#I hope it's less than 122

[iwascoolerinmiddleschool]

How many dice am I supposed to have before it counts as an addiction?

[soft-sunbird]

50 campaigns less than 4% complete

All campaigns are from the incredible @gazavetters (spreadsheet)

Strawberry Pink group #3 Aiutare Mohamed e la sua famiglia Help Mohamed and his family #10 Helping Ahmed's family displaced by the war in Gaza #16 The war took everything from me #17 Help me to give a save life for my children #18 Urgent Help Needed For Saeed's family

Watermelon Red group #19 Help Amina Yasser's family provide her children with a safe #20 Help Salem Yasser to help his family in Gaza #22 Help Ali Jundia and his family to move to a safe place. #23 Support me so I can get treatment #27 Help me to evacuate my family from Gaza

Juicy Orange group #28 A family trapped in Gaza asks for help to survive #31 Help Iman and Her Family Survive in War-Torn Gaza #33 A Call from Gaza: Saving My Family from Siege and Death #36 Help Thaer’s Family: Save my Family the War in Gaza #37 Your donation rebuilds our life, which has become non-existe

Buttercup Yellow group #40 Help my family and children #44 Save Gaza: A Brighter Future for Shady and Family #51 Helping Khaled's family in the evacuate from Gaza #58 Help me bring my dream to life ! #61 Help Safa and her family survive and escape Gaza

Lime Green group #65 Moumen has died, We are suffering greatly after him. Help us #67 Help us keep my family safe and offer them a decent life. #71 Help Amal and Fadi leave Gaza before it's too late #72 Help Mahdi family to survive to get better life #73 Help Ahlam Rebuild Her Life and Dreams

Forest Green group #76 Help me support my family (Abujubara) #80 Please save me and my family and reunite me with my husband #85 Help Linda evacuate her family from Gaza & rebuild her life #86 Save Muhammad's family and his eight-month pregnant wife #90 Help Inas Children Receive Urgent Treatment and Escape Gaza

River blue group #94 Aidez la famille MOKDAD a survivre au genocide israélite #96 Hope for Gaza: Support Rabah’s Family Rebuild Their Lives #97 Support My Journey to Rebuiled Dreams Shattered in Gaza #98 Help Rana’s family to leave Gaza before it too late #104 Help Toto and her Family Evacuate the Horrors of War in Gaza

Sea blue group #106 Help Rebuild Zain and Lana's Home in Gaza #108 Please help the child layan to travel and urgent treatment #109 Help me get my family out of Gaza #119 Please help me to evacuate from this crazy war in Gaza #122 Helping a mother with 4 children in Gaza

Lilac purple group #123 Help Save My Family & My Baby Elaf #126 Save Roaa Family From The War #128 Support my family in Gaza in their time of need #130 Help me to evacuate my family urgently #132 Save my family from the war

Sunrise magenta group #133 Helping my family get out of Gaza #134 Donate to help Myassar's family from the war in Gaza #139 Support my loved ones to escape the genocide in Gaza #148 Help us rebuild our home and restore our life #150 Help Noor's family get out of Gaza to safety!!!!!

[fullscoreshenanigans]

No other option for this poll since it's based on the options that won a top 2 spot in the previous rounds.

Grace Field Kids Edition Goldy Pond Edition Lambda 7214/Paradise Hideout Edition Free-For-All Edition Other Platonic Duo Polls Suggestions Post

Copypasta'd propaganda from my other posts under the cut:

Grace Field Poll: I was glad to see how well Don & Emma and Gilda & Ray were doing on the Grace Field poll. ;w; Both feel the most criminal to me given how big of a role Don and Gilda play in the series, but ultimately I went with Gilda & Ray because I couldn't think of any moment for them that was equivalent to Don being the first of the larger group of kids to voice his support for Emma's plan:

(Chapter 130)

Except for maybe this brief exchange they added to the anime:

(S1 Episode 12)

Episode 10 also nixes the scene of Don and Gilda privately conversing in the woods in chapter 31 and instead has Ray apologizing to Don and Gilda directly rather than just Emma, which is made even more poignant when you consider how strongly he reacted to Emma and Norman giving them false hope about still being able to save Conny in chapter 11/episode 4.

He's not even trying to feign the distance he self-imposed between them in his mind at this point. He's genuinely sorry for failing them for their own sakes, not as extra able bodies who could assist Emma and Norman outside the wall. And it's a genuinely distressing sight for the two of them, seeing him at his lowest point after everything he sacrificed for this plan.

To have her then knowingly hum and hold that look of fondness for him when she sees how shocked is, after years of believing a better outcome was impossible, and how worried he is, because try as he might to keep the other children at arm's length mentally there's a way Ray frets over and looks after them that is reminiscent of Gilda's own (they are united in being the Mom Friends™ of the escapees 🤝), is such a sweet, gentle kindness that they didn't have to include but I'm very glad they did.

Goldy Pond Poll: Emma & Oliver has always felt like one of the most pertinent dynamics to come out of Goldy Pond alongside Emma & Violet with the amount of focus each are given individually as effectively the leaders of the Grace Field escapees and Goldy Pond kids, respectively, and together. The latter is significantly less, unfortunately, but Oliver usually acts as Emma's point person when she needs to confer information/plans and Norman and Ray won't work for the situation because symbolically the scene calls for a representation of larger group cohesion with the kids she didn't grow up with.

Also, after losing so many older siblings at Grace Field and becoming the big sister/leader of them, it's nice to have her regain that kind of relationship with any of the Goldy Pond group; Oliver just happens to have more panels dedicated to it lol

(Chapter 69)

(Chapter 110 & 111)

(Chapter 122; this moment is so minuscule, but again we have Oliver acting in a leader role and Emma using him as a point of reference to confirm that taking it easy in this new place is wise and safe for everyone. If even Oliver thinks it's okay to act like this—to say nothing of the way he tells her so gently and in so few words—then she can rest a little more soundly.)

(Chapter 161)

(Chapter 179; he's not the only one given focus here, but I like that he's the one this bit ends on to drive the point home to Norman and Ray about Emma.)

And then this piece by @nagaikei-ajin is my favorite of the two of them for the intensity and parallels.

i want to believe emma and oliver are carrying on yugo and lucas’ will and even got a pair of gloves for remembrance... 

Free-For-All Poll: I'm glad other people are also fucked up by this panel of Ayshe & Mujika:

(Chapter 144)

The way she's staring at Mujika in rapt attention, left hand grabbing for hers while she holds her right in front of her chest to show how animated she is in the conversation, either because she's gesturing to herself or is at a loss for words in the the excitement of the moment or because the adrenaline from the skirmish with Hayato and Jin is wearing off and trying to will the words to spill forth.

It's been months since she's been able to hold a conversation with anyone in the language her father passed down to her because he believed it was something worth preserving of his culture from a millennia ago, so to be able to have that back with someone as kind and graciously loving as Mujika is something special.

[raayllum]

Now to talk about poll results for "what made you see callum as a snake boi? (aka selectively loyal, ultra devoted to & willing to sacrifice the world for ez and/or rayla)?"

Initial notes:

238 votes was a lot more — almost twice as many — votes as I actually expected the post to generate, based on consistent notes for adjacent posts as well as the amount the categories in favour of it got on a prior post (about 80-90 votes in total). For this poll I'd been expecting about 120 maximum, particularly because it only ran for one day. So thank you to everyone for participating!

The actual goal of said poll was to see when people started to see Callum as being selectively loyal/devotional to Ezran and Rayla, as I'm always curious as to when people start viewing characters or ships or whatever in certain ways (with a couple of particular tipping points, like 2x07 and 5x08, being their own options). I almost didn't include the last category of people not knowing when that formed for them but knew that it did, but I'm glad I added it last minute, as it clearly ended up being the primary result.

You can also see my little vote up for S1, because I am nothing if not consistent as hell.

The two seasons that seemed to have the biggest effect on people's view of him were, unsurprisingly, season 2 (15.1% altogether or approx. 36 people) and season 5 (12.6% or approx. 30 people). 2x07, accordingly, had the biggest upswing but not as much of one comparatively over 5x08 (only 1.2% more, or approx. 2.8-3 people - however that's divided - of a difference), which was more surprising to me, since I thought 2x07 would've had a much bigger lead.

I was also surprised at S3 or S4 being turning points for close to 10 and 5 people respectively; if you voted for these seasons I would be deeply curious and would love to know what tipped things over you, as my best guess for S3 might be getting mad at Ethari / going off the Pinnacle and getting mad at Soren in 4x01. Please feel free to leave notes here in the tags/replies or in my inbox/dms!

