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#the birds that live here
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I think it's so adorable that early humans took wild gourds - a tiny fruit that hollows out as it dries, making it float - and decided to make something out of it
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they thought the tiny fruit was so good that they bred it for thousands of years, making it larger to form into bowls and cups, and different shapes to become bottles and spoons
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and musical instruments
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And then, people took the hollow gourds they farmed, and they turned them into houses for birds. We adapted them into the perfect houses for birds, and now there are specific breeds of birdhouse gourd just for making into birdhouses
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And humans dedicated gardening space and time and thousands of years of breeding to make the gourds so absolutely perfect for birds, that there is a species of bird that lives almost exclusively in them
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ailithnight · 1 year
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Aheem... prompt from @regonold
16 Hours
Danny remembers the first time something shorted out his powers. Vlad with his stupid Plasmius Maximus thing. Well, 'remembers'. Mostly he remembers the aftermath.
Apparently Vlad hadn't known at the time exactly how Danny ended up half ghost. He thought it had been a slower progression like his own development. It hadn't occurred to him that Danny's original death had been much quicker.
Danny remembers a short, light shock. Really, the spector deflector was worse. But this shock... suddenly his muscles were seizing, his heart stuttering, his Lichtenbergs burning. And then, nothing. A blank space in Danny's head that apparently spanned 3 hours.
Next thing he knows, they're in some kind of vehicle. There are sirens outside (a police escort, Danny would later learn). His mom is driving like her life depends on it. And Vlad is giving him chest compressions, looking grieved and panic striken. He's crying. They both are.
"Please tell me you didn't have to kiss me." His voice comes out pained and raspy. Mom almost crashes the vehicle.
"No, Little Badger. Thankfully, you kept breathing. Just your heart that was struggling." Vlad chuckled, guilty yet relieved.
It was another hour before they made it to the nearest hospital from the stupid hunting cabin. 6 more for all the stupid medical tests. "An accident," Vlad told them. "Small shock, but with an already weak heart..."
Any other time, Danny might have argued. Tried to make Vlad admit more guilt. But the whole ordeal had exhausted him to much to care then.
The second time was marginally better. At least with the Fenton Crammer, it was a steady loss. And Danny managed to fix it before his healing factor fully failed. It still hadn't been pleasant, fighting Skulker and dealing with Dash while phantom echoes of his death arced across his body. But he'd managed.
This. This is so much worse. Danny thought it would be like the Crammer again. A steady decline. But it isn't.
And it isn't like the Maximus either, a one then done, pain then nothing, dying then dead, moment.
No. This is more like the blood blossoms. This is torture. This is hell.
The suppression cuffs let just enough of his power bleed through, just enough healing factor, to keep him alive. Alive and in agony for... hours? Days? Weeks? Minutes? Danny couldn't really tell. His thoughts had long since turned to nothing but static and pain. All he knew was that time was passing around him while he was here, suffering on the absolute brink of death yet unable to embrace it.
Oh god he wanted to die. Please just let him die already! It's too much. A death that should only last a few seconds drug out into an eternity. His muscles ached with the strain of being locked up. His insides were broiling from the electric heat. His heart stuttered and stopped and started and stuttered. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts!
He might have been screaming. He might have been Wailing. Or he might he been choking on weak uneven breaths. Danny didn't know. Didn't care to know. Didn't care if he ever found out the details of his time in chains. He just wanted, no needed, it to end. But it just dragged on and on and on. And Danny was lost in it.
Too far gone to even realize when it ended.
.
Batman hadn't been there when the new meta appeared, quite literally materializing from nowhere in the conference room mid-meeting. He had been dealing with a mass Arkham breakout at the time. So he wasn't there. An unfortunate fact which will haunt him for the rest of his life and possibly beyond.
He should have been there. If he had only been there...
He didn't blame his team mates. They didn't know. Who would have guessed that simple power suppression cuffs could ever be an instrument of torture. He'd never considered it possible.
He didn't blame his team mates. How could he blame them? Batman wasn't even the one to connect the dots. Red Robin figured it out. He always was good at stringing together thoughts know one else would think to connect.
Red Robin asked the right questions. He figured out in 5 minutes what the rest of the league and the best doctors -not technically- on earth had been agonizing over for 16 hours.
16 hours too long.
He should have been here. Should have come sooner.
"Don't know, B!" Flash had met him at the Zetas, already rambling at top speed before he could reorient himself after teleportation. Everyone else had gone home, unable to help and needing to tend to their own cities and responsibilities.
