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"get fat! eat more to grow boobs! you need to eat!" i know asshole do you wanna pay for my fucking groceries?

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when will i be able to post my art again 😔 the job takes everything

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🚨UPDATE ON THE HANDALA🚨

The Israeli occupation has just boarded the vessel

The Handala has been live on YouTube and Instagram to update us on the situation. I have transcribed two parts of the livestream bellow (this was before the occupation boarded the vessel).

First transcript begins with a message from the IDF to the Handala. As this was broadcasted through the radio, I was unable to understand the full message, but here you go, transcription of the IDF transmission plus the response from the activists on board:

“… If you do not change your course, the IDF will be forced to respond and take measures. In accordance to international law (…) You will be held accountable for the consequences of your actions and you may be subject to (…)”

“Israeli navi, this is the civilian vessel Handala. Let me give you a lesson in international law. Any blockade that deliberately starves a civilian population is a violation of international law. It is not only that, it is a warcrime. You have no legal authority to enforce an unlawful blockade and as such, you have no authority to use force — to enforce — an unlawful blockade. Therefore we demand that you stand down. You are responsible for the wellbeing of every civilian on board this vessel. As an occupying power in Gaza, you are responsible for the health and wellbeing of the civilian population there. Not only have you disregarded that obligation, but you are actively exterminating the people. You have engineered a famine. You are deliberately starving civilians and children before the eyes of the world. our vessel does not constitute any threat to you. We carry only humanitarian aid. And therefore you have no authority to intercept or otherwise attack our vessel. We demand again that you stand down.”

Second transcript, a few minutes later: the activists aboard the Handala trying to contact the Israeli occupation with the following message (no response came):

“Israeli navi, again, this is Handala. Again, we are a civilian vessel and we are sailing lawfully in international waters where you have no jurisdiction. We are sailing from international waters to Palestinian territorial waters where you have no lawful jurisdiction. Your claim to enforce a maritime blockade is rejected. You have no authority to enforce a blockade that is deliberately starving civilians. Any blockade that starves civilians or has a disproportianal harmful effect on a civilian population is illegal and therefore you have no authority to enforce an illegal blockade and as such you are not permitted to use any kind of force to enforce an illegal blockade. We demand that you stand down. Do not attack this civilian vessel that is carrying only humanitarian aid. Why are you afraid of baby formula and teddy bears that are destined for the children of Gaza? You spew your propaganda about Hamas but this vessel carries food and baby formula for children that your government is deliberately starving. Your blockade is deliberately starving children to death. You have no authority to enforce an illegal blockade. This is a warcrime. You are responsible for the health, wellbeing and safety of all civilians aboard this vessel and any attack on us is a violation of international law which you will be held accountable by the international community. Again, we are a civilian vessel, constitute no threat to you. Do not attack this vessel, do not board our vessel, do not obstruct our path to Gaza. Handala out.”

I have screenrecorded parts of the livestream to make these transcripts, Tumblr will only let me post one video at a time and it takes a while for videos to come online here. Time the crew of the Handala does not have.

All eyes on deck. All eyes on Palestine.

Talk about the Handala, talk about Freedom Floatila. Contact your government and demand the release of the hostages kidnapped in international waters.

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sorry just inflicted the psychological torture that is moana 2 on another person and reignited the rage within me about how the fuck that movie got made

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fellas. this week has really drained me :/ did a group project with five other people and i ended up redoing my part three or four times. and it kind of got worse every time i got feedback on it and tried to apply that? then also some of the feedback was in direct conflict with other crit so i tried to do the best of both? still feel like i didn't quite make it. idk. i thought it looked pretty good. idk. this week was just incredibly confusing, exhausting, and frustrating. feeling very defeated. especially since everyone else in the group keeps talking about how much fun they had. and im just sitting here like. i need to do anything else but this. don't want to bring the room down either or make it all about myself either. i really just took the L on this assignment. and that just bums me out because im past the halfway mark of this whole thing and i dont want to make something that im not proud of or that i can't say i triumphed over

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Good US news because I think we all could use some of it:

The Marines are to be withdrawn from LA. The extreme escalation many of us feared did not happen thanks to the people of LA and the soldiers themselves who said "no".

The "Good Trouble Lives On" protests may not have been as big as the previous "Hands Off" and "No Kings" protests (likely due to heat + being planned on a weekday), but still 1.6k protests were held across the USA with thousands joining in with the peaceful protest.

The Trump administration has been ordered to restore $6.2 million in grant funding to nine LGBTQ+ and HIV-related nonprofits. This is fantastic.

Pittsburgh City Council has passed bills to protect its LGBTQ+ citizens.

California has stepped up to partner with and support The Trevor Project. Let's go, Cali!