Then we had his Tales of Xadia bio, which spells out the Inherent 'Snake Boi' premise outright, at around 3 votes. Again, interesting for me as a tipping point as it is 1) ultimately supplementary material and 2) existed as a confirmation of what I and many others had already thought. It does make sense that this is the smallest tipping point category as his bio was not likely to be effective if you weren't already at least open to this interpretation of him, and it will naturally have less eyes on it since it's supplementary material.

Overall, the largest demographics were the seasons altogether, at 39.5% or approx. 94 people, with the "can't remember when" being the actual largest with roughly 122 people. In total, that is the majority of the votes (216 people) with the remaining percentage largely stemming from my own meta - 8% or 19 people - which is approximately on par with 5x08 as a turning point, and outstrips all other seasonal categories except for 2x07. Not bad meta wise, I think! It is pleasing / feel validating, though, that the overwhelming majority came to the conclusion on their own and overall fairly early on (arc 1 rather than arc 2 where it is much more obvious).

As always thank you for participating, I hope you're enjoying the tags, and that you're having a perfectly swell weekend <3

[depressedhouseplant]

Just Fucking Write - Day 122

A/N: Hey, hey, hey here’s some bonus content for C&R! You can find the main fic here.

Kevin was walking out of the hospital when his private phone rang. He didn’t bother to look at the number before answering.

”Who needs stitches now?” He asked.

“No one, to my knowledge,” Mingi replied.

”Oh, hi. How did you get this number? This is the phone Juyeon gave me,” Kevin said.

”I know and I have my sources,” Mingi told him. “Don’t worry. No one was harmed in the procurement of this phone number.”

”That makes me feel better. So, uh, why are you calling?” Kevin asked.

”I was hoping you might be interested in a second try at a first date. Unless, of course, you aren’t interested. I would understand,” Mingi suggested. Kevin smiled to himself as he got in the car. A mafia sniper was stumbling over his words trying to ask him out. How many people had that happen twice in their lives?

”Was it the crying?” Kevin laughed a little.

”And the fact you’re the only person I’ve ever told I was married. That’s something I thought I’d take to my grave. Shit, sorry, I didn’t mean to put it like that,” Mingi replied.

”You’re fine. I guess that’s something we have in common, dead spouses,” Kevin said.

”I hope we have something more than that and maybe a little less morbid,” Mingi sounded hopeful.

”Sure, I’m willing to give it another shot. Maybe I’ll even clean my apartment before you come over,” Kevin smiled.

”Already inviting me over and I haven’t even bought you dinner yet?” Mingi laughed.

”I guess I am,” Kevin replied.

”Looking forward to it already,” Mingi said.

[skull001]

Amy hot takes.

Amy's Sonic Advance gameplay is still THE superior 2-D gameplay for Amy, and the only reason it hasn't been revisited in newer games is because Sega are cowards still stuck with the "one-button" approach that only works for Sonic and Tails.

Even when games like Origins Plus and Sonic Superstars nerfed down Amy to just two moves, she is still more fun to play as than Sonic.

Amy's gameplay in Sonic Advance >> E-122 Psi Amy hacks >> Amy Mania by Troop Sushi/Codename Gamma >> Sonic Supertars >> Origins Plus.

Sonic X's Amy is the full package of how Amy should be like. Even with her flaws, she was one of the most fun characters to watch, and surprisingly got plenty of moments that humanized her and even explore a bit of how she saw her relation with Sonic, proving she isn't deluded about it like her detractors claim.

Giving Amy a toy hammer is one of the best things Sega did, and wish the full potential of what she can do with it was more explored in gameplay terms.

The tarot cards should be only a back-up weapon, never the main one. Story-wise, the can guide her in her quests, providing the player with hints that they have to interpretate.

IDW's characterization of Amy is alright. The issue if anything, is that she, like the game characters, are hardly the focus of the stories, nor are they allowed to be shown in a more personal manner. Don't care if it's because Sega is too strict, or if the writers only use them to get to the characters that THEY really want to write for. Either way, the situation sucks for the game cast.

I think Amy is better suited to be the franchise's co-protagonist alongside Sonic. She is very versatile as she isn't restricted to be by his side 24/7, and as long as she sees Sonic as her prince in shining armor, there really isn't any reason to keep her from growing into a stronger and more beautiful heroine.

I'd like to see a story where Amy tries to help a character find redemption, but is ultimately unable to, betrayed by them even. I think this would be an interesting change of pace because, even if let down by those Amy tries to help, that she still remain kind of heart would be proof of just how strong her heart is.

Superform. Of all characters not named Sonic, Amy's noble and compassionate heart should be more than worthy of awakening that miracle.

Morio Kishimoto really should go all out with exploring more of Sonic and Amy's relation. I think he is one of the few people capable of doing so and pushing the status quo to ot' limit whole keeping things fresh. After the let down of that last Tailstube where Amy's feelings were again the object of mockery from american writers ( especially HIM), I'd more than welcome the more respectful approach from Japanese writers towards the dynamic of these two characters.

Amy IS part of the main cast, and should be treated accordingly to her status as lead female character. That means, not giving away Amy's roles to less important ones. Wether it's things like her compassion (which Tyson Hesse mentions to be unique) or being the most adventure loving of the girls.

Don't make Amy be "mature" by becoming a party pooper who dislikes fun. This is a very outdated stereotype of women that honestly, doesn't apply to the real Amy. She would join the boys in doing dumb things, while still doing girly things with other girls too.

Enough of sad face Amy. Why the hell is Sega afraid to show an Amy that, no matter what, can be a beacon of hope for those who have lost their faith. Further more, why is she not expressing faith anymore on Sonic? I swear ever since Sonic Boom, only Tails is allowed to do this as an artificial means to push the bff thing, in contrast to previous games and even shows, where Amy did this. It saddens me how in Prime, she complains about Sonic not sticking to the plan, while Tails is the one who reminds that he has never let them down. Like, helloooooo? Amy also knows this, so why treat her like she doesn't?

Sonic, Tails, Amy & Knuckles >> Sonic, Tails and Amy >>>>>> Sonic, Tails & Knuckles.

Writers shouldn't be afraid to show/play out Amy's flaws. I like seeing characters make fools of themselves once in a while, as long as they are also allowed to get out of their mess by also playing out their strengths and positive traits.

[corvidcall]

So, I didn't like the book "Abolish the Family" by Sophie Lewis very much

(Or, "wow, Corv, how did you manage to write over 5k words about a book that's got less than 100 pages?")

I read Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation by Sophie Lewis and I.... well, to be gentle, I did not much care for it. And to be less gentle, I thought it was hot nonsense, and I kind of wanted to just put my thoughts down about it somewhere.

I picked up the book because I was curious about family abolition. I actually heard Sophie Lewis on a podcast ages ago, and I've seen some posts on Tumblr from people talking about family abolition, but I hadn't really heard it argued in full. I had some immediate concerns when I heard about! I mean, I agree that it's pretty fucked up to offload all the responsibility of caring for people who cannot care for themselves onto their families, which both enables abuse and also leaves people who don't have families shit out of luck. But what's the alternative? I assume it's not advocating for just letting all children run loose in the streets, but I don't know what it IS advocating for. If all children are to be raised collectively by the community, how will unique cultures and heritages be passed down? The way I see it, either we have diverse communities, and nobody gets to pass down history and culture and religious practices that are applicable to them but not to everyone (so either the white children in this community have as much claim to participating in the practices of, say, Native American tribes as any Native child, OR these practices are just dissolved entirely), or all these communities must be racially segregated. And isn't "abolishing families" what colonizing governments did to their native populations, when they forced their children to attend state-run residential schools? Are you just advocating that but for all children?

But these are concerns raised by someone who has only heard the name, really, and it's silly to get very mad trying to argue against what you imagine something to be without ever investigating what it actually is. That's not the kind of person I want to be! And surely someone who spends a lot of time thinking about and writing about this concept would have been able to anticipate my incredibly obvious and uninformed complaints about it. (In the same way that anyone advocating for police abolition MUST have an answer for the obvious "but then who will stop all the murderers?" question that people immediately respond with). I picked up this book in particular because, hey, it's a MANIFESTO! That must be the most distilled version of the idea, so surely it will answer my questions and tell me what I wanted to know!

I, uh. I was wrong.

Before I get started with a lot of my thoughts about the actual book, I do want to say that this is not really a refutation of the idea of family abolition, so much as a complaint that this one book is incredibly poorly argued. I have heard compelling arguments for family abolition, and I am, at the very least, sympathetic to the idea. I was honestly coming into this hoping to be convinced by it, so I think it's kind of shocking how unconvincing this book was!

OKAY with all my scenes set and my disclaimers made, let's get into the good stuff.

Abolish the Family is a very short book (122 pages, the last 30 pages of which are footnotes), and is broken up into 4 chapters. I'm just going to go chapter by chapter chronologically, although I could probably go in any order, as I don't feel like they really build on each other well.

