Changelings - Tumblr Posts
Trollhunters Headcanons
*Trolls have a different way of showing affection depending on the type of relationship:
Horn Touch- Ally
Forehead Touch- Friend
Cheek Touch- Family
Nose Touch- Lover
*Changelings will sometimes link tails to calm or console one another. Those that don't have tails tend to get jealous of this. (I've been seeing lots of changeling ocs with pretty long tails so I thought of this.)
*Trolls can growl and roar while Changelings can purr and hiss. Both can make clicks and chirps.
Two sides of the same coin
(Edit: forgot to put the original-)
Here’s a story about changelings:
Mary was a beautiful baby, sweet and affectionate, but by the time she’s three she’s turned difficult and strange, with fey moods and a stubborn mouth that screams and bites but never says mama. But her mother’s well-used to hard work with little thanks, and when the village gossips wag their tongues she just shrugs, and pulls her difficult child away from their precious, perfect blossoms, before the bites draw blood. Mary’s mother doesn’t drown her in a bucket of saltwater, and she doesn’t take up the silver knife the wife of the village priest leaves out for her one Sunday brunch.
She gives her daughter yarn, instead, and instead of a rowan stake through her inhuman heart she gives her a child’s first loom, oak and ash. She lets her vicious, uncooperative fairy daughter entertain herself with games of her own devising, in as much peace and comfort as either of them can manage.
Mary grows up strangely, as a strange child would, learning everything in all the wrong order, and biting a great deal more than she should. But she also learns to weave, and takes to it with a grand passion. Soon enough she knows more than her mother–which isn’t all that much–and is striking out into unknown territory, turning out odd new knots and weaves, patterns as complex as spiderwebs and spellrings.
“Aren’t you clever,” her mother says, of her work, and leaves her to her wool and flax and whatnot. Mary’s not biting anymore, and she smiles more than she frowns, and that’s about as much, her mother figures, as anyone should hope for from their child.
Mary still cries sometimes, when the other girls reject her for her strange graces, her odd slow way of talking, her restless reaching fluttering hands that have learned to spin but never to settle. The other girls call her freak, witchblood, hobgoblin.
“I don’t remember girls being quite so stupid when I was that age,” her mother says, brushing Mary’s hair smooth and steady like they’ve both learned to enjoy, smooth as a skein of silk. “Time was, you knew not to insult anyone you might need to flatter later. ‘Specially when you don’t know if they’re going to grow wings or horns or whatnot. Serve ‘em all right if you ever figure out curses.”
“I want to go back,” Mary says. “I want to go home, to where I came from, where there’s people like me. If I’m a fairy’s child I should be in fairyland, and no one would call me a freak.”
“Aye, well, I’d miss you though,” her mother says. “And I expect there’s stupid folk everywhere, even in fairyland. Cruel folk, too. You just have to make the best of things where you are, being my child instead.”
Mary learns to read well enough, in between the weaving, especially when her mother tracks down the traveling booktraders and comes home with slim, precious manuals on dyes and stains and mordants, on pigments and patterns, diagrams too arcane for her own eyes but which make her daughter’s eyes shine.
“We need an herb garden,” her daughter says, hands busy, flipping from page to page, pulling on her hair, twisting in her skirt, itching for a project. “Yarrow, and madder, and woad and weld…”
“Well, start digging,” her mother says. “Won’t do you a harm to get out of the house now’n then.”
Mary doesn’t like dirt but she’s learned determination well enough from her mother. She digs and digs, and plants what she’s given, and the first year doesn’t turn out so well but the second’s better, and by the third a cauldron’s always simmering something over the fire, and Mary’s taking in orders from girls five years older or more, turning out vivid bolts and spools and skeins of red and gold and blue, restless fingers dancing like they’ve summoned down the rainbow. Her mother figures she probably has.
“Just as well you never got the hang of curses,” she says, admiring her bright new skirts. “I like this sort of trick a lot better.”
Mary smiles, rocking back and forth on her heels, fingers already fluttering to find the next project.
She finally grows up tall and fair, if a bit stooped and squinty, and time and age seem to calm her unhappy mouth about as well as it does for human children. Word gets around she never lies or breaks a bargain, and if the first seems odd for a fairy’s child then the second one seems fit enough. The undyed stacks of taken orders grow taller, the dyed lots of filled orders grow brighter, the loom in the corner for Mary’s own creations grows stranger and more complex. Mary’s hands callus just like her mother’s, become as strong and tough and smooth as the oak and ash of her needles and frames, though they never fall still.
“Do you ever wonder what your real daughter would be like?” the priest’s wife asks, once.
Mary’s mother snorts. “She wouldn’t be worth a damn at weaving,” she says. “Lord knows I never was. No, I’ll keep what I’ve been given and thank the givers kindly. It was a fair enough trade for me. Good day, ma’am.”
Mary brings her mother sweet chamomile tea, that night, and a warm shawl in all the colors of a garden, and a hairbrush. In the morning, the priest’s son comes round, with payment for his mother’s pretty new dress and a shy smile just for Mary. He thinks her hair is nice, and her hands are even nicer, vibrant in their strength and skill and endless motion.
They all live happily ever after.
*
Here’s another story:
Keep reading
Woman crush Wednesday or whatever jerm said
"sometimes i wonder if it was cruel, them sealing her to stone. if only i had tried again."
Hello tumblr I heard you like changeling stories
If you want a physical copy of this comic!
Inktober 2014 - Day 19 : G-pen What would Ely and Trispin look like if I drew them like Poppet? I wondered. The answer was ‘pretty creepy and weird’.
Inktober 2016 - Day 1 : mapping pen What’s this? An Inktober picture posted on the same day I drew it? And I didn’t goof up the first one? Incredible! Don’t take fruit from fairies, children. Not even if they go to your school. Especially not if they haven’t even bothered to put glamours on. I’m not really prepared for Inktober this year, but I’ll do it anyway!
Inktober 2016 - Day 15 : gel pen Tempting with fruit isn’t the only way for a bad fairy to entrap unsuspecting humans. (Ely is also wearing her glamour like a sensible changeling.)
Inktober 2016 - Day 23 : brush pen I don’t have a good bead on what Trispin’s glamour looks like, so I was pretty pleased with the sketch for this! Then I remembered Inktober is supposed to be about getting better with ink so I valiantly attempted to ink it with my Pentel Brush Pen, probably the pen I have least control over. Thankfully it seems to look okay! I think the glamour just makes him look a bit cleaner.
Inktober 2016 - Day 26 : mapping pen I already drew Ely with her glamour, so here she is without it. She’s just as gross as Trispin.
I ended up doing a lot of companion pieces in this year’s Inktober, so I thought I’d compile them so you can see them side-by-side. I’m pleased by how well most of them line up, since I do these in a bound sketchbook and they’re all many pages apart. Also a bonus pair from last year!
Inktober 2017 : Day 16 - gel pens
Wipe that glamour off your face Trispin, Ely isn’t impressed. I have a super-fine gel pen (0.25) that I rarely use, so I tried it for the cross-hatching on this. I like it but it’s just so scratchy! I had to pull paper fluff out of the nib several times.
Hello tumblr I heard you like changeling stories