Coffeeandqueue - Blog Posts
I know for a fact that my stepmother loves me.
I know it for a fact because the vaccine for the sleeping sickness came out when I was ten, and she cried. When she was a kid, parents would have Sleep Overs whenever someone caught it, in the hopes of spread it around - children were statistically more likely to be woken up by "True Love's Kiss" from a parent or family member, after all, whereas if you caught it when you were older, things got more complicated and if you were old, you might be the last one in your family left.
(There’s more to it than that, I know, I've tried reading the papers, but I barely passed biocurse with a C+, and don't even get me started on organic curses. Those two classes were enough to kill any hope I had of becoming a fairy godperson.)
So, when the vaccine against the sleeping sickness came out, my stepmother cried, and my father got me on the list right away; I wasn't high priority, after all; I was young, there wasn't an active outbreak in my school district, and I was otherwise healthy. But they put me on the backup list anyway, so if there was one, just one available, I could get it.
When the fairy godperson's office called, my dad was at work, but my stepmother bundled me up and drove there so fast I thought we were going to be pulled over. (Later, I found out that she'd gotten an automated ticket from one of the red light cameras, a fact that she hid from both me and my dad.) They called my dad, of course, and he left work, but he also gave the okay for my stepmother to be my medical proxy in case he was delayed.
Vaccines don't last forever, and it was decided that I would be given it without him there. At 100 minutes, my stepmother would try kissing my forehead, and if it didn't work, the office would set me up for the 100 hours it would take before my dad could try.
Magic can't be ignored, but it can be tricked.
It didn't matter. At 100 minutes post-vaccine, my stepmother kissed my forehead and I woke up.
So. I know she loves me.
My mom would have been there, if she could, but she died when I was five. She'd gotten Rapunzelean cancer in high school, but she'd beaten it! She was one of the successes!
...Until it came back.
I don't remember much about her, but I remember that she loved me. Even as the golden tumors grew from her bare scalp and sucked the life out of her, she would sing to me, and she wrote me a series of letters for me as I grew up, just in case.
My stepmother took me to her grave sometimes. My dad does too, but it's nice that my stepmother is willing, you know? I had a breakdown one year when I couldn't find my mom's favorite flowers to take to her burial site, and my stepmom drove me all over town until we found one store that had them in the right color. (My dad was at the fairy godperson's office to get some pre-wards before we went to the cemetery. I found out later that his father had caught a curse shortly after my grandmother passed away, specifically geriatric onset donkeyskin, and my father was paranoid of following in his footsteps.)
My dad and my stepmom shuffled their shifts, so that one of them was with me in the morning before school, and one of them was there after, and then both were home for dinner. When I told them I wanted to study to be a fairy godperson, they took me seriously, even though I had wanted to be a pilot and a vet, and and a lawyer and and and - they always supported me, and soon I was being gifted books on the history of magicomedicine and cursebreaking. Some of them gave me nightmares - siren's disease freaked me out for a long time; something about the tongue swelling so much you would suffocate, and the agonizing images of ancient "cures" where the victim had to get their tongue cut out so they could breathe. I don't even know why! There were much worse ones! But something about that was so visceral to me. For the next month, any time my feet hurt even a little was convinced I was coming down with siren's disease.
I worried my parent's so much that they took me to Fairy Elena, my PCFP, and asked if she would be willing to go over how siren's is treated now. She gave me a quick rundown on intubation, pain medication, and told me about Prince's Blood Donations.
It was the first time I learned that magic can be tricked; according to legend, siren's disease could be cured by killing someone's true love and smearing their blood over the patient's legs. At least, that was one line of thought; another line of thought argued that it had to be the blood of royalty. Some fairy godpersons and magicoresearchers got together in the '80s and decided to research it methodically, going through every known case of siren's disease & what worked and what didn't. It turned out royalty was the key, but then it became a question of ethics. I didn't care too much at the time, that was all boring, grown-up stuff, but finally one researcher decided to just make a blood bank company, call it Prince's and see if that worked.
And it did.
Magic can be tricked, and my mind was blown.
I also asked my dad if we could put that book away for a little, because it was too scary. He agreed, and we put it on the top shelf, where all the scary books went. I reread it recently, and honestly? I don't remember what I was so afraid of.
Things started changing when I turned 16.
For one, my hair, which had always been brown, started darkening to black. For another, I stopped being able to tan. It was like a light switch went off; magic was determined to turn me into something, and I hated it. My PCFP really went to bat for me, getting insurance to cover the cost of cosmetic glamours and professional tanning sprays. She wanted me to tell my parents, but I didn't want to, not yet, and she was bound by her oath to protect my privacy.