1. But I Love My Family!

Lewis opens the book by arguing why families are bad: they are the means by which society privatizes care (as I said earlier!), they perpetuate capitalist hegemony, they foster environments under which abuse can flourish. I don't really have any refutations to these points, but I feel like me trying to summarize them here makes them come across as better argued than they are. Lewis makes a lot of assumptions about the readers immediate willingness to agree with her, in my opinion. She imagines we will try to argue that we love our families, which is, admittedly, one of my first arguments. "But loving one's family in spite of a 'hard childhood' is pretty typical of the would-be family abolitionist," Lewis insists, "She may, for instance, sense in her gut that she and her family members aren't good for each other, while also loving them."

I suppose that is true, but when I object to the idea by saying that I love my family, I mean that I enjoy being around them and I think my life is frequently better for them being in it. My mom is one of my best friends, and one of the only adults in my life who cared about and tried to accommodate my disabilities. It's weird to me that the only real response to this objection is for Lewis to go “sure, you love your family, but you can admit they're bad people!” I could admit that, but I don't think it's true! And if I did think that was true, you wouldn't really have to be arguing to convince me, would you? I would already be agreeing with you.

Personally, I always struggle a little with the idea that you can ��love” someone but not “like” them, or that you can “like” being around someone but not really “love” them. A lot of that, of course, is that there is no consistent definition of what love means, and I'm autistic, so these things that seem very instinctual to others are occasionally a little inscrutable to me. Lewis attempts to define loving another person as ”[struggling] for their autonomy as well as their immersion in care, insofar such abundance is possible in a world choked by capital.“ Using this definition, she suggests that a mother who REALLY loved their children would not seek to have any particularly special relationship with their child on the basis of being their ”real“ mother, and that you, as a child (”assuming you grew up in a nuclear household“, which is a parenthetical that's doing a LOT of heavy lifting, if you ask me), surely noticed how lonely and isolated your mother was, being confined to the home, so you should all understand that family abolition is truly the more ”loving“ option, as opposed to perpetuating the family structure.

My problem with this argument is that... well, none of these things were true about my mom? She did not ”restrict the number of mothers (of any gender) to which [I] had access.“ When my father got remarried, she was delighted there would be more people in my life to love and care for me. And I most certainly did not sense her loneliness and isolation, because she was neither lonely nor isolated. And I very much did not grow up in a nuclear family, as my parents divorced when I was still in preschool. All of the things Lewis is suggesting as reasons for abolishing the family are things that were achieved for me within the family, and without any special effort on the part of anyone. So why should I support abolition, as opposed to, say, better social safety nets or something? If you were arguing that we need to eliminate mosquitoes to stop the spread of malaria, the fact that you can get vaccinated against malaria WITHOUT eliminating all mosquitoes kind of undercuts your argument, doesn't it? Even if I agree the problems you've pointed out are bad, you haven't convinced me that yours is the best solution.

I also found that the way that Lewis brings up the issue of abuse comes across as kind of... callous, I guess? It's brought up as more of a gotcha towards people who think that families aren't inherently evil, as opposed to a real concern that she actually has compassion towards and is seeking to solve. Lewis writes, "The family is where most of the rape happens on this earth, and most of the murder. No one is likelier to rob, bully, blackmail, manipulate, or hit you, or inflict unwanted touch, than family. Logically, announcing an intention to “treat you like family” ... ought to register as a horrible threat." And that's about all she has to say on the subject of abuse, beyond one name drop of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, an English 6-year-old who was murdered by his parents during the COVID lockdowns (which, frankly, I found both a little inappropriate to mention, and not even a good example of the thing Lewis is complaining about. The abuse this child was experiencing at the hands of his father and his father's girlfriend was reported by both his grandmother and his uncle, but social services chose not to investigate. While he was abused and subsequently killed by his family, his family also attempted to save him. So it's a little weird to use this as an argument for family abolition and for having some sort of government/non-family body be in charge of the safety and well-being of children, if you ask me.) It just strikes me as weirdly uncaring, to bring up the subject of abuse only in response to a common piece of advertising copy. "Oh, Olive Garden says 'when you're here, you're family'? Well, sometimes families rape each other. Betcha didn't think about that!" Like, yeah, Sophie, I guess I didn't. You owned me, with facts and logic. Congrats.

2. Abolish Which Family?

I'm gonna be honest, it's very possible that this chapter went a little over my head. I like to think I'm decently smart and whatnot, but I really couldn't parse some of the points of this chapter.

Lewis states that her purpose in this chapter is to argue why families must be ABOLISHED, and not reformed or expanded, and why THE FAMILY needs to be abolished, and not just "the white family" or "the bourgeois family". She starts off by bringing up what she imagines some of the criticisms to family abolition might be: do you really want to talk about families the same way we talk about things like prisons or police? How can we talk about "abolishing the family" for colonized people, like Palestine, when the occupying genocidal power has already pre-abolished the indigenous family? Isn't this just asking queer people to surrender their hard-won family rights to hospital visitation? "As you can see, I’m semi-fluent—almost impassioned— when it comes to reeling out points against becoming a partisan of “family abolition.”" Lewis writes, "They are compelling, these counterarguments, even to me."

But she doesn't really refute any of these points? At least, not directly, which seems odd, given that she introduced the chapter by bringing them up. Most of this chapter is a lot of Lewis quoting other writers, who were writing about how Black motherhood is "as radical and revolutionary, as spiritual and transformative" (Jennifer Nash), and "Black mothering is queer" (Alexis Pauline Gumbs). I have no problems with Black writers exploring the ways in which the Black family is fundamentally different from the White family, or in finding power and beauty in that. But I do think it's a little odd for Lewis, a White woman writing about how families ought to be abolished, to spend so much of this book talking about how Black mothers are so important and wonderful? I thought families were bad? I think the point she's trying to make, both with this section and her later transition back into talking about how families should not be, is that Black families are already inherently aligned with family abolition, as they exist outside of the societal ideal of "the family", which is White. But it still strikes me as odd, to take a long diversion to deify the figure of a Black matriarch before going back to talking about how it's bad that women feel like they must be mothers. Do we want them to be mothers or don't we?

Anyway, if anyone else has read this book and can come up with a more coherent thesis for this chapter in particular, let me know. It's definitely the one I struggled with the most.

3. A Potted History of Family Abolitionism

In this chapter, Lewis lists every prominent writer that has written in support of family abolition (by her own metrics, as some of them did not identify themselves or their political pursuits to be attempting to abolish the family). This was honestly my favorite chapter of the book! A lot of the people she listed sounded very cool, and I will be reading more from some of them. I'm not going to talk about everyone Lewis mentions in this chapter, but I will go through a few of the ones I had the most to say about:

Charles Fourier

A French philosopher from the late 18th/early 19th century, he is the man who coined the word "feminism" and wrote about utopias (including insisting that, in his imagined utopia, the seas would lose their salinity and turn to lemonade. So I'm gonna put his ideas of utopias in the "maybe" pile). He imagined a world in which people lived in "phalanxes" of 1600 people, with universal basic income, covered walkways to protect from bad whether, a guaranteed sexual pleasure minimum, and communal kitchens, where all cooking and eating would be done by everyone. Lewis refers to some of these ideas as "unquestionable sensible" (particularly the removal of private kitchens in favor of communal cooking), and I, personally, DO question how sensible the idea is, actually! This is an incredibly common talking point amongst my fellow radical leftists of all stripes, to which I always want to respond with: have you ever known anyone with a severe allergy, or dietary restrictions, or an eating disorder, or or or or? I have ARFID, and there are very few things I can eat. Are we going to require the entire community change their diets to match mine, or, under this utopian society where I am not allowed access to a kitchen for only my food, am I simply not allowed to eat? Given how hostile people are to those with peanut allergies, even when it does not impact them in the slightest, I find it hard to believe that everyone would be happy never using peanuts in their cooking ever again when someone with an allergy joins the community. Maybe it makes me an unforgivable lib or something, but I don't believe capitalism is the sole reason behind man's unkindness to man, and I don't believe it will disappear after we build communism.

I also have some concerns about this supposed "guaranteed sexual pleasure minimum", but it doesn't seem like Lewis is going out of her way to defend that part, so I suppose I will have to let it slide in service of brevity. Which I know is funny to say, considering how long the rest of this post is. But, well, you decided to read it, so this is at least partially on you.

The Queer Indigenous and Maroon Nineteenth Century

This part's good! Lewis talks a lot about how, pre-colonization, Indigenous tribes did not organize property along the lines of the biological family, and the idea of "the family" was something that was imposed upon them by colonization. Taking property ownership out of the hands of the collective and putting it under the control of the heads of households - which is to say, men in general and husbands/fathers in specific - was a way for colonizing governments to dissolve the tribal identity. In this way, family abolition is actually a protection AGAINST colonialism, because it would be allowing people to return to ways of structuring communities that were not imposed by the colonizers.

