Meet the Meadowsweets (Patreon)

Finally, a family tree for all these jerks

In 1980, young Eleanor marries her college sweetheart, Merry Meadowsweet. Merriweather is admittedly a bit of a bore, but traditional in a way Ellie decides is old-timey romantic, and ambitious, so very, very ambitious. Merry takes over their local church as the new worship leader, and Eleanor, ever the good wife, gives him two bright and talented children. The church grows steadily as the years go by, and the family lives a life of relative comfort and happiness.

In 2001, Merry Meadowsweet decides to sleep with his young new office assistant, an act that would abruptly disrupt the course of his family’s future. For better and for worse.

Some notes:

-Eleanor returned to her maiden surname when she divorced Merry. She and Merry are both in their sixties in present-day Fuzzbutts.

-Bob’s surname, Brückenbauer, means “bridge-builder”. Kathleen kept his surname when they divorced, to show that they were still best friends, and forever family.

-Toffee and Bob chose to hyphenate their surnames when they married, meaning Toffee’s full title is Dr. Reverend Tobias Toffington Meadowsweet-Brückenbauer, what a mouthful. Unlike his sibling and mother, Toffee opted to keep his Meadowsweet surname in the hope he could build a better, kinder legacy than his father has.

(Merry despises the fact that Bob is officially a Meadowsweet.)

-Topher, meanwhile, dumped his surname the moment he was legally able to, and on the same day he also dumped his first name/deadname. “Topher Noir” makes for a pretty sick stage name, if you ask him.

-Mal’s own original surname, “Drake”, means male duck. Her adoptive parents were waterfowl, and also kinda terrible parents in their own unique way. She hangs on to it even after becoming estranged from them, but ultimately changes it when after she meets Eleanor and learns what having a true loving parent is like.

-It’s unclear if Mal and Topher get married, but they are platonic lifemates. Their bond is as undeniable as it is nebulous. What are they? Roommates? Friends that make out? Besties? Non-exclusive bang buddies? Soulmates….? Labels are for normies, Topher says. Mal is inclined to agree.

-also shown is their eventual inevitable anarchist hellspawn, Axel. Axel has a very strong grasp of their identity from a very early age, and is quite outspoken about being non-binary and wanting to be referred to with they/them pronouns. Axel strikes me as an absolute menace to have in a classroom, but is nonetheless Topher’s best lil buddy, and Mal’s precious sweetheart cookies n’ cream babie.

-It’s unclear if Axel is a false hybrid (a member of one species with coloration/markings from their other parent’s species), or if Mal just has snow leopard somewhere in her ancestry. The world may never know~

-Honey u are a smug butthole and nobody likes u