Another win for California: Reports show that California is powered by two-thirds clean energy. This is a historic first and it keeps getting better!

The ACLU of Louisiana has secured the release of two wrongfully detained Iranian LSU students.

The Republican governor of New Hampshire has defied her party and shot down a book banning bill.

Shareholders have pushed back on corporations' anti-DEI proposals, forcing companies to face the fact that diversity is good for business... And reminds us that the majority does not agree with the removal of DEI, no matter what MAGA wants us to believe.

Since November, 69 of the 110 Supreme Court lawyers tasked with defending the Trump admin's policies have quit.

Don't let anyone tell you that there isn't hope, that there aren't people fighting and working and just as scared and angry as you are. You are not alone. Peaceful protests, contacting reps, and simple non-cooperation is how we sustainably and successfully push back against authoritarianism.

"We're cooked" is the devil talking. Giving up, rolling over, and perpetuating the idea that we've already failed is exactly what MAGA wants. Don't give them the satisfaction. Don't make it easy. Continue to look after each other and support your communities where you can. Keep protesting, keep calling, keep writing, keep loving. The heart is a muscle the size of your fist; we can get through this as long as we continue to stand up and say "no".

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I'm visiting some dear friends of mine this week, and all of us have at least one disability. While we were eating breakfast this morning we were discussing the impact medication has on our lives.

I was sharing how difficult everything was for me when I had moved to a new city where the cost of housing was much more expensive and I couldn't afford medication. Over the course of the year, my energy deteriorated rapidly. First I couldn't keep up with my job, then I couldn't keep up with housework, then I couldn't keep up with basic hygiene, and eventually even chewing and swallowing became difficult. Sometimes walking to the train, I thought about lying down on the side of the road and how long it would take before a cop would force me to move. I wanted to die but I didn't even have the energy to figure out how.

My friend asked me if I had chronic fatigue. I don't know, because I was never diagnosed. I don't claim it because right now I'm very functional. I can keep up with hygiene, cook, clean, do work, and even exercise! But this is only possible from the combination of four different medications. Right now, I am extremely fortunate in that I have much of my medical expenses covered by my wife's health insurance that she has through work. I pay $415 USD every month for these things I need. I can never take this for granted because I know so vividly how difficult it is to survive without them.

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Freedom for Palestine!

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Look Up Gay Porn.

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i see what u mean and to be clear i dont necessarily think that's this is what they should have done, im kind of just throwing out ideas.

it was said in a different reblog chain that the visual style may have worked better if there was a more stark progression from viktor's beginning to end, which is what i feel that the core issue we are picking up on in this whole discussion. because i think that what sulky is saying (or at least this is how i understood it) in the original post is that there isn't much of a difference in what is being communicated through his cult leader design and the machine herald with the religious imagery. so what end up happening is the audience being like okay we get it he's the savior of man, because there is simply So much jesus symbolism in those two designs. i mean in a literal sense the designs are very different, but i think that what they are visually saying to the audience is, "viktor believes that he is a savior and is becoming unrecognizable in the process."

what i was thinking about is if the cult leader design leaned more into the temptation aspect of religious themes that it may have been more effective? but like i said i don't feel strongly about that idea. it's clear to me that the visual progression is missing something but what that is i dont know.

in saying that, i wonder if what we are poking at could be fixed if viktor wasnt so different in his cult leader form? to me the jesus imagery is a really stark contrast between his previous academic, put together look. because he seems to completely abandon the look that's been canonically the one he has maintained for the whole first season which is like? seven years i think? i suddenly cant remember.

but yeah maybe if the visual for the cult started with viktor maintaining a look that resembled more of his previous style, that way the thing that it would be communicating is "viktor believes himself to be a savior and there is no doubt that he is still the same person." rather than immediately jumping to the ways he's becoming unrecognizable? i mean. character wise it is really strange that viktor completely abandons all science to go wave his arms sagely and touch people's foreheads, especially that he jumps immediately to that, rather than starting with a scientific perspective and then devolving into all the woowoo stuff.

my thought is, what is the purpose of ascending to machine herald when visually he is kind of already there in the jesus look? like he's already a completely different person when he starts his cult and acts completely divorced from his body already, so it seems unnecessary to push it further to the all powerful god form. like if the point is to sell how he has completely lost himself and is a different person, that's already been communicated. but idk

a question for the panel: would s2 have been better without the Jesus imagery? or perhaps 50% less Jesus imagery?

I think ultimately some of the visual allusions were distracting and didn’t add up to more than a wink at the audience. Yes, yes, he’s dressing like Jesus and people are following him lolll. But you can’t follow the metaphor very far down before it falls apart.

