#True Meaning of Life

[codenamejudas]

@hirvenxsoturi continued from here

Just because something is a success doesn’t mean it can’t be a mistake as well. Much like Bev, Judas is left laying on his back, staring up towards the sky for what feels like eternity as he re-evaluates his life choices. “That hurt you, too?”

[tawnysoup]

Finally now that the comic is fully public on comicfury, I get to share it with all of you here, too <3

If you enjoyed, please consider supporting by buying a PDF of the comic on itch.io: https://tawnysoup.itch.io/home-in-the-woods

[eggeithlegg]

[demaparbat-hp]

Little Zuzu for an incoming project 🔥

[zhukzucraft]

=> Martyn: Have a flashback

Your adventure started, as they often do, with some daring exploration. You gave Jimmy the good old soulmate punch test and felt nothing. And yet, it felt only natural to stick together.

The two of you happened upon some fortuitous surface iron, which you bartered for some provisions for the road.

The provisions ran out sooner than you expected.

...But with your soulmates, whoever they were, seeming more than ready to eat for two, your adventure didn't have to end there.

Unfortunately, wood isn't something that can be shared through the soulmate bond. You had to leave, pronto.

Martyn: Phew! Was that a productive trip or-

Jimmy: Martyn I'm not healing!!

Martyn: Wha-

Jimmy: The hearts!! They're not going up!!! What if something shoots at me now??

Martyn: Damn, really? Hold on, let me get us into a boat at least

Jimmy: Oh man oh god oh man

=> End Flashback

Start Over -- Go Back

[palatinewolfsblog]

"True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don't need to regularly escape from." Brianna Wiest.

[hinamie]

binding vow

[dayurno]

(voice of a man slowly losing his mind) does it ever strike you that the plot of aftg is moved by little acts of kindness kevin offered to people who never had any semblance of it before. loving riko when no one would, befriending jean in the nest and keeping him alive through debilitating amounts of trauma, telling andrew he was worth it in a dingy high school locker room, teaching neil every night even if he knew he was about to die

[skunkes]

[hold-on-a-little-longer-whump]

Don't mind me, just thinking about a character recovering from an illness or injury. The danger has passed, but they're still weak and exhaustion follows them like a heavy cloud. Comfort food is brought regularly. Soft clothes. Blankets. Fuzzy socks.

Particularly, the image of them sleeping on a squashy looking couch. Maybe they kicked off the blankets. Golden sunlight bathes them in warmth, and it's heavenly. Their hair is fluffed and messy.

And their companion stops themselves in the threshold of the door, not wanting to disturb this rare moment of bliss. They're carrying a tray of warm food, and the steam catches in the sun's rays just right.

They smile. Lunch can wait.

[lgbtlunaverse]

So I've said multipe times now (here and here) that thinking nmj is just so blinded by privilege he doesn't undertand that acting out of line gets people killed is, in my opinion, a misunderstanding of his character that ignores the part where he's, you know, actively dying the whole time and thinks that's a good thing. But that doesn't mean I don't think privilege plays no role at all in how he views the world.

Specifically, his view that death (at least premature or violent death) means something.

Death isn't always a tragedy to NMJ, but it is always meaningful. If you kill an evil dangerous person for your righteous cause, that death had meaning. There was evil in the world and now there is less of it. Similarly, if you die in the pursuit of your righteous cause, that death has meaning, because the sheer dedication you gave to it that you were willing to die for it will further that cause, and your bretheren will be invigorated by your sacrifice to fight even harder.

If a death isn't meaningful, that's an injustice and it is up to the living to give it meaning. That's what cuts so deep about his father's murder. There were no consequences, no changes, no meaning. Wen Ruohan was just going to get away with it! He fights and wins an entire war to make it mean something, to make it so that the unjust murder of Nie Mingjue's father is part of Wen Ruohan's downfall.

But this is a view he can only hold because he's the kind of person who's death will be meaningful. Most ordinary people's deaths are meaningless. Not ontologically, not inherently, but they are made meaningless because no one cares. For death to be meaningful you either have to be so powerful that anything you risk your life for will be impacted in some way. (Like, say, if you sacrifice a long life for immense martial power in a faustian bargain with a blade) Or if people with that kind of power care enough about you to do so for you. For most people, this isn't true. A starving street kid has no power to change the unfair world that put them there, even if they risk their life trying, and no one will do it for them once they die.

Nie Mingjue knows this in abstract, and of course rightfully believes it's wrong. But all that does is make it yet another righteous cause people should be willing to die for. Everyone's deaths should mean something, we'll make it so or die trying!

This is what the conflict between nieyao is about at its core. Because Jin Guangyao, fundamentally, cannot conceive of his own death as meaningful. Nie Mingjue grew up around powerful men who could change the world but refuse to do so because god forbid they risk a single hair on their perfect heads. Meng Yao, on the other hand, grew up in an environment where no one of importance would blink twice if you died. He was surrounded by meaningless death. Indeed his entire early life is defined by that lack of care.

