#english is still hard

[taimanzano]

One of one. One, alone, one.

[inbabylontheywept]

Memories of Grandpa Dale

I was playing in the barn, but I was also hiding from my grandpa. I was aware that this hurt his feelings, but I didn’t know what else to do. Every year I’d ever visited him before, he’d seemed kind of mad at me, but I’d hoped still that year was the year that we’d finally be friends. I even made a list of things to do together. 

Unfortunately, the list did not fix things¹ so I'd been forced to acknowledge that if he couldn't be happy with me there, and he couldn't be happy with me gone, then perhaps he simply could not be happy. At least, not until someone invented The Secret Third Thing.

(But I was only nine. So. That someone would probably not be me.) 

Fortunately, being happy is a task that I've never needed to delegate - I’m actually quite good at it. I’d been sad in the barn for maybe an hour or so, but eventually that got boring, so I invented a new game where I would chase big clouds of shiny blue flies off the sun-warmed horse-poop and try to shoo them towards a corner of the barn that I knew had a large spiderweb in it. 

I was perfectly aware that this is not ideal for the flies, but I had just read Charlotte’s Web, so my empathy function was very biased towards spiders, who I perceived as patient and compassionate and slightly maternal women. Who just happened to have eight legs.  

(I, like most nine year old boys, would have personally been willing to fight a war for every patient, compassionate, slightly maternal woman I had ever met. If you, personally, have ever hugged a little boy who was trying very hard not to cry in front of his friends after skinning his knee, know that there is a child in this world that would kill in your name.)

(Now live with that knowledge.) 

I played my game with the flies for a long time. Long enough to get into a rhythm of running and laughing and then panting outside on my back while wallowing in the long green grass.

It was during one of those walks outside to lay in the grass that I noticed my mom. She was sitting on a hay bale, looking baffled. I don’t know how long she’d been there, but I was too young and confident to even feel odd. She asked me what I was doing, and I just kind of gestured to the ceiling, and said, You know, just. Feeding spiders.²

She nodded. I was feeding spiders. Of course. 

We sat there a few moments. It was an amicable silence, but I was still faintly relieved when she broke it.  

Your grandpa’s been looking for you, she said. He got some grapes earlier. Wanted to take you to feed the ducks.

I've always really liked feeding ducks³. Visiting them had actually been the next thing on my list. 

I was baffled by the effort. 

He’s mad at me, I pointed out. My mom, to her credit, looked genuinely confused. 

He’s not, she said. 

But he was mad when we picked blackberries, I pointed out. And when we went on that walk down to the prairie. And he snapped at me this morning when I asked if I could have some of his dried mangos. 

The mangos had been my last straw. The weirdest part was that he didn’t even say no, he just (angrily) said of course you can, as if it was an insult to his hospitality that I was asking when just the year before he’d yelled at me because I ate a tin of dried apples. Apparently, I was just supposed to know that those apples were exclusively reserved for The Apocalypse. 

(To be fair, my grandpa has always been very worried about the apocalypse, but mostly in the context of not having enough dried apples for it. There was a period of my life where I thought that The Apocalypse referred to some kind of prophesied biblical event where there would be No More Apples. This thought has stuck with me for a very long time⁴.)

Well. Yeah. My mom said. He’s mad. But he’s not mad at you. He’s just… Mad. 

I mulled this over. 

What about the mangos? I asked, and she shrugged at that. 

Alright, so that time he was mad at you, but that’s being mad one time in three days. Cut the man some slack, you’ve been asking him for permission before eating anything. 

I just don’t want to eat the wrong thing, I said. I’ve always been very defensive of my rule-following. Both because rules are important, and also because that #10 can of dried apples ripped through me like a shotgun full of razor blades⁵. That “snack” had 400% the recommended daily fiber for an adult man. And I was very definitely not a grown man when I ate it.  

It was a very painful experience is what I am trying to say. 

I know, my mom said. 

I don’t even like apples, I added. Still defensive. 

I know, my mom said again. She’s very good at saying it. It always feels like she’s agreeing with me, and not just trying to rush me onto The Point. Sometimes, people need to make detours from The Point in order to explain things. Like, hypothetically, why they once ate a very large number of dehydrated apples. My mom is wise, and she has always known this. . 

I just really wanted to eat something sweet, I continued. They don’t keep anything sweet in the whole house. The day before I ate those apples, I licked all the salt off a saltine just so I could eat the cracker plain. And then the cracker tasted just like a cookie. To me. That’s how crazy I was going. 

My mom nodded her head sympathetically. 

My first month of college, she said conspiratorially, I ate about a box of poptarts a day. 

There was another longish pause as both of us considered what led us to this point. 

My parents are crazy, my mom said at long last. It’s a very peaceful statement to her. I'm sure it was stressful when she first realized it, but she's had a long time to make her peace, and she's made it well.  

Will you go with me? I asked. To feed the ducks?  

He’s not mad at you, she said again. Reemphasizing her point. He’s just mad. It’s just how he is. 

But she went with me anyway.

