love when an absolute nightmare of a character is introduced and all you can think is "jesus christ buddy what the hell is your problem" and the narrative gives you a hot minute to stew before explaining Exactly what is Their Problem. and you just sorta sit back in your metaphorical rocking chair and think "huh. yeah okay fair. that would do this to a person, yes."
Maladaptive daydreaming as a child was like "what if I was in the digimon universe" and now it's like "what if someone genuinely loved me even though I'm flawed"
Finally, I can present you my little comic ‘Hearts for Sale’. These are the first 10 pages.
I’m very nervous about this since it’s my first self-published book. I hope you like the story.
Read Part 2/ Part 3
In the future, children will think our ways are strange. "Why do old people always grow so much milkweed in their gardens?" they'll say. "Why do old people always write down when the first bees and butterflies show up? Why do old people hate lawn grass so much? Why do old people like to sit outside and watch bees?"
We will try to explain to them that when we were young, most people's yards were almost entirely short grass with barely any flowers at all, and it was so commonplace to spray poisons to kill insects and weeds that it was feared monarch butterflies and American bumblebees would soon go extinct. We will show them pictures of sidewalks, shops, and houses surrounded by empty grass without any flowers or vegetables and they will stare at them like we stared at pictures of grimy children working in coal mines
We will be feeding our grandchildren strawberries and raspberries we grew in our gardens, dragging them along to the farmers' markets for tomatoes and eggs and goats milk and pickles and pecans and salsa and sunflower seed butter and jars of honey, as they complain and drag their feet because Gramma always stands around talking to people for like an HOUR
and we will say "When I was YOUR age, fruits and vegetables came from a supermarket and they were bred to get shipped 1000 miles in a truck and sit on shelves for weeks, and they tasted so sour and watery it was like eating paper compared to these ones. It wasn't even legal in some places to grow your own food"
and they will roll their eyes like yeah yeah just because everything was miserable in the 20s doesn't mean I have to have a smile on my face standing in the hot sun while you listen to that one guy talk about his bees FOREVER
But they will go, because there might be baby goats.
Since I made this post, dozens and dozens of people have left tags telling me that it was the first thing today that made them want to continue living, that it was the first thing that made them consider that they might be okay years in the future, that they might grow old, that it was the first and only post of its kind they'd ever seen—the first post that boldly predicts a future where we make it.
And many other people have been just spitting, foaming at the mouth fucking FURIOUS. How dare I have the audacity to imagine a future where things get better?
Don't I know how BAD things are? Am I not aware of the TERROR and DEVASTATION of climate change and fascism and biodiversity loss? How dare someone be so bold, so callous, as to imagine something other than misery and suicide. How dare someone suggest it will get better. How dare a person propose that there is a future where we will be okay, in the face of so much terror. Hasn't she seen the abyss opening its jaws before us?
the idea that there is hope for the future is the only way we have this kind of future.
there were kids who stayed inside because of the black plague and went on to help cure it.
there were women who sat at home and cleaned the house and dreamt up a world where they could vote and have jobs.
there were kids in the mines who thought up a life outside of it.
there were children who hid in annexes and wrote a diary where they prayed for a future without a terrible man in control
there were slaves who wanted freedom so badly and had hope that it would get better
there were gay people who hid in the corners of clubs and fought back for a future where they could walk down the street together
do you know what all of that has in common? they had hope that things would get better and they made that change. they looked at the world in its cruel ways and fought back.
so now, there are kids and teenagers and young adults and new adults who dream of a world so beautiful and the only amazon their grandchildren know is the rainforest
and it is in everything we do that we find this hope. wishing on dandelions, counting the stars, making our own clothes out of crochet or knit or sewing it, watching the sunset, going to the farmer’s market, feeding the birds, planting seeds.
step by step, we dream up, like our ancestors before us, a beautiful world
last night I had the experience of "referencing a tumblr post that you think is widely known but turns out to not be as widely known as you thought it was" last night and it was this post. whatever. go my scallops
Now available on Patreon! Public release will be two weeks from now.
+30k words, for a total of 455k!
Hunt for information in the scraps, or get it straight from the source in an interrogation! Will you take a persuasive approach, or resort to blunter methods?
For badly behaved Paradigms, face the music for your actions.
Find out what’s going on with Wil.
Unveil some of the shroud around the Zone.