Meng Shi dies and no one cares. Meng Yao gets thrown off a flight off stairs and no one cares. He has to be the one to do the caring, and once he's gone no one else will do it for him.

So he has to live.

Jin Guangyao eventually gets far enough that he actually does aquire the power to change some things... as long as he's alive. If he changes too much, holds on too tightly to his ideals, he'll die and it'll all be for nothing. He can't sacrifice himself for his goals because doing so would immediately render those goals unobtainable. No one will care about what he tried to do. He won't be a heroic sacrifice, he'll just be trash that finally cleaned itself up.

And well... Nie Mingjue dies, and someone makes it mean something. Makes it mean so much that the entire story of mdzs would not exist without it. Jin Guangyao dies and it doesn't mean anything. Most people are glad to be rid of him, and the few that are not don't do anything to change that.

[gideonisms]

"don't walk alone at night as a woman" "don't live alone as a woman" "don't try to buy a car by yourself as a woman" damn it's almost like people just don't want women to do things

[warmfuzzyanimal]

cow's secret revealed! 🛸

fun lil alt design for cow i've been workin on >:03c

💫🛸

[blueberry-ry]

Little thought of the day: What if "New Mandalorians" was the name of a movement rather than a group?

Lemme explain:

I we look at the True Mandalorians and Death Watch, we can see that they are two specific groups, with a specific leader and also a chain of command, who have a specific objective and code etc.

They were an important part of the war, but they were still two distinct groups.

But then we look at the New Mandalorians, and we are told that they are the vast majority of the mandalorians, but how is that possible for one single group of people to all agree on what is supposed to be planetarian level? It just does not feel possible to me.

So, what if there were actually multiple mandalorian groups, who shared a lot of common points and even philosophies and ideals, but still diverged in others? And so they all got grouped into the name "New Mandalorians" because of it?

Something like this ya know?

[peace-hunter]

tfone au where OP is created as the last of the primes but way after them, a sparkling born at what were thought to be the last days of the war against the quintessons, the beginning of a new generation of peace after eons of war. a child meant to be loved and raised knowing nothing of war nor sacrifice.

he's kept mostly out of the spotlight by his siblings, who don't wish to expose him to everyone's optics so young, and want to wait until the war is done and over to properly introduce him to their people.

except of course the primes are betrayed and murdered by sentinel, the war is lost and everyone who knows and cared for the truth is either banished or outright killed in order to suppress it.

and the high guard, the ones the primes trusted the most, the ones that were supposed to protect them, the ones who failed in their most important duty, have to make a choice. to take the last prime, their last hope, with them to the surface, a hostile environment where there's little to no supplies and where they'll be hunted down by both sentinel and the quintessons as the biggest threat to their regimen.

or hide him in plain sight. place him where sentinel won't think to look for him. one more sparkling among many. and hope it will be enough to keep him alive. pray to primus that he'll protect his last child long enough for them to come back for him when it's safer (even if most of them have already lost their faith on him when he allowed the rest of his children to be massacred like that)

they almost lose their resolve when they realize they will have to take the little one's cog away in order to make him blend in with the rest of the newborns (and oh do they burn with murderous intent when they see what sentinel has done to their people but it's not the time yet-) but in the end they decide an impaired little prime is better than a dead one.

and so in the chaos of thirteen dead primes and a sudden energon crisis, a little sparkling who very few mechs really knew about and even fewer had seen completely vanishes. and in the depths of iacon a mech in charge of a new batch of newborns scratches their helm in confusion as they realize they must have miscounted the first time.

optimus prime is quietly erased from any official records by sentinel, written off as dead when they find a sparkling's frame mangled beyond recognition after an attack on the base of those rebels that insist on being a thorn on his side. killing the sparkling hadn't been precisely in his plans, he probably could've found some use for it after all, but he's not particularly upset about it either.

and orion pax grows up with an ache on his spark that tells him he's missing something far more important than a t-cog and dreams of gentle and loving hands, cradling him against the frames of mechs he cannot recall the faces of.

[demigods-posts]

hearing annabeth express genuine confusion at the existence of disney world was incredibly heartbreaking. but it raised a good point about just how unprepared she was for a life outside of camp. it makes me wonder how she settled into a public school environment after training as a child soldier for five years straight. i question what her first active shooter drill was like and if the teachers noticed how prepared she seemed for life or death situations in comparison to her english homework. i wonder how she socialized with kids her age, or if she mostly kept to herself because the anxiety of making a misstep in social situation and risk being neglected was near crippling. i think of the quiet moments at home during bedtime ruined by the slightest movement outside and her father finding her keeping watch outside her brothers' bedroom at three in the morning. how heartbreaking is it that annabeth can't find true solace in any environment she's in?