#[You know who you are...My Saviour!]

[lifegrowsfromashes]

Grian can taste Death.

The metallic, cast-iron taste of Death, lingering in the back of his throat. The schizophrenic visions of Death, in the corners of his eyes, flickering like static.

Death follows Grian, like the last thing that’ll stay with him. His friends can get sick of him, his enemies can disappear, but Death, Death remains. And Death is out for him.

He can’t let his friends help; can’t let them get in the way. This fight is between him and the End, only. So, no, he won’t let Scar save him. And no, he won’t let Scar run off, like he’s trying to right now.

They’ve been keeping their distance from each other over the past few days, but Grian can tell when Scar’s planning something. He’s been unpacking less and less, when they settle down to sleep. His agreements to Grian’s plans have been more and more reluctant.

So, yeah, okay, Grian’s been hard on Scar recently. But Scar doesn’t get it. 

Ever since that incident, with the creeper, he’s kept his guard up. He can’t let him go down to red. And, okay, maybe shouting at him and calling him useless isn’t the bast way to do that. But- If Grian doesn’t save him, doesn’t tell him what to do, he knows that Scar will die. 

And he cannot let Scar die. Not again.

So cannot let Scar run off, like Grian knows he’s trying to.

He tries to confront him, when they’re settling down to sleep, in the dirt house. 

Hiding behind his wings, Grian shares across at Scar. The wide, jagged lines of burns raise the skin over his face, distorting his eyes. He’s staring up at the stars. 

“Are you going to leave?” The words startle Scar out of his stupor, and he looks across to where Grian’s laying on top of his sheets.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve seen you, these past few days. Since that creeper. You’ve been unpacking less and less.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m going to leave.”

“Well, what- what about the way I acted? The way I was, with you. After. Didn’t you think- you’d be better off alone?’

“No.”

Grian tenses. He watches Scar’s eyebrows knit together.

“Is this your way of trying to apologise? Because it’s not working.”

“I just-“

“I’m not leaving, Grian. What do you want me to say?”

“Well-“

“That you’ve been acting like a dick? That you haven’t been taking my feelings into account? That your brashness hasn’t just jeopardised me, but both of us? I know this is stressful and I know it’s scary, but we have to work together on this. There’s nobody else we can turn to. So no, I’m not going to leave you. And you’ve got to stop thinking like that.”

Scar’s breathing heavily, now. His voice is raised. They both turn towards the door, and watch for something to happen. And then he sees it. 

The shriek. The death call. 

The darkness.

[calamarispiderart]

been watching doctor who (2005) for the first time. umm. ?????? ??????????

[hella1975]

so there's a reason my new job got back to me so quickly about my application and that's bc it's an absolute fucking shambles like actually perfect timing for me to decide to rewatch the bear bc i have never more felt like ive been thrown into a broke on-its-knees establishment trying to crawl its way up the ladder where i am somehow a godsend to them. my old job was crazy and shambolic in the sense that the industry is just Like That but this one?????? insanity. every 5 mins i am questioning what im doing with my life. ive already had a walk-in fridge moment

[brick-van-dyke]

If there's one thing I've respectively noticed from Zionists and defenders of Israeli war crimes, it's that every source, argument and potential avenue to explore each explanation is riddled with cherry picking, moving the goalposts and mental gymnastics to explain why their conclusions, which typically are barely even related to the sources they use, somehow overshadow literal reality and what we see with our own eyes.

While scrolling, one example I came across was the repetitive misrepresentation of BLM, antifa and quotes from Martin Luther King Jr, as well as statistics, scholarly journal articles and government website information. These are all good sources, yet every single time they're mangled completely until the only possible "interpretation" of any of them is "well Israel is right to defend itself after shorting rockets beforehand because the retaliation was brutal and all Arabs are bad by default therefore". As if any of these sources are even about individual exceptions of Israel versus hatred towards Arabs.

I think what I find most absurd, as someone in the middle of their own studies, is how every bit of critical thinking and logic goes out the window as they do every single thing possible to do what professors worldwide say NOT to do when evaluating sources. It's like watching a race to see who can tangle and misconstrue scientific information to fit their world view the fastest. Then said people say "um actually I studied at university before so it's actually not wrong that I'm doing this exact this everyone is warned not to do because I have a permit". Ignorance I can forgive, but willful and arrogant manipulation? That's another thing entirely.

[petalsfordany]

[jellysshitpoems]

Do you think God regretted not letting Abraham kill his son, the son of a mortal man, when mortal men killed His son? Did He regret sparing an innocent, holy boy when they killed His innocent and holy son?

[wigglys-dikrats]

i know the history of hatchetfield better than i know my family’s history

[thebirdandhersong]

on the good news train today: I have finally finished the last chapter(!!!) of my Inklings challenge story, which marks the FIRST ever Inklings challenge story I've ever completed properly :'D coming in at 30,810 words (yikes) (it did get out of hand, I must admit), it is definitely not a short story, but it IS a piece that I think articulates a lot of what I've been thinking about lately re: love and death, and, considering everything, is probably something I needed to write. I am very happy!! It has been a wild ride, but a deeply clarifying one.