Lewis goes on to talk about the similar experience of the people newly emancipated from chattel slavery in the U.S. Given the circumstances under which slaves were forced to live, the structure that we recognize as "the family" was not available to them, and once slavery was abolished, former slaves did not immediately organize themselves along family lines, and retained “diversity of relationship and family structures greater than their white contemporaries on farms or in factories" (Lewis quoting M.E. O'Brien). Lewis adds, "But the American state’s policing of the post-Reconstruction Black marital bed laid the basis for twentieth-century welfare officers’ “man-in-the-house” rule, which denied benefits to any mother caught “living” (even just for a couple of hours) with a member of the opposite sex. If you, a Black woman, had a “man in the house” of any kind, the law declared, then that man, not the state, ought to be the one paying your child support."

Overall, I thought this section was great! Very informative. Wish the whole book was like this.

Wages for Housework and the National Welfare Rights Organization

This is my favorite section in the whole book. While I don't think that Lewis herself adds much to the discussion, I do think that everything mentioned and quoted in this section is incredibly good and compelling. She first discusses the Wages for Housework movement in Italy which was, as the name would suggest, demanding financial compensation for the household labor traditionally expected of women. “They say it is love,“ Wages for Housework said, ”We say it is unwaged work.“ To quote Lewis:

”Pointedly, they did not deny that unwaged childcare, eldercare, housekeeping, sex, emotional labor, wifehood, might be a manifestation of love. Rather, the militants argued that “nothing so effectively stifles our lives as the transformation into work of the activities and relations that satisfy our desires.” Put differently: the fact that caring for a private home under capitalism often is an expression of loving desire, while at the same time being life-choking work, is precisely the problem. That the “they” of the dictum—bosses, husbands, dads—are not wrong about this illustrates the insidiousness of the violence care-workers encounter (and mete out) in the family-form. It’s the reason paid and unpaid domestics, and paid and unpaid mothers, still have to fight just to be seen as workers."

Meanwhile, in America, and frequently in collaboration with Wages for Housework, the late 1960's saw the formation of the National Welfare Rights Organization, which at its peak represented as many as one hundred thousand people, the majority of which were Black women, agitating for reforming America's welfare infrastructure. One of its founding members was Johnnie Tillmon, a self-described "middle-aged, poor, fat, Black woman on welfare," who said, in an article for Ms. magazine in 1972:

"For a lot of middle-class women in this country, Women’s Liberation is a matter of concern. For women on welfare, it’s a matter of survival. ... [Welfare] is the most prejudiced institution in this country, even more than marriage, which it tries to imitate…. A.F.D.C. (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) says if there is an “able-bodied” man around, then you can’t be on welfare. If the kids are going to eat, and the man can’t get a job, then he’s got to go. Welfare is like a super-sexist marriage. You trade in a man for the man. But you can’t divorce him if he treats you bad. He can divorce you, of course, cut you off anytime he wants. But in that case, he keeps the kids, not you. The man runs everything. In ordinary marriage, sex is supposed to be for your husband. On AFDC, you’re not supposed to have any sex at all. You give up control of your own body. It’s a condition of aid. You may even have to agree to get your tubes tied so you can never have more children just to avoid being cut off welfare."

At a time when most feminists were focusing on getting more women into the workplace, Tillmon and her comrades were demanding the freedom to NOT work, “the aspiration that women’s lives would no longer be dictated by husbands, employers, government bureaucrats, and clerks,” in the words of Wilson Sherwin and Frances Fox Piven.

Lewis argues that the work of the NWRO and Wages for Housework were works of family abolition "on the basis of their simultaneously (or combined) non-maternal and non-workerist accounts of what it is that a poor single mom needs and wants." I'm not really sure I agree, or I think that, were I to agree, then I once again have no idea what does and does not constitute "family abolition." If acknowledging that some single mothers would rather not work is an implicit endorsement of family abolition, that isn't all leftism inherently family abolitionist? I imagine that Lewis would argue that, yes, true leftism IS inextricable from family abolition, but she sure spends a good amount of this book talking about how many leftists DON'T support family abolition. If wanting universal basic income, for example, is wanting family abolition even if I don't say I'm advocating for family abolition, then how can you lament that I don't support family abolition? Am I overthinking this? Probably.

As I said, there were other sections in this chapter that I skipped over, because they were less interesting to me, or I had less to say about them: some arguments that Marx and Engels supported family abolition, some writings from a Soviet family abolitionist (who later, it seems, sacrificed a lot of her own ideals to support Stalin), dismay that Gay Liberation movements had been advocating for family abolition and the expanded rights of children but backed away from it to focus on surviving AIDS, and discussion of second-wave feminist Shulamith Firestone, whose utopian vision in her magnum opus, The Dialectic of Sex, involved mechanical uteruses in which all human fetuses would be gestated, resulting in no one even knowing who they were biologically related to any longer (and, by Lewis's own admission, segments of this book were pretty racist, and featured absolutely no mention of queerness. Ain't that just the way).

4. Comrades Against Kinship

We're almost done! In this chapter, Lewis finally answers the question I've had since I first heard the words "family abolition": but what does that look like? As you can imagine from my frustrations overall with this book, she does not have a coherent response. I would say she gives three answers to this question:

First, quoting Michèle Barrett and Mary McIntosh, she says, "Any critique of the family is usually greeted with, ‘but what would you put in its place?’ We hope that by now it will be clear that we would put nothing in the place of the family." Which is frustratingly dismissive, in my opinion. Obviously, there would be SOMETHING to replace the family. We're not very well going to just let all infants roam free in the streets!

Her second answer is, she doesn't know.

“It is very, very difficult,” wrote Linda Gordon, “to conceive of a society in which children do not belong to someone or ones. To make children the property of the state would be no improvement. Mass, state-run day care centers are not the answer.” Do we have answers? Do we know yet which kinds of relation are outside capitalist accumulation? Lou Cornum: “If the answer today is none, let us devise some by tomorrow.”

And her final, most concrete answer is: Camp Maroon, the months-long 2020 tent encampment in Philadelphia. Just copying from the book directly once again:

What was Camp Maroon? An occupation, complete with a kitchen, distribution center, medical tent, substance use supply store, and even a jerry-rigged standing shower—a militant village led by unhoused Philadelphians and working-class rebels like the indomitable, one-in-a-million Jennifer Bennetch (rest in power). The encampment was composed of hundreds of people willing to live together side by side, in tents, to struggle for free housing, migrant freedoms, the right to the city, and more. Even I, standing on the periphery, felt transformed. It was that summer that taught me this: all beings exploited by capital and by empire are basically homeless. All of us have been driven from the commons. Everywhere, humans have woven enclaves and cradles of possibility, relief, and reciprocity in the desert. But the thing that would make our houses home —in a new, true, common sense of the word—is a practice of planetary revolution.

It might seem a bit vertiginous to draw such huge conclusions from a localized camp-out in the middle of Pennsylvania’s capital city. But if you have experienced, even just for a few days, the alternate social world that brews in the utopian squatting of a city boulevard, you probably know. It’s trippy: people acquire a tiny taste of collective self-governance, of mutual protection and care, and suddenly, the list of demands, objectives, targets and desires becomes much longer and more ambitious than simply “affordable housing.” That’s why M. E. O’Brien thinks “the best starting point to abolish the family” is the protest kitchen: “Form self-organized, shared sleeping areas for safety. Set up cooperative childcare to support the full involvement of parents. Establish syringe exchanges and other harm reduction practices to welcome active drug users.” Expand from there, and never stop expanding.

There's also a lot of waffle about Aufhebung, a concept popularized by Hegal (which Lewis refers to as "the word abolition’s weighty original German form", even though the word "abolition" did not at all originate from Aufhebung, but instead from the Latin abolitionem. But now I'm nitpicking, I suppose), and a strange implication that actually, unhoused people in 2020 were better off than people who had to move back with their families, which I'm not sure really holds up to scrutiny overall. The final paragraphs of this alleged manifesto bring up a heretofore unmentioned point about how family abolition does NOT support the policy of separating families of "illegal aliens" at the border; family separation is actually another way of enforcing the importance of the family unit, as it uses the removal of family as a punishment and the (alleged) respect for the integrity of the family as a reward. Personally, I was always taught that the conclusion of a book or paper isn't really the right time to bring up new points, but I guess I'm just not as smart as Sophie Lewis.

Conclusion:

Let's see how many of my initial questions and concerns were addressed in this book!

