#and they always end up my favorites

[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.

[charminglyantiquated]

✨birthday playlist!✨

it's that time of year, baby! honestly it's been a rough few months, and I'm going to be spending the next seven months or so nose to the grindstone in the shipyard, so I'm looking forward to this year's playlist even more than I usually do. please, if you feel so inclined, share a song you love with me!

as ever, I'll make the whole playlist available on spotify and youtube in a week or two!

[temeyes]

continuing my not really-annual redraws of the frye twins busts lol!!!

[2017 | V2] | [2020] | [2021]

[cementcornfield]

Ja'Marr talks about Joe "screaming" at him in college for wearing warming lotion 🔥

[ari-continues-to-exist]

Pumpkin Rabbit and Witch Sheep wish you a Happy Halloween!!

(Click for better quality)

[rohansdisciple]

this very specific genre of men 💐>>>

[aro-arttorneys]

Happy "it wasn't christmas yet!" to those who celebrate 🥳

[linterteatime]

A Noelle c0mission I did for @ceriisu on twitter !!⭐

[valnotso3xplicit]

In my defense I was the target demographic when mlp came out

[peachphernalia]

assortment of heart doodles i forgotttt to post

[space-sheep08]

Starting a collection of pathetic brown hair girls who, because they desperately want to be and be WITH their blonde bestfriends, sleep with their partners instead.

[reksink]

Requested Works from a Humble Swan 💚

[swagveryswagamazinf]

fro the qsmp cinema thingy¡¡

[null-doesnothing]

if I said that I think Amanda was a near equally horrible parent to Spock as Sarek was but just in a different way, would I get pelted with rocks or what

[neunhofferart]

Howdy, Heidi! You said that some fans picked up things that were done on accident… Were there more scenes like that? Also, were there scenes that you guys made on purpose but fans didn’t pick up / were aware of them? In shipping terms (hihi) and in general terms. Thanks!

I think in every type of media you will inevitably see versions of 'authorial' intent vs audience interpretation that overlap and differ from each other in many ways. (Authorial intent in quotes because in collaborative mediums like film and animation every single person on the pipeline who touches the work probably has a slightly different personal interpretation they're contributing to the final work, even under someone like a showrunner or a director).

Humans are smart and it's in our nature to look for connections and find explainations to questions, so most of the time if someone is putting something down, someone is going to pick it up, so to speak, and a lot of things ARE on purpose.

But this same phenomenon can also lead to us seeing connections in places that even the 'authors' might not have originally thought of while creating the work, and I think that can be pretty neat actually! I don't necessarily think reading alternate interpretations of works is wrong-- it can be very healthy to explore multiple reads of a narrative or a character/character dynamic. On Chaos Theory there were definitely times when we were like 'fans are probably gonna ship this even if it's not the text' haha. Sometimes fans latch onto headcanons you really have no control over. Sometimes things were animated slightly differently from how they were conceived (which is also a natural part of things).

But yes, sometimes I have seen a few other things that were interpreted in slightly different ways from how they were directed or written verbally, but I'm personally of the opinion that it's more fun to leave some things visual and open to a little interpretation rather than beating the words over the audience's head and having the characters constantly announcing 'I'm feeling this because of this!' And going 'this is the only way to interpret the show and the characters and if you don't you're wrong!'

It's usually not a huge deal. I think even as we were working sometimes I'd make connections to myself that weren't necessarily spelled out to us and go 'oh, this is a throughline for this character actually!'

Like for example- if I remember correctly, the original direction behind how Kenji reacted to Ben's apparent death was that it was supposed to the first time he'd ever seen someone he really KNEW seemingly die right front of him, and being unable to do anything about it deeply affected him. Ben is a very important turning point in his character development regardless of which way you read it.

And I think this is actually something that just continued to stack onto his character throughout both shows whenever any of his friends lives are seriously in danger. In Camp when he's still unable to do anything but comfort Sammy while she's poisoned, to deciding it's too dangerous not to trade Wu's laptop for Brooklynn, to eventually throwing himself between the spinosaurus his dad is about to kill Darius with and choosing his friends over his own father and being willing to die with/for them... and then in Chaos Theory it kind of reboots all over again with Brooklynn dying and then his dad dying right in front of him, and his complex of not wanting to be useless and trying to do whatever he can at the expense of even himself to keep the loved ones he has left safe is kicked into overdrive.

I think there are a lot of things like that where the intent is not always verbally spelled out, but the more important thing is that it's still (hopefully) making you feel something.

[mushiimune]

I've kept this headcanon to myself for years but I think Mush would keep a little blue marble in a pouch in his pocket because it reminds him of Blink's eye. He'd reveal it by accident one day. Blink is shocked but not totally surprised, because Mush is sentimental like that.

Blink plays it cool, even though he's absolutely melting inside because how ever did he manage to find somebody so endearing to have on his side?