A Manticore! I Will Eat My Shoe If There Aren't Manticore In The Fablehaven World. I'm Like 95% Sure

A Manticore! I will eat my shoe if there aren't Manticore in the Fablehaven world. I'm like 95% sure one was mentioned at some point.

Lion/Dragon in this design. The human face doesn't work for me, and I don't think it was specifically mentioned to have one in the books. Creative license.

Yes, I'm mildly salty about the whole tying-to-eat-me thing. Am I exaggerating? Probably. Do I care? No, it's a great story. As such, his face became the man-eating Manticore's face.

hindsight

[ID: A two-panel comic with crudely drawn stick figures.

Panel 1: The lime green person is talking to the leaf green person and the moss green person.

Lime: "I... have a confession to make."

Leaf: "Go ahead."

Lime: "I want to rewatch the Wizard Child movies."

Leaf: "Didn't the wizard author get incredibly chromophobic?"

Lime: "Yeah I just... It's nostalgia you know? They meant a lot to me when I was a kid."

Panel 2: The three are on the couch.

Lime: "All right, let's go."

Leaf: "It's so weird how the wizard author just turned chromophobic though. Like I remember this series being pretty good for its time. It'll be weird seeing their work contrasting with their views now."

Moss: "I'm just glad we got the movies for free through normal and legal means. Heh."

End ID.]

[ID 2: Scenes from three Wizard Child movies.

Wizard Child and the Simplistic Morality: A slightly round child with a propeller hat is talking to a child with no hat.

Round child: "I am so fucking fat and greedy I am textually shown to be fat because I am greedy and also evil."

Hatless child: "You are to infer my moral purity from juxtaposition with this fat child. Woe is me for our shared parent has deprived me of a propeller hat."

Wizard Child and the Goodness of Wealth: An adult wizard is talking to the child, who now has a wizard hat.

Wizard Adult: "Wizard child you are secretly extremely rich."

Wizard Child: "I will form biases regarding the bankers all being triangular for some reason!"

Wizard Adult: "Your wealth is deserved because your true parent was Good and therefore you are also Good."

Wizard Child: "Now we should acquire consumer goods. Buy consumer goods!"

Wizard Child and the Dark Family History: A blue-grey horse person is talking to the wizard child.

Blue-grey: "No, wizard child. You don't understand. I am one of the good ones, because unlike the bad ones I don't try to spread my curse that makes you a blue-grey horselike creature to others!"

Wizard child: "Wow uncle blue-grey you are one of the good ones! I forgive you for being a horse because I am so good I would even forgive horses. I sure hope you don't conspicuously get killed off later in this movie!"

End ID 2.]

[ID 3: Oh hell no there are even more of these.

Wizard Youth and the Tokenistic Relationship Dynamics: A square headed wizard youth is talking to the former wizard child, now a wizard youth.

Square Wizard Youth: "Wizard child, as the only person with a square head in this entire series it is my duty to inform you that you are the savior of all people with square heads, too. Let us build a one-sided relationship that only furthers your character development, after which I will immediately lose all plot relevance."

Wizard Youth: "I will do this because I am a maturing wizard youth and need disposable relationships that don't threaten the endgame!"

Wizard Youth and the Escalation of Stakes: The Dark Wizard, a sort of grey-green person with a cloak, is pointing at Wizard Youth.

Dark Wizard: "Wizard Youth, I have returned!"

Wizard Youth: "Dark Wizard! Why are you green now?"

Dark Wizard: "Evil magic made me green! I am green with envy towards all who are good!"

Wizard Youth: "I will not engage with how you are clearly based on fascist ideologies and yet this narrative plays into fascist aesthetic sensibilities!"

Wizard Youth and the Post-Hoc Revelations: The Wizard Youth is leaning over their Wizard Mentor, who is laying in a pool of blood.

Wizard Youth: "Wizard Mentor no! You can't die!"