If all children are to be raised collectively by the community, how will unique cultures and heritages be passed down? - Kind of answered, but not really. In the first chapter of the book, Lewis states "Like a microcosm of the nation-state, the family incubates chauvinism and competition. Like a factory with a billion branches, it manufacturers "individuals" with a cultural, ethnic, and binary gender identity; a class; and a racial consciousness. Like an infinitely renewable energy source, it performs free labor for the market. ... For all these reasons, the family functions as capitalism's base unit." (Emphasis mine) So, I guess, unique cultures and heritages won't be passed down, and she thinks that's good? She doesn't address this specifically, but I don't think you can put "imbues people with a cultural and ethnic identity" on a list between "incubating chauvinism" and "performing free labor for the market" and say that you weren't trying to imply that it's bad and the world will be better without it.

And isn't "abolishing families" what colonizing governments did to their native populations, when they forced their children to attend state-run residential schools? - Answered, genuinely! No, it's different, because it would be abolishing the idea of what a family is/ought to be that was imposed upon native populations, and would allow them to go back to doing whatever they want.

What's the alternative? - Answered, but the answer was "nothing. why would we abolish families if were were just gonna do families again?" so. Not really answered, if you ask me. And by reading this, you are implicitly asking me. There is no clear answer to what the world would look like if Lewis got her way, beyond, I guess, something like the tent city she visited in 2020. But that doesn't really answer my question of: in Lewis's ideal world, what happens to a baby after it's born? If I give birth to a baby, do I get to keep it? If I want to have children, do I get to have them at all, or is this work entirely offloaded to mechanical wombs (that I guess will have been invented by then)? Is it someone's entire job in this society to just gestate and birth children? Do I get to fuck freely and then give birth, but my baby is raised in some sort of state-run nursery or community-owned crèche? I don't know. I didn't know before I started this book, and, if anything, I somehow know even less now.

I looked at the GoodReads reviews for this book, and saw several people saying that they were generally fans of Lewis' work, but that this one was unusually bad, so I might try checking out her other book. If any family abolitionists read this post and have any recommendations, please let me know. I assume this can't possibly be the best articulation of the idea, because it is honestly borderline inept. For her self-described manifesto, Lewis sure doesn't ever make clear what she's hoping to manifest!

If this IS the best articulation of family abolition, then I think it's probably poorly thought out, at the very least. I don't want to veer into any naturalistic fallacies here, but it seems like this entire perspective hinges on the idea that humans are somehow not animals. That pregnancy and child-rearing are labor, and only labor, interchangeable with my data entry job. If a person gets pregnant, gives birth, and then feels a special bond with the child they birthed that they would like to maintain, it is a result of societal brainwashing at best and active selfishness at worst. A true leftist would surrender their baby to the nearest community government official, so it can be cared for by someone more capable, and then said leftist should get back to their life, same as it was before. Now, I've never had any children, but neither has Lewis, so we're both just talking about what we reckon and what we've heard. And from everything I've heard from friends and loved ones of mine who have borne children, this perspective is entirely out of touch with reality, or, at the very least, is an experience of pregnancy that is very much not universal. And, personally, I find it kind of disgusting.

So, uh, no. I guess this book didn't convince me to embrace family abolition. Which, again, is notable, because I went into it with the explicit purpose of being convinced to embrace family abolition. Ah, well. They can't all be winners.

[katzaclysmic]

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[brasideios]

Fanfic Tag Game

Thanks for the tag @aeide 🤍 fairly sure I did this a while back, but I have time so why not 😊

1. How many fics do you have on AO3? 19

2. What’s your total AO3 word count? 481662

3. What fandoms do you write for? Have written for: AC Syndicate, AC Odyssey, AC Valhalla, Stardew Valley, Hades (game), Pyre, Ancient History RPF, and am tinkering with maybe something Minecraft. Maybe.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos? Snatched Moments (163) The Warmth of Home (122) Another Turn Around the Wheel (116) Unfinished Business (71) and the Good Spartan (53).

5. Do you respond to comments? Usually - unless someone replies to every chapter in quick succession, (and especially if the comments are only emojis) - then I tend to just reply to those that I have something worth responding with; or with the emojis situation, just the final one.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Rising to the Surface. No doubt about it. Or maybe the Good Spartan. That seems to get a lot of ‘this ended me’ type comments so yeah.

7. What is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Most of my fics have some variation of a happy ending. I think the one I’m writing now (Another Life) will be the most definitively happy though.

8. Do you get hate on fics? Not really, no. Disappointment that they’re unfinished from time to time, but not hate.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Yeah, mlm mostly. Very mild, vanilla really.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? I’ve never written one. Just not my bag.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I’m aware of, unless you count AI scraping, in which case, almost certainly, probably all of them, up to and including all my original work.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? No.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic? No. I don’t do collaborative writing. Again, just not my bag.

14. What’s your all time favourite ship? I don’t have one. I’m a multishipper to my core, because it’s too fun putting characters together with different partners to see what the relationship brings out of them to go all-in on one pairing.

15. What’s a fic you’d like to finish but don’t think you ever will? Still Crawling Kingsnake. I love it but there’s just no ending. Not even a shadow of one.

16. What are your writing strengths? Fighting the urge to be self-deprecating here - I like to think I do a good job with dialogue and building a character. I feel less doubtful about that than the rest, anyway.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Everything else.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in a fic? If I knew one, I’d do it. I read lots of things with this feature so why not. I would be certain to provide a translation for readers though (side-eyeing academic papers).

19. First fandom you wrote for? AC Odyssey.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written? The Good Spartan or Shadow-Twin. I think they’re both decent, just in different ways. I also like Another Life so far, tentatively hopeful that it’ll be worth reading when it’s done.

Probably everyone has already been tagged, so sorry if I’m doubling up or you’ve done this recently and I missed it. Just a few with no pressure @findusinaweek @ainulindaelynn @krankittoeleven @softest-punk

[newstfionline]

Monday, October 7, 2024

Still Searching for Their Loved Ones, a Week After Hurricane Helene (NYT) The last time Drew McLean’s parents saw him, he was marveling at the power of Tropical Storm Helene as it washed over their home in the mountains of North Carolina. He and his mother found that a large tree had split in the front yard and another had been pushed by surging water into Mr. McLean’s car, tipping it on its side. Amid the chaos, Mr. McLean, 45, offered his mother a comforting thought: “God is still on his throne,” he said. Mr. McLean has been missing for a week now, ever since he apparently walked off into the storm last Friday. Sitting on the back porch of their secluded home in the hills of Black Mountain on Thursday, his parents were holding out hope that he would be found, even as they wiped tears from their eyes and increasingly feared the worst. The McLeans are in a fraught and fragile state shared by many across western North Carolina and other regions crushed by Hurricane Helene. The vastness of the devastation, coupled with a lack of phone and internet service after the storm, has left families unsure of what happened to their loved ones. The storm’s death toll has climbed past 225, but many people remain unaccounted for and searching for them is complicated. Their families are desperate for answers.

U.S. Wiretap Systems Targeted in China-Linked Hack (WSJ) A cyberattack tied to the Chinese government penetrated the networks of a swath of U.S. broadband providers, potentially accessing information from systems the federal government uses for court-authorized network wiretapping requests. For months or longer, the hackers might have held access to network infrastructure used to cooperate with lawful U.S. requests for communications data, according to people familiar with the matter, which amounts to a major national security risk.

Brazil drought sinks Amazon rainforest port river level to 122-year low (Reuters) The river port in the Amazon rainforest’s largest city of Manaus on Friday hit its lowest level since 1902, as a drought drains waterways and snarls transport of grain exports and essential supplies that are the region’s lifeline. Below-average rainfall—even through the rainy season—has plagued the Amazon and much of South America since last year, also feeding the worst wildfires in more than a decade in Brazil and Bolivia. Scientists predict the Amazon region may not fully recover moisture levels until 2026. Last year, the drought became a humanitarian crisis, as people reliant on rivers were stranded without food, water or medicine. This year authorities are already on alert. In hard-hit Amazonas state, at least 62 municipalities are under states of emergency with more than half a million people affected, according to the state’s civil defense corps.

Is Europe Becoming Ungovernable? (WSJ) At a recent debate, a German voter had some pointed criticism for Chancellor Olaf Scholz: The German government is unable to govern and its ministers are bickering like children. Instead of pushing back, Scholz conceded the point. “The truth is: You are right,” he said. “But what would be your solution? I mean, I’m asking for a friend.” The exchange triggered little controversy in Europe’s largest economy, once considered a paragon of good governance. It is now all but taken for granted that politicians can agree on little here, and implement even less. France, which for decades has been the engine of the European Union along with Germany, has found itself in a similar state of political paralysis after elections in June left Parliament divided between a multitude of parties. Political fragmentation and polarization have tied the hands of political leaders, who can govern only in unwieldy coalitions between left- and right-leaning parties. Governments have struggled to find common ground on even basic issues, much less some of their most acute problems, such as handling growing numbers of immigrants, the war in Ukraine and stagnant economies. As a result, the EU and its governments have been failing to fulfill their commitments to voters and risk falling further behind competitors such as the U.S. and China.