She was right. But... I wanted to ignore it. I wanted to pretend everything was fine.
I didn't want to lose another mom.
And it worked for a while; managed to get to my senior year of high school before the world broke.
Stepmothers don't have the best reputation.
It fucking sucks, and it's not fair, but enough stories have been told about them that magic took an interest, and began manifesting curses that warp stepmothers until they follow the story.
We thought we were safe. My stepmother didn't bring any children into the marriage, so she was safe from the ash-girl curse variant, and I was a tanned brunette, so we were safe from the snow-daughter variant.
And she loved me.
She hid it too, I think. Not intentionally, but some of the symptoms are paranoia and anxiety.
I've done a lot of research. I don't think I'll ever be able to be a fairy godperson, but that doesn't mean I had to stop caring. I swapped my focus to researching curses from the history and literature side of things. I still work with researchers, we just come from different angles now.
Anyway, no one realized anything was wrong until she was french braiding my hair and the next thing I knew, she had locked herself in the bathroom sobbing while EMTs took me to the hospital for overnight observation. I don't actually know what happened. She turned herself over to the cops as soon I was loaded onto the ambulance, and she was taken to a hospital herself. She was sedated at first, as she was so wound up that she was hurting herself, and the hospital couldn't scan her for curses. Once she came out of sedation, she immediately called my dad and offered a divorce, he could take everything, she would leave immediately.
But we'd gotten the results of the scans, and I was fine. As best that the fairy godperson's could tell, the magic was frustrated that we didn't want to go down the snow-daughter route, and had lashed out in an attempt to force it. That was apparently what knocked me unconscious; magic poisoned the comb my stepmother was using in my hair.
That didn't mean she didn't feel guilty - but so did I. If I had told them earlier, would things have changed? If I hadn't tried to hide the signs that magic was fucking with us?
They don't blame me, and I don't blame her.
She loves me. I know she does. We still talk, as best as we can. She can only hear my voice for ten minutes before the curse starts taking over. We can email, though, as long as the orderlies can prescreen the email for any curse triggers. She also can't hear about me directly, but my dad will go and visit her, and tell me how she's doing. He refused to divorce her. His insurance still covers her hospital stay. He says he's married, and wears his ring.
When I applied to college, I wrote about all three of my parents, and how much they had all taught me.
How much they all loved me.
Someday, my stepmother will get her curse lifted, I have to believe that. I've joined a multidisciplinary group of researchers based in the EU. Some of us are looking at ways to trick magic, some of us are looking at ways to rewrite the stories of the wicked stepmothers, and create a new path for the magic to follow. One group of researchers is looking into ways of simulating the punishments that stepmothers receive at the end of tales to see if "punishing" stepmothers would break the curse. Actually going through the punishments would cause any ethical review board to remove someone's license, and there's no way I would want my stepmom to dance in red hot metal shoes.
But lately she's been getting hot stone foot massages before I call her; that's how we got to ten minutes before the curse took hold, and next week we're going to see if holding her feet in a hot bath lets us video call. Maybe someday we'll be able to see each other in person again. Maybe I'll be able to take her home where dad and I can cook dinner for her, and we can be a family again. My family has an apple pie recipe, and we never made it - I understand why, now, but maybe someday we can laugh at this and all make it together. To make your own apple pie, you'll need...
![The business man, inexplicably looking upwards, answers, "my name is [censor bar]...but you can call me narrator-chan, senpai"](https://64.media.tumblr.com/768d314c96e40a59dadfe80a92d470fd/e48bce541db797e3-21/s500x750/3f2cbb2830edf005956dfb074f752a51f7d839eb.jpg)
was originally gonna color and post this for pride month but i lost the original file
EDIT: Thank you to @localdisasterisk for making the image discs!! :)
THE CHAFF PROJECT
Hi! Are you cis in the UK and you'd like to support trans rights? Great!
How: buy a trans flag pin and wear it in public.
Why: chaff is an overwhelming amount of false positives so that when a missile gets close to the plane, it hits the chaff and not the plane.
In practice: the goal is to make it DIFFICULT to identify trans people to target with bathroom bans, and to create many FALSE POSITIVES for businesses.
Basically, you might get accused of being trans and kicked out, because of the badge. You say: I wear the badge because trans rights matter.
You follow up with a letter to the business saying you're fucking furious because some nosy dipshit just tried to play fucking genital police with you in the loos. You know lots of trans people (don't name any, if you do) and you wear the pin in support and you're disgusted at them for allowing this.
Blame the business for allowing the behaviour.
Businesses see that their cis customers are getting bothered over a badge and may clarify trans-inclusive policies, so they can kick out the bathroom botherers instead of nice cis allies.