[cream-and-tea]

the thing about judge/calliope is that they really did have a fairly normal budding relationship (<- or as normal a budding relationship as a girl living out the evil version of every portal fantasy story and a preteen monsterthing could have) until everything went Wrong (<- surprise werewolf transformation and maiming) after which judge basically immediately forgave calliope on the grounds that ‘it wasn’t really her doing that’ (<- the maiming) and went “hey can we please still date?” and calliope categorically could notttt handle this so he went “no sorry no dating only guilt driven homoerotic devotion and laying myself at your feet like a dog allowed now” and judge went “sooooo can we still make out?” and calliope said “babygirl at this point i would literally let you waterboard me do whatever you want i will kill anyone who so much as implies they’d hurt you” and judge went “umm okay i guess i can work with– hey wait what was that last part?” and calliope went “nothing 🥰” with their teeth already fully clamped in the throat of some guy who looked at judge funny

[sonic-adventure-3]

uuuuuuuu immortal shadow in the far far far future having a devil chaos chao. his chao living such a full and happy life it reincarnates to stay with him TWICE at least.

long ramble about that and chao biology:

chao biology ramble: in-game, chao have a lifespan of about 33 hours total, ignoring all the messy stuff and presuming they never eat. it takes about 3 hours for them to evolve from child to adult, an adult has a lifespan of about 29 hours, and it takes about 9 hours for an adult chao to fully mature/go through “second evolution”. feeding them makes them evolve faster (1 whole fruit (4 bites) shaves off about 3 minutes, with 50 whole fruit (200 bites) for children and 240 whole fruit (960 bites) for adults being enough to evolve it on the spot if it could eat instantaneously) but doesn’t affect lifespan (unless they’re children, it’s kinda complicated). where was i going with this?

anyway, being generous, if we interpret in game hours as years then chao live like 33 years, and assuming they’re being fed it’ll take like 1.5 years to evolve the first time and 4 more years to reach full maturity. shadow’s chao is a fully mature adult dark run/run chao (with purple wings :D) so theoretically it’ll die or reincarnate in like 27 years. when dying/reincarnating chao cocoon similarly to when evolving for the first time, but when dying it’s white and when reincarnating it’s a very pale pink. in-game they take like 2 minutes or something to emerge from the cocoon so with taking an in-game hour to be a year, chao will cocoon for about a week. after reincarnation, the chao will emerge from their egg again, but will keep their names, 10% of their stats, and their genetic information like colouration (e.g. shadow’s chao’s purple wings).

lore wise, chao seem to be pretty uncommon and often only seen as children or newly evolved. it’s likely chao reincarnation and especially chaos chao are perhaps completely undocumented. chao have been on angel island for millennia though so knuckles probably knows a lot about it, either through relics documenting chao, or firsthand experience of seeing the chao up there reincarnate.

in 27 years, when shadow’s chao reincarnates for the first time, maybe there wouldn’t be the documentation to tell apart a death cocoon from a reincarnation cocoon. maybe any sparse documentation of chao life cycles would equate an adult chao cocooning with it dying. maybe after days of finding no answers he likes he’d find himself up on angel island asking knuckles it’s not true, that there’s something he could do, could have done, to save his chao. and knuckles, not knowing the colour of the cocoon, not wanting to get his hopes up, and even after so many years not fully believing shadow capable of making anything that happy, says no. there’s nothing he could do to prevent the inevitable.

so shadow has to accept it. and spends the rest of the week processing it. and on the final day, the day death cocoons would dissipate, he says goodbye to his chao. and the next morning he finds a chao egg right where the cocoon had been and can only stare. and a month later when it hatches, a baby chao with purple wings that already loves him stares right back.

about 33 years later it happens again. and instead of panicking, shadow puts the pink cocoon in a warm and cozy spot. and waits patiently. and a month later he greets his not-so-new born chao a second time.

a century or so later, there aren’t too many beings left that still remember him, and fewer that remember the chao that followed him everywhere. the few that do can see it looks pretty different than it used to. the horns and fire and gold eyes are pretty strange for a chao. still has those purple wings though

[bayofwolves]

no... the new leader of riverclan is icewing meaning she'll be named icestar... which is the same name as my beloved deuteragonist of starclan's saviours who is driven half-mad with grief after her healer (mate) and leader (close kin) die only moons apart and uses her newfound authority to plunge the forest into a brief period of war... noooo...

[iiusia]

the thing i cant get over with calvinism is that like. yes God is sovereign yes God knew the ones who will be His since before the beginning of time, but that doesn't necessarily imply predestination. God knowing does not equal Him Specifically Choosing These People To Be Saved. the aspect i get the most hung up on is if you are saying that God has chosen specific people to be saved, then the opposite is also true. you can't say that God chose these specific people to go to heaven without necessarily implying that inversely, God ALSO chose (maybe indirectly, but still) specific people to not be saved. to go to hell. and for me that absolutely does not mesh with the loving God of the Scriptures.

