#and that has been true to my experience

[i-cast-zone-of-truth]

"The sea of suffering is endless. As long as you return to the shore in time, there will still be a brilliant sunset waiting for you."

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The Charcuterie Board, as designed by your votes! Thank you to everyone who participated; this was a fun challenge!

[bixels]

The idea that uni protesters are "elitist ivy-league rich kids larping as revolutionaries" on Twitter and Reddit and even here is so fucking funny to me if you actually know anything about the student bodies at these unis. Take it from someone who's going to one of the biggest private unis in the US, 80% of the peers I know are either from the suburbs or an apartment somewhere in America, children of immigrants, or here on a student visa. I've heard about one-percenter students, but I've never met one in person. Like, don't get me wrong, the institution as a whole is still very privileged and white. I've talked with friends and classmates about feeling weird or dissonant being here and coming from such a different background. But in my art program, I see BIPOC, disabled, queer, lower-income students and faculty trying to deconstruct and tear that down and make space every day. So to take a cursory glance at a crowd of student protesters in coalitions that are led by BIPOC & 1st/2nd-gen immigrant students and HQ'd in ethnic housings and student organizations and say, "ah. children of the elite." Get real.

[not-so-superheroine]

Jesus is my older brother, not my dad.

other christians don't seem to feel the same?

am i missing something where he insists on such a thing except perhaps with actual little children?

[loki-zen]

Cynical prediction (non-election-related):

One big eventual consequence of widespread genAI implementation is going to be the revelation that a lot of things we assumed were checked by more than one person before they went out to the general public never actually were, not in the detail you'd hope for at least - we've actually been relying on the diligence and competence of individuals who were not actually tested on or rewarded for displaying this.

[puppppppppy]

learning abt friendship decay and "not reaching out to your friends for months at a time unprompted is not neurotypical behaviour" has me feeling a certain way

[they-didnt-last]

anyone interested in talking about the iconic 2000's middle-grade-bordering-on-ya book series gallagher girls??

[anghraine]

Politics vent, though not about specific politicians:

It is wild to have conversations about White Poverty in the US and the desperate straits in which conservative white bigots allegedly live with left-wing white people who have never ever been poor. It seems like they just can't process that creative/literary people like J and I could conceivably have grown up in actual for real poverty and ... idk, it feels very patronizing (and frustrating) at times.

[owenthetokencishet]

[meanderingmoles]

When all you want to do is focus on a test but all you hear is FLASHBURN, THE [failed to find a piece of jewelry for twenty years] [had self-esteemed destroyed by three children] PERFECT HERO

[doodlejoltik]

just realised how much I'm going to miss the rift once the main story is completed. it's such a defining feature of the landscape

some really cool close-up shots i got of it:

the left shot here is from my first day playing the game. the right is from my most recent. you can literally see it from everywhere in Hisui and I think that's just so cool

how does Rei feel, knowing that the steps he's taking will result in the rift's closure? (that's the hope, at least.) the nebulous place he came from before now even further away, a gateway closed...

what would it be like to live in a Hisui without it to draw your eye? to gaze upon with awe and wonder and fascination and feel a sense of incredible smallness.

it's strange, isn't it, that he doesn't fear it at all.

does it prove the whispers about him right?

[you cannot go any farther.]

[let go.]

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

At your side [End of Season 2]

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[atrophiedemotion]

ivan & the weagein

i don't think that's how it's spelled but i'm taking it straight from patreon so

one of my favorite bits of ivan's character that i wish was talked about more is his relationship with the weagein at anakt garden. so i wanted to give my two cents on it and why i think he was fond of it & his reasons for staging the confrontation (as well as how his view of till was shaped by it).

why did ivan befriend the waegein?

when ivan was young, he had yet to create and adopt his effortlessly charming persona he uses in his later years. he likely didn't think it was worth it at that age especially when he was already planning to escape. he's largely silent, unapproachable, and generally a bit unnerving. ivan is different than his peers, doesn't experience emotion in the same way and can't understand why/how they feel things or how to communicate as efficiently.

i'm certain he's aware of this, and anyone in this situation (no matter how unaffected they may appear) would start to feel at least a bit like an outcast and like something was wrong with them. ivan did not fit in with the other kids at anakt, so it makes complete sense to me that he would see himself in the waegein.

a guard 'dog' that is only meant to scare other creatures. horrifying and monstrous. kept in a place for a single purpose and assumedly not given much autonomy. treated as lesser than creatures that are the same species as it.

i believe ivan saw himself in the waegein, and took comfort in its presence and existence because he felt a commonality with it that he doesn't feel with his peers. he felt he could be himself around it and not get judged for it. he grows close to it (in a way i imagine would be similar to slowly befriending a feral cat who bites) and bonds with it so well he can be physically close to it. i wouldn't be surprised if the waegein felt similarly seen, honestly.

why did ivan stage till & mizi's confrontation with the waegein?

wellll i think there are a few reasons. these could exist separately, but i personally feel that it's a combination of the three.

ivan needed to show/prove to till that anakt garden is just as dangerous as the outside world.

he wanted to gauge other human's fear response and reaction in general to something they would consider dangerous/scary.

he wanted to test how till in particular would react to danger.

reason one - proving anakt was dangerous

ivan, presumably, knows from the beginning that anakt is not a safehaven or the ideal place for humans to be 'raised'. we can assume this from context clues and his charcter in general, but i think it's a safe assumption. he knows that there's a real world out there, somewhere with the real sun and the real stars and no aliens.

he wants to escape and he wants to take till with him, so he needs to show him that the world they're being forced to live in is just as dangerous and, worse- has hidden horrors as opposed to outright ones. the only way till would actually be willing to run away would be to show him firsthand how much danger they're in. telling him isn't enough, till has to experience it himself (till would never take ivan's word i think lmao).

reason two - gauging fear response/reaction

this one's pretty self explanatory- since ivan does not experience emotions in the way most people do, he learns via the reactions of the people around him so he can mirror them. life or death fear isn't something they're really faced with at anakt, so he needs to set up the situation himself. it's basically a science experiment lmfao

reason three - studying till

ivan is already interested in till at this point, since the timeline isn't exactly in the order shown to us. he's enraptured by till's explosive show of emotions and the way he essentially wears his heart on his sleeve, because that's not something ivan can even begin to comprehend. it would make sense that he'd want to see how till, another person he sees as different from their classmates but in the opposite way of himself, would react to something ivan doesn't blink twice at.

with all this being said, i feel like i can somewhat safely say that ivan is probably both confident in the fact that the waegein will not genuinely attack till & mizi and relatively uncaring if it does. the likelihood of them dying is low, ivan most likely had contingency plans in place, but i also don't think he feels remorse or guilt as much as he feels shame. (but that's for another day)

okay i was going to into how this event shaped the way ivan saw and felt about till & the correlation with the meteor shower but this is already very long so i will make a separate post talking about that and link it here when im done lmao

[some-pers0n]

Feeling. normal! 😁

[novice-comics]

DannyMay Split AU Week 3 - Revenge

As the years passed so too did Danny's life without him. Even though he aged, his mentality didn't. Steadily, Phantom started taking over more and more. The villains he once fought against with near cartoonish antics now attacked mercilessly. For most it was the replacement of resentments by rage, no longer solely "haunted" by a life poorly lived. Their loss of freedom left them volatile towards Danny. For Vlad, it was much more personal.

Despite the growing collection of scars, Phantom always pressed on. Picking up the slack from his human counterpart. Regardless of his own hatred towards the teen, he had to protect the one he shared a body with.

[carry-the-sky]

.