Macron urges countries to ‘stop delivering weapons’ to Israel for war in Gaza (Washington Post) French President Emmanuel Macron urged countries to stop providing weapons to Israel for its war in the Gaza Strip and expressed concern that the civilians of Lebanon could face a similar fate as those in Gaza. “The priority is that we return to a political solution, that we stop delivering weapons to carry out fighting in Gaza,” Macron said in an interview with France Inter, a public radio station, that aired Saturday. France itself, Macron said, was not delivering any weapons. Macron’s call comes amid mounting public scrutiny of the high death toll in Gaza and the widening regional conflict to Lebanon. At a summit for francophone leaders in Paris on Saturday, Macron appeared to take a jab at the United States, by far Israel’s largest supplier of weapons: “If we call for a cease-fire, consistency is to not provide weapons of war,” he said. “And I think that those who provide them cannot every day call for a cease-fire alongside us and continue to supply them.”

Russia retrains ex-soldiers heading back to the battlefield (Reuters) Nearly 20 years after he last served in Russia’s army, “Mara” is back in uniform. The bearded ex-driver and foundry worker, who identified himself only by his call sign, signed up with the army on Monday. By Friday, he was going through his paces at a training ground in Russia’s southern Rostov region, practising firing from an automatic rifle and simulating the storming of a building. Two and a half years into its war with Ukraine, Russia is offering one-off bonuses of up to 1.9 million roubles ($20,000)—22 times the average monthly wage—to men prepared to sign volunteer contracts as professional soldiers. Being able to attract people like Mara is crucial to Moscow’s ability to replenish its forces and avoid resorting to another round of compulsory mobilisation. The drafting of 300,000 reserves in October 2022 proved hugely unpopular and prompted hundreds of thousands of people to flee the country.

International rescue teams arrive in Bosnia after devastating floods and landslides (AP) Rescue teams from Bosnia’s neighbors and European Union countries on Sunday were joining efforts to clear the rubble and find people still missing from floods and landslides that devastated parts of the Balkan country. Bosnia sought EU help after a heavy rainstorm overnight on Friday left entire areas under water and debris destroyed roads and bridges, killing at least 18 people and wounding dozens. Officials said that at least 10 people are still unaccounted for.

Ukraine in security limbo (Washington Post) More than a week after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky presented his “victory plan” for how to end the war with Russia to top U.S. officials, details of the strategy and how it was received remain hazy. The trip, which was viewed as a key opportunity by Ukrainian officials for Zelensky to sell the United States on how to support Ukraine going forward, failed to resonate in Washington. Biden held his stance on prohibiting U.S.-provided longer-range missiles to strike inside Russia and Zelensky found himself caught in a political crossfire as influential Republicans largely criticized or snubbed him. Zelensky’s U.S. swing reinforced the sort of unsettling limbo Ukraine now finds itself in going forward—reliant on the United States as its main ally to arm it against Russia yet unsure how long that support will continue as attention on the war fades in its third year and with the new escalation in the Middle East.

‘My dreams are about bombs’ (NYT) The Israeli airstrikes are worst at night. By day, residents walk the city with haggard faces, trying their best to fight fatigue and calm their nerves. Empty cigarette packets pile up in handbags and in the footwells of cars. Anti-anxiety medication is shared among friends. “When will this end?” the 7-year-old daughter of Farah Choucair, an economist who spent 14 years working for the United Nations, asked her mother last week. For the child, the pounding Israeli strikes are a flashback to the deadly Beirut port blast, which ripped through the Lebanese capital just over four years ago and destroyed entire neighborhoods. Ms. Choucair, who now works for a media technology company, said it took years of psychological support for her to process the trauma, but her daughter never did. For many in Beirut, the continuing conflict is just one in a long line of human catastrophes. The city’s bullet-ridden apartment buildings serve as a daily reminder of Lebanon’s bloody 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990. A crippling economic collapse that struck decades later has left much of the country in poverty, and residents are still grappling with chronic power cuts even as the capital is bombarded. Many residents say they loathe the stereotype that the Lebanese are resilient. “I wish sometimes that we could just sit and cry our eyes out and not know what to do, but we always know what to do—what to pack, what we need,” said Ms. Choucair. “It has nothing to do with resilience or any positive trait. It’s a natural survival mode that we have been trained to automate.” She added: “This is how it is living in Beirut. It will never change. I am 41. It has been like this for as long as I remember.” “All my dreams are about bombs,” said Heba Jundi, 36, who was staying at a friend’s house in the mountains above Beirut with her cat, Benji.

Health workers in Lebanon describe deadly Israeli attacks on colleagues and fear more (AP) Israel’s military struck outside the gates of a hospital in southern Lebanon without warning on Friday, killing seven paramedics and forcing the facility to close, the hospital director told The Associated Press a day after one of the most deadly attacks on health workers in the weeks since fighting escalated between Israel and Hezbollah. The account of the Friday airstrikes that flung hospital doors off their hinges and shattered glass was the latest to detail attacks that Lebanon’s health ministry says have killed dozens of health workers. Marjayoun hospital director Mounes Kalakesh said that even before Friday’s attack, ambulance crews in the area were so reluctant to operate that the facility had not received anyone wounded for days. Friday’s attack came hours before Israel’s Arabic-language military spokesman accused the Hezbollah militant group, based in southern Lebanon, of using ambulances to transport weapons and fighters, and warned medical teams to stay clear of the group. The spokesman provided no evidence.

A year of fleeing across Gaza (AP) Ne’man Abu Jarad sat on a tarp on the ground. Around him, canvas sheets hung from cords, forming the walls of his tent. For the past year, Ne’man; his wife, Majida; and their six daughters have trekked the length of the Gaza Strip, trying to survive as Israeli forces wreaked destruction around them. It’s a far cry from their house in northern Gaza—a place of comforting routine, of love, affection and safety. A place where loved ones gathered around the kitchen table or on the roof on summer evenings amid the scent of roses and jasmine flowers. The Abu Jarad family lost that stability when Israel launched its campaign in Gaza in retaliation for Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. They did exactly as the Israelis ordered in the devastating weeks and months of war that followed. They obeyed evacuation calls. They moved where the military told them to move. Seven times they fled, and each time, their lives became more unrecognizable to them, crowding with strangers in a school classroom, searching for water in a vast tent camp or sleeping on the street. Israel’s campaign has displaced nearly the entire population of Gaza—1.9 million of its 2.3 million Palestinians—and killed more than 41,600 people. Like the Abu Jarads, most families have been uprooted multiple times. For this family, the journey has taken them from a comfortable middle-class life to ruin.

[kimberlyannharts]

misc thoughts on Issue #120 -

= Insert obligatory "this should have been an Unlimited book, not just a regular issue, fuck Hyperforce" comment here. It's a little hard to talk about it beyond just "man these characters deserved more time and space to get to know them" because that really is the main problem with it. I'll be very surprised if we get anything about the Green, Black, and Pink Solars beyond the fact that Green's name is Charisma

= They are partly saved by how good their designs are, though, at least

= I appreciate how it feels like they wanted to include a legit m/m Ranger pair before the main series ends, but it's just a shame it had to happen in a "it developed offscreen in a Ranger team we haven't seen in years with characters we've never seen before two issues before the series ends" sort of way. Especially since Maxie and Salum really have no screentime together in a casual/romantic way even in this issue until the end. Maybe #122 can fix this a bit? Hopefully

= Why did Ranger Slayer go to the Void alone why didn't she bring the other Rangers along I thought that was the WHOLE PLANNN

= In ML's review of this issue he mentions how they only gave Ari and Remi a daughter to make this whole thing feel sadder and......yeah, that's 100% true lol like don't get me wrong, it's very sweet. But also very obviously manufactured to pull your heartstrings

= "Very obviously manufactured to pull your heartstrings" I think can also apply to how Remi's characterized in this. Like again, her and Ari are very sweet. They're one of the comics' best original couples. But we all knew she was going to end up corrupted after her second speech about hope and Ari looking into the camera and saying "if anything happens to Remi I'm gonna do something drastic." I feel like I remember her being a little rougher in Beyond the Grid - more possessive of Ari and jealous when she gets closer to the new Rangers - which made her feel a little more interesting and less Too Good For This Sinful Earth/Dead Wife

= Though I will give them that this instance of "character does something super drastic and potentially very dangerous despite their teammates' protests" feels a lot more justified here than it will with Billy next issue, considering Ari gets pushed to the edge by losing her teammates, home, and lover in one fell swoop. And it helps that she doesn't beat up her teammates in the process

= Dayne's totally dead right

[qvnthesia]

hey, hey, hey! hope you're doing good <33 may i present to you, qvnthesia's ao3 wrapped (def better than spotify wrapped!)

