#BUT IT CERTAINLY FUCKING HELPS

[emotional-moss]

sorry for resorting to a meme about this but people are making me mad 👍

[ghxstshxrk]

alexa play losing my religion by R.E.M.

[coveredinbutterflydust]

i'm being so serious when i say that this book warped my perception of what any sort of relationship should look like. is it healthy to want to exclusively feel soul-crushing love for the friends you choose or to know you would absolutely give up every single piece of yourself to them if they asked? probably not, but nothing else feels worth any effort and maggie stiefvater is to blame for that.

[chiisanajimi]

woe, sonic fankid be upon ye 💥

introducing starlight the hedgehog!

they're a son/silv/shad fankid essentially LOL

text from the image says:

- being of chaos produced from residual energy left by sonic, shadow, and silver when they use chaos powers - like when u fry something in oil and some bits come off... or like when u boil pasta and the water gets starchy... - the bits eventually merged their shared qualities to form this artificial hedgehog and dropped it in front of silver while he was mid-transition between timelines/dimensions

tl;dr made from Energy Soup created by extensive use of chaos emeralds. a cheerful thing with lots to learn :)

pronouns are probs gonna change but for now it's she/he/they (or basically, generally feminine but prefers masc/neutral terms)

fun facts:

the quills sticking up is not consistent cuz it depends on how much he gives a shit about looking clean-cut on any given day

silver only really used the emeralds in '06 and that one time in the metal virus arc of IDW (if he's used them more than that don't spoil me on it LOL im still getting through the comics) so his influence is not as strong as the other 2. it comes through mostly in personality (generally pleasant, socially inept)

starlight exists in strict juxtaposition against the other hedgehogs because unlike all 3 of them they literally were created for no purpose other than to exist. hence she has a weaker sense of self than silver or shadow and especially sonic. it's fun to think of them raising a kid and having to manually instruct them how to enjoy living

hypothetically has access to chaos powers like her "dads" but since chaos energy is also literally her molecular makeup she basically falls apart if she uses it too much, hence the inhibitors

also i say "dads" but the only one of the 3 who really acts parental towards them is shadow (more on that later)

[tea-cat-arts]

I simply think this fandom doesn't give Wei Wuxian enough credit for the various ways in which he saved Lan Wangji

[petricorah]

i feel sick

[mychlapci]

here are some tfp megatron doodles i did while wine-drunk and watching my telenovela.

i cannot stop thinking about... what if tfp megs could also take off his helmet...

[captainkirkk]

I'm on season 3 of House MD and I really appreciate that they've graduated from "petty" medical malpractice to straight-up assisted suicide

[kerryweaverlesbian]

Dean Winchester of Supernatural fame is NOT reading parenting books he is putting on Cheaper By The Dozen, Daddy Daycare and Honey I Shrunk The Kids taking notes.

[creekfiend]

it's crazy how much more disabled I am when I'm in a flare like... normally I don't think twice about things like standing up and walking into the kitchen or bathroom or whatever. in a flare it's like every single physical action has to be weighed and considered and if I can at all get away with just not doing them it will be better. just sitting up fully to get something from my Chronic Illness Cart a few minutes ago was difficult for me. like. what the fuck. that dynamic disability sure can is be dynamic

[cmdonovann]

BEING HORNY ON MAIN IS GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH, i shout, tears in my eyes, trying desperately not to cringe at myself for the mortifying ordeal of my friends knowing exactly what type of fictional man i want to fuck,

[slut-strut-satan]

Super hot take here but no Solas would not kill Lavellan.

[gingermintpepper]

Why did Apollo favor the trojans in the Illiad?

So, dear Anon, I've been thinking about how to answer this question since I got it a couple days ago and I think I kind of want to make something clear before I get into it.