You only need to buy and wear the badge, and you are protecting trans people. You can be genuinely heroic. Even one cis person doing this helps, and everyone you get to join in helps even more.
Non-affiliated badge link:
https://rainbowandco.uk/collections/trans-pride/products/transgender-pride-flag-badge
You know the Grimm version of Snow White makes more sense than most versions if only because in that version Snow White was like 7 years old.
Me: *reading a post that makes the joke “Peeta dropped the baby bomb, Gale drops bombs on babies”* haha good one
Also me: you’re missing the point! You’re missing the point! YOURE MISSING THE POINT! He grew up starving. His best friend almost died of hunger. Most of his people live in poverty. He watched children die in a bloodbath every year for the capital’s entertainment. The girl he loved went into the games. Was tortured by the capitol. His district was bombed out of existence. Nearly everyone he knew was killed. Their only crime was being fed up of being hungry and oppressed and sharing the same district as Katniss. All those innocent people. Murdered. He had to take refuge in a district that was bombed out of existence and forced to live underground. Of course he joined the war effort. Of course he designed unethical bombs and battle tactics. He wanted revenge. He wanted the capitol to have a taste of their own medicine. He wanted the rebellion to succeed. And tell me you could live through what he did, and that no part of you would be screaming for Justice and vengeance. Gale is you. You are Gale. He represents a part of feelings and actions that reside within us, even if you don’t act on it.
“But he killed prim!” Exactly! Gale loved prim. She was a second family to her. He looked after Katniss’ family. He saved them from the district 12 bombings. He loved her. He never would’ve put her in danger. He never would’ve put in order for a bombing if it would kill Prim. But coin would. And did. She took what was meant to be a tool of Gale’s righteous revenge for all the suffering he and his people suffered through, only for someone in power to take it and use it to kill someone he loved.
There’s some many lessons to take. We can’t control the things we create. War spares no one. Even justifiable rage and actions can end up rebounding and hurting those you love instead of your targets.
“He drops bombs on babies” is too simplistic of a takeaway and does a disservice to the story and Gale.
heard about the new quarter quell book and came running back to thg like haymitchs axe came back from the force field ifykyk
"died and came back wrong" nah, died and came back an entirely different guy. like actually, that's just some random other dude. where did you get him
Doctor Who is a great fandom to be in on tumblr because you'll see spoilers everywhere but not a single one of them is coherent unless you've seen the episode anyway. like oh the glorbon is secretly trying to ensnare humanity in a giant crab trap? the new companion Jiminy Pubble turned out to be the latest regeneration of the Doctor's old enemy The Fuckwizard? thanks I know less than I did before
literally my second biggest flex is that the guy behind osha official is my mutual. first biggest flex is that there's a discord server dedicated to hating on me
last week i woke up from one of the most fucked up nightmares ive ever had with that middle panel burned into my brain. like the exact wording and the exact apartment and the exact squidward. i feel like if i didnt make it real something bad wouldve happened. anyway todays upload is spunchbob comic oc
I wanted to see if there was a longer version of that Sabrina fortnite clip and im glad there is
EDIT: MIKU PERSPECTIVE
Some of my favorite hobbies are counting my chickens before they hatch, putting all my eggs in one basket, crying over spilled milk, barking up the wrong tree, and above all, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results
the curse is lifted! you are no a beast no more! congratulations! but you'll never forget the way they looked at you, will you.
characters who are undead. characters who die in the end and so they've been dead from the start. characters who are chased by death. characters that chase death. characters who died and came back to life. characters that die again and again and again. characters who consider their past self dead. characters who were born in someone else's corpse. characters that claw their way out of the grave. characters whose deaths leave such a gaping wound that even their absence is still a presence. characters who are emissaries of death. characters who are alive but consider themselves dead. characters whose deaths are ambiguous. characters whose existences are defined by death.
speaking of third-wheeling i love when people are like "third-wheeled too hard and now i'm in a throuple" but i think a little spoken of third-wheeled-too-hard option is getting adopted by other adults. one time when i was 25 and in undergrad i made friends with a married couple in their thirties and ended up in such an unusual relationship that one day they called me to their house and sat me down very somberly and then one of them started crying and i thought one of them must have gotten some sort of life-altering health diagnosis or something
but then they told me they were getting a divorce and they were going to be okay, but they had been agonizing for two weeks over how to tell me because they didn't want to "disrupt" my life and it was then that i had to remind them that i was actually a fully grown adult and that i was going to be completely okay and that in fact i would like to be there for them in this tumultuous time and they were like
"oh....... yeah"
what a beautiful man but☝️he could be beautifuller... guards! cover that man in blood
me impatiently to the little french cat boiling me in a stew: chat am I cooked