How many words have you written this year? — 100,000+ (i thought i wrote less with the writer slump T~T)

How many works have you published this year? — 4; I'm more for a long-fic person lmao

What work are you most proud of? — See You In My Nightmares! *excited*

What work of yours has the most hits? — Definitely See You In My Nightmares (the amount of people that have subscribed to the fic more than YMH is mind-blowing 😂)

What work of yours got more feedback than you expected? — It'd have to be Gently Into the Cold, Dark Earth. It was just supposed to be a one-shot, I didn't expect my inbox to blow up + See You In My Nightmares again 😂

Favorite title you used? — bespangled prairies (for my sw fic!)

If you use song lyrics, which artist’s songs did you pull from the most? — Mostly Taylor Swift

Pairing you wrote the most for this year? — Klaulena and Elejah are tied 😂

Favorite pairing you wrote for this year? — Klaulena (they do things to me, okay? 😭)

What work was the quickest to write? — Time After Time (elejah oneshot that just burst out of me from nowhere)

What work took you the longest to write? — Well, considering I'm writing them right now, See You In My Nightmares and Yours, My Heart collectively take the prize. But, personally speaking, I think Yours, My Heart takes longer because there's a lot of mystery I've got to keep up with and crosscheck with my notes.

How many WIP’s do you have in your docs for next year? — 36 ahahahaha *dies*

What’s your longest work of the year? — See You In My Nightmares (one of the chapters is 21K+ words 😂)

What’s your shortest work of the year? — Time After Time

What WIP are you taking into next year with you? — My two on-going long-fics! + my sw short-fic

What’s your most common “Additional Tags” tag? — Canon Divergence (I've said it before and I will say it again—I recognize that canon has made a decision, but given that it's a STUPID-ass decision, I've elected to ignore it)

Your favorite character to write this year? — Elena! 😭💖+ Anakin (he's a man tugging my own heart)

The character that gave you the most trouble writing this year? — Klaus, that man is both hot and insane.

What’s one pairing you want to explore next year? — Dunno, probably Finnlena, since I have planned a series of one-shots surrounding the Mikaelsons and Elena.

Which work of yours have you reread the most? — See You In My Nightmares (to understand why people like it so much + a reminder that i need to update but i never do)

How many kudos in total did you get this year? — 991 kudos!

Which work has the most comments? — With a comment thread count of 122, See You In My Nightmares 😂

Did you do any collaborative works this year? — Unfortunately, no :(((

Did you write any gifts this year? — I'm actually writing one for @kaizsche!! a bit nervous but excited too!!

Did you receive any gifts this year? — @kaizsche and I are exchanging fics and I'm pretty excited! (nervous but excited, gahh, gotta write good)

What’s your most common category? — f/m

What do you listen to while writing? — First it was indie, then some dark moody songs but now it's a mix of the second one and instrumentals + slowed and reverb songs.

Favorite work you wrote this year? — Time After Time

Favorite line/passage you wrote this year? — This one is from Chapter 12 of SYIMN. “My brother and I, we didn’t hate her for turning into a vampire, we despised her because we thought she was kind. We thought she might be like Tatia, we didn’t expect her to turn out so… different. Yes, even though I was going to sacrifice her, Elijah had a backup plan to bring her back to life. I wasn’t supportive of his plan, but my brother wears his heart on his sleeve for the women from your bloodline, no matter how many tailored suits he wears to shroud his true nature from the world. For Tatia, I did the same. For Katherine, I didn’t. At first, yes, even I considered a future with her, but—” he clicks his tongue. “—that strange emotion in her eyes made me reconsider. And after what she did, I was right. I didn’t see it coming, though. I didn’t see how desperate she was to trick us and somehow live. That betrayal stung deeper than my mother’s role in Tatia’s death. Ever since then, we realized it was a mistake to ever come to love a Petrova.”

Biggest surprise while writing this year? — Around the end of February, I got invited to join a server where a bunch of writers that I'd followed on Tumblr and AO3 were there and I was so excited and happy to actually get a chance to interact with them because the way we've interacted, the ideas we've exchanged and all the times we've listened and helped each other, it's happened to me for the first time 😂 + I've never actually improved so much in writing until I started writing on AO3 and this year just took it to new heights. My worldbuilding rates, writing rates, everything's just gone up in a good way and I'm really content with myself about that, and... yeah! 😂

And that's all from me! It's New Year's Eve and I'd like to thank all the characters I've got a chance to meet (except Susdious and the Salvatores), thank you for making me a better writer! And a very huuuge and special thanks to @kaizsche @sevensistersofsussex @katherineholmes @feralcherry @jennifersminds @elena-mikaelson @amandamonroe and @wazman, y'all are godsend <33

[the-aesthetician-writes]

September Writing Review

(Also a short update.)

Hey all! I've been gone for a while, I know. I've been trying to keep active in the midst of finding work and life being well... life. So the short and quick version of this is, I'm back-ish!

I have decided to really buckle down and have a try at building up my writing habits. With a couple of months filled with some horrendous experiences I won't detail here, I have realized what I want to do more than anything is writing. I have been attempting the process for the passed couple of weeks and the results have been more than I had expected.

Last month's goal is more or less having a decent amount of work done on all WIPs. And while that can seem overwhelming. I think the way I had set this up this time could hold results. So prior to my recent experiment, I've been writing with the goal of finishing one thing with no deadline (probably not the best method now that I'm thinking about it.) So what I decided to do now is to have a deadline along with tentative goals by the end of the year(NaNoWriMo) and some taking place during the first half of the new year (AroWriMo).

Some of these goals range from solid word counts to more abstract concepts in writing but for transparency (and accountability, really) I'll share them below.

Poco-A-Poco (Webcomic)

Poco-A-Poco is a web comic I set out to make at the beginning of the pandemic. Hoping to create something while in lockdown. It has been abandoned for a couple of years but I have decided to work on it to help build my discipline.

The goal for the last two weeks was to create a total of around 30 "pages" for the web comic. Thinking pages for web comics are often subjective and since I have a passion for graphic design. I felt it would at least work as a warm up when working on it.

The goal after September would be to work on a "page" daily for Poco-A-Poco. Just to build a rhythm and if I manage the time, some day update the comic with what I have worked on.

By the end of 2023, the total should amount to around 122 "pages".

By April 2024, the total should amount to around 243 "pages".

@bybyebitheway

Bi The Way is my ocean punk baby. Also started in 2020 and has had the unfortunate ratio of one chapter released per year it's been alive. With my new motivation with these goals, I decided BTW needed a concrete goal to hit. This was not only to build discipline, but also to build stamina in my writing sprints. I will be trying the Pomodo Method when writing BTW chapters along with the modified Kitchen Timer Method.

The goal of these past few weeks was to write around 4 chapters. I really attempted to give my all these passed few weeks, but haven't managed to work on Bi The Way. However, knowing I had planned beyond these two weeks made me feel better about the initial failure.

This October, I plan on playing catch up on BTW and other WIPs I fell behind on. By the end of this month, I plan on having written 5 chapters along with the four chapters that carry over last month. I feel like the carry over factor will help in building that stamina in terms of writing. After all, the only reason I had set 30 pages in two weeks for Poco-A-Poco was to build in routine. I'll talk more about that later on, but for now my goal with BTW is to have written 4/5 chapters each month. Each chapter having a minimum word count of 1,500 words. BTW will have a hiatus in November for NaNoWriMo.

By the end of the year, I would like to have around 14 chapters.

By the end of April 2024, I would like to have around 30 chapters.

@tobeaspected

To Be Aspectec is another product of the pandemic and also my first dive into AroWriMo. Having failed to achieve what I originally wanted for AroWriMo multiple years in a row, I plan to finish at least one character interaction just in time for next year's AroWriMo.

The goal for the last two weeks was to have two "scenes" written for TBA. With the goal being more subjective and similar to my goal with Poco-A-Poco pages, I opted to have a definition set for what counted as a scene (for my overthinking sanity's sake). A scene would mean any amount of writing needed before the player makes a choice. (Oh I forgot to mention TBA is an interactive fiction piece, didn't I?) Besides the quantity, anything else was up to me.

By the end of the year, I would like to have 6 "scenes" written for TBA.

By the end of February 2024, I would like to finish one "volume" of TBA. A volume would be a total of two characters and all their interactions, including endings.

By the end of April 2024, I would like to have 10 "scenes" written.

@thehuntersacethetic

The Hunter's Ace-Thetic is another interactive fiction project that started during the pandemic. It has been through many different mediums as a way to experiment and learn about different media, but I will focus on ChoiceScript for now.