The Iliad by itself as a poem only covers some of the events that occur in the final year of a long protracted conflict that had been brewing for at least two decades and was an active war for ten. Within the space of the Iliad itself, the motivations and affairs of the major players are often referenced but there are many, many parts of the story that are not there because they belong to a different story cycle that has been since lost or was never recorded with words. In the space of the Iliad Apollo's motivations are questioned a lot - his pride is questioned by Poseidon who thinks Apollo should be just as angry at the Trojans as he considering Apollo was treated equally as poorly by Laomedon while they worked together. His honour is questioned by Hera who chastises him for taking the Trojans' side when he'd proclaimed that Achilles would live a long life and prosper at Thetis and Peleus' wedding. His own sister calls him a coward for refusing to fight when Zeus gives permission for the gods to go wild on the battlefield. For all that there's this image of Apollo in the Iliad as some staunch and unwavering protector of the Trojans, believe it or not, I largely think of Apollo as neutral in the war.

Which, I suppose, comes back to the question - why did Apollo favour the Trojans? The truthful answer is that I don't know. The Iliad and all its connected stories isn't something I've done enough research on to have an answer or a reference to an answer off the top of my head. The reasoning I'm aware of is that Apollo was a Patron God of Troy and really a god doesn't need any reason besides that to protect his people but it's not like Apollo abandoned the Greeks either. Calchas is the biggest example of that I can point to - descended directly from a priest of Apollo and one who attributed his mantic power to the god, Calchas was pivotal in ensuring the Greeks even got to Troy in the first place.

From a personal perspective however, I think Apollo was more dedicated to the house of Priam than he was the city of Troy itself. Apollo's affection for that house and all its members ran deep - from his admiration of Hecuba and Hector to his love and attempted courtship of Cassandra to his blessings given to Helenus, Deiphobos, Cassandra, Troilus and even his partnership with Paris - Apollo loved the house of Priam. When you think about the times Apollo lashes out against the Greeks, it's generally because they've done some nonsense to earn his ire. The plague was caused by Agamemnon disrespecting his priest, his aid in the slaughter of Patroclus was because he didn't respect him, his minor grudge against Diomedes too was because he tried to test Apollo's mettle and well, the less said about Achilles the better. Apart from his obvious favouring of Hector in the skirmishes, Apollo doesn't really oppose the Greeks. He has a ton of reasons to by the time the Iliad rolls around, including avenging the death of two of his sons, but he remains mostly satisfied with conducting his father's business and overseeing the war from a somewhat professional perspective. To me, it's always been less about Apollo caring about the fate of Troy as a city itself and more about him just really wanting to protect the people in the city that he's come to love and respect.

Of course, I encourage you to take my words with a big tablespoon of salt - like I said, I don't really know enough about the facts in particular to give a solid, confident answer but I can give you my interpretation of it. Maybe consult someone like @littlesparklight for a more comprehensive and grounded response 🤔

[okkennymay]

Commission for @xxmischieflovesxx (aww man why wont it let me @ you??)

Listen I know the vast majority of what i post is commissions, but a mans gotta keep a roof over his head one way or another 9w9"

At least I get a lot of really fun ones!~ 💖

Ahhh Dan under house arrest by Clockwork, his "warden" a demon, and his attempts at intimidation in that last panel were most certainly futile.

[murk888]

I was too lazy to add the second stripe with buttons on the coat…. oops

FINALLY, I WAS ABLE TO CONCENTRATE AND PUT REAL EFFORT INTO THE DRAWING AND REALLY (kinda) SHOW HOW I SEE HIM IN MY IMAGINATION YEEEEAAA

[navree]

You keep saying refusing to vote for Biden on moral grounds because of Palestine is ineffective because Trump would be worse, but that really isn't the point. Largely (with the exception of a few extremists and a contingency of people who wouldn't have voted anyways) the philosophy of a movement that has people withhold their vote is to force a significant policy change that wouldn't have changed otherwise. Its a form of protest. I understand from your perspective, election-focused and pragmatic, it is a threat to whoever is running, but if Biden had wanted the votes being withheld he would have capitulated.