Wizard Mentor: "It is fine, wizard youth. My death will further your character development into a wizard adult. Also, I was secretly a very very dark purple this entire time. I never brought it up so I could retain narrative approval.

End ID 3.]

[ID 4: Wizard Adult and the Overdue Conclusion. Three panels. I am sorry.

Panel 1: The dark wizard is dueling the Wizard Adult with magic beams.

Dark Wizard: "Evil green beam!"

Wizard Adult: "Good red beam! Despite the enormous variety of magic in this series this is what our final battle looks like!"

Panel 2: Wizard Adult stands victorious over the dark wizard, who is dying on the ground.

Wizard Adult: "In the end, dark wizard, you were defeated because I am morally superior to you."

Dark Wizard: "I was a product of systemic failures. There will be someone like me again someday!"

Panel 3: Zoom in on wizard adult, who says:

"Not if I can help it. Because I am going to be a wizard cop now. The moral of this story is that all systemic issues can be solved by finding a bad guy to beat."

End ID 4.]

[ID 5: Four panels.

Panel 1: Return to the green trio on their couch, watching the TV say "The End." All are are silent.

Panel 2: They are sitting on the couch. Moss is looking at their phone.

Lime: "Yeah so there were maybe a few signs we missed because we were children."

Leaf: "Yeah. A few. Some."

Panel 3: Continue conversation.

Lime: "So what did you think, Moss?"

Panel 4: Zoom in on Moss, who says: "I've been zoned out on my phone since the second movie. They lost me at the magic stuff. Wizards aren't real."

End ID 5.]

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Don't have to interact with something to appreciate it. Beauty from afar ❤

PLEASE let me put your camera in my mouth i promise i wont bite you and chomp you and shake you and drag you to a freezing watery grave pleas please please i am just a friendly sea doggy i will only engulf your camera in my jaws and not anything else (lying)

This is what Rasputin would've wanted.

Birthdays are hard for me.

The first birthday party my parents ever threw for me, I was seven. I was told I could invite five people from my class at school. Only one showed up, and told me my house was tiny and that my party was crap.

I didn't have parties after that.

On my sixteenth birthday, my parents pressured me into trying to arrange something again. I asked a whole bunch of friends if they wanted to do something. They all said they were busy - it was the summer holidays, so fair enough. Anyway my dad takes me to the cinema anyway, and who do I bump into? My entire group of friends, there without me. It was the first time in my memory that I remember being nonverbal, I couldn't speak, I just cried the whole way through the film and swore I'd never try to do anything like it again.

But do I learn? 😒

I had a good run of birthdays in my early twenties mostly due to my more extroverted spouse and his friends, they werefancy dress parties mostly, silly and fun - but as soon as I moved slightly further away from the town our friends all lived in, they didn't want to come anymore. Every party I arranged, people said it was too far. So I started doing meals out instead. And now, people said yes but then would drop out one by one. The last five birthdays in a row have been like this, until it's just me and my bestie.

And it hurts - it shouldn't hurt, I'm a grown ass woman and everyone has their own shit going on, but that trauma is buried deep, that feeling that you're not worth the effort, and it gets deeper every damn year its reinforced by the people you'd go thousands of extra miles for and they can't give you a couple hours one day a year.

Anyway.

This year bestie asks me what I wanna do, and I tell her how I feel (new for me). I tell her all of it. That after the year I've had and the way my head is right now, I can't face people making me feel like that again, intentionally or not, so better to just not bother trying to organise anything.

Two weeks later I get an invite to a group - she's arranged a day out with me and all my friends, axe throwing and lunch and cocktails, and I cried (a lot), because fuck knows I needed someone to show me I meant more than a damn afterthought.

It might not undo the years of not feeling good enough, but I'm hoping that this is the first year in a long time that that feeling isn't present, that the bruise doesn't go deeper.

(If you stuck around long enough to read this self pitying rubbish, thank you. I just had to get my feelings out somewhere.)