Hello Bugborg Fandom! I Present You With A Short Drabble.

@ellipsis-dotdotdot Matangi taking all the bats after divorcing Maui-

notice how it's "with mama" and not "with papa". even in a fake cutesy tumblr scenario, she took the fucking kids. <- what I imagine i'd be posting as a divorced dad on tumblr

random book idea

• Esmeralda is a stunning golden-era showwoman and singer. She's all short pixie cuts gelled and glittered with glam, calf-exposing glittery dresses with a slit halfway down the skirt, and black heels. In the early 1960s, she's untouchable.

• Francisco is a top-notch criminal who steals from the rich and gives to the poor. He's quick, witty, light on his feet, and always red-handed but always wearing gloves. 

• Esmeralda’s been divorced from Francisco for twelve years, ever since her second child Ava was born….if ‘born’ is the right way to put it. They had drifted apart; Esmeralda chasing success and Francisco being drafted into the war between the so-called heroes, magical humans with a somewhat toxic humanitarian facade- and the wearh, blood-sucking villains who rule the lands underground. 

• In Francisco’s absence, Esmeralda made a deal with William, a wearh with whom she has a bit of a history, to transform her pet bird into a living child- she just wanted to feel as though she had a purpose again- especially after the authorities had sent her son Arlo off to his designated “training center,” a school designed to harness children's powers and prepare them to become successful heroes as they reach adulthood. 

• Esmeralda just didn't understand why they had to take him at two.

• Arlo is an independent, solitary, shy kid. He grows up in books and maps and rules, always following, always on the sidelines. He wants nothing more than to break free. 

• Ava is different. Esmeralda’s hidden charm, she learns at one and a half to hide in the garage whenever any car pulls up in the driveway, and to only go to the market early in the morning, before the shops officially open. She's brilliant, social, energetic, loves inventing and designing anything and everything she can get her hands on. With a creative, fast-moving mind, she loves exploring and yearns to see the world and meet everybody who lives in it. 

• Ava meets Arlo, once a summer, only for a month. September is the hottest month of the year, but the two children always run around outside from before the sun peeks above the horizon, to long after dusk when the tiny “glowbugs” create a spectacle of sunny spots through the forest behind the house.

• Those were the good days. But then one night- in December- Ava hears a knock on her window. She almost doesn't recognize the boy hanging by two paralyzed hands on her windowsill. Arlo hadn't visited the previous year, claiming he'd been too busy in a rushed, chicken-scratched letter. He had been thirteen at the time; now he was fourteen. Considering the fact that she hadn't seen him since he was twelve, her age at the present, she had been expecting a very different boy. A boy with untied shoelaces and a missing molar or two, not a tall and lanky kid with a deep voice and long bangs that hid his eyes. 

• He says he doesn't have much time. Much time before they catch him, the people who had taken his dad and forced him to kill- or worse, the people who were trying to kill his dad. He says he wants to run away, and he has been collecting for years and now possesses every map that's ever been reprinted or even sketched once. 

• With Ava hungry for adventure and Arlo desperate for escape, they formulate a plan beneath spilled candlewax and messy scribbles of possible paths on worn-out maps. And thus, their adventure ensues.

Moana 2 is on Disney+ so here's some Moana 1

Romantic Gestures for Characters 

❥ The “I Know You” Gesture

Your character remembers something tiny. Maybe their partner always peels oranges but hates the stringy bits. So they do it for them, meticulously. No grand speech. Just peeled oranges on a napkin, handed over like, I got you. It’s not flowers. It’s better.

❥  The “You Matter More Than My Ego” Move

Apologies. Vulnerable, awkward, ugly ones. Not performative, not flowers-as-a-bandage. Just a raw, honest “I screwed up. And you didn’t deserve that.” That’s romance with guts.

❥ The “I Made This With My Clumsy, Lovesick Hands” Attempt

It’s not a five-star meal. It might be an overcooked mess. But they tried. They Googled recipes, burnt a pan, and still showed up with a crooked smile and a smoke-scented apology. Intimacy lives in the effort, not the execution.

❥  The “I’m Thinking of You Even When You’re Not Around” Habit

A voice memo left in the middle of the day. A text that says, “I saw this book and thought of you.” A saved pastry because “you love those stupid lemon ones.” It’s in the thought, the noticing. The I-carry-you-with-me-even-here of it.

❥  The “You’re Safe With Me” Moment

Middle of a panic attack. They don’t run, they don’t fix. They sit. Hold a hand. Count breaths. They become a lighthouse in the fog. That’s not just romance, it’s sanctuary.

❥ The “Make You Laugh When You Want to Cry” Trick

Silly voices. Bad dad jokes. A spontaneous dance in the kitchen just to make them smile. Love doesn’t always whisper—it cackles, snorts, belly-laughs until you can’t remember what the fight was about.

❥ The “I See the You Nobody Else Gets to See” Love

Noticing the nervous tic they try to hide. The quiet resilience. The softness behind the sarcasm. Your character sees it all and chooses to love them there. Not despite their mess, but because of it.

❥  The “I’ll Go to the Boring Thing Because You Care” Sacrifice

They hate art galleries. Or jazz. Or your character’s weird book club full of PhD students. But they show up. They try. They listen and maybe even ask a thoughtful question. Not because they suddenly love postmodern fiction, but because they love you.

❥ The “Let Me Take Care of You, Just This Once” Flip

Especially powerful when it comes from your fiercely independent character. When they finally let someone in. Accept help. Rest their head on a lap and let themselves be held. Or be the one doing the holding for someone who never asks.

❥  The “I Want to Remember This” Gesture

No, not just a scrapbook. Maybe it's saving movie stubs, or voice recording a partner’s laugh because it's perfect and might not last. Maybe it's writing a poem they'll never read. Romance often lives in what we keep sacred, quietly.

❥ Bonus — The Non-Obvious Public Gesture

Holding hands in public when your character usually doesn’t. Or kissing their partner’s temple in front of their disapproving parents. Or calling them “baby” when it makes their partner smile like a fool. Public affection isn’t about performance, it’s about pride. Claiming someone. Softly, fiercely.

#youwillalsoregretaskingforthechildhoodfriendsbackstory #thatisgoingtoHURT

My characters are so happy right now :) Should I... ruin... everything?

pond creatures 🪷

Reading a book about slavery in the middle-ages, and as the author sorts through different source materials from different eras, I am starting to understand why so many completely fantastical accounts of "faraway lands" went without as much as a shrug. The world is such a weird place that you can either refuse to believe any of it or just go "yeah that might as well happen" and carry on with your day.

There was this 10th century arab traveller who wrote into an account that the fine trade furs come from a land where the night only lasts one hour in the summer and the sun doesn't rise at all in the winter, people use dogs to travel, and where children have white hair. I don't think I'd believe something like that either if I didn't live here.