Not that this isn't a moot point since he's out, but whatever.

See, this is intensely fucking dumb.

"force a significant policy change" it would not. One, because Biden is the president of the United States, and Israel is not one of those states. Short of sending the CIA to, idk, assassinate Netanyahu in his bed, which most of these people would be against I think because of how much they bitch and moan about US foreign policy at any given opportunity, he cannot actually make an independent foreign power do what he wants and what is electorally convenient for him. Like, I'm very sure Biden would love it if Netanyahu and his partisans stopped acting like fucking freaks for five minutes, if only so that it would stop being a PR nightmare for him. But that's not happening, because he cannot control what Netanyahu does. He could vastly reduce the support the US is providing Israel, and in my view he should, but that's not going to stop what Netanyahu and the Israeli government is doing. Because, I hate to break it to you, but the reason they're carpetbombing Gaza is because they want to be carpetbombing Gaza, and even without US aid they will continue to do it, even it just means with older and less effective weapons. Ultimately, the change that leads to a ceasefire and an end to the war is going to come from the actual parties involved, not Joe Biden.

Two, you've already gotten the significant policy change. Biden has, on multiple occasions now, come out in favor a ceasefire. He has actively been working, along with the Qatari government, to try and broker some kind of peace agreement between Israel and Hamas, but those two keep on fucking it up because they're both run by bloodthirsty psychopaths who don't care one iota about the people they're meant to be governing and only on killing whoever they want. That's been open fact for months now. And it has meant fuckall. The people doing their moral purity about how they'd never vote for Biden were still doing it, just moving the goalposts on what they wanted. First it was ceasefire, then it was 'no ceasefire until [insert impossible demand here] is given', because moving goalposts is what these people do. It's the same mentality as people who saw that Biden was doing COVID stimulus, or cancelling student loans, or reclassifying marijuana, and decided that the issue now was that he wasn't doing enough of it. It's a movement that's been consistently comprised of dogs that caught the car, and are angry that they caught the car because now they can't complain, and they don't want to actually affect meaningful change, they just want to complain because that's easier. And if that's what these people have been doing for his entire presidency, why on Earth would any reasonable person suddenly believe it's different on this one specific issue?

Three, cool you're protesting, then what? Your protest is utterly unserious and completely meaningless if it's not going to have any tangible effects, so what's the next step? You've decided to make your moral purity stance an issue that the vast majority of you learned from infographics on Instagram rather than listening to the voices involved (which is why the red triangle brigade is still a thing on Twitter), so what happens now? No political party is ever going to capitulate entirely to it, because the constituency is just too small (that "uncommitted" gambit was only getting like 10% of the vote wherever it was happening, Biden won over it as a literal write-in candidate in at least one state), so other than the compromise that's already happening, the goalpost movers are gonna withhold their votes because blah blah blah my morals. And their next step is, what? Trump gets elected. And their movement, which has no thought or serious effort put behind it or any actual attempt to provide material aid to the people actually suffering, has helped put a man who is going to be far worse for it in power. The "significant policy change" is going to be that Trump gives Netanyahu whatever he wants and he proceeds to wipe Gaza off the map. The "significant policy change" is that President "Trump Heights" actively makes things worse for the people this protest is supposed to help, as a consequence of that very protest.

It's not about me only being concerned with being "election focused" or some cold hearted bitch. It's about me, as a person who thinks what Israel has been doing since the start is godawful and deeply horrendous, realizing that this entire "protest" is not only asinine but will result in deeply negative consequences and very real harm for the people this protest is purported to be for, and being sickened by that. I live in the real world, and in the real world action speaks far louder than intent. I don't have to acknowledge that the protest wants this or that outcome or what the hypothetical impossible asks that are never going to be answered are, because I understand that they will not matter. What matters is what you get out of your protest, what gains are received, how that protest actually affects change, not the change it gives wishy washy lip service to.