"He just- He appeared out of nowhere while we were in meeting. Didn't trip any alarms or nothing. Just popped up. We figured it had to be teleportation, but he'd have to know where the Watchtower was to do that.
So we figured, you know, random kid teleporting into the Watchtower during a Justice League meeting. Not good. Big threat. Bats would tell us to detain. So we did.
But before we could get him to a holding cell, there was this flash of light and he changed or something. He had white hair and green eyes and some sort of jumpsuit on when he appeared.
But after the light he had black hair and a t-shirt and jeans and I actually didn't see his eyes cause he just collapsed on the spot.
Started convulsing or seizing or something. And screaming. God, B, the screaming... So we took him to medbay and...
He's dying B. He has to be. He's got a fever that keeps spiking and dropping, his muscles keep spasming, and his heart keeps giving out...
He looks 14. He looks like..."
Flash had trailed off there, as they reached medbay. Bruce understood his reluctance to complete that sentence as soon as he saw the boy.
He looks like a Robin.
Like all 4 of his sons combined.
Like someone mixed Dick's and Jason's faces and put it on Tim's body at Damian's age.
It can't even be a trick. The suppression cuffs are nullifying his abilities. This is what he truly looks like.
His sons.
In pain.
In agony for 16 hours because Batman prioritized Gotham over an emergency on the Watchtower.
"When exactly did you say he collapsed."
"When we were moving him to a holding cell after we caught him. He was a trick to catch too. He-"
Red Robin cut him off. "Yeah, sure. But when exactly did this start. What happened immediately before?"
Flash was less then pleased about being interrupted, but acquiesced after a look from Batman. Tim had an idea. Tim was on to something. "Like I said, just after we caught him and got the cuffs on so he'd stop slipping away again."
Bruce couldn't keep the growl out of his voice one he realized what Tim was suggesting. Of course he knows it wasn't their fault. He's told all of them as much since. But in the moment...
"Take them off!"
"What?"
"It's the cuffs! Take the damn cuffs off! They're killing him!"
Flash wasted no more time, bolting out of the room to fetch the disabler. Tim didn't bother waiting for the fastest man alive. He had the cuffs disabled before Flash would have been able to swipe his access card into the detainment center storage room. Bruce practically threw the cuffs out of the room in his haste to get them away.
The change had been... not nearly as quick as Bruce would have liked. The heartrate settled out almost instantly, although into something a bit too slow for comfort. But it was steady and Bruce knew nothing about this kid's normal physiology so he counted it a win.
The screaming, of course, had long since choked off. According to Flash's report, his vocal cords failed after about an hour. But his facial expressions still indicated consciousness, though not awareness.
The muscles stopped spasming and unlocked slowly over the course of several minutes. Flash was back by then, looking a bit put out to have lost a race against Red Robin. Batman could not give a single flying fuck about Flash's ego right then.
Shortly after his muscles unlocking was when he finally passed out. Once more, Batman thought about 16 hours. 16 hours and he hadn't even been able to slip into unconsciousness for relief. He should have been here.
The fever was the slowest to break. In that it still hadn't broken almost 2 hours later. Batman had sent Tim and Flash home after Red Robin finished squeezing all the details he could out of Barry. Tim had given him a look before leaving, some mixture of worry and mischief. "Should I tell Agent A to prepare a room?" Bruce just rolled his eyes and shooed him off. Hopefully to bed. Knowing his son, probably not. Tim was most likely still up doing research. Bruce wanted to call Alfred to wrangle Tim to sleep.
But calling Alfred would mean leaving the room so the still potentially a threat meta couldn't hear if he woke up. And Bruce couldn't leave him. Not until the fever broke. Not until he woke up. Not until he knew the boy that looked like his sons would be okay.
Not until he could apologize for being late.
16 hours.
16 hours too late.
