Ok but with ylfa’s backstory it’s just. There’s a wolf who can take people’s skins and mimic their voices? So there have been many ppl who have gone into the woods, been attacked by a wolf, and then what’s returned has looked and sounded and hell maybe even acted like them! But a bit more monstrous. With hair on their hands, and a low snarl, and sure they sound like our dear loved one and they look like them but they’re scary. They’re scary, and they’ve changed, and shouldn’t they be dead?
And maybe if they’re scary they aren’t our loved one - they’re actually just the scary thing in disguise yes of course! Cause they would never scare us like that. They could never be transformed like that. So it’s not them, so they’re dead.
“When I look at my life and its secret colours, I feel like bursting into tears. Like that sky. It’s rain and sun both, noon and midnight… I think of the lips I’ve kissed, and of the wretched child I was, and of the madness of life and the ambition that sometimes carries me away. I’m all those things at once. I’m sure there are times when you wouldn’t even recognize me. Extreme in misery, excessive in happiness - I can’t say it.”
Why do witches like always wanna fatten kids up before they eat them?? fat is like the grossest part of meat
“Why hello there, little children~. Please follow me to my magical… FITNESS ROOM. NO P A N S I E S ALLOWED BEYOND THIS POINT. LEAVE YOUR WHINING AT THE DOOR BECAUSE IT’S LEG DAY AND WE’RE ABOUT TO GET R-R-R-RIPPE D.”
Because they’re always cooking said kids in cauldrons and ovens - aka long cooking times at lowish heat. If you do that to fatty meat, the fat melts completely and the meat gets tear-it-apart-with-a-fork soft. If you do it to lean meat, you get tiny little sad meat bits that bring no joy to anyone.
well you did ask
Also there’s wisdom in fattening them up on sweets and other carbs. A meatless, carb-rich diet makes for more tender and flavourful meat.
you are arguing over the semantics of EATING CHILDREN
Well yeah, you gotta get this shit right or it’s a waste of 40-80 lbs of meat.
plus if you feed them a high fat, low nutrition diet, they’re easier to subdue and less likely to run away, which would be a concern for an elderly crone.
Thank you, Old Witch With Candy House side of tumblr.
she asked me if i believed in god and i told her that when i was four i almost drowned in a public pool and in my panic mistook a stranger for my father. i clawed my way up his leg. four years later he’d send my parents a picture of the scars alongside a tin of cookies. he said, “i hope she’s still okay. i carry her with me. it isn’t every day you save a life. it isn’t every day you feel like you were here for a reason. when it does happen, you have to cherish that memory. for once, i had a purpose. just being there was enough. she tore me open but she taught me a lot about love.”
Elody is tragic, I think, in a way that feels very close to home?
She’s a woman that met someone interesting and strange and became friends with him, happy to have a friend around, since her parents are too sick to be in her life all the time. She was a little girl forced to grow up so fast, to take every type of class and feel the weight of her station on her shoulders every day, growing closer to the time she has to step up and take over, desperate to be deserving of the title. Desperate to do her parents proud.
And she’s got this friend now, this sweet, gross little frog that talks and says he’s a prince. His story is a strange and sad one, one she maybe can’t fully understand but offers what support and sympathy she can. If she even believes him, I’m not sure she really does. And he’s funny. He makes her laugh, reminds her of the fun of the world, encourages her to take care of herself and enjoy things as often as possible, reminds her to be young and happy and live freely. And she needs that. She needs someone to look her in the eyes and tell her it’s okay to be a kid. It’s okay to play with her ball in the woods and it’s okay to sing and dance and get dressed up and do the fun parts of being a princess. He brings her joy that she hasn’t had in a long time. She loves that about him, how fun and silly and clumsy he is, it’s charming. She falls in love with that silly frog.
But then Snowhold comes. They have no allies, their armies are failing, their people are dying and she’s up all night going over maps and strategy at a table of advisors and generals and is so stressed and trying so hard. But her silly frog is still a silly frog. He thinks about balls and good food and safe castle walls. He tells her to relax, enjoy a meal, gossip about the nobles, have fun. He hasn’t changed. But she’s being forced to change. Now that silly levity isn’t charming and fun, it’s frustrating. She doesn’t have time for games and can’t see how hard he’s trying to make her smile. She needs a Prince, a man to stand beside her at the war table and talk tactics and look for ways to save their home and people. She needs a fighter, a hero. But Gerrard has never been a hero, he’s a frog. Elody was the hero. She saved him. And she’s so exhausted by being the hero. She’s always taking care of someone else. She just wants to be taken care of. She just wants help. It’s hard to love someone the same way in times of trouble. It’s hard to find the space in all the stress and work to love Gerrard the way she did when they met.
Elody does still love him though. She does. It’s a painful sort of love, in believing that he’s never going to change and be what she needs him to be, in that she’s always going to be the hero for him. But she loves him. She carries a shield with a lillypad on it, she wields a mace with the golden ball as part of it, she’s actively carrying him with her. She’s thinking of her silly little frog and hoping he’s safe, where ever he’s gone to hide and when it’s all over, when she’s saved everyone and made everything better, she’ll go find him again. And then she can take him to a ball, like he wanted. She wishes he was different, but doesn’t think he’ll change.
Imagine what she’ll find, when they meet again? Her silly little frog is still silly and clumsy and thinking about her constantly, but he’s a hero now. He fought and died with his friends. He’s twice upon a time. He’s been Outside, in The Lines Between. He’s a fighter now, he’s brave, he’s friends with death itself. He’s a commander, great at group tactics, vital to their group. And he’s got a couple kids around him, that he’s exhausted by but loves in some way. He scolds them and encourages them and he’s kind of a dad? And he’s been looking for her, not hiding. He’s been trying to find her since he left, regretting leaving her behind but really not sure how he would have helped. And he loves her, god he loves her. Even as he turns into a frog from her falling out of love with him, Gerrard loves Elody. He loves her enough to be brave, to learn the things he never got a chance to learn before, to take care of others.
Elody is so loved, and she has no idea. She loves him enough to take care of everything by herself, holding onto what parts of him she has space for during this horrible time. But Gerrard loves her enough to die trying to find her.
She has to be his hero, she never had a choice in that, but unlike most cases in life, he’s trying to be her hero too, and she has no idea.