My goal during the past two weeks was to write out one "episode". Again, with the goal being to build stamina, I added THAT work load into the two weeks as well. More so, the focus these past two weeks was to organize the "episode" structure, with the real priority being on an outline for it.

By the end of the year, I would like to have 4 episodes of THAT.

By the end of April 2024, I would like to have 8 Episodes of THAT.

NaNoWriMo 2023 Project (OMS)

For the month of November, I plan to take on NaNoWriMo and work on one of my abandoned attempts. I hope to write to full 60,000 words by the end of Novemember. If anything, I hope I learn how to be a better writer. The name of the book will be: "Oh My, Starsigns!"

"Oh My Starsigns!" is planned to be a sci-fi/ crime drama(?) taking place in the future where the space police have technology that can take over a suspect's body. Along with the police themselves, suspects also posses different abilities. The story will begin when a prison ship crash lands on a distant planet. Really trying hard to not give anything away just yet.

By the end of 2023, I would like to have Oh My, Starsigns! finished.

By the end of April 2024, I have no further plans for OMS other than maybe self publishing on Amazon or somewhere else if I'm able to find a better alternative.

What I've Written So Far (End of September, 2023):

Poco-A-Poco: 20/30 Pages

Bi The Way: 0/4 Chapters, 0/6k Words

To Be Aspected: 0/2 Scenes

The Hunter's Ace-thetic: 0/1 Episodes

What I Plan to Write (October 2023):

Poco-A-Poco: 40/30 Pages

Bi The Way: 8/4 Chapters, 12k/6k Words

To Be Aspected: 4/2 Scenes

The Hunter's Ace-thetic: 2/1 Episodes

Reflection:

I think these past two months have been a great experiment in knowing what to do different for the next couple of weeks. Hope to update you a month from now with good results.

[wushandiandiantou]

The main content I want to draw is the dualism of soul and spirit in the context of the early Tang Dynasty. In the early Tang Dynasty, Buddhism has become more popular, but the dualism of "the soul returns to the wilderness and the vigor returns to the underworld" from the Spring and Autumn Period is still prevalent in the tombs.

The main manifestation is that the tomb passage is from the inside to the outside, followed by the inner house and the gods.The spirit of the tomb owner resides in the inner house, while the soul is guided by the frescoes on both sides of the tomb passage all the way out to the sky 😋

(The figures and architecture inside are mainly based on the murals of Prince Yide and Princess Yongtai.

（（I haven't said that my current direction of study is not practical art, but art history and art management. I am in love with the subject of early Chinese painting, and it may become my future research direction.

Whatever….this is my first attempt at animation, although it's less than half a minute, but I actually drew 122 frames, soooo tired😇😇😇hope you enjoy it 😉

[imlostinthedistance]

214 Times

I can talk about things for hours so I honestly hope you are ready for this.

There are many good things in life, and one of the good things in my life is music, all types of music (except EDM sorry lol). I would have to say my favorite artist is Mac Miller, but my favorite song is HONEST by Baby Keem.

Baby Keem also known has Hykeem Carter was born on Oct. 22 2000. He's a libra and I can tell cause he's always right. He gained recognition when ORANGE SODA first came out. I remember that song being a song of the summer.

Let us focus on the true subject though:

HONEST

HONEST appears on his second studio album "DIE FOR MY BITCH", its the second song.

The beginning beats feel like my heart pounding, it makes my entire body slow but also float to a different headspace. This song makes me feel comfort, sadness, happiness, and laughs.

Every single time I listen to the song it feels exactly like the first time I heard. I get those exact same feelings I got the first time, every time I hear it. I somehow know every single word.

There are so many lyrics that tug at me so much so I'd like to share them:

"half-past tweleve, I was all alone, I can't be compromised

fuckin' on my ex, we aint apologize"

This lyric wow. It is the truth. The whole truth, and nothing but the entire truth. That's all I gotta say.

"cause im way too young and you always right"

Again, wow. I have heard those gut wrenching words come from my mouth and the mouth of exes. It hit me somewhere I didn't know existed. I can just hear my ex saying that and its kind of funny because I am always right and we were just 19 year olds.

"the little arguments always start the fight"

I felt this, I felt it to the core of my entire existance. Arguing is exhausting but geez, having every little thing become an argument is draining. It hurts when a relationship goes through that, but both parties have to grow.

"be honest, honest cause im honest, honest"

That lyric is simply self explanatory. Baby Keem is so relatable what I would do to have a conversation with him.

"youre not who i love, huh i just need to pass the time, huh'

Saying those things to someone is one of the hardest truths I have ever had to say. I dont like lying and I dont like wrong impressions. In truth to not be a person who does this, heal.

"I treat my lil orange like a hellcat"

I LOVE THIS LYRIC. Cutest lyric in the whole song, it alludes to his song his song ORANGE SODA. An orange soda brand is... Crush. I want to be treated like a Hellcat.

Those are just some examples of why this song is so good. To me he is a relatable lyrical genius.

I have seen him perform this song 3 times live in less than 6 months. I traveled down to Miami to see him. Any chance I got I take, Baby Keem's words hit my soul like a truck full of fireworks.

I listened to this song:

122 times on Apple Music

and

92 times on Spotify

I listened to it 214 times. Basically listened to that song once a day for 7 months. 10 hours, 617 minutes.

Crazy, but the song is just that good.

Every single break up, this is the first song I listen to. It can speak to a lot of different circumstances. Its a song that not only is relatable but the beat and the bass and vocals.

His voice is so clear but you can hear how he feels. Hearing him perform it makes you feel warm, he makes the lights a beautiful sunset orange. He makes sure to let you sing it. He knows this song touches people.

The beat and the soothing ooohs, over it give me a feeling of swaying. Just way to the beat and let him talk to you about his shitty love life. It gives a sense of comfort that he has a shitty love life like I have a shitty love life so I am not completely alone in these feelings.

[goldensunset]

oh boy the damage calcs and mechanics of pokemon strike again.. i'm sure there's someone who is more familiar with the actual exact calculations for damage (using the whole wacky formula), but i'll throw in my two cents as someone who refuses to do precise damage calcs.

the impact pokemon stats vs move base power have when it comes to dealing damage definitely depends on a whole bunch of factors (iv/evs, nature, base stats) so it's really hard to say. i think you could suuuper generally (and i mean VERY generally) say this: - if the pokemon's base atk and spatk is fairly skewed (like more than ~40 apart), the move being physical or special will be more important - if the pokemon's base atk/spatk stat is not too skewed, the difference in move base power will be more important

but with your luxray it's a little harder to say exactly. luxray's base stats look like this

luxray's atk and spatk base stats are not too different, so it's a viable mon to be either a physical or special attacker or just mixed. and assuming your luxray's nature doesn't happen to be one that decreases spatk and you didn't invest full evs into atk, using a phys/special move could be equally fine. at this point, the difference in the actual move's base power might be weighed heavier but here's how i see it:

to compare the actual moves - damage: comparing the base powers, the 65 vs 80 isn't really enough considering luxray's stats to really declare a substantial difference in damage - additional effects: tfang does have that nice paralysis and flinch chance, however relying on flinch chance is much shakier than paralysis. in gen 4, paralysis cuts down a mon's speed down to only 25% of its normal speed and a 25% chance to be unable to move at all - MUCH more useful and reliable. discharge has that 30% paralysis chance (and can hit multiple mons in double battles) and 100 accuracy, giving it a much better edge than tfang.

tldr: either one is perfectly fine in terms of damage but i'd personally go w discharge for added effect

i hope the first part actually makes sense and i didn't make it worse lmao. in the end i say just go with your gut!

i wanna preface this by saying i love how every single person who has responded has said ‘now i don’t know EXACTLY how to calculate this but-‘ like ok i take it this is a matter beyond any simple question

so skibby has a jolly nature which means- (*runs to the internet*) oh. +speed and -special attack. huh. how about that. that’s unfortunate

i was gonna sayyyy if they’re both more or less equally good i would love the increased paralysis chance but do you think it would still be worth it with a decreased sp. attack nature?

idk what evs i’ve acquired i haven’t been paying attention lol. but her full breakdown of stats is:

hp 178

attack 167

defense 104

sp. attack 122

sp. def 108

speed 132

so yeah i guess you can really see the +speed nature come through but the -sp. attack nature doesn’t seem to be hurting that bad?

the other thing to say here is that i might be overthinking this bc never in this playthrough have i once even started thinking about evs and natures and stats i’ve just vibed and had no trouble lol. like i have done this for no other pokémon. kinda wonder if it even matters it’s not like i even really need an electric type for my e4 + champion team given what i’ve researched but i’m just gonna bring her anyway. however at this point i’ve committed to the bit on this one and i’m gonna make an educated decision lol