dracodemortem

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remember to drink lots of water, because your insides are a swampy bog and a water shortage would affect the local frog population

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Feels like a good time to remember the end of Arc 1 and Steel’s insistence that Ame *not* break the curse without the citadels aid, so they could “discover who placed it” and “research the origin”

You know, for no particular reason

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nimble, a border collie-papillon mix, wins the 12” class in the 2024 masters agility championship. the first time a mixed breed has won at westminster ever.

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Swamp Singers 🐊🦜

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Fairy: Hey I didn’t get your name.

Me: Yeah that was on purpose.

Fairy: Oh my god stealing people’s names has been categorized as a war crime for like a hundred years. Do I seem like the kind of fairy that would do war crimes?

Me: Well yes, but that’s just my impression of you personally. Not fairies in general.

Fairy: You’re smarter than I thought.

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Im a kick ass artist capable of learning so fucking much and i got awesome lips and nice titties and my hair fuckin rocks. go on. Im waiting.

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john green didn’t “deserve” the way that early ‘10s tumblr treated him technically, but I feel like the discussion around whether he “deserved” it or not is completely missing the point. he was an adult in a space that was largely recreationally used by teenagers. why would he not get the substitute teacher treatment. what else did you think would occur here.

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When I was a kid, we moved into a house that had a huge lilac tree out front. It was mostly rotten, and it needed to be taken down before it fell. It took a while, but eventually, it was gone.

Mostly. A couple years later, little lilac babies popped out of the ground in its place. My mom was determined to get rid of them, because she'd planted a beautiful flower garden there, and the lilac trees would overshadow and kill the whole garden. I insisted on saving at least a few saplings. She said fine, but I had to dig them out and put them in pots myself.

So, I did. I spent days digging little lilac bushes out of the ground and putting them into pots. Some couldn't be saved, but some could. When all was said and done, I had five brand-new lilac saplings. Seven or eight years old, and it was my absolute pride and joy.

Three died due to sun scorching, severe drought that no amount of watering could save, and perhaps just being moved from their place in the ground. But two survived, and I was awfully proud of them! I'd go out and talk to them every single day. I watered them by hand and made sure they were fertilized properly. I learned all about their favored environments, and I was determined to make sure they lived.

One of my mom's friends saw what I was doing with the lilacs. She asked if she could have one to put in her backyard, and I agreed on the condition that she take very, very good care of it.

It's now fucking enormous. I'm talking ten feet tall and bursting with beautiful purple flowers every spring. My mom still gets updates each year as they start to bloom, which she forwards to me. And all I can think is, "That's my friend! Thriving some twenty years on, there it is."

The other tree nearly died, too. It lived in a pot for far, far too long. I wanted to plant it somewhere in my parents' yard, but my mom was reluctant. Eventually, we agreed to put it in the far back garden. It grew okay for many years, despite the shade, but in all these years, it's never bloomed.

Last year, the massive tree casting massive shadows over the lilac and the garden cracked in half and fell. It tumbled into the garden, crushing part of the nearby shed and destroying a few plants beneath it.

It missed my lilac by inches.

The clean-up is long done. The rest of the tree has been cut down, and my lilac has full sunlight for the first time in fifteen years. It won't bloom this year, I know. But it's got new shoots up. It's taller than ever. I spent half an hour a few weeks ago praising it for surviving all this time, dreaming about its future and telling it how I believe it'll become the tall beauty it's always been meant to be.

I think next year, I'll see flowers.

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I love u castles of burgundy, I don't care how ugly you are

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“Grandma Ame, where- why you have all these little wind-up monkey toys?”

“I had to break a man out of prison.”

“What??”

“We’re late to the market! We have to go!”

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chaotic muppets interview

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Is it possible to “beat” mental illness? Or does it depend on type/circumstance?

“Beating” mental illness is actually the norm, not the exception. Most people who have a major depressive episode never have another one. 80% of people who survive their first suicide attempt never make a second attempt. 93% of Borderline Personality Disorder patients achieve remission. Up to 74% of people with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder achieve significant clinical improvement in their symptoms, and 20% achieve full remission. Half of Generalized Anxiety Disorder patients achieve remission after the acute phase of treatment. Even disorders with relatively low rates of remission - bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, schizoid personality disorder - generally become milder and easier to manage as you age. Psychiatric symptoms tend to peak in your 20s and generally drop off as you get older, especially if you seek treatment. 

This is why the narratives we use to talk about mental illness matter so much. Right now, the dominant narrative is that mental illness is “an imbalance in the brain” and that it’s largely something that people are born with. There are upsides and downsides to this. The upside is that it promotes the idea that mental illness is not the ill person’s fault, and it helps us understand that mental illness can impact anyone, regardless of their life circumstances. The downside, however, is that it’s sort of given us this idea that mental illness is inborn and unchangeable. People have taken on the idea that “that’s just how my brain is”, when the reality is that, for most people, mental illness is less of a stable trait for them, and more of just a shitty thing that they are going through for a little while. The idea that mental illness is just “in your brain” also erases the very real connection between your life circumstances and your mental health - while it’s very true that a wealthy person in a happy marriage can become depressed, it’s also very true that living in poor conditions and being in an abusive marriage can be the cause of depression, and that improving your life circumstances can lessen or eliminate mental health conditions. 

If you have a mental health condition, it’s very important that you not resign yourself to the idea that you’re going to be like this forever. Chances are, you won’t. Even if you have a mental health condition that is associated with low rates of remission, it is possible to make leaps and bounds in your functioning, and to get to a point where managing your condition becomes second nature to you. Our understanding of mental illness is improving every year, and new therapies and treatments are becoming available all the time. If you seek treatment and do your best to manage your condition, you have every reason to believe that you will make huge improvements. 

Hope this answers your question!

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god just. the way suvi’s favourite colour is red but even as a small child going to grandmother wren’s at age six she wants to be a Good Girl for her parents and say the Right Things and Belong to the Citadel so she says it’s lilac (because then it’s sort of true in both ways since blue and red make purple) and by the time we see her as an adult she’s bedecked in citadel blue and her hair is teal/white

but ame’s colour is red and her magic is wild and impulsive but also kind and humble and suvi spends weeks relearning to be around her true friends, breaking down walls and social barriers (with lots of heated and tense moments and butting heads and misunderstandings) and starts questioning everything she thought she knew and incorporates witch magic in with her wizard spells and then learns some hard truths and realizes there’s so much she doesn’t know and so many people she can’t trust and she’s being pulled from so many directions and she has to give up the way she’s learned how to actually use magic and she feels lost and disconnected in herself even if she believes in her friends’ causes

and then she’s escorted (alone) back to the citadel (home?) as a sort-of-prisoner/sort-of-hero and back to her (red) tower and the one ink demon she has with her that she has to reconstitute is the red one—and the one who saved her and her friends multiple times—and in order to do so she remembers the lie of her favourite colour red not blue not lilac in order to connect to why she loves magic and spells in order to channel her magic through her own means and it’s w o n d r o u s

and then she finds out ame (red) is here in the citadel for her to find her and make sure she’s safe and okay even though suvi told her it was a trap (but ame is cunning! now 🦊) which means that whatever happens next she’s not alone

the children’s adventure episode 4

something something eursulon’s glamour also has red hair but suvi’s likeness something something i didn’t think this one out it was mostly about ame

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