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vellichorom · 4 months
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self indulgence at its worst
( using a background template made by @ MariStars15 / @enigmari! )
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finedinereception · 7 months
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some details on what im tentatively calling wizard married au- in which betty is here from the start and happily magic married to her equally deranged husband.
past
like canon, betty flees when simon first wears the crown. however, there is no portal to the future this time. she finds somewhere else to stay, and during that time, she begins researching. she can tell that wasnt normal. surely if it had just been simon, he would have shown some symptoms of whatever that breakdown was. it had to have been the crown.
she pours herself into her research. it saves her life, because a few weeks later the bombs drop.
she uses her research to attain magic powers, a la magic betty. like simon, she obtains immortality. however, she loses her sanity the more she uses her magic.
a while after the bombs, she finally meets simon again. by this time hes picked up a travel buddy- marceline. the two of them are relieved and happy to see each other.
the apocalypse ironically saves their relationship.
turns out knowing you and your man are going insane and losing your memories is a pretty sobering, emotional thing to really grasp. it ends up breaking the wall between them, and theyre finally, finally able to begin sorting out the issues in their relationship.
this is an important moment between them. even when they fully lose themselves, it becomes the basis of their future relationship. betty starts doing things for herself, and simon starts paying more attention so he can stop her if she starts focusing too much on him again.
its never easy, but for a while, they get a sort of peace. a surprise family at the end of the world.
simon loses it first. during the night, when marceline is asleep, he tells betty that he has to go. hes held on longer than canon simon thanks to betty being around, but hes finally slipping, and hes worried hes going to hurt marcy. sure, betty could protect her… but shed be expending her own mind if she did so. betty knew this was coming, and they agree.
simon leaves before marcy wakes up, taking nothing but a scrapbook hed been keeping from before the bombs, and the clothes on his back. they should have waited- its something theyll regret in the far, far future. he should have said goodbye. but they didnt think they had the willpower to go through with it if they heard her begging. at the very least, betty is there to offer support.
betty continues to hang out for several more years. she gets to see marceline grow up. marcy can see with every spell that betty is becoming more reckless, more eccentric, more distant.
betty finally loses herself protecting marceline during a vampire hunt. she holds on just long enough to get herself away from marcy.
and she begins to travel. until one day, she finds herself inexplicably drawn to a land of ice.
they dont remember who simon and betty are. all they know is that hes ice king and shes magic queen and they love each other.
Betty Grof/Magic Queen
basically the “main character” of this au lol
she begins using the name “magic princess” when she can no longer remember her old one. it feels right to her. she changes to queen when she and ice king get hitched. she doesnt use the name “ice queen” because she no longer pins her identity to just simon. shes got her own stuff going on. hes part of her life, but not her entire life.
magic queens not around the ice kingdom as often as ice king. she likes to explore and travel! a huge amount of the books on ruins, dungeons, and artifacts were penned by her, from hands on research. shes well known around ooo as somebody who can be dangerous, but is also a very reliable source of information.
shes more “grounded” than ice king. she doesnt remember anything from before the war, or for a while after it. as far as she knows she just spawned on ooo ready to dungeon dive. still, shes better at retaining information, and can read a room better. shes still pretty eccentric, though, and likes showing off.
magic queen was the one who beat the shit out of ash and got his magic carpet. she doesnt remember marcy, but like ice king, finds herself inexplicably drawn to her. so when ash hurts her, it puts him on her shit list.
speaking of, she can hold a grudge. she ends up cursing finn for a while because he beat up ice king based on a misunderstanding.
shes the one who had the idea for a giant library in the ice kingdom. ice king helped with the room layout, and she collected the books.
magic queens doing a lot better mentally than canon betty was. her relationship with ice king has become way more healthy and balanced. shes happily married. she has 53 penguin children. shes been able to chase her dreams, and her work is acclaimed and respected.
shes still a creecher tho. girl is skittering through those dungeons. does a backflip and shoots fireworks into your eyes. she is very bold and loves doing crazy things just to see what happens.
gets her own “i remember you” episode where she takes marcy dungeon diving.
ice king/simon petrikov
stay at home husband now lmfao
but fr. he fully supports magic queen, but hes a pretty forgetful and clumsy guy, so they both agree that he probably shouldnt be dungeon diving with her.
he keeps things stable at home. takes care of the penguins and writes fanfic and plays music in his free time. hes come to really enjoy creative pursuits, even when hes not particularly good at them.
magic queen puts a gun to your head and forces you to read fionna and cake. ice queen (simone) and magic king (benny) if you even care btw.
mq ended up putting a checklist up in the home to make sure ik doesnt forget to take care of himself. eat breakfast you goof
instead of kidnapping princesses, he goes out often to find things mq has mentioned wanting or needing for her research. sometimes he steals them and it gets him in trouble. if hes being a real jerk mq will only step in to take him home. sometimes that man deserved to get his ass whooped.
hes already nicer and more stable to start out with since he has somebody to talk to whos nice to him. people wonder why magic queen sticks around and if you ask her she will get mad. hes funny!!! and sweet!!! also hes canonically caked up.
he wants to be a dad soooo bad. he spoils the penguins.
