would not fly for a thinner person, they'd be rightfully received as weird. People aren't gonna comment on a picture of Ariana Grande going omg she's sooo huggable mom friend shaped. WHAT. Simultaneously are desexualized and sanitized to a weird degree in that uwu language way, WHILE also being creepy. Like, why are you describing what you think I'd feel like if you hugged me? Like the only positive thing you can think of to say is that I look like I have some give. As strangers. I'm not going to hug you, I think you're a creep and I think you're giving yourself a big pat on the back for complimenting a fat person. What are we doing I'm arguing at the air. Where am I And you're just supposed to go oh thank you that's so nice, because as a fat person, you gotta take whatever compliment you get, even if it is actually not a compliment. And that's the thing, there are SO MANY ACTUAL COMPLIMENTS TO PICK FROM. But people settle on huggable and somft. Was this person pretty? Were they hot? You could say gorgeous? Handsome, beautiful? Elegant? Stunning? Sharp? Sexy? Stylish? Are you trying to say that you're attracted to this person's body? Are we being horny? Do you think they just look nice in general? Can't we think of anything else to say? Or are we just gonna sit here and say they fuckin look like Santa Claus. Huggable like a pillow. Girl what the fuck

[isthataraccoon]

so im legitimately sobbing my eyes out right now because someone wrote a kanej fic where kaz died and inej moved on, married someone else, and had a kid with that person and shes telling kaz’s grave about her life and it WRECKED me whoever you are that wrote it I absolutely hate you and also you are one of the most talented writers I’ve ever seen 😭😭😭😭😭

edit: it was called end of a decade, start of an age by moonbeanies on AO3

[l3irdl3rain]

I'm probably gonna regret asking but how does a parrot masturbate?

Parrots have a cloaca that they use to poop but also it is part of their reproductive tract. For Joey to get freaky with the carpet on the cat tree he just put his butt really low and started wiggling.

[fillejondrette]

my aunt and her husband both work in education, so they’re off work in the summer. my aunt is going out of town for a few days and told her son (an adult who lives at home but IS working full time) that he’ll need to take care of the dogs while she’s gone because his dad can’t even remember to fill up their water bowls, “because of his ADD.” this is a middle aged man with a masters degree and a successful career as a teacher. somehow i don’t think he’s incapable of keeping two dogs alive, even if he needs to set reminders on his phone or something. like how do you not realize how fucking ridiculous that is.

anyway, once again, j’ai vu beaucoup de mariages, aucun d’eux ne me tentent