Potentially, witness an intriguing in-team dispute…
Thank you for all the support, comments, and for reading and following the game. :)
so embarrassing when i forget im checking someone's blog and i start scrolling through and liking and reblogging shit as if it's just my dash. it feels like wandering into someone else's apartment and not noticing and making myself lunch
Lohen is the best thing to ever happen in Nod Krai. "stop meat riding-" bro i will literally get on my knees, undo his buttons with my teeth and suck him off until he shoots blanks i DON'T care.
"oh but he's not even meta" thats the best part. that means meta slaves wont larp on him and devalue him to just numbers bro.
im so deadass when i say i will speedrun my comms once my finals are over bc he will be coming home even if i have to drag him by his fluffy bunny tail (buss out the wallet). the last time i went this insane was when i set eyes on Balladeer Scaramouche 6th of the Fatui Harbingers. I WASN'T EVEN PLAYING BACK THEN
Malleus calls Lilia a friend in the new chapter, graduating out of the list of "people who have never called anyone a friend" 🎉
Updated:
While Malleus has had the word "friend" added to his dialogue on EN, the first instance of Malleus canonically referring to another character as his friend was Lilia in Book 7.5, to Lilia's surprise.
In-game citations/additional information on friendship in Twst, available here:
so i've noticed something about orufrey's body language
and i have been going insane about it ever since! kamome shirahama your attention to details will be the death of me /pos
hands are the most expressive non-verbal tool humans have, and since it's also quite literally the tool that gives the witches their magic, watching hands in witch hat atelier is beyond important. implied spoilers up to ch93 under cut! [don't mind the language of half the screenshots, that's beside the point]
qifrey so very often tends to clasp his hands together, rubbing them against each other or simply clinging to his long robes. a gesture so telling of just how uncomfortable due to silverwood he constantly is, always slightly nervous, always tip-toeing around the edge of a cliff.
and he's been doing so since childhood! his emotions are so closed-off when it comes to casual body language, which is both an indicator of his character and the ways in which he deals with his curse. unable to trust even his closest friend, he chooses the only vaguely soothing thing: to curl into himself, to detach, to distance.
meanwhile olruggio, despite his scruffiness, generally comes off as a more open, "simple" man, hands flying all over the place when he's agitated. he expresses his emotions freely, without restrain.
qifrey curls into a ball for comfort, meanwhile olly splays like a star, comfortable in his skin an in qifrey's presence
and what happens when they start to interact?
olly keeps reaching for qifrey, talking some sense into him with his hands, with spontaneous and emotional physical touch.
he does so even upon first meeting
he keeps and keeps reaching out to qifrey, both literally and symbolically.
no matter how hard qifrey tries to run away, to hide deeper into himself, olruggio will always be there to offer him a friendly hand or otherwise
this particular parallel is especially dear to me:
they changed so much,
but they also haven't changed at all
and the culmination of this dynamic in a single image for me is this:
qifrey, gaze averted, hands uncomfortably clasped together, fake smile on his face
and olruggio, calm and confident, leaning into qifrey's personal space with familiar ease, resting an arm on his shoulder in a friendly gesture.
everything that shirahama consistently portrays as the manga goes on and the history unravels, neatly and wordlessly shown in a single static image. the art of showing, but not telling, thus nurturing a deeper understanding of these characters. absolutely brilliant
some more qifreys bc at some point i genuinely started saving all the times i noticed him clasping his hands tightly together or around his clothes
i just feel like shirahama-sensei is so deliberate in her poses and smaller details. she always Knows what to do with the characters' hands. it's so very amazing and important to me. do you get what i mean??????
I’m coming back to this having just read chapter 96
which could straight up be titled ‘Man Viscerally Uncomfortable with Current Situation™ (unexpected social call from a near stranger)’
like my god.
clenching hand at abdomen to awkwardly massaging the bad shoulder to self-consciously rubbing at face. all in the course of a 60 second conversation.
Qifrey you could not be more anxious-looking if you tried 😬
It's so funny too because you get tricked into thinking qifrey is very suave and charming!
And he is!
…When he has a script. Or is in control of the situation. Or he’s interacting with people he's close to. He's perfectly comfortable making his request of coco's mother in their shop. he has no trouble offering assistance to the ladies of the pegasus carriage.
But he also gets steamrolled by the tavern owner during the fire. He gets bullied by medical professionals. He reverts to a preteen in the presence of his old master.
When in his element—teaching children—he is confident and engaging and elegant. But put him in front of a stranger without his family to act as a buffer? ...well
Suddenly he's back to being that little outsider boy who never fit in at the great hall
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