Whereas the halos in his later evolutions are genuinely so strange and staggering, and I think the sense of reverence they borrow from medieval art is totally appropriate.

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Roughly 6 months in and the US is already at the ‘full blown concentration camps’ stage.

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i think that what u said is exactly what i'm poking at but i couldn't quite get there myself.

what his story really needed was more of a progression into the twisted version of himself, because you're right that he was actually helping people and then became too removed from his body and started being unable to empathize with others. like he said he could empathize, but he began to believe that he knew better than everyone and then imposed himself and his beliefs on the world, removing choice.

which is interesting! but i think that plot needed more love in the show because you're exactly right that there needed to be more of a progression into that mindset. because as it stands, it's very much just a switch flipped and suddenly he's evil now. and being able to represent that visually would have overall made the story stronger

a question for the panel: would s2 have been better without the Jesus imagery? or perhaps 50% less Jesus imagery?

I think ultimately some of the visual allusions were distracting and didn’t add up to more than a wink at the audience. Yes, yes, he’s dressing like Jesus and people are following him lolll. But you can’t follow the metaphor very far down before it falls apart.

Whereas the halos in his later evolutions are genuinely so strange and staggering, and I think the sense of reverence they borrow from medieval art is totally appropriate.

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ugh rip jinx's hero of zaun plotline ✌️😭 a lot of my thoughts can be summed up in that i wish there was more room to breathe

a question for the panel: would s2 have been better without the Jesus imagery? or perhaps 50% less Jesus imagery?

I think ultimately some of the visual allusions were distracting and didn’t add up to more than a wink at the audience. Yes, yes, he’s dressing like Jesus and people are following him lolll. But you can’t follow the metaphor very far down before it falls apart.

Whereas the halos in his later evolutions are genuinely so strange and staggering, and I think the sense of reverence they borrow from medieval art is totally appropriate.

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personally i was vibing with the choice but also, a part of me wishes that there was more of a reversal in imagery between his final evolution and his cult leader form? just because the machine herald leans so far into that medieval saint look.

like the staff, the halo, the contrapasto, the blue and red of his drapery, etc i could go on; it leans heavily into that look and i agree that it serves. like i Love that they leaned so heavily into that ascension, especially when the narrative ultimately condemns him for turning himself into that. but i almost wish that his looks prior to that had been more of a contrast to what he would become?

idk i just think that if the visual style they chose for his final form, which is meant to be his fully formed "villain" look, leans so heavily into the religious imagery, it might have been better to do the opposite when leading up to that? because up until he like. "goes too far" the visuals and narrative are leading us to believe that viktor is literally jesus and that's actually really cool and good. like honestly i dont think the show even condemns the him having the commune, the jesus imagery and the fact that the cult is actually doing alright until outside forces come fuck with it. i mean yeah he was going to turn them all into porcelain dolls but. i didnt get the vibe that the narrative was trying to say "gotcha! it was once again a utopian commune that was actually evil!" like a lot of other stories do. the problem doesnt seem to be that it's a commune, and more that it was viktor's hubris about controlling the arcane.

with the transformation, i can't help but feel like it's missing something that might have made it more impactful? which is why im leaning more towards heightening the contrast between his human and ascendant form. because i feel like the fact that he transforms into an all powerful space god is so juicy but i dont know that it hit as hard as it could have because of all the imagery surrounding it. but idk.

i could argue either way. like on one hand i think a reversal would have been cool, so maybe he started with a more primal, satanic look and then became a saint monster. but also, i do really like the idea that the allusions to jesus in his dress are a personal choice on viktor's part as an expression of his desire to be a savior/martyr. like there is something very appealing about his choice to present himself that way throughout the whole progression of the cult era, when it could be argued that he was genuinely saving people, versus where he ended. and how he is still clinging to the idea he has of himself as a savior, but the image is entirely perverted.

that is all to say that i don't think the show itself hammered either of those things in well enough for it to really pay off? like i think the groundwork is there and the design choice is a huge slay, but i think that it could have been heightened and made clearer in order for those ideas to have an impact. which is lowkey a global critique i have of the finale? just because there was so much going on and it was difficult to tie everything together in that time while still having the ending being satisfying and meaningful.

lowkey just thinking outloud this might not make any sense at all lmaoo

a question for the panel: would s2 have been better without the Jesus imagery? or perhaps 50% less Jesus imagery?

I think ultimately some of the visual allusions were distracting and didn’t add up to more than a wink at the audience. Yes, yes, he’s dressing like Jesus and people are following him lolll. But you can’t follow the metaphor very far down before it falls apart.

Whereas the halos in his later evolutions are genuinely so strange and staggering, and I think the sense of reverence they borrow from medieval art is totally appropriate.

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Art by John Park