I watched Grandpa Dale closely the whole way to the pond to see if my mom was right. She was. She almost always is.  He was angry while he drove, and he was angry while he parked and he was even angry while he strode purposefully towards the park. When we got there, he took several grapes, and he angrily put them in his hand, and angrily extended the hand towards the ducks, and he looked at me, and for maybe a tenth of a second he looked okay. Not exactly happy, but a little less mad. Then a duck bit the webbing between his pointer finger and his thumb.

He immediately, without hesitation, without even a second thought, hit the duck with a haymaker⁶. For a human, the punch would have been devastating, but the duck had the benefit of having essentially no inertia, so it just kind of moved sideways and looked perplexed. 

You son of a bitch, my grandpa said. This is a funny thing for anyone to say to a duck, but it was especially funny to hear coming from a former Mormon Bishop. 

Quack,⁷ said the duck. 

My mom started laughing. I'd felt a sort of holy terror at the anger my grandpa was exuding in that moment, but the moment she laughed I realized how absurd it was. I was watching a grown man beef with a duck. I was watching a grown man beef with the world. 

I started laughing too. In a better world, maybe my grandpa would've joined. Maybe he would've taken a good hard look in the mirror and questioned why exactly he was so angry. But he didn't. Instead he swore at the duck some more, and he threw his remaining handful of grapes at it overhand, like a baseball, and then the duck ate the grapes out of the water, and my mom actually laughed so hard she started dry heaving a little, and my grandpa had to go sit in the car for a few minutes by himself to regain his composure. 

¹ He managed to pick blackberries angrily

² Unfortunately, I do this kind of response quite a bit.

³ I got my first kiss from my wife because I managed to capture a duck. They're like, a motif for my life. Very lucky to have that.

⁴ I reference it again in this very weird short story.

⁵ I eat a lot of strange things.

⁶ My wife is concerned people will not know what a haymaker is. It is simply the most redneck kind of punch.

⁷ ...What did you expect it to say?

[trepppy]

Update on the kids sprites!!

For now think I'm move on to the trolls but I'm listening to any feedback or variant requests!

[arrgh-whatever]

[dookiespooky]

It's done! Triumvirate animated wanted posters heehee love me some multiverse-level-threat silly guys,, click here to see the posters in english

overlords au belongs to @aeli-tan-art !

[solongshrimp]

Pancaketiffy's Squidbob comics in English (google drive link)

I've been able to track down almost all of the Squidbob comics created by Pancaketiffy in English! Huge thanks to @lake-fmoli for sharing a majority of these with me ^^

Included in this Google Drive link are the comics Squidward's Birthday Gift, Tiki Ceremony, Vacation, Nautical Disaster, Squelly, The Secret Formula, and The Fantastic And Expansive Life Of Squilliam Fancyson, as well as some mini-comics and miscellaneous art.

Tiki Ceremony had a few pages only in Spanish -- pages 30-33 and page 68 -- and since I know it's going to be VERY hard to find those original pages, I've taken an English translation I found and edited those remaining Spanish pages back into English; those pages I've labeled as "retranslated." I'll still be looking for those original pages, and I'm hoping I can find someone who has them, but for now this is the best way to complete the English version of the comic. (Thank you to the people who uploaded the Spanish-translated pages to a NSFW site along with accurate English translations, lol)

I have included two versions of Vacation -- the version where Pancaketiffy took out the NSFW pages, and the original version with the NSFW pages intact. The NSFW version has been labeled "EXPLICIT." The censored version was taken directly from an upload on Internet Archive -- so big thank you to the person who uploaded that! The only things missing from these are the English chapter covers.

Natural Disaster, Squelly, and The Secret Formula were never completed, and as far as I'm aware I've gathered all of the completed pages. I THINK it's the same for The Fantastic And Expansive Life Of Squilliam Fancyson, but I'm unsure. Secret Formula and the Squilliam comic were retrieved from a drive that I can't find anymore 😅 but thank you to whoever uploaded those in the first place.

Some pages are higher-quality than others, but I'm just glad I've found readable English versions of the comics in general. If anybody has or ever finds higher-quality pages, the original English pages of Tiki Ceremony, the English chapter covers for Vacation, or anything else that's missing, please send them to me. I'm gonna try to keep this thing updated, as well as figure out the best way to upload this stuff to Internet Archive.

Again, big thank you to everyone who saved and shared the art with me!

[literatureaesthetic]

at the risk of sounding like an absolute lunatic.....i miss studying books and writing essays on them😭

[royaltea000]

eldest daughter behavior

[toadletthethird]

Contrarian and Opportunist both use all pronouns, but for different reasons.

Contrarian does so because they saw the whole reality multiplying and breaking, how can they believe in any strong identity? + it's in his nature to break expected rules + she would want to try everything + they're stranger' ally + all other valid reasons y'know

Opportunist on the other hand does so just because he goes with anything people call him as long as they call him

"Gender is a social construct!" They both exclaim in unison, but one of their voices turns more and more into the triumphant villain laughter

[canisalbus]

I want you to know that your art is very important to me, and I'm very invested in all of the characters I have seen from you. Also, the discussion about Finnish and other languages having gendered words or not has been the last little push to get me to start learning Finnish which I think is fun.