[hella1975]

i cannot stand the aot fandom this is not a new take at all they are universally intolerable but oh my dayssss u are FORBIDDEN from making ANY take about the show it's actually insane to watch. 'aot is perfect' no show is perfect. 'tell me you didnt get the show 😂🫵' people have different opinions/interpretations about things. 'eren is a good guy they could never make me hate him' i think there's actually 4 seasons and two movies explicitely using him as a tool to show that no one is 'good' or 'evil' they are only trying to survive. hello. the fandom r all so far up aot's ass that they actually discredit its writing in the process and it would be laughable if it wasn't so frustrating

[notasapleasure]

A tale of two Georgias

Note: I wouldn't normally share subscriber-exclusive content from this news site, but I think Shota Kincha's opinions are too important to hide away in an exclusive email this time. If you're so minded, please consider supporting open journalism in the Caucasus anyway and sending some money OCMedia's way.

Highlighting is my own. Of course I support Georgia joining the EU, but absolutely not under conditions that ignore the recent rolling back of democratic freedoms.

---

By Shota Kincha, for OC Media.

On Wednesday, Georgians celebrated a long-awaited recommendation from the European Commission for their nation’s candidacy for EU membership, leaving the country’s candidacy pending just final approval from the heads of EU member states in mid-December. But the Commission’s assessment of the government’s ‘progress’ seemed to be based on wishful thinking, rather than its actions. 

On denying Georgia the status last year, the European Commission outlined 12 ‘priorities’ Georgia would need to address for the decision to be reconsidered — preconditions that largely reflected the spirit of the April 2021 agreement brokered by European Council President Charles Michel between the government and opposition groups.

When the unforeseen possibility for Georgia to formally apply for membership presented itself in early 2022, Georgia’s leadership had already failed on some of the key components of the previous year’s accord. 

Instead of addressing the ‘perception of politicised justice,’ an apparent euphemism for the imprisonment of opposition leaders, most notably Nika Melia in early 2021, the Georgian court imprisoned another prominent government critic, Nika Gvaramia, only five weeks before the European Commission was due to assess Georgia’s readiness for EU membership candidacy.

Instead of the ambitious judicial reform promised in the 2021 Michel deal and mentioned in the EU’s ‘12 priorities’ last year, the ruling Georgian Dream party has continued to shield corrupt judicial officials with a stranglehold on Georgian courts, resulting in more politicised administrative fines and criminal cases against civil activists, political leaders, media managers, or youth with ‘confused orientation’ who risked their freedom to defend Georgia’s pro-Western choice on the streets.

In the run-up to the European Commission’s latest decision on Georgia, the government and security services run by oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili’s goons artificially created an anti-Western parliamentary group, gifted them private channel PosTV, and made violent extremist pro-Russian Alt Info immune to obstruction or challenge. 

If the last five years under Georgian Dream rule had been a steady decline in democratic freedoms, the government’s actions in the months since it applied to join the European Union — including their recent initiatives to clamp down on Georgia’s civil society and constrain protest — far surpassed any and all negative predictions.

But listening to President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, one could have assumed she was discussing an entirely different country. 

Despite Georgia’s government persecuting free media, parroting Russian propaganda against the West, refusing to undertake institutional reforms in a way that included other groups and stakeholders, and satisfying only three of the twelve conditions set last year, the European Commission complimented them with no substantial criticism.

I do not believe the EU should approve Georgian membership candidacy later this year, as the move looks set to validate and entrench the government’s precipitous lurch towards authoritarianism. 

The European Commission’s approach may be based on the belief that denying Georgia candidate status could lead to Georgians becoming disillusioned with the EU and the West. But Georgians have been staunchly pro-Western for decades, perhaps even centuries. 

The real danger to Georgians’ trust in the West comes from the West’s indifference to anti-democratic moves by Georgia’s government, which, if left unchecked, will continue to use state institutions to slowly but steadily shift popular mood and policies towards Russia. 

Even were we to allow that recommending EU candidacy status was a justified decision in Georgia’s best interests, doing so did not obligate the institution’s leaders to legitimise the country’s government in the way they did.

Listening to the widely televised announcement by the European Commission on Wednesday, Georgians could reasonably have concluded that democratic backsliding, state capture by big capital, and a politicised judiciary are consistent with Georgia’s pro-Western aspirations, or that related warnings from local activists and media have been baseless or overblown. 

The announcement could also have created the impression that the ruling party has been delivering on reforms demanded by the EU, a powerful notion less than a year before the country’s next general elections. 

The truth is, however, that in inviting Georgia to join the club while neglecting to call out the government’s shortcomings, the EU is playing a dangerous game, and one it has played before. The EU does not want another Orban, and the South Caucasus definitely does not need another Aliyev.

I may be wrong: perhaps granting Georgia candidate status will still be a wise choice on the EU’s part. But even in its recommendation, the European Commission could have sent a clear message that business as usual would no longer be tolerated. 

What Georgia’s leadership heard instead will become abundantly clear in the coming months. 

[outlanderalien]

Forever maintaining that this is Izzy's sad girl theme.

[wishluc]

The real heroes are the anons who let you know when you've tagged something wrong