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aarghone · 9 months
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SHE ACTUALLY NEVER LOSES
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fatedroses · 4 months
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He laid at the brink of death once more, staring at the face of despair. He remembered the path that led him to this purgatory, and with a smile could only ask:
"Shall we be friends?"
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voidedjuice · 7 months
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Don't feel like writing today so here's a slight design update for Airi instead
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avernine · 6 months
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chookum doodle!
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57sfinest · 1 year
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i wanted to look at the symbolism of the ocean in disco elysium because it features so prominently in the setting. insulinde being an isola comprised of islands, martinaise as a port town financially anchored by its ocean trade. the divisions brought by water that we see in the geography: how the canal separates the working district of martinaise from the even poorer, commerce-less village-- how the river esperance separates the worst ghettos of revachol and jamrock from the more rebuilt and financially stable districts-- how, for example, lilienne looks across the bay of revachol to the wealthy district of la delta, a poignant moment of separation between someone desperately poor and the towers of wealth built out of the ruins of revachol. we see water, and often the sea specifically, acting as a divider in various contexts. 
the ocean of time and distance that separates dora and harry, that separates klaasje from oranje:
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then, further into the idea of the ocean as representative of time: in various contexts i see the ocean as representing the past. memory residing under the waves, and each of us living above water-- in the present-- but often still helpless to the tides when we’re not careful. to me this is cemented by the implication that the pale is commonly theorized as an *outer ocean* (juxtaposed with harry’s introspective skill, inland empire!!): the pale is the past, and if the pale is seen as an outer ocean, then right there is a tangible connection between the two. memory and the past as an ocean, dangerous if you don’t respect its power, but ultimately navigable. there is frequent reference made to the fact that the bombed ruins of martinaise are sinking or lost into the ocean, lost to the past, now only memory. 
and harry, who is living in the past and being consumed by nostalgia like a rot, drives his car into the ocean. harry’s badge, which is conflated with his identity in the aftermath of his amnesia, was underwater before he pulled it from the car: until he got it, his entire identity was lost with his memory in the past. klaasje’s documents, too, presumed lost to the ocean, a loss of who she was or claimed to be (until you meet the phasmid). lilienne’s husband was lost to the waves, and in the same lines she’ll dismiss your concerns-- he’s in the past now, she’s really not too upset. the cleaning lady, abandoned by the world, who has only her own memories for company in her sea-beaten room. in the context of ruby’s near-suicide in the shack, how inland specifies how the “waves had calmed” as she put the gun away: ruby distancing herself from the past that she thinks is chasing her to form a better plan. the working-class husband, who, had his corpse fallen through the boardwalk into the ocean, would have been lost to the past, living only in the memory of billie and their daughters.
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for me, the final dream had some of the heaviest but most subtle inclusions of the ocean symbolism. it’s brought on by looking into the ocean around the seafort and takes place under the ocean somewhere. even before the dream, dora is alluded to in the context of the sea. she moved across the ocean and now, to him, she’s lost under it. she’s trapped in his memory.
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where we see things half-submerged or partially oceanic, we see a bridge between the past and the present being represented. something partially lost to the past but still with a foot in the here and now. harry’s half-sunken car, in part a representation of his career: part of his past, yes, but still very much in his present. one of the primary spiritual practices we hear of is the volta do mar: originally a palefarer’s practice to keep them grounded in an onslaught by the past, and its meaning is *return from the sea*. when harry tries to turn back time, he wants to go back to a time when the sun had not yet sunk into the sea-- when the light in his life didn’t reside solely in the past.
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also in this context, something that really struck me was how harry will sometimes think of himself in the context of the sea. first is the sea monster thought, brought about by the broken plaza: him as a creature submerged in the past, terrorizing the present. and seafaring brought up to represent a kind of compromise between living in the present and acknowledging the draw of nostalgia. even joyce in her limited knowledge of harry compares him to a “half-submerged ruin”. and when harry is prompted into introspection by the dros predicament, inland empire becomes the *inland sea*.