I'm making this a little compilation post of all the language asks I got. Thank you for sharing, this was genuinely really interesting!

[0039pf-third-blog-hooray]

leon is urgently called on a mission

leon: sorry, mr. president, i'm in madrid. with the daughter of the previous mr. president. no, i can't, i'm at a wedding. mr. president, this is my wedding. no, not with the daughter of the previous mr. president, luis serra. yes, a criminal in 10 countries, but like i said, i’m in madrid.

there’s a wedding march in the background

by @pol-parketny

[ganondoodle]

Sorry ab the shitty English translations/localizations, it's bc they think that Americans won't get it otherwise (bc when we act stupid, we act REALLY stupid), our bad 💀

[cringefail-clown]

this one never showed up in tagz even when i changed stuff around so im reposting it ILL NOT BE SILENCED. anyway ive drawn this one for bones of black marrow on ao3 its literally one of my favorite fics out there. theres a lot of bangin in this one tho so beware!! the pron IS the plot

[whatstheoccasion]

"You are the rock on which I stand, Steady me, please take my hand, Hold me now until the break of day."

— Charles Wiles.

Pirates don't help people, he used to spit. I was not born into this world to help anyone.

Yet, as the fabric of your shirt softly shifts up your skin making you shiver, Law finds himself unable to stop the hand raising his blanket, keeping you warm.

You're not just people, though, he poorly excuses himself. You're more than just anyone to him.

Which is why he pretends to not notice how clingy you get when the sun's barely peeking through the windows, warm and bright enough to make out the shape of your face, features he awkwardly traces with the tip of his fingers, finding himself needing the intimacy, this closeness with you.

He cherishes these slight pieces of yourself you only show him. Asleep, vulnerable and soft to the touch, trusting this callous man to keep your dreams safe, Law has to bite his tongue to hold himself from repeating the same three little words to you like a fool.

He chastises himself for even thinking about it.

And then you start to wake up, with bloated cheeks and messy hair, your eyes still fighting sleep, and God, it's useless, Law thinks. It's an urge too hard to resist– but he refuses to say it out loud. He's content with protecting you as it is, tightening his blanket around you and trying to fix your hair.

Will it be too much for you, he wonders, impatiently waiting for your eyes to fully open, if he physically gives you his heart to keep, to protect?

"Law?"

You shove your face further down his neck, eyes scrunching in a tender way that makes Law's hands clench and unclench with the need to touch.

He hums low on his chest in response, bringing your body closer to his. When you don't continue, eyes closing again, he grumbles out, "Morning."

He feels your smile on his neck, one sleepy kiss pressed against it. "Good morning, love."

It hurts.

Up to this day, Law's guilt clenches with a vice-like grip around his chest, reminding him how he doesn't deserve this warmth, this forgiveness you give him.

It's a hole his heart still aches to fill– this disgusting need for affection, a need he can't allow himself to ask for out loud, but one he desperately looks for anyways.

When you're out and about on a new island, linking pinkies and pressing your side against his, teasing him for his pink cheeks and burning glare.

Aflot in the Polar Bear, dragging his tired self up deck to get some much needed sun in his system, his palms tingling where your hands held him.

On nights he's blessed with your pleasure, where he's insatiable until he makes you his– unsatisfied until every part of you is marked with his name, his traces.

So when you pull him closer to you now, he doesn't say a word. He doesn't tease you like he would any other day, doesn't call you out on how your body seems to always gravitate towards his– today he's not sure if his good intentions would come clear enough, and what if one last remark is what pushes you to finally leave him for good?

Law instinctively holds you closer, letting your body soothe his restless mind. You're here. You're staying. You love him.

You hug him even tighter in your sleep, entwining your legs together, impossibly closer to eachother. He's usually not positive for anything, but you're for sure a gift from his loved ones up above, because only those who cared for him enough could guide you to him.

He has one final thought before dozing off again, as the tiny fluttering of your eyelashes on his skin and the slight rise from the waves of the New World lull him to sleep, carrying so much fondness he doesn't even put up a fight when his eyes start to drop.

His heart is staying right where it belongs.

[soriastrider]

that one meme

original:

[oysunset]

So, I've just finished watching ducktales 2017 and... It absolutely killed me. I mean... The plot? The plot twists, even though I knew about almost all of them?? And final titles??? It's so amazing!!!

Ah, I love "family is the greatest adventure" whole thing! Found family trope is my favourite and there was so lot of it... Definitely one of my favourite cartoons right now!

Honestly, I didn't like how faster May and June became the part of the family, but it's ok. I understand, there wasn't a lot of time to introduce them. I liked cameo of Drake/Darkwing duck and Gosalyn, now I fell like I should rewatch old "Darkwing Duck" series.

Honestly, I don't know what to feel right now. The final was great, but it's so sad there won't be another episodes 🥲 maybe, you guys can recommend some fics about their adventures and family bonding? I'd love to read them!