#and THIS IS VERY TRUE

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

License to Kitty.

[aesethewitch]

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.

[thestuffedalligator]

So usually when an imaginary friend is a real thing in a story, it’s either a demon or a ghost or some supernatural boogeyman that probably wants to eat the kid they’ve befriended (Mama, a couple of the Paranormal Activity movies), or “imaginary friends” are just treated as a real thing in the setting, and if a child just thinks hard enough they can manifest a friend into existence (Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Happy).

And somewhere in the middle is an area where the imaginary friend in question is real and they are supernatural, but they aren’t malevolent, and they aren’t entirely honest about what they are. Like maybe they’re a fairy or a god or some kind of boggle from mythology, but they just got caught by a six year old and they don’t have time to get into it, so they just go “…Yes. I’m your imaginary friend. We haven’t met. How do you do.” And then they stick around because they do love this kid, and if you’re a boggle from mythology in the modern day good food is really hard to come by.

And at some level. That’s what I think Hobbes is.

[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.

[badgerclawsaresharp]

trifecta of brennan lee mulligan self-inserts in fantasy high junior year

[fandom-draws]

One in a million.

[cthulhum]

does anyone realize how crazy it is to have the actor of a mostly headcanoned queer ship say the fans were never crazy and they were right all along after 10+ years of everyone just absolutely going nuts over the said queerbaited ship

[uncanny-tranny]

The leftism/anticapitalism leaving people's bodies the zeptosecond you imply that disabled people who aren't "productive" still matter in society and need to be treated like intrinsic equals who have a place in this world:

[wombrion]

i kno u dgaf about labru but i need to know what u think about female manipulator kabru x miserable housewife laios. them korean n chinese girls on twitter make the craziest fanart of this shit. admittedly it tickles me bc i automatically like any ship that has a brown woman in it

your bluntness has captivated me, you may have wretched yuri

[free-my-mindd]

- Chris Mc Geown

[contactlessdrivethru]

there is something unique and deeply special about monkey d luffy as a protagonist. he’s overwhelmingly ADORED by the fandom. he’s consistently the most or at least top 3 most popular characters in the whole series. peoples takes about him are gushingly positive. and that’s… really uncommon.

a LOT of fandoms i’ve witnessed or been in have a tendency to favor characters other than the main character. especially in anime. the main characters are often written as a blank slate for readers/watchers to project onto, but that makes them not as interesting and so they don’t get the fan attention.

but luffy is so far from that. and he’s ALWAYS been this way. we love him so much. he’s the heart of the story and the heart of the fandom in every single way. and i think that speaks to how well-written he is as a character. he’s fun and charming and complex and interesting and he makes us laugh and cry and cheer and hope and love. he’s able to inspire so much joy in people, both in his world but also in this one. and i think that’s really special. i feel so grateful to have found this story that means so much to me, and i’m so grateful that luffy exists.

[bevsi]

love lies bleeding

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The Dungeon Meshi crew 'leap' into action!

[androgynosaurus]

the other night I had a dream that I was watching a new episode of a TV show I like and my fave male character takes his shirt off and he's got clearly visible top surgery scars. Absolutely no preamble or foreshadowing in previous episodes that this guy was trans just. there they are. and I was so overwhelmed by emotion that I had to stop the episode and get up and jab my finger at them bc the people watching with me had no idea what I was crying about. for context we do not have a TV, but a school-style projector onto a blank wall. so here's an artist's rendition of what it looked like (and how it felt)

[lesbiandemondaddy]

Florence + the Machine heritage post. Literally like this should be required reading for all of their fans it's so iconic

[cruelsister-moved2]

for real! (from kadji amin)

[Image description: Screenshot of text:

What I've realized is that I believe that the matter of gender is practical and relational. It's not about who you are inside, it's more about how you would feel most comfortable in the world. It's not 'Who are you?' but 'How do you want to live?'

Had that been the discourse when I was coming up, I would have breathed a sigh of relief. I don't have to figure out who I am on the inside, I just have to figure out how I want to live.

end of ID]