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and i really want to make a final, individual point of this. the whirling-in-rags music is sea power’s song “fire escape in the sea”. there is an explicit reference made to the song by shivers as well, and i think the choice of this song is very intentional. the whirling-in-rags is where harry forgot his whole life, the whole world, and it’s where he wakes up and begins to piece it all back together. the whirling-in-rags is harry’s fire escape in the sea. his bridge between his past and his present, his last-ditch attempt at escape from the tortures of his subconscious. 
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(this is by no means exhaustive, there are a lot of other moments where the sea comes in, but i included the moments that spoke to me most. you’re welcome to add your own!)
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fate-defiant · 1 year
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yes yes don't fix what ain't broke but when are we gonna address the fact that Princess Tutu never once utilized the fact that ravens can mimic human speech
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loptrcoptr · 3 months
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Ten years ago, a little baby loptrcoptr (then under the username daysoffuturepasta), freshly in love with Norse mythology, decided to make a few Norse-myth-meme valentines. I did seven rounds of these things (technically 6 and 1/2) for a total of seven years and I had a lot of fun. Even made some for my grad department to put around the place, and once shoved them into friends’ pockets on a night out to see how long it took them to find each one.
Now, in honor of the tenth anniversary of these trashy little things, have one more!
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(Also totally message me to tell me which ones were your faves!)
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Southwestern Ohio Wetlands, May 2024.
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parallelkozak · 8 months
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i love what i am and you hate what you are
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pickled-flowers · 24 days
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The blue jays have started building a nest that's right next to my balcony and I see them perfectly from my usual seat!
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lunaeclipse1057-ao3 · 7 months
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And so, the grounded bird stops chasing the sun. He gives up, out of ideas, and leaves feeling worse than he arrived. He finally understands that some things are out of his reach without wings of his own.
IS WHAT I WOULD'VE SAID IF PHIL HADN'T CAUGHT THE FUCKING BIRD-
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mmm essay about sally and kid gort in the tags (cw for child abuse, mentions of suicide, animal cruelty and a murder attempt. i always hope i don’t have to say this but just in case: i don’t excuse or condone any of her or gort’s behaviour at all.) this is literally not even touching upon everything i have to say because i hit the fucking tag limit lmao. NOBODY READ IT’S BAD BRAINSTORMING I JUST NEEDED TO GET IT OUT SOMEHOW
#thinkin too much about gortie side characters again.#sally this time and why she specifically talks about him the way she does#like dravo is obviously still shitty but to me he was. ‘just ‘neglectful#while sally actively hated and even felt terrorised by her own child#like. it’s not like i don’t understand her at all.#imagine you and your love don’t have much besides each other and your shop and you get pregnant and ready to raise a child#only for it to not be a child he didn’t and doesn’t cry ever and he learns everything so much sooner than most but then he never calls you#his parents and it’s not just a petty thing kids do sometimes you feel that he doesn’t see you as family and the worst part is that you#agree deep down#and as he gets older he doesn’t have any friends and actively rejects the notion of the entire concept#but then as time passes you hear about how he has entire groups of children following him and then several of them commit suicide#and that thing coming to sit with you and dravo at the dinner table says that he did what you did last week when the axe to chop wood broke#and you discarded it and got a new one#and he has these habits of ripping out flowers and making sure that they don’t regrow#and then you hear rumours about a friend’s daughter’s cat disappearing and think nothing of it#until you visit his tree house a month later and find a declawed cat and birds with clipped wings and crushed bugs that he keeps fondly#and then you see him with other children and they don’t know and his face is different and body language is entirely different#and were it not for the fact that you know better you would never see anything but a normal child#and you know that you are one who painstakingly brought this thing that should not be into the world and so you decide to end it all one da#and go to him as he’s asleep with the knife shaking in your hand#but he cries when you’re above him! screams at the top of his lungs!#so you beg for forgiveness even though you don’t deserve it through tears but as soon as the knife is put away you see the act drop and fee#his clever fingers having twisted your brain inside and out and you know that you can do nothing#and so the opportunity arises to at least remove him out of your life if not everyone’s lives and you take it immediately.#but you heard him talk. how he will close his fist around the world one day. and you know that it is not a matter of if but when.#like. imagine that. jesus dude.#like i hc her as someone that is messy and does not know a lot about life and she certainly wouldn’t have been a good mother but the love#or at least desire to love is there somewhere. and believing that having a child is really the only somewhat meaningful thing she can do#with her life. she’s not some hero or rich or anything of note. so there’s a lot obligation and not genuine desire for family here.#but she never really got the chance to be an actual mother in the first place so. who knows what that might have looked like
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